--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> You must be kidding:
I kid you not.
Snorri makes Odin a wanderer from Troy and you ask how I know what
his literary model is ... I hope you don't buy stuff like "Aesir =
Asiamen" as based on fact.
No, but how about Etruscan (and Lemnian) *as- "god", the Yaz-
people, "iron" (aes) people, and your own theory of Goths as casters
and founders? (yes I know about the /n/ in *ansuz, but how about
nasalisation in the other cognates?)
No-one can blame Snorri for working like other scholars did at his
time (only harder and better than most), but one does have to verify
his information before accepting it. If one knows something about the
historical, intellectual and ideological context of Snorri's work,
and the mediaeval world-view in general, the sources of Snorri's
inspiration are obvious. Here is an excellent article (by Heinz
Klingenberg) about the background of "The World According to Snorri":
>
> http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~alvismal/2odin.pdf
>
I will repeat myself:
> How do you know that? If you had been a Public Attorney, I wouldn't
> be much convinced. You have postulated (not proven) a motive for
> Snorri to lie, and then you proceed to claim he did just that.
Where I come from, a story is either true or false. I don't understand
Klingenbergs epistemology: What exactly is "non-history" (and in
italics at that)? The question is: Is Snorri's story of Odin true or
false? Klingenberg does not answer that question, he just assumes as
obvious that he did. Therefore: the question is open and Snorri's
stories are as true as those of Herodotus, as far as I'm concerned
Torsten