Hej Torsten,
>Refutation involves reasoning, not insult. I am looking forward to
hearing the arguments I assume you have. But I am puzzled as to
whether mr Wassail thinks Odin migrated or not?
"Mr. Wassail"?
For the record, I don't believe that Odin was an immigrant. Tacitus mentions
that Mercury was the principle god of the Germanics tribes. (Odin is
compared to Mercury elsewhere, in the names of the days of the week for
example). In Paulus Deaconus' and his predecessors work, roughly 400 to 500
years later a Godan or Wodan and his wife Frea are mentioned. Later in the
Eddas, some 500 years after that, we find Odin and Frigg. The data is
consistant over time. I don't think there was enough time for a local tribal
god to become a pan-Germanic in that timeframe. If so, where is the
evidence? I believe that Odin is the Indo-European "sky father" under a new
name. He has most if not all of the attributes necessary for this
identification. On the other hand, Tyr has only been associated with the IE
*Dyuaus Pater becaiuse of his name, not any attribute. Thus the theory
(built solely on a single etymological example) that Odin displaced an
earlier Sky-Father named *Tiu (a name recorded nowhere). I find the
argument rather flimsy and difficult to accept. A stronger arguement in my
opinion is that the IE *Dyuas Piter simply took on a new name in the North,
i.e. one of his designations or attributes in time became a proper name.
It's a much more likely scenario.
>Very convincing, I must say. But why does Tacitus insist that the Liburna
image 'docet' that this religion is imported? Remember we are
talking about a people near to the Ocean. Did Liburnans have ship- model
goddesses too? Were the boats that similar? Would Tacitus have
been so sloppy as not to inquire into possible differences?
I assume you are not "very convinced" by the questions that follow. In the
translation I have of the relevant passage in Germania 9, Tacitus says "I
have no idea what the origin or explanation of the foriegn cult is, except
that the goddess' emblem, a light warship, indicates that the cult came
from a foriegn land."
I wouldn't characterize it as sloppy, but Tacitus seems to be making an
assumption of the cult's origin based on the goddess' emblem alone. I take
Tacitus at his word. There is little else to go on here. Also, I cannot
think of a Roman goddess with a weeping myth, common to the Eygptian Isis
and the Germanic Freyja, thus having heard the myth perhaps Tacitus had to
reach to Eygpt to find an appropriate parallel known to his Roman readers.
All is speculation.The evidence is too sparse to draw many conclusions, but
it is rather unlikely that an Eygptian goddess came to be worshipped by a
small band of Germans in 100 AD, don't you think? We have no evidence of
this. It is more logical to assume that this is another native goddess
designated under Roman interpretation. All we have to go on is the emblem of
a light warship, which we find associated with Freyja (through her brother
Frey). This is strengthened by the fact that Isis and Freyja have similar
mythic roles.
>He manitains that the Germani must have arrived by sea to their homes. In
his theory, therefore, there is no room for contact with the
Liburnae.
Tacitus does not indicate from which direction the Germani arrived by sea,
and since he speaks of a densely populated kingdom to the North in later
chapters, we could with reason believe that the Germanii arrived in Northern
Europe from Scandinavia. There is some evidence in Germanic histories that
the Germanic tribes themselves believed that they originated in Scandinavia.
Of course this need not be historically accurate, it simply means that the
IE tribes were so well established in Scandinavia before descending south
into Europe that they believed themselves to be natives of that region (when
in fact we know they had migrated to Scandiavia from Eastern Europe sometime
prior to or during the Stone Age in Europe). Tacitus after all is reporting
on Germanic customs, not historical fact.
>If he observes evidence to the contrary, one would expect him to go out of
his way to disprove that the Liburna ship models (?)
were related to the Suebian ones (just look at the antics of some of us on
this list trying to make the shoe fit ;-)). He doesn't. Hm!
I cannot think of any other examples in Germania where he goes out of way to
disprove or prove any of the evidence he cites. It seems simply like
observation and report (some of which are obviously second hand reports,
i.e. in regard to the most northern tribes and their environs.)
>And if I accept your argument, we're back to: why are these two myths so
similar (which is exactly what puzzled Tacitus in the first place)?
What indicates Tacitus' puzzlement? He simply states that some of the Suebi
worship Isis, which he takes as a foriegn cult because her emblem is a light
warship. There isn't much to go on here, and little can be built on what
Tacitus did not say, only hat he said and a comparision of known data about
Isis and native Germanic goddesses attempting to find a match that would
explain the Roman interpretation.. Freyja is a close match.
Wassail, William
"I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory';
but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the
other in the purposed domination of the author."
J.R.R. Tolkien