---
celteuskara@... wrote:
> For those who are unaware of Rydberg, he refuted all
> the stories of the Germanic Peoples and Gods having
> originated from real historical personages who had
> more or less recently lived by the Sea of Azov, as
> long ago as 1887! He goes, step by fanciful step,
> through the entire process of the 'correction' of
> Germanic folk traditions in order to make them 'fit'
> with Classical 'history' as largely enshrined in the
> Aeneid.
*****GK: Thank you very much for providing the link.
Rydberg makes a lot of sense and I would think that
his basic point is correct and unassailable. As far as
Odin is concerned it would seem that someone
identified by Tacitus as a God (Mercury) whose name
became "Wednesday" at about the same time (1rst c.
AD)would hardly have existed as a human being just a
century or so earlier. Particularly since there is
nothing in known archaeology or history which
indicates epochal changes in the North at that time.
Having said this, I must add that Rydberg is not
always correct as to particulars, and sometimes makes
whopping mistakes (incl. errors of omission). But for
an individual writing in 1887 he is remarkably
informed and informative.******
>
>(Celteus) There's an online copy at
> http://www.boudicca.de/teut.htm
> It's very long, but the relevent part to this
> discussion is found in sections 10 to 13, and is
> only a few pages worth.
>
> Briefly, it's just a case of the story of Troy
> looming so large in barbarian Europe's inherited
> Classical tradition, that everyone wanted to, and
> simply HAD to, be descended from the Trojans. The
> deduction process the early Mediaeval historians
> used is highly reminiscent of the sort of thing that
> we see in Piotr's list of 'Kooky Sites'!
>
> Rydberg uses these sources as a means to reconstruct
> the older traditions, which he does with some
> degree of plausibility, and constitutes in my
> opinion a worthwhile task. However, you can't treat
> the Trojan euhemerisation bits as containing traces
> of real history for they constitute a grafted on
> addition, that can be easily discerned if you follow
> it's own historiographical trajectory.
*****GK: One thing which must be noted is that Rydberg
correctly points out on many occasions how "myth" can
be "historicized", or conversely "history"
"mythicized". The mixing of myth and history is seen,
for instance in the Gothic tale of Hunnic origins
(scions of the "haliorunas") (R. pp. 101-102, 372); in
the substitution of Attila for Odin (p. 133), or of
the historical Theodoric the Ostrogoth (reigned in
Italy 493-526) for Hadding (p. 136), of Bulgarians for
"Borgarians" in the Lombard tales (p. 395) etc etc.
And even making "Hengest" the leader of the Saxon
invaders of Britain in the 5th c. (p. 460). That being
so, and fully accepting his major premise, we are
still entitled to look for possible "bits of history"
in these texts, but with a great deal of caution. It's
obvious, for instance, that Odin did not originally
come from the banks of the Don. But something may well
have happened there (quite independently of the Trojan
story) which eventually prompted Snorri or a source of
his to come up with the Heimskringla speculations.
They "saw" analogies and did what they did with the
known results. That is why I would not dismiss the
attempted reconstructions of Pritsak out of hand (or
something like this). Pritsak BTW associates Snorri's
"Odin" with the process of the reform of the futhark
in Scandinavis ca. 800 AD (reduction from 24 to 16
letters) cf. Pritsak, op. cit., pp. 86-92. P. 88:
"...the reformer of the Scandinavian version of the
younger futhark was familiar with the Old Turkic of
the eighth and ninth century written in the
Aramean>Sogdian Uighur alphabet...", and Pritsak
thinks that this was facilitated by Norse-Khazar
contacts in the very areas where Snorri recasts his
"Aesir vs Vanir" story. Whatever one thinks of
Pritsak's specifics, one must be careful not to throw
out the baby with the bathwater as to these complex
issues.*****
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