Re: [tied] Vanir

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
> --- 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.

True, but didn't claim that. I said the person "Odin" was named after
the divinity Odin, who was known long before.

>Particularly since there is
> nothing in known archaeology or history which
> indicates epochal changes in the North at that time.

Not true. In Denmark the transition from Celtic to Roman Iron Age at
that time shows influx of a people from the south, new weapon types,
etc.

> 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 perhaps "Odin" did?

>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.*****
>

WAAAH! WAAAH!

Torsten