--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, wyrdplace@... wrote:
>
> I believe there's reason to equate dwarves with the "dark elves"
mentioned in Gylfaginning. If the elves aren't small in stature,
the dark elves (dwarves) probably wouldn't be, either.
A few things to bear in mind about Gylfaginning's comments on
dwarves and elves. One thing is that dwarves have many interesting
and descriptive personal names, whereas elves do not. Only a few
elves mentioned in old sources have names, as ólafr geirstaðaalfr,
etc.. The reason is that elves are dead ancestors, who bore human
names, whereas dwarves are thought of as unrelated to men, who use,
however, descriptive names about them. Gylfaginning does not mention
that elves were once human persons, treating them (in Christian
fashion) as an abstract mythological category unrelated to humans.
This is because Christianity has no place for elves, as it does not
teach that we become them when we die. Note, however, the very vast,
and very old, angel-mythology in western Chirstianity, which really
has no basis in the Bible - still, it persists, and is even popular
among descendants of Christians who no longer practice Christianity
formally, who have formed modern spiritual movements/religions based
on angels. So, just why is this belief in angels so persistant among
western Christians/post-Christians? Why do not, for instance, middle
eastern Christians have this muthology? The answer seems to be that
ancestor worship survived in western Christianity as angel-worship.
The conversionary church would have avoided the topic of belief in
one's ancestors, not wanting to offend folk or loose members, and
thus simply allowed folk to believe that their ancestors continued
to live as angels, though unbaptized in life, as they died _before_
having had the option of becoming Christians, and thus were allowed
to convert after death. It solved them problem during conversion,
but also allowed a vast amount of ancient folk-belief to survive.
Angles live in heaven with God the Father, despite the teaching that
humans are raised from their graves and judged on judgement day, and
thus are presumably not in heaven yet. But such contradictions are
found everywhere in human beliefs about death/the afterworld/etc.,
and they don't bother us, even if we can see logical contradictions.
So, Snorri, in writing Gylfaginning, naturally presented alfar as a
separate group of beings from us, companions of the gods, etc., but
a modern, educated reader has to ask: what was their real origin in
human belief? Why are there not just gods and giants, etc.? Why the
elves? Comparative indo-european religion, and to some extent also
linguist-relationships to the Germanic *albiz, show that they are
the ON equivalent of 'the fathers', the group of long-dead ancestors
prayed and sacrificed to in the Veda, for instance. Thus, the ON did
as we see other hereditary cultures doing, honouring their ancestors
religiously, placing only the gods themselves above/beside them. One
can probably figure out the basics about the angels/evles/etc. issue
just by observing human nature. Thus, not surprisingly, the saga-
named elf, Ólafr Geirstaðaalfr, was a dead man in a burial mound,
who could protect/benefit his descendants/friends. Snorri mentions
dökkalfar and ljósalfar, which you refer to, but largely avoids the
issue of their distinction. So what was it? Wouldn't all alfar be in
the same place, the holy fathers all together? After all, this seems
to be the classic IE-pattern in related religions to the Norse one,
such that folk can assemble and sacrifice to the fathers as _one_
group, besides making private, home sacrifices. Well, the Norse did
go back and forth between cremation and burial, liking helping to
create a grave-cult around buried ancestors, which, while existent,
is typically less substantial in cremating cultures, such as Hindu,
etc. The ON originally cremated, a topic I am well informed about,
as I have studied literature on ON (and earlier) archeaology of this
culture. Non-cremation was a late development, and it never became
universal amongst heathen Norse, who, with few exceptions, prefered
cremation. Archeaologists generally argue that inhumation burials
first arose among rich Norse chieftains, as the mound-finds suggest
throughout the north, while the poor and average (and most rich)
continued to cremate. The reason for inhumation, it is argued, was
social status, burying the dead with lots of goods (which is usually
the case in inhumation burials), showing a large monument, allowing
the dead to live closer to the living, supporting their position in
the society, etc.. It would have been higher status to be able to go
to one's ancestors mounds and talk to them during private sacrifice,
runs one line of reasoning, while others, and especially the poor,
had only the common elf-sacrifce, which many leading families could
have interpreted as being of lower status. Be that as it may, the ON
alfablót is the most central religious event in ON religion, having
no parallel besides the goðablót (sacrifice to the gods). When the
ancestors sacrifed to were mothers, rather than fathers, the rite is
called dísablót. These are the family's guardian female spirits -
that is, it's dead female members. Why the ON used dís about females
and alfr about males is unknown. It could just be language-related.
Regardless, ON is full of female names ending in -elfr (the feminine
grammatical equivalent of -alfr), as well as names beginning in alf-
(as is Old English, etc.) or ending in -alfr. ON alfar live in the
place called Alfheimr, which is in heaven, and a god, Freyr, is said
to own it, having received it as a gift. The popular connections
between light/heaven/virtue/nobility/sun/high-caste/fair-complexion/
etc.etc. probably go back to IE times, being also found in Hinduism.
Anyway, I just thought that I would write a bit about alfar from a
more historical perspective, hopefully filling in some gaps/helping
to make some connections here. There would seem to be a thread that
runs from IE times through to modern angel-belief. The classic, iron
age Norse burial was thus: 1)cremation of the dead, sometimes on
bear-skins (shown by archeaology) and preferably by the water 2)the
burial of the ashes in a small pot under a 'flat-earth' grave (that
is, with no mound) with no/few burial goods (shown by archeaology),
or their spreading over water/a holy river (compare Hinduism) 3)the
raising of an ON bautaðarsteinn/bautasteinn in a prominent position
between farms/at crossroads/etc. - that is, where the stone is most
visable, and ideally, where the other family/extended community
stones are standing - typically tall, thin stones, but not usually
over the ashes themselves and 4)the possible, but not usual, raising
of a burial mound over the ashes - only for high persons/chieftains.
-K
> Jamie
>
>
> -------------- Original message --------------
> From: "Eysteinn Bjornsson" <eysteinn@...>
> --- "llama_nom" wrote:
>
> > Hmm, tall folk... that reminds me of a comment in the glossary to
> > Ralpg O'Connor's "Icelandic Histories and Romances". In the
entry for
> > dwarves he says, "Ancient sources do not mention their diminutive
> > size: later folklore presumably shrank them as it did elves,
goblins
> > and Irish fairy folk."
>
> From the English version of Simek's "Dictionary":
>
> "There is no suggestion in the source-texts that dwarfs
> were originally thought of as being particularly small:
> this is a concept which first appears in the sagas where
> they are described as being small and usually ugly."
>