! Assembly of The Elder Troth - Article - Reaves

What is The AET?

Contacts Database

The Assembly of The Elder Troth would like to welcome you to our website. Please click on the links to the left to enter the relevant area of our site.

Heil and welcome to the Articles section of the Assembly of The Elder Troth website. Here you can find items written by many wide and varied folk. The idea is to provide a venue for discussion, debate and education amongst the folk by giving people an individual flavour to the information provided. Every article here is the work of its' author. The Assembly of The Elder Troth DOES NOT endorse the words or anything that is found herein as being official Assembly of The Elder Troth policy, it is purely the work of the author as provided in each case, and Copyright rests with the Author, reproduction is prohibited without the authors permission.

The Concept of Epic Mythology

From: Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythologi, andre delen "Investigations in Germanic Mythology, Volume 2" by Viktor Rydberg (1886)

"The investigations I have presented for my readers, in their details and on the whole, provide evidence that the Germanic myths formed an epic whose kernel, already organized into an epic, originated in proto Indo-European times. For this reason, it is useless to ask when the individual Germanic myths were first brought into epic connection with one another. When the proto-Germanic language began to diverge from its western Indo-European stem as a branch flourishing in its own right, the epic state of the existing mythology was already an age-old fact, which extended from the roots of proto-Indo-European culture.

I have shown that the Germanic myths are of much different ages, and a separate treatise is devoted to those which originate from the proto Indo-European era (see Investigations in Germanic Mythology Vol. 2 pp. 5-182 "Germanic Myths of proto Indo-European Origin"). Others belong, as we have seen, to later ages: some to the European Bronze Age, and still
others to the Iron Age, and naturally all of these sagas inherited fromsuch different ages were influenced by the times which they passed, up until the end of heathendom. But whatever their origin and whatever their transformations may have been since they arose and became universally accepted, they were joined as new links to an already existing epic chain of myths, created by degrees.

But when did this begin? From a psychological standpoint, I imagine one could answer: the need for organization and order in the mythic ideas, and thus the need for an epic connection between them, arises and asserts itself to the same degree as a people's mythology develops from out of animism and polydemonism into a polytheism with concrete and characteristic divine personalities. These must proceed in relationship to one another and develop in accordance with the character they gradually receive. With that, an epic connection also becomes necessary. It appears as a natural part of the mental process. It is a product of the union of the association of ideas and causality.

This natural process is not limited to the Indo-European race. The whole of humanity has been and is its area of activity, provided the people have progressed out of the animistic and polydemonic period. The Semites as well as the Indo-Europeans have their great mythic epic. Already in the period before the pyramids, the Egyptians, like the Semites and the Indo-Europeans, had a mythic epic in a largely finished form as Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (1846-1916), French Egyptologist , shows. It does not require a developed civilization for the epic-building instinct to appear: the need for order and coherence in the world of ideas asserts
itself in all of polytheism's earliest phases.

Were all religions and mythologies swept out of mankind's consciousness at this moment and the field thus opened for the existing "folklore" to grow freely and acquire all the nourishing juices, which are now being used by the former, undoubtedly the isolated existing pieces of this folklore would, in degree of their kinship, under the influence of the association of ideas, grow together with one another into a bigger complex and this again would join itself to an even greater one, which, transformed by the religious and moral requirements, would finally assume the shape of a new mythology. Stories, legends and adventures, whether they originate from collapsed mythic structures and banished religions, or whether they never had any mythic or religious significance, during the historic centuries and under pressure from officially recognized religious legends still show their extraordinary power of growth as well as their tendency to unite with the latter to form an epic whole. In order to strengthen this argument, do I need to mention the wealth of Jewish folklore that, wherever a gap existed in the coherence of the events of the Old Testament and wherever these events required living up and apparent exposition, appeared in order to remedy this need and thus gave us stories about Adam and Eve, about angelic relations with mankind's daughters, about Enoch, about Abraham and the other patriarchs, about Solomon etc, which in fact, with the Biblical stories as chronological support, united with them through centuries into a folklore-epic? Need I recall the number of dethroned myths and the many non-mythic creations of the folk imagination, which in the form of legends on Christian soil began to unite with Biblical history or historic Church data, and with them received a fixed place in an epic chain of events continuing through centuries? Or the Indo-European mythology, which the Greek forebears traveled with to Europe's southern peninsula and which, crushed to bits there during the collision with other myth-cycles, in sense of its lost association looked back and found a new continuity, so that one could speak of events in a Golden Age during Chronos' rule, about those in a Silver Age following thereon after the scepter was passed to Zeus, and about those in a Copper and an Iron Age, and further, within the latter, of events in Cadmos' and Jason's time, developed into a connecting chain of events up to and after the Trojan war with the Iliad's battles and the Odyssey's adventures as just episodes in a vast whole, yet still mastered by those well-versed in mythology? Thus when Ovid decided to celebrate all of the metamorphoses that the ancient mythology contained, he could do it in a long established epic-chronological order, which begins with Chaos and progresses through the entire legendary times-- the very arrangement of Ovid's Metamorpheus.

If we now move to the Germanic arena and to the centuries which saw one Germanic tribe after another converted to Christianity and the great Germanic mythic structure at last completely brought down in ruins, what do we find then? The epic-synthesizing instinct again in full activity, since from the rubble, new epics joined together and were built up into one great whole. The ancient heathen heroic epic about Halfdan and his descendants was sentenced to oblivion and dissolution; but the scattered pieces had life and with newly historic and quasi-historic support were tied in anew with legends about the Gothic King Hermanrich, about Odoacer, King Theoderich, and King Attila. Sigurd Fafnirsbane's epic sprouted out of the soil of decaying myths, and an epic-synthetic need hastened to further nourish it with what could still be found close at hand of the remains of decomposing sagas, and which, more or less organically, became incorporated with the Dieterich epic. One ought to have realized a long time ago that
the epic-building urge did not come with the baptism of the Teutons, but has its basis in human psychology and was active through the millennia. A contrary opinion is puerile.

That this insight has taken a long time to manifest itself thus far finds explanation in the state wherein the mythological research found itself, and wherein it still for a few years after appeared hopelessly imprisoned within the so called ethnographic school before Andrew Lang took the lead and pointed the way out.

The meteorological school of mythology long and up until now has been as good as all-powerful in this entire area of research. In regard to methodology, the most severe mistake that it makes is that it lacks an eye for the distinction between mythogony and mythology, for the difference
between the science of the creation of myths and the science about their present contents, epic connection, and historical development. The mythogony, which is a human psychological and ethnographic branch of research, has been regarded by this school as the actual mythology. In
closest connection with this methodological mistake stands the untenable assumption from which this school begins, that the myths as they exist today are, without further criticism, suitable material for its endeavor to explain their genesis out of natural phenomena: from the storm, the
lightning, dawn and dusk etc. And this mistake has been compounded by the influence of linguists, who imagine that when a mythic person's name is interpreted and found to mean "rumbling", "shining" etc, that all myths concerning him can therefore be explained by the meaning of his name. Arising in this way, the meteorological-etymological school has intentionally made itself blind since the myths, whatever origin they had - and not least among these, that natural phenomena had an effect on the power of imagination is more than likely - as they stand before us now, were created in a course of evolution, that went on through indeterminably many millennia, during which whole other factors than celestial and weather phenomena worked creating new myths and remodeling old nature-myths. One can say with certainty, that ever since the time when they were in the phenomenon-stage, the acting superhuman forces began to be formed by the imagination into more or less concrete personalities each with a fairly definite character and a fairly prescribed area of activity, united with elements of another origin and character altogether, thus weakening or remolding the purely natural elements in the mythology. And this remolding process must have been further reinforced - the pure nature-myths further transformed - when, after the time superhuman forces became distinct acting personalities, the need for order within mythic concepts immediately moved in and placed the stories under causal and chronological laws in order to satisfy the epic-synthetic demands of the imagination.

For this reason, it is a natural that the meteorological school of mythology would diligently ignore any research into the epic connection of the myths. Mere presentation of such connections would condemn the course they have pursued thus far. Almost exclusively, their efforts concern mythogony. But in order to solve this school's task, one has to regard the myths as they have come to us as a material, which only with utmost critical prudence can be used for this purpose, and only as a small part of the material available to gather and investigate. It is the new folklore-movement and its human psychological investigations, by which one can hope for a mythogony, that is in a position to solve this task.

After this account for my position, I pass to the subject of this treatise, adding only the observation that all mythologies in which narratives about the progenitors of man are included, of necessity must already place many if not all of its myths in a chronological order, since of necessity such a chronology exists in legends concerning progenitors following after one another, who are always put in the closest connection with the gods. The zoly powers of the heavens and the underworld protect creation and mankind, their proteges, and, in relations with mankind's patriarchs, guide the course of events. Thus, the stories about the gods and the stories about the progenitors, as far as research can penetrate, have been interlaced within or fused with one another. To put the mythology in one box and the heroic sagas in another, as the meteorological school of school has, is a psychological absurdity.

In regard to the epic itself, two important pieces of the epic chain did not need to be discovered. They were immediately evident. One of them is the story of Creation with its connecting links: Chaos and the seed of the world-tree, the original beings, the theogony, the ruin of the frost-giants, the origin of the artisans of Nature and their activity during the creation of the world, the peace accord of the primeval age, and the Golden Age before whose close mankind is created. Völuspá relates or makes reference to all of these in epic order.

The other piece that does not require discovery, but is immediately evident, are the final links in the great epic: The mythic age's conclusion with the imprisonment and the exile of the instigators of evil (Völuspá 35); the historical age, whose evil inhabitants populate the underworld's realm of misery (Völuspá 36-38, compare 44); The signs that herald Ragnarok: the sword of revenge delivered to Fjalar; Hati and his wolf-clan's breaking into Midgard; another fimbul-winter; earthquakes that sunder the bonds of Loki and the chains of his brood; the blasts from Heimdall's horn, the awakening of Mimir's sons etc. ; reparations for the final battle, the course of the battle and its conclusion, the incineration of the world, the reappearance of Mimir's realm from out of the sea, the dawn of a new and blissful age.

It is between these well-preserved parts of the chain that the other links unite and with them form a connected whole. With consideration of their original position to one another, Völuspá also gives guidance. The Golden Age ends when the "three dangerous thurs-maidens," born three times to different parents, Gullveig-Heid-Aurboda, begins her activities. She spreads witchcraft among evil women and thus lays the foundations of mankind's ethical degeneration. Thereby the fimbul-winter of the primeval age is prepared. Something occurs, which causes the artisans of Nature to no longer make golden treasures for the gods and consequently, man can no longer say regarding them: var þeim vettergis vant ór gulli (Völuspá 8), ("for them there was no lack of gold.") Freyja is stolen away and comes into the power of the giants. And the air is mixed with ruin, in other words: a fimbul-winter breaks out (Völuspá 22, Hauksbók). Between the outbreak of the fimbul-winter and Loki's imprisonment, Völuspá locates feuds in heaven and on earth, and Balder's death caused by Loki. To the previously peaceful Midgard ride Valkyries, equipped for battle. The Aesir kill and burn Gullveig three times. When she is burnt the last time, a dispute caused because of it breaks out between the Aesir and the Vanir, and the latter occupy Asgard. And this discord has its counterpart on earth, which, like the heavens, becomes the scene of a "great war," a folkvig. After the end of the great war Loki is chained. All this from Völuspá.

Through Saxo we learn what this great war was: a war between Svipdag, Gudhorm, and Hadding. What he says about this feud between these half-brothers leaves no doubt that it was concurrent with the Vanir's conquest of Asgard and Odin's exile. And he also informs us regarding Odin (the old exiled Yggr-Uggerus) that it was him, who while banished from heaven prepared the gods' victory in the so-called "Hun war," in which the giants made their last attempt to conquer the world. By that means, Odin reacquires his dignity as the highest of the gods.

Through Saxo we are likewise informed that Gudhorm and Hadding were sons of Gram-Halfdan, and the myths about this Halfdan's birth, his youthful adventures, his royal power, and his struggle to repel the fimbul-winter can still be recovered in Saxo's work. So too Halfdan's relationship to Svipdag, Groa's son, who acquires Völund's sword of revenge, and with it slays Halfdan. Also completely proven is that Svipdag is the son of Egil-Örvandel, Völund's brother. The adventures, in which Thor and Egil appear as close friends and the latter as watchman on the Elivagar, must consequently be placed before the enmity between the gods and the treasure-smiths, among whom Egil and his brother Völund are among the foremost. Demonstrably, and proven in this work, is that Halfdan, the first king, is the son of Skjold-Borgar, the first judge; that the fimbul-winter began while they still live, and caused the great migrations from the North, and that Skjold-Borgar is the son of Heimdall-Righ, the bringer of culture. Thereby, the old Germanic hero-saga in its essential outline is recovered; and the multitude of links which bind the episodes of the mythology and the heroic sagas together bring the details to light and
inform us how the events, merely summarized by Völuspá in a quick overview, develop into an epic chain of cause and effect.

That the followers of the meteorological school should have patience enough to carefully go through the evidence, I don't expect that of them. That is too much to ask. Because they have no interest in the only type of research - circumstantial research - and in the only type of evidence - circumstantial evidence - that can produce safe results in this field. But I also expect objections from another direction: from the pseudo-Darwinist, who under the influence of the Theory of Evolution is inclined to accept that the Teutons of a couple of thousand years ago did
not have brain-capacity enough to create such an epic, and that consequently can assume even less among the forefathers of the Teutons during the proto Indo-European era.

I have purposely avoided any kind of appraisal of the value of the Germanic epic-myth, which would place it either high or low. Everyone is free to find deep ideas in it or to place it on a level with a children's story. For my own part, all I can say about it is that the epic itself indicates
that the race which created it is a spiritually gifted part of the human family. The inheritance of the Germanic tribes from proto Indo-European antiquity is also a great children's story. That this tale is a world-epic as well, which tells of the origin of the world, the end of the world, and naturally of the legendary progress of events between them, admittedly gives it a majestic character. People of all races and from much more primitive cultural viewpoints have asked themselves the same questions and sought to solve them.

I point this out, because since the Darwinistic theory began to assert itself, one unscientific attempt after another has been made to apply it to the human race's historic era and show an enormous expanse of physiological and psychological results of evolution within this relatively
short space of time. Thus for example, since Homer's time, the retinas of the eye first became sensitive enough to different lightwaves, that they could perceive the basic shades of the spectrum; after the introduction of Christianity, the ears first became sensitive to musical harmonies and the vocal cords in man's throat so developed that one could pass from a shriek
into song. Thus, beside the solid scientific structure that was raised on Darwinism's foundation, a quasi-scientific fairy-castle has arisen, which distinguishes itself from the fairy-structures of the imagination only in that it lacks that which gives fantasy-making value, and possesses that which fantasy-making ought to do without in order to not lose the value it has. Had the ancient Egyptian monuments not shown that the races of men which still exist were found with their existing facial types already nearly 2000 years before Christ, the same kind of Darwinist could
presumably also place the origin of all present racial types in historic times. In full agreement with this pseudo-Darwinism stands the opinion, repeated often during the last 20 years and with the blithest certainty, that our ancestors who lived 2000 years before Christ must have been pitifully uncreative and stupid. Since that time the brain has, of course - according to noted authorities - developed at least as much as the retinas and the eardrums have been refined. How were such idiots able to create an epic? All that they were in a state to ruminate in their cloudy
minds must have been unconnected free-standing myths of such character, that one at will can easily recognize in them thunder, lightning, storm, light, darkness, dawn and dusk acting on their consciousness in the midst of its embryonic phase. I take for granted that the pseudo-Darwinist shall raise this objection.

For my part, I believe that the time that separates us from the year 2000 BC is a relatively short period in relationship to mankind's whole state of evolution, and constitutes just a step, so to speak, from the point where we now find ourselves. The Indo-European man Aristotle (384 - 322 AD, Greek philosopher of Athens) was born 2,273 years ago; the Indo-European Archimedes (287- 212 BC; Greek Mathmatician of Syracuse) 2,176 years ago. If our quasi-Darwinists are to believe their own starting point, they must regard their own brains as a product of a considerably higher physiological evolution than the Greeks named. They have certainly not shown this - on the contrary, the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction - but in any case it must mean something even to them, that while 2,273 years separate them from Aristotle, only 1,616 years separate Aristotle from his Indo-European forebears who lived 2000 years before Christ and presumably belong to the last era of the Stone Age. If these 1,616 years were a sufficient length of time to create such brains as Aristotle's and those of his equally intelligent contemporaries from out of such primitively organized material, that their Stone Age ancestors' brains would have afforded according to the hypothesis, so the time between the year 200 and 384 BC must have been a period of an enormously fast physiological development, absolutely worthy of amazement, in comparison with which the time between Aristotle and the year 1889 AD must be considered a complete standstill, if not a setback. However - I have wasted too much ink on the unnecessary work of rejecting an objection which starts from our ancestors assumed simple-mindedness, in order to admire wie wir's dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.

With the ideas concerning our heathen ancestors simple-mindedness are coupled those about their indescribable barbarism. We think of ourselves as properly scientifically educated people in full possession of the benefits of progress, when we speak of the barbarism of the ancient Teutons. This idea is as naive as the opposite view previously held about our forefather's deep wisdom. It seems to me, that if one speaks of the past centuries barbarism he ought to keep in mind the saying that warns against speaking of rope in a hanged man's house. The European people in the nineteenth century are considerably more barbaric in a pure cultural respect than the Romans of Caesar's time and the Athenians of Pericles' time (495-429 BC). They are more barbaric than the latter as far as poetry and art is concerned. They are more barbaric than them as far as training of the individual into a healthy and harmonious personality is concerned. The great mass of European people is more barbaric in the nineteenth century than the Teutons were at the time of Christ's birth, as far as our opinion of woman is concerned. In this consideration, I refer to Tacitus' narrative and to the feminine character that the Germanic myths describe. The great mass of European people in the nineteenth century are more barbaric than the heathen Teutons as far as the treatment of strangers and uninvited guests is concerned: Quemcunque mortalium arcre tecto nefas habetur, "It is accounted a sin to turn any man away from your door." Germania 21, says Tacitus about the Teutons of his time, and his statement is substantiated by Hávamál. One might object that hospitality has always been the barbarian's virtue. This is not true; but if it were, the opposite of hospitality is not proof of civilization, but a worrisome condition of the civilization that places its morality on this point lower than the "barbarian". I do not know how a troop of Klodvig's Franks or a band of Vikings looked, but I have reason to believe that their appearance provided evidence of a better corporeal culture than the Silesian weavers and the Moravian factory-workers (i.e. 19th century sweatshop employees). What I can say with certainty is that the Teutons' in Tacitus time were a cleaner people than all of the European people in the nineteenth century, assuming that the Roman historian's reporter did not lie when he assured him that the Teutons bathed every morning, in cold water during the summer and in warm water in the winter. In filth, the European masses today are probably almost unsurpassable. Of the heathen-Germanic skalds and singers he was
assured that they were capable of deep influence on the feelings of their audience. It is lucky if one can say this occasionally about more modern poets. The statistics cannot state figures about sexual-offenses committed among the heathen Teutons but when contemporary and impartial witnesses assure us that they held chastity in honor, one might assume that the barbarism of the nineteenth century is probably greater in this area too. Thanks to individual sciences and their progress, we have certain definite advantages over the heathen antiquity, and progress is not an empty word; but at this time the blessings of progress are hardly noticeable on the physical and moral condition of the modern masses of people, which in some respects may be much better, but in others seems to be much worse than those of the Germanic heathen age, that we would be wiser to speak more modestly about ourselves and with less disdain about deceased generations.

At the beginning of my investigations in Germanic mythology I did not presuppose an epic connection between the myths, although Völuspá already refers to one. It was the slow advancing observation that individual fragments of the divine- and heroic sagas whose fractured edges suited one another came to us in a broken and isolated state, that urged me to gather and compare all the remaining fragments, and it was this their character not some prerequisite on my part, that gradually dictated the form wherein they appear here as a reunited whole, upon which generations have worked ever since the proto Indo-European era up until the last age of Germanic heathendom. So unpleasant now must be this discovery of a pervading epic connection between the myths for the meteorological-etymological school which holds as its prerequisite the isolated condition of the myths and which was all-powerful in the subject of mythology up until now, that I naturally think that not one of it's adherents will abandon his way of thinking; at the same time, I am convinced that the results acquired through methodical research without preconditions shall increasingly win the recognition they deserve.

End Quote

HOME | Articles Home | Top Of Page

Page maintained by Schmitt Services

Last Update: Wednesday, August 13, 2003