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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 Use of the Name Narvi: An Investigation concerning Mimir & Urd Part 1 - by William Reaves Here is the investigation of the use of the name Narvi, as promised. Please feel free to comment on the ideas presented. Frankly, I am not concerned with the argument of why Viktor Rydberg's ideas have not been accepted after over 100 years. The fact is they are not, but one must also remember that they are also largely unknown today. Being unpopular does not make a man incorrect. I only mention this because of the nature of some of the responses I have receieved when discussing VR in the past. Look at the ideas, refer to the texts, then decide for yourself - that is critical thinking. Remember in the popular presentation of this mythology, Narvi is a son of Loki, and the phrase "nipt Nera," and its variations ("Narvi's kinswoman") is taken to mean Loki's daughter whom Snorri calls Hel. As in the Elder Edda, Hel is conceived of as death personified. From Viktor Rydberg's Teutonic Mythology (translator Rasmus B. Anderson, with slight revisions and commentary by W. Reaves) excerpts from chapters 84-86, which occur within a greater treatise on the underworld and its inhabitants in general: "The following lines in Sigrdrifumal (str. 3, 4) sound like a reverberation from the lost liturgic hymns of our heathendom. Heill dagr! Hail Dag! Heilir æsir Hail Æsir! Of the Germans in the first century after Christ, Tacitus writes (Germ. 3) "They do not, as we, compute time by days, but by nights; night seems to lead the day." This was applicable to the Scandinavians as far down as a thousand years later. Time was computed by nights not by days, and in the phrases from heathen times "nótt of dagr," "nótt med degi bœdi um nœtr ok um daga," night is named before day. Linguistic usage and mythology are here intimately associated with each another. According to Vafthrudnirsmal 25 and Gylfaginning 10, Nat bore with Delling the son Dag, with whom she divided the administration of the 24 hours. Delling is the elf of the morning redness. The symbolism of Nature is here distinct, as in all theogonies. Through other divinities, Naglfari and Ónarr (Anarr, Aunarr), Nat is the mother with the former of Unnr, also called Audr, with the latter of the goddess Jord, Odin's wife. Unnr means "wave", Audr means "rich." It has been shown elsewhere that Unnr-Audr is identical with Njord, the lord of wealth and commerce, who in the latter capacity became the protector of navigators, and to whom sacrifices were offered for a prosperous voyage. Gods of all clans - Asas, Vans, and Elves - are thus akin to Nat and descended from her. Nat herself is the daughter of a being whose name has many forms. Naurr, Nörr (dative Naurvi,
Nörvi, Nott var Naurvi borin -Vafth. 25; Nott, All these variations are derived from the the same appellation, related to the ON verb njörva, the OE nearwian meaning "the one that binds," "the one who applies tight-fitting bonds." Simply the circumstance that Narvi is Nat's father proves that he must have occupied one of the more conspicuous positions in the Teutonic cosmology. In all cosmologies and theogonies, Night is one of the oldest beings, older than light, without which it cannot be conceived. Light is kindled in the darkness, thus foreboding an important epoch in the development of the world out of chaos. The being who is night's father must therefore be counted among the oldest in the cosmology. The personified representatives of water and earth, like the daylight itself, are the children of his daughter. What Gylfaginning tells of
Narvi is that he was of giant birth, and the first to have inhabited Jotunheim
(norvi eda Narfi het jotun, er bygdi fyrst Jotunheima - Gylf. 10) In regard
to this, we must remember that, in Gylfaginning and in the traditions
of the Icelandic sagas, the lower world <<Here Rydberg is simply
musing, drawing conclusions which he has yet to support by passages. Indeed,
this type of logic proves nothing unless it is backed up by mythical evidence.
What is interesting to note here, as in many other places, is that simple
logic can be effectively applied to this mythology with valid results.
In its original form, it contains none of the self-contradictory statements
which litter Snorri Sturlesson's text. Although primative in its ideas
of geography, the religion of our ancestors is quite logical and reveals
that the principles of higher thinking were indeed in operation among
these "primative" peoples. Following, the true In a strophe by Egil Skallagrimson (ch. 56), poetry, or the source of poetry, is called "niderfi Narfa," "the inheritance left by Narvi to his descendants." As is well known, Mimir's fountain is the source of poetry. The expression indicates that the first inhabitant of the lower world, Narvi, also presided over the precious fountain of wisdom and inspiration, and that he died and left it to his descendants as an inheritance. Finally, we learn that Narvi was a near kinsman to Urd and her sisters. This appears from the following passages: (a) Helgi Hundingsbane (1, 3, ff) When Helgi was born, Norns came in the night to the abode of his parents, twisted the threads of fate, stretched them from east to west, and fastened them beneath the hall of the moon. "Nipt nera" cast one of these threads to the north and bade it hold forever. It is manifest that by "Neri's (Narvi's) kinswoman" is meant one of the norns present. (b) Sonnatorrek str. 24. The skald Egil Skallagrimson, weary of life, closes the poem by saying that he sees the dis of death standing on the ness (Digra-ness) near the gravemound, which conceals the dust of his father and his sons, and which is soon to receive him:
It goes without saying that the skald means a dis of death, Urd or one of her messengers, with the words "The kinswoman of Njorvi of Odin's foes" whom he, with the eye of presentiment, sees standing on the family gravemound on Digraness. She is not to stay there, but is to continue her way to his hall, to bring him to the gravemound. He awaits her coming with gladness, and as the last line shows, she whose arrival he awaits is Hel, the goddess of death or fate. It has already been demonstrated that Hel in the heathen records is always identical with Urd. <<Rydberg includes this argument in a previous investigation. He convincingly shows that Snorri, by placing Urd's fountain with its associated Yggrassil-root in the heavens, and Mimir's fountain and its root in Jotunheim, has effectivelly removed the heathen realms of bliss from the lower world, and left only its place of punishment, Niflhel. The roots of all Trees known to our ancestors are below ground, so too are Yggrassil's. Urd and Mimir's realms form the regions of bliss in the underworld, the region called Hel.The poems make a clear distinction between Hel and Niflhel (for example, see Vafthrudnirsmal 43). Snorri makes no such distinction. By removing Urd from the lower world, all references to a female goddess named Hel, were of neccessity transferred to the Loki-daughter, who before had only been a messenger of disease subject to the real Hel, the goddess of fate we know as Urd. That the Loki-daughter should be death personified, and called Hel, a being more powerful than the gods, and which even the gods are subject to (remember our gods can die, thus making Idunn's "youth-renewing remedy" necessary) is absurd. Witness the treatment of the Loki-daughter at the hands of the gods, they throw her down into Niflhel. Surely, they are more powerful than she. The goddess known as Hel, is Urd, death personified, not the misshapen daughter of Loki. If necesary, I can provide the references to support this. >> Njorvi here is used both as a proper and a common noun. "The kinswoman of the Njorvi of Odin's foes," means "the kinswoman of the binder of Odin's foes." Odin's foe Fenrir was bound with an excellent chain smithied in the lower world (dwarfs from Svartalfheim - Gylf. 37), and as shall be shown elsewhere, there was more than one foe of Odin who is bound by Narvi's chains <<namely Volund, as Mimir is the Nidhad in Volundarkvida, and Volund can be shown to be an adversary of Odin.>> (c) Hofudlausn str. 10. Egil
Skallagrimsson celebrates in song a victory won by Erik Bloodaxe and says
of the battle-field that there "trad nipt Nara nàttverd ara,"
"Nari's kinswoman trampled upon the supper of eagles," (that
is to say upon the bodies of the fallen warriors). The psychopomps of
disease and old-age have nothing to do on a battlefield. Thither come
the valkyries to the elect. "Nipt Nara" must therefore be a
valkyrie, whose horse tramples upon the heaps of dead bodies; and as Egil
refers to a single one of these, he doubtless has had the most representative,
the most important one in mind. That one is Skuld, Urd's sister, and thus
a "nipt (d) Ynglingatal (Ynglingasaga, ch. 20). Of King Dygvi, who died from disease, it is said that "jódis Narva (jódis Nara) chose him. The right to choose belongs to the norns alone. "Jódis, a word doubtless produced by a vowel change from the Old Germanic "idis," has already in olden times been interpreted partly as horse-dis (from jór, horse), partly as the dis of one's kin (from jod, child, offspring). In this case, the skald has taken advantage of both significations. He calls the death-dis (Hel-Urd) "ulfs ok Narva jódis," the wolf's horse-dis and Narvi's kin-dis. In regard to the former signification, it should be remembered that the wolf is horse for all giantesses, the honoured norns not excepted. Cp. (compare) "grey norna" as a paraphrase for wolf." Thus what our mythic record tells us about Narvi is: (a) He is one of the oldest beings of the theogony, older than the upper part of the world created by Bur's sons. (b) He is of giant descent (c) He is father of Nat, father-in-law of Naglfari, Onnar, and Delling, the elf of the rosy dawn; and he is the father of Dag's mother, of Unnr, and of the goddesses Jord, who becomes Odin's wife and Thor's mother. Bonds of kinship thus connect him with the Asas and gods of all other ranks. (d) He is near akin to the dis of fate and death, Urd, and her sisters. The word "nipt," with which Urd's relation to him is indicated, may mean sister, daughter, and even sister's daughter, and consequently does not state which particualr one of these she is. It seems upon the whole to have been applied well-nigh exclusively in regard to mythic persons, and particularly in regard to Urd and her sisters, so that it almost acquired the meaning of dis or norn. This is evident from Skaldskaparsmal, ch. 75: Nornir heita thœr er naud skapa; Nipt ok Dis nú eru taldar, and from the expression Heil Nótt ok Nipt in the above cited strophe from Sigrdrifumal. There is every reason for assuming that the Nipt, which is here used as a proper noun, in this sense means the dis of fate (Urd) as a kinswoman of Nat. The common interpretation of "heil Nótt ok Nipt," is "hail Nat and her daughter," and by her daughter is meant the goddess Jord; but this interpretation is, as Sophus Bugge has shown, less probable, because the Goddess Jord immediately below gets her special greeting in the words: heil sia in fiolnyta Fold!, Hail the bounteous Earth! (e) As the father of Nat, living in Mimir's realm, and kinsman of Urd, who with Mimir divides the dominion over the lower world, Narvi is himself a being of the lower world and the oldest subterranean being; the first one who resided in Jotunheim. (f) He presided over the subterranean fountain of wisdom and inspiration, that is to say Mimir's fountain. (g) He was Odin's friend and binder of his foes <<cp. the name Asvidr, a variation of As-vinr "Asa-friend" as a name of Mimir in Havamal 143; and Odin's designation as "Mims vinr," Mimir's friend.>> (h) He died and left his fountain as an inheritance to his descendants. As our investigation progresses, it will be found that all these facts concerning the name Narvi apply to Mimir, that "he who thinks" (Mimir) and "he who binds" (Narvi) are the same person. Already these circumstances (a-h above)...point definitely to Narvi and Mimir's identity. Thus the Teutonic theogony has made Thought the older kinsman of Fate, who through Night bears Day to the world. The people of antiquity made their first steps toward a philosophical view of the world in their theogony." End of Part I: The investigation will continue
with a look into Snorri's use of the name Wassail~William Reaves HOME | Articles Home | Top Of Page Images and Contents Copyright © Assembly of The Elder Troth 2002 - 2007 or as specified. For communications regarding this website please e-mail webmaster@aetaustralia.org Page maintained by Schmitt Services Last Update: Monday, June 30, 2003
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