[gothic-l] Re: Odin the man - medieval scholarship at its best

[konrad_oddsson <konrad_oddsson@yahoo.com>]

Sæll Einar!
 
>    # Hej. I would leave out the Nobel in this case. I have never 
> heard that Odinn was especially a Wind God. That must be a great 
> oversimplification or simply not right. 

I think its the former. I agree with others in accepting that Odinn 
was and is a wind god. This is entirely consistent with everything 
we know about the etymology of the name and words related to it. It 
clearly goes back to IE times, as many scholars have pointed out. 

Odin was associated with 
> skaldship, war, magic, wisdom among other things. He was said to 
have 55 names and control many things at his liking, probably the 
wind as well. So he was a multi-natured god.

This is correct. Odinn is a multi-natured god. The sentence "Odinn 
is a multi-natured god" is itself a gross understatement! He could 
well be the most multi-natured god of any. Nevertheless, the Odinn 
we know today is far more complex than the Odinn of several thousand 
years ago. He had his origin as a wind god, but grew to encompass a 
vast array of functions, especially amongst those Germanic peoples 
who are not of the Jewish-Islamic-Christian tradition. One of the 
things that I, and many others, find so interesting about Asatru is 
how archaic it is. Many of the gods are still only barely, or not at 
all, differentiated from the natural phenomena they represent. Even 
Odinn, the most complex god, is still discernable in his basic form 
as a wind god. Odinn and the other Gods of Asatru are an inheritance 
from primitive IE times, when natural forces from the Sun and Moon 
to the Waters and Trees were personified as manifestations of the 
Divine Reality behind them. Many great scholars have written about 
the early stages of IE religion, with the Heathen Gods of the north 
regularly being cited as amongst the most primitive animistic forms.

> Snorri's Odinn was a man, a leader of a southern tribe migrating 
to the Mälar Valley in the about 5-6th century (according to the 
> Chronology). Odinn and the others were humans and died a human 
death.

I have great respect for Snorri as a scholar. Like many of the best 
Icelandic minds of his time, he had a deep love for his ancestral 
faith. Legally and superficially he was a Christian, as was everyone 
else. People had to be Christian - their lives depended on it. This 
being said, the mind of Snorri was quite extraordinary for its time. 
He knew how to write in such a way as to pacify Christian zealots, 
while at the same time writing truthfully and accurately about his 
beloved ancestral faith. One of the concessions which Snorri and 
others of his kind had to make was to preface any writing or talk on 
the subject with the standard propaganda accepted by the church of 
his time. This propaganda basically consisted of the false story of 
the Gods having been men who eventually migrated to Scandinavia. It 
seems fairly clear that it is primarily this story which causes so 
many modern readers to question his overall integrity. Whatever the 
case may be, we moderns need to make an honest effort to understand 
the laws and propaganda of the time, as well as the limits of all 
medieval education, if we wish to understand what Snorri wrote.   


 Snorri is describing a ancestor cult were humans later become gods 
or rather representatives of various things, like fire, the elements 
etc.

The nominal etymologies for most of the Gods and the comparative 
evidence available from related religions speaks for the latter.


 But all this could also be symbolism. So according to Snorri, the 
Asatru's (in the beginning an ancestor-cult)origin is in central 
East Sweden. I think that could more or less harmonize with the 
accepted view (and the chronology).

I would agree that Sweden has long been one of the most important 
centers for the religion. Historically, it seems fairly clear that 
Sweden and Denmark were already powerful centers of Scandinavian 
culture and religion at a time when Norway was truely a "nýlendi", 
as modern Icelandic would have it. Medieval historians and modern 
linguists concur in relating the Goths, whom we are studying, to the 
easternmost part of Scandinavia. While it is still a hot subject of 
debate, it seems fairly clear that East Scandinavian matches Gothic 
in certain areas where it differs from West Scandinavian. I have 
studied and written on this topic myself, as have many others.


 I wonder about the etymology of Odinn in 
> the light of what Vladimir said about the "ringleader". 
Interesting 
> indeed.####

What Vernon and others have pointed out about the etymology of the 
name is very solid. It conforms to the best in applicable modern 
linguistic material on the subject, as other have pointed out.

Vernon writes:> 
> > The hypothesis that Odin was a person is medieval scholarship at 
> its best and reeks of Judeo-Christian bias against European 
natives. The Slavic forms obviously show medial d. How would you 
then account for the influence of Verner on the Germanic word? How 
would you account for the â-to-ô shift? The linguistic evidence 
makes it painfully clear which hypothesis is the correct one. The 
fact that the Asian equivalent is also a wind god drives the final 
nail into the coffin of this medieval church scholarship. They ought 
to award the Nobel Prize to whomever it was who first discovered 
this derivation. He may not have discovered a new law, but he did 
destroy centuries of dark superstition. Vernon Peberty

Maybe not the Nobel Prize, but certainly some kind of award. How 
about a free dinner? 

Regards,
Konrad.


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