[gothic-l] Odin No Myth - Heyerdahl's new book

[Bertil Haggman]

Dear listmembers,

An article from today's The Scotsman in Edinburgh.

Gothically

Bertil

Heyerdahl declares Odin no myth

Alister Doyle In OSLO 

THE Viking god Odin might have been a real king who lived 
in what is now southern Russia 2,000 years ago, the Norwegian 
explorer Thor Heyerdahl said in a book released yesterday. 

In The Hunt for Odin, Heyerdahl says his digs by the Sea of Azov 
in Russia backed evidence in 13th-century sagas by Snorre 
Sturlason that Odin was more than a myth. 

Heyerdahl, who won acclaim for his 1947 voyage across the Pacific 
on the Kon-Tiki balsa raft, said Odin was a king who lived around 
Azov before being driven out by the Romans and taking his followers to Sweden. 

Ancient metal belt holders, rings and armbands from 100-200 AD found 
near the mouth of the Don River were almost identical to Viking equivalents 
found in Sweden some 800 years later, he said. 

"Snorre didn’t sit down and dream this all up," Heyerdahl said at the launch 
of his book with his co-author, Per Lillestrom. "In ancient times, people 
treated gods and kings as one and the same thing." 

Snorre’s stories about Odin, viewed as the king of the gods in Norse 
mythology, portrayed him as fighting battles. By contrast, Snorre treated 
Thor, the god of thunder, as a mythical hammer-wielding figure riding 
through the air. 

He said many of the place names in Snorre’s sagas matched the ancient 
Greek names for places around the Sea of Azov, such as Tanais. 

Heyerdahl’s digs uncovered skeletons and ancient metal objects. "It’s 
obvious that there was some link between the Nordic region and where 
we dug." 

Some historians have criticised the findings as based on insufficient 
evidence and said Odin’s name originated from the Germanic name 
Wotan. One likened Heyerdahl’s quest for Odin to digging for the Garden of 
Eden. - Reuters 






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