[gothic-l] Re: "Eruli", "Goths", "Danes" and wherefrom the runes

[gunnerwold <gunnerwold@yahoo.com>]

Hello Bob, Troels and everyone. Just a few comments on the Odin 
discussion.
> 
> Troels writes:
> > As far as I can see you have just argued that Odin could easily 
be a king/chieftain/ancestor like Abraham.

I don't think so. My major was in forestry, but I also took a lot of 
anthropology in college - enough to have looked at ancestor worship 
in many cultures. Odin doesn't really fit the bill. First the kings 
claimed him as their patron to strengthen their power, then as time 
passed they claimed actual descent from the god. Christians later 
took advantage of these silly claims by heathen kings and used it to 
prove that their chief god was really a man. This scenario is often 
repeated in converted cultures. It happens during the transitional 
period. Later the cultural traditions are forgotten and replaced by 
Hebrew ones from the Bible. This is also what happened to the Goths, 
at least as far as I can tell. Odin and the other viking gods were 
the same ones the original Goths worshipped before their culture was 
destroyed through assimilation. Their gods were definitely not human.
Just my thoughts.
 
> Bob
> I´m not an anthropologist, however, and 
> it seems more like a question for anthropologists. As to the name - 
> I researched the name and came to basically the same conclusion as 
> Konrad and others have: an attested Asian wind god. 

I have some background in Anthropology. Odin is definitely a wind god 
and not a human. But I'm not sure why he became the main Germanic 
god. Do you have any more information about the Asian connection? I'm 
interested in this because the Nordic gods have always seemed Asian 
to me. Were there Asians in Scandinavia a long time ago? I don't 
think Germanic people would have developed any religion on their own. 
Christianity is borrowed from the Jews like Islam is. Maybe they were 
borrowing from the Asians before that and then changing things to fit 
their way of life. Just my thoughts.

Gunner





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