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

[Dr. Dirk Faltin <dirk@smra.co.uk>]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "gunnerwold <gunnerwold at y...>"
<gunnerwold at y...> wrote:
> 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.




Odin is a later derivation from Wodan/Woden (W)oden. As such Odin was
in all likelihood unknown to the Goths. Also Gothic culture was not
destroyed through assimilation; it came into existence through
assimilation!! The first Gotones of the middle Vistula in the first
century BC/AD were likely a rather different group of people from the
Goths who lived at the Black Sea, Moldavia and so on. As H. Wolfram
has shown, there were several Gothic ethnogeneses. I.e. a Gothic
people was established several times anew. Each time involving
different ethnic and religious groups. The latter Goths had
assimilated/integrated many non-Germanic peoples including Carpi and
Dacians. Most significantly, the Goths of Italy, Gaul and Spain were
a Christian people with a long and proud Christian tradition. To a
large extent it was this Christianity, which allowed the Goths to be
as successful as they were.

Cheers
Dirk


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