[gothic-l] Odin

[the_mad_berzerker]

 To Troels,

I found your site about a week ago, and this "group" yesterday(HELLO), and discussed "your side" as best i could interpret with a "fellow heathen" to no avail, and i was wondering if you would care to elaborate some more on it...  ??..maybe some extra speculations..??..and also what do you , or ANYONE else, think of the gokturk alphabet..??...and a few quotes from your site that i think best get your point across..

"The name of the invading Herulian king might have been Audun/Aun (100) – a name which according to Snorri is identical with the Wothan-like name Odin. Just Aun from Ynglingesaga connects as mentioned the Odin cult in Uppsala to a calendar related to Rome and the year 476 when Odoaker took over. A similar name is also found among the Germanic people in the South. An Audoin with a mother from Thuringia and an unknown father became king of the Lombards in 545, when he as former guardian followed the young Waltari (ON Valdar) at the throne. Waltari was dying young as a son of Silinga (Wacho's third wife), daughter of the Herulian king Roduulf (101). Moreover an Ostrogothic noble Odoin was executed in the year 500. The similarity between the names is obvious, but this does not correspond to the scholarly accepted theory that Odin is the ON version of the Germanic Wothan. However there is also another explanation, which seems more probable. The first Herulian king mentioned around 350 AD was called Alaric, and Jordanes told about another king Alaric in 468 AD, who could have been the father or grandfather to the Herulian king Roduulf. One of Roduulf’s sons or brothers was probably leading the migration to Scandinavia around 512 AD. We do not know the name of this king, but if we read Ynglingatal a horseriding king Alrik without any history was father to a king Yngve – also the name of the founder of the new dynasty in Svealand. If we assume that the invading king used their usual royal name, Alaric (=Alrik meaning king of all), the new god Odin (=a Norse version of Wothan) probably absorbed his “history” and was put in front of Ynglingatal. This process is described below. Alrik is documented as a royal name connected to the Uppsala dynasty as early as at the Sparloesa-stone around 800 AD, when classical historians hardly could influence the choice of royal names in Scandinavia. As the name is not known from other Germanic people this royal name alone indicate a Herulian/Gothic connection to Uppsala. "


"The religious transformation process in Sweden is of course uncertain. Obviously the Ing-worshippers of the Suiones in Sweden already before the take over used a Disething in Uppsla, where the Inglings were the local kings. At the take over the Heruls (according to the sagas this was Odin) enforced a worshipping of the ancestors of the Herulian Kings (Ases/Ansus), but the Suiones were allowed to keep some of their fertility gods (Vanes~in Danish: Old customs). The Disething continued, but the cyclus was changed to a new Julian calendar – Auns calendar. Snorri told in Edda, that Odin and his men on their way from Asia to Uppsala were celebrated as gods but his explanation elsewhere that Odin's devine dignity was caused by the warriors, who in the beginning called upon the fameous warriorking Odin before a battle is probably more likely. If we continue with the above example with the names Alrik and the shaman-like Aun, Alrik may have taken the throne in shape of a Germanic Wothan figure using the name Odin/Audun/Aun – four linguistic versions of the same name. Alternatively the royal priests of Uppsala later placed the former warriorkings Alrik (Aun), Yngve and maybe Jorund(105) under the godlike names Odin (Wothan), Frej and Njord in the new world of gods mixed by Ases and Vanes, where the shapes changed and took new positions during the years. We will probably never be able to tell what happened, but under all circumstances some historical myths of Scandinavia became the myth of the divine family of Odin and the Ases – the Ynglings, Skjoldungs etc.. The decendents were therefore able to use the relation to Ases to ligitimate a family-right to the throne – a right met in many societies, including as mentioned the Heruls "

"The odd construction of the Northern mythologies splitted up between Ases and Vanes is obviously due to a merger between a nomading people and a people of agriculturists – with the nomades as the powerful part. "

"Many poems have described the old Norse religion with its different worlds, the old gods and the tree of life, but the real religion shall not be discussed here. We probably have to distinguish between remains of two or three "merged" Norse religions (Ingviones and Wothan/Gauts) and on the other side the legends of the royal family of a king – later presented as the god Odin"

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