Vanir

[ingemarn2000]

To give anybody a better clue to  what I mean I give you an introduction  chapter of my dissertation showing Dúmezils scheme.
I give you a lot of arguments both for and against and these I have in the continuation of the book elaborated thoroughly and I have come to the conclusion that Dúmezil is in the great picture correct but that several names and functions have been changed in connection with the arrival of the specific name Wodan/Odin from the continent. Also Wolfram supports this earlier cult variant.

Best
Ingemar

About the religion in Scandinavia and Northern Europe during Pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age  
Since witten sources for knowledge about Germanic religion, in the time that interests us, are almost non existent, researchers in history of religion normally have turned towards the generously flowing Icelandic literature and its testimonies about the world of the  Germanic gods. The  great system builders having achieved to build a structure, like for example Grønbech, de Vries, Ellis Davidson, Eliade and Dumézil have each presented their own individual schemes who are hard to prove or to counterprove.
In the following I will try to find what there is in these schemes, and in details in their works, being possible to apply to the Goths and possibly better enlight their cultic, system of which we know very little. Of course I will also look closer on the sources they use to make my own interpretations.
In this connection, of course, also archaeological finds and contexts are of major importance. It deals primarily with Óðinn and the matter that he also appears with the double name Óðinn-gaut. Between Óðinn and Gaut  there seems to be many similarities and these problems will be treated with respect also to the fact that the occurence of the name of Óðinn is very frequent while the references to Gaut are scarce and mostly occuring in genealogies. Structural conditions in a society worshipping Gaut and/or Óðinn is here positioned relative to conditions who have supported the developement of a traditional fertility cult.
The discussion goes about shamanistic elements and fertility cult. By this means you might, hopingly, better enlight the background of the double name Óðinn-gaut and hence see differences and similarities between the two names.

Theories about the origin of the gods

The first problem that appears in this context is to decide wether the whole world of Germanic gods is Indo-European and besides also identical within all geographical areas, whether it is Indo-European but differs between different areas, or if it is not at all Indo-European. The last alternative might rather be regarded as rethorical, of course, and so remains the choice between the two first options. Let us for a start look on a spokesman for for the first alternative – identical Indo-European. 

Georges Dumézil has in "De Nordiska Gudarna"(The Nordic Gods) performed an epochmaking achivement in showing the connection between the Nordic and also the general Germanic religion and the Indo-Iranian, vedic religion, and stated that most European religions generally fall back on the Proto-Indo-Europeans. His opinion can be demonstrated through the scheme of the world of the gods below.  An Indo-European divine pantheon consists according to him of three levels:

  
 

1Two ruling gods with complimentary functions			
or One ruling god
	2.  	A second level god – maybe several
	3.  	Third level gods – fertility gods being twins, and some times also a goddess

The two upper levels stick together against the third level which has a much lower position.

The pantheon which, according to Dumézil, is actual for the Nordic and general Germanic divine world is the one you find in e.g. the Mittanni realm during the 14 c. BC. It consists of two ruling gods – Mitra and Varuna. They dwell on the uppermost level and their equivalents in human society are the Brahmans, but this has no direct connection with the gods, being of mythic origin.
Mitra cares of this world, things that are visible, the daylight, juridics, law enforcement, contracts, agreements et.c. His name means just contract, agreement. In this administrative task is included the responsibility to control that wars are carried out in a correct and orderly way – he is accordingly also a military god – a god of war.
Varuna takes care of the other world including the invisible, the night, the magic (mâyâ), the violently killed and specially the hanged . He has a snare with which he can fetter and kill enemies. He also has an army of nature- and death-demons, the Maruts, with whose help the evil chaos-forces can be controlled and which can be used shamanistically to enforce the fertility of the fields.
  (Other researchers, for example von Schröder, Wikander, Höfler place this army under the Indian god Rudra. The entities of the army are called the Maruts after its leader Marut, who in Indian mythology is the son of Rudra. Rudra is storm god, god of the nature forces, the wrath of Brahma, god of healing, of peace and of animals. He later becomes part of Brahma under name of Vishnu – the destroyer.)
 In post Vedic time the Maruts are transferred to the god of war, Indra, who takes care of both of the two former high gods responsibilities as single high god of the uppermost level.
The second level, comparable in human society with kshatriya, the warriors, is ruled by the god of war, Indra, who also has the thunderbolt as a symbol and is said to have red hair. Indra has a son called Arjuna. Dumézil thinks Arjuna  reminds of the Óðinn-heroes.
The third and lowest level, in human society equivalent to Vaiçya, peasants, is occupied by Nâsatyas - the fertility gods consisting of twin gods, who in India and Persia also are connected with a goddess. Dumézil refers to an Iranian legend from fifth Veda treating warfare between the gods of the 1st and 2nd levels against those of the 3rd . Nâsatyas, or Açvins, demanded to get their share of the sacrifices given to the gods by the humans, but the higher ranked gods denied them this because they meant the Açvins were to close to the humans. The war that followed was won by the Açvins thanks to an ascet who helped them create a being, Mada, who was intoxication personified. He was that huge and strong that even Indra was helpless. After peace was made Mada was chopped in four pieces by the ascet and those remains were distributed to four special areas – drinking, gambling, hunting and women. (Mahabharatta 123-25)

He also gives parallels with the religion of the Italics. Here he finds divine triads comparable with the Indo-Iranian:

Rom – Divided ruling: 	Iupiter, Dius Fidius (fidelity, promise) (and the goddess Fidia)
Pre-Capitolian triad:	Iupiter, Mars, Ouirinius
Umbria - Triad	Inn, Mart, Vofiono
Germania (Tacitus)	Mercurius (Wodan) Mars (Týr) Hercules (Þórr) (two levels)
Germania (Caesar)	Sun(Wodan), Vulcanus (Þórr), Moon (Frejr/Freja)

The mentioned three levels Dumézil also finds in the Nordic pantheon with the triad Óðinn, Þórr and Frejr (he also mentions Óðinn, Vile, Vé ) where Óðinn is the ruler god, god-king, and closest under him, in the 2nd level, comes his son Þórr  as god of war. He posesses the thunderbolt and the hammer as symbols, and he has red hair. Þórr  leads the other gods on this level. The gods of  1st and 2nd levels are all called Asir.
On the lowest level are the Vanir, who he defines as Njorðr, Frejr and Freja. He remarks that even Nerthus must be seen as a name-variant of Njorðr. (Dumezil, De Nordiske Guder, 1969, p. 9-39)

In opposition to the structuralistic approach above stands the older historical school, that originally goes back to Snorri Sturlusónar and Ynglingasaga. The person who can be referred to as the modern founder of this "school" is the Swedish researcher Bernhard Salin who 1903, in  Studier tillägnade Oscar Montelius, put forth a theori which literally is very close to Ynglingasaga. It describes the cult of Óðinn and the Asir as invading and superposing the old Vanir cult. In this spirit he also published his famous work of the Nordic animal ornaments, Die altgermanische Tierornamentik, which he tried to connect to this approach. H.  Schück, E.  Mogk  and several others have thought of a regular war of religions, but most think of an ethnical, political war. Concerning to Salin and others the penetrating by the Asir cult happened during the 4th century AD while others relate the happenings to the time of the Indo-European immigration in the North. They support their opinion with archaeological finds indicating a transition from the Megalithic culture to the Corded Ware Culture. This is claimed by e.g. E.A. Philippson in Die Genealogie der Götter. (Philippson 1953, p.19) According to this approach the myth should relate a factual warfare.

According to my opinion neither of these "schools" stand above objections. On the contrary both of them from time to another have  failed in taking notice of all relevant sources or, alternatively, failed to see the connection between different types of sources. The reasoning is many times logically inconsistent. The structuralistic school has great trouble to show the existence of a cult of Óðinn in an early stage. You just have to remind of the tribal saga of the Goths which, overhanded already in the 6th century, by Jordanes/Cassiodorus/Ablabius in Getica, where explicitly is told that the Goths converted to the cult of Óðinn in the 3rd c.AD under Filimer, and that halirunnae were chased out into the wilderness. A similar ethnogenesis between fertility cult and cult of Óðinn can be derived from the tribal saga of the Langobards, when the Vinnilii convert to Óðinn and the religious power of  the women disappear (Origo Gentis Langobardorum; Paulus Diaconus Hist.  langob., 8thc.AD) and the Vandilii are mentioned at the same occasion. (Wolfram, Origo et Religio )

Let us briefly regard both stories and compare them to each other: Before the decisive battle the two Vandilic twins ask Oðinn, leader of the Asir, to give them   victory. Óðinn seems inclined to want to  help them and not least because the Vandilii are more numerous than the opposers. In the meantime the pristess of the Vinnilii gets support by her Vanic goddess Freja. The which introduces her as the mate of Óðinn in spite of the fact that this position normally is held by the asynja Frigg. It has however been pointed out that Frigg and many other Scandinavian goddesses probably should be regarded as variants of Freja. It is accordingly the Vanic Freja who makes the Asir wargod fullfill his own oracle towards the Vandilii, who originally are supported by him. One of many divine names of Óðinn was Longbeard. Under the leadership of the wise mother the Winnilic women and their Vanic goddess  outmanuevre the wargod; unintentionally he happens to call the threated tribal group "longbeards-longobards"after himself and, accordingly, he has to grant them the victory. Both peoples were prepared – it is the Vandilii who at first invoke the wargod – to constitute a progressive military  organization in form of a wandering army.
This means in the language of  myth that they are prepared to forsake their Vanic origin and accept the Asir god Óðinn as leader of their army. It is the Vinnilic women, the goddess Freja and her priestess who not only prepare and ease the happening, but also forces this change of cult and name and  through this produces victory for their men. As representatives of the Vanic tradition they sacrifice their whole past, and their cult, to secure the rescue and survival of the tribe, legitimating a new ethnogenesis. It is not astonishing that they make to their first governing king the son of the younger Vinnilic dioscur, which creates a legal constitution till well into historical time.

This is nothing you can dismiss with a shoulder-shrug referring to Middle Age monk-chronicles. The divine pictures of the rock-carvings, who partly  might be more ancient than the IE immigration, are also uncomfortable and Dumézil admits there might be older remains from the defeated proto-population. (Dumézil 1969, p.30)  There are also e.g. references to later archaeological  evidence of an "old" extra-Nordic divine triad from the christening of the Saxons by Charlemagne. Dumezíl means this is a sign the religion was old and original up North. (Dumézil 1969, p.31). This one is however late - 9th c. – and he also means that Saxnót = Seaxnet is a fertility god since he finds the meaning 'fellow of the Saxon's, 'Genoße' and compares with Frejr as veraldar goð, folkvaldi goða 'the god of the human herd'. Other researchers see in Seaxnot the god Týr as 'follower of the sword','fellow' armed with the short, single-egged Saxon sword -  seax  -  which was his attribute in late time. The name can be derived from *Sahsginot.  (Ellis Davidson 1984, p. 59).


The traditional "historical" school on the other hand must face the fact that there are great  similarities with Vedic and Iranian myth, even if they are not total. That our system accordingly is connected with the general Indo-European divine world is undeniable and not to discuss. Hence Óðinn might have been here all the time without us being able to confirm it. In the following I shall try to find evidence, or at least in any case indices, that can give a more understandable wiew  of the origin and spread of Odinistic cults and the relations with fertility cult.
To be able to work systematically with the mythological material, and  to get kind of hold of  it initially, I start with a mythological overwiew where I indicate more detailed those components who later should be examined more thoroughly. 

This presentation builds on old and accepted, popular estimations of the divine world, and every god/goddess of importance will later be examined in detail in order to judge the reasonableness of the role this entity is regarded to play within the divine pantheon. The question is whether the world of the gods is as systematically and simply built as Dumézil indicates, and for that sake generally also is assumed by tradition.




--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ingemarn2000" <ingemar at ...> wrote:
>
> Just read Dumézil! In the 1st c.they  have had a cultic place for Freya at Jutland (Neumann 1982)In the 500's there is fight between Scilfings and Gauts/Geats in Västergötland as well.
> 
> Ingemar
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Tore Gannholm <tore@> wrote:
> >
> > Ingemar,
> >  where is  " it is evident they all were up here already during at least the pre Roman IA."
> > 
> > Do you mean Västergötland?
> > 
> > Tore
> > 
> > 
> > 30 jul 2012 kl. 15:58 skrev ingemarn2000:
> > 
> > > Tore!
> > > 
> > > I noice you quoted an old paper of mine:
> > > 
> > > "In the 300s the Vanir and Æsir cults existed together in present day Romania,
> > > practiced by the Goths, "Gutþiuða", and their allies the Heruls, and finally
> > > with the immigration of the Heruls to the Lake Mälar, the cults emerged combined
> > > in Scandinavia. The fertility cult never vanished, but was completed with and
> > > overrun by the Æsir cult, which nominally won, but in practice they shared in
> > > half between Oðin and Freja who reigned together, but were not married."
> > > 
> > > Later I have studied this far deeper as you know and it is evident they all were up here already during at least the pre Roman IA. What happened around 500 is simply that the Roman influenced variant headed by the chief god Odin, a new name of an older god, replaced the older type of this religion and changed the sacrificial meton cycle from 19 to 8 years. Gods changed names in some cases but still they were vanir and aesir both before and after. Religious fights however I can agree to but not only in the Baltic region.This new religion started to expand up here long before the Heruls but it did not take over quite until about 475.
> > > 
> > > Ingemar 


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