Virgin warrior from the retinue of god Odin. Germanic-Scandinavian mythology

most valuable information on the myth. and beliefs of the West. Germans are in "Germany" Tacitus (1st century AD). Tacitus is mentioned. terrestrial god Tuisto, whose name means "Double (bisexual) being", which gives grounds for its rapprochement (at least in part.) with Scand. Ymir, as well as with the cult of twins at the ancient. Germans (Tacitus in "Germany" compares them to Rome. Castor and Pollux). The first man (Mann) allegedly originates from Tuisto, and the ancestor from Mann. three tribal or cult groups of Germans - Istevones, Herminones, Ingevones. Of these ancestors. with certainty it is established (as the ancestor of the Irminons) Ing (mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon runic inscriptions). It is also possible that mention. German (Saxon) historian of the 10th century. Vidukind god Irmin, associating. with the pillar of Irminsul among the Saxons (the cult analogue of the world tree), was considered the ancestor of the Herminons. Irmin, in turn, is brought closer to the Saxon Saxon and Tiwas \u003d Tiu (Scandal. Tyr) in view of the tradition. comparing these gods with Mars. Tacitus witness ( "Germany" IX) about the veneration by the Germans of Mercury, Mars, Hercules and Isis, implying probably Wodan (Scand. One), Tiu (Scand. Tyr), Donara (Scand. Thor) and, possibly, Freya or Frya (Scand. Frigg ). One of the arguments for the first three answers. - coincidence dedicated. them days of the week. To Mercury, according to Tacitus, a human is brought. victims. This is quite appropriate. scandal. ideas about the cult of Odin. Donar's notation \u003d Torah rim. them. Hercules is suitable for Thor, because the latter is represented in myths as a hero protecting a human being. peace from monsters. Coming from Rome. names of germ. and the celt. gods and some other parallels, Tiu, Wodan and Donar \u003d Thor can be compared with the Celts. the gods Nuadu, Lugom and Oghma; Donar \u003d Thor, apparently identical. Celt. thunderer Taranis. By its main function, it is reflected. in the name, Donar \u003d Thor - typical. Indo-European. thunderbolt, comparable to ind. Indroi, Tiwas \u003d Tiu \u003d Tyr etymological. and genetic. acc. Indo-European. Dyaus \u003d Zeus. Tiwas \u003d Tiu at first, apparently, carried out the function of spiritual and legal. power, and Donar is a warrior. function, but then Wodan (Odin), to-ry at first was chthonic. demon and patron warrior. initiation, became the supreme deity and functionally supplanted Tiwas \u003d Tiu (Tyra), which gave grounds to compare Wodan with Ind. Varuna. As for the third function - fertility - wealth, then we must take into account the message of Tacitus about the cult of Nerthus, which undoubtedly was the goddess of vegetation, fertility, possibly the goddess of the earth. Since Nerthus is linguistic. yavl. accurate wives. form them. Njerda - scandal. god of fertility and pestilence. elements, it is possible that the subject of veneration of the trees. Germans were a pair of Njord - Nertus, brother - sister and husband - wife, in the likeness of scandals. Freyja - Freyra, counting. children of Njord (such couples are har-rny for fertility cults). The peoples who worship Nerthus are, acc. Tacitus, to the Ingevons, which acc. connections between Njord and Freyr (i.e. Yngwie-Freyr).

Some gods are mentioned. in the oldest germ. (German) texts - the so-called. Merseburg spells (recorded in the 10th century), compiled. in the land of the Franks. In the First Merseburg spell, wives appear. deities - disas, kinship. scandal. Valkyries and norns, and in the Second Merseburg spell (for limping a horse) it was mentioned. Wodan as Ch. bearer of magic. forces, Fria (ie scandal. Frigg) and her sister Folla. Some (very scanty) information about germ. myth. contained in op., dedicated. history of the Goths, the historian Jordan (6th century), in the Frankish chronicles of Gregory of Tours (6th century) and Fredegar (7th century), in "Stories of the Lombards" Paul the Deacon (8th century), in "Ecclesiastical history of the English people" The troubles of the Venerable (8th century). For example, Paul the Deacon retells ethnonyms. legend of the origin. name "Lombards" (lit. "Long beards"), in which Wodan and Fria appear: Wodan will protect. Vandals, and Fria - Vinyls, she advises her pets to make the women of Vinyls come out early before the battle and tie their hair like beards. Since Wodan predicted victory for those who will be on the battlefield earlier, the vinyls won (the same plot scheme is repeated on scandalous soil and prosaic introduction to "Speech of Grimnir" at "Elder Edda": Frigg destroys King Geirred - Odin's favorite, giving Geirred insidious advice to detain and torture the wanderer Grimnir, in fact Odin).

Systematic. data are available only for scand. myth. last centuries before the adoption of scandals. peoples of Christianity, reflected in ch. arr. in Iceland. lit. monuments of early Christ. time. Ch. source .: poetic. "Elder Edda" - collection of myth. and heroic. "Songs"that reached Iceland. manuscripts 2nd half. 13th century and prose writer. Younger Edda - a textbook poetical. skald claims, composed. also in the 13th century. by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson and containing samples of the poetry of the skalds (starting from the 9th century), decoding the skaldic. myth. allegories (kennings) and an overview of mythology itself; there are echoes of mythology in the composition. Snorri ist. chronicle "Heimskring-la" ("Circle of the earth"), where the legends are stated. Norwegian story. and some Swedish kings (the so-called Yngling saga). Christianization of Iceland took place in 1000, and ancient. myth. interpreted by Snorri partly as ist. allegory. Almost at the same time. with Snorri the Danish chronicler Saxon the Grammaticus "Acts of the Danes" transfers pl. myth. plots, replacing gods with kings and heroes. Thus, as a myth. systems are known to us only scandal. myth. (mainly as a poetic Eddish myth.).

Spaces. "Model of the world" scandal. edditch. myth. systems include "Horizontal" and "Vertical" projection (the transition from one to another assumes some transformations). Horizontal. the projection is anthropocentric and built-on opposed. inhabited and occupying. cent., mastered. part of the land of Midgard, a desert, rocky and cold edge of the land (Utgard, Eetunheim), inhabited by giants (etuns), as well as finding. around the earth to the ocean, where the monster Ermungand lives (his middle name - the snake of Midgard - indicates that the snake was the original element of a positive system - the support of the earth). This is contrasted. is revealed as the opposition of the center and the periphery, internal. and ext. (especially Midgard and Utgarde), "His" and "Alien", "Culture" and "Nature"... Besides, the land of the giants is marked as finding. to S. and V. S. in scand. myth. especially demonized, the kingdom of the dead is also localized on the north - hel (a cut, however, stands out more distinctly and brighter in the vertical cosmic projection). Both projections include the motive of the four dwarfs-zwergs, bearing the names of the four cardinal points (Austri, Vestri, Nordri, Sudri), supporting the sky at the corners.

The basis of the vertical. cosm. projection is the world tree - Yggdrasil ash. It connects the land where people live (Midgard), with the sky, where (in Asgard) are the gods and where a kind of "paradise" for the fallen warriors - valhalla, and ch. - with the underworld, where the kingdom of the dead is located - hel ( "bottom" and "north", as said, otd.) and a variety of water sources. You can even say that hel is yavl. that center at the point to which the horizontal coincides. and vertical. pictures of the world. Vertical. the scheme contrasts gods and people, the heavenly kingdom of the dead for the chosen (valhalla) and underground villages for mere mortals; acc. - heavenly Valkyries and norns living at the roots of the world tree - two categories of goddesses of fate. In the first song « Elder Edda» Divination of the Velva Vel-va (seer) recalls "Nine worlds" (nine is a conditional constant number in Scand. myth., as well as the number three, which underlies it) and nine tree stems or roots (so we can assume that we are talking about a set of myth. trees), but at the same time ... listed. three roots, acc. people, frost giants (hrimturs) and hel. In a later edition "Younger Edda" clarity of vertical. projection is blurred, because the root is associated not with people, but with the sky, and the frost giants, already dead and living in the underworld, are replaced by simply giants - etuns, who live on the edge of the earth. Vertical. scheme with different. levels "Woody" cosm. models matched "Zoomorphic" series. An eagle at the top, a Nidhogg snake at the roots, four deer (possibly previously associated with parts of the world) eating Yggdrasil ash leaves are at the middle level. Nidhogg is in a sense equivalent to Ermungand (in horizontal projection), as well as underground springs. and rivers can be compared to the ocean surrounding the earth. In addition, a goat and a deer standing on a valhalla, a tree trunk and a spring. at the roots overeat. in a vertical scheme by circulating priest. honey as a source. vital renewal and magic. forces. A squirrel scurrying through a tree, yavl. a kind of intermediary between "on horseback" and "Bottom"... In addition to Yggdrasil, verticals. the projection also knows the Bivrest rainbow bridge, comm. earth and sky.

In the temporal aspect of scandal. myth. is divided into cosmogonic. and eschatological. (myths of creation and the end of the world), between which there is incomplete symmetry. The world arises from the interaction of water and fire with cold and dies from fire and flood, cold and heat, in "Initial" and "Final" times are repeated about the same duels of the gods and chthonic. demons. At the same time, the Ases and Vans (the main groups of Scandalous gods) are hostile. at "Beginning", act in "End" as a single tribe of gods, Odin and Loki - as doubles in cosmogony and antipodes in eschatology.

Arose. of the world is drawn as filling the void of the world abyss Ginungagap and the transformation of chaos into space. The giants not only oppose the gods in space, but also precede them in time; the primordial being of the giant hermaphrodite Ymir comes from the cooling underground. waters (Elivagar), which filled the world abyss of Ginungagap; from his armpits, as well as from the friction of the legs born. other frost giants. The gods kill the giant Ymir and create the world from his body. Gods (sons of the giant Bor) "Raise" the earth (apparently, from the primary ocean, surrounding it in the spatial models of the world, and they arrange a beautiful Midgard on it; three asas (Odin, Lodur and Khenir) revive the arboreal prototypes of people, who, themselves., and should live in Midgard; norns appeared, determining their fates.The gods arrange the firmament and determine the roles of the sun (Salt) and the month (Mani) - sister and brother.In the process of the world order, they curb chthonic monsters - the serpent Ermungand, the wolf Fenrir and their sister Hel is the mistress of the kingdom of the dead (and then their father Loki).

However, later. (approaching "End of the world") these monsters will have to escape. In scand. myth. the eschatological people penetrate into cosmogony itself. motives. Per "Golden age" (when everything was made of gold, and the gods and people enjoyed peace) soon follows the first war between the Aesir and the Vanir. The myth of the origin of death from the spear and the first ritual. sacrifice within the warrior. initiations - the murder of the young god Balder - becomes a prologue to the eschatological itself. cycle and the reverse transformation of space into chaos. Vows and moral norms are violated, strife arises, and a three-year cold sets in. The world tree shudders when chthonic. monsters break free, a ship of the dead arrives, appeared. the sons of Muspell and the fire giant Surt. In the last battle, in a cut on the side of the gods, the fallen warriors (Eincheria), gods and chthonic also participate. monsters kill each other. Surt sets fire to the world, which dies in fire and flood, after which, however, it must be reborn again.

Beyond the myths of creation and the end of the world remain numerous. myth. narratives about the relationship and struggle of the gods with giants (etuns) and dwarfs (zwergs). Mostly in the background "Horizontal" projection cosm. In the model, events of constant struggle with giants unfold (for example, the campaigns of Thor and his companions to the east), which do not interfere with love. relationships and even exogamous marriages with their daughters. The Jötuns are trying to take away the goddesses and the wonderful attributes of the gods (Thor's hammer, Siv's hair, Idunn's rejuvenating apples, etc.), and there is a struggle for them, but the beginning. wonderful objects and elixirs (the spear of Odin Gungnir, his golden ring Draupnir, the hammer of Thor Mjellnir, the wonderful ship Skidbladnir, the Brisingamen necklace, the treasures of the dwarf Andvari, the honey of poetry) made. skillful dwarfs-zwergs, and the gods get it all from them by force or cunning. At the heart of such plots are partly etiological. (explanatory) myths (about the origin of sacred honey, the first spear, a hammer, etc.), in which the gods act as cultural heroes and fighters against monsters. However, in the texts that have come down to us, the etiology is strongly obscured and a peculiar picture is rather unfolding before us. "Circulation" values \u200b\u200bbetween different. "Worlds", combined with military. hiking. So, a very important myth about the origin. priest honey, giving strength, shamanic ecstasy, poetic. inspiration and wisdom, turns into a story about its circulation in a circle: gods - zwergs - giants - gods. Plots of obtaining by Odin priest. honey from the giants, Thorom - a cauldron for beer (and possibly the story of Loki's return of the rejuvenating apples of Idunn), apparently, have a single etiological basis. myth and acc. ritual, which proves the parallel with the Indus. the myth of soma - amrita. Semantically, the myth is close to the myths about wonderful drinking and rejuvenating fruits. presented. about the inexhaustible honey milk of the goat Heidrun and the inexhaustible meat of the goats of Thor, the wonderful boar of the fallen warriors of the Einherians and the god Freyr (the goats and the boar also act as wonderful horses), and further - about the ring of Odin, which gives birth to its own kind, the golden miracle mill Frod E.E. Freyr), about returning, like a boomerang, the hammer of Thor, not to mention such symbols of fertility or fertility as the golden hair of Siv and the necklace of Freya. This mythology of eternal renewal is magical. forces of the gods and source. food is consonant with the images of the Einheris who kill each other and come to life again for a feast in the Valhalla.

The gods oppose hostility. chthonic. monsters and etuns; rise above natural. spirits alvami and over dwarfs (miniatures), over women fateful creatures (Valkyries and Norns), above earthly heroes. The highest pantheon of gods in Scand. cosmoteogony is presented as a result of the combined. two groups of gods - the ases and the Vans after the war, or rather, as a result of the assimilation of the Ases Vans - is very limited. categories of deities associated with agrarian cults, endowed with magic. and the prophet. gift, sacred peacefulness (Njord, Freyr, Freya). The Aesir share the same properties: agrarian prosperity is associated with Thor, magic and prophecy with Odin, and peacefulness with Balder. Freya is Oda's wife functionally, and maybe genetically almost identical. Frigg is Odin's wife, but the first is attributed to the Vani, and the second to the Aesir. In pl. texts gods and ases are synonyms, since vanilla agrarian myth. subordinated to the single one, i.e. heavenly chthonic., military and "Shamanic" myth. Odin with Valhalla, Valkyries, Einheris, military initiation (death of Balder), etc.

Ases are represented in myths as a head. One patriarchal. tribal community, in a cut, however, important issues are resolved at the tinge (people's meeting with the Scandinavians); ritual is of great importance. feasts of the gods with drinking priest. drink.

The pantheon includes the gods: Odin (power, wisdom, magic, including the military, the patron saint of warriors, the master of the valhalla), Thor (a thunderbolt with military and agrarian functions, the main fighter with giants and the world serpent), Tyr (old Indo-European heavenly god, patron saint of military gatherings and fights), Heimdall (guardian of the gods and the world tree), Henir, Ull (god - archer and skier), Balder (young god - ritual sacrifice), Njord (fertility, sea and shipping), Head (blind god, killer of Balder), Freyr (fertility, peace), Loki (mythical rogue and mocker, father of chthonic monsters, mediator between gods and giants), Bragi (skald god) and some others. There are still young gods Vidar, Vali, Magni and Modi, to-rye function ch. arr. as avengers for fathers and brothers; Hermod, who is trying to return his brother Balder from the realm of death hel. Vili and Ve mentioned. only as brothers of Odin and "Sons of Bohr", and Od - as the husband of Freya (and, probably, the hypostasis of the same Odin). The goddesses (mainly related to fertility and childbirth.) Are primarily Frigg, Freya, Siv, Idunn, as well as the hunter and skier Skadi, sometimes mentioned. Gevion and Fulla. If Odin, Thor and Frey were of great importance in the cult, then in the narration. myths of ch. acting. persons yavl. Odin, Thor and Loki, acting primarily in the role of cultural heroes: Odin - as a cultural hero - a creator and shaman (priest), Thor - as a heroic. the fighter who protects the gods and people from monsters, Loki - as denied. variant of the cultural hero is a myth. rogue - trickster. Odin emphasizes the mind (in his syncretic understanding, including magical power and cunning), Thor emphasizes the physical. strength and heroic rage, Loki has cunning and deceit. Corresponding Thor acts as Ch. the enemy of the giants and the world serpent, Odin - as the earner of priest honey and runes, the bearer of wisdom, magic and prophecy, and Loki - as an eternal "Getter" (through tricks), myth. values \u200b\u200bfor dwarfs for gods, gods for giants, etc., as the operator of their eternal "Circulation"... Both Odin and Thor (as well as the ousted Tyr)) yavl. gods of heaven and war. Parallelism is eliminated by the fact that Odin is the war god. magic and military. squads, the patron saint of heroes and the sower of discord between them, and Thor is the hero-god, modeling arms. people, protector "Their" (gods and people) from "Strangers" - different. demons (Tyr is limited to the function of the keeper of warrior rules); Odin is the sky god as a warrior master. "Raya", and Thor is reduced to specialized. thunderbolt. Loki acts like a comedian. Odin's understudy in cosmogony and his demonic. enemy in eschatology. They both have shamanic traits, but Loki's shamanic travel is limited to the horizontal. projection, while the image of Odin is closely related to the world tree. He ousted the thunderbolt Thor in this and competes with the guardian of the gods Heimdall, which the original, apparently, was the same. the world tree Yggdrasil (the parallelism between them is reflected in the myth of Odin's eye hidden under the tree and Heimdall's hearing (or horn)). Conventionally Odin and Loki can be correlated as white and black shamanism. As a positive. Creator Odin is the father of the Aesir, and Loki is the father of the Chthonic. monsters, Odin is the master of the heavenly kingdom of the dead for the elect, and Loki is the father of the mistress of the underground. kingdoms of the dead and the secret culprit of the first death (death of Balder), edges of yavl. by an odin sacrifice (the real killer Head is also possibly Odin's backup).

Myth. proved to be significant. influence on the German-Scandal. heroic. epic. The earliest preserved. manuf. heroic. epo-sa - Anglo-Saxon. poems "Beowulf" (originated in the late 7th - early 8th centuries, recorded around 1000), "Battle of Finsburg" (9th century), "Vidsid", "Complaints of Deor" (both - 10th century); german "Song of Hildebrand" (early 9th century), "Valtarius" (9th century, in Latin); ch. array of records heroic. the epic dates back to the 13th century: German "Song of the Nibelungs", heroic. songs "Elder Edda" (songs about Völund, Helga, Sigurda, Gudrun, Brunhild, Atli, Hamdir) and section "The language of poetry" at Younger Edda and "Saga of Tidrek" and etc.; heroic. legends were stated in "Sagas of ancient times" - saved. ( "The Saga of Hrolv Zherdink") or lost, but used. Wed-century. authors ( "The Saga of the Skjeldungs"), in bunk. ballads of the late Middle Ages, etc. Heroes of the epic yavl. characters both fictional. and ascending to the ist. prototypes, but from the latter in the epic only names are preserved, and the events with which they were connected in action. stories (usually the epic reflects the era of the Great Migration of Nations of the 4th - 6th centuries - the wars between the Goths and the Huns, the death of the Ostrogothic kingdom in 437, the death of the Hunnic king Attila in 453, etc.), are presented in the form of family feuds and personal conflicts, overgrown fantastic. elements, etc. AT "Elder Edda" songs about heroes are quite clearly separated from songs about gods. Ases, as a rule, are direct. do not interfere with the lives of the heroes, and if the scene is in the myth. songs - Asgard or Etunheim (country of giants), but not the world of people, then exploits and atrocities, yavl. heroic plots. epics, performed on the Rhine, in the power of the Huns, in the Gothic kingdom, although topographic. and ethnic. the coordinates here are rather vague and contradictory. Even more uncertain is the time of action heroic. songs ( "Glorious distant past"), there is no clear distinction between primordial times and heroic. era; heroes often act at the same time. (although their original prototypes lived at different times), etc.

In a number it is essential. moments, the border between myth and epic is vague or essentially disappears. Mn. childbirth scandal. germ. kings and nobles date back to the ases (such are the genealogies of the Ynglings, Skjeldungs, Welsungs, Anglo-Saxon. Royal dynasties). Valhalla Odin accepts heroes who have fallen on the battlefield; loved. heroes (Sigurda, Helgi, Velunda) are often Valkyries, etc. And G.-s. m., and the epic is imbued with a kind of tragedy: all the heroes of the epic die, for the most part a terrible death, which they, as a rule, boldly accept, and in some cases go to meet it (Brunhild, Signyu, Gunnar, Hegni); into a myth. eschatological. concept the world is moving towards Twilight and the асыsir know about its cause - the violation of their vows. The motive for breaking oaths is one of the leading and heroic. epos: Sigurd, Burgundians - Gyukungi, Atli and other characters die precisely because of non-observance of solemnly taken oaths. Common to myth and heroic. the epic was also an understanding of fate. True, references to fate, norns, etc. become especially frequent in later epic recordings. production, where they may already be deprived of their former meaning, however, predictions of the future destinies of heroes are fundamentally important for heroes. legends (eg, about Sigurd, about Starkad, whose life was predetermined by the rival Odin and Thor).

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