Teutonic Mythology E-Book

Rydberg

• Herausgeber: Rydberg
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Idun was the beautiful goddess who in Asgard was keeper
of the apples which the gods ate to preserve eternal youth.
She is most generally regarded as the wife of Brage.

Heimdal, the son of nine mothers, was guardian against the
giants of the bridge of the gods, Bifröst. With a trumpet he
summoned all the gods together at Ragnarok when he and Loke
slew each other. He was the god of light.

Loke though beautiful in form was like Lucifer in character
and was hence called the god of destruction. By the giantess
Angerboda he had three offspring, the Midgard serpent,
the Fenris-wolf, and Hela, the latter becoming goddess of Hel.

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Rydberg

Teutonic Mythology

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Table of contents

I. INTRODUCTION.

A. THE ANCIENT ARYANS.

B. ANCIENT TEUTONDOM (GERMANIEN).

II. THE LEARNED SAGA IN REGARD TO THE EMIGRATION FROM TROY-ASGARD.

A. MEDIÆVAL MIGRATION SAGAS.

B. REMINISCENCES IN THE POPULAR TRADITIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES OF THE HEATHEN MIGRATION SAGA.

III. THE MYTH CONCERNING THE EARLIEST PERIOD AND THE EMIGRATIONS FROM THE NORTH.

IV. THE MYTH IN REGARD TO THE LOWER WORLD.

FOOTNOTES:

IDUN, HEIMDAL, LOKE, AND BRAGE.(From an etching by Lorenz Frölich.)Idun was the beautiful goddess who in Asgard was keeperof the apples which the gods ate to preserve eternal youth.She is most generally regarded as the wife of Brage.Heimdal, the son of nine mothers, was guardian against thegiants of the bridge of the gods, Bifröst. With a trumpet hesummoned all the gods together at Ragnarok when he and Lokeslew each other. He was the god of light.Loke though beautiful in form was like Lucifer in characterand was hence called the god of destruction. By the giantessAngerboda he had three offspring, viz: the Midgard serpent,the Fenris-wolf, and Hela, the latter becoming goddess of Hel.Brage was the son of Odin and being represented as the chief skald in Valhalla he is called the god of poetry.

I. INTRODUCTION.

A. THE ANCIENT ARYANS.

1.THE WORDS GERMAN AND GERMANIC.Already at the beginning of the Christian era the name Germans was applied by the Romans and Gauls to the many clans of people whose main habitation was the extensive territory east of the Rhine, and north of the forest-clad Hercynian Mountains. That these clans constituted one race was evident to the Romans, for they all had a striking similarity in type of body; moreover, a closer acquaintance revealed that their numerous dialects were all variations of the same parent language, and finally, they resembled each other in customs, traditions, and religion. The characteristic features of the physical type of the Germans were light hair, blue eyes, light complexion, and tallness of stature as compared with the Romans.Even the saga-men, from whom the Roman historian Tacitus gathered the facts for his Germania—an invaluable work for the history of civilisation—knew that in the so-called Svevian Sea, north of the German continent, lay another important part of Germany, inhabited by Sviones, a people divided into several clans. Their kinsmen on the continent described them as rich in weapons and fleets, and in warriors on land and sea (Tac., Germ., 44). This northern sea-girt portion of Germany is called Scandinavia—Scandeia by other writers of the Roman Empire; and there can be no doubt that this name referred to the peninsula which, as far back as historical monuments can be found, has been inhabited by the ancestors of the Swedes and the Norwegians. I therefore include in the term Germans the ancestors of both the Scandinavian and Gothic and German (tyske) peoples. Science needs a sharply-defined collective noun for all these kindred branches sprung from one and the same root, and the name by which they make their first appearance in history would doubtless long since have been selected for this purpose had not some of the German writers applied the terms German and Deutsch as synonymous. This is doubtless the reason why Danish authors have adopted the word "Goths" to describe the Germanic nation. But there is an important objection to this in the fact that the name Goths historically is claimed by a particular branch of the family—that branch, namely, to which the East and West Goths belonged, and in order to avoid ambiguity, the term should be applied solely to them. It is therefore necessary to re-adopt the old collective name, even though it is not of Germanic origin, the more so as there is a prospect that a more correct use of the words German and Germanic is about to prevail in Germany itself, for the German scholars also feel the weight of the demand which science makes on a precise and rational terminology.[1]2.THE ARYAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES.It is universally known that the Teutonic dialects are related to the Latin, the Greek, the Slavic, and Celtic languages, and that the kinship extends even beyond Europe to the tongues of Armenia, Irania, and India. The holy books ascribed to Zoroaster, which to the priests of Cyrus and Darius were what the Bible is to us; Rigveda's hymns, which to the people dwelling on the banks of the Ganges are God's revealed word, are written in a language which points to a common origin with our own. However unlike all these kindred tongues may have grown with the lapse of thousands of years, still they remain as a sharply-defined group of older and younger sisters as compared with all other language groups of the world. Even the