Sheila's and Nygel's birthday;
coffee at another friend, Nathan's, restaurant;
Viking Festival;
after this post, Indian meal with Aileen and Yossi.
At the Festival, several men wore Mjolnir. One guy showed me that his hammer had symbols for day and night on opposite sides. However, when I asked him about "making the sign of the hammer," he did not know about this so I am not sure how authentic the attribution of Christian-like signs to pagans is:
"They stared, listened, furtively drew signs Ax or Cross."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT p. 402.
Anderson refers to the hammer:
"The storm god smote [a giant], and a crushed skull was the wage that he got."
-Poul Anderson, War Of The Gods (New York, 1999), I, p. 13.
"Redbeard caught [a hammer] in midair and whirled it aloft. It was a short-handled maul. The weight of its iron head smashed open the carpenter's skull."
-Poul Anderson, The Golden Slave (New York, 1980), X, pp. 124-125.
Redbeard says, "'They call me Tjorr the Sarmatian...'" (ibid., p. 128)
"'And Thor has a hammer, too, which he throws at trolls.'"
-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 14.
World Without Stars is futuristic science fiction.
Time Patrol is historical science fiction.
The Golden Slave is historical fiction.
War Of The Gods is heroic fantasy.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
There is some reason to think that in the last one or two centuries before AD 1000, Scandinavian paganism was being affected or influenced by Christian ideas and symbols. I recall reading that some commentators think the Eddaic poem about Ragnarok or the doom of the gods had been influenced by the Book of the Apocalypse. And symbols/gestures about Mjolnir could have been modeled on the Christian Cross.
Sean
Sean,
And was Odin hanging himself on the Tree as a sacrifice to himself influenced by the Crucifixion? And who is the mighty lord who comes, all power to hold, all lands to rule, at the end of the Voluspa?
Yes, if there was a sign of the hammer, then it was influenced by the sign of the cross, but was there a sign of the hammer? The Mjolnar-wearing re-enactor that I spoke to today had not heard of it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The thought I had was that Scandinavian pagans like raiders, mercenaries, or peaceful merchants would have been, some of them, interested by the Christian ideas and symbols they observed in, say, AD 700 to 1000. So, Odin sacrificing himself for wisdom might go back to what these Scandinavians observed about the Christian belief in the Passion of Christ.
Sean
Yup, neo-pagans use the sign of the Hammer and it's attested for the VIking period.
The divine charioteer with the hammer (or ax) that is also the thunder and lightning is very ancient as an Indo-European supernatural figure -- Thor is the Germanic version, but there's substantial evidence that it's cognate with the Perkunaz-Perun figure and linked similar ones in Indo-Iranian mythology (like Indra).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I should have remembered that bit about the Indo/European thunder god, whose symbol was often a hammer or ax. And no surprise it was found in India. After all, the Indo/Europeans invaded and conquered northern India.
Sean
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