Veleda to Heidhin:
"'A Roman host has fallen into our hands, and you believe that we should do what warriors of old did, give everything to the gods. Cut throats, break weapons, smash wagons, cast all into a bog, that Tiw be slaked.'" (3, p. 499)
Tiw of the Anses/Tyr of the Aesir is the Norse god of war, equivalent to Ares/Mars. Tuesday is Mardi in French and De Mairt in Irish.
I read Myths Of The Norsemen by Roger Lancelyn Green in my teens and now realize that that kind of retelling had effectively Christianized the Aesir whose sole role had become to protect both mankind and themselves from the giants, like a superhero team defending Earth from invaders. The suggestion that Tyr might be slaked by human blood would have shocked and appalled Lancelyn Green's readers.
Myths and stories change over time but we need to know their history. And we control the gods. It is we that imagine them.
Heidhin replies that a slaughter of prisoners would be:
"'A mighty offering.'" (ibid.)
-and that:
"'It would quicken the blood in our men.'" (ibid.)
In other words, it is not just its effect on the gods that matters! Its effect on the Romans must also be considered but Heidhin thinks that:
"'...a slaughter will rouse the tribes and bring new warriors to us, more than it will set the foe on vengeance.'" (p. 499)
He adds that the gods will be glad and will remember but for practical, pragmatic, political, rabble-rousing, mobilizing purposes, it is the effect on men that counts...
(And, in my view, if that is the only way that you can rouse the tribes to rebellion, then forget it!)
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Unfortunately, some writers bowdlerized the Norse myths, deleting the barbarism and savagery to be found in them. Anderson refused to do that, talking bluntly about "heathen rites obscene or bloody" in HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA.
Ad astra! Sean
Actually, Tiwaz was the Germanic reflex of *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr -- Sky Father, like Jupiter and Zeus Pater and so forth.
In proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European "d" ==> "t", as "p" ==> "f". *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr becomes Tiwaz Fader.
He was originally the supreme God, the father of all the rest. In later times, Wotan/Odin acquired a lot of his characteristics.
Indeed. Tiwaz was demoted from Sovereign to Minister of War, to adapt political titles.
Note that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were, from all the evidence available, ferociously warlike. Eg., their young men spent some time 'living in the woods' as wolves did, and attacking anybody they could -- that was one of the mechanisms of their expansion.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I'm not objecting to anything you wrote above--my point being how some sentimentalists watered down the savagery found in the origins of these Germanic/Nordic myths.
What you wrote about how ferociously warlike young proto-proto-Indo-European males were reminded me of an African tribe whose adolescent males behaving in almost exactly the same way. They were supposed to attack/raid other tribes before being considered fully adult.
Ad astra! Sean
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