Thanks very much for the information! So the Vanir were of the lower classes and the Aesir of the aristocracy. That sounds like the newer gods were brought in by conquest, as the newcomers become the warrior aristocracy and the indigenous people become peasants. Trell=thrall (slave/serf)?
Wondering if any Scandinavian hippies or leftists will start a religion called Vanatru… No, that’s an island nation.
Oh, wow! And my husband grew up about an hour east of Cleveland, so it’s even possible you know him or people he knows! Though if you dated a Stinkee Beetle in high school, you’re probably quite a bit younger than he - he has at least 10 years on most of the S.B.'s we know anyway. But yeah, I’ve spun with them at festival and we almost always camp together at three sites - two in Indiana (I’m sure you know which, but they’re small and private, so let’s spare them the publicity) and of course, at Starwood, when they’re there.
[singing] It’s A Small World After All…[/singing]
I’d like to preface my post by saying that I fully support anyone having religious experiences that are beneficial to them, all forms of ‘paganism’ (I share your distrust of the word) included.
But I have to admit the reconstructionist thing throws me. I certainly get the desire for accuracy - as an ancient historian, that’s my goal, too. But it seems like, at least in the religions I know something about, the non-individual framework is what has come through in the historical record as significant and/or come through at all. It must be impossible to feel as if you’re truly approaching ancient religious experience without temples, religious hierarchy, accurate knowledge of the mysteries, someone willing to mummify you and wrap you appropriately, etc. etc.
Well, possibly on a daily basis, but not exclusively. They were not two separate sets of gods; anyone conected to the sea or seafaring would pray to Njord for safety, and highbord women would still pray to Freya for children. The differenc lies in which gods were the “closest” for farmers vs. warriors.
It’s still a very interesting question. Are the vanir the result of a merger between two religions? I don’t have the answer, mind you.
And yes, trell=thrall, a cross between slave and serf.
I know that, for me, it’s not about completely accurate reconstruction, as, well, the information left in records for Norse reconstructionists is a bit like trying to decipher swiss cheese when it comes to things like constructing temples, building religious hierarchy, and completely accurate knowledge of the mysteries. Personally, I look to the texts that are left and the information we know about Norse society and their myths to shape a mental frame through which to view their gods. For me, it’s a better method than trying to connect with a god via going by the seat of my pants and having a lot of misunderstandings on my way to understanding the gods that I’m working with. I also realize that I am not living in the time period or the culture that the gods were first experienced in, and I have to adapt a bit of my practices to the modern world.
In many ways, reconstructionism (for me at least) is about understanding the theory and reasons behind what we knew about the past interactions with the gods in order to understand how to better communicate with them in our own time period. That said, there is a concept of there being a subset within the reconstructionist community that are labeled “modernists” because of this adapting the old and new to work within the world we live in. I’d consider myself part of this movement, if only for the fact that it’s hard to be a hardline traditionalist when you live in an urban setting without too many of the same resources as the pastoral peoples who first worshipped your gods.
And this is the problem of reconstruction.
No matter how complete our archaeological knowledge of something, there are bits that have gaps, things alluded to that we don’t have information on, things with varying interpretations, things that just don’t work anywhere that we can get to from a modern-day cultural framework.
So people bicker about it. And there are arguments about whether anyone should do the things that are alluded to but not described in detail at all (an example would be seidh, an oracular trance practice associated with Asatru), what to patch gaps with (cultural borrowings from neighbouring or related cultures, making shit up/divine inspiration, attempted extrapolation from extant data, etc.), how closely one should push to emulate ancient culture within modern culture, whether by forming separatist enclaves or trying to push modern culture to new norms, what things are cultural relics to discard and what are theological points to keep, and so on.
My personal approach is looser than many prefer in some places and stricter by far in others. For example: most of the Kemetic temples go far further into cultural reconstruction than I think is feasable, trying to hang the theology of a god-king or its representatives on people who are not extremely wealthy (essentially owning the entirety of a nation in name, and having heavy influence over it in fact) and obligated to provide for their entire demesne with that wealth. (God-kings do not have mortgages.) So I spend a fair amount of time figuring out what parts of that theology I think of as essential – which leaves me with an outlook that I suspect resembles the communitarianism of early Christian groups more than anything else – and find the whole god-king thing as no more tenable in the absence of that structure than priestly Judaism is without the structure of the Temple. (This is why I’m not in an organised Kemetic denomination; they all have either god-king wannabes or cabals of priests intended to fulfil the ceremonial role thereof. So I’m a happy heretic trying to figure out how it works with a less centralised structure.) At the same time, I’m uncomfortable with the level of borrowing of concepts from African Diaspora religions that are fairly mainstream, and am much stricter about where I’m willing to take borrowings from and how much I’m willing to borrow.
The concept of the ancient Mysteries is one that’s really touchy in reconstructions – many of the Mediterranean religions had them, and we don’t know what they were. Some people are all gung-ho about Mysteries, and the IMO more rational of us sort of go<, “Uh. We have no idea how. If we’re meant to have Mysteries, someone will reveal 'em to us sooner or later.” A friend of mine who was at the time doing Canaanite recon did part of a ceremony which we know the physical details of fairly extensively, and it went off well enough that the rest of her group said, “Let’s do the Mystery!” She was dubious. Eventually she decided that they’d work up to doing the ritual they knew about from the historical record in full, and if the Mystery happened, then they’d know how to do it, but intending to do it was foolish.
Basically, the reconstruction process is full of adaptations and people bickering about which adaptations are the right ones. I think the only reconstruction that’s been around long enough to have a settled canon of practice (aside from a few minor things that settled on a canon now known to be historically inaccurate but which works for the membership) is Asatru, and I still hear about these arguments there.
Indeed, a small world. The odds are good Johanna and Lillairen know an aquaintence of mine, who goes by the name Psy.
Neat guy, I wish I’d gotten to hang with him more before I moved across the country.
Is Psy over towards the West Coast? I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure, here on the East Coast. There are a lot more of us in California.
I’ve been recently reading The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples by Herwig Wolfram, translated by Thomas Dunlap ( 1990, translation 1997, University of California Press ) and he goes into this just a bit in relation to the origin myth of the Longobards ( Langobards, Lombards ). To quote:
The Germans knew of two families of gods: the older, settled Vanir, who bestowed fertility, practiced marriage among siblings and a pronounced matriarchal way of life and counted helpful twin gods among their own; and the younger, warlike Aesir, headed by Odin-Wodan. Against this backdrop unfolds the saga of Longobard origins: lots were drawn to select a group of Vinnili who had to leave their homeland. The archaic sacral king apparently remained behind, for the emigrants followed the two commanders ( duces ), Ibor and Agio, a Diskouridean pair of brothers who were counseled by a wise woman - their mother - who was knowlegeable about the gods. The first crisis on the way to the formation of anew tribe was a clash with the Vandili-Vandals.
Herwig goes on to relate how in the myth, Wodan prophecies the victory of the more powerful Vandals ( under their own paired commanders, again reflective of Vanir influence, Ambri and Assi ). But Ibor and Agio’s mother petitions her goddess, the Vanir Frea/Freja ( here cast as Wodan’s wife ) to trick him into reversing his prophecy. This was done by the Vinnili women combing their hair over their faces so it looks like they have beards and Wodan, seeing them with the men, wonderingly asks who the “longbeards” ( longobards ) were. Having thus named them after himself ( he was called “longbeard” as one of his epithets ), he is forced to grant them victory instead. Thus the wandering section of the Vinnili gained a new name and patron. so…
The clash between the Vinnili and Vandali, who were both committed to the same way of life, was settled in favor of the homeless invaders. Both peoples were ready to take on the militarily more successful organizational form of the wandering tribe ( the Vandals Ambri and Assi approached the god of war first ), which means, in the language of mythology, to turn toward Wodan, the god of warrior bands. At that moment the Vinnili women, the goddess Frea, and her priestess not only prepare this change of cult and name but also actively pursue it, thus gaining victory for the men. As representatives of the Vanir tradition they sacrifice their own past and cultic existence fore the welfare of the tribe and thus legitimate the new ethnogenesis.
So the need to become somewhat mobile ( for whatever reason, economic hardship, roused by invaders or internal political schism ) and hence more assertively militant, demanded a more aggressive pantheon to supplement the more traditional hearth-oriented gods.
Thanks for the history, Tamerlane. You’ve offered an alternative reading of the mythological development, which is quite interesting. Instead of the warrior class conquering the old religion’s goddesses, this has the old goddesses and matriarchs themselves helping the people to turn warrior to cope with an increasingly violent world during the Völkerwänderung. There are lots of other examples of formerly peaceful goddesses turning martial as the warriors became prominent in society: Inanna, Athena, Cybele. The model that Goddess people are familiar with involves the warriors conquering peaceful societies and dominating them by force.
Oh well, way I see it, the peaceniks get screwed either way. Humans have been continually ramping up the scale of violence for thousands of years, however the mythology be adjusted to account for it. As the old song asks, “When will they ever learn?”
Yeah, see what I mean, delve back into ancient Paganism and you always find them screwing around with the gender identities. 
From the earliest times gender-crossing was regarded as a powerful act of magic. As a transgender Witch, I inherit a very old legacy. The Polish anthropologist Maria Antonina Czaplicka lived among Siberian tribes near the end of the Czarist period, before the Siberian natives were collectivized by the Bolsheviks, when their old traditions were still intact. She found that the oldest traditions of shamanism were attributed to women including transgender women. In later times non-transgender men learned the techniques, but took up cross-dressing to follow the traditions. Cite: M.A. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia, Chapter 12: Shamanism and Sex.
So to recap the OP, this is a pretty strong personal reason for me to go Pagan.
Indeed. Another thing Wolfram notes in his brief discussion of Vanir influence, this time in regards to the Vandali ( Vandals ), is that Tacitus mentions that they had a central cultic site which was presided over by a male priest in women’s dress.
Bada bing bada BOOM.
You’re a powerful ally, Tamerlane.
On edit: I must be hallucinating, I could have sworn I saw an edit button.
Second edit: It doesn’t even stick in those pesky little timestamps. Way cool, Dope powers that be.
If you like that aspect of it, I suppose I’ll have to relate this story then:
Tor, the God of Thunder, had a hammer (Mjølnir), which was magical in nature, and so heavy that none other could wield it. When he threw it at an enemy, it returnet to his hand on it’s own*.
One day, Mjølnir was stolen, and the Gods recieved word from one Utgards-Loki that the hammer would not be returned to them, exept to Freya, as a wedding gift. Tor was furious; he had lost half his might with the hammer, and without Tor, the trolls might overun both Midgard and Aesgard. He asked Freya if she would marry Utgards -Loki, but she refused.
Then Loki (different one), the trickster God, told him that they did not need to send Freya to Utgard; they need only send someone in her place, as Utgards-Loki did not know her. However, none of the women in Asgard would take Freyas place, and so Loki convinced Tor that he would have to do it himself. After much gnashing of teeth, he agreed, and so Loki and Tor dressed themselves as women, with a veil to hide Tors face, and set forth to Utgard as Freya and her bridesmaid.
(Fast forward over many adventures)
In Utgard, they were recieved with all the splendour the jotun could provide. A feast had been prepared for them. However, Utgards-soon became suspiscious; Freya was renowned as the most beautifull woman in the world, whereas the woman before him had hands as large as boulders.
“Why are the hands of your mistress so large?” he whispered to Loki.
“Because she has been wringing them since she heard you wanted her to bride, so worried and nervous has she been that she might not please you”.
This warmed the old jotuns heart, and he assured Tor-as-Freya that she was beautiful.
When the food was brought in, however, the jotuns suspicions returned, for the woman he was about to marry ate more than any of his men, and there seemed no end to his appetite.
“Why does your mistress eat the food of ten men?” he whispered to Loki.
“Because she has not eaten a morsel, nor drunk a drop since your proposal, so exited has she been to see you.”
The jotun was pleased, and sent to the kitchens for more food for his bride. However, when he looked into her eyes, they were red and raw, like the eyes of warrior used to foul weather and fighting.
“What is wrong with the eyes of your mistress?” he asked Loki.
“They are red from all the tears of joy she has shed on the journey.” he said.
And now Utgards-Loki was so pleased with hid bride that he sent for his bride-gift, the hammer Mjølnir. As soon as Tor laid eyes on the hammer, he tore of his veil, grapped the hammer and slew every living thing in the hall, save for himself and his bridesmaid. And so Mjølnir was returned to Tor, who returned to Aesgard in the finery of a bride and was recieved as a hero.
*which proves that the vikings invented the boomerang.
Hell hath no fury like a drag queen when her hammer has been ripped off. Thanks for the story, Septima!
Gender fluidity in mythology may be merely symbolic of metaphysical principles, the union of opposites or something. But I think it more likely, the older the myth, that it records the sacred rites of transgender people. (The moral of your story might be: Piss off trans people at your peril.) Likewise the Valkyries were originally real women on the battlefield or in funeral rites, priestesses who later became mythologized as supernatural beings, especially after their role was no longer practiced.
In religion, as a general rule, praxis comes first while theory is secondary. In mythology, I think praxis came first and mythologizing came later.