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. . CLAN
GODS AND RITUAL GODS
From
our point of view the gods divide themselves into two
groups: the god of the clan, the divine representative
of the kinsmen's luck or hamingja, and the ritual god
representing a phase in the drama. Properly speaking,
the whole festival: the circle of worshippers, the house
in which the blot took place, the ceremonial implements
and acts and words are god, but this divinity assumes a
personal appearance or crystallises into a character in
every act of moment, as is dogmatically illustrated by
the functional gods of the Romans. This ritual
manifestion of the hamingja in a definite attitude is
actually identical with the sacrificer who performs the
sacral action and pronounces the formula appropriate to
the ceremony. Such ritual divinities are not possessed
of any individual permanence outside the scene in which
they act; their particular existence begins and ends
with the episode and thus will never acquire what we
call a distinctive personal character. In
poems and fragmentary myths, in kennings and lists of
names there is preserved a great number of cult
epithets, more than sufficient to prove the intricate
structure of the drama, but in most cases such names are
nothing more to us than cues to scenes that have been
irretrievably lost. At times we dimly recognise in the
epithet a cult title expressive of a duty incumbent on
the god, or his impersonator, as f. i. when it is said
of Odin in Grimnismál (v. 50): “I bore the names of
Svidurr and Svidrir in the house of Sökkmimir”. This
class comprises the triads mentioned in connection with
the fight with the demon and the creation. Hoenir
discovers himself as the blower of the sacrificial fire
and the giver of life; Voluspá introduces him as
“choosing” the omen-sticks, thus alluding to another
of his functions in the blot. The quaint remark of the
Heimskringla (113) that Hoenir as a ruler was dependent
on the wisdom of Mimir and in every difficulty appealed
to him with the words: “let others decide”, may very
well be a rationalistic interpretation of a ritual fact.
An
interesting epithet, belonging, so far as we can make
out, to Hoenir and referring to still another function
of his, is Meili; the name implies a ritual cooperation
with Thor in his fighting the demon. In the poetical
terminology of Haustlong, Thor is called Meili's kinsman
(14 cf. Harb. 9). The name recurs in a compound,
Fet-Meili (Haustl. 4), the walker or strider. From these
indications we may form a tolerably clear idea of the
significance of the title. Like Vishnu in the Vedic
ritual Hoenir has to perform a ceremonial pacing in
order to hallow the place, to make it safe and to ensure
the success of the sacred acts performed on the spot;
one aspect of this ritual walk finds a parallel in the
procession round the territory by which a squatter
appropriated a piece of ground. The same ritual duty is
hinted at in other kennings designating Hoenir: the
fleet áss and the Long-foot (S E 84). The epithet aurkonungr
(ib.) indicates a connection with the aurr. The
god Ull probably belongs to the group of ritual gods.
The facts to be drawn upon for the explanation of his
character are firstly that he is called the stepson of
Thor, and secondly that he is closely associated with a
shield, and these two facts form parts of the same
evidence. The first datum indicates his place in the
drama as the companion and helper of Thor — in the
same way as Hoenir, but in different situations; in the
Thorsdrapa the relationship between the two divinities
is defined by a ritual word of unknown acceptation: gulli.
The character of their cooperation is sufficiently
indicated by the shield that plays a part in either
drama, in the former the shield on which Hrungnir was
slain, in the latter the shield that saved the
companions of Thor from being drowned when crossing the
infernal river. The programme of these scenes is given
by S E (115): “shield may be called the ship of Ull or
paraphrased in allusion to the foot of Hrungnir”; from
this note we learn that a shield was a ritual implement
in the drama, and further that the functional divinity
of this shield was called Ull. The passage in the legend
of Hrungnir stating that the giant thrust the shield
under his feet or, as Haustlong has it, that he was
slain on the shield, indicates the ritual staging of the
act. Probably the shield and the shield god, as Ull is
poetically named, performed in situations other than
those accidentally mentioned in mythological literature,
as it has come down to us. Grimnismál
42 adds one more item to our knowledge concerning the
part played by Ull in the drama; the verse (v. supra p.
294) intimates that the god was connected with the
sacrificial fire and the kettles. This hint is probably
elucidated by Baldrs Draumar v. 7, whence it appears
that the holy vat of ale was covered by a shield:
“Here stands the mead brewed to welcome Balder, pure
drink covered by a shield”. Further epithets belonging
to Ull are bow-man, ski-runner, god of chase, but in
default of explanatory legends or other hints, the
significance of these names must be left undecided. The
remark of S E (31) that he is worth calling on before
entering on a duel probably hinges on his ritual role as
Thor's helpmate. If
our knowledge of the god Ull must remain somewhat vague
and circumstantial, we are on surer ground when we
approach the figure of Heimdal. Though our material does
not furnish more than broken glimpses of his position in
the ritual, the rays of light are so numerous and play
upon him from so many angles that we get a pretty clear
view of his character and sacral importance. According
to the rather systematic account of S E (30), he is the
warder of the gods and sits by the rim of heaven to
guard the bridge against the giants. When this
mythological image is translated into a ritual fact, the
meaning is that he is the protector of the holiness of
the feast. Like Varuna in the Vedic ritual, Heimdal is
the personification —the functional god — of the
feast frith; he keeps watch over the worshippers so that
no member of the sacred circle may infringe the rules
and tabus on the observance of which the blessing of the
blot was dependent, and through his insubordination lay
the holy place open to the pernicious influence of the
demons. In this character he is called the white ase (S
E 30, 83, Thrym. 15), the whitest and purest of the
gods, and from another point of view: sif sifjađan, the
incarnation of frith and the solidarity of kinship (Hynd.
43). The
sacrificers are called the sacred kin or sons of Heimdal
(Vsp. 1), because they are consecrated and thus
subjected to the rules of the feast frith; actually it
means that Heimdal's Sons or kin is the sacral name for
the congregation during the moments when the ceremonial
hints at or turns upon the consecration and moral duties
of the feast, in the same way as the circle of
worshippers in Vedic ritual appeals to Varuna and Mithra
as the guardians of the sacrifice. The
sanctity of the feast implied euphemia: ritual silence
and devout attention, during the performance of the
ceremonies and the chanting of the sacred texts; in the
sacral language this euphemia is called hljóđ, and
hljóđ is bound up with the horn of Heimdal, the
symbol or incarnation of his authority. The horn is
simply called his hljod and according to Vsp. (27) it is
hidden — i. e. it rested — beneath the world
ash in the sacrificial place. Vsp. opens with the verse:
“I ask for hljod from the sacred kin, the sons of
Heimdal”, lines in which a ritual formula is
paraphrased or more probably directly transcribed. In
the poetry of the viking age the horn of Heimdal figures
as the trumpet that heralds the battle of Ragnarok.
Whether this fanfare is a poetical invention due to the
battle-heated imagination of the Ragnarok poets or it
has its origin in ancient ritual is a question that must
be left in abeyance; the ritual epithets never allude to
the blowing of the horn, but their silence is no proof
that it cannot have been in use as an instrument of
music. The
ceremonial and dramatic appearance of Heimdal is not
obscure; he was present in the horn resting on the place
of sacrifice. The scene is pictured in the kennings of
the scalds that render the sword by “the head of
Heimdal”; we learn moreover that the symbol consisted
in the horn of a ram, the sacrificial animal, for
Heimdal is a ritual and poetical name of the ram, and hallinskíđi,
“ram”, is an epithet of Heimdal's, cf. III 80, S
E 30, 209. S E (83, 145) proffers the information that
the head of Heimdal is called sword on account of a
story to the effect that he was pierced with the head of
a man, lostinn mannz-höfđi í gögnum, and in
continuation of this startling piece of news we read:
“that is the reason why the head is called Heimdal's mjötuđr
or destiny, and sword means the destiny of man”.
It is evident that there is a hitch somewhere in the
chain of reasoning, at any rate the author has made a
mess of two kennings or epithets, viz, that the
sword can be styled Heimdal's head in allusion to a
ritual scene turning on the horn of a ram, and on the
other hand that the god was pierced with a man's head;
and the summing up of the author in the form of a
logical conclusion: head is the destiny of Heimdal,
sword is the destiny of man, therefore head is sword,
looks pretty like an artificial makeshift. In all
probability the sentence is the outcome of the author's
attempt to make sense of an epithet the meaning of which
was lost or obscured, but this does not exclude the
possibility that he had at his disposal two different
kennings which had got mixed up. This being the case,
the latter epithet alludes to an unknown rite suggesting
the legend of the kettle being called the pledge of
Odin. But
we get a little nearer by examining the word mjötuđr,
that is used by the author in support of his logic.
Mjotudr is a ritual expression for luck, or destiny, i.
e. the future as it is bound up with the sacrifice
and created by its proper performance. This fate is
concentrated in the sacrificial place, as we have seen,
by the well; it is thus closely connected with the horn
of Heimdal, and with the world ash that shades the
sacred spot. The tree is said to possess this mjotudr
— the power —among men, to help women in the throes
of birth (Fjols. 22). Vsp. (2) offers a parallel form, mjötviđr,
that should mean the tree of destiny, but this
compound is possibly due to a late rationalistic
redactor who tried his best to make sense out of an
obscure text. According to Vsp. the battle of the gods
and the demons is ushered in by the mjotudr bursting
into flames by the ancient Gjallarhorn, when Heimdal
raises the horn and blows a loud blast. The phrase is
not clear, but it evidently turns on the fact that the
tree is called mjotudr, in the same way as Heimdal's
horn is called hljod as being the “symbol” of
euphemia. Heimdal
is called the warder of the gods sitting at the rim
where heaven joins the earth: a mythical expression of
the fact that he rested viđ jarđar ţröm (Hynd.
35), at the edge of men's holy place, viz, the
sacrificial place where the real or eternal world was
found. There he dwells in close contact with the sacred
aurr; Loki twits him with leading a dog's life, his back
soiled with mud: aurgu baki (Lokas. 48), a
travesty that finds a mythical parallel in the Grimnismál
13: Heimdal drinks joyfully his mead at Himinbjorg. The
consecration of Heimdal or mythically speaking his
birth, is described in words that reflect the ritual
with its formulć. According to Hynd. 38 his power was
created from the megin of the earth — jarđar megin
that resided in the aurr —the cool waves and the
fluid from the sacrificial kettles. He is the son of
nine mothers. Through these abrupt phrases we catch a
glimpse of the ritual that initiated the feast and
constituted its frith: the horn of the ram is carried
forward and deposited on the “altar”, consecrated to
be the guardian of the blot, born by nine mothers, nine
ritual acts, as in default of better knowledge we must
be content to say. Later on a series of ceremonies
proceeded from this guardian, or had his symbol for
their centre, as is tantalisingly hinted at in obscure
allusions to his horn. In
the prose sentences introducing the Rigsmál, Heimdal is
identified with Rig, the father of men, but the
evidential value of this gloss is rather doubtful. It is
not intrinsically impossible that the identification may
be inspired by a genuine tradition, that of Heimdal
taking part in the dramatic birth of the clan, but the
poem itself contains no intimation of Rig being looked
on as an avatar of Heimdal. So
long as the feast lasted the congregation was under the
protection of Heimdal, but during the moments when holy
words were spoken from the rök seats, the solemnity of
the hour found expression in another ritual word. The
recitals are Hávi's speech, the congregation is Hávi's
hall, and from such formulć we learn that another
ritual god, Hár or Hávi, presided over the chanting
and watched over the correct enunciation of the sacred
texts (Háv. 109, 111, 164). A ceremonial formula
relating to this aspect of the blot crops up in the poem
which Eyvind composed in honour of Earl Hakon: “I ask
for hljod in Hár's assembly” (Skjald. 60 cf. or ţvi
liđi, Vsp. 17 and Háv. 111). The
opening verse runs as follows: “I ask for attention in
the assembly of Hár while I raise the mead — the
weregild of the giant — and reckon up the kin of the
Earl to the gods in Odin's kettle's fluid — lögr —
which he bore on mighty wings from Surt's deep, gloomy
vales”. Even though we were to strain our words to the
point of breaking, we should never succeed in
reproducing the precise import and significance of these
verses; the only way of approach is possibly to describe
the setting of Eyvind's poem. He had composed a poem in
honour of the Earl of Hladi taking for his theme the
traditions of Hakon's race; in his verses he gives a
list of the earl's ancestors or a compendium of his
hamingja, the names of the genealogy naturally implying
the history represented by these several figures. Such a
poem makes up a rök or dómr; it gives real honour to
the Earl by calling the fame of his family into new
being and thus increasing his strength and luck. Hence
it follows that it could only be recited at a feast as a
piece of worship, baptised and made “whole” by the
sacred cup. As a matter of course Eyvind opens his poem
with a ritual allocution, addressing his listeners in a
ceremonial phrase allusive to their holiness “in the
hall of Hár”. Further he clothes his opening phrases
in images referring to the ale indicative of the feast
in which his poem makes up a formćli. It is not an idle
poetical metaphor when his poem and the legend of the
ale combine into a comprehensive idea, that of reciting
the drapa and that of serving the ale; thus we are led
to feel the force of the kennings in this verse: He who
bore the ale up from the dim vales of the nether world
king. All
that can be said of the god Vali may be expressed in one
word: the avenger. According to the legend, he was
begotten by Odin for the sake of revenge, and he placed
his antagonist on the pyre at the tender age of one
night, before he had washed his hands and combed his
hair; this mythological biography is sufficiently
elucidated by his dramatic function: he is the god who
restores harmony after the slaughtering of the victim,
he is “born” to his task, like Heimdal, and he has
no personal existence outside the scene of restoration
(S E 83, Hynd. 29, Bald. 11, here I 100-1). To
the same category belong gods like Modi and Magni,
divine strength and power or megin, representatives of
some situation in the drama; the remainder of ritual
gods are but names to us and must be left in the
twilight of a broken tradition. The
principle of the ritual drama involves an inner tension
that — to our view — brings about a bewildering
intricacy in some of its scenes, as of a double fugue
running upon discordant themes. The body of the
sacrificial animal is the Holiest of Holies, at the same
time playing the part of the demon; the explanation is
to be found in the creative power of the ritual in which
the fundamental sentiment of the Teutons finds
expression: to be pure and true, life must again and
again be snatched out of the reach of the giants, to be
good and fruitful, earth must be built on their dead
bodies. In S E 11 the question is raised: What did Odin
do before the world was created, and the query elicits
this answer: He dwelt among the frost giants. These
words originate in an ancient legend and reproduce the
proceedings of the ritual. Not only such grand objects
as heaven and earth, sun and moon, but ritual symbols,
the ale vat and the ale itself, must be reft or acquired
from the demons. The myths frequently allude to a ritual
connection between the divine powers and forces of
demoniacal appearance, to matrimonial or amorous
alliances between gods and maidens belonging to the
world of the giants, f. i. Thor's friendship with Grid
that resulted in the acquisition of the Gridarvolr —
according to S E Vidar was the son of Grid — the love
affairs between Frey and Gerd, Odin and Gunnlod (cf. Hym.
8). Thus
it comes about that the ritual demands the cooperation
of figures — whether human actors or acting implements
—who are at once holy and accursed; accursed because
they have to impersonate — for a time — the
mischievous influence of the evil powers, holy because
they have to appear in the drama in order to be
overthrown, and cannot take part in the ritual unless
they belong to the body of consecrated worshippers.
Their task consists in representing objects or forces
that have to be made heore, nýt, and it must
never be forgotten that the creation of the world, the
conquest of the gold or of the ale, the slaying of the
giant, are not so many pieces of make-believe. This
category of ritual persons includes the giant's maiden,
whose part was to initiate the ceremony of atonement; in
the legend we see Skadi mounting the stage with the
object of giving the gods an opportunity to cleanse
themselves of the guilt incurred by the death of Thiazi.
Haustlong and Thorsdrapa still preserve the ritual name
of this figure: Mörn, and we catch a reminiscence of
the drama when the demon is styled the father of Mörn.
This ceremonial title crops up in Volsathattr, a piece
of Christian persiflage on rustic idolatry, in which,
moreover, we are presented with a formula containing the
name: “Moernir accept this blot”. To all appearance
the title reappears once more in a magic verse composed
as a lampoon against a Danish king. The
Skadi of the legends certainly hails from a drama
belonging to a group of worshippers in the Drontheim
parts of Norway; the importance of this figure in the
ritual is vouched for by the fact that she gives birth
to the clan of the Earls: Odin and Skadi were the
progenitors of this race. In
the council of the gods there is no figure more
arresting than that of Loki. He was a favourite of the
poets in the viking age; they gave him an ample chance
of playing the villain in the piece, and in their
poetical myths extracted the full measure of slyness,
double-dealing, cock-sureness, effrontery, cunning,
cowardice and foolhardiness that lay hidden behind his
sleek, ingratiating features. He becomes the leading
character in the tragedy of the world, the most
entertaining person in the history of the gods and at
the same time the sinister power who shapes the fate of
the world by his strength of weakness and his daring of
cowardice. The threads of a destiny involving gods and
men meet in his fertile brain and are twined by his
ready wit and spiteful cynicism into a net that draws
the whole world into the abyss of death. Double of
tongue, glib of speech, never at a loss for a jest and a
trick, he passes backwards and forwards between the gods
and the demons; again and again he lures the gods to the
brink of destruction; every time he contrives a way out
for the sake of saving his own head; by his
double-dealing he slowly but surely prepares for the day
that shall set free the enemies of life and is to see
him marching at their head into the battle-field. This
subtle friend of the gods is rather refractory to a
sober method of analysis dividing him into mythological
and folkioristic elements. As a matter of course he has
been caught time upon time and placed on the anatomist's
table, has had his body dissected and his inner organs
numbered as belonging partly to a corn spirit, partly to
a spirit of nature and partly to something else; but the
analysis has never succeeded in depriving him of his
deftness and agility, he slips from under the hands of
the anatomists and springs to his feet ready with a
shocking jest. The only explanation of his character is
the momentous drama of history in which he plays the
leading part. The viking poets anthropomorphised the
gods and all but turned them into studies of character,
but their subtlest art was lavished on this divine
jester and trickster, so as almost to make him a symbol
of the mysteriousness of the human soul. There are few
figures in the human portrait gallery to match the sly
judge of humanity, or, rather, divinity, bewilderingly
complex in his straightforward spitefulness, possessed
of a foolhardiness equal to his cowardice, carrying the
sharpest steel of subtle cunning in a sheath of cynical
garrulity and abuse, handling his weapon with
magisterial obsequiosity — a sly rogue who loves a
trick disinterestedly for its own sake, able to turn his
very blunders to account, spending his time in getting
into scrapes to provide an opportunity for testing his
wits in getting out of them and never alighting more
gracefully than when he has been hoist with his own
petard. This
figure of demoniacal humour is not evolved out of
nothing by sheer psychological ingenuity; matured as his
powers have been, he is of ancient dramatic extraction.
The poets manufactured Loki, but they did not create
him. To put the matter briefly, he was the sacral actor
whose business was to draw out the demon, to bring the
antagonism to a head and thus to prepare for victory —
hence the duplicity of his nature; to act the part he
must partake in the holiness and divinity of the
sacrificial circle, and when this ritual fact is
translated into the language of the legend, it assumes
this form: Loki is of giant extraction, born in Utgard
and admitted to the company of the gods on his entering
into friendship and a blood covenant with Odin. In the
Lokasenna he triumphantly claims his seat on the
strength of this covenant, and reminds Odin: did we not
mingle blood in ancient times, you made a vow never to
touch the cup of ale unless I had a share. The
“ancient times” — árdagar —alludes to
the origin of time in the sacrifice — cf. esp. Vaf.
55, Hynd. 35 — and this verse of Lokasenna is probably
a reminiscence of a ritual scene, a council, held in the
rök seats in preparation of the ceremonies. Such a
figure has to bear the blame of the tricks and feints
necessary to provoke the conquest of life, he becomes a
comic figure, the trickster who is predestined to be
overreached. The philosophical poets of the viking age
paint their Loki on the canvass of old stories, and we
may believe that the humour of this figure was
foreshadowed in the ritual character. The scenes
presenting the demon tripped up by his own stratagems
and hurled head over heels into destruction were imbued
with grim humour, but the bantering, laughing scorn had
in it a clear ring of triumph, coming as it did from men
who were able to do justice to the dangerous strength of
their enemies. The worshippers did not sneer at the
demons, for in overcoming the onslaughts of evil they
had to put forth their utmost strength, and through the
perilous contest they had tasted and got to know their
own power and the might of their gods. |
