[This part and the forthcoming sequels are an elaborated version of the original article entitled “The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia—a late Shamanistic Branch of the Old European Civilization?” by Märta-Lena Bergstedt & Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen, included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Mago Books, 2018) Edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.]
Asir Religion – and Its Historical Background
Asir-belief is firmly rooted in the Western patriarchal tradition, characterized by its glorification and romanticizing of war, focus on honorable death, and by its demands on holding power. Any fertility parts of Asir mythology will derive from incorporated Vanir elements.
The overall concept of gods and goddesses belongs exclusively to patriarchal religions. In short and to be exact; gods and goddesses in an invisible and separated dimension did not exist before the concept of kings and queens.[1] The fundamental idea of gods and kings originated around 3000 BCE in Mesopotamia, where organized military societies and patriarchal religions were first established. Here, the oldest anthropomorphic images of gods appeared. Gods were portrayed as social beings with human shape; they were given individual names and clear characteristics, and they lived court-life in an alleged parallel, but invisible universe. They were launched as immortal, and defined as supreme forces to rule over humans, but ultimately (and in reality) they were employed to sanction violence and the unlimited power of the human leaders/kings. The idea was based on the fabricated oppositional dualism (everything can be classified in two separates, black or white, bad or good – never meeting and nothing in between), an idea still ruling the Western world.
The new order was world-shattering, and for the sake of calming the waters, the new kings, ruling the city-states, employed a serving estate of priests (and priestesses?) with the task of drafting the new religion, asserting dominance, but simulating unbroken continuity with the past through using familiar shamanic figures from the local indigenous community, giving them new guises and areas of function, and syncretizing them into a new pantheon of cosmocratic gods and goddesses.[2] The old belief systems were so to speak “ruled out by adoption and amalgamation.” Gradually the priest estates took on a monopole role as intermediates between heaven and earth, between gods and humans, with claims of being authorized mouthpieces of divine will. Syncretism or accultation, familiar also in Christianity, was a vivid part of Asir religion, too,[3] as also its complete hierarchical structure, all of which a heritage from the Proto-Indo-European culture (PIE) that first introduced Sky-gods, horses and bronze weapons.
PIE culture spread from the steppe areas north of the Black Sea, eastwards to India, and westwards to Europe, around 2800 BCE.[4] Wherever the wave of PIE cultural advanced, it systematically gave rise to patriarchal cultures with the institution of kingdoms, organized military, warfare, and a new male-centered sky-god based religion. It brought the Indo-European top-down societies and the well-known hierarchical distinction into three social classes; 1; the bipartite office of profane kingly rulers & the sacred priesthood – 2; the military class – and 3; the class of craftsmen and food providers. Males now became exclusive holders of power. PIE created new laws and legislation that allowed the owning of land e.g. and for heritage, which now put women in a disfavored position. The PIE social structure was repeated in their religions, myths, epics, and their history records.[5] Based on dualism, the model and philosophical idea introduced invisible gods ruling obeying humans. It introduced the keynote principles of devil & savior, and included the dualistic idea of a double-exit after death – one place for reward and one for punishment,[6] turning the former idea of eternal cyclic regeneration on earth into the concept of resurrection in a distant heaven.[7] The postulated heavenly order and hierarchy was utilized as model for society, lending earthly rulers´ the authority of using unlimited power. In other words, as summarized by editor of science, Karin Bojs, PIE introduced the society we live in today![8] DNA-science identifies the PIE-people as Yamna or Yamnaya.
With the long-distance travelers from the Carpathians (Ural, Black Sea, Anatolia) operating between the Hittite Empire and northern Europe Yamnaya DNA reached Scandinavia by the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE.[9] Between the eighteenth and fifteenth century BCE, the presence and cultural influence of the heavily male oriented new-comers in Scandinavia caused a complete break with previous tradition [Stone Age].[10] One of the earliest bronze swords found in the North dates c. 1500BCE (in the river Tollensesee, northern Germany). The masses of victims still being excavated, tells of a massacre to almost a thousand local people.[11] This sword originated from theCarpathian region. The new-comers traded. In exchange for metal, horses and chariots, they got hides, slaves, and big quantities of amber to be distributed within their widespread European-Minor Asia contact networks. To what it seems, their dominance was still based more on owning riches than on the later Iron Age premises, owning land.[12] During their sway in Early Bronze Age, their wealth grew to match the Mycenaean, dominating in the west Mediterranean. And in fact, in the following stage of the process after 1500BCE, just one or two generations later, Mycenaean material culture, as well as their warrior values, chief rituals and burial traditions quickly spread to France, Germany and southern Scandinavia, resulting in a major social transformation. The adoption of Mycenaean culture and lifestyle of the ruling elite started a period of almost explosive tumulus building that totally reorganized the Danish landscape – still visible today. Grassing areas for their massive herding of cattle/sheep replaced the old woods, and thousands of pompous grave mounds at hill tops, metaphorically close to the sky (heaven), signaled the godly status and importance of the deceased chiefsin the now open landscape.[13] Most of the nearly 100.000 burial mounds were erected in Denmark in a brief and intensive period of 200 years.[14] It is not too hard to imagine that huge numbers of Scandinavian locals engaged, probably enslaved, in order to execute mainly two ominous activities; herding of large-scale live-stock cattle, and building of enormous grave mounds for each single of the thousands of non-local, elite male chiefs.
In some 4-5 generations, the use of only turf and top-soil for the masses of burial mounds, in combination with the simultaneous overgrazing by the extensive live-stock, left the soil of the whole area infertile and sterile for a long time to come. This was classified a virtual environmental disaster, by the Danish grand old man of archaeology, Professor P.V. Glob, causing the mound building to an abrupt end.[15] DNA analyses desert 90% of the single individuals buried in the mounds to be male, and attest their direct connection to Yamnaya.[16] They left their DNA and their IE-tongue to dominate in the area, for all time after.
“From the ashes” a new era rose – the Late Bronze Age B, and female influence started to grow. Archaeologists Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larsson affirm that indications of substantial long-distance travelling to Scandinavia, as well as Minoan connection and influences, foremost in southern Scandinavia.[17] Kristiansen and Larsson state it like this;
“Quite clearly their [women´s] role in rituals and as priestesses increased during the Bronze Age.”[18] In his comparison the slightly older, Early Bronze Age A grave of a male, assumed a shaman-warrior-priest from Hvidegård (Denmark), with a female grave from the beginning of Late Bronze Age B, also a shaman (völva/vala) from Maglehøj (Denmark), P.V. Glob explains the shift like this; “the grave of this woman [shaman] tells us that from now on women have taken over in society, inclusively the role of the medicine man.”[19] (Our translation from Danish).
Medieval literature on Sami shamans, the noaijdies count both women and men. If earlier this was also the case in Germanic pre-patriarchal society, is not established, but the many solitary rich woman graves containing goods believed to be shamanic objects, suggest that a Nordic shamanic institution would primarily have been female. And Caesar in Germania, Cap. 8 reports that the Germanic people believe women endowed with something holy and ability of prophecy. They [men] will not disdain to consult women for advice, nor will they neglect their responses… several women have been esteemed and adored as divinities, although it is not flatter, nor regarding them as gods. [20]
The Late Scandinavian Bronze Age B was different from the former. Its material culture is generally characterized by brittle and elegant art works of gold, silver and bronze showing spirals, circles and swirls, replacing the former more robust metal articles. Cremation and urn burials were now reinstated. Holy wells and lush sacred grooves became centers of ritual life. And from this period 1100BCE and onwards, the building of pre-historic walled enclosures of boulders, borgs, high on mountain- and hillslopes, got momentum. It seems that the start of the institutionalization of the female shamanistic (völva/vala) tradition could be found here. The culture now unfolding was stabile for a long, long time – maybe 1000 years.
The question what or who inspired or gave rise to this culture is still unanswered. A mere return to old tradition on home ground after the prior exploiting rulers could be suggested. But the testifying of Minoan influence in Scandinavia opens new possibilities.
Kristiansen and Larsson generally merge the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures (Mycenaean/Minoan), maybe for good reasons. The Mycenaean though was extremely militant, whereas the older Minoan (Crete) shows so many female features that its degree of matriarchy long has been a subject of debate. We would like to keep the two apart in the following discussion. Around 1450BCE, when southern Scandinavia was heavily influenced by the Mycenaean culture, the Mycenaeans in the same period also conquered Minorian Crete and ruled there until around 1200, when the Mycenaean civilization and its neighboring empires suffered a general collapse.[21] Around this time in Scandinavia, also the building of grave-mounds ceased. The chaotic break-down of the Mediterranean empires may well have initiated a mass-migration in which some groups of refugees – from Crete and Old Europe – may have found their way to the North. It is hypothetical, but perhaps not unrealistic, as trading routes were well established e.g. along the Amber Road to Scandinavia. The culture that now rose in Scandinavia had more collective and mythic features and it was more egalitarian than the former. It seems to have had some Old European signatures. And it seems to have been guided by female shamans (Sw. valor, plur.). It was a stable society and archeological evidence in Scandinavia from this period shows no organized military or regular wars inany traditional meaning.[22] This society was not severely challenged before around 1-200CE, until gradually subdued from 450CE onwards (Iron Age).[23]
We would like to find some support for the virtual shift from the elite male dominating culture in Early Bronze Age to a more peaceful, female and shaman based society from the beginning of the Later Bronze Age and onwards, in their conclusion for the whole Bronze Age Period, where Kristiansen and Larsson, state that it was:
“an epoch of theocratic leadership, only to decline with the advent of the Iron Age and the formation of world religions [Asir belief and Christianity, Red.]. But even in Bronze Age we find at least two opposing and competing traditions of leadership and gender roles: one, where warriors and warfare were heroic and ritualized in burials (the Indo-European tradition), and one, where this was not the case (the Near East tradition), but where women instead played a major role in religion. These two traditions were represented by Mycenaean and Minoan society, but they are replayed in central and northern Europe … They represent two potentially different lines of historical trajectory – and one might see them unfolding historically in Christianity/Islam and in Buddhism”.[24]
Kristiansen and Larsson have the two traditions opposing and competing all the way through Bronze Age, whereas we suggest them to prevail in different periods, and the exhausting opposition and competing for authority in Germanic world starting with the threat from the Roman Empire and getting momentum, when the Roman Empire was falling.
Already several centuries before 400 CE, archeological findings attest a disparate but unmistakably growing process of militarization. The south-European situation and the Roman Empire were starting to rub off in the North. Although plagiarizing the Roman model, organization and equipment were still disparate and casual, as loose bands started to roam within Danish territory,[25] pioneering the take-over of hierarchical structure and war-based society and religion in Scandinavia. In the 5th century CE, the total rearrangement of society was ripe for completion. The shift, when happening, was not only quick, but also targeted and universal, and gradually the power of the new elite became irreversibly manifested. [26]
Now for the first time, archeology testifies items of unambiguous organized warfare (helmets, belts, swords) in Scandinavia. Depositions of military out-fit are no longer random with simple and individual stile. Instead, traces of large-scale troupes, well organized and with standardized equipment, speak for a professionalizing in Roman pattern. For the first time in Scandinavia, organized military and uni-formed soldiers appeared.[27] The martial deposits parallel the establishments of local training and initiation centers at new built borgs, an activity later transferred to local estates and temples of the chieftains. Simultaneously, the ancient ways of religious practices like that of sharing and gift-depositing in lakes and groves were abruptly abandoned.[28] The question is why the whole process happened so quickly?[29]
One reason could well be connected to the threatening political situation in south-Europe.[31] Already from the first centuries CE, the Roman Empire had held southern Germanic areas, between the Alps and the river Rhine, under occupation. Along the Rhine, on both sides of the Roman borders, Limes, cultural and religious influences between Germanics and Romans were strong, and the impact from the dominant Roman Empire was considerable. North of the Rhine, Germanic tribes were still free, but under a constant pressure from the Roman war-machine. Suddenly, the familiar Roman threat was doubled by a new gigantic horror, the horse-borne Asian warriors, the Huns. Between 375-453CE, their massive and devastating raids swept across Central Europe from the east, sacking everything in their way, leaving tracks of genocide all the way to Paris (Fig. 3). Shockwaves rolled over the entire Germanic world, and shook the Roman Empire to its foundation. As a modern historian has shown, it is hard to overstate the consequences of the raping, plundering and anarchy that characterize the 4-5th century, when Goths, Alans, and Huns ravaged half of Europe.[32] Thus, confronted with two overwhelming and highly professional armies, the Romans and the Huns, the desperate situation in the free Germania may have been one of the catalyzing factors urging the previously loose Germanic tribes or clans to organize in the attempt to constitute an armed alternative for the entire Germanic world.[33] This is one of several theories. Another theory, forwarded e.g. by scholars like Marianne Görman and Hedeager[34] have suggested that after the death of Attila, parts of the Hunnic army may even have established a base in south-Scandinavia (Gudme, Fyn) from where they introduced patriarchy. Other theories go that parts of former Germanic tribes (or the departed PIE-elites, e.g. the Eruls?) for nearly a century having fought as Hunnic vassal-tribes in southeast-Europe, now after Attila´s death actually made their way “back home” to Scandinavia. Settling in the North, they now introduced the new order of society in patriarchal pattern.[35] Traditional theories will point to the massive impact from the Roman cult worshipping of the Emperor as the son of God. Another substantial inspirer or stimulator for the up-coming mannaförbund (secret male societies of Asir religion and Odin cult) in Scandinavia, may well have the extensive mystery sect of Mithras, wide-spread along the Rhine around 100-300CE as model.[36] The Mithras cult was built on the principle of exclusive maleness, hierarchy and martial virtues. Its members were initiated by oath into total submission, loyalty and obedience to the Mithra pater (top-ruler). Mithras shared substantial features with Christianity for which reason they were competing opponents. Mithras disappeared around 500CE.
All the same, top-down warfare societies and patriarchal religions and ideologies were not unknown to the Germanic population; South-Germanic areas had endured long-lasting Roman occupation, and the Germanic men from Scandinavia had fought against Rome or within the Roman army – or they had traded with Rome. Germanic men, captured or adventurous, had been popular as Roman soldiers; some managed even to have glorious careers. The Roman Empire, now on decline left a mass of unemployed professional infantry and wealthy veterans of war to return to their northern world. If they had in mind to secure the North through establishing a new order in the north, these returners had obtained all knowledge they needed. Archaeologist Anders Carlsson puts it this way; the leaders of the new ideology were those, who had journeyed out and now came back, they were “border-crossers”, on every level. They came back and broke up loyalty to their kin and clans, and favored of a non-kindred ruler. This made way for the radical change and resulted in a radical shift in society.[37]
Summing up, who or whatever the source of influences; the Romans, Huns, Germanic fortune-hunters or released captives, traders or returning Hunnic vassal tribes, or a happy potluck of them all – and whatever the inducement, a new ideology of ruling and cult, exclusively male dominated and war-centered, did establish itself from 375 CE onwards. As all south-European and Minor Asian warfare societies before them, the new society in Scandinavia was built on original IE-material, laws and myths, and given local looks by means of the intertwined local entities figures of shamanism.
The new ruler ideology built on the classical double sided system of chief rulers with their retinues on one side, and the estate of Asir goder (priests) on the other.[38] Archeological findings indicate southern Danish territory as the ideological think-tank and cradle of the new Nordic Asir-belief. The landscape of Angeln in south Jutland or Gudme on the island of Fuen/Fyn have been suggested.[39] From southern Scandinavia, military symbols and religious iconography started to spread in all directions into the Pan-Germanic territory, and a few centuries later, when Christianity absorbed the Germanic tribes in South Germany, Asir mythology of the elite kept its stronghold in Scandinavia until as late as the 11th century.[40]
Imagery on early warfare items displays traditional Germanic symbolism, for instance shamanic power animals like bears, wolves, wild boars, and eagles, but now depicted in grim and aggressive appearances, as ready to attack. Bracteates, small one-sided gold medals, dating Migration Period, 450–550 CE, are connected to the new order.[41] Bracteates were worn as pendent jewelry, and we find it tempting to interpret them as visual markers signaling level of initiation, e.g. the level of Berserks, Wolfskins, or Wildboars, perhaps inspired from similar levels of Mithras initiations.[42] Imagery from the beginning of this era has mythological figures, some of which can be recognized from the 500 years later Icelandic texts. Patriarchal religions generally claim to build on historical events and facticity, so also Asir religion.
Traditionally, Indo-European religions hold a strong class of priests or prophets, rigorously educated since boyhood.[43] The priestly estate, the authorized voices of the gods, will control the announcements of divine will and heavenly plans for the human world. Their right to fabricate and ratify religious stories, laws, and dogmas is monopolized. In all the Nordic languages, the titles of the priests have connotations to god and good (gud/god).[44] And as always, also the ideology behind the Asir-belief is most likely to have been elaborated by the estate of priests, goder and priestesses, gydjor.[45] In function (as well as wording) the Norse gydja seems connected to pythia, priestess andprophetess in the patriarchal Greek context. The Asir mythological stories were fabricated on pre-existing frames, Indo-European goods combined with the local animistic/shamanistic Vanir tradition. For the IE goods in Asir-belief, a number of stories can be traced back to an ancient IE-origin (India, Persia, Greece). This is true for e.g. Tor´s power competition at Utgårds-Loke´s dwelling; or a hero sleeping in the mitten of a giant; the goddess Skade, choosing a man from his feet; or Tyr having his hand bitten off in the mouth of the Wolf, or Thor and the Aurvandill toe and Tjatse eyes.[46]
Even the aim to surpass the Roman and Christian gods is exposed in the deliberately exaggerated versions of the Asir gods; Like the Roman Jupiter Zeus, also the high-god Odin lived family and court life; and like the Christian Jesus, Odin had twelve disciples (goder) between whom he divided, not divine knowledge, but the land of Scandinavia.[47] The list of similarities is long and it includes Odin, the high-god, who like Jesus controlled the elements like the calming the storm at sea (in Havamál, XII,154), raising dead people (in Havamal, XII,157) as well as volunteering to be hung onto a tree in a liminal state; hungry, thirsty and stung with a spear, to obtain divinity.[48] The still debated (dualistic) issue concerning Jesus, when crossing the borders between human and divine realms, if he was true man, or true god, or both simultaneously also pertain to Odin.[49] Per se, the phenomenon was not totally unintelligible to the Germanic warriors. Other humans like Jesus, Roman Emperors[50] and others in contemporary time were insisting on being both human and divine. This is an IE-tradition and it expanded over time, even into defending levels of divinity of historical saints, as to upholding claims of superiority of the aristocracy. Medieval scripts equally blurring the lines between human heroes and divine heroes – or divine gods and human gods are fully in line with other patriarchal religions claiming a historical origin for their divinities. Näsström solves the problem by allowing Odin simply to be a shapeshifter, alternating between being god and man.[51] Medieval writers like Saxo Grammaticus (1150 CE) and Snorri Sturlason (1179 CE) both agree in portraying Odin as a powerful human war-chieftain and magician, taking power and settling in the northern lands, after which he claimed himself a god, after which he apparently set up his mythological court, interweaved into it, the ancient Vanir mothers.[52]
History knows what cannot be known in contemporary time. If the Germanic tribes had made an attempt in the eleventh hour to unite and stand strong against the Romans and the Huns, it all came to nothing. Around 450 CE, soon after the death of the Hun chieftain Attila, the Huns disappeared from Europe for good, and the Roman Empire slowly imploded. But in Germanic areas the ball had been set rolling. The idea of a top-led and military based society in the Germanic world was manifest. Once started, there was no way back. The deep change in Scandinavian society is considered probably to have been the most abrupt and dramatic shift of paradigm, ever. Lacking the enemies they had united against, originally, the Germanic chieftains and restless soldiers ended up in internal struggles for the overall ruling power in northern Germanic areas.[53] Their fight for kingdoms expanded abroad during the Viking Age.
PIE core values like the taking and holding of power, male supremacy, and the controlling of land by force also constituted the Germanic patriarchal take-over, and is equally mirrored and legitimized by Asir religion. Asir-belief disappeared only 500 years later, in the 10th century, when its aristocratic representatives, kings and their courts converted to Christianity. It left no vivid tradition in either folklore, or in the common mind-set of today´s Scandinavia. What it did leave was the memory of its notorious preoccupation with dominance, costly weapons, gold and riches, ships, horses and slaves, and its unabashed romanticizing of violence and war, associated with the raids of the Vikings.
Now, having defined patriarchal PIE religions and given a historical background for the origin of Asir religion, we will focus and portray the transition between the two very different belief systems in Scandinavia. For illustration, we will use the decorated standing stones (bildstenar) from Gotland. That will lead us a step further backwards on the trace to the Vanir Mothers.
(To be Continued)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen.