[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.]
Travelling into World of the Vanir Mothers
The mythological world of the Eddas was inhabited also by the Vanirs, and also many other explicit groups like the Jättar (Giants/Jotnar) and Elver/Alfer (Elvens).[1] In the Eddas, these groups most often came to represent the opponents to, or enemies of Asgård. The Asirs fought them to control or destroy them, and always kept a distance from them, unless profiting from any interrelations or intermarriages with them. If not in some way useful for the Asirs, they were generally seen as negative beings. In their original animistic contexts these groups may have represented something quite different. By means of general features of the animistic world view, and with the specific, but mostly unintended left-overs and information in the Eddas, combining it with archeological findings and general rules for the patriarchal shift, we have allowed a glance at the inhabitants of the old mythological world with positive glasses, and to let quite a different world shine through.
JÄTTAR — the Giants
Giants/ Jotnar (Jättar or Gyger) were born before beginning of time.[2] They were the oldest of all beings. In our understanding these first beings typify or metaphorically personify the basic physical elements. When they appear in their most compact and dense form, the primordial forces are almost uncontrollable; Earth materializes as rocks and mountains; Water as oceans, blizzards and hail; Fire as the heat of the sun and blazing fires, volcanoes and thunderstorms; and Air as hurricanes and gales. The names of the Giants, the “Big Ones” testify their connection to basic nature elements; they are Frost, Hoarfrost, Snowdrift, Snow, Sea, Shower, Flame, Thunder-flash, Fire, Gust, Storm, etc. In Ragnarök, the Fire-Giant Surt (Black) will lick the earth with his ravaging fire.
Humanizing the Giants in the Eddas, the Asirs saw them as lumpy, heavy-sized, and incredibly strong beings. They lived their hard and raw lives in the far North, in Jotunheim, where the elements rage and the chaos forces; ice, gales, wild oceans, volcanoes and naked rocks reigned. Sometime records of their damaging strength will know that this Giant was only three days old – a lot though, if this giant is signifying or personalizing a rising hurricane or fire. Giants, in Asir optics, were entirely physical, totally lacking divinity, and having no glory from battlefield fighting attached to them. Therefore, in his spare time Asir-Thor was frenetically occupied with hunting them, especially the females,[3] to either break them, or to control them and their forces.
ELVER and ALFER — the Elven
In the Icelandic Sagas, the epithets Elven and Vanir are often interchangeable. The fair, shimmering Elven people are most often thought to be connected to and metaphors for the moving of elements – light (fire), water and air. We have come to conclude that the specific Elven feature is that of adding an energizing and moving, flowing, streaming or even electrifying aspect to the basic physical elements. The energizing of light would cause sunbeams streaming (Alf-röd-ul, a Vanir figure) and be connected to the continuous progression of light at dawn, day and dusk. The energizing of water makes rivers to flow, vapor to rise, and hazes to dance. It would add sharpness to the air (Egil, Egg-ilning, a Vanir figure)[4] and cause winds to blow. And for the moving of water, the Nordic word for crystal flowing rivers is elve or älvar. Rivers are surely Elven domiciles.
The energizing of the physical elements may actually even mirror the archaic and classic understanding of the not four but five elements, co-creating our world; fire, air, water, earth, and ether.[5] Ether was traditionally understood as life-breath/living spirit, wit and consciousness, and thus not included in the element, air and wind.
Elven energy will also cause affections to move.
VANER – the Old Vanirs
If Giants represent the basic physical elements, and the Elven, like electricity, set a moving energy (and life) to the physical elements, then Vanir entities give the impression to represent and personify abstract phenomena and conditions of life, meaning; fertility (the ability to grow), mating (the urge or force of love), warmth (phenomenon of kindness), beauty, death and re-incarnating (the ability to die and re-generate), etc. The regular cycles of seasons; winter, spring, summer, and fall – the on-going cycles of changes shared with organic life in the physical world; plants, humans, animals and stars. The old emblem of the Life-circle is personified in the maiden-mother-crone triad, throughout the old world, and in the Vanir world. But the word, Vanir, what may the very word denote?
Academically, the explanation of the specific word vaner (Vanir) has not yet reached fully consensus. What is clear is that the word itself belongs to the Old Scandinavian domain. Scandinavian landscapes have hundreds of geographical Van–Vaner-names: Vansbro, Vanered, Vanatjärnen, Vantinge, Vansø, Vanhøje, and Vänern, testifying old presence. A sidelong glance will spot the many van-vaner-words in modern Scandinavian languages, the meaning of which most often lie within the sphere of “common, plain, non-admirable, powerless, wrong, distorted, customs and old habits, old ways”, etc. (Sw. vanlig, vanmakt, vantro, vanskapt, vantro, vansinne, vana, etc.). The Asir believing nobility may well have thought of the rural peasants of Vanir believers as people sticking to their old habits/ways (Sw. vanor), as well as even being unbelievers or wrong-believers (vantro), and thus twisted any van-words into negative connotations. The alleged natural beauty of the Vanirs on the other hand may be preserved in words like vän, vänlig, vän, etc. (beautiful, kind, friend). Näsström traces the word vanir to the Ancient Indian (IE) vanah (wanting, “lustful desire”), meant to uncover the true dark and immoral nature of the Vanirs; in Näsström´s wording the Vanir refers to their postulated dealing with witchcraft, thirst of gold, and asserted preoccupation with sex, as indeed to their sibling parenthood organization, understood as throughout incestuous and brute.[6] This understanding is all the same a loan from the classic Greek and Roman understanding (even ruling modern religious history) that all pre-classic and pre-historic divinities are representing low and perverted lust and abnormity. Thus as a whole, the ruling explanations for the word, vanir are not fully convincing. At times, a more satisfactory solution will emerge from unexpected angels. Therefore, we would like propose an explanation for the word, Vanir, to our knowledge not tested before. It stems from the both pre-historic and historic Danish and Swedish settlement in Estonia, in the Baltic Ocean.
Estonia or Estland (Scand.), meaning east-land was settled already c. 650 CE by Scandinavian vikings to secure access to waterways to the Black Sea and to trade. Later with substantial help from the Crusader´s Order, Danish and Swedish kings built fortifications in Estonia and were continuous rulers there until 1718.
Linguistically Estonian is related to Finnish, but the long-lasting contact with Germanic language of the occupants and traders is still palpable in Estonia. Whether Estonian language left imprints on and gave loan words to the Nordic languages, or visa versa, or if the two languages share certain words from a still older linguistic origin may be less important than the fact that the two share a huge number of ancient words e.g. völu-kepp (völva-staff); völu (magic); vala (vala/völva); visa (songs); viis (way/manner). Of specific interest is of course the word vana, which in Estonian means simply old. Vana Turg is Old Square; Vana Toomas is Old Thomas; vana-ema is grandmother etc. The Estonian word vana-eit means old woman/crone. The last part, –eit parallels the Scandinavian ät, in principal with the same pronunciation and the same meaning, namely old kin/tribe/family. The Icelandic word for the medieval texts, Edda also means Old grandmother/Old kin. In the Icelandic Eddas, the Vanirs claim themselves to be of Vana-ät, which in translation would mean belonging to and originating from the Old tribes/the Old people. We find the connection striking, and suggest this meaning to the old Scandinavian word, vaner, namely old.
The local Estonian population was never invited to become Asir believers by Scandinavian kings and nobility; nor was Christianity ever fully adopted in Estonia, either. They stuck to their vana viis (Est.), old ways. The shamanic based world-view is transparent within the Estonian society till this day.[7]
(To be Continued)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen.
[1] There are a great number of other groups also (tursar, dvarfs etc) which will not be examined here.
[2] Margaret Clunies Ross, Hedniska ekon, trans. Suzanne Almqvist (Stockholm: Anthropos AB, 1996), 67.
[3] Thor hunting Giant females at night are preserved in legends, where Wojen (Odin); or kings, heroes and powerful men like Holger Danske; Palnatoke on Fuen; Marsk Stig, Drost Peter (druid), king Valdemar – hunt old women, the Slattenpatter (long-tits) to kill them.
Lidegaard, Mads, Danske høje fra sagn og tro (København: Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck, 1998), 23-25. Even Näsström, Fornskandinavisk, 78. (Sång of Harbard, 23 ”I headed East to slay the Giant women..their number rapidly increasing did I not fight them.)
[4] V. Rydberg, Fädernas gudasaga berättad för ungdomen (Stockholm: Bonniers förlag, 1906), 165,158.
[5] In some aspects, perhaps comparable with the Five Elements in both Chinese and Indian philosophy.
[6] Näsström, Fornskandinavisk, 45, 95, 113, 149.
[7] Operating with the distinctions, the Old World and the New World, Juha Pentikäinen, in relation to later missionary religions, labels shamanic based cultures and their world view as Old Believers – thus a direct parallel to the epithet Vana-tro, the Old Belief. Pentikäinen, Shamanism, 61, 81, 86.