Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice
Another day amongst the Eddas. Reading. Hearing. Seeing. Letting the world of the Nordic gods wash over me, immersing myself in its rhythms, its logic, its conflicts and wonders.
(Walhall by Emil Doepler)
Like the Celtic myths these suffer from an interpretation problem. That is, they were recorded by Christians or by Romans. In either case the translators and compilers of these myths had an ax to grind. A fundamental conflict with the metaphysics, a desire to wipe out the pagan world motivated many Christian redactors of folk traditions. Though, it must be said in fairness, not all.
In the Roman case there was a general willingness to let conquered people have their own religions, so in that sense there was not the same kind of problem. Yet, there was a similar one in that Romans and pagans alike often compared folk deities to Roman deities. But, more to the point, there was the assumption of cultural superiority on the part of Romans. Since many of the conquered peoples were pre-literate, the first written evidence of their cultures comes in Latin. That very act, transforming local stories into Latin entails translation, interpretation and assumptions, all from a single direction, the Roman, since the conquered peoples could not write.
Fortunately, for my purposes in this case, I don’t care. Much. It’s the spirit and the tenor and the names and the stories that I want, not scholarly accuracy. At other points I’m very interested in the question of what was truly Celtic or Nordic and what an overlay from their interpreters. Today, not so much, though I do look out for obvious interpolations of Christian or Roman assumptions.
