Page 111 [111]
OCR
A MYSTERY AMONG THE MYSTERIES: ARE THERE OLD ICELANDIC MYSTERIES Viking Age, “lord, master”). Freyja and Freyr were leading gods in the Viking Age, whose adventures are referred to in many different written sources. Njôrdr appears in such stories both as a heroic and a ridiculous person, or even as a Clearly average figure. But we do not find among these stories accounts of mysteries in the proper sense of the term. It must be pointed out, however, that in the work of Tacitus, the Germans are not the early Scandinavians but the continental German tribes living in the territory of present-day Germany. We can speak of a “continuity” of rites and religious beliefs only in the case of Nerthus / Njérdr.’° There again, we do not know the reason for the gender shift. There is another striking case of the afterlife of Nerthus / Njördr. In his famous book Du mythe au roman (Paris, 1970), Georges Dumézil shows how the stories about a warrior chieftain, Hadingus, in Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum I, v-vii, follow the construction of narratives about Njordr."' Dumézil rejects the assumption that Hadingus was a Viking named Hastings, that is, a historical person. Three major narratives (Njordr and Skadi, the marriage of Hadingus, and the one on Hadingus and navigation) date back to the age of the Vane gods. By this reconstruction, we may learn more about the structure of the activities of the Vanes in general. However, one important point is still not explained by Dumézil’s theory: how does Hadingus, an otherwise unknown person, replace the god Njordr in Saxo’s chronicle? Is this a case of “Euhemerism”?” SACRED PLACES OR SPACES There is important information on the “grove of the Semnones” in chapter 39 in Tacitus.’? According to him, the Semnones were the mightiest tribe of the Suebi. From time to time, all the tribes sent delegations to a grove and there started to perform their rites by sacrificing humans. The grove could be approached only if one was tied up in handcuffs. German philologists have noticed that ina lay of the Verse Edda, the Helgakvida Hundingsbana II (strophe 28, and in a reference in prose) a hero, Dagr, that is, “Day”, kills the protagonist Helgi with the spear of Odin. The murder happens in a place called Fjoturlundr, that is, “fetter-grove.” Thus we understand that the grove 10 Folke Ström, Nordisk hedendom. Tro och sed i förkristen tid, Göteborg, Akademieförlaget Gumperts, 1961, 34-40. Georges Dumézil, Du mythe au roman, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1970. Kurt Johannesson, Saxo Grammaticus. Komposition och världsbild i Gesta Danorum, Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978, 94-100. Johannesson connects the description of Hadingus and other warriors to the medieval notion of fortitudo. 12 Rudolf Much, Die Germania des Tacitus, 3. Auflage, Heidelberg, Carl Winter, 1967. * 109 « Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 109 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:16
