“Grimm’s Gamble”: Odin’s Dark Afterlife Flashcards
Why is it essential that we understand when, how and by whom and in what particular circumstances Old Norse material was processed?
When we look back at Old Norse mythology, we are never looking directly at the material. It has already been process and arranged, sometimes with a very specific agenda in mind.
Even if we were able to get back the “original” material it would still not tell us everything had there is to know about Norse Mythology. Why?
Myhology is always in flux. It was not written down or codified. Instead thousands of people told hundreds of tales for hundreds of years.. they were bound to change.
This makes the study of mythology both more interesting and more frustrating…
Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), was one of the most influential processors or relay stations in the transmission of Old Nose material. Who was he?
Jacob Grimm was the elder of the two fairy tale-collecting Grimm Brothers. He was a philologist, a mythographer and the inventor of “The Wild Hunt”.
Jacob Grimm was instrumental in what way?
He plotted the systematic sound shifts that accompanied the evolution from PIE to proto-Germanic and then into the various Germanic language family (German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and extinct languages like Old High German Gothic, Saxon etc.)
What did Jacob Grimm to with knowledge of systematic sound shifts?
He applied the approach that had been so successful in researching the history of languages to the history of mythology!
Just as the many Germanic languages could be traced back to a common photo-germanic parent language, Germanic mythology (which includes Scandinavian myhology) could be traced back to a common mythology. And just as the differentiation into the various Germanic languages could be shown to be subject to systemic changes, the evolution of mythological personnel, topics and narratives could be shown to evolve equally systematically.
Just as the Old Germanic languages (e.g. Old English or Old High German) were more “systematic” than their current successor languages, Grimm thought he would be able to arrive at a grand mythological system comparable with more established mythologies and religions.
This project was bound to fail. Why?
Neither was there any common “Germanic Mythology” as Grimm has assumed, nor does mythology change like a language. Nonetheless we owe Grimm a big debt -> Much of what we know about trolls, elves, giants etc, was dug up and archived by him.
Provide a simplified overview of the switch from diachronic (developed and evolved through time) linguistics to diachronic mythographic analysis? (Grimm’s Gamble)
- The various Germanic languages stem from one parent language.
- Many elements within different Germanic languages are therefore related (cognates).
- The more of these linguistic elements you accumulate, the more you will be able to recreate the extinct forerunner.
- It appears that the earlier Germanic languages were more systematic than those of today.
- By the way, if you recreate the parent language, you will have access to the world in which the language was spoken.
Here comes the magic! Just switch language to mythology:
1. The various Germanic mythologies stem from one parent mythology.
2. Many elements within different Germanic mythologies are therefore related (cognates).
3. The more of these mythological elements you accumulate, the more you will be able to recreate the extinct forerunner.
4. It appears that the earlier Germanic mythologies were more systematic than those of today.
5. By the way, if you recreate the parent mythology, you will have access to the world in which that mythology was believed.
Grimm’s grand project was based on three interesting but ultimately faulty premises. 1 cognates?
- Just as cognate words in various Germanic languages (e.g. Engl. father, German Vater, Swedish far, Dutch vader) could be traced back to one common root word in Proto-Germanic, mythical elements and narratives from various Germanic sources could be traced back to one common mythological element
Grimm’s grand project was based on three interesting but ultimately faulty premises. 2 systematic changes?
Just as Grimm had been able to establish the rule of systematic sound change such as “Grimm’s Law”, he now aimed to establish equally comprehensive and systemic rules for the change of mayhems.
Basically, it is one of the great dreams of the last two centuries: to plot the change of meaning though time, to show that the meaning of words and myths changes as systematically as the linguistic sound components used to convey those words and myths.
Grimm’s grand project was based on three interesting but ultimately faulty premises. 3 older = more systematic?
Just as the old Germanic languages new more systematic than their modern offspring, that old mythology was a highly evolved system that could be compared to Christian religion which replaced it.
Jacob Grimm had a problem. There is a lot of material about Old Norse mythology, but very little about (Southern) Germanic mythology.
Example: We can fill a book about Odin, but “original” material about Wotan fits onto a fridge door note.
This forced Grimm to some dangerous moves??
(a) to use the rich Norten Germaic (Scandinavian, especially Icelandic) material -> APPROPRIATION
(b) to treat extant Southern Germanic folklore and customs as living fossils of the old mythology -> Germanic CONTINUITY hypothesise
Grimm has to make use of a lot of Scandinavian material to construct what he called a German Myhology (appropriation). What did he do and how did Scandinavians react?
Scandinavian experts came to see it as an attempted takeover of their cultural heritage by Germans. For instance, German and Danish scholars soon came to argue whether Thor was an authentic Norse god or descended from the Southern Germanic Sonar. And this debate tool place against a difficult political background.
What was the political background that added tension to the debates between Grimm and Scandinavian philologists?
The wars between Prussia and Denmark (1848 and 1864).
It has been said that many European wars (and genocides) of the 20th and 21th century were first fought out on the desks of 19th-century etymologists and mythologists.
Why were mythologies the basis of so many wars? What is the big danger in the work Jacob Grimm did?
Mythological antecedence justifies political precedence. In plain English, if you things are derived from mine, then your culture is indebted to mine, you are a side show and I have right over you.
Example; what Russia is doing to Ukraine right now.
What can be said about the construction of the Wild Hunt?
The legend of the wild hunt is a flimsy construct pieced together by Jabok Grimm. There is no evidence of any such “wild hunt” stretching back to antiquity, as Grimm and others argued. There is no evidence that such a hunt was ever associated with Odin/Wotan.
