Óðinn, Vili & Vé would have originally alliterated (the initial v/w was dropped before a back vowel in Old Norse, but was still preserved in West Germanic forms like Wóden & Wótan), as was common in Germanic poetry. There is no way that Snorri, or even a Pagan author retelling the old story, could have known that, and it proves that the story must predate the Old Norse language.
I am not very familiar with the Eddas or outright mythological literature, but I am better acquainted with the Nibelungenlied and Volsunga saga, the works of Germanic legend, rather than myth.
The legendary cycles come from an interesting time when Germania was in the process of Christianization, Francia was a Germanic country, and real historical events blend with myth. The real life Siegfried was probably a Nicene Christian from West Francia and not a pure German pagan hero; the same goes for Brunnhilde (not that either of these characters are necessarily paragons of Christ-like virtue). The figure from which we probably derive the hero Siegmund is a canonized saint in the pre-schism Church, King Sigismund of Burgundy (patron saint of the Germanic peoples, btw). Gunther of Burgundy (Sigismund’s ancestor) and his vassal and kinsman Hagen Tronje were figures from a time of transition when Burgundy was embracing Christianity, but had not fully left paganism behind. And I think we all know who Attila the Hun is and where he relates to the historical record.
Of course, a lot of these figures are composites, as Brunnhilde is sometimes Frankish, sometimes Icelandic, and sometimes a mythological Valkyrie. But the main point to derive from all this is that the Germanic heroic legend isn’t pagan and it isn’t Christian—it’s German, and it transcends religions because it was developed in a time of religious transition.
And most of these legends are interfaced into the modern world through the operas of Richard Wagner, whose works represented his own religious beliefs: a complicated blend of Lutheranism, Catholicism, paganism, atheism, Nietzschean vitalism, and even traces of Buddhism. As an Orthodox Christian, I am none of these things, yet I think there is still a lot of value and meaning we can all derive from the ancient works and their romantic-era operatic adaptations.
Christian influence on the narrative level in Old Norse sources is generally pretty easy to detect. The euhemeristic account of the gods in Snorri's Heimskringla or Saxo's Gesta Danorum often don't make sense in terms of their own narratives let alone in terms of pre-christian norse belief. It's dropped more or less completely in the Prose Edda after the prologue. The influence on perspective is more difficult to disentangle which is not helped by the fact that those who accuse medieval sources of having Christian biases often have inbaked Christian perspectives themselves.
"This argument comes to a head with the Edda, a collection of sagas and poetry from medieval Iceland which purports to detail the myths, beliefs, and customs of historical Norse paganism."
Just a minor correction, the Eddas are, as you rightly describe afterwards, just the two compilations: the anonymous Poetic Edda and Snorri's Prose Edda. Sagas are a related but different category of texts. Just a slip of the pen, I suppose.
There is a milieu during the 900’s AD composition of Voluspa where Christianity could have significantly affected its character and framing of features. This milieu had significant traffic from the Norse world, including Iceland, and had noted skaldic travel through it. I’m talking about the Danelaw. It is quite historically viable to show how Voluspa could have been composed in or influenced by contact with this milieu which was at the intersection of Norse Pagan and Anglo-Saxon Christian worlds.
On top of this, we know that from the 300’s onward, there was contact between Norse-Germanic environs and the Latin system: language, trade, and historic accounts. Christians wrote the first text in any Germanic language: a Bible. This is significant time for Norse-Germanic mythology to have been influenced by Christianity.
The example of Ask and Embla is curious because this is perhaps the most striking parallel with the Latin-Christian cosmology. Not only does it come in a near-identical narrative pattern (creation from void → land/vegetation → luminaries for calendrical order → ensoulment of the first pair → cosmic tree) but is also has elements that are almost certainly derivative of Biblical and Patristic elements:
* the three gifts fit nicely into a Latin-Christian medieval cosmology (breath of life giving a soul which is synonymous with reasoning; being made in the ‘image of God’ (lida goda)
* a veritable ‘Trinity’ of gods involved in the creative process
* the very names Ask and Embla are almost identical to Adam and Eve
* the fact that Voluspa is the ONLY Norse account of this
Taken together, there is still significant reason to believe that the account of Ask and Embla in Voluspa is still heavily colored if not outright transplanted from a Latin-Christian context
For a long time I assumed that Ask & Embla was a clear derivative of the genesis account as well, but the academic field and its investigations has been clear for some time that the connections are illusory.
Most of it is from the mistake of assuming the Bible is the default, and not itself influenced by various PIE (or older, Eastern) myths & cosmogonies. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and PIE myths all feature a triad cosmogony, for example. For the PIEs particularly, Wotan/Wili/We has clear functions within the trifunctional system and origins in the oldest PIE cosmogony (Ymir = Yemo).
Certainly and interesting angle for perennialism. But we can't attribute these things to Christian missionaries because it, much like everything else mentioned in the post, was already in existence long before they came.
The account of creation in Genesis 1-3 certainly does use content from the ancient Near East (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia) which in some instances could be classified as Indo-European. However, Genesis’ particular arrangement of the material and the fact that i it redacts certain information is unique to Genesis (see the book: Genesis as ancient cosmology). So when we see the same flow of information in a much later source - which had significant contact with Christianity - I don’t think that we should be appealing to PIE layers here when more recent layers explain the layout and coloring of the material in Voluspa.
And I wouldn’t assert that these parallels originated from Christian missionaries , but from Nordic skalds interacting with the Latin-Christian system (one contemporaneous historical milieu being the Danelaw in England).
I would be curious which scholars you are referring to because there are others who assert Ask and Embla is Christian.
Been a while since I wrote this but I believe I read this, see page 58. Covers good ground, and the whole book is something you would probably enjoy having
I agree with you that humans from wood plus divine-triads are motifs that exist outside Christianity. But that does not settle the point which I am actually making. My claim is not 'Christians invented the whole myth,' it is that the attested Voluspa anthropogony shows plausible literary shaping in a Christian contact world, and that the specific package of a named first couple plus a triadic endowment of personhood (breath/soul, mind/sense, life/appearance) is exactly where Christian conceptual influence is most plausible, ESPECIALLY when taken into the structure of Voluspa up to that point when compared to the structure of Genesis. The article you provided (thank you, genuinely, by the way) notes early on how Gro Steinsland and Kees Samplonius treat the relevant 'background' for "lita goda" (to varying degrees) as Christian medieval theology. McKinnell also notes that it is generally agreed-upon that Voluspa is influenced by Christian ideas to some extent. So your line that 'the field has been clear that Christian influence is illusory’ isn't really borne out, especially by a source that is looking to use other IE myths to interpret (rather than investigate potential influences on) Ask and Embla. Scholars seem to disagree on how, not on whether Christian concepts are in Voluspa, particularly with Ask and Embla.
On your four points that you say should 'secure' Ask and Embla being native. (1) Dating and authorship do not exclude influence, because the North Sea world included numerous contact zones where ideas moved through trade, captivity, travel, and bilingual milieus well before Iceland's formal conversion. I keep bringing up the Danelaw because it was contemporaneous and shows examples of other synchronization like the Gosforth Cross. (2) 'Wood versus clay' does not exclude influence either. It is a category mistake to treat material as the deciding variable when the debated issue is the animation and anthropology of breath/soul, mind/ sense, and life/appearance. Sabine Heidi Walther has even argued that wood imagery can sit within widely-known Medieval Christian symbolic programs tied to Adam and Eve traditions. (3) Comparative mythology can show that motifs are old or shared, but it does not outrank a close literary case when the narrative pattern maps so closely onto the Genesis 1-3 cluster in the way that Voluspa's first nineteen stanzas do. Parallels can be ancient, but tight patterns of alignment are going to be the mark of later literary shaping. (4) Wooden male and female figures may support an 'ancient wooden pair' substrate or 'wood cult' possibility, but it cannot be evidence for the distinctive point under dispute, namely: the literary theology of personhood in Voluspa's triadic endowment. That is a textual semantic question, not something iconography can adjudicate, and to associate the two is conflation.
Óðinn, Vili & Vé would have originally alliterated (the initial v/w was dropped before a back vowel in Old Norse, but was still preserved in West Germanic forms like Wóden & Wótan), as was common in Germanic poetry. There is no way that Snorri, or even a Pagan author retelling the old story, could have known that, and it proves that the story must predate the Old Norse language.
I am not very familiar with the Eddas or outright mythological literature, but I am better acquainted with the Nibelungenlied and Volsunga saga, the works of Germanic legend, rather than myth.
The legendary cycles come from an interesting time when Germania was in the process of Christianization, Francia was a Germanic country, and real historical events blend with myth. The real life Siegfried was probably a Nicene Christian from West Francia and not a pure German pagan hero; the same goes for Brunnhilde (not that either of these characters are necessarily paragons of Christ-like virtue). The figure from which we probably derive the hero Siegmund is a canonized saint in the pre-schism Church, King Sigismund of Burgundy (patron saint of the Germanic peoples, btw). Gunther of Burgundy (Sigismund’s ancestor) and his vassal and kinsman Hagen Tronje were figures from a time of transition when Burgundy was embracing Christianity, but had not fully left paganism behind. And I think we all know who Attila the Hun is and where he relates to the historical record.
Of course, a lot of these figures are composites, as Brunnhilde is sometimes Frankish, sometimes Icelandic, and sometimes a mythological Valkyrie. But the main point to derive from all this is that the Germanic heroic legend isn’t pagan and it isn’t Christian—it’s German, and it transcends religions because it was developed in a time of religious transition.
And most of these legends are interfaced into the modern world through the operas of Richard Wagner, whose works represented his own religious beliefs: a complicated blend of Lutheranism, Catholicism, paganism, atheism, Nietzschean vitalism, and even traces of Buddhism. As an Orthodox Christian, I am none of these things, yet I think there is still a lot of value and meaning we can all derive from the ancient works and their romantic-era operatic adaptations.
Excellent essay.
Christian influence on the narrative level in Old Norse sources is generally pretty easy to detect. The euhemeristic account of the gods in Snorri's Heimskringla or Saxo's Gesta Danorum often don't make sense in terms of their own narratives let alone in terms of pre-christian norse belief. It's dropped more or less completely in the Prose Edda after the prologue. The influence on perspective is more difficult to disentangle which is not helped by the fact that those who accuse medieval sources of having Christian biases often have inbaked Christian perspectives themselves.
"This argument comes to a head with the Edda, a collection of sagas and poetry from medieval Iceland which purports to detail the myths, beliefs, and customs of historical Norse paganism."
Just a minor correction, the Eddas are, as you rightly describe afterwards, just the two compilations: the anonymous Poetic Edda and Snorri's Prose Edda. Sagas are a related but different category of texts. Just a slip of the pen, I suppose.
This is excellent. I am beginning the Norse section of my course shortly and this was helpful
Glad you enjoy
There is a milieu during the 900’s AD composition of Voluspa where Christianity could have significantly affected its character and framing of features. This milieu had significant traffic from the Norse world, including Iceland, and had noted skaldic travel through it. I’m talking about the Danelaw. It is quite historically viable to show how Voluspa could have been composed in or influenced by contact with this milieu which was at the intersection of Norse Pagan and Anglo-Saxon Christian worlds.
On top of this, we know that from the 300’s onward, there was contact between Norse-Germanic environs and the Latin system: language, trade, and historic accounts. Christians wrote the first text in any Germanic language: a Bible. This is significant time for Norse-Germanic mythology to have been influenced by Christianity.
The example of Ask and Embla is curious because this is perhaps the most striking parallel with the Latin-Christian cosmology. Not only does it come in a near-identical narrative pattern (creation from void → land/vegetation → luminaries for calendrical order → ensoulment of the first pair → cosmic tree) but is also has elements that are almost certainly derivative of Biblical and Patristic elements:
* the three gifts fit nicely into a Latin-Christian medieval cosmology (breath of life giving a soul which is synonymous with reasoning; being made in the ‘image of God’ (lida goda)
* a veritable ‘Trinity’ of gods involved in the creative process
* the very names Ask and Embla are almost identical to Adam and Eve
* the fact that Voluspa is the ONLY Norse account of this
Taken together, there is still significant reason to believe that the account of Ask and Embla in Voluspa is still heavily colored if not outright transplanted from a Latin-Christian context
For a long time I assumed that Ask & Embla was a clear derivative of the genesis account as well, but the academic field and its investigations has been clear for some time that the connections are illusory.
Most of it is from the mistake of assuming the Bible is the default, and not itself influenced by various PIE (or older, Eastern) myths & cosmogonies. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and PIE myths all feature a triad cosmogony, for example. For the PIEs particularly, Wotan/Wili/We has clear functions within the trifunctional system and origins in the oldest PIE cosmogony (Ymir = Yemo).
Certainly and interesting angle for perennialism. But we can't attribute these things to Christian missionaries because it, much like everything else mentioned in the post, was already in existence long before they came.
Thank you for the prompt response.
The account of creation in Genesis 1-3 certainly does use content from the ancient Near East (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia) which in some instances could be classified as Indo-European. However, Genesis’ particular arrangement of the material and the fact that i it redacts certain information is unique to Genesis (see the book: Genesis as ancient cosmology). So when we see the same flow of information in a much later source - which had significant contact with Christianity - I don’t think that we should be appealing to PIE layers here when more recent layers explain the layout and coloring of the material in Voluspa.
And I wouldn’t assert that these parallels originated from Christian missionaries , but from Nordic skalds interacting with the Latin-Christian system (one contemporaneous historical milieu being the Danelaw in England).
I would be curious which scholars you are referring to because there are others who assert Ask and Embla is Christian.
Been a while since I wrote this but I believe I read this, see page 58. Covers good ground, and the whole book is something you would probably enjoy having
https://www.scribd.com/document/462102448/Old-Norse-religion-in-long-term-perspectives-origins-changes-and-interactions-an-international-conference-in-Lund-Sweden-June-3-7-2004-pdf
I agree with you that humans from wood plus divine-triads are motifs that exist outside Christianity. But that does not settle the point which I am actually making. My claim is not 'Christians invented the whole myth,' it is that the attested Voluspa anthropogony shows plausible literary shaping in a Christian contact world, and that the specific package of a named first couple plus a triadic endowment of personhood (breath/soul, mind/sense, life/appearance) is exactly where Christian conceptual influence is most plausible, ESPECIALLY when taken into the structure of Voluspa up to that point when compared to the structure of Genesis. The article you provided (thank you, genuinely, by the way) notes early on how Gro Steinsland and Kees Samplonius treat the relevant 'background' for "lita goda" (to varying degrees) as Christian medieval theology. McKinnell also notes that it is generally agreed-upon that Voluspa is influenced by Christian ideas to some extent. So your line that 'the field has been clear that Christian influence is illusory’ isn't really borne out, especially by a source that is looking to use other IE myths to interpret (rather than investigate potential influences on) Ask and Embla. Scholars seem to disagree on how, not on whether Christian concepts are in Voluspa, particularly with Ask and Embla.
On your four points that you say should 'secure' Ask and Embla being native. (1) Dating and authorship do not exclude influence, because the North Sea world included numerous contact zones where ideas moved through trade, captivity, travel, and bilingual milieus well before Iceland's formal conversion. I keep bringing up the Danelaw because it was contemporaneous and shows examples of other synchronization like the Gosforth Cross. (2) 'Wood versus clay' does not exclude influence either. It is a category mistake to treat material as the deciding variable when the debated issue is the animation and anthropology of breath/soul, mind/ sense, and life/appearance. Sabine Heidi Walther has even argued that wood imagery can sit within widely-known Medieval Christian symbolic programs tied to Adam and Eve traditions. (3) Comparative mythology can show that motifs are old or shared, but it does not outrank a close literary case when the narrative pattern maps so closely onto the Genesis 1-3 cluster in the way that Voluspa's first nineteen stanzas do. Parallels can be ancient, but tight patterns of alignment are going to be the mark of later literary shaping. (4) Wooden male and female figures may support an 'ancient wooden pair' substrate or 'wood cult' possibility, but it cannot be evidence for the distinctive point under dispute, namely: the literary theology of personhood in Voluspa's triadic endowment. That is a textual semantic question, not something iconography can adjudicate, and to associate the two is conflation.