The Roots of Norse Mythology, Family Reflections, and Letting Traditions Die

Anyone who knows me knows that I love mythology, all mythology, from anywhere and everywhere in the world, with a burning, burning passion. Maybe more than just about anything else. Many was the time I've spent staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning devouring some anthropological piece or another and drinking coffee until my eyes were bloodshot.

Visual approximation of the above statement

And in the process of researching my Norwegian heritage and my Anglo-American heritage and finding some Otherworldly space where everything connects, I started looking at proto-Germanic societies and also, proto-Germanic languages (both of which we know next to nothing about beyond theoretics, really), from whence Old Norse and Old English have common roots.

I was struck then, when I came across this passage from the University of Texas at Austin's Linguistic Research Center on the hypothetical proto-Germanic language, and on early, early German religion:

Our knowledge of their religion or religions is based most directly on information gleaned from the accounts of Caesar and Tacitus. According to Tacitus in his brief section 9, they worshipped especially Mercury, his Latin for Wodan/Odin, Hercules for Thor, and Mars for Tiu. But they did not believe it worthy to enclose them in temples or to fashion images of them like men; rather, they dedicated woods and clearings to them. Caesar had stated that there were no priests, but the statement is assumed to result from his observation that there was no such official rank, because Tacitus refers to priests who functioned in several activities. In section 40 he states that a priest alone may touch the sacred wagon that transports Nerthus, i.e. mother earth, among the Lombards and various other tribes. In section 43 he states that a priest in women's clothing is in charge of a wood that is an ancient shrine. And in section 45 he remarks that the tribe of Aestii venerate the mother of the gods — matrem deum venerantur - and also display the sign of their cult with images of boars; these are to protect them from all dangers.

This confirmed something I've thought for a while, which is regarding the decentralized, home-based aspect of a lot of early Germanic religious worship, and particularly how remnants of that sentiment have survived through the ages (in particular, with the later appearance of Protestantism, which became foundational mostly in countries with some sort of heritage of Germanic paganism or another and was based, in large part, around decentralized home and community worship).  

Also, in the edition of the Icelandic Sagas printed in cooperation with the Icelandic government, I remember reading in the foreword that there have been found no reliable examples of Norse temples whatsoever, and really, aside from one mention by the German traveler Adam of Bremen and some material from the Sagas, no real descriptions either, at least none that were concurrent with Norse paganism.

This man needs no temples! Notice the carved door-post, which were often represented each family's personal household deities in Norse paganism.

Rather, it seems that many of the idols found by anthropologists seemed to have been in large family homes and barns, which seems to confirm my thoughts about small community, hearth-centered religion.

Pro'lly something like this, I reck'n. (Credits: Herbert Ortner, Vienna, Austria/Wikipedia)

Anyway, I just bring it up because I was remembering how so many of the traditions in our family had died, and how, though both of my great-grandparents, including my Norwegian great-grandma, were devoted Lutherans, no one beyond them really kept in touch with it, and how I, even though I don't belong to any religious denomination really, once thought of attending the local Lutheran church out of a sense of keeping tradition alive, but, when Sunday rolled around, found myself quite content to sit at home studying mythology and religion and doing my own spiritual practices.

Tradition!!!

And then I remembered my grandfather, just reading his Bible at home with my grandmother and rarely feeling the need to go to church to find any spiritual peace, and I thought about the decentralized nature of Norwegian worship, and Norse worship before it, and I realized...

Perhaps sometimes the only way to stay truest to our traditions, all traditions (not just Norwegian, obviously), is to let them fade organically, and turn into something new, instead of trying to become conservationists and try to keep every practice, every recipe, and every last memory, so that we can live the way our ancestors did when they pulled into Ellis Island (this particular impulse is something I find myself guilty of). I know a lot of Americans  who, for better or for worse, turn their heritage into a something of a dogma, and, while I recognize the impulse,  it can sometimes seem disingenuous as well...

And yet, I do still spend a lot of time trying to recapture my heritage...

My work desk. Yep. No sense of artificially maintaining heritage here...