The World Mill (also "heavenly mill", "cosmic mill" and variants) is a

mytheme In structuralism-influenced studies of mythology, a mytheme is a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure (typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme) from which myths are thought to be constructed—a mi ...

suggested as recurring in

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...

and other mythologies. It involves the analogy of the cosmos or firmament and a rotating

millstone Millstones or mill stones are stones used in gristmills, for grinding wheat or other grains. They are sometimes referred to as grindstones or grinding stones. Millstones come in pairs: a convex stationary base known as the ''bedstone'' and ...

. The mytheme was extensively explored in Viktor Rydberg's 1886 ''

Investigations into Germanic Mythology ''Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi'' (''Investigations into Germanic Mythology'') is a two-volume work by Viktor Rydberg, published in 1886 and 1889. Henrik Schück wrote at the turn of the 20th century that he considered Rydberg the "last � ...

'', who provides both ancient Scandinavian and Indian examples. Donald Mackenzie described the World Mill’s relationship to the sacred spiral and the revolution of the starry heavens, providing analogs in Chinese, Egyptian, Babylonian, and AmerInd folklore, before concluding "that the idea of the World Mill originated as a result of the observation of the seasonal revolutions of the constellation of the 'Great Bear'." Clive Tolley (1995) examined the significance of the mytheme in Indo-European and

Finnish mythology Finnish mythology is a commonly applied description of the folklore of Finnish paganism, of which a modern revival is practiced by a small percentage of the Finnish people. It has many features shared with Estonian and other Finnic mythologies, ...

. Tolley found that "the image of a cosmic mill, ambivalently churning out well-being or disaster, may be recognized in certain fragmentary myths", adding additional Indo-European and Finnish analogs of the mill to the material previously considered by Rydberg and others. Tolley comes to the conclusion that Richard M. Dorson surveyed the views of 19th-century writers on the World Mill in his 1968 historical review, ''Peasant Customs and Savage Myths: Selections from the British Folklorists'', and the mytheme is discussed in the ''Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda'',bd. 3, p. 839. in regard to the Eddic poem, '' Grottasöngr''.

Notes

References

*Dorson, Richard M., ed. (1968). ''Peasant Customs and Savage Myths: Selections from the British Folklorists'', Vol. I.

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...

. *Tolley, Clive (1995). ''The Mill in Norse and Finnish Mythology''. Saga-Book 24:63-82. {{refend Astronomical myths Comparative mythology Mythological objects

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