Undersökningar I Germanisk Mythologi
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi'' (''Investigations into Germanic Mythology'') is a two-volume work by
Viktor Rydberg Abraham Viktor Rydberg (; 18 December 182821 September 1895) was a Swedish writer and a member of the Swedish Academy, 1877–1895. "Primarily a classical idealist", Viktor Rydberg has been described as "Sweden's last Romantic" and by 1859 wa ...
, published in 1886 and 1889. Henrik Schück wrote at the turn of the 20th century that he considered Rydberg the "last —and poetically most gifted —of the mythological school founded by
Jacob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He formulated Grimm's law of linguistics, and was the co-author of the ''Deutsch ...
and represented by such men as
Adalbert Kuhn Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn (19 November 1812 – 5 May 1881) was a German philologist and folklorist. Kuhn was born in Königsberg in Brandenburg's Neumark region. From 1841, he was connected with the Köllnisches Gymnasium at Berlin, of wh ...
" which is "strongly synthetic" in its understanding of myth. Of this work, Jan de Vries said:
At a time, when one was firmly convinced that the Old Norse myths were a late product, Rydberg’s voice resounds. At that time, he swam against the stream, but he clearly expressed that which has become an ever stronger certainty today: a large part of the myths of the Germanic tradition —and that is to say basically the
Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...
tradition—must be set back in a time when the undivided
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
people themselves created the vessel of their worldview in myths.


Reception

There is no shortage of scholarly opinion and no consensus on Viktor Rydberg's works on Indo-European and Germanic mythology. Some scholars feel that his work is ingenious, while others feel the work is too speculative. One scholar expressed the opinion that "Rydberg's views" concerning resemblances of
Thor Thor (from ) is a prominent list of thunder gods, god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred g ...
and
Indra Indra (; ) is the Hindu god of weather, considered the king of the Deva (Hinduism), Devas and Svarga in Hinduism. He is associated with the sky, lightning, weather, thunder, storms, rains, river flows, and war.  volumes Indra is the m ...
were carried to extremes, therefore receiving "less recognition than they deserved." Others refute individual points of the work. Still others have commented on what they see as fundamental flaws in Rydberg's methodology. While many modern scholars object to any systematization of the mythology including the one imposed by Snorri Sturlusson, believing it artificial,
John Lindow John Frederick Lindow (born July 23, 1946) is an American philologist who is Professor Emeritus of Old Norse and Folklore at University of California, Berkeley. He is a well known authority on Old Norse religion and literature. Biography John Lin ...
and
Margaret Clunies Ross Margaret Beryl Clunies Ross (born 24 April 1942) is a medievalist who was until her retirement in 2009 the McCaughey Professor of English Language and Early English Literature and Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of S ...
have recently supported a chronological systemization of the most important mythic episodes as inherent in the oral tradition underlying Eddic poetry. Rydberg, however, believed that most of the Germanic myths could be fit into such a chronology. H. R. Ellis Davidson has characterized this approach as "fundamentalist". While Rydberg's ingenuity has been recognized by some, his work has most often been criticized for being too subjective. Yet, within his work, many find points on which they can agree. In the first comprehensive review of the work in English, in 1894, Rydberg's "brilliancy" and "great success" were recognized, alongside an acknowledgement that he sometimes "stumbles badly" in his effort to "reduce chaos to order." In 1976, German-language scholar Peter-Hans Naumann published the first evaluation of the full range of Viktor Rydberg's mythological writings. One of Rydberg's mythological theories is that of a vast World Mill which rotates the heavens, which he believed was an integral part of Old Norse mythic cosmology. The controversial 1969 work '' Hamlet's Mill'' by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend utilizes this theory. The British literary researcher
Brian Johnston Brian Alexander Johnston (24 June 1912 – 5 January 1994), nicknamed Johnners, was a British cricket commentator, author, and television presenter. He was most prominently associated with the BBC during a career which lasted from 1946 until h ...
has suggested that
Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and actor. Ibsen is considered the world's pre-eminent dramatist of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama." He pioneered ...
's play ''
The Master Builder ''The Master Builder'' () is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was first published in December 1892 and is regarded as one of Ibsen's more significant and revealing works. Performance The play was published by Gyldendal AS in C ...
'' (1892) is rich in references to both
Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...
and
Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism ( ), also called Mazdayasnā () or Beh-dīn (), is an Iranian religions, Iranian religion centred on the Avesta and the teachings of Zoroaster, Zarathushtra Spitama, who is more commonly referred to by the Greek translation, ...
, and that Rydberg's book, which presents the different Indo-European religions as being closely connected, may have been a key source for Ibsen. In 1997, William H. Swatos, Jr. and Loftur Reimar Gissurarson reference Rydberg's explanation of ''draugur'' ('mound-dwellers') in their work, ''Icelandic Spiritualism'', while Marvin Taylor cites Rydberg’s definition of the phrase, “dómr um dauðan hvern,” as predating that of a more contemporary writer cited by the author. Both the comprehensive multi-volume ''Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda,'' and Carol Clover's article "Hárbardsljóð as Generic Farce", name Rydberg as one of the early writers who believed the ferryman Harbard of the Eddic poem ''Hárbardsljóð'' to be Loki, rather than Odin, although both sources note that this theory has not been accepted by scholars since the late 19th century. The Kommentar states: "Because there is no explicit revelation in the poem Hárbardsljóð concerning the identity of the title figure, Harbard, who is concealed under this name remained disputed until the end of the 19th century. In the third volume of the same work, Rydberg's theory regarding the World Mill is discussed in relationship to the eddic poem Grottosöngr. He has also been mentioned as one of several writers who proposed analogs for Askr and Embla from comparative mythology, and who sought Indo-Iranian analogs for the Eddic Poem,
Völuspá ''Völuspá'' (also ''Vǫluspá'', ''Vǫlospá'', or ''Vǫluspǫ́''; Old Norse: 'Prophecy of the völva, a seeress') is the best known poem of the ''Poetic Edda''. It dates back to the tenth century and tells the story from Norse Mythology of ...
. In 2004, Swedish Doktorand (PhD student) Anna Lindén reviewed the full two-volume work on mythology, concluding in part that it was not more widely received because it was not fully available in one of the three international languages of scholarship: English, German or French. A German translation was being prepared in 1889 by literary historian, Phillip B. Schweitzer, who died in a skiing accident shortly thereafter. A French translation planned by a group of scholars in Lund in 1891 was never completely realized. Rydberg himself knew that his mythology would be regarded as "folly" to the German philologists, who, as adherents to the school of nature-mythology, regarded him as a heretic, in regard to his methods and results.Karl Warburg, Viktor Rydberg, En Lefnadsteckning, Vol. II, (1900), p.615-616 As Fredrik Gadde explained,
“the book was reviewed by several German scholars, who all took up a more or less disparaging attitude towards Rydberg’s methods of investigation and his results.”Gadde, Fredrick (1942). “Viktor Rydberg and Some Beowulf Questions,” Studia Neophilologica 15:72.
Those contemporary scholars "although they speak with high praise of the author's learning, his thorough insight, his ability occasionally to throw light upon intricate problems by means of ingenious suggestions" were especially critical of what they see as Rydberg’s “hazardous etymologies, his identification of different mythical figures without sufficient grounds, his mixing up of heroic saga and myth, and, above all, his bent for remodelling myths in order to make them fit into a system which (they say) never existed.”


Editions

*1886, ''Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, första delen'', (''Investigations into Germanic Mythology, Volume I''). **''Teutonic Mythology'' translated by Rasmus B. Anderson 1889 *1889, ''Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, andre delen''. **Viktor Rydberg's Investigations into Germanic Mythology, Volume 2, Parts 1 & 2, translated by William P. Reaves, 2004-2007.


See also

*''
Deutsche Mythologie ''Deutsche Mythologie'' (, ''Teutonic Mythology'') is a treatise on Continental Germanic mythology, Germanic mythology by Jacob Grimm. First published in Germany in 1835, the work is an exhaustive treatment of the subject, tracing the mythology an ...
'' *'' Hamlet's Mill''


References


External links


Viktor Rydberg's "Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland" 1906 edition, e-book
{{Authority control 1886 non-fiction books 1889 non-fiction books Swedish books Mythology books Germanic mythology Books by Viktor Rydberg