[This part and the forthcoming sequels are an elaborated version of the original article entitled “The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia—a late Shamanistic Branch of the Old European Civilization?” by Märta-Lena Bergstedt & Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen, included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Mago Books, 2018) Edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.]
The Holy Crones, Mothers and Maidens – Guardians of Life in Vanaheim
The process we have undertaken to un-wrap the original Vanir mothers from their Asir goddess clothing and functions for the sake of being able to observe them in their own rights, has gradually unfolded a group of powerful female images, shimmering in their own natural potential. As shamanic entities or at least as strong mythic archetypes, they once seem to have served as eternal models of inspiration. Beside them, we most often find their allied brother-partners, together with whom the mothers formed a social base for the upbringing of her children. This alliance granted both parts free access lovers at their own choice.
Storytelling about the old mother figures must have granted pleasure to the humans at all life-stages, giving existence bearing, hope and trust. We are happy to now share our findings of their stories, and to let them step forward, at times also accompanied with both their brothers, and their lovers.
HEL — Great-Grandmother of the Universe
In Edda mythology not all of the significant Vanir mothers were given roles to play within the Asir Court of Asgård. The Asir gods may have wanted these left-outs to fulfill other roles outside the divine Asir domain, not least for the sake of contrasting Asgård. At least, this was true for the Universal Grandmother, the exalted Crone, the Great-Grandmother Hel. In the Eddas, Odin put her away deep down in the Underworld, in Nifelheim (Home of the Mists) and gave to her the unpleasant task of superintending the miserable Hell, designed for non-heroes, yielding corpses dead from illness and age, and to reign over its nine worlds.[1] Never the less, her name, Hel signals that she is the Grandmother of the Hele, meaning wHole and (H)all, even Holy. Hel (whole) personifies or maybe rather, is the complete unity of the Three-in-One-idea (Three and the triangle was the holy numbers before dualism[2]). Hel is One and She is All, She is the trunk of the Tree-of-Life braided together from its three roots; She is the three threads of the Norns, separately spun and intertwined into one string of yarn. She is the image of Life consisting of three parts: spirit, body-movement, and senses.[3] And metaphorically she is the human fate, the whole person twisted together from the three birth-gifts spun together into one personality;[4] she is the timeless individual beyond its three ages. Therefore she is the ancient triad of maiden-mother-crone, and the whole world consisting of the inseparable trinity, the moon, the earth, and the sun (Fig. 19). She is identified as the Old Källing/Kärring (Da/Sw), and parallels the Celtic Cailleach.[5] Her archaic name is familiar in all Indo-European languages, but surprisingly and also speaking in favor of her universality the Grandmother-Hel-concept, it is found also in non-Indoeuropean languages like Basque, Finnish, and seemingly also in Arabic/Hebrew, stretching perhaps as far as Korea to the ancient, pre-patriarchal Crone Mother of All, known as Halmi, Halmae, Halmoni, Halmui, Halmang (-mi/me/ma is mother). The Korean icon, Halmi, has legends telling about her function that are similar to those of the European Hel and Crone Mother, e.g. shaping land by dropping boulders.[6]
According to the researchers the authors Gun and Göran Liljenroth, the form Hel appears with
– interchangeable vowels, a-e-i-o-u-y (-ä-ö-å) (Hal, Hel, Hil, Hol, Hul, Hyl), giving; Holy, Hallo, Hell, He(a)ling, Help, Holly, and wHole; and with
– mute or lost H; Alter, All, Old, Elder-tree, Elderly, etc.[7]
In Nordic languages huld means beautiful; hyld means eldertree; häll is rock; eld/ild is fire, hailstorm, etc — words all associated with Hel, her manifestations and her five elements. The German hell (light) corresponds with the Greek helios (sun); the Basque (H)ilargi (moon) and hil (month), and here the Arab words, hilal (Moon), counts in. Once in early times, over-ranking the two lower gods Jahve (YHWH) and Baal, the ancient Ugaritic and Hebrew High-God was named El (El Eljon). [8] He received all his ruling power from his wife/sister Asherah,[9] a fact that points towards a still earlier concept that prior to patriarchy in Israel, El may once have been the all-female grandmother Hel. Also the ancient male god Tub-Hal, “the one who gives birth or brings forth” may in a distant past have been the original mythical grandmother.[10]
Countless geographical names all over Europe are dedicated to Grandmother Hel – Halle, Hull, Holland, Hellas, Hillerød, Halland, Helsingborg, and Helsingland (Land blessed by Hel) etc.
In the Asir take-over, Grandmother Hel was neither forced to march to Asgård, nor was she wanted there. And for good reasons. War-based PIE religions valuing both murder and dying young, had invented the double exit for the dead. They insisted on a heavenly place for reward, fabricated to motivate young warriors for battle. In Scandinavia Odin set up Valhall (Battlefield Hall). The whole Valhall-idea intended to reflect heavenly and divine values on earth, sanctioning the idealizing of battles and fights, and the duty of loyalty towards authorities. This whole set-up was crucial if to encourage young men to go to battle field and die.[11] For warriors wounded and slain by pointed iron, the realm of Valhall beckoned with its daily combats, nocturnal feasting on beer and pork, and free access to blooming virgins, forever. And to make the idea fully clear, Valhall needed an opposite – and here Hel’s domain came into use. The famous Icelandic writer, Snorri Sturlasons depicts Hel-Vid or Hel-vi as a scary shadow-land, ruled by restlessness, hunger and bad dreams, where Hel in person would receive the dead, and show to them her face, half white, half black with rot. Although mythology gives vague hints to still one more realm of death designed for virgins or slaves, Hel was in principle where everyone were headed for, except the war-heroes.[12]
Hell, in Scandinavian languages is called Hel-vete or Hel-Vi, Hel-vid/ved, meaningHel´s Holy Realm, Holy Grove or Wood.[13] Interestingly, Snorri Sturlason is the only one amongst the medieval writers on Norse mythology, to portray Hel´s Land as a troubled place. Other writers usually depict Hel-Vi as beautiful, peace-giving Meadows of Bliss; dwellings to where all the living will always return.[14] The picture of a rest-full place for restoring seems to disclose the earlier concept, counting only one-exit after death saying; Having played one’s role in life, the dead body of human, animal, or plant is laid back into the arms of the earth, the eternal Mother of All for transformation and re-generation. In the holy well of the three Norns, Urdar-brunn,[15] all will sleep peacefully, rest (hvile) and heal (hela),until it is time to be reborn. Meanwhile the Norns; Urd, Verdande, and Skuld will merge their three spun threads into the one fate of a new being,[16] and when ready, Hel will put on her skin (slough) of a white swan or stork and softly on white wings she will carry the embryo to the woman (female creature) she has chosen for its mother.[17]
In the minute the mythology Odin opened the gates of Valhall to the brilliant battlefield heroes, Hel’s peaceful dwellings lost attraction. “Honour and death are intertwined in warrior ideology. To die in battle is the only honourable way to die.”[18] Heroes were not honored for running-home-to-their-mothers. Heroes turned their backs on Mother Hel. Ordinary people had no other option than to go to Hel-Vi (Hell) as always. But over time, the mothering meadows of Hel became discredited by the ruling elite, and gained a still poorer reputation. By and by it was twisted into a sad, sick and gloomy place. In the end, either through libel or because rural people were denied, or ridiculed for their Old Ways and beliefs, Hel-Vi also lost attraction also to ordinary people. The Christian Hell is a brutalized continuation of the already distorted concept of Hel-Vi that once was the Holy and Blissful Meadows of Peace and Beauty, welcoming all the dead to rest and restore in her warm motherly embrace.[19]
NATT—the Black-Skinned Night
Hel has twelve daughters, according to the Sagas. Natt (Night) is one of them. Natt is a dark velvet beauty, black-skinned and graceful, bestowing the world with deep inner peace and comforting stillness. Like her mother, Natt was not taken into Asgård. The Asirs found no use for her soft and gentle darkness.
Natt carefully chose her lovers, and gave life to five children. With the aurora Elven Delling (Daybreak, Dawn of Ages), guardian of the Eastern Wisdom realms, she had the son Dag (Day).[20] With Lodur (Waving Heat), she had the twins, Sol and Måne (Sun and Moon). With Nagelfare (The Night-and-Day-Boat-Traveler/Voyager)[21], she had her son, Nor (Oceanwaters), and finally with the Vanir called Anar (Ancestor), she gave birth to När. Grandmother Hel, the Uni-verse (The One Spinning) kept a tenderly watch when Natt birthed her children, Daylight, Sun and Moon, Ocean Nor and finally När, our very Moder Earth.
(To be continued)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen
[1] Jónsson, Gudelære (Gylfaginning), Cap. 33.
[2] The three form an alternative to the dualistic system consisting of two opposites (or to the complementary opposites in Tao).
[3] In the Old Norse texts, Odin now the creator of the world cuts the first humans, Embla and Ask from a dead twig. Then Odin and his friends Vile and Ve give them these three outer and inner abilities (breath and spirit – to move about and to be moved – the five senses (organs to look, hear, smell, taste and feel) and their inner counterparts (to see/realize (see with eyes closed), to listen, to smell a situation (this affair stinks), taste (have a good taste), feel (compassion). I owe thanks to Brita Haugen for this clarification.
[4] This concept seems to have been orally transmitted to us in fairy tales, where the wise women bestow their magic gifts upon the baby.
[5] Brunsgaard Clausen, Scandinavian Cailleach.
[6] Similarities between the Korean Strongholds led by Korea Shaman Queens and the Scandinavian/European borgs are seemingly emerging. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, The Mago Way, Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia, Vol. 1. 2015. 26, 101, 112. Brunsgaard Clausen, Scandinavian Cailleach.
[7] Gunnel Liljenroth and Göran Liljenroth, HEL – den gömda gudinnan i nordisk mytologi, (Lidköping: AMA förlag, 1995), 25ff.
[8] E.g. names like Elias, Israel, Michael, Elohim, El Shaddai, the Akkadian Ilu, and the Arabic Allah.
[9] Mogensen, Himlasagor, 33f.
[10] Elizabeth Gould Davis, I begynnelsen var kvinnan, trans. Anna Pyk (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell Förlag AB, 1971), 40.
[11] Kaliff and Sundqvist, Oden Mithras, 78
[12] Rydberg, Fädernas gudasaga, 279.
[13] Näsström, Fornskandinavisk, 107, 126.
[14] Rydberg, Fädernas gudasaga, 8, 224-332, (279). Partly corresponding with antique ideas.
[15] Norns may count more than three and constitutes a specific category of non-goddess icons, linked to fate. Bek-Pedersen, Norns, 82.
[16] Tradition will have them spinning, and there is certainly a direct connection between spå, the Scandinavian word for foreseeing and the spånad, the Swedish word for spinning, as in wyrd (Urd)– spin. Metaphorically the threads are qualities of the personality (almost like the unchangeable DNA strings) which may determine the new person´s life as a whole. The wise women e.g. in The Sleeping Beauty almost act like former days norns, each of them donating their magic gifts at babies cradle-parties to be twisted together in the one fate of the new-born.. In the Norne-Gest Saga, three walk-about Völvas are still found in this role, in Fredrik Winkel Horn, ed., Nordiske Heltesagaer Fortælling om Norne-Gest, trans. Fredrik Winkel Horn (Kjøbenhavn: Forlaget af Samfundet til den danske Litteraturs Fremme, 1876), Cap. 10.
[17] Gunnel, and Göran Liljenroth. Folket bortom Nordanvinden: Från matriarkat till mansvälde. (Lidköping: AMA Förlag, 1994). 25-27. Personal interview in August 2002.
[18] Kristiansen, and Larsson, Rise of Bronze, 240.
[19] Leikin, evil spirit of diseases, originally ruling the realms of punishment (Hell) became the underlying model for Asirs´ Hel-figur in Snorre´swritings.
[20] Rydberg, Fädernas gudasaga, 290-91.
[21] Made, not from cut-off human nails as often misinterpreted, but being a boat with (iron) nails/dowels – a new invention at the time.