[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.]
IDUN — The White Disa and Keeper of Apples
In the light summer’s nights when mists are floating like white veils over the meadows, a common expression is that;“Now the disirs are dancing” (Diserne danser), or that the “Cailleach is brewing” (Kællingen brygger). Maidens, Mothers, and Crones still recur today as fundamental components of the living nature.
For long, there has been an extended discussion about the nature of the Norse Disir. These discussions take their starting point in the rather twisted disir-figures depicted in the 13th century Iceland texts, for instance those in the Saga of Thorhall and Tirande, Flateyjarbók.[1] In these late texts, disirs are dualistically separated into two groups of black and white disir, good and bad ghosts, deities, or spirits of fate and the like. All the same, the word, disa in Scandinavian languages is simply and nothing but an old synonym word for maiden (mö), which over time, developed into the modern word, tös.[2] Consistently, early Danish translators would translate the Icelandic word, disir into young women (unge kvinder), and nothing else. Disa-Day, still celebrated in Sweden on the 2nd of February, is the day of the Bride of Spring returning, where also the Disa-Thing is still held in Uppsala, north of Stockholm.
The Sagas count a number of Vanir disir of which the Vanadis Fröja is the most renowned. In this presentation, we will let yet another disa step forward, namely Idun. Travelling in her slough (skin) of a white swan, this Vanadis is also a guardian of growth and propagation wisdom. She is the famed Keeper of Apples, the round womb-fruits enclosing all the seeds of the future in their cores.[3]
Idun´s mother is a ljus-disa (Maiden of Light), and has several names, Svan-hild (Swanlight), Guld-fjäder (Goldfeather), and Hilde-gun (Shining-Woman/Mother).[4] Idun is brought up by Svanhild and Svanhild´s brother, Idvalde (Ivalde), also known as Finn-Alf (Shining-White-Elven, postulated to be the first “King of the Elven and Finns in North-East Svitjod” (Uppland, Sweden), which may rather indicate that he was an elder in elven understanding).
Idun, when grown, is engaged in a sibling parental pair with her brother Völund(Weyland), Smith of Beauty, renowned for his tender forging of every flower on earth born in his imagination. With great delicacy, Völund puts each petal in place, shapes each little green straw of grass, and rounds the cheek of every rosy apple. He entrusted the precious apples of eternity in his sister and partner, Idun´s keeping.[5]
In Asgård, Idun was soon married away to Brage, and given the task of providing daily apples to the Asir gods, which they believed would keep them forever fit-for-fighting and avoiding old age. But one day, the Giant-son, Loke (Lug) had enough and sputters at her: “You are Id-valde´s family! How can you go on serving his murderers? Put on your slough (skin) and fly away home to your family and your brother! It is your duty, if you are not staying here to claim blood vengeance!” Next to murdering Id-valde, the up-bringer and uncle of Idun and her brothers, the Asir gods had also violated her brother Völund (Weyland) by putting his art of forging natural blooming into a contest, after which they nominated Völund’s work second best to Sindre’s. The dvarf Sindre had forged the hammer, Mjölner that became Thor’s pride and token, and his iron-gloves and power-belt. Völund never recovered from this degradation.[6] With his words, Loke succeeded to provoke Idun to put on her slough and fly off home together with her sisters, Siv and Aude to re-unite with their dear brothers. Realizing Idun was gone, and also the precious apples, the Asir gods of course got furious, demanding Idun back immediately, before rusting away!
The Apple prototype all fruit, and is a universal symbol of offspring and launched projects – fruit of life, and fruit of one´s work. The apple-seeds in belly-round and womblike centers condense the idea of the over-all feminine, seeds awaiting in the peaceful dark core of the female womb. Apples belong to the Rose family. Idun’s magic apples symbolize the magic world of feminine of propagation; still today red roses are signs of love and love-making, and the fruits of apple are symbols of pregnancy and birth- giving.
As Guardian of the Fruits of Eternal Regeneration (which the Asirs mistook for staying forever young), Idun symbolically belongs to the ancient apple orchards, the Apple Lands, in Greek, Roman, and Hebrew mythology. The Greek Hesperides, Nymphs of the Sunset, kept a strong guard over their golden apples. The Old Norse word apel (appel) means any round fruit,[7] and the apple-theme, found in many stories of our cultural heritage concerned with young maidens eating round apples, echo ancient female initiation rites performed on the threshold of becoming a woman.
Initiation once gave the young maidens all necessary knowledge of their intrinsic procreating power and life-giving potential dwelling within, soon to flourish. Although now-a-days dressed in patriarchal costumes, fairy-tales like Snow White still contain fresh and recognizable fragments and memories of girls´ former initiation rites to become women. In Snow White, the innocent (snow-white) little girl makes thetransgression by a ritual dying, initiated when swallowing (integrating) a bite ofan apple (the apple-womb-knowledge); the transition takes place within a glass coffin (glas-borgs are discussed below),[8] her re-birth as woman is completed when meeting a man (the prince, the lover of her choice) and their first love-making (symbolized by the kiss); to be followed by her motherhood (pictured in the patriarchal wedding). Fairytales are full of these stories, but also medieval Sagas have remembered the old knowledge, too. In the Saga of Volsung there is a neat little story about a king who sits on the mound or on high, a traditional expression for sejding. His concern is his wish for off-spring. A bird suddenly flies by, and drops an apple in his lap. He picks it up and hurries home to give it to his wife without his men being around. Soon after, she finds herself pregnant with their baby, their fruit of life.[9]
The seemingly peculiar prop, the glass coffin in fairytale of Snow White, in which the young girl dwells until wakening up to her sexual maturity, corresponds very well to the existence of the ancient Glass-Borgs/Bergs (Glass Mountains and Vitrified Forts) all over the Germanic and Celtic world, geographically neighboring orchards and Apple-sites.[10] In Britain, the world famous Avalon (Isle of Apples) lies next to Glastonbury (or Ineswitrin, Isle of Glass). Scattered generously all over Scandinavia, Apple-Lands and Glass-Mountains are found next to one another: Äppelviken next to Glasberget, Stockholm, the incredible Æbleø, Fyn, Dk, Appelland in Friesland, Germany, just to name a few locations. The enormous Norwegian Oseberg Ship, grave of two estimated völvas, contained an oak-bucket filled with wild apples – dried whole.
Once thesesites, we believe, were centers of the Vanir Vala-institution, and here at the Glass-Mountains, young girls, the next generation would be taught by the Wise-Women all essential wisdom of life that they needed to know, about their future woman body, about mating, and their life-giving ability. The Borgs will have a further discussion below.
Her name, Idun has been suggested to derive from ON unnen (meal) and refer to apple-eating.[11] But the ON word un/unn also means love.[12] Apple-eating and love-making may very well explain the last part of her name, Id-un. For the first part of her name, Id, it must be noted that Idun shares the Id– with her uncle and up-bringer, Idvalde and with her brother Ide (Slagfinn-Gjuke), also it is the name of the home-area of the Ida-family, the Idaslätter (Ida Plains, that wasevergreen) and the Idabergen (Ida mountains).
The Danish and Swedish word id- connotes repetitive work.[13] Id- is still used in modern Swedish language e.g. idog meaning industrious and hard-working; idka meaning practice, dealing with, doing for a long period of time (e.g., trade); idissla is ruminating/re-chewing. We suggest the names Idun, Ide, Idvalde, Idaslätter and Idabergen be linked to their doing, their annual repetitive work of re-creating vegetation. Idvalde would then come to mean Powerful-Doer.Un, meaning Love, Idun´s namemay rather refer to the attentive and ever-loving work that she (and the artistic Idvalde-brothers and Ida-family) do in the Ida Plains – over and over again, namely forging and dressing the green vegetation, decorating and renewing the meadows every spring. From the Latin word idea (to see, to know) and its Greek origin (Idaea, Idaia, (Ἰδαία)), an interesting thread links into the Ida-family, the skillful inventors and loving re-generators of the bountiful vegetation.[14]
It is noteworthy also that the beautiful green and flowering Ida Plains are not destroyed in the Ragnarök, which means that the ever renewing each spring of the earth will continue undisturbed.[15]
Springtime and morning sunrise in the East both mark new beginnings, and ideal times to set off to work with new energy and inspiration after winter’s rest or a good night’s sleep. Whether or not a weighty piece of the puzzle for explaining the ON word Id- is found here, Estonian language, preserving a number of ancient words as discussed above, also contains the Ida-word. In Estonian tongue, Ida means East e.g “Päike tõuseb ida” (the sun rises in the East). The Ida Plains and Ida-Mountains, if correctly situated in northern Svitjod, would from both Icelandic, and Scandinavian view point lie to the ultimate East of Scandinavia.
Here the most famous and well-known of the old Vanir female entities, their partner-brothers and their lovers, and their symbolic functions has now been presented. At some point, when the patriarchal take-over was a fact, the old feminine symbols and token were taken over by Odin and his male gods. The costs and effects on the old world were immense, and although struggling against the new order, the old collective oriented and mythic based society was suppressed and officially extinct. The High-god Odin dominated until the Christian take-over some centuries later, a historic period of time that in c. 1000CE completed the apparently intended extinction of the völva-institution, too. But despite all take-overs, the old culture dived and survived under the official surface until this day.
(To be Continued)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen.
[1] Thórleifr Jónsson, Fjörutíu Íslendinga þættir, in Cap. Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls. Flateyjarbók, Olof Tryggvasons Saga, trans. Jesper Lauridsen. Fortællingen om Tidrande og Torhall. (Reykjavík, 1904), http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Fort%C3%A6llingen_om_Tidrande_og_Torhall
[2] The Estonian Hal-djas means Fairy (Hel´s disa, the light maiden of Hel). The Dutch etymological dictionary states for the older form, ‘hagetisse’ a homonymous the word for ‘newt’ (modern Dutch ‘hagedis’, cf. NHG ‘Eidechse’). The word traces back to a PGM *haga-tusjo. The second part is probably related to new Norwegian. tysja ‘elf’, new Danish. tøs, new Swedish. tös ‘girl’. The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (EWN) http://www.etymologie.nl/ [160417].
[3] Jónsson, Gudelære (Gylfaginning), Cap. 25.
[4] Gun – kone, woman, equivalent to the Indo-European and Greek, gyn, meaning woman.
[5] Mogensen, Himlasagor, 178f. Rydberg, Fädernas gudasaga, 23.
[6] H. G. Møller, Den ældre Edda. (Sangen om Vølund), (Völundarkviða ), trans. H. G. Møller. (København: Chr. Steens forlag 1870), Cap. 1. http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Sangen_om_V%C3%B8lund.
Rydberg, Fädernas gudasaga, 304. Näsström, Forntida, 111. The story of Weyland, the smith, having his hocks cut is an IE parallel to the Greek Hefaistos.
[7] Mogensen, Himlasagor, 178.
[8] Borgs are frequently found vitrified both in Scandinavia and UK. Peter Kresten, and Björn Ambrosiani, Swedish Vitrified Forts – a reconnaissance study. In Fornvännen 87 (Stockholm: 1992). http://kulturarvsdata.se/raa/fornvannen/html/1992_001).
Per Deckel. Berg, murar och tolkningar (PhD diss., Stockholms Universitet, 1997).
[9] Sturlason, Völsungasagan, Cap. 1. Aksel Olrik, Danske Studier, (København:Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag. 1909),2
[10] There are at least two types of borgs; the older borgs dating Bronze Age and the Scandinavian Iron Age fortresses. For long, all borgs were defined as military fortresses by archeologists, but today the Bronze Age borgs, often called Holy Mountains, are generally agreed to belong to a former fertility cult in Scandinavia. The Iron Age type of borgs, dating c. 400-600 CE, were for martial cult practice, underlining the new ideology. Later, these were apparently replaced by temples, due to e.g. southern Christian impact and the new ideology of the King´s Hall., see Carlsson, Tankar Torsten, 168, 173-4., Berg, murar, 13, 19ff.
[11] Leche, et al., Nordisk familjebok, 1904, 1908. Idun
[12] Mogensen, Himlasagor, 179. Näsströn: Fornskandinavisk, 71. Un/Unn is love. (Modern words: unna någon något, missunnsam, ynnest).
[13] Ið- ‘again’, making the earth green, renewing itself with grass and plants. (Dk: ið- ‘igen’, altså ‘atter og atter grön’, ‘den sig stadig fornyende’ m. h. t. græs og urter. Hellquist, Svensk etymologisk ordbok, 94.
[14] The two Mount Ida on Crete, and in Anatolia (known as Phrygian Ida) are equally associated to the Ultimate Mother Goddess from the deepest layers of pre-Greek mythology, Magna Mater Idaea, Mother of Creation (Ideas). Honored by the Minoans. Later birth-place of Zeus.
[15] Gjellerup, Ældre Eddas.Völuspá, 43