Balancing Out the Blarney

Is Druidry just fer a narrow line up of Indo-Europeans? Ye might get that impression from what has been presented herein to date. But it aint, as it were. It's for those who Honor the Goddess, tell the truth and constrain their appetites. So perhaps we, that is the Druidry in these parts, need to spell some of the Volsungs. Yepper. It's about time, fer it.

Red
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"So says the story that King Volsung let build a noble hall in such a wise, that a big oak-tre stood theirin, and that the limb of the tree blossomed fair out over the roof of the hall, while below stood the trunk within it, and the said trunk did men call Branstock."



Norse Cosmoology Notes by Badgemagus Swineherd, Tabby Labber

Skipping over the really hard part we get to a fountain from which 12 rivers flow in the world of mist. Southward is the land of light. Warm breezes blow from the land of light and these mingle with the cold of the ice of the land of mist. From these clouds of warmed up mist and melted ice sprang Ymir the frost giant and the Cow Audhumbla. Also there sprang other giants. So the food chain here is hoar frost and salt from the ice for Audhumbla and cow milk for the giants.

After awhile Audhumbla licks away at the ice and eventually licks some of the ice into the shape of a god who comes to life and marries a giantess. They have 3 sons, but the only important one is Odin. Odin murders Ymir and makes our world, Midgard, from Ymir's eyebrows. Then Odin magics an ash tree into a man, and an elder into a woman and they are the first people and Odin puts them in Midgard.

A mighty ash tree, Ysdrasill grew from the body of Ymir and it supports the whole universe. Somewhere on or about the large ash tree is Midgard, where we live. The gods live somewhere else on the tree in a place called Asgard. The ash has 3 roots with 3 springs. The Norns tend one of the roots, the one that feeds the part of the tree where Asgard sits. The other two roots are on their own. The Norns are sort of goddesses of time; past, present and future, maybe.

Odin's totems are ravens named Hugin and Munin, but known to the vulgar and ignorant as Heckel and Jeckel.

There is another important god in all this confusion named Loki. He has wolf and snake totems and also death at his beck and call. Thor, son of Odin, is yet another and is famed for killing giants. One interesting story is told of his meeting with Skrymir the Giant, and that is probably what I should be working on here instead of this somewhat larger theme.

There are some goddesses; Frigga, Freya, Sif, Nanna and Ran who perform some of the functions we would attribute to iterations of the White Goddess. For example, Freya is much like Blodeuedd. Nanna is a moon goddess.

Valkyries are daughters of Odin, but of uncertain maternity. Their job is to pick up dead warriors and take them to Valhalla to help Odin fight the giants some day. Brynhild is the most famous Valkyrie.

The Norse also have some interesting ideas about elves. There are two kinds. Pretty elves of the light, and ugly elves of the dark. The light elves are friendly and silly (to us). The dark elves are way smarter and don't much care about people one way or t'other. There are also a good many dwarves and giants, of course.
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Volsung Notes by Badgemagus Swineherd, Tabby Labber

1)Sigi son of Odin , is a werewolf who works his way up to being a king and marries a noble wife. He is of uncertain maternity. They have one son Rerir. Sigi is murdered by his wife' brothers. Rerir avenges his father and also marries a noble wife.

2) Rerir and his noble wife don't have any babies until Freya (goddess) sends them an apple via Ljod, a giant's daughter. Interestingly, she allegedly sends it to Rerir and he gives it to his wife. The queen eats the apple and becomes pregnant. Meantime Rerir dies or gets killed somehow.

3) The queen dies after carrying the baby for six winters. The story of this is; wearied at the progress of her pregnancy, and the prodigious size of the babe within, she says, cut it out, which they do. She dies but her son, Volsung survives. Note: To this point none of the wives/queens have names so they can't get euhemerized. Volsung is six years old when he is "born" .

4) Volsung grows up and marries the giant's daughter, Ldog. They have a big house built around an oak tree named Branstock (the Oak tree). They have 10 sons and one daughter. The oldest son and daughter are twinks, Sigmund and Signy. Odd this, that the house would contain and oak called Branstock. This could reflect the triumph of Gwydion over Bran, the White Goddess as constrained by the house of Odin; or a triumph over the sun god worshiping Druids, whose totem is the oak, or fear/worship of Jupiter whose totem is also the oak.

5) Seggier, another king, negotiates with Volsung for Signy, and marries Signy against her will and takes her home with him. Then he invites the Volsungs over to his place. The Volsungs go over to King Seggier's, despite Signy warning them not to. Volsung is killed in the ensuing ambush and all the boys are taken prisoner. The boys are put in a dungeon where one by one they are eaten by a she-wolf. (This part of the story may be a cautionary tale with redundancy as the theme). Sigmund, Signy's twink, is the last male Volsung and he allegedly kills the she wolf by smearing honey on his face and bites the wolf's tongue while she is licking the honey off his face. Wolf dies and Sigmund escapes. Meantime Signy is still married to Seggier. She has some kids with him all of whom she contrives to have murdered by Sigmund who is an outlaw in the woods. One night she changes shapes with a witch woman. The witch woman sleeps with Seggier that night and Signy goes off to the woods and sleeps with Sigmund. They begat Sinfjotli who turns out to be a dead end. A good while later Sigmund murders Seggier and Sinfjotli murders a couple more of Seggier and Signys's children, and Signy kills herself because of having been a bad wife to Seggier. Yikes! (Sometimes in these stories withches seem to be taking on the role of the Goddess as assistant in the revenge mode).

6) Sigmund lives on to become a king and marries Borghild. They have 2 sons, Helgi and Hamund. Helgi is the more famous of the two because the Norns visit him. Borghild poisons Sinfjotl for killing her brother and Sigmund drives her away and she dies.

7) Helgi marries Sigrun and becomes a great king and is visited by Norns, but has nought more to do with this story. Neither does Hamund who never even gets a Norn visit. Sigmund then marries Hjordis but is killed in a battle by devine intervention a little later. I.e., Odin makes an appearance.

8) Hjordis is great with baby by Sigmund, but now requires a new husband and so goes to have the baby at King Hjalprek's house so Hjalprek become foster father to the baby, but Hjordis later marries King Alf. She bears the baby and the baby is named Sigurd and gets reared up in the King Hjalprek's household with great honor. A while later, after he grows up some, Sigurd kills a worm named Fafnir, gets lots of treasure, avenges his father by wiping the Hunding clan that killed his father off the face of the earth, and then meets Brynhild the Valkyrie. Sigurd is now, obviously, a sun god. He learns lots of stuff including the speech of woodpeckers by eating some of Fafnir's heart. Later he lets Gudrun eat some of it (the worm heart) also. (This is another of the numerous examples in Norse mythology of the sun god taking on the role of the goddess who is usually the dispenser of these kinds of gifts). Sigurd also learns lots from Brynhild though who is regarded as being really smart. (The acquisition of knowledge by this sun god is repeated, worm heart and Brynhild, possibly to appease the Goddess.

9) Sigurd meets Brynhild and Brynhild foretells of Gudrun, the other woman.

10) Grimhild the "wise-wife" (another witch Goddess) is married to King Giuki. Besides Gudrun, their daughter, they have 3 sons; Gunnar, Hogni and Guttorm. She, Grimhild, it is who gives the cup of forgetfulness to Sigurd so he will forget Brynhild and marry Gudrun, which he does do. She also eggs Gunnar on to woo Brynhild. Brynhild is tricked into thinking Gunnar has dared her special fire which she sometimes surrounds herself with to keep unwanted visitors away, but it was really Sigurd that dared the fire, taking on the appearance of Gunnar, and Sigurd is complicitious in this trick, albeit he was drugged first to forget about Brynhild so he is sort of blameless except for being a liar.

Gunnar, who is another jerk, remarking on Brynhild, says it is a deed well worthy of death, that taking of Brnyhild's maidenhead; "So come now, let us prick on Guttorm to do the deed", meaning kill Sigurd. Ha! This is too much. Why do they want to kill Sigurd? I can't remember. Oh, now I do. Brynhild wants Gunnar to kill Sigurd as pay back for Sigudr's role in tricking her. she also wants Sigurd's son killed, but I can't remember Sigurd having a son and in any event the son is never mentioned in the story again. Anon, Guttorm kills Sigurd and is in turn slain by Sigurd so that they are both dead.

11) Brynhild realizes she has been tricked into marrying Gunnar and that Sigurd was party to the trick, but that she really loved Sigurd and now he is dead on her account, so she kills herself.

12) Gudrun, Sigurd's widow, eventually remarries, this time to King Atli (Attila the Hun).

13) Atli kills Gudrun's remaining brothers, Gunnar and Hogni.

14)Gudrun with the aid of Hogni's surviving son, Niblung, kills Atli and all his children.

15) Gudrun somehow gets away with all this and winds up married to King Jonakr. They have 3 sons plus Swanhild which is Sigurds x Gudruns child which may be the son Brynhild was referring to ear;ier, but got mixed up about. The boys are Hamdir, Sorli and Erp.

16) A certain King Jormunrek wants to marry Swanhild and sends his son, Randver, as ambassador to woo her. Swanhild doesn't want to marry the old man, but does like Randver as she discovers on the trip to Jormunreks house. They know one another during the sea voyage over to Jonmunrek's kingdom and Jonmunrek executes both of them after being tipped off about their tryst.

17) Gudrun sends her sons Hamdi and Sorli and Erp to avenge Swanhild. Then dies of heartbreak herself, maybe. (I'm not sure if she is sincerely dead or not. This one seems like a Goddess). Hamdi and Sorli are off to kill Jonmunrek but kill Erp first because he shows some signs of intelligent thought and this offends them. After they kill Erp, then they go along and kill Jormunrek, but in their turn are killed by Jormunrek's people with Odin's help.

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Alrighty then. Goddess help me make some sense of this, please, because it is right confusing to my mind.

Badgemagus, why don't you try leaving out all the extraneous he-man stuff.

All righty then. I'll try that.

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There was a great place of mist and ice and from the south a Great Cow came wandering and took up her abode there. The Great Cow licked at the ice and her breath warmed it, and as she licked at the ice and shaped it and gave off fumes and fragrances of Her own to mix with the mist and ice; the sky and earth, the sea and stars congealed from the mist and ice. Then from the earth and the dung she put upon it came life and over time these took on new shapes and semblances until some came to be like those we see about us to this day.

Now this particular Cow liked pretty things which is one of the reasons she licked things into certain particular shapes and not merely random shapes. She had some notions about Herself and how she might want to appear at times to Her various creatures. So anon She made an image of Herself in the likeness of a female person and this is what we call the White Goddess, the Great Cow in human form, beautiful and terrible, the Authoress of everything we have been, are now , or will ever be, and as with us, this is also true of all the little wonders who have their own images of the Goddess.

So now come the mighty men of the ages. First, they figure out how paternity works which takes awhile. If it hadn't taken awhile then Sigi and Rerir would be able to give the names of their children's mothers. But at that time they couldn't because they didn't know about paternity and had to make up lies about apples to explain difficult situations.

Then comes the first sun god , Volsung, whose dad is a god and whose mother is unknown. Volsung marries Ldog, a goddess and we have the concept of paternity from this point on. This is a new concept for Volsung though, therefore the backhanded reference to Bran and the oak tree, which acknowledges the Druidry free fall into sun god worship.

Then comes the dual theme of subjugation of the Goddess followed hard upon by the wrath of the Goddess. The Goddess is forced to marry a jerk and every man involved gets murdered or eaten by a she-wolf (obviously the goddess) including a bunch of them that didn't have much to do with the subjugation process, but probably would have if they had been important enough. Sigmund though temporarily escapes and becomes the replacement sun god for the old one. For Volsung, the sun has set.

Sigmund marries Borghild but this marriage goes nowhere historically speaking even though they have two sons. Borghild does, however, do pay back on Sinjoftli because in addition to killing the two babies of Seggier, he also killed her brother. This subplot is obviously just thrown in as commentary on incest which Sinjoftli is the product of. Or maybe it reflects soemwhat of history.

But Sigmund needs a new wife now, so he marries Hjordis, the fairest and wisest of womankind. But shortly after supposedly knocking Hjordis up, Sigmund is killed, probably because he is old. Not surprisingly Odin is implicated in the killing. Again an example of a sun god, this time Sigmund, waxing too powerful to be killed by mortals alone, and the usual sacrifice of the sun god to the Goddess is proscribed in this religion, so Odin assumes the role of the Goddess. There is no hint from the texts that Hjordis had any role in the demise of Sigmund.

Hjordis now has to go off and find a new foster father, King Hjalprek, that will be good to the baby boy, new sun god, Sigurd, she is carrying about inside her. This arranged she goes off and marries King Alf. (This is very confusing, to me. The only thing I can figure is that the author just had to get rid of Hjordis the potential Goddess).

Now the stage is set for the next cycle. And here I discover this all is just too many for me.

In confusion,

Badgemagus Swineherd, Tabby Labber

I agree,

Cerridwen, White Goddess

No, I changed my mind. You keep after it Badgemagus.

Cerridwen, White Goddess

All righty then. Maybe I need to break the Sigurd parts up into stages. Or maybe I need a shot or two of Old Crow. Jeez Louise, here I go again.
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Sigurd x Brynhild - The tragedy here, I reckon, is that Brynhild is a career woman driven by goals and though she loves Sigurd, she can't commit to him right at that time. But then, of course she changes her mind later on, sort of.

Sigurd x Gudrun - Sigurd is enamored of Brynhild. But Grimhild the witch/Goddess gives him a drink that makes him forget about Brynhild. This sets the stage for the marriage of Sigurd x Gudrun. They do get married and for a time , five seasons)things are Okie Dokie, Sigurd even lets Gudrun eat some of the worm's heart, but.........

Sigurd/Gunnar x Brynhild - Grimhild spells to her eldest boy, Gunnar, that Brynhild would make him a good wife. Soon everyone thinks this is a swell notion and everyone "pricks" Gunnar to go a-wooing. But when he tries to reach Brynhild to woo her, he can't get through a fire she has around her. Now though, Gunnar and Sigurd change semblances and Sigurd goes through the fire and woos Brynhild and wins her for Gunnar. This semblance changing is recurrent, little witch antics, and really annoying. Obviously, all this shape shifting is in imitation of transmigration.

I, Badgemagus realize that I am spelling the same stuff redundantly here, but I'm weak, weak and stupid.

Ahem. All righty then.

So Sigurd and Brynhild should have gotten married to unite a God and Goddess and since they were both really smart, they could have figured out lots of stuff and things would have been better for everyone. But this didn't happen and the blame is Brynhild's for being a Tomboy, maybe.

The real player here seems to be Grimhild who must think that her son Gunnar can be elevated to sun god status if he marries the Goddess Brynhild. But she already has that sowed up through her daughter's marriage to Sigurd. Perhaps, Grimhild is playing Cerridwen and doing so winnowing of the prospects. It is noteworthy that we never hear of the death of Grimhild, or of her daughter Gudrun either really. In any event, she has engendered the death of a sun god presumably in his prime and a goddess.

Gudrun x Atli - Gudrun marries Atli and the revenge/death cycle is repeated for the third time and another old sun god, Atli, is snuffed as are Gudrun's brothers.

Gudrun x Jonakr - Gudrun weds King Jonakr and they rear up some sons for revenge/death cycle #4.

Swanhild x Jonmurek - Here is an example of a surrogate, in this case Jonmurek's son, being sacrificed instead of the old king, Jonmurek. That Swanhild, the presumptive goddess is killed too, indicates that a black evil is at work in the land. In any case Gudrun sends her sons to repeat the revenge/death cycle for the fifth and last time in this telling of the end of the Volsungs and Giukings.

I Badgmagus, have done my best, but it will take more than a Tabby Labber to sort all this mess out.

Badgemagus, Tabby Labber
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You did well-enough Badgemagus, except for that Cow malarkey.

Cerridwen