Chapter
4
(of the forthcoming book “Howling, I gathered
them, vol. 2)
Runes AND MORAL LAWS
Introduction
The moral
laws I uncovered during my study of the runes are so different from the ones
that are currently ruling our opinions that I feel the need of starting with a
sort of philosophical presentation of where these ancient ethical
categories fit in the general thinking of our time.
At first, by proposing new moral categories, it may
look that, as the existentialists, I propose to modify the rules by which we
live and that I pretend that our existence causes the birth of these new
categories. This is not the case. For one, I deal with the old category of what
is good and bad, as all kinds of theologies and traditions have done for ever.
For two, I criticize the definitions of what is good and bad in our society by
proposing to come back (this is often called ‘reconstructionism’) to what I
believe to be ancient rules. I’d rather call me a structuralist since I propose
a new structure – one inspired by my knowledge of the ancient Germanic world –
to the category of ethics. Below is a drawing that shows this new structure.
The dotted lines between two nodes express that a weaker link joins two related
subcategories.
As you see on the drawing, moral laws are brought
about from three sources. The influence of cosmogony may look surprising. It is
however very usual, think for instance of the moral influence of the legend of
Adam and Eve eating the apple of knowledge.
This chapter is devoted to the explanation of what is
meant by these subcategories of what is good and what is bad. Even more
importantly from the structuralist point of view, I carefully explain the
nature of the relationship between a source (i. e. individual, social and
cosmogony) and its associated moral subcategories. You can see that they
largely differ from the classical ones, except the one called “enjoying one’s
body” which, as we shall see later, states here that it is morally depraved to
refuse to enjoy one’s body. Note also the unusual position of ‘fate and
ancestors’, which is by itself a moral category and also a source of morality.
Each of these subcategories is judged in three levels:
good, bad and ‘disgusting’ (or ‘revolting’ or ‘worse than bad’). The last mark
may look surprising. It renders the idea that we receive, during our early childhood, a large
amount of moral information from our social environment. This information tends
to remain unconscious in us and to provoke deep feelings of the kind “this is
unbearable!” that lead to qualifications as ‘disgusting!’ or ‘revolting!’
The various
Futhark(s) differ by the importance they put on a given concept but they share
a common view of the world, a philosophy of life that this chapter will
describe. Since their ethics are based on the ‘ancient’ way of life, it is
quite obvious that they are very different from the modern ethics, based on the
conjunction of the
What
is morally acceptable and what is not
As I tried
to show it at the beginning of chapter 2, we receive our faculty of judging
what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and even more so, what is ‘disgusting’ (that is:
unconsciously repelling) or ‘acceptable’ from our childhood life experience.
The way our parents react to what is happening, the stories that they may tell
or hide, their wordless mimics, all that forms the basis upon which our ethics
are built. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to become conscious of what
has been thus instilled into us, and to become able to accept or reject it as a
responsible adult. This is why the rules of morality which I will now describe
may appear to you as unethical. You might feel them as immoral or not relevant
to morality. This large gap between our current morality and the one still in
use in the Scandinavian words some thousand years ago is explained by the way
our triumphantly aggressive rationalism twisted or sorted Christian concepts to
its own uses. The example that I gave earlier is perfectly typical: Christian
thought, as far as I know, recommends love and respect to the others. On the
other hand, ‘rational’ modern thought tends to forget respect and is focused on
love and compassion for other, supposedly less fortunate, people. The ancient
thinking that I will now present to you is based on a firm balance between what
is rational and irrational, though it strongly rejects irrational
superstitions, and on Heathen spirituality that pervades everyday life. It is
not surprising that it would lead to a morality and a philosophy of life
radically different from our current Western beliefs.
You may be
surprised by the fact that I present some features as individual morality while
you have been taught to look upon them as social behaviors. Your classification
in individual morality versus social behavior is born from the implicit
teachings you received in your childhood. My own expertise on the topic simply
comes from the fact that I received teachings that were very similar to yours.
Thus, the
morality rules of which I will speak of are related to the knowledge and the
acceptance of one’s destiny, with the respect of the others and to keep one’s
word, with the moral primacy of action over speculation, with the proper
behavior towards accumulating riches, with forgetting one’s ego, with the moral
importance to take pleasure in our living body, with the primacy of respect and
generosity over charity and compassion.
Knowledge
and acceptance of one’s destiny
When Völuspá describes the state of Ask and
Embla before the Gods give them the features of a living being, it specifies
that they were ørlöglausa, without
destiny (and lítt megandi, little
able of acting, of which I’ll speak below under “Moral primacy of
action on speculation”).
The Gods then will confer to these bodies the properties which make life, but
they are not in charge to give them an ørlög
(a destiny). In other words, in our tradition it is not enough to be a
living human to be automatically granted a destiny. As the Old English Rune
Poem states: “Each one must share much if
he wants to obtain a destiny on behalf of the Master,” having a destiny is something to be deserved. That does not
mean there are two human types, one who deserves a destiny and the other who
does not. On the contrary, the moral law I understand from our old texts is
very simple at the start: each one must act as well as possible, as far as he
or she is able to until destiny knocks at the door. At this very instant, the
Norns grant you a destiny, they honor you, they do not curse you and it becomes
wrong, ‘disgusting’, not to accept your fate with dignity. Simultaneously and
somewhat paradoxically, it is also immoral to passively give up oneself to this
allotted destiny. In fact, the proper moral behavior is as follows. Either the
being who has just met destiny still owns some degrees of freedom and this
freedom must be used to achieve this destiny instead of fighting against it. Or
the human being is totally caught in some kind of inescapable snare, then there
is no way to better fulfill destiny and the only proper behavior is accepting
it with pride and as much dignity as possible. A myth perfectly illustrates
this last attitude. It describes the fate of a hero who is locked up in a pit
full of venomous serpents, his hands cut, and he plays until death the
Scandinavian harp with his toes. Even in the worst cases, non passive
acceptance is requested. I understand well those who find all that ridiculous
or even funny, but is not their attitude a little bit disgusting, this bunch of
smart ones?
All this does not determine our every day life
behavior, it only does in the crucial crises when our life is at play. In every
day life, this moral rule cannot directly help deciding what is morally
acceptable or not. However, each decision must be weighed according to its
possible role in our own possible destiny. This way of weighting our decisions
constitutes the basic moral rule dictating the management of our lives. I would
not be surprised if you react by saying: “Fine, but if promote this moral rule
as supervising all other rules, will you then judge as acceptable other
behaviors I judge as being revolting?” My immediate answer is that we shall see
later other morality principles that lead us in the search of finding or
fulfilling our destiny. Those other principles will help you to see more
clearly what might be really shocking for you in my proposals. Before going
into them, we shall now analyze of few consequences of the above basic
principle in our relationships to death, our heredity and social behavior.
1. Death. It may seem that the sole rune Kaunan
points at hard facts of our lives: body corruption, the multiple warnings of a
forecoming deaths, the slow decline associated to ageing are obvious part of
our lives and of our hidden terrors. Our current civilization choices make them
more hidden thus all the more frightening. Death is nevertheless the only part
of our destiny we can be assured of, which makes as immoral to refuse death as
to speed up our unavoidable decaying. It is necessary to accept this slow
decline of our vitality by riding it, not by undergoing it.
Applying this moral rule to suicide is very
complex and would need a whole book by itself. Suffice to say here that suicide
is obviously not always to blame. When destiny pushes you to live without the
dignity you have been used to, when you feel that all the roads are blocked to
you, nevertheless remember, all scaled down at your own level, that as the
Northern hero did, you can still play the harp with your toes!
2. Heredity. When studying rune Naudiz, we
shall see that another component of our destiny is our belonging to an
inheritance line of which we only are one tiny point. It is immoral not to
recognize what we inherited from our ancestors and, if we have children, what
we will bequeath to our children. Once more, I insist on the fact that I am now
speaking of individual moral laws, not of social ones. Seen from a social point
of view, stressing so much inheritance and bequest will lead to a racist or
closed society. Seen from a personal point of view, it simply deflates our ego.
The old texts speak of the powerful Norns,
mistresses of humankind’s destiny as a whole, who rule the behavior of these
human lines. As I will explain with more details while speaking of the rune
Naudiz, they have three functions.
Skuld ((he/she)‘Shall-Should’) is Norn of
the not yet born possibilities that are still in the form of seeds. It is
‘disgusting’ to refuse to acknowledge the worth of possibilities, the seeds
that your ancestors brought to you. Part of your destiny certainly is to help
some of these seeds to bud.
Verðandi (‘Becoming’) is Norn of blossoming, this is why it is ‘disgusting’ not to seek
to take part in the growth and the development of the budding seeds transmitted
by your ancestors.
Urðr ((they) ‘Became’) is Norn of
achievement. It is ‘disgusting’ to be blind to what your ancestors already achieved
and to give no care of transmitting what you achieved.
3. Social behavior. Social life
means living with our neighbors, thus with their ancestors and their offspring.
The one component of a harmonious social behavior, which is implied by having a
destiny is the need for intertwining all these destinies, rather than trying to
keep apart one ‘pure’ line. So far, our social environments have developed only
two ways of dealing with this problem, both vaguely disgusting. It is either a
soft one, in which the problem is simply ignored, or hard one where the borders
are mindlessly closed. The only attitude compatible with the old Germanic
morality, at least in my opinion, is to study the problem with serenity to know
to which quantity of the “world’s misery” we can open our arms without
destroying our society and our moral values. As you see it, and it will be
often the case, the attitude which I describe as belonging to the ancient
Northern ethics is the same as a simple rational attitude.
To conclude on the topic of the
respect granted to the rulers of destiny, remember from chapter 2 that the Dísir rule
personal destinies, and take note that the following is an ominous curse: “yðr munu dauðar dísir allar! for you the
Dísir are all dead!” Too many people now throw this curse upon themselves
and even find a source of pride in doing so. The first conclusion I can draw
from all the poems I give you here, written in five different old languages, is
that this behavior, namely refusing to listen to one’s Dísir, was looked upon
as revolting by our ancestors.
Respect
for other people and keeping one’s word
Here is the
other moral law that upon which rest individual and social behaviors. Lack of
respect to other people obviously causes social disturbances, it is however
mostly a self-shame, a soul stain much more for the insulting one than for
these insulted.
This moral
judgment appears most visible in the texts relating a story including a
commitment taken between two characters. As an example, I was struck by the
fact that Judith Jesch, starting with a purely linguistic analysis of the
skaldic poems and the runic inscriptions, can show us that the word drengr (which means, in ordinary use: a
‘guy’) describes, in the runic inscriptions, someone who did not betray his
companions when facing difficulty. A sort of reverse is also very usual, the
funerary inscription speaks then about a courageous man betrayed by his
companions in spite of having been a gódhr dengr, more than good guy. To keep or not
to keep one’s word appears a primary qualifying feature, bringing praises or
insults beyond death. This is why an oath is a serious constraint that binds
you more than you could believe. An oath is a contract, one of the kinds it is
forbidden to revoke, as opposed to a normal one.
On this
topic, and as a limitation to the binding enacted by a contract, remember what
happened to Skadhi when she accepted to end her revenge quest provided she
could marry the God of her choice. You know that the Gods tricked her by
letting her choosing among them, but she could only see their feet and she
chose the ‘wrong’ one. When the Gods committed themselves to the contract, it
did not say that Skadhi should be able to see them in full, and they felt free
to show her only their feet. It thus seems that taking advantage of some
misunderstanding relative to the exact content of the contract is not
forbidden. The Gods did not break the letter of their given word, but they used
the fact that Skadhi interpreted the contract in a different way than theirs.
This may look as typical casuistry, but its real teaching is to explain why
there are cases were a kind of casuistry is allowed.
The largest
majority of oaths can receive several interpretations and leave a possibility
of partially escaping to keep one’s word. The person who forces a weaker one to
swear an oath is the one in charge to specify each interpretation he/she
intends to enforce. If some interpretations are left open then it is morally
good that the weaker one, the one upon which the oath has been enforced, uses
the interpretation which favors him/her. In Skadhi’s case, she is in a position
of power relative to the Æsir because she is claiming wergild for the
killing of her father. This is why the Æsir may play with their oath in a
way that looks like a trick, especially because of its funny content: Skadhi
can look at the group where stands the one she will choose, but she sees their
feet only. A much clearer case also happens so often! People swear behaving in
some way, and they hasten, as soon as it bothers them, to behave exactly in the
opposite manner. For example, they do an oath of reciprocal assistance and, as
soon as feel like it, they drool poison on whom they promised their faith. This
last attitude is obviously disgusting, and simply forgetting an old contract –
this fortunately takes place much more often– is also looked upon as immoral.
This casualness calls to mind a lack of respect for the others, and uncovers a
lack of respect for oneself.
A
particular form of respect, the one due to the ancestors, is also very
important in this ancient civilization. While speaking of rune Othala, I will
quote for you a few of the poems that stress how much dangerous it is to
disturb the dead ones: Necromancy makes use of them, it does not give them
proper respect. Some naive children calling on their dead mother are the only
ones who are not cursed for transgressing this rule. Symmetrically, disturbing
the dead souls is not looked upon as morally bad due to the way they are used.
This is why necromancy is not immoral because it is usually done or not with a
destructive goal but because it does not show respect to our ancestors.
I however
believe that the respect due to others primarily shows in the moral value of
self-liability. Each one has to feel responsible for his/her actions. When harm
happens, looking for someone else responsible of this harm instead of
evaluating at once one’s own responsibility is also a really disgusting
practice. Its origin is in the lack of self-respect (“I am too weak to be
accused!”) and the lack of respect for the others (“This other one is the bad
one who should be accused!”) In the legal system, the procedure of “pleading
guilty” tries to promote self-liability. You however know well that the
judicial system tends nowadays to promote the contrary by applying the letter
instead of the spirit of the laws allocating responsibility, as shown by the
mushrooming of ridiculous signposts warning of obvious dangers, such as the one
on the
Our great
poem describing what is proper behavior, the Saying of Hár (Hávamál), points at a serious, though
not obvious, bond between self-respect, respect of the others and the
ancestors. Its eighth rune song (verse 153) beautifully stresses how futile
quarrels due to the lack of mutual respect will calm down if each squabbling
party agrees to take in hand its destiny (see rune Naudiz).
A simple
moral rule emerges: “Respect other people, as you would like them to respect
you, and keep your love for your close family of blood ands heart.”
In the case
of handicapped persons, living with them belongs to our destiny and they should
be treated with respect, as any other human being, not with compassion. In
other words, the above moral rule specializes thus: “It is enough to respect
others, including these who are looked upon as handicapped persons. They do not
expect your love, nor your compassion, neither your pity which humiliates them
more than it helps them!”
Moral
primacy of action over speculation
I already insisted on the fact that the human
forms from which Ask and Embla were made had no destiny. They were also lítt megandi (‘little action-taking’).
Thus, for the author of the poem Völuspá, it was also obvious that whoever is
unable of action is not really human. It is besides acknowledged by all the
specialists that a striking feature of old Scandinavian civilization is an
admiration for active humans. The rune Laukaz, rune of ‘viridity’ (according to
Hildegard von Bingen’s definition, viridity is the force that lifts tree sap –
modern meaning is greenness) praises this greenness, this internal liveliness,
which is in charge of our actions. Inversely, attraction for speculation, so
typical of intellectual people (a group to which I belong!) is never praised in
our texts (Note 1). I find striking that Hávamál constantly makes fun of the unwise
ones, i.e. of who have no good sense, but it does not exclude them: It only
excludes those “moody from conceit,” as we have seen. Hávamál
certainly underlines that too much silliness prevents an efficient action. To
some extent, it is quite obvious that handicapped persons, be it physically or
mentally, hamper action, but Hávamál provides no moral judgment by which
their handicap could be blamed.
You note
that, despite everything that claims modern morals, respecting the Norns is not
only the source of the respect of other people, but also it leads to this moral
judgment of the primacy of the action. For instance, lack of respect for the
others is typical of whomever remains locked up in his/her books, satisfied to
speculate, as I like to do, about declensions and recensions, and refuses to
act and feeds on his/her contempt for the others. The implication of such an
attitude is that they enjoy their small private world and they do not want to
rub against those they judge as being idiots unable to understand their
invaluable selves. An active being must take into account the natural, social
and human facts. This can be done with respect or brutality, and this last case
is unfortunately the most common. This ‘rubbing against’ can however be also
done with respect for the others and, in this case that the primacy of action
over the speculation finds its best moral value.
(Note 1).The reader may
oppose in citing the famous poem Hávamál, which draws so
many barriers between the ósviðr
maðr, or ósnotr maðr, (the unwise
human) and the horskr or snotr (wise) ones. These are the proper
meanings of the words, in spite of all the variations introduced by the
translators. Thus wisdom is highly praised, not speculation. Note also that the
primary meaning of svinnr (here
spelled sviðr) is ‘quick’ thus ósviðr primarily means ‘slow’ and its
usual use is metaphorical: ‘slow of thinking’, thus ‘unwise’. Our civilization
puts emphasis on speculation, thus the translators, not unwisely, speak the
language of their readers and often translate by ‘stupid’ or the like.
Forgetting one’s ego
Somewhat
funnily, our society expresses two opposed positions with respect to the
glorification of the ego. On the one hand, there is a ‘politically correct’
position, seemingly inspired by the moral laws of the main religions. It
recommends humbleness in dealing with oneself, it classifies pride among the
sins and it claims: “vanity of vanities all is vanity.” On the other hand and
conversely, the current morals that impels our actions requires the “building
of our own destiny”, that recommends to be what we are “by ourselves and in
ourselves”, that we should give forth our “major deep personal traits.” Both
positions sound deeply immoral from the point of view I develop here. On the
one hand, our lives are not at all pointless, pride can be positive, and excess
of humility can be hampering our task of discovering and partially achieving
the tasks set for us by the Norns. Conversely, this destiny really does not
rest on our deep ‘ourselves’. It rests rather on our place as a simple bond
between our ancestors and our descendants. Avoiding excessive humility as much
as self-importance and practicing a realistic pride are important moral values,
here is the lesson of morality which seems to come out of the runes.
Another
contradiction of our modern society on this topic is that it glorifies
sacrifices achieved by compassion, while preaching a thorough concern for
individual integrity. This concern goes even up to castigating the concept of
sacrifice made to the Gods (“How horrible! Nothing more than offerings are
allowed …”), and to set up as an absolute crime the human sacrifices that our
ancestors undoubtedly practiced. This is particularly hypocritical in a society
where millions are sacrificed on the altar of economic prosperity: indeed, many
forget their ego, simply because they have no other choice. The thrashing
against sacrifices is delivered by well-fed people who can revel in their ego
and forget their role, though a tiny one, within large social decisions.
Anyhow, this criticism of our society has no other goal than stressing that
hypocrisy is a very good way to hide self-centering. I rather want to emphasize
that, in what I call runic ethics, sacrifices are done in a state of mind where
we have to forget our ego, since they are only done for honoring the Gods (not
for asking them favors!). Individual integrity is much less significant than a
complete harmony with our individual self, our ancestors and descendants, and
the social and natural environments.
Physical
delights belong to the category of ‘good’ …
and
rejecting physical pleasure is immoral. Our society calls Hedonist someone who
enjoys the pleasures of life: it is considered as an admissible philosophical
choice, however not an admirable one. To be really accepted, it has to reach
the status of a refined art of living, it cannot stay the crude self-enjoyment
anyone can obtain. Inversely, the role of rune Wunjo is to praise, and give
some amount of majesty, to a simple everyday well-being and to physical
pleasure that life can provide us. Wunjo straightforwardly says to us that
physical pleasure, be it sexual or not, is a healthy activity which does not
need further justification.
The rune
Gebo is the rune of love. The love it glorifies, however, is not the abstract
love of others you are supposed to love as much you love yourself. It glorifies
a concrete love, the one you share with your ‘best half’ who is incredibly
close to you, someone you share physical pleasure with, and who, after some
time, also becomes family.
Our
morality does not require to take into account the demands of a silly God who
is strangely, almost insanely interested in each of our small or great
pleasures. We do not fear a weak minded Devil who is supposed to lead us to
vices, a kleptomania afflicted divinity who tries to steals souls with a
fastidious frenzy. For us, this little war between God and Devil is not worthy
of the majesty of our divinities.
The
behavior vis-à-vis the material riches
The moral
judgments associated to wealth seem to be quite erratic since they always
oscillate between criticism and praise.
As a good
example of it, consider the argument between Thórr and Ódhinn, as described in
Gautrek’s Saga. For each wealth granted to Gautrek by Ódhinn, Thórr immediately
finds a means to make of it a poisonous gift.
Richness is
the prerogative of great men, provided they are generous enough to quickly get
rid of some of it, otherwise it will become a source of discord.
Fehu is the
first rune and yet it means ‘wealth’.
In fact,
the solution of these contradictions is extremely simple. You remember the rune
Ingwaz, I associated it to Njördhr in chapter 2. This God is the one from whom
richness is requested, he is also the God of balanced richness (as explained
with rune Ingwaz). Quite simply and as good sense tells us, the good way is
avoiding greediness while alloting proper respect to wealth.
This is
also illustrated by a tradition that provides a lot of respect to women, yet
describes them as gold carriers. The Nibelungenlied gives some idea of what
could have been this tradition by describing queen Sieglind as being riche, that is noble and powerful (a
word in Mittle Hoch Deutsch, the German language of the Middle Ages).
Because of that, she cannot avoid liberally distributing her ‘rotez gold’ (her red gold) to ensure the
popularity of her son Siegfried. This behavior is described as ‘alte site’ (an ancient habit) by the
song. This tells us that this behavior is not specific to queen Sieglind: the
antique habit is that a powerful woman gives her gold with open hands:
siglint div
riche nach
alten siten plach
Sieglind the powerful from
the ancient tradition acts
dvrh ir
suns liebe teilen rotez
golt
through her son’s love distribute
red gold
si chvndez wol gedienen daz im div livte
waren holt.
she can full insure
that to him
people were held.
What
is socially acceptable and what is not
I again
stress that you should not be surprised at finding me classifying as social
ones, behaviors you use to classify as individual moral attributes. This is
part of the large difference between the runic ethics and the ones of our
society.
To be or not be a
human being
A few lines
in the Hávamál speak better that
anything I could say (verse 57):
…
funi kveikisk af funa; flame
self kindle from flame;
maðr af manni human from human [also ‘self-kindle’]
verðr at máli kuðr Will
at the measure known
en til dælskr af dul. is that moody from conceit.
As you see
the last three lines cannot be understood without the image of a fire kindling
a new fire. They thus mean: “human becomes human by meeting other humans, the
measure will be known of the aloof one who hides inside him/herself.”
And verse
47:
Ungr var ek forðum, A young was I formerly,
fór ek einn saman: walked I one self, [I
walked alone]
þá varð ek villr vega; thus became I wild [or bewildered] to move. [thus I moved wildly, erratically]
The skald
describes his loneliness as a form of harshness he underwent during his youth.
Meeting other people and sharing ideas with them makes of you a human. People
who do not really belong to humankind put themselves outside of humankind
because they despise (they show conceit for!) other humans. This ‘definition’
of humankind calls for three remarks. The first one is that conceit, nowadays a
mild flaw, is told to be what excludes you from humankind. It has thus been
that behaviors based on conceit and its parents, greed or jealousy, were looked
upon as socially unbearable. The second remark is that there is nothing like
the concept of someone being “less than human” because of some deficiency, say,
intellectual deficiency. As soon as that some kind of communication takes place
between humans they do belong to humankind and their rights and duties can be
defined. It is even the case that deeply retarded persons who cannot communicate
are not excluded as long as they do not stay away from their human siblings
(who are thus in charge to help them to fully integrate humankind). The third
remark is that a ‘morally good’ human tries to avoid loneliness, otherwise
he/she will become a (still human) boor. As we all know, our society generates
isolation, especially among the aged ones who are put apart in retirement
houses. This is one of the most obvious example by which we might realize that
our modern society is far from improving in all respects on more primitive
civilizations, including the Old Germanic one, which concerns us here.
‘Primitive’ has become a condescending term while, in some respects, it should
be held as laudative. This chapter provides several other examples of
regression of the modern world. This absolutely contradicts the belief of our
elites in the undisputable value of what they name progress. This phenomenon is
particularly conspicuous among ethnologists who study the primitive societies.
Under the scientific cover of objectivity, they unwillingly apply the value
judgments that implicitly run in our civilization. Thus, while doing their best
to avoid it, they report the primitive behaviors in a condescending way. It is
extremely difficult to stay really objective. On our topic of study, I already
quoted here as such Mrs. Jesch and Dillmann, and there are fortunately many
others, especially within the linguistic community.
Another way
of losing the human statute is to become a living-dead. When studying the rune
Othala we will see that it is linked to the refusal of giving proper respect to
our ancestors and to our descendants. On this point again, our society is based
of a kind of ‘forward rush’ that prevents appreciating the past and that eats
up the future. This makes of us a civilization of living-dead beings, a large
progress indeed over primitive societies!
Compassion and Love
vs. Generosity and Respect
While
discussing this topic with friends, I realized that, even if they agree that
compassion can be pure hypocrisy, they call ‘generosity’: Having “a good heart”
and showing compassion for the less fortunate ones. Finally, they call
‘generosity’ a compassion done with sincerity. This is a measure of how much
our society confuses generosity and compassion. These two words do have a
commonality in the sense that they both imply sharing material wealth.
Compassion, however, is still compassion when performed with condescension,
while generosity cannot be performed with condescension and might be performed
with admiration. When the generous donors are socially higher placed from the
material wealth point of view, they implicitly acknowledge that there exists a
(social) dimension in which they are socially lower than the receiver.
Generosity requests respect from the donor to the receiver, while compassion
does not. Compassion requests love from the donor to the receiver while
generosity does not. Obviously enough, there exist charitable persons who
respect whom they give help. Obviously enough, there exist generous persons who
love whom they give help. These feelings are not at all opposed and I cannot
say that respect and generosity are morally superior to love and compassion. I
only claim that our present day society tends to confuse them and tends to give
supremacy to the social role of compassion. Inversely, the old Germanic
civilization would draw a neat line between the two, and would see respect and
generosity as much more important social features than love and compassion. My
claim rests on the fact that I did not find many traces of praise for
compassion in the poems and the sagas. On the contrary, generosity is praised
like an admirable trait by many skaldic poems and sagas.
Long life to freedom!
The now
classical shout “Freedom or Death!” is popular enough to stress the importance
of personal freedom. This was already true in the old Germanic world with,
however, two important restrictions.
Whene
studying rune Othala, I’ll insist on the primary importance of binding our
right to freedom to our ancestral heritage. Within this bond, need for freedom
becomes normal and refusing to not to exercise our freedom becomes sacrilegious
and ‘degusting’.
In
addition, in the principal religions, neither the Gods nor their Saints often
go down from their heights to protect human freedom. Conversely, in our
tradition, as well Ódhinn as Tyr are in charge of lowering the arrogance of the
powerful ones who set up tyrannical rules.
All things
considered, in the current civilization, only strength enforced freedom
violations are looked upon as unbearable. Any kind of gentle freedom curtailing
is complacently judged as morally acceptable and socially useful. Such are
commercial advertising and the ‘politically correct’ prevalence, especially
when applied to children. Conversely, in our tradition, these obstacles to
freedom without physical violence are not less immoral than the others ones,
and they sap the base of a respect-based society.
A gyno/macho society?
We lived so
much a long time under a strongly patriarchal mode that we regard as a feminist
victory what should be ordinary, such as that equal work brings equal wages,
that women can be in political position of responsibility, etc. As explained in
appendix 2 to this chapter, certain Germanic tribes lived under a matriarchal
mode, an unbearable fact for Tacitus. This world preserved, at least in its
myths, details that became stories, which tell a history where women power has
been substantial. This obviously shows in the everyday life attitude of these
women, such as described in the Edda poems and the sagas. But what seems even
more characteristic to me, are details which unexpectedly come forward in a
tale and which are not even underlined by the narrator. It thus happens some
heroines show a ‘typically male’ behavior and this is looked upon as ordinary.
Here are four typical examples.
In
Völsung’s Saga, two extremely significant details are given whereas Sigurdhr
wakes up and frees Brynhildr. She tells him that she has been punished by
Ódhinn because she caused the death of the king who was supposed to win the
battle. Ódhinn pricked her with a
svefnþorn (a sleeping thorn) and predicted to her that she will marry. But
she adds that, her answer has been to solemnly vow (she uttered a heitstrenging) to never marry any man
who would experience fear. Nobody seems to be surprised that a Valkyrie may
oppose a decision coming from Ódhinn himself. He is stronger than her, but she
will relentlessly do her best to rebel. In the sentence of the saga that
follows her speech, Sigurdhr who has just overcome nothing less than a dragon,
finds normal to ask her: “Kenn oss ráð til will stórra hluta.”
This means exactly: “Make me know the advice for hard fates,” which is often
translated by “Show me the way of the powerful things.” What is amazing is not
that Sigurdhr is enough intelligent to understand that he can receive useful
advice from her; I find amazing that he asks it at once as if this were
completely normal. That is, this request is an obvious one for him, not
something he should think about before asking: he knows that wizard women can
teach him ‘the way of the hard fates’.
Eirik the
red’s saga describes a battle between American natives (‘Indians’) and Vikings.
The Indians behave so strangely, evoking some kind of magis, that the Vikings
find it wiser to flee. Then, a woman named Freydís
insults her companions by claiming she is a better fighter than them. She
then tries to follow them and fails to do so because she is pregnant and this
slows her down. She then tries to follow them in their flight but she cannot
becauseshe is slowed down by her pregnacy. She is caught up by the Indians. She
then grabs the sword of a dead fighter and prepares her defense: “Hún tekr brjóstið upp úr serkinum og to
slettir á sverðið (she seizes one of her breast out of her shirt and
strikes it with the sword)”. This way of showing her courage is already
striking. What is even more incredible is that her behavior is looked upon as
ordinary for her companions: She is simply congratulated for her luck at staying
alive. A much later and convincing testimony is given by Olaus Magnus who, in
1555 (Historia de Gentibus
Septentrionalis, book V, ch. 28-32), describes warlike women of antiquity
and points out that, for these ‘Goth’ (Swedish) women, it is normal to be such
good fighters “for from the very cradle they were brought up to strict conduct
and soldiery training and … exchange a woman’s temperament for a virile
ruthlessness …” In this case, Olaus Magnus does not describe an anecdotic case
but a widespread social rule among the Swedes.
By a kind
of reversed example, the poem Thrymkvidha
would not have any meaning if a form of feminism did not appear in it.
Thórr is on his way to marry the giant Thrym who stole his hammer. Thórr bears
this humiliation because he knows that he will recover his hammer before the
marriage completion and that will enable him to crush his ‘bridegroom’ instead
of consecrating the marriage links, as it is usually done. This illustrates
that a hammer symbolizes a form of female power on her wedding, though on a
farcical mode.
In modern
publishing, I was almost surprised by the title of the collective work
published by Sarah Anderson and Karen Swenson, Cold Counsel, Women in Old
Norse Literature and Mythology (Routeledge, 2002). This title is drawn from
a saga where a hero says: “ok eru köld
kvenna ráð (and is cold women’s advice)”: When men falter, women will not
and remind the men of their duties.
It is
difficult to draw clear rules from these convincing but not very detailed
examples. It simply seems obvious that, in the old Germanic society, the
male/female relationships are of different nature from ours, and they exceed in
equality what the fieriest feminists request. Rune Fehu kindles female softness
but Uruz is not very far to recall that strength and violence are not a male
only prerogative.
The
End of our World and Morals
All runes
give us rules of life, intended for our personal and social moral laws, as we
just discussed it. Others, particularly Hagala and Naudiz, replace us within
our gigantic universe and give us back our true size, the one of tiny ants
insolated within a frozen vastness.
Appendix 1
below, while discussing the bonds between science and the religion, shows the
kind of agreement existing between Science and the religion of ancient
Scandinavians. It however concludes that this agreement leads to a kind of
pessimism reflecting the cold observations of the scientists.
In fact,
this pessimism is implicit in the description which our tradition provides of
the creation of the Universe and our World. I use here capital letters because
‘world’ and ‘universe’ are ambiguously used to describe as well the entire
Universe as our (relatively small) World. To fix the ideas, let us say that our
World is the solar system. The dominant religions do not clearly specify the
difference between the Universe and our World when they say that “God created
the World.” Conversely, our mythology has a very clear idea on this topic, as
you could see in chapter 2 of this book. The universe as a whole, the Universe,
existed at first as a kind of chaos. It included Ginnungagap, the ‘holy
vacuum’, the primary waters represented as nine rivers and, somewhere around
them, Niflhel and Muspell, extreme cold and extreme heat. This Universe slowly
evolved, Ginnungagap filling itself with layers of poisoned icecold frost.
Within this well-structured stack of frost layers, light and primal life were
created by their contact with sparks issued from Muspell. These forms of primal
life were the first giant, Ymir, and the cow Audhumla (aka Light), i.e. the
primitive forces that still stir change in our Universe. This cow licked the
ice which fetters the first God, Búri. At this stage, we are still inside a
Universe without World. Notice that our tradition does not honor especially
Búri although he is the very first God. Afterwards come in action the mediators
between the Universe and our World. Búri generates three grandsons with
giantesses. They are our first Gods and they are in charge to put order within
a chaotic Universe. As a part of performing this duty, they have to dismember
Ymir whose body will be used to create our World, the sea (his blood), the
clouds (his brain) etc. These three Gods seem to be at the origin of our twelve
Gods and twelve Goddesses. They are living beings who belong to our World and
who do not seem, in our mythology, so much concerned with the Universe outside
of our World, placed around the junction of trunk and the roots of the Tree of
the World (should I rather name it the tree of the Universe?). These Gods
create humankind and become the three ‘High ones’ who Gangleri consults and
whose answers constitute the substance of Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning. In
this, and although their names vary in the texts, they are integrated to the
twenty four divinities of our World. As claimed by Science, our World is finite
both in space, and in time. Similarly, our mythology carefully differentiates
the World and the Universe, and introduces the myth of Ragnarök – the end of
the World – as well describes a World limited in space and time. Our mythology
is no more ‘pessimistic’ than science is. On the one hand, I do not see in how
the idea of an infinite World is comforting for humankinds. On the other hand,
if the World is finite, it is then obvious that it sooner or later will end
and, with it, the Gods who live in it. This is called Ragnarök in our
mythology. The poetic description given by the poem Völuspá is a catastrophic
event during which the primitive forces of the Universe (the Giants) eliminate
the representatives of our World, the Gods. I acknowledge that Völuspá ends
with a few words about a new World that reappears. I suspect this part to be a
late appendage since it does not fit in our mythology. This rebirth would imply
that there will be always a World, and thus performs the trick of bringing back
with one hand the idea of an infinite World that had been removed by the other
hand. All these attempts appear to me a way to ‘provide opium to the people’,
that is false hopes of an infinite world. Our World will indeed disappear.
It is
stupid to seek consolation for an event that might happen one billion years
earlier or later. It is cowardice to look for loopholes to avoid facing our own
death and our World’s death. It is a shame to refuse carrying forward our
destiny and to ignore our own input, as tiny as it might be, to our World’s
destiny.