Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Viking - odins eye

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Viking - odins eye

    Hello
    anybody out there
    did odin sacrifice his left or right eye to, most images and artifacts show his left eye?

  • #2
    I'm not knowledgeable on Norse lore. That being said they were one heck of a culture. Really advanced in many aspects...
    The chase is better than the catch...
    I'm Frank and I'm from the flatlands of N'Eastern Illinois...

    Comment


    • #3
      The early Norse texts don’t actually specify which eye he sacrificed and there are Odin depictions from all periods with either left or right eye missing. The most definitive sources would be the Eddas but neither the Elder Edda, nor the Snorri Edda refer to anything more than “an eye”.

      Padraic Colum's 1920 “retelling” of the Eddas and the Volsung Saga, published as “The Children of Odin” is more specific with the line: “He will ask thy right eye as a price, O Odin,” said Vafthrudner. But there is no historical precedent for this embellishment. Colum seems to have made it up and later authors took it as authoritative, even though his book was essentially a collection of stories for young adults.

      The historical mythological symbolism of right versus left eye suggest it’s more probable that the left eye was sacrificed. Also, if he plucked it out himself as some sources say (although not the Eddas) then right hand plucking left eye would seem more probable. As you say, that's the most usual depiction.

      I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

      Comment


      • #4
        A little more for you to chew on. The earliest known representation that has possible associations to Odin was recovered from peat deposits on the North bank of the Thames to the East of London in 1922 and is known as the “Dagenham idol” after the nearest town to where it was found. It’s 18 inches high, carved from pinewood and has been carbon-dated to between 2459 - 2110 BC. Note that the left eye is missing/deliberately damaged.


        Click image for larger version

Name:	Dagenham idol.jpg
Views:	197
Size:	55.6 KB
ID:	241696
        [Picture from the ‘insearchofholywellsandhealingsprings’ website]

        Although this idol predates any known association to Norse mythology, it has distinct parallels to the “Broddenbjerg idol” found in a peat bog near Viborg, Denmark which is the earliest known Norse representation that might have associations to Odin. That one is made of oak, has been dated to approximately 535–520 BCE and has a left eye which is much more fully defined than the right… the latter being represented by a linear cut into the wood. In both cases, I'm referring to left or right as possessions of the figure itself, rather than as you are looking at it.



        Click image for larger version

Name:	Broddenbjerg idol.jpg
Views:	80
Size:	37.3 KB
ID:	241697
        [Picture by Stefano Bolognini – from Wikipedia; Creative Commons license]

        The Broddenbjerg idol has an erect phallus, although it’s formed from an original feature of the branch used to make the effigy. The Dagenham idol has a hole in the crotch which most likely held a similar erect phallic peg that is now lost. There are several Neolithic and later idols which also have this feature. Interestingly, the English example is made from Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) which grew in Scotland but not England at the time. It may well have come another area of Northern Europe where the cold climate and poor soil suits it.

        Both idols were found in possible association with food offerings. At Dagenham, there was a deer skeleton in close association that may represent a sacrifice and at Broddenbjerg the idol was next to an altar-like arrangement with corn-grinding stones and clay vessels that may have contained offerings.

        In neither case can we say that these are “Odin figures”. More likely they’re an indication that the Norse legends of Odin were based on much earlier Germanic pagan traditions of god/goddess worship which are known to overlap with those of the later Norse. These kinds of wooden figurines have also been found in male/female pairs, may have fertility associations and are sometimes known as “bog guardians” or “forest guardians”. They’re often found in an upright position and are sometimes quite tall, so may originate from belief in the “world pillar” (as seen in the Saxon Irminsul and the Old Norse Yggdrasill) and thus derive from an archaic tree cult.

        The Dagenham idol has an interesting recent history. While on display at Colchester Castle Museum in the UK in November 2009 it was stolen. Bizarrely, it was recovered in January 2011 by the San Francisco Police. They were called to investigate a report of “drunk and disorderly” by a resident of Clement St where there was a man chanting loudly and dancing naked around a six-foot replica of the idol that he had made in his backyard with a chainsaw. The man’s wife allowed officers onto the property where they found Nigel Bunt, a US Citizen born in the town of Dagenham who pleaded with the arresting officers to help him “harness the power of the Idol” and told them they would “perish if the warnings of the Idol were ignored”. Bunt was taken into custody to undergo psychiatric evaluation. His wife gave the officers the original idol and Bunt confessed to having stolen it during a UK visit to his home-town. He claimed that the idol:

        “… spoke to me, as soon as I saw it I felt its power, its hard to describe, I just suddenly felt Neolithic and I knew I had to have it … When I came back to San Francisco strange things began to happen, I soon felt my life spinning out of control and I knew it was the power of the Idol, I thought I could speak to it and it would help me but the more I spoke to it the worse things got… My construction business really took off when I got back, despite the recession I started making more money than ever, while everyone else was struggling I was having success, it had to be the power of the Idol… Then all of a sudden everything turned upside down, my cat died and then my favourite cactus, and then I got a visit from the IRS and things really went downhill, I started drinking heavily and gambling and I squandered all the money I had made, Dawn threatened to leave me, worst of all, my football team started losing every game”.

        The Colchester Museum curator was reunited with the item after the De Young Museum in San Francisco identified it from an Interpol report on stolen antiquities. He observed:

        “Some very odd and unpleasant things have happened to people who have dealt with the Idol over the centuries, it is said to be cursed”.


        I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

        Comment


        • #5
          Interesting.
          South Dakota

          Comment

          Working...
          X