High seas. Our ship, the Gullfoss, a twelve-hundred-ton Icelandic vessel, is struggling hard against the sea. Silvery North Sea dolphins accompanied us for a while, jumping out of the waves. It was marvelous to see their glittering bodies shoot up out of the water and dive back in again. As I watched them, I had to think of Orpheus, the divine singer. Apollo’s favorite animal was the dolphin who carried him over the clouds. As an Argonaut, Orpheus traveled to the north and maybe even came from there. His mother was a mortal: Chione, “snowy.” The singer charmed even the animals with his music. He descended to the deepest part of hell to rescue his love Eurydice and bring her back to the light of day.
Now the night is no more. Like mother-of-pearl, the sea shines in the twilight between sunset and sunrise. Our flag is a blue swastika on a white ground. When I asked him on the bridge, the captain told me that we will soon reach the 60th parallel.
In the ninth century and later around the year AD 1000, when King Haraldur Harfagri and then king and saint Olaf Haraldsson began the suppression of the free pagan farmers of Norway, the country’s best immigrated to Iceland to recover their old freedoms and found a new homeland.
Olaf is one of the many saints of the Catholic Church who should no longer be praised. The celebrated skald Snorri Sturlusson (who was the author of the Younger Edda) reports in his Heimskringla: “Olaf severely punished everyone who did not abjure paganism; he drove some out of the land, others had their hands and feet crushed or their eyes poked out, and still others were hanged or slain in other ways.”1 So the flower of Norway’s farmers fled over the North Sea to Iceland, among them those who inherited their fathers’ beliefs in never being enslaved.
Thanks to the Icelandic Landnamabok (Book of Settlements), which was begun in the thirteenth century, just as Iceland was becoming Christian, we know how long the voyage took from Norway to Greenland and Iceland:
Experienced seamen say that it takes seven sailing days from Stad (the west point of Norway) to Horn in eastern Iceland. Sailing straight across from Bergen to Hvarf in Greenland, a traveler passes Iceland at the twelfth sea mile. One must sail so far north past the Shetland Islands that these are visible only in calm seas, and so far south of Iceland that birds and whales come from there. From Rekyanes, in southern Iceland, it is three sailing days until Jolduhlaup and a day trip from Kolbeinsey (a small island in the north of Iceland) to reach the Einod coast of Greenland.
Iceland’s first settler was named Ingolfur. The Landnamabok informs us:
Every summer, Ingolfur sailed out to Iceland, 6073 years after the the world began or 873 in the year of the Lord. When Ingolfur sighted Iceland, he threw overboard his carved wooden pillar. He would settle at the spot where the wooden beam washed ashore. Ingolfur landed at the place that is called Ingolfhoefdi. Vifil and Karli were Ingolfur’s serfs. They were sent out by him to find the pillar, which they did by the third winter. In spring, Ingolfur resettled at Reykjavik. Ingolfur’s son was Thorstein and his grandson was Thorkel Mond, who was a law-speaker. When Igolfur fell ill and lay dying, he had himself carried out into the sunshine and there commended himself to God, who made the sun. He led a life as pure as the most pious Christians could ever lead.
Another settler was named Thorolf. Because he sacrificed to Thor, he fled to Iceland to escape the violence of King Haraldur. As he arrived at Breidifjord, he threw overboard the beam with Thor’s carved image. He would settle where Thor landed. He fulfilled his promise and consecrated the land in the name of his god and friend, Thor. Thorolf sailed into the fjord, where he found Thor’s image washed ashore. Farther on, he and his shipmates landed in a bay. There he built a farm and a large temple, which he consecrated to Thor. The fjord was hardly settled. Thorolf put down roots there and called the entire area Thorsnes. He had such a strong and profound belief in the mountain that dominated the peninsula that he called it Helgafell, or “holy mountain,” and stipulated that nobody should look upon it who was unwashed. He made the mountain into a place for eternal peace; nothing should happen to anybody there, neither man nor beast. It was Thorolf’s belief that they should all die on this mountain. Later, as the Eyrbyggjasaga describes, when his son Thorstein drowned in the sea, he too went to the mountain. Fire burned and horns blew. The son should rest upon a wooden pillar.
Two other men, both incredibly strong and familiar with magic, threw their wooden pillars overboard when they sighted Iceland. These men were Lodmund and Bjolf. Their home was Thulunes in the Norwegian countryside north of the Hardangerfjord.
It is ten o’clock, and an evening tea is being served. At home, it is midnight and the stars are sparkling. Maybe the moon is casting Germany in silver. Here it is day and will stay so for weeks.
There is a storm and it is pouring rain. The waves are slamming against the portholes of the dining room. From a total of around seventy passengers, only a dozen or so have made it to tea. The cups and saucers are placed within wooden frames that are screwed tightly to the table, and still things are broken. The stewards move like trapeze artists in a circus. The ship experiences heavy going. In my cabin, the bed heaves up and down under me, and sometimes I feel like I am floating in the air. The ship cracks and groans at every joint.
I am reading. According to the sagas, the first colonists of Iceland were the Westmen, the Irish. In his account of 825, an Irish monk named Dicuil wrote that he had spoken with fellows who had resided on the extreme northern island of Thule of Pytheas. “Thirty years ago, some priests told me that on such an island, from the first of February to the first of August, and not only by the summer solstice but in the days before and after, the sun hid itself just behind a small hill so that it was not dark, even for the shortest time.”
So much for the account of Friar Dicuil. “It is fact that before the eighth century, Iceland was uninhabited. This speaks against those who seek Pytheas.” Thule in Iceland. How could the earlier population have died off? Given that the island was hermetically sealed from contact with the outside world, we must rule out epidemics. Mutual destruction through war can be ruled out as well because hostile natives did not exist. Even if we refuse to accept this reasoning and hold as possible that outside interference caused the extinction of the inhabitants of Thule during the age of Pytheas, some archaeological remains of their settlements should have been located. Yet no trace can be found that would contradict the evidence that the handing down of the sagas began with the arrival of the first residents of Iceland in AD 795. In addition, the supposed inhabitants of the Thule islands spoke more often of volcanoes and hot springs than of a sea of ice in the far north.
Couldn’t fire and lava have depopulated Iceland without a trace?
With more assurance, I read in another book, “According to Strabo (the celebrated Greek geographer of antiquity who lived in Rome at the beginning of the first century), Thule could be found six sailing days north from Britain. This can only mean Iceland.”
Where was Thule?
I am shutting off the lights. My cabin is on the inside of the ship, so it is always dark. The ventilator blows rough and cold sea air into the room. The ship’s sharp prow cuts into wave after wave, sure of its way despite the high seas. I can hear the noise of the water. I will put away my writing paper and books now and try to sleep. We have it easier than the Vikings.
Once there was a king of Thule who was faithful up to the time of his death. Where lies Thule, which has the sun to thank for its name? Was it in Iceland or in a Norwegian region called Thulunes at Hardangerfjord, where Lodmund and Bjolf brought their pillars to Iceland?
Thulunes means “island” or “peninsula.” Thulu . . .
After a rainy and ultimately quiet voyage, our brave ship entered the harbor of Iceland’s capital at around four o’clock in the morning. Heavy rain clouds hung over the mountains; we can only guess their elevation. The sea was ashen and the ladies were made up garishly. Despite the time, pale sightseers walked through the streets, and there were still many cars on the roads. The city is “beautiful!” Concrete walls, corrugated iron roofs and high-rise, American-style buildings . . .
The interior of our hotel is bright and surprisingly comfortable. For the first time in weeks, I could empty my suitcase and hang up my clothes. How I missed the throbbing of the ship’s engines, though, and the darkness of the night! Are there days when you can escape the light? I couldn’t sleep. I was overtired, and a phrase from Goethe echoed in my brain: “Now, you are at wit’s end.” Why did you seek companionship with the devil if you are so afraid? Why did you want to fly and yet you are still frightened? Are we pushing you, or are you pushing us? This is more or less the manner in which Mephistopheles spoke to Faust. My thoughts rush through my head and I leave the room. Once out of the hotel, I start to amble down the street.
Now the ugly city is sleeping. The Icelandic sun shines through the clouds, but only for a moment. There seems to be some life in the harbor, but otherwise, all is quiet. No tree rustles in the wind, no bird sings on a branch. The concrete walls are soaked with humidity. I am going to the harbor.
Bedlam is loose aboard our Gullfoss. Cranes are lifting from its hold boxes, barrels, sacks, bales, barbed wire, and iron bars. A little farther on, a fishing boat is docking. I look on as they shovel its thrashing and silvery cargo into baskets. A bearded fisherman, dressed in a water-resistant coat covered in fish scales, holds a fish high and calls over to me. Thinking that he wants to show me his catch, with my hands and feet I try to make clear to him that I don’t speak his language. He throws the fish in a basket and wipes his hands with a sack. Jumping over to the quay, he extends his hand and says: “Welcome to Iceland! I know that a guest from Germany arrived today. Welcome to our homeland!”
I was almost at my wit’s end. And why? I dreamed of a fairy-tale land and suddenly found myself in a country that isn’t at al! like a fairy tale. I was impressed by the loneliness of this deserted island on the edge of the polar sea—an island where night’s veil covers nothing, like eyelids that keep closed eyes from seeing what they do not wish to see. In a way, however, I was guilty: I wanted to “fly” like Lucifer, but I was dizzy. Yes, this was what made me so uncomfortable.
No matter where I went and stood and thought and saw, everything has drawn me here. Are Iceland’s shores the key to understanding the Viking song of sailing? Is Iceland Pytheas’s island of Thule—for which he risked his life? I dreamed of a fairy-tale land. Gruesome reality surrounds me. No trees, no forest, no flowers or field; just tasteless houses jumbled together between shop counters, clothes shops, newspaper offices, and movie houses. Everything gives the impression of being transitory, unripe—what must be but in reality is quite unwanted. Gold-rush towns must have looked like this place, the towns founded when men dug for Californian or Klondike gold and most of the time fell into the graves they had dug for themselves.
When I think about our Upper Hessian farmers—who, despite their difficulties in feeding themselves on twenty or thirty mornings (a common measure in Germany) of land (which is successful only if they choose their belongings as cautiously as possible), have never forgotten their dignity and love of beauty—and I contrast them with the capital city of the Vikings and skalds, a cheap imitation of the worst Europe has to offer, I am forced to look from the north to the south!
A pious Christian pilgrim to Palestine once told me that he had very contradictory feelings when he visited the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: Arguments and brawls were common, and you could count the days when murder was not reported. This journey to Iceland should be my pilgrimage. Yet disappointment speaks its language within me and I cannot silence it. Not that I am repulsed or disgusted—if I have communicated this, then I have exaggerated. No, simply put, I have nothing to do here. That’s it. What Reykjavik has to offer I could have found more easily in Marseille.
Today we went to Thingvellir, or Parliament Field, the location of Iceland’s world-famous Althingi, or Parliament. A great deal has been written about it, but I didn’t feel a holy shiver. I was shown around and thought of Germany, and not only because praise was written in German for Germany’s most illustrious communist leader in big red letters on the basalt walls. In the Walhall Inn, we had cake and coffee. Then we drove back to Reykjavik. The earth couldn’t even offer a tree, shrub, or bush, and what I believed to be a mountain range when we arrived in Reykjavik was revealed to be a heap of volcanic ash. The only life we saw was a rider on a pony; three mother sheep with their offspring; and a few patches of dry, yellowish green grass as well as a bit of moss with a few flowers. In the end, we drove to our hotel down a straight, asphalt road between ugly houses.
My room is comfortable and friendly, with a bed, a desk, a steel chair, a built-in closet, and on the wall five paintings by four Icelandic artists. In their frames I find deeply knotted, wonderfully green trees with large crowns. Do Iceland’s artists yearn for the south?
One of my traveling companions—twenty of us came to Iceland— told me that he is counting the days until he is back home. He promised to himself to hike through the Teutoburger Forest when he returns.
The Icelandic word for “commemoration” and “recollection” is minni!
Iceland’s artists yearn for the south! Yet when they’re south, they want to return home. Given the choice between the south or their barren and lonely island on the edge of the Arctic Circle, they would always choose their island. I posed the question and that was the answer I received from a painter. We had become friends. His wife is German. The painter, Mansi, and his only brother, Sveni, are the last surviving relations of the celebrated Icelandic poets Snorri Sturlusson and Egil Skallagrimson. Sveni is moving to Germany for an extended stay. He is twenty years old and still hasn’t seen a tree! Although there are a few trees and even forests on Iceland, so he explained, until now he had never managed to visit them, wherever they are. By contrast, he knows all the glaciers and deserts. Mansi will also visit Germany this year for a few months. We have arranged a small alpine expedition to scale Rose Garden Peak in the Tyrol. He has already climbed the Dolomites four times and painted them. He showed me the four paintings, which are not for sale. He must really love Rose Garden Peak! Mansi said that it was time for him to leave Reykjavik. He could understand that I was homesick or disappointed, but only I am to blame. Iceland is not to blame—and Reykjavik is not Iceland. I had everything to seek and find in his island homeland, but I must not forget to look to the Icelandic heavens.
Sunday: Jazz music penetrates through the thin wails of the hotel where we are resting for a few hours. Young people who made it here over the incomparably bad roads are dancing. The ladies are made up and are dressed in the fashion of a few years ago. The men are well dressed and sporty. The latest hits are played on a gramophone. Just played was a fox-trot that an organ grinder tortured passersby with every Wednesday morning—for months—in Berlin.
As I look out the window, the hot waves of Laugarvatn Lake slap against the shoreline as steam rises in the air. In the distance, the snow shimmers on the slopes of Iceland’s most famous volcano, Hekla.
In 1300 CE, Hekla broke open and spat “earth fire.” It was so dark that nobody knew if it was night or day. “At the same time, there was an eruption of lava on Sikiley that burned two dioceses.” (Sikiley is Sicily.) Three hundred years later, when Charles V reigned as emperor over half of Europe, an imperial courtier named Walter van Meer visited Iceland and saw how “the souls of the condemned were brought to Hekla on a dark ship that was steered by a Moor.” So, just like Sicily, Iceland had its own fire mountain—Bel! Both Hekla and Etna were supplied with the same firey brew—“earth fire”—from the forge of the divine blacksmith Hephaistos-Vulcanus, the spouse of Venus.
Dietrich von Bern, who was Thidrek in the Norwegian sagas, lived in Bel Mountain.
A few hours ago we visited the big geyser. We were forced to wait for hours until the waterspout shot up. In the end, to get the geyser to erupt, sacks of soap were unceremoniously dropped into it. Soon afterward, the earth began to shake and make noises until suddenly the enormous cooker expelled hissing steam and threw up its waterspout in strong puffs. The height of the cooking water was estimated to be about four meters at the highest.2 Then, suddenly, the earthly cooker was silent and empty. Here and there a cloud of steam puffed. The bowels of the earth still rumbled. Steam clouded the whole valley and the air smelled of sulfur, which you felt in your chest.
Laugarvatn 227
A geyser was frothing on a winter or midwinter night. The snowy shroud lay endlessly and profoundly over the land. The polar star cried. The steam clouds hissed and the earth rumbled. There was no living creature to be seen. The reflection of volcanic fire reflected somewhere. The colors of the northern lights rolled across the heavens. In Iceland, the lights of the stars like to wander in wintertime. Now it is summer and day.
I am spending a very bright night in a house that is an ugly concrete box. During the winter, it serves as a school. It is ten o’clock in the bright night of the summer solstice. I am in my room, writing. My companions are frolicking downstairs in a large swimming pool, which is fed by hot water from thermal springs. I also enjoyed a dip after a long and uncomfortable trip and I rather unhappily left the warm water to write these lines. My swimsuit, which hangs over the radiator to dry, smells of sulfur.
The sun is high in the northwest. The sky shines in bright colors. A light and hardly noticeable mist hangs over the Reykjadalsa Valley. There is not a tree to be seen. The bleakness of the patchy green fields makes the place look much more dead than it is.
I don’t think that I could live here willingly. If I were forced to do so, then every bone in my body would soon be yearning for the forests and pastures of my homeland.
Seven hundred years ago, the law-speaker and poet Snorri Sturlusson lived here in Reykholt. His warm bath encircled by a large wall is still here, just a few steps from the inn, past a row of miserable peat houses with smoke rising from their chimneys. Did Snorri, a contemporary of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, Peire Vidal, and Peire Cardinal, write the Younger Edda and the history of the Norwegian kings, Heimskringla, in such a hut? On his farmstead, did homesickness and the forgotten memory of his forefathers’ ways guide his quill during those long winter nights that were shrouded in icy cold and blackest dark and only now and then were brightened by the northern lights so far from this world?
We want to drive past the vicinity of Borg, where Snorri also lived. There he inhabited the same homestead where his ancestor Egil Skallagrimson lived two hundred years earlier, before some daring Viking seamen took him roving on the high seas to faraway lands.
Around the house, the storm is howling and bellowing. I am going down to my companions. It is summer solstice in the land of the Edda.
One hour later: The new day soon began as the sun moved closer and closer to the north. I had a look at the Steindorsstadaoxl [a place in Iceland]. The play of colors on the bleak stones was spectacular, and the endless expanse of the Langjokull Glacier just behind was both attractive and imposing. Wherever I looked, the hues wandered from a soft mauve to a glowing red, from the brightest white to the darkest blackgray. On the other side of the river, some dots moved in the yard of a farm that appeared on my map as Hoegindi. Through fieldstones, I could see Icelandic ponies moving slowly to the river. All was quiet at the farmhouse. I turned my telescope back toward the Steindorsstadaoxl. Its delicately rising slopes stopped midway where some rough basalt walls rose steeply. If my eyes didn’t deceive me, those black spots were entrances to caves. As I concentrated, I heard the familiar voice of a traveling companion asking if I wanted to start poking around caves again. When I answered yes, he proposed walking over to the mountain when all were asleep, because tonight was the solstice. Although the bed of the Reykjadalsa was wide, he knew that there was a ford in the vicinity. Before dinner, he had taken a short walk down to the river and saw where a farm wagon had crossed. We could also wade to the other side and climb up to the caves, because, as he admitted, he too believed there were caves located there. I didn’t hesitate, and we started off.
The storm was almost over. We went down to the river, took off our shoes and socks, rolled up our trousers, and started across in the water. It was so icy that I must have flown to the other side. A long hike to the Hoegindi farmstead made our blood rush. The mountain was less steep than it appeared. Finally, we reached our goal: the basalt wall—but we were mistaken. What we had taken for cave entrances were grottolike niches in the rock where brooks and rivulets ran in cascades down to the valley below. At the prettiest waterfall, we rested, facing the sun. Reykholt was below and looked like a toy. We marveled at the Eyjafjallajokull Glacier for a very long time. Who broke the silence first, I don’t remember, although a few hours had certainly passed.
“There is an Indian word, titthakara,” I said. “It once meant ‘he who finds a crossing’: those men who found their way across a river at a shallow place where others had searched in vain. A titthakara understood that a ford represents a transcendental passage over the darkest abyss that separates man from the ultimate truth, which he can learn only after his death. It is a crossing that poses an eternal question: Can we acquire
the knowledge of that dark abyss, of the hereafter, and cross in spirit to the other side of the river as a way to understand the meaning of our existence? There were people, spiritual pathfinders, who answered this question. Titthakara is a word in the ancient Pali language that could be easily translated as ‘pure one’ in Europe.”
I remember my companion’s words. I never interrupted him. As the sun rose gently between rose-colored clouds over the bleak heights and water ran down to the valley, at Reykholtsdalur, where the river widens out into a lake, swans flew into the sky singing. Or did the wind create a massive aeolic harp in the niches and clefts in the rock? There were songs in the night of the summer solstice. My companion, who was more Christian than I, said:
“Christianity is concerned above all with mankind. Either it condemns nature as nondivine or hands it over to nonspiritual ‘natural sciences’ or modern technology. By contrast, paganism was nature itself, with ‘real gods.’ All natural events were the result of the actions of genies or spirits. In that sense, paganism should be considered more pious, insightful, and Christian than the power-hungry and structurally rigid Roman Catholics or Protestants, who were more often than not inspired by Rome or Israel than by Christ himself.
“Ancient myths are inseparable from the power of gods. This spiritual association is part of a blood bond that gives a people their inner strength. For that reason, the Edda chants: ‘In the old times, as the eagles sang, holy water ran from the sacred mountains of Paradise.’ Yet every people—yes, every tribe—looked to its own, sharply different gods. They were inspired by the power inherent in them as a force for unity in the face of famine-induced migration and war, as well as in wisdom and law-speaking. In this way, the ‘gods’ were absolutely real, as language and people were.
“These popular and tribal gods were rooted in the countryside (the epicenter of popular belief), groves, and wells. Certain preferred places—such as caves and grottoes, for example—are indeed places that radiate subterranean activity, just as mountains and peaks are summits that reflect planetary and stellar activity. A mighty tree is a place where the water element and earth element rise up and meet the air and light elements that descend from above.
“In this period of prehistory, the divine did not reside in an unfathomable Paradise that was attainable only through faith. There was no mechanical legitimacy. Instead, nature was the all-powerful and ever-present countenance of divine reality. Above all other peoples, the Germanic tribes encountered their deepest spirituality in nature. Their gods were natural gods, their mysteries were the mysteries of nature. The Germanic soul was immersed in the sunny and innocent dream of the spiritual revelation of nature. That was the realm of Odin’s son Baldr, the darling of the gods and mankind. This part of history cannot be understood until we see where crucial gods were scattered about the country and steered toward central strong points. Neither individuals nor even tribes nor entire peoples (which means groups of mortal men who fought with one another or allied themselves with one another) could sway the course of ancient history. The inhabitants of the large, holy sites had to manifest their presence with their divinities in the populated countryside. At decisive moments, Germanic tribes undertook pilgrimages to their holy sites. They went to Irminsul or Teutoburger Forest or to visit Veleda, the soothsayer, at Lippe Spring. They believed that destiny was spoken more easily and more forcefully at these places by gifted persons—particularly women.
“That is why the destruction of sacred sites played such an important role in the devastation and domination of peoples. Only in these places could an opponent strike at the pounding heart. Although some isolated clans and families soldiered on, once they were robbed of their divinities and their relationship to them, they posed no military threat and were reduced to meaningless, nomadic peoples. This is why the Romans tried to influence Veleda with threats or gifts to sway the Germanic chieftains and why the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, like Varus and Germanicus before him, sent his armies into Teutoburger Forest, for this area, where the territories of so many large tribes met, was the spiritual heart of Germany.
“This mythological prehistory becomes understandable only when we recognize that our modern concept of the individual was nonexistent. Ancestral order dwelled in the deep subconscious, not in individual thoughts and desires. Nature is not only populated with gods, it is filled with the souls of the departed. Surrounded by the ghosts of
their ancestors, the Germans went into battle, protected by a strong belief in reincarnation that was consummated by the presence of the Valkyries. These pagan warriors recognized that immortality was part of a mighty, spiritual process of divine inspiration. They possessed the ability to admire fallen heroes as ‘spirits of light.’ Their lives were a spiritual drama in which the living and the departed were united. The mythical and mythological revealed a faraway past where mankind was devoted to the supremacy of a divine, natural order. Whether we like it or not, we are very far from all things mythical. The realm of modern man is natural science and technology, and any impartial, historical review of paganism’s gods is automatically disqualified as superstition. In this light, Christianity was in no way less intellectual than modern science. The mythological is inseparable from the revelation of the gods, which is gone forever. Modern man no longer lives in a cosmically inspired world; he thinks and lives in a world of inanimate things and bureaucratic abstractions.
“Myths have nothing to do with faith and creed. Because most faiths became organized religions when the physical presence of gods became nebulous abstractions, people have yearned for that missing soul in new faiths. If we accept the mythological world of the old gods and its roots in the legendary world of popular myths, any other analysis is illogical. The mythical world of the old gods is not the product of poetry. Far more, mankind is the product of the gods. First, the image of the gods is revealed in man. Woe to man if he wishes to see himself as a god! Then the gods, offended, leave him. His image takes precedence over that of mankind. Man’s desires and knowledge of what mankind can and should be, he learned from the gods. Gods are always at the forefront.
“If the mythological being was the product of fantasy, then he was the product of a divine fantasy that invaded the imaginations of mankind. He belonged to a fantasy world that operated its own cosmology and hymns within a strict structure of pictorial imagery just as it appears in nature, but accompanied by words: in plants and animals, the seasons, and the course of the planets. Thanks to the strength of his soul, he told the truth as the practical part of this divine concept. In this way, humanity remained open to the cosmos without reticence.
“The source of religion is celestial, not human. First, a god must enlighten the dreams of mankind. Ancient religions were a fusion between the godly and mankind; they were a way to organize physical and spiritual existence and join it with the divine. The ‘legendary’ man was nourished from the cosmos and, like an embryo, formed in the mother’s womb. As in all religions, divine revelation is not madness but the most authentic of all realities. It forged a people from the horde.
“Early cultures did not live in an indifferent world of things. Rather, they were brimming with significance and communicative sanctity. Human life won priestly, consecrated importance. As every divine manifestation touched the human soul, extraordinary creativity was unleashed. This encouraged man to speak about the immensity that had possessed him, and the most noble of these languages was culture. Yet culture as a divine language has become almost extinct, because it has been reduced to the all-too-human considerations of profitable usefulness. We have corrupted the noblest manifestation of ancient times through our self-centric lifestyle. Instead of measuring ourselves against the greatness of the past, we measure the past against ourselves.
“Culture is a service to our world, and cultural activity in the ancient world could be likened to a pair of arms outstretched to the heavens. The individual carried in him like a seed what man can give and take from the world. He stood between heaven and earth, funneling what was underneath to the world above and what was above to the world underneath. Children frolicking around a tree in a meadow are already a cultural event. They do not try to understand the world with their intellect; instead, they feel it in their breast as they breathe and their heart throbs. On a bright spring day, children bring floating elements and elementary spirits in consonance with a round dance. Culture is neither abstract symbols nor organized commemorations. It is the overwhelming presence of the powers of the earth. The world and God are no longer theories. Instead, they are served with pure emotion. The highest and most secretive pinnacle of culture is, of course, sacrifice. Any selfish intentions should be seen as corruption. An authentic sacrifice consummates human activity, because the cosmic order of the world is reinforced in the act. The ‘victim’ is dominated not by selfish greed or the cowardly desire to obtain the favor of the powerful, but rather by an inner richness that he wishes to spend for others in a life—spending revelation.
“As it is, human life is intrinsically a huge sacrificial rite in which all the elements, animals, and gods take part. A person not only receives, but also gives. A good portion of health and spiritual order lies in his ritual activity. Yes, even the gods favored these people who were willing to become part of the creative force through their selfless actions. Also, the sun sacrifices its rays when they descend to the earth. Water evaporation, the life of the plants and their colors, fruits, and aromas are all the sacrificial answer of the earth to the sacrifice of the heavens.
“Ancient sacrifice had no purpose other than the act itself. Nothing should happen or should be desired or should be influenced by magic. Its reality was within the act itself. Through it, a person announced his fusion with the powers and creatures of the world. That creatures in nature nourish themselves with one another is an expression of this generosity and reception; there is nothing selfish in it—rather, it is an act that gives all and receives everything.
“The profound bond that united the ancient Germans and the powers of nature was formed by the diversity of their sacrifices and how these acts contributed to maintaining their society. In this way, lighting torches, singing hymns and sayings, and sacrificing plants and animals pleased the spirits of the springs and trees. Hanging flowers, colorful bands, and fruits from branches or singing and dancing around them were just some of the ways these people chose to honor the living energy of trees. In ancient times, even houses were built around the trunks of living trees in order that people might grow with these saplings and give strength to and take strength from them.
“Celestially inspired nature became a bond that held mankind in a society. According to Tacitus, the Germans refused to honor their gods with humanlike pictures or idols inside closed rooms because this was incompatible with the gods’ greatness. With their prayers, they dedicated groves and forests to their deities and they piously invoked the gods’ names at every mysterious event. To undermine the old spiritual system of living with nature, the first Christians destroyed these forests and built churches with the wood. They taught the pagans to recognize only dead wood in the trees and prepared the way for modern man’s ruthlessness and hostility toward nature, so that man now sees in his surroundings only working material for his purposes and pleasure.
“Although mythology remains in a sort of gray prehistory, it does not belong to the past. It is the ongoing and hidden strength of history, which reflects in events what mythology has already symbolized. Although these mythical powers remain hidden in prehistory, they are ridiculed as such in the new order. Make no mistake, however: They inhabit the dark corners of the subconscious, where their effect can still be felt. It is exactly there that myths, slandered as unreal and unhistori-cal, retain their metaphysical reality.
“We must demand an effort from honest historians to help us surmount the ever-present scourge of materialism. As reality becomes more mythical, it remains more real in both space and time, yet eventually it overcomes space and time. The labor is over; it no longer possesses any ability to reproduce. Only the powers of mythology alone could do this. As Schiller once said, ‘What was never and nowhere can never grow old.’ As a historical personality becomes greater than our powers of expression, he becomes more mythical.
“The transition from the legendary to human historical reality created tradition and living heroes. These gods appear in human form or as simple people who provoked the disgust of the other gods. They appear as founders of cities or as law-speakers in the dawn of human history, and are identifiable with particular historical events that guided the high priests and kings of ancient history.
“In the realm of legends, the nonhistorical and suprahistorical invade the historical. Yet legends do not reveal what conventional historians are used to. From the historian’s point of view, legends represent a fantastic distortion that demands reinterpretation. Such tales may be more true than modern historical works because the popular soul speaks out with special strength in the construction of a legend. These tales, which were never intended to recount actual events, told the story of human destinies. All historians should take very seriously the legends that surround Arminius, Theodoric, and Alexander.
“If we understand the sign of the times properly, we are no longer interested in the old gods and other heroes because certain documents have been discovered that declare as imaginary the events that refer to them. Yet if we want to explore the deeper meaning of our past, we are only beginning to understand the destructive power of the forces of
modernity and that this knowledge is more precious than ever.
“The twilight of the gods was at the same time the dissolution ol tribal loyalty to the gods, heroes, and the almighty forces of nature. Only cosmic considerations of ancestral blood can free mankind. The twilight of the blood is the same as the twilight of the gods. As blood loses its spiritual significance, it dries, and likewise the ancestors go silent. Then begins the struggle of everybody against everyone. In place of mythical divine wisdom, a ritual mechanical intellect has assumed its place in the ‘me’-addicted world of things. Individual freedom is bought with death and burial. These human realities are reflected in the cosmos as the destruction of the gods of light by dark powers.
“In a moving passage, the Edda mirrors this: Fear of the world afflicts the gods as they feel themselves threatened by Baldr’s death, because he more than any other being was the embodiment of nature.
“The mythical world of prehistory also saw its destruction in the final battle of the gods. Thor fought with Midgardschlange: He overcame and killed her but nine paces from there, and then he was killed by her poison. Odin was eaten by a wolf, a revenge as great as the distance between heaven and earth. We should remember that Rome’s mother was a she-wolf.
“Alsbald managed the turnaround: Odin’s son, the silent Widar, killed the wolf in yet another act of revenge. As it says in the Edda, Baldr returned and announced to mankind the divine mystery of earth and the cosmos: ‘On Gimil’s heights, I saw a room brighter than the sun and decked in gold. Worthy lords must live there and enjoy its pleasures without end. There rides the powerful in instance of the Gods, the strong from above who steer everything. He decides the field of battle, and speaks the eternal rules.’
“What is that strength from above that conquers the power of death and hatred? Who can reawaken a very lonely mankind after the twilight of the gods and his ‘me’-addiction, so that we can rebuild society in selfless service, taking care not to destroy freedom, but to heal it?”
I gave my companion my hand, and I thought that every strength from above is brought by the sun whose children we all are. In the New Testament, he is called Apollyon, and he suffered injustice.
Singing traveled through the air of the summer solstice in Iceland.
Was it sacred music that announced Baldr’s death and return? As this dead god was consumed by the flames of the firethorn, his father, Odin, whispered in his ear the greatest wisdom. This same word could have come from Lucifer or Lohengrin or Hellias. These swan knights had a special, happy message to bring to the Christian people.
As we returned to Reykholt, I picked up a stone. I will take it home to join the piece of Delphi temple frieze and that stone that I dug from the ruins of Montsegur.
[Skald Snorri Sturlusson (1179-1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He is author of the "Younger Edda. The Heimskringla is a compilation of Scandinavian history. —Trans.]
[About thirteen feet. —Ed.]