Sources, Volume V
The Northern Inheritance
How to weigh the evidence for this room, where to read the texts, and what survives for each of its five bays.
How to read the evidence
Evidence for the Norse, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Finnic, Hungarian, and Albanian traditions of northern and eastern Europe should be read in a hierarchy: dated and provenanced primary objects first; critically edited literary or ritual texts second; ancient reception and interpretation third; modern synthesis last.
Read the texts online
- Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages
- Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT), University College Cork
- Irish Sagas Online, University College Cork
Further reading
- Davidson, H. R. Ellis. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Penguin, 1964.
- Faulkes, Anthony, trans. Edda. Everyman, 1987.
- Larrington, Carolyne, trans. The Poetic Edda. Revised edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford University Press, 2001.
- Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Translated by Angela Hall. D. S. Brewer, 1993.
- Davies, Sioned, trans. The Mabinogion. Oxford University Press, 2007.
- Koch, John T., ed. Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. 5 vols. ABC-CLIO, 2006.
- Mac Cana, Proinsias. Celtic Mythology. Hamlyn, 1970.
- Ivanits, Linda J. Russian Folk Belief. M. E. Sharpe, 1989.
- Bosley, Keith, trans. The Kalevala. Oxford University Press, 1989.
The Norse and Germanic Gods
What survives
- Vernacular manuscripts
- Eddic poetry, sagas, Irish and Welsh narratives, chronicles, and songs require manuscript date and literary genre to remain visible.
- Classical and missionary observers
- External witnesses can preserve early names and rites but often misunderstand or polemicize against them.
- Inscriptions and place-names
- Runes, votives, theonyms, and sacred topography may attest cult independently of later story.
- Archaeology
- Burials, deposits, iconography, halls, cult buildings, and landscape practice constrain literary reconstruction.
- Folklore and ethnography
- Late evidence may preserve durable patterns, but continuity across a millennium must be argued rather than assumed.
- Comparative linguistics
- Cognate names and formulas are powerful evidence when sound laws and chronology are explicit; free resemblance is not.
- Eddic poetry
- Anonymous poems of different ages preserved in medieval manuscripts; poem-by-poem dating matters.
- Snorri’s Edda
- A Christian-era poetics handbook using myth to explain skaldic language.
- Runes, place-names, and archaeology
- Independent checks on divine names, cult geography, and ritual practice.
Entry by entry (12)
- Yggdrasil §1.1 The principal sources are the Poetic Edda's Völuspá (the Seeress's Prophecy) and Grímnismál (the Lay of Grimnir), and Snorri's Prose Edda (Gylfaginning chapters 15–16).
- Freyja §1.5 The principal sources are throughout the Poetic Edda (Lokasenna, Hyndluljóð, etc.) and Snorri's Prose Edda.
- Týr §1.9 The Fenrir-binding is in Gylfaginning 34.
- Njord §1.12 Snorri's Gylfaginning 23 and Skáldskaparmál; the Skadi-marriage narrative is in Skáldskaparmál 1.
- Vidar §1.16 Gylfaginning 29, 51 (the Ragnarök prophecy); Vafþrúðnismál 51, 53.
- Ullr §1.20 The place-name evidence (collected by Magnus Olsen and others in the early 20th century) is the strongest evidence for an originally substantial Ullr-cult in Sweden; the Eddic record's relative paucity may reflect the geographical bias of the Icelandic source-tradition.
- Fenrir §1.24 Gylfaginning 34, 51; Lokasenna 39 (the Týr-and-Fenrir reference); Völuspá 53.
- Norns §1.28 Gylfaginning 15 (the three principal Norns); Völuspá 20; Hávamál 84; Sigrdrífumál 17.
- Vili And Vé §1.32 Vili and Vé appear in Gylfaginning chapters 6 and 9, in Vǫluspá 17-18 (where the three creators of humankind are named Odin, Hœnir, and Lóðurr — a different triad, raising the unresolved question whether Vili and Vé are alternative names for Hœnir and Lóðurr or whether the two triads are simply variant traditions), in Lokasenna 26 (Loki's taunt about Frigg), and in Snorri's Heimskringla (Ynglinga saga 3, the Frigg episode).
- Mimir §1.35 Mímir appears in Vǫluspá 28 (Odin's eye in the well), Sigrdrífumál 14 (the head and its counsel), Snorri's Gylfaginning chapter 15 and Ynglinga saga chapter 4 (the war and the beheading), and Hávamál 140 ("the wise words I learned from the famous son of Bölthorn, Bestla's father" — possibly identifying Mímir as Odin's maternal uncle).
- Wayland §1.39 Wayland's story is told in the Eddic poem Vǫlundarkviða, one of the heroic poems of the Codex Regius, probably composed in the tenth century.
- Grendel And Grendel'S §1.43 Grendel and his mother are described in Beowulf, lines 86-1798 — substantially the entire first half of the great Old English poem, composed probably in the eighth century.
The Celtic Mythologies
What survives
- Vernacular manuscripts
- Eddic poetry, sagas, Irish and Welsh narratives, chronicles, and songs require manuscript date and literary genre to remain visible.
- Classical and missionary observers
- External witnesses can preserve early names and rites but often misunderstand or polemicize against them.
- Inscriptions and place-names
- Runes, votives, theonyms, and sacred topography may attest cult independently of later story.
- Archaeology
- Burials, deposits, iconography, halls, cult buildings, and landscape practice constrain literary reconstruction.
- Folklore and ethnography
- Late evidence may preserve durable patterns, but continuity across a millennium must be argued rather than assumed.
- Comparative linguistics
- Cognate names and formulas are powerful evidence when sound laws and chronology are explicit; free resemblance is not.
- Irish manuscript corpora
- Recensions, scribal setting, and Christian learned framing must be identified.
- Welsh narrative manuscripts
- The White Book and Red Book preserve medieval literature, not an untouched pagan canon.
- Continental inscriptions
- The firmest evidence for many Gaulish deities, often without accompanying myth.
Entry by entry (12)
- Danu §2.1 The principal sources for Danu/Anu in the Irish tradition are the Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of Invasions, 11th c.) and Cormac's Glossary (10th c.), where Anu is glossed as "mother of the gods of Ireland." The Indo-European reconstruction is in Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon (1995), and in standard handbooks of Indo-European religion.
- Morrígan §2.4 The principal sources are the Ulster Cycle (especially the Táin Bó Cúailnge) and Cath Maige Tuired.
- Manannán Mac Lir §2.7 Manannán appears across the Mythological, Ulster, and Fenian Cycles; Serglige Con Culainn is one of the principal extended treatments.
- Fionn Mac Cumhaill §2.10 Macpherson's Ossian (1760, 1762, 1765) is the principal source for the modern Romantic reception; the controversy is treated in Stafford, The Sublime Savage (1988).
- Bran The Blessed §2.13 Branwen ferch Llŷr (Second Branch of the Mabinogi).
- Belenos §2.16 Belenos is attested in over 50 inscriptions, mostly from Aquileia and the eastern Alps, plus a few from Britain.
- Esus §2.19 Lucan, Pharsalia 1.444; Pillar of the Boatmen (Paris, 1st c. CE, now in the Cluny Museum); the Trier relief.
- Ceridwen §2.22 The story of Ceridwen and Gwion Bach / Taliesin is preserved in the prose Hanes Taliesin ("Story of Taliesin"), which survives in late manuscripts (the earliest from the sixteenth century) but is clearly older.
- Airmed §2.25 Airmed's herbs are described briefly in Cath Maige Tuired (the same saga as her father's).
- Medb §2.28 Medb is the central figure of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, the great prose epic of the Ulster Cycle, surviving in two main recensions (the Lebor na hUidre version of c. 1100 and the Book of Leinster version of c. 1150) that diverge significantly.
- Taliesin §2.31 The Hanes Taliesin (the prose legendary biography) is preserved in late manuscripts but reflects much earlier traditions; the Book of Taliesin itself, c. 1325, contains poems of widely varying date, from Marwnad Owain (sixth century, perhaps actually by the historical Taliesin) to fourteenth-century compositions.
- Nantosuelta And Sucellus §2.34 The pair appears together on the Sarrebourg relief, on the Metz Sucellus relief, on the great altar from Speyer, and on numerous smaller monuments.
The Slavic Gods and Spirits
What survives
- Vernacular manuscripts
- Eddic poetry, sagas, Irish and Welsh narratives, chronicles, and songs require manuscript date and literary genre to remain visible.
- Classical and missionary observers
- External witnesses can preserve early names and rites but often misunderstand or polemicize against them.
- Inscriptions and place-names
- Runes, votives, theonyms, and sacred topography may attest cult independently of later story.
- Archaeology
- Burials, deposits, iconography, halls, cult buildings, and landscape practice constrain literary reconstruction.
- Folklore and ethnography
- Late evidence may preserve durable patterns, but continuity across a millennium must be argued rather than assumed.
- Comparative linguistics
- Cognate names and formulas are powerful evidence when sound laws and chronology are explicit; free resemblance is not.
- Primary Chronicle
- Central but late and politically framed witness to the 980 Kyiv cult.
- Missionary and clerical texts
- Often preserve practice while condemning or simplifying it.
- Folklore and place-names
- Useful only with regional dating and explicit arguments for continuity.
Entry by entry (12)
- Perun §3.1 The principal source is the Russian Primary Chronicle (entry for the year 980 in the conventional dating).
- Svarog §3.3 The principal source is the Hypatian Chronicle's gloss (12th c.).
- Stribog §3.5 The principal sources are the Primary Chronicle (980) and the Tale of Igor's Campaign.
- Lada §3.7 The medieval Polish sources are the Statuta provincialia of Mikołaj Trąba (1420) and a sermon of c. 1410.
- Svetovid §3.9 The principal source is Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum 14.39, the most extensive ancient description of any Slavic temple-cult.
- Jarilo §3.11 The folk-tradition is collected in Afanasyev's Russian Folk Tales and Beliefs (1855–1869) and in subsequent ethnographic work.
- Rusalka §3.14 The folkloric tradition is in Afanasyev (1855–1863) and the modern ethnographic literature; Linda Ivanits (1989) provides English-language synthesis.
- Rod §3.16 Rod is mentioned in the Slovo nekoego Khristoljubtsa ("Sermon of a Lover of Christ") and other Russian Orthodox polemical texts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, where the cult is attacked.
- The Zoryas §3.18 The Zoryas were treated extensively by Neil Gaiman in American Gods (2001), which is the source through which most English-speaking readers have encountered them; Gaiman's treatment is largely faithful to the Slavic sources.
- Simargl §3.20 Simargl is named in the Primary Chronicle.
- Koschei §3.22 Koschei is widespread in Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian folktales; the standard examples are in Afanasyev's Russian Fairy Tales.
- Bannik And Polevik §3.24 Linda Ivanits's Russian Folk Belief is again the standard English-language source.
The Baltic Pantheon
What survives
- Vernacular manuscripts
- Eddic poetry, sagas, Irish and Welsh narratives, chronicles, and songs require manuscript date and literary genre to remain visible.
- Classical and missionary observers
- External witnesses can preserve early names and rites but often misunderstand or polemicize against them.
- Inscriptions and place-names
- Runes, votives, theonyms, and sacred topography may attest cult independently of later story.
- Archaeology
- Burials, deposits, iconography, halls, cult buildings, and landscape practice constrain literary reconstruction.
- Folklore and ethnography
- Late evidence may preserve durable patterns, but continuity across a millennium must be argued rather than assumed.
- Comparative linguistics
- Cognate names and formulas are powerful evidence when sound laws and chronology are explicit; free resemblance is not.
- Chronicles
- Date, authorial agenda, and translation of local terms require close control.
- Dainos and folk songs
- Poetic relationships are primary evidence for recorded performance, with time depth argued separately.
- Archaeology and sacred landscape
- Deposits, groves, waters, and settlement context test literary reconstruction.
Entry by entry (12)
- Dievas §4.1 The principal sources are the Latvian dainas (over a million collected; the standard scholarly edition is the Krišjānis Barons collection of 1894–1915, six volumes); the medieval Latin chronicles; the modern reconstruction has been conducted principally by Marija Gimbutas (in her capacity as a Lithuanian-American scholar of her own people's religion, distinct from her broader and more controversial Old European theses) and by Algirdas Greimas (Of Gods and Men, 1979/1992).
- Perkūnas §4.2 The principal sources are the Latvian dainas (where Pērkons appears extensively); the medieval chronicles (Henry of Livonia 7.5, etc.); the Jesuit missionary reports (Jan Łasicki, De diis Samogitarum, 1582).
- Saulė §4.3 The principal sources are the Latvian dainas (where Saule appears in thousands of songs); the Lithuanian folk-tradition; Jesuit missionary reports.
- Mėnuo §4.4 The principal sources are the Latvian dainas; folk-tradition.
- Aušrinė §4.5 The principal sources are the dainas and the Lithuanian folk-tradition.
- Laima §4.6 The principal sources are the Latvian dainas; Lithuanian folk-tradition.
- Žemyna §4.7 The principal sources are the dainas; Jesuit missionary reports (Jan Łasicki, 1582); modern ethnographic record.
- Velnias §4.8 The principal sources are folk-tradition; Greimas, Of Gods and Men (1992); the historical-comparative reconstruction has been most systematically pursued by Vladimir Toporov and his successors.
- Auseklis §4.9 Auseklis is documented chiefly in the Latvju Dainas, the great corpus of Latvian folk songs collected by Krišjānis Barons in the late nineteenth century (published 1894-1915 in six volumes, comprising over 200,000 four-line songs).
- Māra §4.10 Māra is one of the central figures of Latvian folk religion, documented in the dainas (numerous songs to Māra in various aspects) and in ethnographic collections from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
- Jumis §4.11 Jumis is documented in nineteenth-century Latvian ethnographic collections, particularly those of Otto Brüning and August Bielenstein.
- Jānis §4.12 He combined his collected materials into a connected poem that he presented as the Finnic national epic; the work is genuinely composed of authentic folk-materials, but Lönnrot's editorial work was substantial, and the connected narrative of the published Kalevala is more his arrangement than any pre-existing single oral text.
The Finnic, Hungarian and Albanian Traditions
What survives
- Vernacular manuscripts
- Eddic poetry, sagas, Irish and Welsh narratives, chronicles, and songs require manuscript date and literary genre to remain visible.
- Classical and missionary observers
- External witnesses can preserve early names and rites but often misunderstand or polemicize against them.
- Inscriptions and place-names
- Runes, votives, theonyms, and sacred topography may attest cult independently of later story.
- Archaeology
- Burials, deposits, iconography, halls, cult buildings, and landscape practice constrain literary reconstruction.
- Folklore and ethnography
- Late evidence may preserve durable patterns, but continuity across a millennium must be argued rather than assumed.
- Comparative linguistics
- Cognate names and formulas are powerful evidence when sound laws and chronology are explicit; free resemblance is not.
- Finnic runo-song archives
- Performance variants and collector intervention are as important as the Kalevala synthesis.
- Hungarian chronicles and ethnography
- Later sources require linguistic and archaeological corroboration.
- Albanian folklore and comparative linguistics
- Sparse evidence demands special restraint against manufacturing a complete ancient pantheon.
Entry by entry (12)
- Ilmatar §5.1 The principal source is the Kalevala, Canto 1; the world-egg cosmogony is widespread (parallels in Greek Orphic, Vedic Hindu, Egyptian, and Polynesian traditions) and represents one of the most ancient mythological motifs.
- Väinämöinen §5.3 Lönnrot's Kalevala is the principal source.
- Ahti §5.4 The principal source is the Kalevala (where Ahti appears principally as a sea-figure) and the collected fisherman's charms in the various ethnographic collections.
- Ilmarinen §5.6 The principal source is the Kalevala.
- Tapio §5.7 The principal sources are the Kalevala and the great body of Finnish hunter's charms collected ethnographically.
- Lemminkäinen §5.9 The principal source is the Kalevala, Cantos 14–15.
- Isten §5.10 The principal sources are linguistic (the survival of Isten as the standard word for God) and the somewhat-later medieval Hungarian texts (the Gesta Hungarorum of Anonymus, c. 1200, and the Chronicle of Simon of Kéza, c. 1283, both written in Latin and giving stylized accounts of the Magyars' pre-conversion religion).
- Zojz §5.12 The principal sources are the modern ethnographic collections; the linguistic argument is treated in Hamp, "Albanian and Messapic" (1957) and in various Indo-European-comparative studies.
- E Bukura E Dheut §5.13 The principal sources are the Albanian folk-tale collections, especially Auguste Dozon's Contes albanais (1881) and the various 20th-century gatherings.
- Hiisi §5.15 Matti Kuusi's Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (1977, English edition 1977) is a useful sourcebook.
- Kullervo §5.16 Kullervo's cycle is in the Kalevala, Runos 31-36.
- Zojz §5.18 The principal sources are the modern ethnographic collections; the linguistic argument is treated in Hamp, "Albanian and Messapic" (1957) and in various Indo-European-comparative studies.