Thursday, July 28, 2016

THE TERRIBLE ONE'S HORSE: CHAPTER 5



BEAR-SHIRTS AND WOLF-COATS: ODIN’S SACRED WARRIORS AS SOLAR AND LUNAR FRATERNITIES?

Part I: The Bear and the Sun

For those who are looking for a good recent study of shapeshifting in Norse literature, and its concomitant the berserksgangr, I would kindly refer you to the following two papers:

Stephan Grundy, "Shapeshifting and Berserkergang", in Translation, Transformation, and Transubstantiation, ed. Carol Poster and Richard Utz (Evanston: IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), pp. 104–22.

Davidson, Hilda R. E. "Shape-Changing in Old Norse Sagas." In Animals in Folklore, Ed. Joshua R. Porter and William M. S. Russell. Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978, pp. 126–42.

My only caveat to these excellent articles would that they place an over-reliance on a somewhat arbitrary division of the shapeshifting process into two general types.  Here, quoting from Grundy:

“…the changing of the body and the changing of the disembodied spirit (or spiritual manifestation of the human in the form of an animal).”

The actual physical transformation into animal form is a folkloric motif and can be discounted.  The confusion over a man who dressed like and acted like an animal, with convincing ferocity and brutality, and the actual animal itself would have been an easy one to make, especially by battle opponents of berserkers or ‘Bear-shirts’ (I adopt this reading of berserkr rather than the one that proposes a meaning of ‘bare-shirt’) and ulfhednar or ‘Wolf-coats’.  While I’m in no sense touting the historical accuracy of the Hollywood movie “The Thirteenth Warrior”, the filmmaker did an admirable job of showing how warriors dressed as bears – especially if they attacked at night – could be mistaken for real bears.

What we must see in the supposed physical transformation is instead two complementing factors: 1) a warrior is ‘armored’ and/or ritually dressed to resemble a bear and 2) his in-dwelling bear-like spirit is brought to the surface of his consciousness – or replaces his consciousness - and is unleashed to operate martially through his own human body. 

Various means have been sought to explain how the ‘berserker rage’ was engendered.  The most common explanations so far tendered have to do with the ingestion of hallucinogenic compounds and/or alcohol.  The sagas do not support such theories and, indeed, we have several well-drawn characters who simply have a natural “berserker personality”, if you will. A person exhibiting such a personality could go into a fit of rage and inflict horrific acts of violence against the causal agent or even the redirected or misdirected focus of that rage.  

The problem with hallucinogens and excessive alcohol consumption is that individuals “drugged” in such a manner are not effective fighters.  We do know that certain modern drugs (PCP or ‘Angel’s Dust’ and the newer “Bath Salts”) can create psychotic and manic states that include instances of apparent extraordinary strength and imperviousness to injury or wounds.  However, once again the saga evidence does not allow us to view the troupes of berserkers or ulfhednar serving kings as being unable to distinguish friend from foe because they were under the influence of psychotropic substances.  Bear-shirts and Wolf-coats did not flail about uncontrollably.  Their bestial might was DIRECTED at a foe in a calculated way and was part of the battle tactics of a Norse army.  Frequently they were put in the van of the host or at the prow of the ship as “shock troops”.  None of this suggests that the “animal warriors” were so deranged as to be as much a hindrance to those whose side they were on as they were a threat to their enemies.  

I tend to think that we are dealing solely with an unqiue kind of religious fanaticism in the berserker/ulfhednar complex and see no reason to provide any additional impulse for their behavior.

In my opinion, there is one critical aspect of the Bear-shirt and Wolf-coat warrior fraternities that has been overlooked, and this component lies at the heart of the RELIGIOUS nature of these elite military units:

“… berserkers appear in the bodyguards of kings, often in groups or small units containing a specified number of troops, USUALLY TWELVE.” [emphasis mine, quoting from Neil S. Price’s THE VIKING WAY: RELIGION AND WAR IN LATE IRON AGE SCANDINAVIA, 2002, p. 367]

Although various scholars have echoed the observation that berserkers are mostly found in groups of twelve in the literature, to my knowledge no one has seem fit to answer a fairly obvious question.  Why twelve?

Twelve as a sacred number has very important connotations.  It is the preeminent solar number, as there are 12 solar months to the year and 12 zodiac signs in the same sacred calendar.  This being so, again why twelve berserkers?

The answer to this question may be embedded in earlier shamanistic beliefs of various circumpolar cultures.  Shamanism has been discussed in detail in so far as it relates to Norse accounts of the sending forth of one’s spirit in the form of animals – including those of bears (as is in the tale of Bodvar Bjarki). What has not been brought into this discussion is the solar symbolism of the bear itself.

Our most valuable resource for the bear’s connection with the sun in circumpolar tradition may well be the late Nikolai Konakov’s “Rationality and Mythological Foundations of Calendar Symbols of the Ancient Komi” (found in SHAMANISM AND NORTHERN ECOLOGY, ed. by Juha Pentikainen, 1996).  I will here quote rather extensively from Konakov’s study:

 “The discovery in the Komi region of a unique picture of an ancient trade calendar and its subsequent study, have extended and deepened our understanding of the level of natural science and the worldview of the Uralic population.

Decipherment of the pictures in the calendar shows it to be a solar calendar.  The year began with the vernal equinox and was divided into periods (months) in accordance with the annual biological rhythms of animals hunted for trade.  These periods were denoted by nine symbols of various animals: bear, reindeer, ermine, wolverine, elk, otter, fox, squirrel, and marten…

The calendar depicts two solar phases (the vernal and autumnal equinoxes) by means of solar animals.  The symbols for these periods (bear and elk) covered by the phases were in opposition to one another, representing a binary code…

The use of he bear as the zoomorphic symbol of spring or (in the bipartite structure of the year) the spring-summer period is very archaic and universal.  It exists in the calendric rituals of many peoples: Russia, Austrian, Swiss, Polish, etc.  The emergence of the bear from its den announced the end of winter and the beginning of spring in Byelorussia, Italy, Rumania and France…

The elk is a zoomorphic symbol of the autumn or autumn-winter period in the ancient trade calendar.  The elk and the bear are widely used as the symbols of calendar opposition in the mythology of the Siberian peoples…

The bear is the active element in this zoomorphic code (day, spring, male power, destructive tendency), while a female, hoofed animal is the passive element (night, autumn, the female reproduction element, the concept of sacrifice)…

From the solar symbols of the elk (deer) nd the bear, typical of the North Eurasian peoples, it is but a short distance to the concept of bear = east = spring to the left and elk (deer) = west = autumn to the right…

The image of a bear embodies broad monozoomorphic symbolism in the solar calendar: each of its limbs represents one of the four seasons…

In zoomorphic symbolism, the calendar opposition of two equal yet contrasting seasons is clearly reflected in the species of animal: the beast of pretty in opposition to a herbivorous animal…”

To make this a bit clearer, one can compare the bear, who remains in the earth for the winter, with the winter sun at high latitudes, which for weeks at a time does not rise above the horizon.  In other words, mythologically speaking, the bear = the sun. 
If the solar symbolism attending the bear was as pervasive in circumpolar cultures as Konakov claims, we might assume that it was also present in the Sami of northern Sweden, who practiced their own version of the Bear Cult.  The Sami shaman’s drum, itself a cosmogram, had as its central design the symbol for the sun (or sun goddess Beaivi), and one of the most common animals portrayed on the head of the drum with the sun is the bear (see, for example,  http://www.utexas.edu/courses/sami/diehtu/siida/religion/bearjw.htm and http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol47/joy.pdf ).

Professor Juha Pentikainen at the University of Helsinki has told me:

"There is a lot of information on the bear as solar symbol both in epic (e.g. Sami epic on the Daughter and Son of Sun) by Anders Fjellner and rock art (Okladnikov, etc.)."

Professor Neil S. Price has shown in his book THE VIKING WAY that Sami traditions seem to be paralleled by many Norse beliefs and burial customs and may, in fact, have exerted a profound influence on the development of Viking religious views. For the most recent study of the Bear Cult, see “The bear cult among the different ethnic groups of Russia (sacred Russian bear)”,  pp. 278-290,  by Robert E. F. Smith in Sacred Species and Sites: Advances in Biocultural Conservation, ed. by Gloria Pungetti, Gonzalo Oviedo and Della Hooke, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Part II: The Wolf and the Moon

The ulfhednar of Odin are not nearly so difficult to associate with a major heavenly body.  Norse sources make it plain that Odin himself possessed two wolves, Geri (the ‘Greedy One’) and Freki (the ‘Ravenous One’ according to Simek, derived from Proto-Germanic *frekaz, but merely ‘Wolf’ elsewhere).  Freki is used as a descriptor for Garm in Voluspa 43, and for either the same hound or the bound Fenrir in Voluspa 48.  In some of the Finno-Ugric langauges, the wolf is ‘the dog of God’, and in Estonian tradition the animal is under the special protection of Ukko the sky-father.   

Fenrir, whose name may contain the word for fen or swamp (cf. the Mansi and Khanty designation for the wolf as ‘the one who lives in the swamp’), meaning ‘Marsh-dweller’ or the like, is indisputably a lunar beast.  We know this because he bites off Tyr the Sky-Father’s solar hand. A lunar nature for the wolf is in keeping with the animal’s noctural habits.  The Garm of the Eddas is also known as Managarm, not so much ‘Mani’s or Moon’s Garm’ as ‘Moon-Garm’. According to Snorri Sturluson, Managarm will swallow the sun at Ragnarok.  Another name for this sun-devouring moon-wolf is Skoll.

The only wolf in the Eddas who would not seem to fit the lunar pattern is Skoll’s companion, Hati.  He is said to be pursuing the moon.  Scholars (see Simek again) have sought to associate the phenomenon known as the parhelion, called a “sun wolf” in Scandinavian languages and merely “sun-dog” here in the United States, with these devouring monsters.  However, the wolf is NOT a daytime animal, nor is its connection with the sun a reasonable conjecture.  Sun and moon bows, no matter how bright, cannot be viewed as “consumers” of the sun or moon.  No, the lunar nature of the wolf remains paramount and in the case of Hati, who will swallow the moon, I would consider him to be a manifestation of a strictly lunar eclipse and thus symbolic of the earth’s black shadow.   

It may or may not be a coincidence that sometimes in the Norse literature we find not twelve berserkers, but thirteen.  This may in some contexts be explained as a parallel to Christ and his Twelve Apostles or similar groupings where the chief sun god and his twelve constituent monthly or zodiacal “selves” are separately designated.  But if the warrior group in question are not Bear-shirts and are instead Wolf-coats, then the number thirteen may well represent the thirteen months of the lunar year, as opposed to the twelve months of the solar one. 

Icelandic sources give the famous Viking Arngrim 12 berserker sons, but in the history of Saxo Grammaticus the number is reduced to 9.  We find 9 brothers, sons of Volsung, consumed in the course of nine nights by a female werewolf in Volsunga Saga.  Nine is consistently employed as the number deemed sacred to the moon. 

Both lunar and solar groups of warriors were naturally sacred to the sky-father Odin, whose very eyes are the sun and moon.

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