Untitled - Awaken Video

Chapter 5. The Underworld 117
reader, whether these familial guardians are actually ancestors who have taken up
a new role as family protector or whether they actually constitute a distinct race
under a single generic name. Davidson is describing this same problem when she
discusses the fisherman, Þorolf, buried near Helgafell:
“Helgafell is not unlike a large burial mound, and here we may have a
transference of beliefs about dead leaders in their great mounds in Scandinavia
who brought blessing to the land when they were laid to rest in their
graves. Snorri in Ynglinga Saga traces such beliefs back to the god Freyr,
who once ruled over the Swedes at Uppsala and had his chief temple there.
He is said to have brought good seasons and prosperity to the land, and so
when he died, the Swedes brought great offerings to his mound, and believed
that he remained alive and potent in the earth. The connection which seems
to exist between Freyr and the elves and the land-spirits thus provides an
additional reason to associate them with the dead in their graves.” 7
When one looks to neighboring cultures for possible clarification, the problem remains.
For example, no one is quite sure if the sidhe constituted a distinct race
of people who inhabited Eire (modern Ireland) prior to the coming of the current
inhabitants or if the race of the sidhe considered to continue growing even in modern
times because some of those who die from Earth are taken into the Blessed Land.
In other words, it is difficult to tell if souls after death were understood to have
constituted a “new tribe” or somehow have changed status. A similar blurry distinction
exists among the Scandinavian Lapps, the Finnish Lapps, and the Finno-Ugric
peoples proper.
Perhaps, there is a parallel to the problem which, although not offering any
real explanation, will make the ambiguity at least somewhat tolerable. The ancient
Northern Europeans were well aware that Midgard was comprised of several different
races, cultures, and religions which moved around, intermingled, and overlapped to
some degree depending on geographic location. People south of what is now modern
Germany had darker hair and skin than the northern peoples, Celts were tall, the
Saamí were short and dark as were the Greenland Eskimo, etc. This does not really
present a problem to the modern way of thinking until somebody tries to figure out
who the indigenous people of France were, for example. If Midgard and Helheim
were understood to reflect one another in structure, then it might also be assumed
that tribes of beings living in the netherworld were as capable of migration and
intermixing, trading, marrying, feasting and visiting as were their counterparts in
Mannheim, and remnants in Northern European folklore including Celtic, Germanic,
and Finno-Ugric would indicate that this certainly was the prevailing belief.
7 H. R. Ellis-Davidson, Myth and Symbols in Pagan Europe, 1988, p. 116.