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Chapter 3. Midgard 87
have taken this to mean that the poem itself is not representative of pre-Christian
ethics. R. I. Page in Chronicles of the Vikings addresses this issue:
“In recent years there have been attempts to divert much of this material
to the post-Christian phase of the Viking Age, and indeed to as late as the
twelfth century. . . . It is fairly clear, at any rate to the unbiased, that
(whatever the date of its edition into a composite Hávamál) a good deal of
the poem derives from earlier times. Also that a good deal of it illustrates
aspects of the Viking Age not otherwise recorded, notably the life of the poor
or underprivileged.” 38
Regardless of whether “godless men” composed part of the poem, or that it came
into its final edition during the post-Christian Era, the poem’s content is consistent
with behaviors recorded in writings from Tacitus (in the 1st century CE) on up
through the Age of the Saga (700 CE through 1300 CE). The phenomenon of the
“godless man” seems to have been a by-product of the Viking Age possibly due to
lack of exposure to one’s own homeland (community) and one’s cultural history, but
it did not change the knowledge that one needed to interact with power/ luck.
The conversion to Christianity apparently did not affect the common man’s
knowledge/ worldview that one needed to interact with one’s environment in a
harmonious fashion, and that resolution is a far better means to an end than all out
extermination. Perhaps man had forgotten about the original war between the tribes
of Gods, but the noble method of bringing such a problem to a good conclusion was
held in the folk-memory to the point where the Scandinavian countries of Sweden,
Norway, and even Finland, at least, have been able to maintain neutrality in the
world political arena for most of the current millennium. And, although Christianity
has been able to change the face of much folk philosophy it has been unable to wipe
out completely the folk belief that one needs to interact honorably and respectfully
with the spirits that also form a part of this world, whether ancestral, land/ water,
or domestic.
The so-called New Age has really been an attempt at turning the modern folk
mind back toward a concern for the environment and the land; however, this same
group of people has turned its view away from their own cultural heritage and
towards eastern philosophies or Native American. Eastern, Native American, and
Germanic philosophies, although having some things in common, are very different
in both approach and practice. As mentioned earlier, the ultimate goal of the eastern
philosophies is to blend into the One (the first bardo), but the goals of the ancient
northern Europeans appear to have been to make peace with the third (everyday
reality) and second bardos (hallucinations and “second-sight” being here equated)
38 ibid. p. 140.