Towards the Baldur Myth - Germanic Mythology

II.
THE GERMANIC DISCOURI IN TACITUS.
Among the Germanic gods mentioned by Tacitus are two brothers whom he
compares to the Discouri.
In chapter 43 of Germania, he writes:
―All these people (the Suebian tribes Marsigni, Cotini, Osi, and Buri) dwell in an
area consisting in part of little level country, and in part of highland forests, mountain
peaks, and ridges. Through Suebia runs an unbroken mountain range that divides the land
into two parts and thus puts up a dividing wall between them, beyond which a multitude
of people live. Of these, the Lygii name is most widespread as they extend into several
communities. It will suffice to mention the most important among them: Harii, (Harios),
Helvecones (Helveconos), Inanimani (Inanimos, variant Manimos), Elysii (Elisios), and
Nahanarvali (Nahanarvalos). Among the Nahanarvali is found a grove. It is of ancient
sanctity and in the charge of a priest in women‘s clothes. But the gods worshipped there
are said, in Roman interpretation, to be Castor and Pollux. That is the character of their
divinity; their name is alk (or alks: the name Alcis). There are no images of the gods (in
the grove) and no trace of foreign import – it is the brothers, it is the young men
themselves that are worshiped (there). – Of the other tribes just enumerated, none surpass
the Harii in strength, and with their bravado is united an innate ferocity that is enhanced
by their art and choice of timing (for attack). With black shields and painted bodies, they
choose pitch-black nights for battle. With their dreadful appearance, they inspire terror as
a war-host belonging to the realm of death; no opponent can bear so strange a sight, as if
stemming from the underworld, because in all battles, it is the eyes that are conquered
first.‖
Before I enter into an investigation of this chapter of ―Germania,‖ some
observations should be made.
At the time of Christ‘s birth and in the first centuries thereafter, the Romans were
closely acquainted with the Germanic tribes on their border. Into the Roman archives
flowed intelligence about the Germanic country, tribes, social order, customs, practices,
and religion, which was accurate and reliable to the same degree as the German people
that it concerned lived in proximity to the Rhine or the coastal waters conquered by the
Romans or the trade routes used by them. It is out of such sources that Tacitus gathered
the material for his incomparable, but all too brief, description of Germania as it existed
at the time.
As one learns from his work, the Roman historian‘s plan was, so far as it was
possible, to describe in a short space the whole of Germania along with its borderland.
Regarding Germania‘s farthest reaches, he had to stick to what his Roman or Germanic
informers had heard said of it. He had to supplement the information that was based on
his informers‘ personal experience with stories about remote peoples and conditions, the
accuracy of which he could not adduce other than by what he heard reported and what he
believed to be correct.
But the Teutons had as small a dividing line as the Greeks and the Romans had
between actual ethnography and geography on one side, and mythological ethnography