Towards a Method of Mythology - Germanic Mythology

or more correctly worked in, a synthesis. As we know, analytical comparisons resemble
an equation: they contain two parts, joined with an equal sign. Synthetic comparisons are
presented as a seeming whole: their parts are worked into one another, and the equal sign
between them is hidden. The skalds expect their listeners or readers to discover it through
analysis and separate the two joined parts.
As an illustration of this, I have chosen an example from Virgil and have
imagined how a Norse heathen skald would take a Virgilian comparison and give it the
synthetic form prescribed by his own poetic art
Virgil says of the young Trojan Eurylaus that he collapses under a Rutulian
weapon, “as a purple flower, cut down by the plough, droops dying or as a tall poppy
sinks its head, when weighted down by the driving rain.” (Aeneid, Book IX).
This comparison is analytical. It has two parts: on one side, the handsome dying
youth; on the other side, the purple flower cut down by the plough or the poppy bending
in the rains. The equal sign between the two parts of the equation is represented by an
“as.”
The Old Norse skald does not allow himself an “as.” Instead of the clarity on the
surface that the analytical [481] form presents, he draws pleasure from a mental operation
through which clarity is won by means of a certain measure of reflection. He makes the
Virgilian comparison in roughly the following form: “the purple flower of the Trojan, cut
down by the plough of battle, droops dying; the weight of the hail of swords and showers
of arrows sink the head of the Idaean plains’ high-raised battle-poppy, Euryalus.”
It is in this manner that the Norse skaldic artists who composed historical poems
proceeded. But at the foundation of their synthesis almost always lies a comparison
between a hero the skald celebrates and a mythic personality, and a comparison between
one of the former’s deeds or fates and one of the latter’s. My investigation has presented
many examples of this. See for example the analysis of the verse in Vellekla: Ok
herþarfir hverfa, etc. in the first volume of this work (no. 53) and another verse in the
same poem (no. 113, 20). In many cases, the results of these analyses cast a surprisingly
clear light on the contents and connections of the myths. 75
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Mythology is not a linguistic science. It is a historical science, specifically a
science of cultural history, of the history of ideas, and of the history of religion. One
should be thankful, however, that linguistics adopted this Cinderella among sciences
under its roof. Otherwise, she would currently be homeless. She has to accept that the
people of the house, who at times lack the necessary prerequisites to understand her, treat
her accordingly. I do not doubt that a remarkable linguist also can educate himself into a
remarkable mythologist. Example shows that this is possible. I merely believe that one is
as little a mythologist as he is a historian or archeologist, or initiated into the
philosophical development of religious ideas, simply because he studied linguistics — a
75 The nature of skaldic poetry was not well understood before the work of Rudolf Meissner, Die
Kenningar der Skalden (1921). Thus, throughout Rydberg’s work, the evidence he draws from skaldic
poetry is generally, but not always, flawed. Two excellent modern works on skaldic poetry are The
Structure of Old Norse Dróttkvætt Poetry by Kari Ellen Gade (1995) and Eysteinn Björnsson’s Lexicon of
Kennings at http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/ugm/kennings/kennings.html (2001).