Lay of Thrym

[Malcolm]

This is the story about Thor dressing up as a woman to retrieve his hammer....Its important to note here, I feel, that it was EASIER to convince Thor to dress like a woman than it is to get Freyja to do something she doesn't want to do. Freyja rocks...but thats not the point of this thread. There is a passage in the Lay that reads:

"Then every god headed for Gladsheim, the hall with the silver thatch, to sit in solemn council and discuss how to recover Mjollnir. The godesses joined them there. The watchman Heimdall had left Himinbjorg and the trembling rainbow bridge. Like the other Vanir, he could read the future. The White God said, 'Let us swaddle Thor...' He paused and looked around '... swaddle Thor in the bridal veil!'

This is from The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland. He goes on to say that this lay is a burlesque and probably just meant for entertainment.

I guess the phrase that really pops out at me is 'Like the other Vanir, he could read the future.' Whether that means Heimdall, or Hamma, is actually Vanir is not what I'm getting at. I have my own opinions about that, which may deserve their own thread, what I'm getting at here is foresight...and how that plays into the war between the Aesir and Vanir.

Did Gollveig go amongst the Aesir fully knowing that a war would be the outcome? Did she know the Aesir would try and burn her three times? Was it a convenient excuse to pick a fight? Did the Vanir know the only way they could maintain a place in the grand scheme of things was to go to war with the Aesir and in the ensuing hostage exchange secure that place? Was it calculated?

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[KellyP]

The line you reference regarding Heimdallr's ability to read the future appears as the 3rd line of stanza 16, which in Old Icelandic reads


"vissi hann vel fram".


With a few references to Old Icelandic I would approximate the key translation elements to be as follows.


hann "he"
vel "good, highly, well, fine"
fram "forward , forwards"
vissi "wisdom"

So, while I can see that some may translate that into Heimdallr seeing into the future, I might be more inclined to believe Heimdallr is attributed with great insight. Perhaps his reasoning abilities are such that he correctly deduces the likely outcomes of actions taken by his colleagues.

None of this, of course, directly reflects on your ultimate question of Gollveig's actions towards the Aesir. I shall ponder that one a bit more.

[Malcolm]

I look forward to hearing your thoughts. :)

[Malcolm]

No one? Okay, I must be off my little heathen rocker then.

[Garm]

There is an underlying assumption of a linear timeline in this narrative that might be an overeach

[Hangatyr 13]

Did Gollveig go amongst the Aesir fully knowing that a war would be the outcome? Did she know the Aesir would try and burn her three times? Was it a convenient excuse to pick a fight? Did the Vanir know the only way they could maintain a place in the grand scheme of things was to go to war with the Aesir and in the ensuing hostage exchange secure that place? Was it calculated?

Anyone else have any thoughts?
Yngona Desmond seems to have the most to say about Gullveig in "Voluspa - Seidhr as Wyrd Consciousness":

"Gullveig is a singular trinity. Alone, she is positive, negative, and neutral; she is sub-conscious, conscious, and supra-conscious, she is a teacher of seidhr, a master teacher, and an ascended master able to relate the knowledge of all time, space, and matter. Hers was a shamanistic death, the destruction of her external identity and existence making way for the revelation of inner being. She is an inspiration to all seidhus, compassionate guide and protectress from all harm.

Being burnt and resurrected three times, then being renamed-rebirthed as Heidh, would reassemble her as the purest and truest expression of primal and multiversal attainment, or a supreme being."

Desmond has a lot more to say about Gullveig, but that, to me, is the meat of it. This is all her opinion, but I will say that I've met her personally at Althing 26 and she is an amazing woman. I value her opinion very much.

Gullveig's triple-burning could be interpreted as a form of ego-destruction. It could be interpreted as similar to the kind of ego-destruction that Odin underwent on Yggdrasil, except where Odin's was active (self to self), Gullveig's was passive. That, to me, underlies the difference between rune magic and seidhr along with other dichotomies in Germanic mythology like Aesir vs Vanir and Fire vs Ice.

I don't know if what you were looking for had more to do with celestrial politics in Germanic mythology or not, but I don't try to analize the motivations of mythological figures. The gods take certain actions in the mythology because the stories themselves have a certain truth, or a number of truths to convey to us. I think it's more important to analize the motivations behind the stories themselves rather than the figures therein.