The Rydberg Edda: A Skaldic Interpretation

By Brandon Gerner

This volume has three books inside, each of which stands alone but compliments the volume as a whole. The first book deals with the birth of the giants; the gods who brought about their deaths; and the worlds' creation, destruction, and renewal. The second book focuses on Heimdall's trip to Earth and how Svipdag (Od) became influential to the gods in their conflicts. The third book deals with the journey of the soul in the afterlife, and contains many obscure elements that only lifelong scholars have studied. This volume contains something for everyone interested in Norse Mythology, no matter how familiar with it they may be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667873169

Book preview

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The Rydberg Edda:

A Skaldic Interpretation

Brandon J Gerner

Cover Design by Justine L. Kohn

Copyright © 2022

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-66787-315-2

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-66787-316-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

THE RYDBERG EDDA

Contents

Introduction

Book One

Notes For Book One

Book Two

Notes For Book Two

Book Three

Notes For Book Three

Chronology

Man’s Age of Innocence Begins

Man’s Age of Innocence Ends

Bibliography

Glossary

Acknowledgements.

Introduction

Victor Rydberg (1828-1895) is universally held to be the greatest romantic poet that Sweden has ever produced. His work on mythology and the study of myth origins (mythogony) are in a class of their own for originality of thought and because of his application of investigative methods. He was a man who his peers perceived with disbelief for his unconventional ideas that were far beyond their time, rather than traveling down the same tired roads of thought that his contemporaries had paved. He quite literally blazed his own path with the discoveries that his ingenious mind gleaned from literary relics (even though they were often renamed and retold). He was the first to see that the desperate tapestries all had the same threads running through them which pointed to their common origins.

Like a master sculptor who sees the shattered remains of a forgotten statue scattered throughout a dark torchlit room by the light cast from its flickering flame, He alone was able to see how the pieces should fit together (or rather see that they once had) in a way that no one else had been able to do since the days when the statue first stood as crafted.

His contemporaries, and even some esteemed scholars of our own time, look at the details that he got wrong or that didn’t fit with the widely accepted materials as the proof that there had never even been a statue at all to begin with. Saying that because the scattered pieces don’t always fit together how we imagine that they should is all the proof we need to feel confident that there was never any larger epic. That the ancients were incapable of crafting something so grand seems ludicrous. Anyone who seriously considers Rydberg’s contributions must recognize that his detractors were more often wrong than right about his assertions and that it took a poet to discover what literary relics have remained for us.

Upon my first reading of Rydberg’s Teutonic mythology (also known as Investigation into Germanic Mythology Volume 1), my whole perception on the early beliefs of the Germanic people was irreversibly changed. I’d been reading books and writing papers and poems on the subject for well over a decade at that point and my whole understanding of what I had thought I knew well was shaken to the core. I was perplexed as to why it had taken me so long to even hear of Mr. Rydberg’s works.

The commonly held conceptions of Norse/Germanic mythology are so strongly challenged by the claims laid out in Rydberg’s Teutonic Mythology series that I had to read them multiple times just to fully grasp the depth behind the logic he employed coming to his conclusions. Yet it was that very depth he enjoyed so effortlessly in his investigative genius which also served as a barrier, keeping his findings from being readily accessible to the average reader who can’t devote years of their life to understanding them more than nominally. I felt that his discoveries were such an important contribution to our understanding of the original state of the Germanic people’s early beliefs that it was imperative that they be reframed in a more comprehensible and accessible fashion so that more people could read them for themselves.

So, after coming to this conclusion (at this time I was unaware of his 2nd volume of Investigations into Germanic Mythology or Our Fathers Godsaga retold for the Young or their English translations by the very capable Mr. William P. Reaves), I began taking notes from his Teutonic Mythology and placing events described there in a logical chronological order. Reducing the multiplicity of names which makes the ancient sources (as a result of polynomy) so confusing to the average reader.

Wanting to give a fresh voice to Rydberg’s discoveries, I chose poetry as my method of delivery so that I could combine the ancient manner the early Germans used to pass on their lore from one generation to the next with the long forgotten original composition of those stories (as rediscovered by Mr. Rydberg’s investigative genius) and in this way pay homage to them both. Although admittedly to both imperfectly so and diverging from how they themselves would have chosen to do so undoubtedly.

Upon discovering Mr. Reaves English translations of Rydberg’s second volume of Investigations into Germanic Mythology and after coming across the chronology that Rydberg himself presented and comparing it to my own (which I had independently developed form his works combined with my own knowledge of events), I realized that I had diverged from his timeline in some significant areas, though not without logical grounds for doing so.

Having drawn almost entirely from the first volume of Rydberg’s Teutonic Mythology, (yet not exclusively from it). I was able to make my own conclusions about the information he presented without actually seeing the culmination of his conclusions first, (such as a successful completion of the wall around Asgard as being the reason for Odin agreeing to the blood brotherhood with Loki and the story of Svipdag winning Frigga’s favor by being the only one who would accept her mission of faring to Hel to try and secure Baldr release as the reason why he, even after dying as a dragon and a foe of the the gods after being judged by them, was still accepted amongst their ranks). I used my own knowledge of mythology and what also seemed most logical to me to fill in the development of the story that I felt the information presented by Rydberg was pointing at and I hope to have somehow added to that which he uncovered and rediscovered by presenting it in another possible light.

I encourage anyone who reads these works and has questions concerning the origins of the deviations they take from the more familiar renditions of Norse/germanic mythology to study the profoundly insightful works of Viktor Rydberg for themselves. Particularly his three teutonic mythology books, so as to weigh the preponderance of evidence he sights and upon which he makes his profound conclusions. Therefore being able to decide for themselves if it is necessary for us to admit that what we have been led to believe about the simplistic nature of our ancestors revered pantheon and spiritual wellspring was wrong and if we must now use the evidence they left for us to put new flesh on old bones if we wish to truly have a reawakening or renaissance of our indigenous beliefs to enjoy for ourselves a living religious spiritualism such as they were fortunate enough to have and hold as sacred. For one day we ourselves will be the ancestors and it is our duty to leave our descendants the best legacy we can to honor our ancestors.

Book One

1.

Before the stars in heaven,

On their proper courses were affixed.

T’was there in the land of nothing,

Where the opposites of life first were mixed.

2.

Fire and ice were spreading,

And the space between them smaller grew.

From the south poured the warmth,

While from the north flowed the ice so blue.

3.

From a single golden seedling,

Had a bare yet powerful tree majestically grown.

That would become a most terrible steed,

Whose roots still no man alive has ever known.

4.

Born of those sacred waters,

From the eternal wells of power and strength.

The time of whose existence,

Is to all else that is of greater length.

5.

In the Yawning void,

Where those opposing forces once fought.

The seeds of all life swirled,

As a creature from the rising mist was wrought.

6.

Where before there had been nothing,

There something first coalesced.

For within those wise well’s waters,

Was the power of life itself compressed.

7.

From the north came the power,

As from the south came a mighty spark.

Next arose from that fateful meeting,

A journey from which all life itself does embark.

8.

From the deep blue icy depths,

In the rising steam was uncovered.

What like all but the tree before it,

Had never a living breath discovered.

9.

From out the vapors cast,

The most primal being of all then arose.

Born of the powers of fire and ice,

T’was one in whom both of those was enclosed.

10.

By the name of Ymir we call,

This first being who of these contrasts was born.

But to one of the races he was to sire,

This same creature had the name of Bolthorn.

11.

All know him as a giant,

For from him alone descend this kind.

Yet he himself would have first perished,

If he did not first the Sustainer find.

12.

For only through Audhumla,

Did he the essence of strength to live recieve.

Though one day there would come a time,

When even having that would grant his life no reprieve

13.

From her wonderful udders,

Flowed the life granting and sustaining milk.

Though from naught but Ymir himself,

Would come to life those now known as his ilk.

14.

Though he lived and moved,

As well as ate and breathed.

So base was his nature,

Of little more than this had he concieved.

15.

He’d known of nothing while he was alone,

Neither culture nor cleanliness.

Barely understanding the things he needed,

To survive and further subsist.

16.

And from his filthy feet was something,

Where from sweat mingled there growing.

Another burst of life now born,

Modeled after none but their father’s knowing.

17.

And in his stench as he’d slept,

One foot’d found and begat with the other.

The giant Thrudgelmir whose son Bergelmir,

Like him would never know a mother.

18.

This race were hateful beings,

Who fully resented the lowly manner of their birth.

Even more was this true when their father,

Produced next beautiful twins of much higher worth.

19.

Again as he’d slumbered,

While one foot with the other had life begat.

From the pit of his heart’s arm,

The beginnings of another line had sat.

20.

And thus did Ymir bare Bestla,

Together with her far-famed brother Mimir.

Whose wisdom and advice in all things,

One day all would wish to hear.

21.

From these siblings,

Were many great things to come.

Though not for much longer were those alone,

Who strangely from the giant Ymir had sprung.

22.

For a while the cow fed both,

The primal giant and his growing brood.

Only from the blocks of salty ice,

Did the most revered Audhumla receive her food.

23.

And one day it came to pass,

As she licked those icy blocks.

That with her tongue she uncovered Buri,

As she touched upon his golden locks.

24.

Next came the head and thirdly the man,

So was he freed from his icy prison.

And word quickly spread amongst Ymir’s children,

That a new race apart from their own had arisen.

25.

Yet of him, Bergelmir and Thrudgelmir,

Held an opinion born of the greatest resentment.

For always because of their own lowly birth,

They had never felt anything but discontentment.

26.

For Buri in his freedom thrived,

Even having Ymir’s higher children befriended.

So much that his own son Borr,

Took the lovely sister of Mimir as his wife intended.

27.

But the base born this union,

Convinced their dimwitted sire to resist.

Knowing that should such a noble union ever occur,

Forever from then on would their lowly station persist.

28.

So they poured words of poison,

Into their giant father’s ear.

And this ensured that Borr and Bestla’s children,

Grew up under a consistent shadow of fear.

29.

Those children now called gods knew,

That their very lives were by this breed imperilled.

But Mimir who daily drinks from the well,

Knew that they one day would a strong new race herald.

30.

Having watched his nephews,

Brave Odin, wise Vili and kind Ve.

Bestla’s brother knew that he alone must choose,

Which of these brothers should be called the first of the three.

31.

It was to Odin alone whom he,

With his dreadful deal approached.

And only with great sacrifices being made,

Could the young god see the terms of it broached.

32.

After hearing what all upon,

His steadfast commitment and resolve depended.

Borr’s bravest son bid himself,

To from the spreading arms of Yggdrasil be suspended.

33.

Himself to himself,

Was he on that tree willingly for all given.

Nine long nights of torture plagued his mind till finally,

All darkness and ignorance from it was driven.

34.

Neither food nor drink by any,

Was sent to the young god nor by nature gave.

While also was pierced his side,

By a sharpened wooden stave.

35.

Wounded he screamed at the approaching abyss,

And when its unimaginable void engulfed him at last.

At the same terrible moment,

Were the keys of all power delivered within his grasp.

36.

Nine songs of great power,

He while hanging on that sacred tree first found.

Yet still was not his suffering complete,

Even when he from the Ashe’s limbs came down.

37.

An eye to truly see,

Was the price from him demanded and paid.

And only with this mighty tribute given,

Did Odin first drink from where it was laid.

38.

Through these acts he