Thanks to Patreon supporter Jennifer Brenneman for writing to me about one story I missed here: in the Prose Edda (specifically, the part called Skáldskaparmál), after the gods have killed the giant Þjazi and his daughter Skaði comes to Ásgarðr looking for reparations, we read the following: Svá er sagt at Óðinn gerði þat til yfirbóta við Skaða, at hann tók augu Þjaza ok kastaði upp á himin, ok gerði af stjǫrnur tvær. (“It is said that Óđin made amends to Skađi this way: he took Thjazi's eyes and cast them up into the sky, and made from them two stars.”) In Hárbarðsljóð (st. 19) in the Poetic Edda, it’s Þórr who says put Þjazi’s eyes there (quoting from my published translation): “I killed Thjazi, the bold giant; I threw the eyes of that son of Allvaldi into the clear sky. Those are the greatest monuments to my deeds, which everyone can see ever since. What were you doing meanwhile, Graybeard?” Naturally, neither source says which two stars these are, though Castor and Pollux might be a reasonable guess.
What about the northern lights? Any mentions there? I have a personal theory (for what little it is worth) that bifrost was not a rainbow, but the aurora. From Wikipedia: Scholar Andy Orchard suggests that Bifröst may mean "shimmering path." He notes that the first element of Bilröst-bil (meaning "a moment")-"suggests the fleeting nature of the rainbow," which he connects to the first element of Bifröst-the Old Norse verb bifa (meaning "to shimmer" or "to shake")-noting that the element evokes notions of the "lustrous sheen" of the bridge.[3] Austrian Germanist Rudolf Simek says that Bifröst either means "the swaying road to heaven" (also citing bifa) or, if Bilröst is the original form of the two (which Simek says is likely), "the fleetingly glimpsed rainbow" (possibly connected to bil, perhaps meaning "moment, weak point").[4] Looking at these descriptions... I think it fits the aurora better. I don't know if I would call a rainbow "shimmering" per se, but an aurora certainly does that. The aurora shakes as well. "the swaying road to heaven" Auroras, if you use your imagination look a lot like a mountain path in the sky, and they sway quite a bit. More from Wikipedia: In the Poetic Edda, the bridge is mentioned in the poems Grímnismál and Fáfnismál, where it is referred to as Bilröst. In one of two stanzas in the poem Grímnismál that mentions the bridge, Grímnir (the god Odin in disguise) provides the young Agnarr with cosmological knowledge, including that Bilröst is the best of bridges.[5] Later in Grímnismál, Grímnir notes that Asbrú "burns all with flames" and that, every day, the god Thor wades through the waters of Körmt and Örmt and the two Kerlaugar: And now it burns with flames. I don't think rainbows look particularly flaming, but the aurora might be described as looking like blue flame.
It's weird since Nordic people were seafarers, and certainly used night sky for navigation. You would think that stars would be much more present in their mythology.
@@heathenpride7931 The Greeks and Romans were of literate cultures and there are extensive preserved primary texts, whereas the Norse were not literate outside the context of runic engravings. We only have scattered written sources made centuries after the Viking Age. It's not favouritism or bias, it's just the way it goes.
I'm so happy that you talked about Hati and Skoll. There's been a recent debate about which one chases which but I'm glad to hear your input which clears up this debate/topic for me. Thank you.
I forget to make comments sometimes, but please know that these videos are an absolute highlight of my day (I sneak them at work, where I am a science Braillist at a school). This was a particular treat. Thank you for sharing your work and passion with us!
I wonder how much of the norse mythos was left out of the remaining record. Perhaps they did tell stories about the heavenly bodies but Snorri just weren't interested in those stories, or maybe they had been lost at that time.
I wrote a radio play for my planetarium science course almost ten years ago that was based on these small stories about the stars in Scandinavian mythology. It's a good play that lasts an hour. You can actually listen to it at Valley City State University planetarium. :)
I'm a linguistics student, and something that caught my attention was the fact that the Old Norse word for "sun" is "sol". I'm curious if that is a loanword from Latin (which raises the question of why the North Germanic tribes borrowed it, but not the West Germanic tribes), or if it's a natural feature of the language, and it's merely a coincidence that the Norse and Latin words are identical.
In Russian it is "Solntsye". Probably all variations of sun. other Indo-European languages did the same, although I am not sure what Norse's explanation is.
It's just a funny coincident. Both languages rendering the same word to almost the same form. The original PIE ancestor of both was *sóh₂wl̥ and it gave also the Greek ἥλιος (hḗlios) and Old English sweġl. Like I said, just a funny coincident, along with a shared ancestor, nothing more.
Given that the Norse were so reliant upon navigation by the stars, I find it fascinating that they didn't mythologize heavenly bodies like the Sun, Moon and so on by associating deities with them like many other ancient peoples' pagan/polytheistic mythologies did.
Hi, Jackson, I've been enjoying your videos and had subscribed earlier this morning. I wanted to let you know it is occasionally difficult to hear you because of the loud crackling noise from the mic picking up the breeze. Love your work. Cheers! Linda Lee
Dr. Crawford, I'm sure it's been asked before but any chance an intro to old Norse book coming out? Loved the Poetic Edda and just starting the Saga of the Volsungs.
Here's a related question: How did the ancient Norse name the stars? We know how the Greeks and Romans named their stars, because that system survived. We can guess at how the Egyptians did, the constellation Orion matching with Osiris (I can't think of other cognates); but not the Norse.
_Here's_ a related question: how did your Mum deem a numeral to be appropriate for your praenomen? I see similar naming conventions here on YouYube & am frankly perturbed by this onomastic impropriety. _Good Day & God Save the Queen._
Very interesting! I didn't know that the sun was feminine, sounds so strange to modern ears! I was also wondering, what were the Scandinavians' opinions about other faiths? Do we have any knowledge of that?
For a long time I've wondered if there is any cultural or social significance to the fact that in Germanic languages, the sun is feminine and the moon is masculine, but in the Romance languages, it's the other way around. Any ideas on this?
Because in Germanic religion the sun deity is a female (“Sól” or “Sunna”) and the deity of the moon was male (“Máni) while in Greek mythology (where Roman was derived from in large part) the deity of the sun was male “Helios” and the deity of the moon was female “Selene”. In Roman mythology the the deity of the sun is known as “Sol” as well but unlike the Germanic deity, “Sol” was male in Roman mythology. The Roman moon goddess was known as “Luna”. Note the Roman gods stated are essentially renamed versions of their Greek counterparts. The Romans also considered “Apollo” the god of the sun and “Diana” the goddess the moon but these are not the same as the earlier stated gods. The Greeks may have also done so with their counterparts but it is much more unclear if that is the case. In the same way, the Greeks may have also considered “Hekate” a goddess of the moon, and some think that Hekate, Artemis, and Selene may have all just been epithets of the same goddess, but I wouldn’t take that rumour as gospel - there isn’t enough evidence. TLDR: The genders are different between the two families because the Greco-Roman deities of Moon and Sun were opposite gender to the Germanic deities.
Yes, I realize that, but what I'm getting at is, what might there be in the outlook of the Germanic soul that makes them see the sun as feminine and the moon masculine, and what's in the outlook of the Romantic soul that makes them see the opposite? They're all Indo-Europeans. And also, why is the moon usually pictured as a goddess and the sun as a god in English art and literature, when English is a Germanic language? Are we slowly turning into a Romance language?
Doug Hicton I wouldn’t be able to say what it is that made it so that one perceived the moon as feminine and the other as masculine in the first place; I highly doubt anyone could without some extremely extensive archæological and linguistic research into things we probably couldn’t find as they may be lost to time. Perhaps as the Germanic folks were farther north, and as they weren’t farmers, they might have thought the moon to be a mighty killer as the nights can get *really* long in the far North while the sun was gentle and kind with warmth, while perhaps in the south the Greeks thought the Sun was violent and hot, but it was a “provider” for the family as they had developed farming techniques whereas the moon was gentle and kind with coolness on a sweltering day. Purely my own speculation there though. What I can say is that English will almost certainly not become a Romance language. It doesn’t matter that 60% of the modern language is Romance vocabulary, the vast majority of it is pretentious garbage to the majority of the people who never use it in their speech. For some context; English has the most words out of any language in the world. A huge number of these words are Romance duplicates of words which already existed. There are some words which leaked into common tongue, but for the most part, the common tongue has stayed very much based around the original Germanic vocabulary. Not to mention, the key reason English is considered Germanic is because of its grammar. English could be 95% Romance vocabulary, but if it’s grammar was Germanic, then it’d be a Germanic language. I should also mention that while some people think the language changed after the Norman invasion, I have the say the changes were not entirely massive. The huge amount of outlandish inbringings actually came after the Norman conquest, mostly through the form of prententious “scholars” who though that Romance vocabulary was “superior”. If you ever wondered why there’s a letter s in the word “Island”, it’s because of “scholars” who wanted to make the word “iland” (Germanic in origin) more “Romance” looking. So they threw an s in to try and link it to the word “insula” - hence, “Island”. Heck the word “island” is probably closer related to Gaelic “Eilean” than Latin “Insula”.As you can imagine, this only added to English’s messed up system of spelling from importing Romance words into English. But despite these scholars pushing for such words, most people stuck with trusty old English words.
As to why the moon and sun have swapped in English now; pretty much because the language lost genders (mostly) over time and most thing are just objects now, aside from ships and people. This lack of genders within the language paired with the advent of Christianity disconnecting the English from their cultural past likely caused the sun and moon to be neutral for the most part up until the British started studying the Greeks and Romans at the height of the empire where they probably attained the idea of a female moon and male sun.
The word for sun is also feminin in Irish. I'm not certain if it is only certain European languages that give the sun a masculine gender (and persona). In global cultures, is there a general trend. I wonder if it is the dominance of Roman mythology and the romance languages which gives us the idea?
Linguistical genders has almost NOTHING to do with biological genders. And the very few cases, where they are connected, are because of a coincidence happened in PIE. So, originally, there was no connection at all. Genders in languages are noun classes, and their main task is making derivation and syntax "easier".
While that is true about languages in the broader context, when discussing the connection of stars and planets to the gods, there is GENERALLY ALWAYS a connection to biological gender. Interestingly, as shown in this video, the Norse did not make a place for the stars and planets in their pantheon. Many other cultures did.
The genders for the nouns meaning moon or sun, have nothing to do with biology. There is no esoteric or spiritual thought behind them. Linguistical genders are solely based on derivation.
The gender of a noun has nothing to do with any religion. NEVER. One thing comes to my mind. The Germanic word for god was neuter but changed to masculine, through Christian influence. But this is something different. Don't mix it up with the nouns for sun and moon. Their gender is solely determined by derivation.
How close are north myths to nature? I mean, I've read in some place the all the giants are a metaphor of natural forces oppressing human kind and Thor represented the hope to fight such forces to survive. I can see a lot of animals of high significance as well, the four elks/stags/deers, Ratatoskr, the eagle and hawk in the Yggdrasil's canopy, the World Serpent, Fenrir and his sons, horses and boars. Strange that bears are not portrayed as much, they have had encountered a lot of them back then.
hi jackson crawford , you are the most interesting person on the net..brilliant....can you tell us anything about king arwald? i live on the isle of wight and there is lots of interesting saxon info here......does king arwald sound like king ourworld or is that wishful thinking
In Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian the sun and the moon are still feminine and masculine respectively. While in Danish and Swedish the sun and the moon are now Common Gender and are referred to as "it", though from what i recall some dialects still referred to them as "her" and "him". Maybe a Dane or Swede can confirm.
The old "three gender system", used in Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic, German, is actually still visible in contemporary standard Swedish, as a kind of relict. Previously masculine nouns end with "en" in the definitive form, former feminine nouns end with "an" and earlier neuter nouns end with "et". For instance "the man" translates to "mannen", "the woman" translates to "kvinnan" and "the child" translates to "barnet". Every noun follows this pattern. In a number of dialects the three gender system is actually still in use. Some dialects in e.g. Värmland distinguish between the genders when using indefinite forms as well. The feminine indefinite article is "e" instead of "en". As in en man, e kvinne, ett barn (which would be en man, en kvinna, ett barn in standard Swedish). Every noun can be referred to as a he, a she or an it in these dialects, whether it is the sun, "sola(n)" (="she"), the moon , "månen" (=he), the sea gull, "måsen" (=he), the birch, "björka(n)" (=she), the deer, "rådjuret" (=it) or whatever.
The Swedish Lucia tradition seems to be related to the idea of the sun's rebirth. It's sad that there's not enough to prove either way really. Just a fun idea.
Floro actually, while the modern celebration has of course evolved over the years, the day and the saint have been celebrated since at least the 6th century, and coincided with the winter solstice until the calendar was reformed. It seems likely to me that it was a Christianization of Lussi Day, which took place around the same time and marked the start of Yul, which was of course Christianized to Christmas. The wikipedia page on St Lucia Day is a fascinating read if you want to know more about the origins of the holiday!
AFAIR the tradition was imported and altered by a Swedish-Italian, fascist sympathizer and borderline pedophile in the twenties. It’s basically a beauty pageant for young girls. IMO it should be abolished due to it connotations and I’m surprised it hasn’t been in Sweden yet, considering their at times overly PC and holier than though attitude. There is absolutely no ties with something ancient or even old.
I've always heard that Odin took sparks from Muspellheim and threw them into the sly, creating stars and the sun and moon. Sol and Mani were children of a man who was said to be so proud of how beautiful his kids were, due to his pride the gods decided to take them away and have them drive the sun and moon around the world pulled by the horses, which of course are chased by the wolves so naturally Sol drives the sun and Mani drives the moon
DarkrarLetsPlay It hasn't really replaced it, máni still exists and is used, it's just that tungl is much more common in daily speech these days. Same with sól and sunna, though sunna is much less common than máni, most likely because it hasn't really been as popular as sól as far back as old norse. This is one thing I notice when comparing Icelandic with English, Icelandic has a lot of still commonly used words with the same meanings while English always tries to narrow and specialize same meaning words into variants. Though because of tungl's more general use it has the meaning of a moon as in a moon around a planet, while máni is only used for our moon. All in all, tungl is basically an other word for the moon that was decently popular in ancient times, though not as much as máni, and then became even more popularly used in later Icelandic but ended disappearing from the Scandinavian languages. But even so people still talk using "máninn"
its not so much the sun and the moon but rather day and night personified. the norse god Dellingr is father of Dagr(day), his mother is Nátt (night) who is daughter of the jotun Narve.
They probably didn't see much of the Sun or Moon because of the cloudy weather that is so common in Nordic countries . Consider also that they relied on Frigg and Ing for bountiful nature not realising how important the Sun is for that .
In regard to the ancient creators of language assigning genders to objects: Perhaps if you were a Norse poet freezing your butt off and who couldn't get a job as Warrior or a God then a warm female is exactly what you would associate with the sun. Where as, if you were a Egyptian Poet who was dying of heat in a palace with no air conditioning then the cooling light of the moon is what you would long for.
In my experience studying all different spiritual cultures throughout history they synchronize throughout time... The Vikings had to be talking about the sun moon and stars otherwise why would they label some as gods? The gods are the wondering Stars in all the other ancient cultures so why wouldn't it be the wandering stars in Viking mythology? Stores the god of thunder so it is very easy to say that Thor is Jupiter because Zeus is the planet Jupiter represented by thunder and lightning
Thank you, very interesting and much appreciated! Wishing you a "Glad Påsk!" & "Hyvää Pääsiäistä!" .. on this "skärtorsdags" evening 🐣🐥🐤 Hugs & sunshine 🌞 N
RANDOM NAME Well.. I would say no..in Finnish it would be very hard to read and to understand the words.. sorry!😊 But it could be an idea to ponder over..
I mean, they're just a big rock and a big fusion power plant in the sky. No real reason to necessarily associate one or the other gender to the objects.
Thanks to Patreon supporter Jennifer Brenneman for writing to me about one story I missed here: in the Prose Edda (specifically, the part called Skáldskaparmál), after the gods have killed the giant Þjazi and his daughter Skaði comes to Ásgarðr looking for reparations, we read the following:
Svá er sagt at Óðinn gerði þat til yfirbóta við Skaða, at hann tók augu Þjaza ok kastaði upp á himin, ok gerði af stjǫrnur tvær. (“It is said that Óđin made amends to Skađi this way: he took Thjazi's eyes and cast them up into the sky, and made from them two stars.”)
In Hárbarðsljóð (st. 19) in the Poetic Edda, it’s Þórr who says put Þjazi’s eyes there (quoting from my published translation):
“I killed Thjazi,
the bold giant;
I threw the eyes
of that son of Allvaldi
into the clear sky.
Those are the greatest
monuments to my deeds,
which everyone can see ever since.
What were you doing meanwhile, Graybeard?”
Naturally, neither source says which two stars these are, though Castor and Pollux might be a reasonable guess.
What about the northern lights? Any mentions there?
I have a personal theory (for what little it is worth) that bifrost was not a rainbow, but the aurora.
From Wikipedia:
Scholar Andy Orchard suggests that Bifröst may mean "shimmering path." He notes that the first element of Bilröst-bil (meaning "a moment")-"suggests the fleeting nature of the rainbow," which he connects to the first element of Bifröst-the Old Norse verb bifa (meaning "to shimmer" or "to shake")-noting that the element evokes notions of the "lustrous sheen" of the bridge.[3] Austrian Germanist Rudolf Simek says that Bifröst either means "the swaying road to heaven" (also citing bifa) or, if Bilröst is the original form of the two (which Simek says is likely), "the fleetingly glimpsed rainbow" (possibly connected to bil, perhaps meaning "moment, weak point").[4]
Looking at these descriptions... I think it fits the aurora better. I don't know if I would call a rainbow "shimmering" per se, but an aurora certainly does that. The aurora shakes as well. "the swaying road to heaven" Auroras, if you use your imagination look a lot like a mountain path in the sky, and they sway quite a bit.
More from Wikipedia:
In the Poetic Edda, the bridge is mentioned in the poems Grímnismál and Fáfnismál, where it is referred to as Bilröst. In one of two stanzas in the poem Grímnismál that mentions the bridge, Grímnir (the god Odin in disguise) provides the young Agnarr with cosmological knowledge, including that Bilröst is the best of bridges.[5] Later in Grímnismál, Grímnir notes that Asbrú "burns all with flames" and that, every day, the god Thor wades through the waters of Körmt and Örmt and the two Kerlaugar:
And now it burns with flames. I don't think rainbows look particularly flaming, but the aurora might be described as looking like blue flame.
It's weird since Nordic people were seafarers, and certainly used night sky for navigation. You would think that stars would be much more present in their mythology.
Most likely were, just not well preserved due to Greco-Roman favoritism
@@heathenpride7931 More likely just lost in time, not due to any sort of favoritism.
@@heathenpride7931 The Greeks and Romans were of literate cultures and there are extensive preserved primary texts, whereas the Norse were not literate outside the context of runic engravings. We only have scattered written sources made centuries after the Viking Age. It's not favouritism or bias, it's just the way it goes.
@@chunkypythagoras1732it is most likely both, the Romans hated the Nords who vandal-ized their city
I'm so happy that you talked about Hati and Skoll. There's been a recent debate about which one chases which but I'm glad to hear your input which clears up this debate/topic for me. Thank you.
I forget to make comments sometimes, but please know that these videos are an absolute highlight of my day (I sneak them at work, where I am a science Braillist at a school). This was a particular treat. Thank you for sharing your work and passion with us!
Thanks for all your work Professor! Love the videos.
Thanks for taking time out of your morning to talk to us! What a beautiful place Colorado is.
Always learn something new. Thank you very much for all your work
I wonder how much of the norse mythos was left out of the remaining record. Perhaps they did tell stories about the heavenly bodies but Snorri just weren't interested in those stories, or maybe they had been lost at that time.
Its so intresting to listen and learn at your lessons...keep it up
I wrote a radio play for my planetarium science course almost ten years ago that was based on these small stories about the stars in Scandinavian mythology. It's a good play that lasts an hour. You can actually listen to it at Valley City State University planetarium. :)
Spring has sprung in CO! Looks beautiful there
I like how he just straight up vanishes at the end of the video
Thanks for this Dr Crawford!
I'm a linguistics student, and something that caught my attention was the fact that the Old Norse word for "sun" is "sol". I'm curious if that is a loanword from Latin (which raises the question of why the North Germanic tribes borrowed it, but not the West Germanic tribes), or if it's a natural feature of the language, and it's merely a coincidence that the Norse and Latin words are identical.
In Russian it is "Solntsye". Probably all variations of sun. other Indo-European languages did the same, although I am not sure what Norse's explanation is.
In Polish it's "Słońce" which, despite very different spelling, has to some extent similar pronunciation.
There were two words for sun in Proto-Germanic, both descendants of the same word in PIE. One with an l, the other with an n.
It's just a funny coincident. Both languages rendering the same word to almost the same form.
The original PIE ancestor of both was *sóh₂wl̥ and it gave also the Greek ἥλιος (hḗlios) and Old English sweġl.
Like I said, just a funny coincident, along with a shared ancestor, nothing more.
Given that the Norse were so reliant upon navigation by the stars, I find it fascinating that they didn't mythologize heavenly bodies like the Sun, Moon and so on by associating deities with them like many other ancient peoples' pagan/polytheistic mythologies did.
Hey, I recognize that mountain in the background! #pikespeak
Hi, Jackson,
I've been enjoying your videos and had subscribed earlier this morning.
I wanted to let you know it is occasionally difficult to hear you because of the loud crackling noise from the mic picking up the breeze.
Love your work.
Cheers!
Linda Lee
makes one wish there was more they had to say.
That's pretty surprising, Do the Norse have any myths about the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)?
sagan64 I think he said in an older video that there are no surviving myths about them
Great question
There are currently no surviving myths about it! Crazy right!?
One of the mysterious things about Old Norse literature is that it almost never even mentions the Northern Lights. It is very strange.
th-cam.com/video/lFzY1gYcKkE/w-d-xo.html
interesting - thank you Dr Crawford
Dr. Crawford, I'm sure it's been asked before but any chance an intro to old Norse book coming out? Loved the Poetic Edda and just starting the Saga of the Volsungs.
Here's a related question: How did the ancient Norse name the stars? We know how the Greeks and Romans named their stars, because that system survived. We can guess at how the Egyptians did, the constellation Orion matching with Osiris (I can't think of other cognates); but not the Norse.
_Here's_ a related question: how did your Mum deem a numeral to be appropriate for your praenomen? I see similar naming conventions here on YouYube & am frankly perturbed by this onomastic impropriety.
_Good Day & God Save the Queen._
Very interesting! I didn't know that the sun was feminine, sounds so strange to modern ears!
I was also wondering, what were the Scandinavians' opinions about other faiths? Do we have any knowledge of that?
For a long time I've wondered if there is any cultural or social significance to the fact that in Germanic languages, the sun is feminine and the moon is masculine, but in the Romance languages, it's the other way around. Any ideas on this?
Because in Germanic religion the sun deity is a female (“Sól” or “Sunna”) and the deity of the moon was male (“Máni) while in Greek mythology (where Roman was derived from in large part) the deity of the sun was male “Helios” and the deity of the moon was female “Selene”. In Roman mythology the the deity of the sun is known as “Sol” as well but unlike the Germanic deity, “Sol” was male in Roman mythology. The Roman moon goddess was known as “Luna”. Note the Roman gods stated are essentially renamed versions of their Greek counterparts. The Romans also considered “Apollo” the god of the sun and “Diana” the goddess the moon but these are not the same as the earlier stated gods. The Greeks may have also done so with their counterparts but it is much more unclear if that is the case. In the same way, the Greeks may have also considered “Hekate” a goddess of the moon, and some think that Hekate, Artemis, and Selene may have all just been epithets of the same goddess, but I wouldn’t take that rumour as gospel - there isn’t enough evidence.
TLDR: The genders are different between the two families because the Greco-Roman deities of Moon and Sun were opposite gender to the Germanic deities.
Yes, I realize that, but what I'm getting at is, what might there be in the outlook of the Germanic soul that makes them see the sun as feminine and the moon masculine, and what's in the outlook of the Romantic soul that makes them see the opposite? They're all Indo-Europeans. And also, why is the moon usually pictured as a goddess and the sun as a god in English art and literature, when English is a Germanic language? Are we slowly turning into a Romance language?
Doug Hicton
I wouldn’t be able to say what it is that made it so that one perceived the moon as feminine and the other as masculine in the first place; I highly doubt anyone could without some extremely extensive archæological and linguistic research into things we probably couldn’t find as they may be lost to time. Perhaps as the Germanic folks were farther north, and as they weren’t farmers, they might have thought the moon to be a mighty killer as the nights can get *really* long in the far North while the sun was gentle and kind with warmth, while perhaps in the south the Greeks thought the Sun was violent and hot, but it was a “provider” for the family as they had developed farming techniques whereas the moon was gentle and kind with coolness on a sweltering day. Purely my own speculation there though.
What I can say is that English will almost certainly not become a Romance language. It doesn’t matter that 60% of the modern language is Romance vocabulary, the vast majority of it is pretentious garbage to the majority of the people who never use it in their speech. For some context; English has the most words out of any language in the world. A huge number of these words are Romance duplicates of words which already existed. There are some words which leaked into common tongue, but for the most part, the common tongue has stayed very much based around the original Germanic vocabulary. Not to mention, the key reason English is considered Germanic is because of its grammar. English could be 95% Romance vocabulary, but if it’s grammar was Germanic, then it’d be a Germanic language. I should also mention that while some people think the language changed after the Norman invasion, I have the say the changes were not entirely massive. The huge amount of outlandish inbringings actually came after the Norman conquest, mostly through the form of prententious “scholars” who though that Romance vocabulary was “superior”. If you ever wondered why there’s a letter s in the word “Island”, it’s because of “scholars” who wanted to make the word “iland” (Germanic in origin) more “Romance” looking. So they threw an s in to try and link it to the word “insula” - hence, “Island”. Heck the word “island” is probably closer related to Gaelic “Eilean” than Latin “Insula”.As you can imagine, this only added to English’s messed up system of spelling from importing Romance words into English. But despite these scholars pushing for such words, most people stuck with trusty old English words.
As to why the moon and sun have swapped in English now; pretty much because the language lost genders (mostly) over time and most thing are just objects now, aside from ships and people. This lack of genders within the language paired with the advent of Christianity disconnecting the English from their cultural past likely caused the sun and moon to be neutral for the most part up until the British started studying the Greeks and Romans at the height of the empire where they probably attained the idea of a female moon and male sun.
Nice!!
well I'm very happy that I discovered this guy.. subscribed. Very awesome.
Weren't Þjazi's eyes turned into stars as well?
can you tell us more about germanic sources?
The word for sun is also feminin in Irish. I'm not certain if it is only certain European languages that give the sun a masculine gender (and persona). In global cultures, is there a general trend. I wonder if it is the dominance of Roman mythology and the romance languages which gives us the idea?
Linguistical genders has almost NOTHING to do with biological genders. And the very few cases, where they are connected, are because of a coincidence happened in PIE. So, originally, there was no connection at all.
Genders in languages are noun classes, and their main task is making derivation and syntax "easier".
While that is true about languages in the broader context, when discussing the connection of stars and planets to the gods, there is GENERALLY ALWAYS a connection to biological gender. Interestingly, as shown in this video, the Norse did not make a place for the stars and planets in their pantheon. Many other cultures did.
The genders for the nouns meaning moon or sun, have nothing to do with biology. There is no esoteric or spiritual thought behind them. Linguistical genders are solely based on derivation.
The gender of a noun has nothing to do with any religion. NEVER.
One thing comes to my mind. The Germanic word for god was neuter but changed to masculine, through Christian influence. But this is something different. Don't mix it up with the nouns for sun and moon. Their gender is solely determined by derivation.
How close are north myths to nature? I mean, I've read in some place the all the giants are a metaphor of natural forces oppressing human kind and Thor represented the hope to fight such forces to survive. I can see a lot of animals of high significance as well, the four elks/stags/deers, Ratatoskr, the eagle and hawk in the Yggdrasil's canopy, the World Serpent, Fenrir and his sons, horses and boars. Strange that bears are not portrayed as much, they have had encountered a lot of them back then.
hi jackson crawford , you are the most interesting person on the net..brilliant....can you tell us anything about king arwald? i live on the isle of wight and there is lots of interesting saxon info here......does king arwald sound like king ourworld or is that wishful thinking
In Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian the sun and the moon are still feminine and masculine respectively. While in Danish and Swedish the sun and the moon are now Common Gender and are referred to as "it", though from what i recall some dialects still referred to them as "her" and "him". Maybe a Dane or Swede can confirm.
The old "three gender system", used in Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic, German, is actually still visible in contemporary standard Swedish, as a kind of relict. Previously masculine nouns end with "en" in the definitive form, former feminine nouns end with "an" and earlier neuter nouns end with "et". For instance "the man" translates to "mannen", "the woman" translates to "kvinnan" and "the child" translates to "barnet". Every noun follows this pattern. In a number of dialects the three gender system is actually still in use. Some dialects in e.g. Värmland distinguish between the genders when using indefinite forms as well. The feminine indefinite article is "e" instead of "en". As in en man, e kvinne, ett barn (which would be en man, en kvinna, ett barn in standard Swedish). Every noun can be referred to as a he, a she or an it in these dialects, whether it is the sun, "sola(n)" (="she"), the moon , "månen" (=he), the sea gull, "måsen" (=he), the birch, "björka(n)" (=she), the deer, "rådjuret" (=it) or whatever.
The Swedish Lucia tradition seems to be related to the idea of the sun's rebirth. It's sad that there's not enough to prove either way really. Just a fun idea.
Floro actually, while the modern celebration has of course evolved over the years, the day and the saint have been celebrated since at least the 6th century, and coincided with the winter solstice until the calendar was reformed. It seems likely to me that it was a Christianization of Lussi Day, which took place around the same time and marked the start of Yul, which was of course Christianized to Christmas. The wikipedia page on St Lucia Day is a fascinating read if you want to know more about the origins of the holiday!
AFAIR the tradition was imported and altered by a Swedish-Italian, fascist sympathizer and borderline pedophile in the twenties.
It’s basically a beauty pageant for young girls. IMO it should be abolished due to it connotations and I’m surprised it hasn’t been in Sweden yet, considering their at times overly PC and holier than though attitude.
There is absolutely no ties with something ancient or even old.
Helge Frisenette can I ask where you're getting this info? I'd like to learn more and maybe clarify the wiki page for others.
I've always heard that Odin took sparks from Muspellheim and threw them into the sly, creating stars and the sun and moon. Sol and Mani were children of a man who was said to be so proud of how beautiful his kids were, due to his pride the gods decided to take them away and have them drive the sun and moon around the world pulled by the horses, which of course are chased by the wolves so naturally Sol drives the sun and Mani drives the moon
How came that the Icelandic word "tungl" replaced "máni"?
DarkrarLetsPlay It hasn't really replaced it, máni still exists and is used, it's just that tungl is much more common in daily speech these days.
Same with sól and sunna, though sunna is much less common than máni, most likely because it hasn't really been as popular as sól as far back as old norse.
This is one thing I notice when comparing Icelandic with English, Icelandic has a lot of still commonly used words with the same meanings while English always tries to narrow and specialize same meaning words into variants.
Though because of tungl's more general use it has the meaning of a moon as in a moon around a planet, while máni is only used for our moon.
All in all, tungl is basically an other word for the moon that was decently popular in ancient times, though not as much as máni, and then became even more popularly used in later Icelandic but ended disappearing from the Scandinavian languages.
But even so people still talk using "máninn"
Ragnarok is not on my bucket list, thanks for playing
I am curious, do you not consider the tale of Þjazi's (Skadi's father) eyes as significant here for the stars?
What about thiazi's eyes. They were made into stars
Maybe this is not Ragnarok, maybe this is something beautiful
Are you saying we should discount the prose Edda ?
How bitter of enemies are Thor and Odin?
Someone seems to be making excuses for why the sun is still present after Ragnarok...
its not so much the sun and the moon but rather day and night personified. the norse god Dellingr is father of Dagr(day), his mother is Nátt (night) who is daughter of the jotun Narve.
I always felt that Baldr had a strong association with the Sun. Maybe in the past he was seen as a Sun god.
The Sun, the Moon, and the Truth....
One would think a seafaring people like the Nore would pay more attention to crlestial bodies.
Charlie understood, you guys stole his work and perverted it, I am proudly pink
They probably didn't see much of the Sun or Moon because of the cloudy weather that is so common in Nordic countries . Consider also that they relied on Frigg and Ing for bountiful nature not realising how important the Sun is for that .
They are angry because they are discraced
In regard to the ancient creators of language assigning genders to objects: Perhaps if you were a Norse poet freezing your butt off and who couldn't get a job as Warrior or a God then a warm female is exactly what you would associate with the sun. Where as, if you were a Egyptian Poet who was dying of heat in a palace with no air conditioning then the cooling light of the moon is what you would long for.
In my experience studying all different spiritual cultures throughout history they synchronize throughout time... The Vikings had to be talking about the sun moon and stars otherwise why would they label some as gods? The gods are the wondering Stars in all the other ancient cultures so why wouldn't it be the wandering stars in Viking mythology?
Stores the god of thunder so it is very easy to say that Thor is Jupiter because Zeus is the planet Jupiter represented by thunder and lightning
Thank you, very interesting and much appreciated! Wishing you a "Glad Påsk!" & "Hyvää Pääsiäistä!" .. on this "skärtorsdags" evening 🐣🐥🐤 Hugs & sunshine 🌞 N
Sarah Gray Kiitos!! So very kind of you 😊
🐣"Onnellista Pääsiäistä" to you too 🐥
Hyvää Pääsiäistä!
Sarah Gray I thought you can just add an e as in “ae” where the umlaut isn’t available for “ä”. Like ä - ae, ü - ue, ö - oe...?
RANDOM NAME Well.. I would say no..in Finnish it would be very hard to read and to understand the words.. sorry!😊 But it could be an idea to ponder over..
Sunshine&SilverArrow I suppose - I mean that’s a heck of a lot of “ä”s already, no need to make it worse. :D
The sun is feminine and the moon is masculine? Strange it's usually the reverse in mythology.
That is a commonality amongst most germanic languages. In german die Sonne is the sun and is feminine. Der Mond is the moon and is masculine.
I mean, they're just a big rock and a big fusion power plant in the sky. No real reason to necessarily associate one or the other gender to the objects.
Are you saying that people knew this over 1,000 years ago?
The Skooma Cat The moon is associated with cycles lasting a month. The sun is a provider of heat/energy/food.
Dreoilín ÓCoigligh Isn't the Irish god Lugh the sun deity?
Uh oh...
Flat Earth