Among the Teutons exists a tradition that reaches to its tribal
ancestors, the people of antiquity that called itself Ri-ar:
those-who-till (the ancient Aryans whose Sanskrit name means: those
whose life is based on spiritual values). Teutonic lore is transmitted
by means of Skaldic poetry, Sagas, Runes, Thulur, and the Edda; the
keepers of the ancient words to recite and of the primordial shapes to
know are the ErilaR, a name that is widely understood as Runemaster.
They preserved the core of Teutonic belief, having transmitted it from
mother to daughter, father to son, since the beginning.
They told that once there was no Heaven above nor Earth beneath but only the
bottomless deep ~ Ginungagap, and a world of mist ~ Niflheim, in which sprang
the rivers of the icy waves ~ Elivagar. When these had flowed far from their
source they froze to ice; one layer of ice froze onto the last until the great
deep was filled. Southward from the world of mist was the world of light ~
Muspelheim. Warm winds blew from there that melted the ice. Vapors rose from
the great deep, billowed in the air, and formed great clouds. From the clouds
sprang Ymir, the rime-cold giant who was evil and all his kind which emerged
like maggots from his armpits and crotch and from every opening of his body.
From the clouds also came the cow Audhumbla whose milk the giant drank for
nourishment. The cow every day licked the hoarfrost and the salt from the ice
for food. While she was one day licking the salt stones, there appeared the
head of a being. On the second day his head showed. On the third day, his
entire body was free of ice showing its beauty and power. This new being was
Buri. From him came Bor, who on his wife (a daughter of the giant race)
fathered Woden, Vili and Ve. These are the first of the aesir race, that some
call gods; they are of asu: Life. Woden, Vili, and Ve, slew the giant Ymir and
out of his body formed the Earth. Of his blood the seas, of his bones the
mountains, of his hair the trees, of his skull the heavens, and of his brain
clouds charged with hail and snow. Of Ymir's eyebrows they built a fence around
Midgard ~ the midmost place, middle-earth ~ home to the People. Woden set the
Sun and the Moon and the stars in their places in the heavens. As the Sun began
to shed its rays, the Earth started to bud and sprout and blossom. Though the
aesir made the visible world, they did not create it nor the people but only
their form. They took an ashen spar and made a man of it. Woman they made of
an elm branch. The Teutons call the man Ask, the woman Embla. Woden gave them
breath, Vili motion and the senses, and Ve gave them life and blood. Midgard
was given them as their residence, and there they begat children, and the
children's children ~ who only knew their mothers ~ ranged the world to find
their homelands.
The children of Ask and Embla found Ri-arana, the first of the good
lands, where they lived in peace and harmony. This was told in the
Avesta, the book of knowledge and wisdom given in the hands of the
prophet Zarathustr, the complete text of which covered twelve-thousand
cow hides. It had twenty-one books, only one of which remains: the
Vendidad. Thereupon, says this account, "came he who is all death,
and created by witchcraft the serpent in the river and winter. Ten
months of winter were there, two months of summer, and those were cold
for the waters, cold for the Earth, cold for the trees. Winter fell
there, with the worst of its plagues." It forced the people to leave
their homesteads and settlements. Some of the nations traveled south
and east, to Persia and India, others went west into Europe: Balt,
Hellene, Ital, Kelt, Slav, Teuton. They had barley, wheat, oats and
rye; flax, hemp, peas, beans, turnips, beets, onions; cattle, sheep,
hogs, goats, horses, oxen, chickens, geese, ducks, dogs. They carried
with them the knowledge of their household society (at once
hunter-fisher, herder, gatherer and tiller), and the ideology that
permeates the religious texts of the ancient Indians, emerges in the
epic poetry and drama of the Hellenes, hides behind the facade of
history among the Itals, and expresses itself in the tales of medieval
Keltic and Teutonic peoples.
2
It is written in the Vendidad (Fargard III):
"Who rejoices the Earth with greatest joy is who cultivates most grain,
grass, and fruit, who waters ground that is too dry, or dries ground
that is too wet.
"Unhappy is the land that has long lain unsown with the seed of the
sower and wants a good husbandman, like a well-shaped maiden who has
long gone childless and wants a good husband.
"Who would till the Earth, unto him will she bring forth plenty, like a
loving bride on her bed, to her beloved; the bride will bring forth
children, the Earth will bring forth plenty of fruit.
"To who would till her, thus says the Earth: ‘O you! who tills me, here
shall people ever come and beg for bread, here shall I ever go on
bearing, bringing forth all manner of food, bringing forth profusion of
crops.'
"To who does not till her, thus says the Earth: ‘O you! who does not
till me, ever shall you stand at the door of a stranger, among those
who beg for bread; ever shall you wait there for the refuse that is
brought out to you, brought by those who have a profusion of wealth.'
"‘How is the law fulfilled?' asked Zarathustr, and was answered: It is
sowing again and again! Who sows, sows holiness and makes the law grow
higher and higher, makes the law fat as with a hundred acts of adoration,
a thousand oblations, ten-thousand sacrifices."
3
The people had no priests, temples, nor images, for (as Roman historian Tacitus noted in the
first century of the current era) they did not consider it consistent with the grandeur of
celestial beings to confine them within walls or to liken them to the form of any human
countenance. "The Teutons" (commented Julius Caesar more than a hundred years before Tacitus)
"the Teutons have no Druids to control religious observances, and are not much given to sacrifices.
The only beings that they recognize as gods are things that they can see, and by which they are
obviously assisted; the sun, the moon and fire; the others they have never even heard of." Trees,
woods, and groves were consecrated, and the names of deities were applied to abstractions
discovered in spiritual activities. There were places that custom consecrated seasonally to
the assembly of the people where mounds, stones, trees or springs symbolizing communal liberty
had long attracted devotion. Festivals grew ancient in these religious places, where goods were
traded in gifting ceremonies and oaths were taken, and local traditions attest to the faithfulness
of communal meetings to the original meeting place marked by megaliths ~ stones of justice
(erected for all time to mark the peaceful millennia of the Old Stone People). These marked
central places where the social cohesion of the group, the cult that sanctified the places, and
the oaths made in them were all reinforced, but they were also places of encounter and passage
where alliances between neighboring groups were forged. In historical times the Teutons were a
medley of independent tribes occupying northwestern Europe. Tacitus wrote that they maintained
their greatness by righteous dealings: "Without ambition, without lawless violence, they lived
peaceful and secluded, never provoking war or injuring others by rapine or robbery. The crowning
proof of their valor and strength was that they kept up their superiority without harm to others.
Yet all had weapons in readiness, and an army if necessary, with a multitude of men and horses, and even while at peace they had the same renown of valor." Both Tacitus and Caesar remarked that the people lived parted by marshes, lakes, and forests, and that they were fond of such separations. The extended family members, or clan, owned the houses, outbuildings, gardens, and fields, that were used in the annual productive activities of the homestead, and was surrounded by a tribal commons through which a stranger might only travel with much noise so as not to be mistaken for a foe. Because of the cultural importance of gifting, there was little trade and consequently few villages or towns where markets might flourish. To free peoples trade is unworthy; traditional work was agriculture, husbandry, hunting and arms; the worst crime was falsehood; youth were trained to work, fight, and speak truth. The kindred or clan was responsible for the acts of all the living generation, shifting with deaths as to blood relationships. The feud righted murder, injury, and insult, by just revenge or by wergild: payment of compensation. The social order was based almost wholly on the family and the clan in a spirit balanced by hospitality and bravery, the hard life and climate lightened by music and song and loyal friendship. An individual's responsibility was to mother, father, spouse, family, kindred and clan, community, tribe, nation. "The country was common, the government peculiar; the territory the same, the nations different. The spirit of personal law prevailed among the people." So wrote Baron de Montesquieu about Teutonic society in The Spirit of Laws. Each tribe apart was free and independent, each individual to be tried by the established custom of his or her own nation. About minor matters their chiefs deliberated, about the more important the whole tribe. Their freedom had this disadvantage (wrote Tacitus) that they did not meet simultaneously or as they were bidden, but two or three days were required in the delay of assembling. Then the chief, according to age, birth, distinction, or eloquence, was heard more because of influence to persuade than because of power to command. If the sentiments displeased them, they rejected them with murmurs; if they were satisfied, they brandished their spears. This was the Weapon-Take, the Witan, the council by which alone a chief might be acclaimed. In these same councils they also elected the chief magistrates who administered law in the cantons. The common council was the supreme court interpreting the body of law according to the rules of custom as it was held in the minds of the living generation ~ for law is the dynamic rule of the tribe as arising from the people, not as enacted in single rules by authority of a few.
Then came warlike times of the short iron sword that made people
everywhere build hill forts great and small, when who tilled the soil
was thought the lowest rank by those who prided themselves on idleness
and lived by pillage and plunder, and aristocrats came to brood for a
king as they sat drinking Hellene wine. The dynamic of Europe at that
time came to be dominated by two radically differing philosophies: from
the south had come the concept of concentrated power that sought to
establish ever growing empires; to the north what John Stuart Mill
termed an "excessive liberty" and a fierce independence resulted in
anarchic forms of social organization. It rejected authoritarian
government and maintained that voluntary institutions are best suited to
express people's natural social tendencies. It is based on faith in
natural law and justice, and aims at the utmost possible freedom
compatible with social life, believing this to be the most harmonious
and ordered in its effects. It is a benevolent doctrine held fast in
the belief of the innate goodness of people. Vast areas became enslaved
in a rigid hierarchy that ascended to the gods and the emperor could,
with the aid of a powerful priesthood, claim to rule by divine right.
But in the boreal north, individualistic to the point of chaos, an
entire populace stood ready to bring down any who would seek to abrogate
the power of the individual, for the people held that none could have
power over another.
For long centuries, the Roman Empire sent its legions in efforts to
extend its frontiers by clashes with the northern ‘barbarians' (as the
Romans styled the tribes). Time was when the emperor himself first
brought Roman arms to the far reaches of his realm. In the course of
nine years of campaigns, his well trained army of legionnaires nearly
exterminated some tribes. In one obstinate conflict hardly five-hundred
survived of sixty-thousand tribal fighters. At another, the total
population of thirty-three-thousand was sold into slavery after
succumbing to an arduous siege of their last refuge. These were the
two greatest border tribes of the Gauls. Taking time to maraud Britain
(and lay the groundwork for four centuries of Roman rule there), Caesar
subdued the country of the Gauls, punishing and annihilating. Tribal
lands were laid waste and the people were hunted like wild beasts.
Large tribes were destroyed, whole regions depopulated and ravaged,
respect bloodily impressed, and thus the empire grew. Two entire
Teutonic tribes numbering four-hundred-thousand pushed into northern
Gaul but were driven back across the Rhyn. Still the mighty river could
not be forded. Teutonic warriors raised such stubborn resistance that
the armed occupation of northern Gaul required fifteen Roman legions
(perhaps seventy-five-thousand men), a thousand ships, fifty fortresses;
and a bare strip of no-man's-land, with walls faced by deep ditches and
dotted with watch towers on the south shore, established the Rhyn as the
end of empire beyond which stretched the vast and unknown mirkwood
forest homelands of the Teutons. Over centuries, revolts and uprisings
of oppressed peoples stained with blood the imperial banners as all of
the province of Germania was lost by the Romans and the rule of empire
decayed and shrank, but it left behind the legacy of an alien
civilization and religion.
Then also was the time of the Folk-Wandering. The climate cooled,
coastal areas flooded, and the women (as historians Durant put it) were
more fertile than the fields. Cold and hunger became constant
companions. The adventurous, determined, and the desperate were forced
into a great centuries long migration. They rolled south in covered
wagons and a million fighting men, women, children, and animals. They
were so blond that terror-stricken Itals described the children as
having the white hair of old men. Fierce blue eyes, huge frames, and
red hair, were other distinguishing characteristics. From the south
(leaving deserts in its wake), concentrated power ~ in the form of
imperial economic manipulation, aided by priests bent on cultural
genocide ~ compromised the lives of free Teutons. Life became
increasingly dependent upon the rule (or misrule) of various royal
estates as kings battled each other for thrones and territory, imposing
on the people their wars and their crimes. A millennium of a thousand
unjust imperial and religious wars wrought carnage and desolation.
Armies fed by appropriating the grains and fruits and cattle of the
fields, quartered in the homes of the people, and plundered, and raped,
and killed. Fertile land was left untilled for lack of men, draft
animals, or seed, or because peasants had no assurance that they would
live to reap where they had sown. Those who survived were reduced to
eating dogs, cats, rats, acorns, grass. Men and women competed with
ravens and dogs for the flesh of dead horses. Offenders were taken from
the gallows to be devoured. Exhumed bodies were sold for food.
The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the secular state, coincided
with an increase and the supremacy of the Holy Roman Church, the new
ecclesiastical state. In the course of hundreds of years, imperial
language, gods and priests replaced the dangerous (because national)
knowledge of Keltic Druid and Teutonic ErilaR who retreated to the
forests and mountains seeking in secret to counsel the people as "they
were robbed even of their legends, which were reworked by crafty clerics
who forged out of them the mental foundations of a veritable ideology of
power" (at least, so wrote Poly).
Teutonic culture became poisoned with the greed of those who usurped
the power of the people, ever aided by priests with a mission of
cultural destruction. The last stand of Teutonic tradition in Europe ~
before its northward retreat, was in the war of thirty years against
Frankish emperor Karl the (so-called) Great. By cruel efforts to spread
the gospel of a messiah of Israel, he gave Saxons a choice between
baptism and death and had forty-five- hundred beheaded in one day.
Through the centuries hundreds and thousands died for persisting in the
old traditions. They were dragged from their homes and hacked to death
with seven blows of a rusty sword, put to torture, hands and feet burned
to the bone, tongue cut out, and suspended over a fire and slowly
roasted. In the north they struggled to remain free of royal
prerogatives and of feudal subjection. The historical records show the
destruction of Roman churches, the killing of church organizers and
missionaries, and when the Vikings sailed in fleets of hundreds as the
scourge of Europe it was in vengeance that monasteries and churches were
burned and looted.
4
Codex Regius, the Icelandic Edda ~ Eddukvaedi
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The early records, the songs and the stories, were obliterated by foreign monks and
priests who felt a bitter hatred for the paganism they had come to destroy. It is
remarkable how clean a sweep these ecclesiastics were able to make. Scholars recognize
that the greater part of the early tradition has perished, that practically none of it
survives except in Icelandic manuscripts, and that it must have lived orally for many
generations before it was written. Its corpus are the Thulur: "collections of mnemonic
verses, lists of synonyms or names which served to pass on knowledge to the following
generations orally, using mnemotechnical aids such as alliteration, rhythm and factual
associations," according to Simek, while Cleasby defined thula as "a rote, or strings of
rhymes running on without strophic division, also used of rhymed or alliterative formulas."
It was originally of magical-religious content, and the thulr (a sayer of saws, a wise man,
a sage, or bard), as Simek noted, "could, thus, be seen as the guardian of tradition,
especially religious but perhaps also legal tradition, as the speaker of the tradition, as
‘cult speaker'. . . . As the Thulur in the more extended sense of the word . . . convey
mythological knowledge, it would seem natural to see the origin of the Thulur as part of the
education of the Thulr, the cult speaker." Such are the ErilaR who preserved the tradition
by unique wordcraft in lays and drapas as they were performed by the bards of yore, recorded
in innumerable ancient songs that were learned by heart. In the collection known as the
Edda, the text of the verses was copied in Roman characters from an earlier version in a
single, practiced, elegant hand on fifty-three leaves (eight leaves are missing) of a
vellum manuscript. Believed penned perhaps a thousand years ago, there is no record of it
before being rescued from an Icelandic farmhouse into the possession of a Scandinavian
bishop in the seventeenth century. It was presented as a gift to the king of Danmark and
remained for three centuries as the Codex Regius (King's Book) in the royal library at
Kobenhavn until it was returned to Iceland. It contains forty-one strophic lays in a
complex, artificial style, with much use of mythological imagery ~ turning songs in lyric
stanzas meant to be recited. Not until the first decades of the nineteenth century were
all the lays published.
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The ErilaR carried the mythological lore and the traditions ever
northward, and Iceland became a final refuge of the profound liberty it
demands. It led ~ by the creation of the allthing, the united
parliament ~ to the establishment of the first free republic in the
European world, where the homesteader also was poet, law-speakers were
bards, and a small peasant population devoted a consuming literacy to
the preservation of what then was an oral heritage. According to the
Islendingabok, the settlers moved to the peace by the northern seas to
keep "holy freedom's laws" and to be free of the authority of "kings and
criminals".
