The gate of the year

Burials of the Viking era, in the archaeological site of Lindholm Høje, near the town of Aalborg, Denmark. In this locality, the most imposing funerary site of Northern Europe, have been discovered more than seven hundred burials, dating around the X century, most of which show the typology of the “ship-burial”, characteristic of the Viking period.
For the ancient Germans the goddess Hel was the personification of the Underworld and of the realm of the dead. According to the mythological tradition reported by Snorri’s Edda, Hel is the daughter of Loki and a giantess, and was put in the Underworld (Niflheim) by Odin, where he “gave her power over nine worlds, that she should share all those abodes among the men that are sent to her, and these are they who die of sickness or old age”. The goddess is furthermore described as a worrying figure: “she is half blue and half the hue of flesh, therefore is she easy to know, and (beside) very stern and grim” (Gylfaginning, 34). The word Hel was also employed to indicate the place in which the dead dwelt and it seems that the original meaning of the term was “what hides, conceals”, and was used to design the tomb: subsequently it was extended to the world of the dead and only later was personified. Albeit frequently conceived as located underground, the realm of the dead was also represented as situated to the extreme West, beyond the sea, and that is why the tomb were made in the shape of a ship, particularly diffused during the Viking era. The sea was, in some way, an Underworld, opposed to the earth, and the dwelling of dark and dangerous powers.
Julius Caesar (Gallic War, VI, 18) reports that “the Gauls affirm that they are all descended from a common father, Dis, and say that this is the tradition of the Druids”. The Romans called Dis Pater the god of the dead, also called Pluto, equivalent to the Greek Hades. The Celtic homologue can be found in the Irish Donn (“the Brown”, “the Dark”), who dwelt on an island off the coast of South-Western Ireland, called Tech Duinn, “the House of Donn”. Another name for this island, in Old Irish, was Inis Tarbhnai, term which refers to the word tarbh, “bull”. Thus, it seems to emerge a relationship between the god of the dead Donn and the bull Donn Cuailnge, the “Brown Bull of Cuailnge”, which is the central figure of the epic narrative of the Táin bó Cuailnge (“the Raid of the Cattle of Cooley”). Significantly, the god of the dead, Donn, was frequently associated with the god of plenty and fertility, the Dagda.
Among the Celts, the view of the Otherworld as a land beyond the sea appears also in the conception of Emain Ablach, the Island of the Apples, a wonderful place where the inhabitants lived an everlasting summer, located somewhere off the coast of Scotland or of Ireland. An Irish legend narrates of the hero Bran Mac Febail, who went there searching for a mysterious woman who appeared in a dream, and spent on the island several years. Caught by homelessness, he obtained from his lover, Niamh of the Golden Hair, the permission to come back to his country, with a group of other youths that had been lured in that place. But when they came near the shores of Ireland, the first of them who leaped ashore was instantly turned into a heap of dust, because time on earth passes much more rapidly than in the Other world. Bran and his companions were thus condemned to wander through the sea, remaining forever in an intermediary zone between this world and the Other (Monaghan 2004).

[Image: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1297580/Denmark-city-breaks-Six-things-Aalborg.html]




World of the Dead

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Burials of the Viking era, in the archaeological site of Lindholm Høje, near the town of Aalborg, Denmark. In this locality, the most imposing funerary site of Northern Europe, have been discovered more than seven hundred burials, dating around the X century, most of which show the typology of the “ship-burial”, characteristic of the Viking period. For the ancient Germans the goddess Hel was the personification of the Underworld and of the realm of the dead. According to the mythological tradition reported by Snorri’s Edda, Hel is the daughter of Loki and a giantess, and was put in the Underworld (Niflheim) by Odin, where he “gave her power over nine worlds, that she should share all those abodes among the men that are sent to her, and these are they who die of sickness or old age”. The goddess is furthermore described as a worrying figure: “she is half blue and half the hue of flesh, therefore is she easy to know, and (beside) very stern and grim” (Gylfaginning, 34). The word Hel was also employed to indicate the place in which the dead dwelt and it seems that the original meaning of the term was “what hides, conceals”, and was used to design the tomb: subsequently it was extended to the world of the dead and only later was personified. Albeit frequently conceived as located underground, the realm of the dead was also represented as situated to the extreme West, beyond the sea, and that is why the tomb were made in the shape of a ship, particularly diffused during the Viking era. The sea was, in some way, an Underworld, opposed to the earth, and the dwelling of dark and dangerous powers. Julius Caesar (Gallic War, VI, 18) reports that “the Gauls affirm that they are all descended from a common father, Dis, and say that this is the tradition of the Druids”. The Romans called Dis Pater the god of the dead, also called Pluto, equivalent to the Greek Hades. The Celtic homologue can be found in the Irish Donn (“the Brown”, “the Dark”), who dwelt on an island off the coast of South-Western Ireland, called Tech Duinn, “the House of Donn”. Another name for this island, in Old Irish, was Inis Tarbhnai, term which refers to the word tarbh, “bull”. Thus, it seems to emerge a relationship between the god of the dead Donn and the bull Donn Cuailnge, the “Brown Bull of Cuailnge”, which is the central figure of the epic narrative of the Táin bó Cuailnge (“the Raid of the Cattle of Cooley”). Significantly, the god of the dead, Donn, was frequently associated with the god of plenty and fertility, the Dagda. Among the Celts, the view of the Otherworld as a land beyond the sea appears also in the conception of Emain Ablach, the Island of the Apples, a wonderful place where the inhabitants lived an everlasting summer, located somewhere off the coast of Scotland or of Ireland. An Irish legend narrates of the hero Bran Mac Febail, who went there searching for a mysterious woman who appeared in a dream, and spent on the island several years. Caught by homelessness, he obtained from his lover, Niamh of the Golden Hair, the permission to come back to his country, with a group of other youths that had been lured in that place. But when they came near the shores of Ireland, the first of them who leaped ashore was instantly turned into a heap of dust, because time on earth passes much more rapidly than in the Other world. Bran and his companions were thus condemned to wander through the sea, remaining forever in an intermediary zone between this world and the Other (Monaghan 2004). [Image: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1297580/Denmark-city-breaks-Six-things-Aalborg.html]