CITY OF GODS
Somewhere in a vague and distant area (which some think is placed in the South, others in the East) is a city that transcends everything humans have ever created. Above the city is the tower from which you can see each populated country and even dark and inhuman fields which indicate the end of the world. In its center is a field that is used by the gods for play. But above it is the hall with twelve thrones of which the highest one belongs to the most powerful among the gods. His name means "One" and he is the father of gods and men. While he is sitting at the table two ravens are resting on his shoulders; they tell him everything that's going on in the world.
There are numerous castles that surround this hall. Icy waves are roaring above some of them, on the other side, others are constructed in the skies or on the seacoast. There is also a huge gate under which there is a grove with leaves of red and gold. It is, however, leading to another and more spacious hall where feasts are being held every day with brave warriors as guests. These are the warriors killed in battle; the most powerful of the gods is the Father of Fallen Warriors. They feast with boar meat that never lacks, cooked in a magic cauldron. The Father of the Gods does not eat boar, he only drinks wine; with his own meat he feeds two voracious wolfs which follow him always and everywhere.
It's Asgard, City of Gods - a city built by the giants and gods. It is impossible to describe all the wonders and treasures it contains. Right next to Odin stands invincible, powerful Thor, who defends the abode of the gods with his irony gloves and deadly Mjolnir - mallet or hammer, which always comes back into the hands of the person who threw it. His property is called Thrudvang or Thruthvang, which means "power-field". Goddess Idunn keeps the golden apples in her shrine, thanks to which the gods do not age. At the southern end of the sky is a castle Gimle, "brighter than the sun", which will remain in place even when the whole world collapses. There is also a deer every day browsing leaves of St. Ash Tree (roots of that tree are reaching out to the dark underworld), and of whose horns dew is melting, the source of all rivers in Valhalla. But at the very end of the sky, next to the bridge Bifrost is a castle where Heimdallr sits, the keeper of the gods, who will blow his marvelous horn when the battle for the end of the world begins.
Description of Asgard, with all its fantastic details, we mostly owe to Snorri Sturluson, Icelander who wrote the Prose Edda (between the years 1222 and 1225), a complex of myths and beliefs of the people of old Scandinavia. In fact, these beliefs were common to the tribes and nations of the whole German speaking areas, or perhaps even wider than that. It should be noted that, Edda had been rejected for a long time by scholars as a figment of its author - at least until the discovery of even older manuscript, also in Iceland, four centuries after the death of Sturluson (1643), by Icelandic bishop Sveinsson. (This book was renamed The Elder Edda, as opposed to Sturluson’s Younger, and was immediately admitted into edaic cycle of poetry, which finally became the subject of serious studies.)
Edda contains the story of Aesir, a kind of genealogy of gods, as well as information about their migrations and the countries through which they passed. Sturluson’s story begins in a region located northerly of the Black Sea. This sea "divides one-third of the world: the one towards the east is called Asia and this one to the west some call Europe and some Aeneas. Northerly of the Black Sea is the Greater or Ice Sweden" (as opposed to Sweden in Scandinavia. Greater Sweden or Svitjod, or Svealand, simply means Holy or Sacred Earth). This is the stage for future major events. We read on in Sturluson’s writing Circle Terrestrial, that through that Sweden is flowing river Tanais, which used to be called Tanakvisl or Vanakvisl (and this is the Don River that flows into the Black Sea).
Author claims the region around the confluence of the Don was called Land of Vanir or Settlement of Vanir (first rivals and later allies of Aesir gods. First war in the world began between them. Aesir learned magic skills from Vanir: Vanir are older and wiser gods). And further: "Land in Asia east of Tanakvisl is called Land of Aesir or Settlement of Aesir," its capital is Asgard and "there reigned the one named Odin. There was a great temple". And also:" According to an old custom, there were twelve priests. They were in charge of sacrificial rituals... "(Ynglinga saga, II).
The story contained in Younger Edda is extremely accurate, not only geographically, but also chronologically. Odin left his land because he knew that, according to the prophecy, his descendants will inhabit the northern part of the world. He leaves his two brothers in Asgard. His son was called Skjold and he ruled the Denmark, Skjold’s grandson was named Frodi and ruled in the time of Emperor Augustus - "when Christ was born". The events we mention were in the first century AD.
As an old chronicle claims, road led Odin through the land of Saxons. He appointed his son Beldur or Balder as a ruler of Westphalia. He came via Denmark to Sweden (the one in Scandinavia), which has been by then ruled by certain Gylfi. But Gylfi - defeated by Aesir wisdom and beauty - handed princely power to Odin and set out to Asgard; he set off to this journey "secretly, disguised as an old man". Finally, after an exhausting journey, he discovered the "high castle with roof covered by gilded shields". Inside it he detected numerous dignitaries feasting or fighting with weapons, just like those in the mythical Valhalla.
Odin's glorious and long reign ends in the following way: on his new land he died of the disease. Before his death, he told his subjects that he is going back to the abode of the gods (we read this in the Ynglinga saga) promising that he will continue to accommodate his friends there. After his death, he has been appearing to Swedes before great battles, "to some giving the victory, others calling to join him". His body was burned at the stake, which "was a brilliant sight". He left his throne to Njord from Noatun, which also was Vanir... One of Njord’s descendants Svejgdir, will repeat Gylfi’s achievement and will go straight to the land of the Turks and Great Sweden, in order to find the old residence of Odin. The journey took five whole years. In Svitjod in Great Sweden he found plenty tribesmen and married a woman named Vana (precisely her name tells us that she was of divine race Vanir, and Vanir or Vyatichi, as it is known, are Slavs or Slavic ancestors).
Are gods fathers of humans or humans are fathers of gods? Do people create gods or, on the contrary, the gods created humans, as their companions, helpers and comrades? Story of Odin and his kin we have just introduced is undoubtedly correct. It can be also a memory of deified rulers and ancestors, but this in no case calls into question the cult, the belief in the divinity of the Father of gods and humans.
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Following the narration of the ancient chronicle, Russian explorer Vladimir Shcherbakov believed he had found the mythical Asgard. He found it right in place to which the chronicle about Aesir pointed its finger. It's Nisa, the ancient capital of the Parthia - the rival of Rome on the East, and alongside the Rome, the largest and most extensive empire of that time.
As noted by Shcherbakov, the poverty of history sources of Parthian beliefs is devastating. But, archaeological reconstruction of the Parthian capital and its cult places come to the rescue. Without dwelling on all architectural correspondences between mythical Asgard and ancient Nisa (old Nisa, but the situation with cult places in Nisaa is almost identical), I will mention that this is a true "copy" of Valhalla: it is mysterious RoundTemple. Contours of the walls are square but within them there is a circular room - twelve meters high. At the second level of this hall there were pillars and colored clay statues placed in alcove. These are the statues of the gods or deified ancestors. Old Parthians fostered the cult of ancestors:
"Deified ancestors, Aesir, accommodated here the guards and the other warriors. These were their statues that have been, as in other temples, creating the effect of their presence. "
The same explorer noticed a seemingly incidental detail: Odin, as it is written down in Edda, participated in feasts alongside with his warriors. But he never ate there, wine was enough for him. In other words, his presence was symbolic, not real.
A series of highly complex and obvious coincidences may not yet prove that in the descriptions of Asgard from Scandinavian myths the memory of the actual Asgard is really preserved - abode of the gods in the old Nisa, the capital of Parthia. But they confirm the consanguinity of beliefs of so much spatially distant people - beliefs that, as pointed out in Edda, originated in the area above the Black Sea, which are the authentic habitats of Aesir and Vanir.
Chinese chronicles of Tang dynasty named the Parthian state - Ansi.
Boris Nad
translated by: Zorana Lutovac
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