The Norse Lunar Cycle
Now that we know the basic elements of this lunar Soma cycle, we can begin to spot them, in an exceedingly fragmentary form, just where we would expect them, in a series of tales about the third function gods of the Norse, the Vanir, and the Aesir-Vanir War in which they are combatants. For if the tale of Chyavana and the Asvins fighting Indra, and the Asvins becoming priests of the sacrifice, is the same as the Vanir fighting Óðinn and the Aesir, and becoming priests of their sacrifice, then we should find more or less the same events in the myths of the gods who fight this war in each case.
It first needs explaining that Mani, the generally recognized Moon god of Norse myth, does not seem to figure in this sequence of events which we have named “lunar.” However, what basic analysis of the myths has shown is that the Indo-European people often had more than one moon deity or moon-related deity, just as they sometimes had more than one sun deity or sun-related deity. These could of course designate different aspects of the moon or sun. In the Vedic case, one form of the moon god is Chandra, whose name means “shining,” who is an ancestor figure of the Lunar Dynasty, which spawns the Kuru kings who fight the Kurukshetra War. The god of the soma plant is theorized to have at one point been a separate god and then to have become identified with the moon as well as with associated figures such as Indu (“bright drop”), and Osadhipati (“physician, lord of herbs”). Whether the Soma god was originally only a plant god or was always seen as a lunar deity, there was certainly a period where Soma, Chandra, and the others were associated but had separate myths of their own, until at last they were simply known in Vedic myth as Chandra-Soma or simply Soma. There is, however, no reason to think that the moon and lunar plant gods necessarily became one deity in the European branches in the same fashion.
As we have seen, the "Surya's Bridal" hymn involving Chyavana is about the moon god Soma specifically, rather than Chandra, and it seems to contain themes relating to both his lunar function and his function as god of the soma plant and sacrifice. Indeed, the hymn to "Surya's Bridal" was likely created after the soma plant had been identified with the moon, as the opening verses of the hymn seem to clearly suggest Soma's lunar character. The scholars Jamison and Brereton, translators and editors of a current benchmark scholarly edition of the Rig Veda (2014), believe that this was the first hymn in the Rid Veda to clearly identify Soma with the moon. However, language relating to “waxing” or “swelling” is used to describe Soma even before this hymn, and even if he was only a lord of plants or waters these could have been seen as spheres under the domain of the Lunar power from much earlier, hence why he was eventually syncretized to Chandra at all. In the first Book of the Rig Veda we find: “Soma, wax great. From every side may vigorous powers unite in thee:/Be in the gathering-place of strength./Wax, O most gladdening Soma, great through all thy rays of light, and be/A Friend of most illustrious fame to prosper us” (1.91.16-17). How and when Soma was combined with the moon itself, if he was ever fully separate, and then with Chandra, then becomes a key subject for further research.
Thus, in keeping with the parallels we have demonstrated thus far, we may consider the myths of the Vanir and the Aesir-Vanir War potentially as a centering on a lunar myth specifically connected to the Norse version of the soma as the liquid of immortality given to the gods in sacrifice. The culmination of the war in an exchange of hostages associated with divine drinks or liquids (Kvasir, Mimir and Njorðr in Ynglinga Saga, Mimir and Njorðr in other sources) and the accession of the Vanir to priests of the high sacrifice underscores this connection to the soma. Mani, on the other hand, not connected to this cycle, may more accurately be seen as either comparable to Chandra or perhaps even as another manifestation of the moon divinity in an aspect unrelated to either Soma or Chandra.
In fact what we find in the sequence leading up to the Aesir-Vanir War are nearly all of the elements of the Chyavana tale, however they have been split up and distributed to a few deities rather than attached only to one. Despite this splitting up, it cannot be ignored that the same elements exist here, often linked one to the next and including the confrontation of the lower gods with the higher and their ascendence to priests of the sacrifice. Thus, as we go along in examining these linked motifs, we are tasked with deciding if each of these gods who take roles paralleling the Indian Chyavana-Soma are related to the lunar epiphany in some way, as aspects of the moon, or only as auxiliary performers in a lunar cycle, with separate identities.
The story of Iðunn and the golden apples, which begins the events that lead up to the marriage of Njorðr and Skaði, shares the identical main theme of the Chyavana tale: the matter of renewing the youth of the gods when they begin to grow old. For the Norse, this important function is performed by the golden apples, tended by Iðunn. In the Vedic version, this same function is performed by the special herbal paste, one form of which comes to be known as the Chyavanaprash, which the Asvins give to Chyavana when he goes into the water and has his youth renewed. As we can see, these objects are quite different and their keepers are here so dissimilar that they are of opposite genders. So important, however, is their function that we must look past these surface differences to see the way in which each object plays a key role in very similar sequences of events.
Specifically, we see that the abduction of Iðunn causes the identical problem, the identical state that we encounter at the beginning of the Chyavana tale: Chyavana on the one hand and the Norse gods on the other have now grown old and decrepit, and require the herbal paste or the golden apples to renew their youthful state. Furthermore, the killing of Thjazi for stealing these apples, which follows, incites the same situation and outcomes that the poking of Chyavana's eye by Sukanya (or alternately by the playing youths) does: Thjazi's daughter Skaði must be given recompense for this deed, concluding with a marriage involving a “choosing” scene, just as Chyavana must be recompensed, concluding with a marriage, followed by an analogous “choosing” scene. Tellingly, one of the recompenses to Skaði for the killing of Thjazi is the removal of Thjazi's eyes and their placement into the sky as stars. Therefore once again, right where we would expect a key element – the poking out of eyes – we find it, only changed slightly. In the Norse version the eye removal motif is itself one of the recompenses, while in the Indian version the poking of eyes is one of the causes which require recompense. And of course, in the Norse version it is the female deity, Skaði, who is given the husband, Njörðr, as the final recompense, while it is the male Chyavana who is given the female princess Sukanya in the Indian version. The roles have simply been reversed, while the outcome is identical: each pair undergoes the “choosing” scene (Skaði choosing Njörðr (whose feet have been kept young by the waters of his domain) from among the gods by looking only at their feet and Sukanya choosing Chyavana (who has just emerged from the waters of a lake renewed in youth) from among the same-looking Asvins), and the gods acquire or reacquire that which renews their youth, the golden apples or the magical herbal paste.
Above all, what this sequence seems to suggest is an identity between Njörðr and Chyavana-Soma, and between Skaði and Sukanya, while Thjazi then either seems to be here embodying a role related in some way to the cause of the decaying of the gods and/or the waning of the moon. The identification of Skaði with Sukanya-Surya would of course imply that Skaði could be a daughter of the Sun, which would not fit the interpretation of Thjazi as part of the lunar hierophany. Thus we would have to suggest that Thjazi could be a destructive aspect of the sun which may have been seen as greedily taking away the youth of the gods or the light of the moon in some manner. We could of course conclude that this exact familial relationship may have been altered in one tradition or the other, just as several other details show the signs of change and difference. Thjazi is a giant also said to be skaut-giarn which has been translated in one case as “eager for shooting” – archery being an extremely common indicator of solar activity in myth, the sun shooting rays from afar, while Skaði is known as “the shining bride of the gods,” and is said to use both bow and skis as the solar Ullr also does.
The only manuscript of Hyndluljod, found in Flateyjarbok, appears to have skaut-giarn, which some scholars have emended to skraut-giarn, adding a k. Skaut-giarn, the compound word as it is in the manuscript, has several possible meanings, recorded by the LaFarge-Tucker Glossary (1988): “eager for shooting,” which interpretation however requires us to read the “au” as a stand-in for u-umlaut ö, making the first word skröt, said to be an allowable reading but not the simplest one; “fond of disguises (Gerring) or fond of sailing (Finnur-Jonsson).” The reading of “eager for shooting” is not the one favored by the most scholars, but remains a possibility if we consider that the mythic context for it may have been lost. We merely note this as an uncertain epithet with several other possible meanings. We hold that Thjazi very well could be connected to an aspect of the sun, but that this is by no means necessary for our overall argument. This detail could have shifted. In the case of Sukanya, she is the great-granddaughter of Vivasvan, the Sun god himself, and because she incarnates the Daughter of the Sun, her own father may or may not incarnate the Sun god as well. A grandfather or other relative of Skaði who is not Thjazi could connect her to the solar mythos in the Norse case, or this parentage could have been forgotten altogether.
If we accept Viktor Rydberg's equivalency of Thjazi with the smith Volund, which argument cannot be laid out here, then there is further support for the idea that he “loves to shoot,” and could be a solar divinity of some sort. In Volundarkvida, Volund uses skis in order to hunt bear, causing him to appear similar to Skadi and Ullr, the other ski and bow divinities. He is called “sharp-sighted marksman,” or, in another translation, “weather-wise bowman” (Volundarkvida 8). Whether Thjazi loves to shoot or not, Volund, his posited double, does seem to. Volund also is called an elf king (Volundarkvida 10) (even if he appears only to be half elf), the alfar having solar associations as we note elsewhere. It is said that at his hall he has 700 rings (Volundarkvida 10), while rings are one of the central symbols, as we have seen, of the Sun god Ullr. Thjazi himself, like Volund, is in general closely associated with gold, gold being known as “Thazi's testimony,” which could have a specific mythic meaning while also expressing the fact that gold can be poetically likened to an emanation of the sun.
Rydberg argues that Thjazi-Volund is one of the “Sons of Ivaldi,” divine artisans of the Norse pantheon who compete in an artistic competition, and compares these figures to the Vedic Rbhus, divine artisans who compete in a very similar competition. The Rbhus seem themselves to have been solar deities. “Initially, Ribhus [singular] was an early Vedic sun deity,” says Charles Russel Coulter. He notes that in some passages they are called sons of the goddess of morning light, Saranyu, and in the Atharvaveda are said to be sons of Sudhavan, the “good archer” (Coulter, 1892). Similarly to Adityas, Maruts and Vasus, the Rbhus “appear as stars or rays of the sun” (1893). In the Aitareya Brahmana, III, 30 they are called the “sun's neighbors or pupils,” and are said to periodically dwell in the house of “he who is not to be concealed,” Agohya, an epithet of the Sun. If this figure Rbhus was “sun deity” in the earliest phase, this could explain why Thjazi appears in such a solar family, as the father of a sun princess. There could either have been a splitting apart of this early sun deity and the solar artisans in the Vedic branch, or a simple coinciding of these aspects in the Norse branch. We could then either interpret Thjazi as a hypostasis of the sun itself, or as only a family member or descendant of the sun who shares in and passes along its qualities to his solar daughter.
Indeed, if we follow Rydberg down this path, and accept also Volund's brother Egil (as great an archer as can be found in Norse legend and myth) as the father of Ullr (and thus an elder Sun god like Irish Elatha), then we have suddenly a fully united family of Sun deities: Thjazi, his daughter Skadi, his brother Egil (along with a third brother), Egil's son Ullr, and, if Rydberg is correct in his further equations, a brother of Ullr, Odr, who is the lover or husband or Freyja. Earendel, a form of Aurvandil, who Rydberg equates with Egil, is called the “true light of the sun” in the medieval Christian poem Crist I, and, in the Blickling Homilies, makes way for and announces a younger “Sun” god, here said to be Christ, who perhaps takes the position previously held by the younger Sun god Ullr. Earandel is also used in the Old English corpus to translate, among other things, oriens, the Latin term meaning “rising sun.” If the aforementioned Odr, called Ullr's brother by Rydberg, is also a sun deity, like the other members of his theorized family, it would lend credence to the idea, which we will touch on further along, that Freyja stands as a parallel to the Dawn goddess. We would have Odr and Ullr as solar brothers, at least one of whom weds this goddess. This then would seem to be the imperfect parallel of what we find in the case of the Iliad: Helen adulterously marries not just one solar figure, but two brothers in succession, the sun incarnation Paris and his brother Diephobus, who is a sort of double of Paris and whose name also suggests a possible solar character. Ullr does not necessarily need to be a lover of Freyja for this parallel to prove meaningful, as the role of husband of this goddess could have been held only by his brother in the Norse case. This perspective also makes possible one explanation for why the myth of the Sun god and Dawn goddess marriage is split from the myth of the cuckolding of the Mitraic god in the Irish case. Once again we have two potentially solar figures: the Sun god Bres, who marries the Dawn goddess, and Cermait, “of form all fair,” with a tongue of honey, who cuckolds Lugh and is killed in revenge. In this case Bres and Cermait are not brothers, however, but they are still closely related, Bres being the paternal uncle of Cermait. Cermait dies but rises again, revived by his father the Dagda, further opening him up to a solar interpretation.
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