Heimdallr and Apam Napat

 Heimdallr and Apam Napat

[This article builds on our most recent article demonstrating the parallel between Manannan, Odinn, and the Vedic fire god Agni: Link]

In his Investigations, Viktor Rydberg contends that Agni is in fact a parallel of Heimdallr. However, it is not difficult to contest this claim. Rydberg in fact assumes that the deity Apam Napat, The Descendant of Waters, who has become combined with Agni in the Vedas, but not elsewhere, is simply an aspect of Agni. Thus he uses for his comparison the composite Agni-Apam Napat found in the Vedas under the name “Agni,”* then brings in the Apam Napat of the Avesta for further support of the Agni comparison. This of course does not work if Agni and Apam Napat are distinct deities only combined in the Rig Veda, as it appears. An original distinction between Agni and Apam Napat is supported by the fact that Apam Napat and the Fire god are separate in the Iranic Avesta; by the clear distinction we have uncovered in Irish myth between Manannan/Aed (Agni) and Nechtan (Apam Napat); by the fact that no other branches demonstrate a combination of these aspects; and lastly by the opinion of Herman Oldenberg and other scholars upon the Rig Vedic evidence. Arthur A. Macdonell summarizes: “Oldenberg is of opinion that Apam napat was originally a water genius pure and simple, who became confused with the water-born Agni, a totally different being. His grounds are that one of the two hymns in which he is celebrated (10.30) is connected in the ritual with ceremonies exclusively concerned with water, while even in 2.35 [the only Vedic hymn dedicated solely to him] his aqueous nature predominates” (Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, 70). Brereton and Jamison concur with this being likely, as can be seen in our note below, and Agni and Apam Napat are sometimes distinguished even in the Rig Veda, including in the one hymn dedicated solely to Apam Napat. The question remains somewhat open-ended among scholars; however, the weight of comparative evidence we have surveyed points toward a very likely original separation of the two gods. Thus evidence drawn from Iranic Apam Napat or from a Vedic Agni that has been blended with Apam Napat cannot support a parallel of Heimdallr with the true archaic “Agni,” that is, the Fire god. Much of what Rydberg uses as evidence of Vedic Agni's character demonstrably has its origin in this Apam Napat (as we will see below), or otherwise its origin is muddied by the uncertainty caused by the mixture of the two gods, and could originate in either. 

*Brereton and Jamison: “The connection between fire and waters is also evident in the identification of Agni with a minor divinity going back to Indo-Iranian times, Apāṃ Napāt, the “Child of the Waters.” Originally he was probably a separate deity, a glowing fiery being concealed and nurtured in the waters, perhaps configured in part as lightning. But the single R̥gvedic hymn dedicated to Apāṃ Napāt, II.35, gradually merges Apāṃ Napāt with Agni by attributing Agni’s functions and form to him, until in the final verse Agni emerges fully in the poet’s address to him” (Brereton and Jamison, The Rig Veda: A Guide, 75).

"...in the Rgveda it [the name Apam Napat] is in the course of becoming an epithet of Agni. In this hymn we see aspects both of the identification with and assimilation to Agni and of the original independent divinity" (Brereton and Jamison, Rig Veda, 452).

Such evidence can, however, support a parallel of Heimdallr with Apam Napat, the deity that Rydberg was sometimes comparing Heimdallr with while supposing that it pointed toward Agni. A brief summary of details relating to Apam Napat should make this sufficiently clear for the present. Vedic Apam Napat “shines forth without fuel in the waters (2.35.4). Clothed in lightning,” whereas Heimdallr is the whitest or brightest god (Þrymskviða 15), thus the color of lightning; “the swift (waters) golden in colour go around him (2.35.9). The Son of waters, Apam Napat, is golden in form, appearance and colour; coming from a golden womb,” while Heimdallr has golden teeth (or is at least called gullinntani) and a golden-maned horse; “Standing in the highest place he [Apam Napat] always shines with undimmed splendour” (RV 2.35.14) and similarly Avestan Apam Napat's most characteristic title is bərəzant-, the “High One,” (Zam Yasht, 52) or Borz ī Ābānnāf “The High One who is Son of the Waters”” (Zātspram 3.18)), as Heimdallr is the gods' watchmen from on high, near to the rainbow bridge Bifrost, and lives at Himinbjorg, “Heaven's Castle” or “Heaven's Mountain”; in the Veda (2.35.14) “the swift waters carry ghee as food to their son,” that is, Apam Napat curiously has multiple mothers (the waters), while Heimdallr is said also to have multiple mothers, nine of them. In fact, the common interpretation of these mothers of Heimdallr is the waves of the sea, making them identical with the Nine Daughters of the sea gods Aegir and Ran. This theory has been commonplace at least since Dumezil, as found in his Gods of the Ancient Northmen. Supporting this supposition is a stanza from the Voluspa hin skamma, which reads: “Nine giant women, at the world's edge,/ Once bore the man so mighty in arms,” implying a birth at sea, which is where the world's edge is, and a few lines later, “Strong was he made with the strength of the earth,/With the ice-cold sea, and the blood of swine” (Voluspa hin skamma, 7, 9), further connecting his origin to the sea, his mothers having made him strong by its cold waters (among other things) upon his birth. Of Apam Napat: "The youth [Apam Napat] do the youthful waters, (though) unsmiling, circle around while they groom him" (RV 2.35.4).

        

        Vedic Apam Napat also “has engendered all beings, who are merely branches of him (2.35.2-8),” and of Avestan Apam Napat: “(It is) he who created men, he who shaped men (yō nərə̄uš da’a, yō nərə̄uš tataša)” (Zam Yasht, 52), while in Rigsthula, under the name Rig, Heimdallr directly engenders the classes of human society, making them his descendants. Agni is spoken of in similar terms in the Veda, in fact; however, Macdonell is at pains to emphasize that this attribution, only in the case of Agni, cannot be taken to mean he is believed to be the father of the human race in a proper interpretation: “Agni is once spoken of as having generated these children of men (1.96.2); but this is a mere incidental extension of the notion expressed in the same stanza, that he created heaven, earth, and the waters, and cannot be interpreted as a general belief in Agni as father of the human race” (Macdonell, 99). Thus when Agni and Apam Napat are seen in their separate contexts via the distinct Avestan case, it is Apam Napat who has the stronger claim to engendering humans (though engendering the castes is not specifically mentioned in relation to either god). Macdonell concludes that, “In the Avesta Apam napat is a spirit of the waters, who lives in their depths, is surrounded by females and is often invoked with them, drives with swift steeds.” 

        

        Perhaps most crucially, this Iranic Apam Napat “is said to have seized the brightness in the depths of the ocean,” which is one of the key pieces of evidence Rydberg uses to link Heimdallr with Apam Napat and thus with Agni by association. But this is a myth solely belonging to Apam Napat in the Avesta, and not to Agni at all. In fact, the Avestan fire god, Atar, appears as a completely separate figure in the same section of the hymn attempting also to seize the "glory" or "brightness," but he is unable to do so and it swells up and goes into the sea. It is at this point that Apam Napat appears and successfully seizes the "brightness." He is its proper guardian. Thus, as Heimdallr fights Loki, on a rock in the sea according to Snorri, in the form of a seal, for the famous shining necklace Brisingamen, and finally returns it safely to Freyja, so also Apam Napat seizes the “brightness” or the shining “glory”,* the khvarenah, from the ocean during a battle with Azhi Dahaka “of the evil law.” Apam Napat watches always over this shining glory, also spelled Xwarrah, in the Bundahišn (26.91). Heimdallr's seal form then finally makes sense in this interpretation, considering that he is a proper god of the waters. In the Avesta Apam Napat is also “the god amid the waters, who being prayed to is swiftest of all to hear,” while Heimdallr is the great watchman of the gods who is known above all for his eyesight and hearing, being able to hear grass as it grows and wool as it grows on sheep (Gylfaginning 25). In the Avesta Apam Napat is also called “kingly” (Zam Yasht, 52), while Heimdallr goes to the houses of Men in Rigsthula under the name Rig, believed by scholars to be borrowed from an Old Irish word for “king,” rí/ríg.

* “51. That Glory swells up and goes to the sea Vouru-Kasha. The swift-horsed Son of the Waters [Apam Napat] seizes it at once: this is the wish of the Son of the Waters, the swift-horsed: 'I want to seize that Glory that cannot be forcibly seized, down to the bottom of the sea Vouru-Kasha, in the bottom of the deep rivers.' 

52. We sacrifice unto the Son of the Waters, the swift-horsed, the tall [high] and shining lord, the lord of females; the male god, who helps one at his appeal; who made man, who shaped man, a god who lives beneath waters, and whose ear is the quickest to hear when he is worshipped” (Avesta, Zam Yasht, 51-52).

One interpretation that could bring the Agni and Apam Napat parallels closer together in relation to the Heimdallr question is the idea that Apam Napat could be partially combustible himself, that despite being a god of the waters he could have his own semi-fiery or at least electric nature – for example, that he embodies a form of lightning. Macdonnel himself states that, at least in the Rig Veda which already has conflated the two, Apam Napat “appears to represent the lightning form of Agni which is concealed in the cloud,” and this overlap with Agni (along with the contemporary idea that water held fire within it in general) may have been what caused the two gods to be conflated in the first place. The loud note of Heimdallr's Gjallarhorn could then relate to something like thunder and his location in heaven near the rainbow bridge could indicate his dwelling among clouds as lightning does. James Darmesteter agrees with Macdonell in regarding Apam Napat as a lightning-in-clouds deity, though Oldenberg and others see him as purely aqueous. It would of course be possible to picture a deity related to the lightning or electrical power residing within all water and clouds generally, distinguished from but easily confused with the Agni which lives also in water, but this could also be too reductive. The Encyclopaedia Iranica states: “In Indian rituals, as in Iranian ones, Apām Napāt’s connection remained solely with water. Oldenberg’s interpretation was accepted by L. H. Gray (“The Indo-Iranian deity Apām Napāt,” ARW 3, 1900, pp. 18-51).”*  

*Encyclopaedia Iranica. Iranicaonline.org, “Apam Napat”. Accessed May 2021.

We do not claim that the foregoing is a definitive case for the identity of Heimdallr. Our only contention at present is that Manannan and Agni (the true fire gods), and particularly Agni in his specifically fire-related passages, have far more in common with Odinn, including actual myths, than Agni has with Heimdallr when the Apam Napat element is set aside and seen clearly for itself. We have not even mentioned yet that Rydberg also is required to bring in a third unconnected deity to make his Agni parallel function. This is the Avestan Sraosha of the “fine hearing,” an embodiment of the divine word or of divine hearing, who Rydberg requires because only Avestan Apam Napat is said to have quick hearing while Vedic Agni is not. Suffice it to say that Sraosha is not a fire deity, is less connected to Agni than Apam Napat is, and indeed does not have a connection to him.

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