Essay on The Greco-Germanic Family Cycles I : The Greek Cycles and the Volsungasaga(part 1)

The Greco-Germanic Family Cycles I :

Stone mace – Corded Ware culture

The Greek Cycles and the Volsungasaga
by Thomas Sefton

There was a very ancient body of literature that was common to both the ancient Greeks and the ancient Germanic peoples. It takes the form of family cycles that center around the stories of Orestes, Melampous, Oidipous and Sigurd. All these cycles have a common, well–defined form, and all have a common content. When the Sumerians were developing civilization and the Semites were developing religion, the Indo-Europeans or people very much like them were developing something different from both. That something is quite different from anything that we understand today, I will tell these stories and allow that something to emerge. And at least in the case of the stories of Oidipous and Sigurd, the stories have been well-preserved enough so that we can understand the choice that Oidipous and Sigurd both made in terms of our own experience and our own lives, and this will allow us to understand what the Indo-Europeans developed instead of religion or civilization. This is something we have lost, and we need very badly to find it again.

“Greek Mythology” is simply all the stories from all over the East Mediterranean that the Greeks happened to be aware of, but within this “Greek Mythology” we find a central core of stories that are very much alike and very different from the others. All of these stories have a common content, the Greeks called this content, “Apollo,” and all of these stories were in the same specific form. The Greek “myths” that are not part of this central core tend to be about adventure and heroic exploits— monsters are slain, Gods make brief appearances— but the stories outside this core are never about the God. In many of the stories outside this core most of the action takes place overseas, which may well be where these particular stories came from, and then there are other stories that have much in common with this central core but are not of it. The fact that part of this fairly homogeneous body of literature can be found in Northern Europe as well as in Greece means that this type of story and perhaps the stories themselves migrated with the first Greek-speaking people into the Greek peninsula in 2,200 BC, and that the Greeks did not hear it or them from foreigners in the Mediterranean. I am referring to the stories of the House of Tantalos (or Pelops) whose central character is Orestes, the House of Melampous whose central character is Alkmaeon, the House of Kadmos whose central character is Oidipous and the House of Volsung whose central character is Sigurd.

Most of the Greek tragedies were based on stories taken from this central core, and together with the Iliad, this core was the predominate cultural influence in Athens during the classic age. We find the cycles of Tantalos, Melampous and Kadmos in classical Greece where they were already very ancient, and we also find the cycle of Volsung, in this same specific and well-defined form and with exactly the same content, a thousand miles away and two thousand years later in medieval Scandinavia. The content of all these cycles was Apollo/Odin. Odin and Apollo are quite different in some ways, but as they are found in these stories they are exactly the same. At the time when the Mesopotamians were developing the elaborate systems of power and obedience and position and hierarchy that eventually became civilization and nomadic Semites were developing a mental world based on law and will that eventually became what we call religion, nomadic people in Eastern Europe and in the western steppes developed something that nomads could create and evolve and carry with them, which did not involve obedience or conformity or submission or power-worship or even any definable idea of what we ought to be. Rather, it was the expression of what we actually are and the knowledge that we can choose to be that, and a confused and crippled version of it eventually became literature.

Besides the four Ancient Family Cycles we have other literature common to both ancient Greece and ancient Scandinavia. First, Oidipous is a completely typical example of a family of characters found in stories from the North and Baltic Seas. I will go into this in detail in “Greco-Germanic Tradition II.” Next, we have the Shield Poem which we see in Hesoid’sThe Shield of Herakles, eighth century BC (Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, pp. 220-253), and in Iliad XVIII, 478-608, probably at least as early, and in medieval Scandinavian examples too numerous to mention (see Hollander, pp. 32-37, 39 & 42-48 and Egil's Saga, 78). People in Scandinavia had the custom of giving each other shields with elaborate groups of figures painted on them, and if you got one of these shields you were expected to make a poem in turn describing the scenes on your shield. This poetry is fairly trivial, but its presence in both ancient Greek and medieval Scandinavian cultures has been recognized for some time. Furthermore, both Greek and Germanic epic poetry was sung to the lyre. When Germanic epic poetry finally died out in the 11th and 12th centuries AD —the Volsungasaga is a prose version of earlier poetry— the Germanic lyre died out as well and was replaced by the frame harp. (Bruce-Mitford, “The Sutton Hoo Lyre, Beowulf, and the Origins of the Frame Harp,” plates I & VI & pp. 11-12 and The Gods Remain, plates 8 & 9). Both the Greek and the Germanic traditions share the Shield Poem and share the lyre for their epic poetry, so it isn’t really surprising to find that they share another poetic form as well, the Family Cycle, and this form is far from trivial.

The Volsungasaga purports to go back only to the 5th century AD and the three Greek cycles purport to go back to Mycenaean times, 12th and 13th centuries BC, they are in fact all part of the same body of literature. And that body of literature and possibly the stories themselves go back much farther, at least to a time when the people who would become the Greeks and the people who would become the Germans shared a common culture, and that had to be before the time when Greek-speaking people first migrated into the Greek peninsula, and probably the time of the Corded Ware Culture, 2,800 to 2,300 BC, and the Bell Beaker Culture, 2,500 to 2,200BC. It could be argued that the Germans picked up these stories from the Greeks through travelers, or that the stories found their way north along with bronze-making, ironmaking, weapon types, etc. But that’s simply ridiculous. Whether we find the Family Cycles in Greece or in the Germanic countries, they express something at the heart of the culture we find them in. They were not foreign curiosities, they were part of the core of both cultures. And with the possible exception of the Indo-Europeans who invaded South-East Europe, the Chorded Ware culture and the related Bell Beaker culture appear to have been the most dynamic force in Northern and Central Europe. If these cultures indeed were the originators of the Ancient Family Cycles, that would explain why they are so different from the rest of known Indo-European literature.

Whether we find them in Greece or Germany, the characteristics of the Ancient Family Cycles are these: (1) A foreigner comes from a distant land and founds a dynasty. (2) The story follows this dynasty through several generations. (3) The generations tend to repeat certain behavior patterns. (4) The story is about a God, and it tells us who the God is. Other stories in “Greek mythology” feature Gods as characters, but these stories are about Gods. (5) The God the story is about, interacts with other Divine forces. (6) The stories are about Odin or Apollo, and Odin/Apollo are pretty much identical as we find them in the stories. In the story of the House of Volsung, Odin is in conflict with a Ring and a Hoard of treasure that are overwhelmingly good and desirable and so invariably cause evil. They are the opposite of Odin in every way. The story of the House of Melampous is fragmentary, but it is about Apollo, Dionysos is present, and Apollo is in conflict with a Robe and a Necklace that are overwhelmingly good and desirable. The story of the House of Tantalos is about Apollo, who is in conflict with the mindless Furies of guilt. The story of the House of Kadmos is about Apollo who is partnered with Dionysos and who is in conflict with his opposite, unconsciousness and mindlessness. (7) The tone of the story and the events of the story are tragic. (8) The stories have a clarity, a lack of fantasy and exaggeration, a realism, a naturalism, a relatively sparing concern with the supernatural that is often not found in “Greek mythology” or in the rest of Indo- European literature. My guess is that this type of story came from the Chorded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures rather than from the Indo-Europeans of the steppes. (9) Each story has a principal character, and he is always found in the second-to-last generation. (10) This character, in the second-to-last generation, makes a choice, that choice tells us who Odin or Apollo is, and that choice is the climax to the whole immense story.

The principal character in the story of the House of Melampous is Alkmaeon, and he chooses to kill his mother. The story is too fragmentary for us to understand this choice, but it will involve choosing Apollo over something more like the supremely good and desirable Robe and Necklace which are Apollo’s opposite. The principal character in the story of the House of Tantalos is Orestes, who also chooses to kill his mother. Apollo has nothing do do with whether or not he kills, but with the way in which he makes his choice. He chooses because he must, and he chooses with no regard for what might be good or desirable for himself. and he refuses to
be unconscious of the unimaginable guilt that must be his. And so he, and Apollo within him, eventually quiet the Furies. The principal character in the story of the House of Kadmos in Oidipous. He chooses to be conscious of who he is and to accept his life and his Fate. He chooses Apollo, he chooses consciousness over the empty paradise that contains everything he wants and needs and that is Apollo’s alternative. The principal character in the story of the House of Volsung is Sigurd. Like Oidipous, he chooses to accept his Life and his Fate. He chooses Odin, he chooses Odin’s magic and wisdom, he chooses the defeat and failure that will be his life, and he chooses Odin’s valkyrie, Brynhild. It’s all the same decision. Nothing that will happen to him and to Brynhild will be good, nothing will be as they would want, everything will be wrong, but she will be there, and the alternative to choosing her would be a pointless tale, of no meaning to him or anyone else. As would be the case for Oidipous.

This is a very different kind of story than we are used to. We are used to stories where the climax comes at the end, the good guys win, and normalcy is restored, everything becomes OK, things become as they should be. Not here. Here, the climax comes in the second-to-last generation, significantly before the story’s end, Good does not triumph over Evil, and order is not restored. The hero does not slay the monster, he only becomes aware of it. The hero chooses Odin or Apollo, he chooses knowledge over mindless pursuit of desire, happiness and goodness. But he doesn’t choose this because it is in any way better for him, he chooses it because he chooses it. His choice may well have an effect, but it will certainly not set everything right. His choice will dispel blindness and open the door to knowledge, and after this climax life goes on in whatever way it goes.

* * *

The House of Tantalos is also sometimes called the House of Pelops or even the House of Atreus. But the crimes that unbalance Nature start with Tantalos, and so does the plot repetition. Since the plot repetition helps define what is and is not in the story, it seems more reasonable to begin with Tantalos.

Tantalos was a mortal man, but he was also a son of Zeus. He feasted with the Gods at their Divine table, and in turn had them feast with him as his guests. But when he hosted the Gods’ feast, for some reason he murdered his son, Pelops, and mixed the son’s dead flesh into the dishes he served the Gods. Zeus restored Pelops to life and contrived an eternal punishment for Tantalos, Zeus had dispensed justice and that that was the end of the matter as far as the Olympian Gods were concerned. But vaguer powers had been disturbed as well, powers that
seem to flicker at the edge of the mind’s vision, and these older, darker powers were not so easily put to rest.

Pelops became king after Tantalos’ death. Military pressure forced Pelops to leave Anatolia, and he moved with his followers to Greece. There he eventually came to rule the whole Peloponnese, and disturbed things further through various murders and a broken oath. (Sophokles, Electra, 509-510 Euripides, Orestes, 990 & 1545-1547) One of his especially brutal murders caused a famine all across the Peloponnese. (Apollodoros, III, 12, 6)

The son of Pelops was Atreus and the son of Atreus was Agamemnon. Atreus was king of Mycenae in his time as Agamemnon would be in his. Pelops had a second son, Thyestes, and Atreus and Thyestes quarreled over the throne. Atreus’ wife became the lover of Thyestes and managed to trick her husband into surrendering the throne to Thyestes. But Atreus was able to recover the throne. He pretended to forgive his brother, and he held a feast in Thyestes’ honor. Thyestes enjoyed the feast immensely, and he had eaten quite a lot before he discovered that he had been eating the cooked flesh of his sons.

When Atreus died, Agamemnon became King of Mycenae and High King of the Akhaians, and it came to pass that he led the expedition against Troy. The Goddess Artemis did not favor the expedition, so she stilled all favorable winds and the army could not sail. The ships of those days could not tack and thus could not sail against the wind.

The seer, Kalchas, proclaimed that the Goddess’ price for a fair wind would be the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon's daughter. Agamemnon hesitated for agonizing months while the army grew mutinous. Finally he gave in, he paid the price.

Klytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife and Iphigenia's mother, was not consulted in the matter. Further, Agamemnon tricked her into bringing Iphigenia to the sacrifice herself, Klytemnestra thought that her daughter was to be married to Achilleus. Then Agamemnon left Klytemnestra for ten years. In his absence, she hooked up with Aegisthes, the son of Thyestes. Klytemnestra was not happy about the murder of her daughter, Thyestes was not happy about what had happened to his father and his brothers. When Agamemnon finally returned, he returned with a concubine, Kassandra, daughter of Priam the king of Troy and part of Agamemnon’s share of the war booty. There are many variations of what happens next. In all cases Aegisthes and Klytemnestra act as a team in murdering Agamemnon and Kassandra, and in all cases Agamemnon is not fought but murdered off-guard and unarmed. Even if Aegisthes is absent, as he is when Klytemnestra kills in Agamemnon, 1331-1398, Klytemnestra could not have acted without him. Unlike the positive characters in these stories, she would never have
jumped without having a good place to land.

Now we come to Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra. Klytemnestra not only murders Orestes’ father, but either tries to murder Orestes as well or merely drives him from the home where grew up, deprives him of his birthright and replaces both him and his father with her boyfriend. Aegisthes and Klytemnestra then seize the throne, over the objections of their subjects. But Orestes is only ten years old when he loses his throne, and his subjects cannot help him.

Now Aegisthes has had vengeance on the son of his enemy, now he settles back to enjoy the wealth and power he has won. Now Klytemnestra tries to make a public compact with the powers of Fate and vengeance that have brought all this to pass. She on her part will be content with the wealth and position she has already won and the situation she has brought about, though it is “filth” and “hard to endure.” The powers on their part are to leave the house and kill no one else. The forces that have been destroying the House of Tantalos shall rest now, now that she is content personally.

This is not an attempt at black humor, she expects to be taken seriously. She has no idea that she is being blasphemous; it never occurs to her that anything could be higher or more precious than her personal life.

Klytemnestra can rarely be accused of sincerity, but she is moderately sincere at this point. She says that she is content with the property and position that she has just gained and wants nothing further. (Aeschylos, Agamemnon, 1568-1571) She has in fact gained everything that was available, but we can believe that she is ready to slow down. She and Aegisthos get into a confrontation with some of her late husband's subjects and she acts with restraint. (Aeschylos, Agamemnon, 1652-1661) And more importantly she does not, according to Aeschylos, try to murder her ten-year-old son when it would be to her advantage to do so. (Aeschylos, The Libation Bearers, 914-915) We are told that hybris, the inability to stop at the proper time, is the flaw that leads to the downfall of tragic characters. Klytemnestra did not fall into hybris; she was willing to act with restraint. Theoretically, moderation should bring the dark powers to rest before they kill her, and that is what she is hoping for. Moderation will not bring the powers to rest, certainly not her rather moderate sort. But something else will.

Orestes was in an agony of indecision, should he take revenge or not? It is hard for us to understand half of his conflict. There were no judges then, no police, there was no king to enforce justice, he was the king. Justice for a murdered man was customarily in the hands of his children, especially for a king. (Herodotos, I, 155) No one could help Orestes’ father now but Orestes; if he did nothing the murderers would be left free to feel smug. Mothers are about the same now as they were then, even rotten ones, and the other half of his conflict is easier to understand. Orestes asked Apollon through the oracle at Delphi what he should do. Apollon ordered him, in the strongest possible terms, to kill.

Apollo’s involvement in the decision meant that Orestes would attain, not justice, justice was the sphere of Zeus, but a certain balance. He knew what he felt now, he also knew what he would feel if he actually killed his mother. Orestes was a Greek, not an Oriental, and the fact that God had told him to kill did not make him less guilty. He saw clearly that it was not possible for him to be clean or just or right, what was possible was integrity and clear-mindedness. Klytemnestra had claimed that she was justified in what she had done; Orestes knew quite well that he was not justified. Klytemnestra had prayed that the Furies might rest now that she was satisfied. Klytemnestra felt self-satisfied and self-righteous, she “felt good about herself.” That was because she was insane. Orestes felt agony and madness and guilt because his mind was clear. Orestes did not ask the Furies to rest. He would make, not a judgment, but a decision. He would avenge his father and if the consequence was death or a lifetime of horror, so be it. He said, “Let me kill her and let me die.”(Aeschylos, The Libation Bearers, 438)

In the Iliad Achilleus affirmed his intention to avenge Patrokolos, though it would mean his own certain death. He said, ”Now I will go to find Hektor, the murderer of he whom I loved most. I accept the Ker and the time of its coming, whenever Zeus and the other immortal Gods will to bring it to pass“ (Iliad, XVIII, 90-92 & 114-116) The Ker was the spirit that brought death, it is the Greek equivalent of the Valkyrie. Achilleus accepted the Ker, Orestes accepted the Furies. Orestes accepted his guilt and his death, if that was what his act and his Fate would bring.

Orestes and one companion invaded Mycenae and killed Aegisthos as he sat drinking. Now he was confronted with Klytemnestra. As he was about to strike the blow, he wavered. Klytemnestra saw that and she reminded him of what they had been when he had been a little boy, what they had done together, as she secretly sent a servant for a weapon. His friend reminded him that Apollo had ordered him to do this, and if he faltered, Apollo would be his enemy. He struck. His sister Electra, recognizably Klytemnestra's daughter, said, "If you have the strength, strike again!" (Sophokles, Electra, 1415)

Agamemnon went through months of agony before he could bring himself to kill his daughter, when he was told of the will of Artemis he could not stop his tears. Orestes went through years of agony before and after he killed his mother. Klytemnestra killed her husband and tried to kill her son and she didn't mind a bit. She was concerned only that her personal situation be satisfactory, and she was aware of nothing else. She had no reason to hesitate and nothing to overcome, that which touched Agamemnon and Orestes was simply foreign to her.

Orestes had killed his mother. All notions of right and wrong didn't matter, the fact that God had told him to kill didn't matter, his guilt was so black that no one dared touch him. The rest of his life was a conflict between the balance with which he had acted and the unanswerable Furies of vengeance and guilt. He quieted them to a degree through a unique ritual based on logic rather than song; we call it a "trial." Other rituals and actions followed, months and years passed. Finally, in time, he quieted the Furies not only for himself, but for the rest of his family. For political reasons Aeschylos made the Orestea conclude with the trial, but the essential point of the story on which the trial was based was not the trial but the man who accepted the trial. Orestes felt fully the forces that had killed his family, he felt them perhaps more deeply than anyone else. And he also responded to them more deeply than anyone else, and in his response lay a certain balance, and it was he and no one else that brought the chain of violence to an end. He alone saw the powers clearly and did not ask them to rest, he alone did not try to avoid them, and he alone did not ask that his personal situation be right. He did not look at the Sacred forces that tore at him in terms of his personal happiness, he looked at them as they were and he treated them with respect. His sister Electra was like her mother in many ways, and she was potentially just as violent. In one version, Orestes stopped her from blinding her sister Iphigenia. (Hyginus, Fabulae, 122) If the forces that had killed the rest of the family had not been laid to rest, Orestes and Electra would certainly have come into conflict.

Orestes' son Tisamenos grew up to be a fine man and a great king. (Pausanias, II, 18, 6-9) Tisamenos had to fight wars with both the Dorians and the Ionians, but he did not have to fight his own family. The evil that had begun with Tantalos and Pelops was over.

The cycle ends with Tisamenos, and we have seen all the points that characterize these cycles. Notice the repeated behavior patterns. Notice that the story centers in a choice made in the second-to-last generation. Notice that what is chosen is the balance that is an aspect of Apollo. Notice also that Apollo is there to give balance and sight to blind fury and vengeance, he is far from what later ages would think of as “Apollonian.” Notice also that Apollo is not an ethic, at least in the usual sense. It doesn’t matter which choice Orestes makes, and in fact for him either choice is equally monstrous. Apollo here is a certain balance, and Aeschylos expresses this balance very well when he has Orestes say, “Let me kill her, and let me die.” Now let us move on to the House of Melampos.

* * *

A man named Amythaon migrated from Thessaly to the Western Peloponnese and made a home there. After his son Melampous grew up, the family servants discovered a hollow oak near the home that large numbers of snakes used as a den. The servants then killed the snakes, but Melampous cremated the dead snakes honorably and reared those of their children which had survived. One day when these young snakes had grown, they crawled onto his shoulders while he slept, and they cleaned the inside of his ears with their tongues. As he slept, he suddenly became terribly frightened for no reason that he could understand. He started awake, still terrified, but in the midst of his fear he found he could understand the language of the birds, and from then on the birds told him what would come to pass. (Apollodoros, I, 9, 12) When I talk about the House of Volsung, we will find Sigurd having intimate contact with a serpent and suddenly understanding the language of the birds. (Volsungasaga, 19 & 20) Apparently quite a few Greeks acquired foresight this way, (Frazer's note in Apollodoros, Vol. I, pp. 86-87) and as we shall see Apollo became the Oracle at Delphi only after merging with a serpent. Further, there is an alternative version for the Melampous story wherein Melampous kills a huge serpent that has just killed his servants, just as Kadmos did. Melampous then honors the serpent by burying it and rears its young, who lick his ears, etc. (Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, pp. 262-263) Either way, Apollo appeared soon after Melampous’ encounter with the serpents, he met Melampous by a river and added to the power of prophecy that the serpents had given him. (Apollodoros, I, 9, 12)

In the Germanic countries it was in fact fairly common to acquire knowledge by eating serpent's flesh; it was also common in Greece, one either ate or had one's ears cleaned. The association between the eating of serpent's flesh and the acquiring of wisdom was known in various cultures, we can see something like it in Genesis, but it seems to be especially characteristic of both Greece and Germany. (Frazer, Spirits of the Corn, Vol. II, pp. 146-147 and Blecher & Blecher, Swedish Folktales, pp.354-355.)

Melampous did a number of things, but his most notable achievement was to cure the mad daughters of Proitos, king of Tiryes. For this service, he demanded and got a third of Proitos' kingdom in the Argolid and an additional third for his brother. Melampous cured the daughters by chasing them many miles over the countryside, shouting and dancing "a fearful dance, full of God," (Apollodoros, II, 2, 2). One daughter died and the other two were cured. Melampous, who "became a friend of Apollo," was said to be the first Greek to cure with drugs and purification (katharmos). (Diodorus Siculus, VI, 8, 9) Herodotos credited Melampous with the introduction of Dionysian rite, Dionysian rite not Dionysian madness, and Melampous was said to have invented the practice of mixing water with one's wine. (Athenaeus, II, 45, C-D) Melampous was "best loved"by Apollon, (Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, pp. 260-261) and he founded a Sacred precinct and an altar to Apollo. ( Bakchylides, Lyra Graeca, Vol. III, pp. 214-215) Note the usual connection between Dionysos and Apollo.

We have only a few bits of information about a few of the people in the generations after Melampous. More than one is stated to be a prophet with foresight, (Odyssey, XV, 252 and Apollodoros, III, 6, 2) others have names that would suggest it, (Odyssey, XV, 242) others do purifications, one establishes a shrine to Dionysos, (Pausanias, I, 43, 4) and the latest of the obscure figures, Oikles, was killed on Herakles' expedition to Troy. If Oikles had foresight he would have known that he would not return if he went, and he must have had a very compelling reason to go. (Apollodoros, II, 6, 4) That pattern will be repeated in the next generation.

The son of Oikles was Amphiaraos, "loved by Zeus and Apollo.” (Odyssey, XV, 245-246) Amphiaraos was king of the Argolid territory that Melampous had won several generations earlier. And it was to the Argolid that Oidipous’ son Polynakes went to seek help to regain the kingship of Thebes, applying to the Argive king, Adrastos. Adrastos said he would help, but he did not want to attack Thebes without the support of Amphiaraos. But Amphiaraos was a prophet like his ancestors, and he knew that if he went on this expedition, he and most of the others would not return and so he would have nothing to do with it.

But Polynakes did not seek help empty-handed. He had the Robe and the Necklace that the Gods had given his ancestors, Kadmos and Harmonia, as wedding presents, and these were the most beautiful and precious and desirable objects on the face of the Earth. Amphiaraos and Adrastos had formerly warred, and as a peace settlement they had vowed that Eriphyle, Amphiaraos’ wife and Adrastos’ sister should decide any dispute between them. Polynakes gave Eriphyle the Necklace, and she decreed that Amphiaraos would have to go on the expedition. (Apollodoros, III, 6, 2) Amphiaraos could not break a vow, but he commanded his sons to war on Thebes when they grew up, as it would still be unconquered and he would need to be avenged, and to kill their mother then as well. (Apollodoros III, 6, 7) And he rode to his death.

Ten years passed, and the sons of the seven leaders of the first Theban expedition wished to mount an expedition of their own to avenge their fathers, but they were told that this would not succeed unless it was led by Amphiaraos’ son Alkmaeon. Alkmaeon’s father had commanded him and Alkmaeon’s father’s death weighed on him, but he did not wish to go to war or to take revenge. But his mother Eriphyle would not shut up, would not leave him alone, would not stop trying to force him to join the expedition. Finally he gave in, he went, and the expedition succeeded. But when he returned he found that Eriphyle had wanted so badly for him to get involved in a war because Polynakes’ son Thersandros had given her the Robe. (Apollodoros III, 7, 2) He became mad with fury, and he asked Apollo through an oracle what he should do. Apollo told him to murder his mother, and so he did. (Apollodoros, III, 7, 5)

Then the Furies attacked him as they had attacked Orestes, and he became permanently mad. He was finally purified by a man named Phegeus; he stayed with Phegeus and married Phegeus’ daughter, Arsinoe, and he gave Arsinoe the Necklace and the Robe. (Apollodoros, III, 7, 5) The purification began to wear off, and he began to make the countryside around him infertile. Finally, he found a river delta where silt had formed an island which had not existed when he murdered his mother. He lived on the island, he was purified by Achelous, the River God, and he married the River-God’s daughter, Kallirroe. (Apollodoros, III, 7, 5 and Pausanias, VIII, 24, 8)

But Kallirroe became consumed with desire for the Necklace and the Robe, and she said that she would leave him if he did not get them for her. So he set off on yet another expedition, against his will. He went to Phegeus and told them that Apollo had said that he would be cured of his madness if he gave the Necklace and the Robe to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. Phegeus gave him the precious objects, but when he learned that Alkmaeon was only going to give them to Kallirroe, Phegeus had his sons kill Alkmaeon. When Arsinoe reviled them for this, her brothers sold her into slavery. (Apollodoros, III, 7, 5 and Pausanias, VIII, 24, 10)

Kallirroe had two sons by Alkmaeon, she asked Zeus to make them full-grown so they could avenge their father. Zeus did this, and the newly grown sons killed Phegeus and his sons. They then gave the Necklace and the Robe to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi, so Apollo owned them, neutralized them, and they could kill no one else. (Apollodoros, III, 7, 6-7)

This story is too fragmentary to see in any depth, but it is clearly a family cycle. We know next to nothing about most of the characters, but there is obvious behavior repetition in Amphiaraos and Alkmaeon. Amythaon from Thessaly was the founder who migrated from far away. The Peloponnesians would have considered a man who was from Thessaly, and who seemed to barely speak Greek, to be as good as a foreigner. Alkmaeon is the principal character, his decision is to kill his mother, and his sons are the last generation and the end of the story. Sophokles made a tragedy about Alkmaeon, and if we had that we would better understand Alkmaeon’s choice. Apollo told him to kill, and his choice would in some way tell us who Apollo is. The choice would have something in common with Melampous’ “fearful dance, full of God.”

* * *

Now we will move on to the story of the House of Kadmos and Oidipous. It is a typical example of the Greco-Germanic Family Cycle, and of all the Greek Family Cycles it is closest in content to the Volsungasaga. The choice made by Oidipous is exactly the same as the choice made by Sigurd. Oidipous is also a completely typical example of a family of characters otherwise known only from the Baltic and North Seas, but that will be the subject of "The Greco-Germanic Family Cycles II."

Apollo was knowledge and consciousness, and all of Time and fate was clearly visible to him. There was a place in the mountains of Northern Greece called Delphi. There was volcanic activity in this place, fumes escaped through cracks in the rocks, and it was believed that Apollo spoke through certain people who inhaled these fumes. So Apollo spoke in this place, but before Apollo arrived, an enormous serpent was there. Apollo killed the serpent, and took the place. But the serpent was Holy, and Apollo, a God, had to be a servant to a mortal as penance for its murder. Once the penance was over, Apollo would seem to have replaced the serpent as Lord of Delphi. But the truth was different from this. Far from conquering the serpent, Apollo had merged with it.

Kadmos was a Canaanite from Tyre, he had been wandering the world searching for his lost sister. Finally, he went to Delphi to ask Apollo where he could find her. Apollo answered that he would never find her, that he should start whipping a cow, that he should drive the cow before him, and wherever the cow dropped from exhaustion, there he should found a city. He did that, and the cow dropped in the place that would be called Thebes. The first thing he did was to send some of his followers to a nearby spring to get water. They never returned, there was a monstrous serpent there. Kadmos had the blood of Poseidaon and of Zeus in him, and he killed the serpent with a huge boulder. But the serpent had been Holy, a child of the War God Ares, and Kadmos had to serve Ares for eight years as penance for the murder. But in fact Kadmos’ serpent was no deader than Apollo’s had been. Kadmos had not overcome the serpent, he had merged with it.

When the penance was over, Kadmos was given a wife named Harmonia, also a child of Ares. Their wedding was the most magnificent affair of the age. All the Gods attended, and for wedding presents, Kadmos and Harmonia were given a Robe and a Necklace, and these were the most beautiful and precious and desirable objects on the face of the Earth. Kadmos and Harmonia lived long and happy lives and had five beautiful children. When their days came to an end, they changed into serpents and spent eternity in peace and contentment. The Robe and the Necklace remained behind, and we have met them in the story of the House of Melampous. It was because they were so good and desirable, that they caused so much death and suffering.

Kadmos and Harmonia also left behind five beautiful children: Agave became insane and torn her son’s head off. Autonoe had to gather up her son’s fresh bones as he had been eaten alive by his dogs. Ino tried to murder her step-son. One of her own sons was murdered instead, and she took her other son in her arms, and she leaped into the sea. The profane part of her died, and she became a kindly Sea Goddess. Semele was burned alive, but her son was the God, Dionysos, and Dionysos went down into Hell and brought his mother back and made her immortal. We know little about Kadmos and Harmonis’ son, Polydoros, except that he was king of Thebes in his time and that he died very young. (Pausanias, II, 6, 2) He was probably torn to pieces.

As to the grandchildren: Pentheus had his head torn off by his mother. (Euripedes, Bacchae, 1105-1211 and Apollodoros III, 5, 2) Aktaion was eaten alive by his dogs. (Apollodoros, III, 4, 4) The sons of Ino were murdered or swallowed by the sea. (Pausanias, I, 44, 7-8) Another grandchild—the God, Dionysos— had a habit of ripping people apart, but at one point he was ripped apart himself. (Diodoros Siculus, III, 62, 7) And Polydoros’ son, Labdakos, was also torn to shreds by the frenzied followers of Dionysos. (Apollodoros, III, 5, 5) Labdakos also died very young, but before he died, he produced a son, Laios.

Apollo warned Laios three times not to have a child, because if he had a son, that son was Fated to kill him. He and his wife, Iokaste could not refrain, and a son was born. Laios ordered a shepherd to take the infant to a mountaintop, and leave it there to die of exposure. But the shepherd did not do that, he gave the infant to another shepherd who took him home to Corinth. The king of Corinth adopted the child, and named him Oidipous. Oidipous grew to be a man, and one day a man who had drunk too much at a party told Oidipous that the King of Corinth was not his father. Well, Oidipous wanted to know about this, so he went to Delphi and asked Apollo whether this was true. Now Apollo could have answered him, but Apollo did not answer him. Apollo told him that it would be his Fate to kill his father and marry his mother. Oidipous was horrified, and he certainly had no thought of going back to Corinth. He had to go somewhere, and he took the road east towards Thebes. It was Apollo who sent him there.

And on the roads around Thebes, a monster appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. It was called the “Sphinx,” the “Strangler.” Aeschylos simply called it the Ker, the Death Spirit. (Aeschylos, Seven Against Thebes, 777) It posed a riddle to anyone it met and killed anyone who could not answer, so far no one had been able to answer. Laios, the King of Thebes, was headed west on the road to Delphi, to ask Apollo what he could do about the monster. (Euripides, Phoenician Women, 35-37) Oidipous was on the same road headed east. Apollo draws the father, and sends the son. They meet. Both father and son are harsh and impatient, there is a question of who will pass first, Oidipous is struck, and when it is over Laios and all his servants are either dead or running. Oidipous continues towards Thebes, and he meets the Strangler. The Strangler asks Oidious the Riddle, and he answers it with ease, with suspicious ease. The Strangler has been conquered, and the Strangler dies.

Apollo seems to conquer a serpent, but he merges with a serpent. Kadmos seems to conquer a serpent, but he merges with a serpent and the serpent permeates his descendants. Now Oidipous too seems to conquer Death, but in fact he merges with it. Beauty and peace and harmony and goodness create agony and slaughter. All the Kadmeans are destroyed, mostly by being ripped to shreds, either physically or mentally, some of them become Holy. Now, the same thing will happen to Oidipous. Dionysos will rip him apart, tissue by tissue, before he can accept the clarity of Apollo.

He thinks he is victorious, and so does everyone else. He thinks he has killed the monster, he thinks he has conquered Death, he thinks he has saved the city, he thinks he has solved the Riddle of Life. He has done none of these things. The real Monster and the real Riddle still await him.

Only one of Laios’ servants survives the fight. This man was ashamed to admit that he, the king and their whole party had been defeated by a single man, so when he got back to Thebes he said that the king and the others had been killed by a whole band of robbers. So when Oidipous reaches Thebes, no one thinks of connecting him with the king’s death and neither does he. The king is dead, this stranger has saved the city from the monster, and so by acclamation, Oidipous is made king. As a matter of course, he is given the former king’s wife to be his queen. That is Iokaste, his mother.

Oidipous lives in a beautiful paradise where he is a king, a hero, the savior of the city, the conquerer of Death, where he has solved the Riddle of Life, and where he has a beautiful wife and four beautiful children. And it is precisely this beautiful illusion that causes him to take his dead father’s throne, and his dead father’s wife, and to marry his mother and have four children with her. He dwells for a while in this empty paradise of goodness, and the real Monster and the real Riddle wait just outside its borders.

In ancient times, when the king did something morally wrong, the countryside often became infertile— especially now since part of the king’s crime was unnatural sexuality. The crops began to die in the fields, the herds dwindled, the unborn children began to die in their mother’s wombs. Oidipous was the king, it was his job to do something about the plague. He went to Delphi and asked Apollo. This time Apollo answered him. Apollo said that a murderer lived in Thebes, the man who killed king Laios, when the pollution of this man’s presence was removed the plague would end. Then Apollo said further that the pollution would be found if it was sought, but if it was not sought it would remain unknown. “.”
(Sophokles, Oidipous the King, 110-111).

This time Apollo answered his question. Until now, everything that had happened to Oidipous had been part of a pattern. Until now, he has had no choice about anything, until now nothing that has happened has been his fault. Now for the first time, he has a choice. The next thing that happens will be determined by him and by nothing else. He can stay in this paradise that has everything good, everything he wants, everything he needs, or he can go outside and meet the monster. He can remain blind, or he can know. It’s all up to him. Everyone tells him, stop. You don’t want to know. Stay in here. Here, you are a king, a hero, a savior, a husband, a father, everyone loves you, everyone respects you. Everything good is in here, there is nothing in the truth except agony. He stepped out of Paradise, he opened his eyes, and he saw the real Riddle and the real Monster. Like Apollo and like Kadmos, he had not conquered the Monster he had fought, he had merged with it. He was a monster.

He lost his wife and his mother in the same moment; Iokaste hanged herself from the rafters of her bedroom. He tore out his eyes with Iokaste’s golden dress-pins, he never physically saw anything again.

We have seen that the Greco-Germanic Family Cycle, as a form, can be found both in Greece and in Northern Europe, and so goes back at least to the time when those who would become the Greeks and those who would become the Germanic peoples could have shared a common literature, the third millennium BC. I will show in “Greco-Germanic Tradition II” that the story of Oidipous in particular has counterparts in Northern Europe, and so some version of it will go back to the third millennium BC. We can see that in this story, Apollo merges with a monster, Kadmos merges with a monster, and Oidipous merges with a monster, and we can see that, yes, Oidipous is revealed as what people might think of as a monster. But a story like this, perhaps forty-five hundred years old, is not going to be that simple, is not going to let us off the hook that easily. So that merger is something we had better examine pretty carefully.

Silenos was the companion of Dionysos. Silenos was half animal, half God and constantly drunk. The legendary Midas, king of the Phrygians, captured Silenos on one occasion and asked him, “What is mankind’s greatest good?” Silenos refused to answer. Midas hurt him or threatened to hurt him, and Silenos finally said, “The greatest good would be for you not to know. But since you force me, I will tell you that mankind’s greatest good is never to have been born, and the second greatest good, being born, is to die swiftly,” (Bakchylides, Lyra Greaca, Vol.III, 208-211)

Kleobis and Biton were heroes from Mycenian times, they had shrines at Argos and also at Delphi. Their mother was a priestess of Hera and she was supposed to be at a temple at a certain time for an important festival. Ritual required that she go in her ox-cart, but at the last moment the oxen were unavailable. The cart was very heavy and it really needed two healthy oxen to pull it, but Kleobis and Biton hitched themselves to the cart and pulled their mother to the temple on time. She was so immensely proud of having such fine, strong sons who were so good to her that she prayed to the Goddess that they be given the greatest gift a human being could receive. She left the judgment of what that gift should be to the Goddess. Her sons fell into a peaceful sleep and never woke up.

Herodotos tells the story of Kleobis and Biton.(Herodotos, I, 31) He says that Solon, the founder of the Athenian constitution and famous for his wisdom, had an interview with Kroesos the proverbially wealthy king of Lydia. Kroesos was then the most powerful and revered man in that part of the world. Kroesos asked Solon, "Who is the happiest of all men?"

Solon's answer was an obscure Athenian who had died painfully but gloriously in battle, who had suffered no great dishonor or heartache in his life, whose sons had grown to be fine, honorable men.

Kroesos asked who was the second happiest. He thought that his own position was the most enviable in the world and that the answer should be himself.

Solon replied that nothing remains the same. And he perhaps could not think of a second example, because he answered with the story of Kleobis and Biton.

Plutarch tells us a similar story: Apollo rewards Trophonios and Agmedes with a peaceful, endless sleep— Death, “(Plutartch, A Letter to Apollonion, 109, A, Moralia, Vol. II.) Bakchylides has told us the story of Silenos and Midas, that I related above, and he said something similar in, Bakchylides, 33, 160-162, Lyra Graeca, pp. 154-157. Aeschylos once said, "We who will die are not just in hating death, which is our greatest protection against evil." (Aeschylos,
Vol. II, Fragments of Uncertain Plays, 191, (353), pg. 491 & Letter to Apolloion, 106, C) Theogins said, “The best of all is not to be born on the earth nor behold the light of the piercing sun, or being born in this way, pass swiftly through the gates of Hades and lie under much–heaped earth.” (Theogins, I, 425-428, Greek Elegy and Iambus, Vol. I) And Oidipous says something similar in Sophokles, our best source for the story of Oidipous. In Oidipous at Kolonos, 1225-1228, the earth opens in front of Oidipous, and the entrance to the afterworld lies before him. And he says, "Never to have been born, that is greater than anything that can be thought. The second best is a brief walk in the sunlight, then return to whence one came. And do it quickly." And he calmly and deliberately walks down into Death.”

Oidipous was what we would normally call a monster, he was so filthy that he polluted the sun if it were allowed to shine upon him. But none of this was his fault, he was simply part of a pattern that began with Apollo, continued with Kadmos, and now continued still further with Oidipous. But he was able to make one choice, do one thing not determined by the pattern. And he chose to know, and not to live mindlessly and blindly in an empty paradise. Everything good lay in this paradise but he did not choose the Good, he chose to know. Apollo is knowledge, Apollo is consciousness, and he chose Apollo. Now he saw real Death and he saw the real Riddle, and he saw that it had no answer. And he saw that the Riddle could not be solved and that Death had to be faced. And he did not face Death as a king or a hero or a conqueror, he faced it naked— without power, without wisdom and without an answer. But when he looked at Death, he looked with open eyes. And if he did not have an answer, he did not require one. And this monster, this abomination, this creature who was so filthy that he polluted the sun if it shone upon him, this man looked at himself. And he looked at himself with open eyes. And as he calmly and deliberately walked down into darkness and silence, all the land, everywhere around him, became clean.

* * *

Remember the characteristics of the Greco-Germanic Family Cycle: (1) A foreigner comes from a distant land and founds a dynasty. (2) The story follows this dynasty through several generations. (3) The generations tend to repeat certain behavior patterns. (4) The story is about a God, and it tells us who the God is. Other stories told by the Greeks feature Gods as characters, but these stories are about Gods. (5) The God the story is about interacts with other Divine forces. (6) The stories are about Odin or Apollo, and Odin/Apollo are pretty much identical when we find them in these stories. (7) The tone of the story and the events of the story are tragic. (8) The stories have a clarity and a naturalism often not found in the rest of Indo- European literature, and often not found in the rest of “Greek mythology.” (9) Each story has a principal character, and he is always found in the second-to-last generation. (10) This character makes a choice, that choice tells us who Odin or Apollo is, and that choice is the climax of the story.

In the story of the House of Kadmos, the migrant foreigner who founds the dynasty is Kadmos. The generations who follow him are destroyed, mostly torn to pieces, and some of them are made Holy. Sanctification is not particularly common in Greek stories, only here. Dionysos and Apollo are not in conflict here, the characters must be shredded by Dionysos before they can realize the clarity of Apollo. Dionysos and Apollo are opposed to Apollo’s opposite, unconsciousness. Contact with a serpent produces knowledge, as it did in the story of the House of Melampous, and as it will in the story of the House of Volsung. Apollo’s enemy is the desire for the Good. In the story of the House of Melampous, we saw Apollo opposed to the Robe and the Necklace which were almost infinitely good and desirable and which therefore caused so much evil. Now in the story of the House of Volsung, we will find Odin/Apollo opposed to a Ring and a Hoard of treasure which are also supremely good and desirable and which therefore cause unending evil.

Sigi was the son of Odin. Sigi killed someone, and he was driven from his homeland. He and his followers were guided by Odin on an immense journey, until they came to the country of the Huns (Hungary). He settled there and became king. But his success kept growing and his power kept increasing, until his wife’s brothers killed him out of envy.

That put his son, Renir, in a quandary. He liked his uncles, but they had killed his father and so he was torn. Finally he took revenge for his father, killed his uncles, and established himself as king. He became even more powerful than his father had been, but he seemed unable to produce children. Odin caused a special apple to fall in his lap, he ate some of this and so he was able to produce a son, Volsung. Volsung became king in his time, and he had ten sons and a daughter. It was arranged that he daughter would marry Siggeir, king of Gautland, in what is now Southern Sweden.

The daughter, Signy, had doubts about Siggeir, but Volsung thought the match good and the wedding went forward. At the wedding feast an old man appeared, tall and grey-haired with one blind eye and carrying a Sword. That was Odin. He thrust the Sword into a huge tree, and he said that only he who was worthy of the Sword would be able to draw it out. Everyone tried, including Siggeir, but no one could draw out the Sword but Sigmund, the eldest son of Volsung. Now Siggeir didn't like this. He was very rich and powerful and he thought he was entitled to the Sword, so he tried to buy it from Sigmund. But Sigmund replied, with no tact at all, that obvoiusly the Sword was meant for himself and no one else and he wouldn’t even consider selling it. Siggeir liked that even less.

Having spent one night with Siggeir, Signy told her father, “My mind does not laugh with him.”“eigi gerir hugur minn hlæja við honum.” (Volsungasaga, 4) But Volsung said that the agreement had been made and it would be shameful to break it, and Signy prepared to follow Siggeir to Gautland.

And Siggeir invited Volsung to visit him there. Everyone knew there was something wrong with that invitation, but Volsung did not want anyone to say that he had ever run from anything, so he went. No one had occasion to say that, but Volsung was killed, and all ten of his sons were captured. Nine of the ten sons were killed by a werewolf as they were bound and helpless, but Sigmund found a way to kill the werewolf and escaped into the forests of Gautland.

Signy lived with Siggeir and had two sons with him. When she thought they were old enough, she sent them into the woods to Sigmund to help him kill their father. However, Sigmund found that neither of them was bold enough for the job. She told him to kill them both, and he did. She then exchanged shapes with a magic woman, and in the woman’s shape she went to her brother and got a child from him. She reasoned that a child with the blood of Volsung on both sides would be fierce enough to kill her husband, and she was right. The child, Sinfjotli, was fierce enough, maybe too fierce. He went to his father and they began to roam the forests murdering and robbing people, they became werewolves eventually. At one point, Odin intervened to save Sinfjotli’s life.

When Sigmund thought Sinfjotli was ready, the two of them invaded Siggeir’s hall and Sinfjotli murdered the two little boys that had since been born to Siggeir and Signy. They accomplished nothing else however, they were only two and Siggeir’s warriors overpowered them. Siggeir then had them buried alive in a huge mound of earth. But Signy smuggled Odin’s Sword to them before they were covered— this is the same Sword that had begun all this— and they cut their way through a giant stone slab, and they cut their way out of the mound. And in the night they went back to Siggeir’s hall, and they burned Siggeir’s hall, and they burned him and everyone else who was asleep in the hall.

Signy, however, was not in the hall, she was with Sigmund and Sinfjotli. As she watched the hall burn, she said to them, “Now you know whether I remember the murder of Volsung. For his sake, I have born a son to my brother, I have murdered my children, and I an not fit to live.” And then she walked into the burning hall to join her husband.(In Volsungasaga, 8, the above speech is longer than I show it here.)

Sigmund and Sinfjotli returned to Hunland. They recovered the kingship with their swords, and Sigmund married a woman named Borghild. However Sinfjotli killed Borghild’s brother in a fight, she in turn poisoned him, and he died. So Sigmund left her and married a woman named Hjordis. But Hjordis had another suitor who didn’t accept this, and who invaded Hunland with a large army. There was a battle between the Huns and the invaders. It went on for a long time until Sigmund was Odin striding toward him, looking very serious, carrying a spear. And when Odin got too close Sigmund swung Odin’s Sword, Odin parried it with his spear, and the Sword shattered. This was the Sword that Odin had given him and so he knew he was about to die,and indeed he was killed very quickly. Hjordis escaped and found refuge with the king of Denmark, there she gave birth to Sigmund’s son, Sigurd.

Sigmund is the principal character in the second-to-last generation that we’ve been waiting for. And when he came of age, the king of Denmark gave him the choice of any of the king’s horses to have for his own. Odin appeared and showed him which horse to choose, and so he chose Grani. Grani was the best and bravest horse in the world, and he was completely devoted to Sigurd and to no one else. And in fact Grani was descended from Odin’s own horse, Sleipnir. Grani’s loyalty will have an enormous effect on Sigurd’s life, but something else will have an even greater effect. We will learn about that in the story of the Otter’s Whiskertip:

There was a man named Hreidmar who had three sons: one, named Regin, was a dwarf and a supremely skilled metalworker, another, named Fafnir, was huge and strong and violent, the third, named Otr, was a shape-changer and could change himself into an otter to catch fish for the others. Otr was asleep on a riverbank in his animal form when the Gods, Odin, Loki and Hainir happened along. Loki was always trouble, and he could never leave anything alone. He threw a stone at the sleeping otter and killed him. Hreidmar found out who had killed his son and demanded gold from the Gods in compensation. It was the custom in those days to accept wealth in atonement for a murder, this prevented endless blood feuds. Now these were Gods, but they had to take Hreidmar’s demand very seriously. Hreidmar was extremely formidable, and the Gods were not at that moment in their full power. So they sent Loki to find gold.

Loki found a dwarf named Andvar. Now depending on the account, Andvar lived in a cave behind a waterfall, or else in a lake somewhere in the region of the Dark Elves. But wherever he lived, he had a hoard of gold, and Loki demanded that he hand over all of his gold. Andvar had no choice, so he did that— except for a single Ring that he was very reluctant to part with. Loki was not generous, and he forced Andvar to give over the Ring as well. Andvar did that, but after he had done it he seemed to realize that something had begun. He said that whoever owns this Hoard was fated to be destroyed by it, and by far the most dangerous part of the Hoard was the Ring. The Hoard and the Ring had not had much effect on Andvar, apart from possessing him with greed for it. He lived a solitary life in the water, and he had no friends and therefore no one to kill him. But now the Ring was out in the world, and indeed something had begun.

According to the compensation agreement, the Gods were to fill the dead otter’s skin with gold and then completely cover it with gold. They did that and the skin was completely covered, except for the tip of one of the otter’s whiskers. Hreidmar demanded that they produce more gold, he said that the debt was not paid until that last whiskertip was covered. And it turned out that they had more gold. There was this one Ring that Odin had been very reluctant to part with, he hadn’t wanted to give it up. The Ring just covered that last whiskertip, and the debt was paid. (Volsungsaga, 14 and Poetic Edda, Lay of Regin and Prose Edda, Skáldskaparmál, XLVI)

So Odin and the Ring meet, and the Ring is stronger, the Ring defeats Odin. Hreidmar insisted that the last whiskertip be covered. That and nothing else saved Odin from the Ring.

Now Hreidmar has the Ring — and the Ring has Hreidmar. Hreidmar refuses to share the treasure with his sons, Fafnir murders him in his sleep and refuses to share with Regin. Regin the dwarf doesn’t dare do anything against giant Fafnir, and he leaves home. Now Fafnir is alone with the Hoard and the Ring, that he has just murdered his father over, and they completely dominate him. Eventually he becomes a grotesque, poison–breathing dragon, brooding over his Hoard, afraid to leave it, poisoning all the countryside all around him with his killing breath. He will never again leave this place, and his eyes will never again see anything but the Hoard and the Ring and poisoned, dead, withered desolation.

There was a man named Hreidmar who had three sons: one, Regin, was a dwarf and a supremely skilled metalworker, another, Fafnir, was huge and strong and violent, the third, Otr, was a shape-changer and could change himself into an otter to catch fish for the others. Otr was asleep on a riverbank in his animal form, when the Gods Odin, Loki and Hoenir happened along. Loki could never leave anything alone, and he threw a stone at the sleeping otter and killed him. Hreidmar found out who had killed his son and demanded gold from the Gods in compensation, this was the customary practice in those days. Hreidmar was extremely formidable, and the Gods were not at that moment in their full power. The Gods had to take this matter completely seriously, and they sent Loki to find gold.

Loki found a dwarf, named Andvar. Andvar lived in a cave behind a waterfall, or else in a lake somewhere in the region of the dark elves. Wherever he lived, he had a hoard of gold. Loki forced him to hand it over which he did, all except a single ring which he was very reluctant to give up. Loki was not noted for generosity, and he forced Andvar to give over the Ring as well. Then, after the Hoard was Loki's and not Andvar's, Andvar seemed to realize that something had begun. He told Loki that the Hoard was Fated to destroy whoever owned it, and by far the most dangerous part of the Hoard was the Ring. The Ring had had no effect on Andvar in his solitary life in the water-apart from possessing him with greed for it. He had no friends and therefore no one to kill him. But now the Ring was out in the world, and indeed something had begun.

According to the compensation agreement, the Gods were to fill the dead otter's skin with gold and then completely cover it with gold. They did that using all of the Hoard, only one whisker still stuck out from the pile. Hreidmar demanded that they produce more gold to cover that last whiskertip, and it turned out that they had more gold, Odin had been reluctant to part with the Ring and had held it back. The Ring just covered that last whiskertip and the debt was paid. (Volsungasaga, 14 & Poetic Edda, Lay of Regin & Prose Edda, Skáldskaparmál, XLVI)

From now on the Ring will determine what happens, Odin will not. Odin's Sword and Odin's Horse will be under the power of the Ring just as Odin was. The Ring did not come from Odin, it is completely different, whatever it is it is stronger than God. Once Sigurd has the Ring, Odin will not appear again and will not guide him again; Odin will not re-appear until the Ring has vanished.

Hreidmar now had the Hoard and the Ring, and he refused to share it with his sons. Fafnir murdered him in his sleep, took the treasure and refused to share it with Regin. Regin the dwarf didn't dare do anything against Fafnir, and he left home. Fafnir kept the Hoard and the Ring and became completely dominated by them, eventually he became a grotesque dragon brooding over his Hoard, afraid to leave it, poisoning all the country near it. He would never again leave that place, and his eyes would never again see anything but the Hoard and poisoned withered desolation.

Regin went to the Danish court. There he met Sigurd, and he became Sigurd’s fosterfather. Sigurd’s foster-father talked Sigurd into taking revenge on Fafnir on his behalf, But if Sigure was to do that he would need a weapon capable of killing a dragon, so Regin the master smith took the shattered fragments of Odin’s Sword and re-forged them.

Before Sigurd could take revenge on Regin’s behalf, he had to avenge his own father. As he was sailing on his journey to do that, a terrible storm arose. As he made his way through towering waves, he saw an old man standing alone on a rock that jutted out amid monstrous, crashing breakers. The old man beckoned for Sigurd to pull alongside the rock and take him aboard. Now no one with even a trace of sanity would even think about doing this, but this is exactly what Sigurd did, and of course the old man turned out to be Odin. Sigurd had a halfbrother, Borghild’s son, who was once sailing in a similar storm, and he told his sailors not to shorten the sail, as any remotely sane person would do, but to hoist it higher still. The Volsungs were all like this. They were good or they were bad or they were whatever they were, but they were all children of Odin.

Sigurd avenged Sigmund. After he had done that, he and Regin traveled to the poisoncountry of Fafnir. As I have mentioned, Fafnir had changed into a “dragon,” that is, an enormous serpent whose breath was poison. You can’t confront something like that head-on, but Odin the trickster appeared and advised Sigurd to dig as trench in a place where he knew the dragon would crawl and to hide in the trench. Sigurd did that, and as Fafnir crawled over the trench Sigurd stabbed him in the heart with Odin’s Sword.

Regin came out from hiding, and he asked Sigurd to roast the dragon’s heart for him. Sigurd unsuspiciously obeyed, but when he tested the meat to see whether it was done, he burnt his finger and stuck it into his mouth. At the moment he tasted serpent’s flesh, and at that moment he could suddenly understand the language of the birds. And the birds said that he ha killed Regin’s brother, and he was a fool if he didn’t think Regin wasn’t going to take revenge. They said that he would gain great wisdom from eating the serpent’s heart, and that he should kill Regin and eat the heart and take the treasure for himself.

The Eating of serpent’s flesh brought knowledge, but this was no ordinary serpent, this was a monster created by murder and uncontrollable greed. As he lay dying, Fafnir had told Sigurd what terrible things would happen to him if he took the Treasure and the Ring. But Sigurd had already tasted the monster’s flesh, and he killed his foster-father and he took the Treasure and the Ring. We have already seen that the Ring is stronger than Odin. From now on the Ring will determine what happens to Sigurd, Odin will not, and Odin will never appear to advise him again. (Volsungasaga, 20)

Sigi was the foreigner who came from a long way off and founded the dynasty in Hunland. The dynasty was Hunnish, and both Sigurd and Brynhild are consistently referred to as Huns. The story then follows the dynasty down through the generations. There are plot repetitions: Signy has married a man she does not love, because she is obligated to do so. She does this on the advise of her father, and the result is a disaster. In the next generation, Brynhild will marry a man she does not love, because she is obligated to and on the advise of her fosterfather. The result will be a disaster. Volsung received an invitation from the man who married his daughter. He knew there was something wrong with the invitation, but he couldn’t quite decide not to go. He went, he was killed. Two generations later, Gunnar and Hogni receive an invitation from the man who has married their sister. They know there is something wrong with the invitation, but they can’t quite decide not to go. They will go, they will be killed. The story as a whole is that of Odin’s conflict with the Hoard and the Ring. These objects are almost infinitely good and desirable, and they are the opposite of Odin in every way. Odin was defeated, he could not give up the Ring and he was dominated by it. Now Sigurd has the Ring, but Sigurd is a man, not a God. Now the question is, will he too be defeated?

Sigurd is the principal character in the second-to-last generation. His decision will tell us who Odin is, we know that beforehand. The question is, now that the Ring has him, will he be defeated as Odin seems to have been?

After he took the Hoard and the Ring, Sigurd rode away and rode on until he came upon a valkyrie named Brynhild. A valkyrie was a being who chose those who would be slain in battle, like the Greek Ker, but where the Ker was a sort of monster, the valkyrie was human part of the time and a servant of Odin. And those whom the valkyrie chose had the honor of feasting with the Gods and of fighting by their side in the last battle when the world ends. Valkyries were permeated by Odin, were completely of Odin, and what they were as valkyries had an enormous effect on what they were when they took their human form. When Sigurd met Brynhild, she was in her valkyrie form, perhaps more God than human, and completely infused with Odin. So he asked her to teach him Odin’s wisdom.

But Odin’s wisdom is not taught and learned, it is accepted. Brynhild talked about magic done with carved runes. She said much about where to carve the runes and their purpose, but the knowledge that is the magic itself is not learned but accepted. She further advised him on how to avoid certain spirit-beings, to avoid drunken arguments, to be careful of pretty women, and to be very careful about taking revenge and to think twice about doing it. Revenge occurs all through the story, and those who fail to take revenge, or who do so reluctantly, are not portrayed as positive characters. But Odin has nothing to do with revenge or with the terrible situations that revenge causes, Odin is a response to those situations.

Then Brynhild offers Sigurd a cup of beer— this will have been grasaðr mjöðr. In Heimskringla, 83, King Olav Haraldson and his company drank mead with herbs added to it to make it more potent. In the Poetic Edda, Hávamál, 140, Odin drinks something along that line to acquire his wisdom, “I drink for gat, of the precious mead,” “og eg drykk of gat ins dýra mjaðar,” a “gat” is an opening or pathway. Clearly this does not refer to Coors. And lastly, Barclay and Russell-White, 1993, pp. 94, 101, 109-110 & 184-185, found traces of henbane, a herb with psychotropic properties in a vessel from a ceremonial center. So Brynhild offers Sigurd a cup of beer, with much more in it than alcohol, and with it she offers herself, she who is completely of Odin. And Sigurd must choose whether to accept the beer, whether to accept Odin’s magic, Odin’s wisdom, whether to accept Odin, whether to accept Brynhild, Odin’s valkyrie, and above all, whether to accept his own life. It is all the same decision. Brynhild says:

Now you must choose,
since to you is offered choice,
Maple Shaft of Sharp Weapons.
A tale or silence,
you take for you,
your own mind,
all the tale is determined.

Nú skaltu kjósa
alls þér er kostr of boðinn
hvassa vopna hlynr.
Sögn eða þögn
haf þu þér sjálfr of hug.
Öll eru mál of metin.

All the horrible things that are going to happen to him are going to happen, they are determined, there is nothing he can do to avoid them. The question is, will he take these things, will he have them (hafa). Oidipous was asked whether he would accept Apollo, now Sigurd is being asked whether he will accept Odin. Will he accept the rune magic, will he accept the wisdom about how to steer his life, will he accept the beer and its contents? And will this “Maple Shaft of Sharp Weapons” accept Brynhild, the valkyrie of Odin, and above all, will he accept his own mind, his own life, his own Fate?

Now Brynhild doesn’t fully understand what she is asking when she asks him to take her, but Sigurd does, he knows exactly what will happen. A seer has told him what will happen, a seer has told him every horrendous detail of what will be their life, and Fafnir too has warned him. Will he accept her and the Fate they will have together? He says, “I will not run away, I will have all of it for all of my life.” “Munkat eg flýja, vil eg öll of hafa svo lengi sem eg lifi.” (Volsingasaga, 21, 21)

He has made his choice. And now, the terrible flower begins to unfold.

Sigurd rode on, and he met Brynhild again, this time in her fully human form. They conceived a daughter, but the daughter escaped the Ring and passed out of the story. He rode on further until he reached the kingdom of Burgundy. He stayed there with King Gjuki, his wife Grimhild, his daughter Gudrun and his three sons Gunnar, Hogni and Guttorm. Grimhild was a sorceress, and she wanted to incorporate a potent man like Sigurd into her family. She gave him a poison that caused him to forget Brynhild, and he completely forgot Brynhild, he had no idea she existed. In time he swore a pact of brother hood with Grimhild’s sons, and he married Gidrun.

Grimhild then decided that Brynhild would make a good match for Gunnar, and she sent Sigurd and Gunnar to try to win her. Brynhild had been given no poison and knew that she was married to no one but Sigurd, so she surrounded herself with a wall of flames and vowed that she would marry no one but the man who rode through it. She knew, and she was right about this, that no one could do this but Sigurd. Gunnar was willing to try, but his horse would have nothing to do with it. Sigurd’s horse, Grani, the best and bravest horse in the world and the gift of Odin, was quite able to pass through the firewall, but he would allow no one to ride him except Sigurd. So Sigurd and Gunnar exchanged shapes, and Sigurd in Gunnar’s shape rode through the flames. Brynhild did not know what to make of this stranger who stood where Sigurd should have been, but she had vowed to have the man who rode through the flames, and for Brunhild the valkyrie to break a vow was not thinkable.

He stayed with her inside the firewall for three nights, but they slept with Odin’s unsheathed Sword between them. He explained that this was necessary because of a vow he had made. He is in another’s shape, so she has no idea who he is. He’s been poisoned so he has no idea who she is, and the Ring is as desirable and as irresistible as ever. Remember that she’s still wearing the Ring. At night while she sleeps, he steals the Ring from her sleeping finger.

Now the Ring has conquered everything. We have already seen it dominate Odin. Now, Grani’s absolute loyalty and Sigurd’s unequaled courage have led them to destruction. Odin’s Sword that should have defended Brynhild and Sigurd against anything has sundered them. They have been destroyed, it only remains for them to know it.

Brynhild’s foster-father, Heimir, told her that she must keep her vow, and she and Gunnar were married. Sigurd, Gudrun, Gunnar and Brynhild all lived together in Gjuki’s household. One day Gudrun and Brynhild were bathing in the Rhine, and Brynhild pointedly moved farther out into the river than Gudrun. She did this to show that she was of higher rank that Gudrun, since her husband Gunnar was king. Gudrun questioned this, and Brynhild said, “My husband Gunnar rode through the firewall, but your Sigurd was a dependent of the Danish King.”

Gudrun, who had kept her mouth shut until now, said, “It was Sigurd who rode through the firewall, not Gunnar, and it was Sigurd who slept with you on your wedding night, not Gunnar, and Sigurd gave me something he took from you that night.” And she held up the Ring. Now they know.

Grani was the gift of Odin and completely loyal, and we have seen the result of that loyalty. Odin’s Sword was the best sword in the world, but it destroyed the family it should have protected. Brynhild was a valkyrie, and she was completely of Odin. She was pure Truth, pure poetry, absolute integrity, and she could love no man on earth except Sigurd. She was what she was, unequivocally. Like Oidipous, she did not think about what was good for herself or for anyone else, she did not think about what was good, desirable, sensible, advantageous or even sane, she did not want anything but the Truth. And the only Truth was that she was Sigurd’s wife, and if that was impossible then so was she. She should have been the best of all possible wives, but now the part of her that made her that became perverted by the Ring and led her into murder.

Sigurd had eventually recovered from the poison and remembered who Brynhild was, but by then it was far too late. He accepted such happiness as was possible and hoped that the horrible things that had been foretold would somehow not happen. He only agreed to leave Gudrun and marry Brynhild when Brynhild had become so unstable that it was clear that she might die. But such a marriage would mean dishonor, and dishonor for Brynhild was not a possibility. Like Oidipous, she could no longer think about what might be good, but only about what was true. And Truth was no longer possible. She knew Gunnar’s weaknesses, she was his wife. And she played on them day after day, and day after day the Hoard and the Ring pulled upon him. And finally he and his brothers murdered Sigurd, and they took the Hoard and the Ring. When Sigurd died, Brynhild died too. Then she killed her lifeless body with Odin’s Sword. She and her husband Sigurd lay on the same funeral pyre and were burned on the same pyre, lying side by side, with the Sword between them as in life.

When Brynhild asks Sigurd if he will accept Odin’s magic, Odin’s life-wisdom, Odin’s special beer, whether he will accept her, Odin’s valkyrie, whether he will accept his own life, this is what she is asking him to accept. She doesn’t fully understand what she is asking, but he does, he knows exactly what is going to happen. He knows that the woman who is his love and who is half of his life will have his best friends murder him, and that they will murder him, that all his courage, all his strength, all his spirit, will work against him, will destroy him and everyone he loves, and he knows that all Brynhild’s courage, all her strength, all her strength, all her spirit, will work against her, will destroy her and everyone she loves, that they will both be ground into the dirt. When she asks him if he will take her, he knows exactly what she is asking him to take. And he takes her. He says, “I will have all of it for all of my life.” He is completely of Odin.

As I have said, this is a very different kind of story than we are used to. It is not about Good versus Evil. We don’t have a fight of some kind and Good triumphs, and then the characters live happily ever after or go back to normal or whatever. The climax comes when the principal character makes his decision to accept the action he is Fated to perform (Orestes and Alkmaeon) or to accept his life as a whole (Oidipous and Sigurd). And then after the climax, we do not find happiness or normalcy, we simply find life going on in whatever way it goes. What has changed is that now we know that knowledge is possible and that it is possible to be human.

Literature is thought, thought is literature. What we mostly have in our heads is neither. What we mostly have in our heads is like a complex of video games whose purpose is to make us feel important, comfortable, secure and satisfied, whose purpose is to protect us from anything we might actually feel, to protect us from actual knowledge, and whose purpose is to make us feel as if we know, as if we were standing on solid ground. Real knowledge has a different flavor, a different presence or feel than the games have. Because when we really know, we never know fully, finally, completely and absolutely, because real knowledge is never full, final, complete and absolute. The games are very likely to be full, final, complete and absolute, because we made them, we asserted them, and they can be as absolute as we want them to be. Real knowledge is never like this, because real knowledge is something we are always in the process of approaching, real knowledge is something we are always in the process of learning. If we really know, then we don’t “know” in any final sense, because real knowledge is something we are always in the process of finding out.

And real knowledge, of the human world at any rate, had always been expressed through literature. It is so expressed here.

Every time we know something, we are not alone. We’re in a different world now, we’re outside the games, everything has a different feel, a different presence. This is the world that Oidipous and Sigurd stepped into. This is why, when Sigurd accepted Odin, the magic, the wisdom, the psychotropic beer, his life, his fate, Brynhild, it was all the same decision. When he stepped outside the games, he stepped into the real world— where she was. The power of Odin is the power to be human.

* * *

I mentioned that stories in the Greco-Germanic Family Cycle form and perhaps some of the stories themselves go back as far as the time of the Corded Ware culture, 2,800 to 2,300 BC, and the Bell Beaker Culture, 2,500 to 2,200 BC, before the Bronze Age began. That would explain the common character of these stories and why they are so different from the rest of Indo-European literature. We can’t really understand the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures now. They have only left the barest physical traces, and those have been studied haphazardly. But we know that they were very different from the farming cultures that came before them, and perhaps even more different from anything that arose after. The Corded Ware culture arose as people abandoned their substantial houses and their ancient, stone ceremonial centers that had held the piled bones of uncounted generations of their ancestors. They traded these for small, scattered clusters of flimsy, apparently temporary shelters that leave almost no trace now. (Sherratt, 1991, pg. 60; Sherratt, 1994, pg. 192 and Shennan, pp. 126, 139 & 138) They abandoned their old identification with a “House,” an extended family or clan that traced its ancestors back many generations, and became individuals. And they left their old House funeral ceremony behind and took up a completely personal one.

We can see this ceremony in the form of a standard set of cord-impressed drinking vessels, and we never find these vessels in what is left of Corded Ware settlements, but always in graves. Earlier in the Corded Ware Culture the graves had been of two classes, one class with the set of vessels and various weapons or ornaments-- the stone mace illustrated at the beginning of this essay was universal-- and an equally numerous class with little or nothing. Within each of these classes, all graves were pretty much equal. (Vandkilde, pp. 67-70, 83, 85 and Shennan, pp. 151) Then at a certain point something new happened to the Corded Ware Culture, a new culture arose from it. This new culture, the Bell Beaker Culture also had drinking vessels in its graves, but of a different design. A great many diverse groups of people adopted the Bell Beakers, the funeral practices that went with them, and various other aspects of the Bell Beaker Culture, and the results varied. But the Corded Ware class of barren graves disappeared. It has even been asserted that its poor people weren’t buried at all (Vandkilde, 88), but the variation we encounter in the quality and quantity of Bell Beaker grave goods is more than adequate to account for a full range of wealth or the lack thereof. Everyone, regardless of age, sex or status, was honored with at least something for their grave, everyone had at least a ceremonial drinking Beaker or a weapon or both. (Sarauw, pg. 69, Thomas, pp. 34-35 and Brodie, pg. 300) Barren graves wer not completely unknown, (Wicke et al) but there was clearly a very strong movement away from them.

The presence of a few pots isn’t much evidence, but cultures that have left as few traces as have the Chorded Ware and the Bell Beaker, aren’t going to give us much more. We know that the Family Cycle Stories came from this time, and to find their source, we need to find something that suggests that, at least for a while, the dignity of ordinary people was once more recognized.

Athenian democracy was established at the beginning of the Athenian classic age, when the prestige that had formerly been reserved for the elite was extended to everyone. Everyone became important and the decisions everyone made became important. And so the literature the Athenians embraced was different than that of the other Greeks. Whereas the other Greeks were inspired by Odysseus and Herakles, the Athenians were touched by Achilleus and Oidipous. The Athenians produced great literature, and their literature was about choices. As the Athenians gradually became elitist again, their democracy became hollow and their literature lost its power. But where did this literature come from? Much Athenian literature, especially Tragedy, was based on the Greco-Germanic Family Cycles. And those cycles came from a time when everyone was important, and when the choices everyone made were important. And further, the people of that time could not have been far in outlook from the people of classic Scandinavian society, where again, everyone was important, and the choices everyone made were important. And the most significant literature of classic Scandinavia is found in the Volsungasaga, the Family Cycle we have just recounted above. In classic societies like that of Athens, of “dark age” Scandinavia and perhaps of the Bell Beaker Culture, everyone matters, what everyone does matters, and everyone’s words and actions are based on something that is never finished, final or complete, something that we are always in the process of discovering.

Greco-Germanic Tradition I: Bibliography

Aeschylos— Aeschylus I: Suppliant Maidens, Persians, Prometheus, Seven Against Thebes , H.W. Smith (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1973.

— Aeschylus II: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, Fragments, H.W. Smith &H. Lloyd- Jones (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983.

Apollodoros— The Library, Vols. I & II, J.G. Frazer (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990.

Athenaeus— The Deipnosophists, Vol. I, C.B. Gulick (trans.), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969.

Bakchylides—Lyra Graeca, Vol. III, J.M. Edmonds (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980.

Barclay, Gordon & Russel-White, Christopher (eds), “Excavations in the Ceremonial Complex of the Fourth to Second Millennium BC at Balfarg/Balbirnie,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Vol. 123, 1993.

Blecher, Lone & Blecher, George— (eds) Swedish Folktales and Legends, Pantheon Books, New York, 1993.

Brodie, Neil, “New Perspectives on the Bell-Beaker Culture,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 16, issue 3, pp. 298-313.

Bruce-Mitford, Rupert & Bruce-Mitford, Myrtle— "The Sutton Hoo Lyre, Beowulf, and the Origins of the Frame Harp," Antiquity, Vol. 44, 1970, pp. 7-13 & plates I-VIII.

Diodorus Siculus— Diododus of Sicily, Vol I, 1968, Vol. II, 1979, Vol. III, 1970, Vol. VI, 1977, C.H. Oldfather (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Egil's Saga— Hermann Palsson & Paul Edwards (trans), Penguin Books, New York, 1978. Text in Egilli Skallagrimii Uita: Ex Manuscripts Legati Arna-Magnaeni, J.R.Thiele, 1809 and Sagan af Agli Skallagrimssyni, Einar Thortharson (ed), Prentsmithju Islands, Reykjavik, 1856.

Euripides— Euripides II: Electra, Orestes, Iphigeneia in Taurica, Andromache, Cyclopes, A.S. Way (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,Massachusetts, 1966.

— Euripides III: Bacchanals, Madness of Hercules, Children of Hercules, Phoenician Women,
Suppliants, A.S. Way (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971.

Frazer, James— The Golden Bough, Vol. VIII, Spirits of the Corn and the Wild, MacMillan Press, London, 1980.

Heimskringla— Sturylason, Snorri, Heimskringla or the Lives of the Norse Kings, Erling Monsen & A.H. Smith (trans), Dover Publications, New York, 1990, Reprint of Cambridge edition, 1932. Text in Islenzk Fornrit, vol. 27, Heimskringla, vol. 2, Bjorn Atðalbjörnarson, Hið Islenzka Fornritaflag, 1945.

Herodotos— Herodotos, Vols. I-IV, A.D. Godley (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982.

Hesoid— Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, H.G. Evelyn-White (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982.

Hollander, Lee— The Skalds: A Slection of their Poems with Introduction and Notes, Princeton Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978.

Homer— The Iliad, Vols. I-II, A.T. Murry (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, the Poetic Edda, Columbia University Press, New York, 1936.

— The Odyssey, Vols. I-II, A.T. Murry (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984.

Hyginus— The Myths of Hyginus, Mary Grant (trans & ed), University of Kansas Publications Humanistic Studies No. 34, Lawrence, Kansas, 1960.

Kere'nyi, Karl— The Gods of the Greeks, Norman Cameron (trans), Thames & Hudson, New York, 1979.

Pausanias— Pausanias: Description of Greece, Vols. I-V, W.H.S. Jones, (trans.), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980.

Plutarch— Moralia, Vols. II, IV & V, F.C. Babbitt (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992.

The Poetic Edda— Lee M. Hollander (trans), University of Texas Press, Austin, 2nd edition, 1990. Text in Eddukvaethi, Gisli Sigurthsson (ed), Mal og Menning, Reykjavik, 1998.

The Prose Edda— Sturyluson, Snorri, The Prose Edda, Jean Young (trans), University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Text in Snorra Edda, Heimir Palsson (ed), Mal og Menning, Reykjavik, 1996.

Sarauw, Torben, “Male symbols or warrior identities? The ‘archery burials’ of the Danish Bell
Beaker Culture,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Vol. 26, #1, March, 2007, pp. 65-87.

Sefton, Thomas— The Gods Remain, Kolonos Press, www.kolonospress.com, Kerhonkson, New York, 2001.

Shennan, Stephen, “Settlement and Social Change in Central Europe, 3,500-1500 BC,” Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1993.

Sherratt, Andrew, “Sacred and Profane Substances: the Ritual Use of Narcotics in Later Neolithic Europe,” Sacred and Profane: Proceedings of a Conference on Archaeology, Ritual and Religion, Oxford, 1989, in Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, Monograph No. 32, 1991, pp. 50-64.

— “The Transformation of Early Argrarian Europe: The Later Neolithic and Copper Ages, 4,500-2,500 BC,” in Barry Cunliffe (ed), The Oxford Illustrated History of Europe, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1994, pp. 167-201.

Sophokles— Sophokles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, F. Storr (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981.

—Sophokles II: Ajax, Electra Trachiniae, Philoctetes, F. Storr (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978.

Theognidos— Greek Elegy and Iambus, Vol. I, J.M. Edmonds (trans), Loeb Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982.

Thomas, Julian, “Reading the Body: Beaker Funerary Practice in Britain,” Sacred and Profane: Proceedings of a Conference on Archaeology, Ritual and Religion, Oxford, 1989, in Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, Monograph No. 32, 1991, pp. 33-42.

Vandkilde, Helle, Culture and Change in Central European Prehistory, 6th to 1st Millennium BC, Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, Denmark, 2007.

Volsungasaga— The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, Jesse L. Byock (trans), University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1990. Text in Volsungasaga og Ragnars saga lothbrókar, Orneólfur Thorsson (ed), Mal og Menning,Reykjavik, 1985.

Wicke, Jörg; Bertemes, Francios; Brown, Keri; Brown, Terry; Harrison, Richard; Volker, Heyd;
Robson-Brown, Kate; “A Biomolecular Approach to the Study of Social Organization during the
Late Copper Age in Southern Germany,” UK Archaeological Conference, 2006, (on line).