Everything about R G totally explained
Ríg is the name applied to a
Norse god described as "old and wise, mighty and strong" in the
Eddic poem Rígthula (
Old Norse Rígsþula - Song of Ríg). The prose introduction tells that Ríg is another name for
Heimdall, who is moreover called the father of mankind in
Völuspá.
Rig wandered through the world and brought into being (apparently by fathering them) the progenitors of the three classes of human beings as conceived by the poet. The youngest of these sons inherited the name "Ríg" and in turn his youngest son, Kon the Young or
Kon ung (
konung meaning 'king' in Old Norse) also inherited the name or title "Ríg". This third Ríg was the first true
king and the ultimate founder of the state of royalty as appears in the
Rígsthula and in two other works in connection. In all three sources he's connected with two primordial
Danish rulers named
Dan and Danþír.
The poem
Rígthula is preserved incomplete on the last surviving sheet in
Codex Wormianus following
Snorri Sturluson's Edda. A short prose introduction explains that the god in question was
Heimdall who wandered along the seashore until he came to a farm where he called himself Ríg. The name Ríg appears to be the oblique case of
Old Irish rí,
ríg "king", cognate to
rex in
Latin and
rajan in
Sanskrit.
That Heimdall as an ancestor, or kinsman, of humankind appears in the first two lines of the eddic poem
Völuspá:'
I ask for a hearing of all the holy races
Greater and lesser, kinsmen of Heimdall.
The Rígsthula
The
Rígsthula tells how Ríg happened upon a
farm-hut which was owned by
Ái 'great-grandfather' and
Edda 'great-grandmother'. They offered Ríg shelter and poor, rough food for a
meal. That night Ríg slept between the pair in their bed and then departed. Nine
months later Edda gave
birth to a son who was
svartan (dark/black in color). They named him Thræl (
thrall,
serf,
slave). Thræl grew up strong but ugly. He married a woman named Thír (slave girl, bondswoman) and they'd twelve sons and nine daughters with names mostly suggesting ugliness and squatness. They became the race of serfs.
Travelling further, Ríg came across a nice
house where lived a
farmer/
craftsman, Afi "grandfather" with his wife
Amma "grandmother". The
food was good and this couple also let Ríg sleep between them. Nine months later, a son, Karl (
churl, freeman) was born whose face and hair was red. Karl married a woman named Snör (daughter-in-law) and they'd twelve sons and ten daughters with names mostly suggesting a neat appearance or being of good quality. One of the names is
smiðr (smith). These become the ancestors of the lesser farmers and herdsmen.
Travelling further, Ríg came to a
mansion inhabited by
Faðir (Father) and
Móðir (Mother). They gave him excellent food served splendidly and, nine months later, Móðir gave birth to a beautiful
baby named
Jarl (earl, noble) whose hair was blond and who was
bleikr (bright white in color). When Jarl grew up and began to handle weapons and to use hawks, hounds, and horses, Ríg reappeared, claimed Jarl as his son, gave Jarl his own name of Ríg, made him his heir, taught him
runes, and advised him to seek lordship.
Through warfare Jarl became lord of eighteen homesteads with much wealth besides. Jarl also gained the hand of Erna 'Brisk' daughter of
Hersir 'lord'. Erna bore eleven sons to Ríg-Jarl but no daughters. All of the sons were given high sounding names, mostly meaning 'son'. They became the ancestors of the
warrior nobility.
The youngest son, named Kon, was the best of them. He alone learned rune-craft as well as other magic and was able to understand the speech of birds, to quench fire, and to heal minds. He also had the strength of eight normal men. His name was Kon the young (
Konr ungr in Old Norse), the name and title to be understood as the origin of the Norse word
konungr 'king' (though in fact that etymology is false). Kon, like his father, also gained the name or title of Ríg.
One day, when Kon ung was riding through the forest hunting and snaring birds, a crow spoke to him and suggested Kon would win more if he stopped hunting mere birds and rode to battle against foemen, that he should seek the halls of Dan and Danp who were wealthier than he. At that point the poem breaks off.
A marriage by Kon ung into the family of Dan and Danp seems to be where the tale was headed as seen in the two other sources which mentions this Ríg. According to
Arngrímur Jónsson's
Latin epitome of the lost
Skjöldungasaga:
Ríg (Rigus) was a man not the least among the great ones of his time. He married the daughter of a certain Danp, lord of Danpsted, whose name was Dana; and later, having won the royal title for his province, left as his heir his son by Dana, called Dan or Danum, all of whose subjects were called Danes.
The other tradition appears in chapter 20 of the
Ynglinga Saga section of Snorri Sturluson's
Heimskringla. The story speaks of King
Dygvi of
Sweden:
Dygvi's mother was Drótt, a daughter of King Danp, the son of Ríg, who was first called konungr in the Danish tongue. His descendants always afterwards considered the title of konungr the title of highest dignity. Dygvi was the first of his family to be called konungr, for his predecessors had been called dróttinn ['chieftain'], and their wives dróttning, and their court drótt (war band). Each of their race was called Yngvi, or Ynguni, and the whole race together Ynglingar. Queen Drótt was a sister of King Dan Mikillati, from whom Denmark took its name.
Despite genealogical discrepancies (to be evaded only by imagining more than one
Danp and more than one
Dan) the accounts relate a common tradition about the origin of the title
konungr 'king'.
Kon ung, whose magical abilities are so emphasized, is as much a magician as a warrior: a magician king, perhaps a sacred king. Dumézil (1958) pointed out that Kon alone represents the supernatural function, represented by the
brahman caste in
India, the
flamen function in
Rome, the
Druids in some
Celtic cultures, and by the
clergy in the three estates of
medieval Europe. Instead of the three estates of clergy/priest, warrior, and commoner, with serfs outside the system, the
Rígsthula presents three estates or castes in which the clergy/priest class has been subsumed within the warrior class and identified with royalty. Also, although in Rome and India the color
white is assigned to the brahman and priestly functions and
red to the warrior function, here the noble warrior is white in color while the red coloration is ascribed instead to the commoner in place of the green or blue or yellow color which appears in other cultures associated with
Proto-Indo-European society. Dumézil saw this as a Germanic adaptation of Indo-European inheritance.
The
Rígsthula account may be an attempt to harmonize different tales. Though Ríg seems to be father in all three families of sons born nine months after he's departed, in fact the sons seem to take after their parents in all ways and it isn't clear that they're in any way special, except for the third. But the superiority of the third of three sons is a common motif in Indo-European legend and folklore.
That the
Rígsthula names the three couples as "Great-Grandfather" and "Great-Grandmother", "Grandfather" and "Grandmother", "Father" and "Mother", suggests a conflicting concept in which Jarl, the first real noble, is descended in the fourth generation through fathers each of which was superior to his own father, each of which rose above the station of his siblings and founded a new sub-class within the common class of humanity.
Further Information
Get more info on 'R G'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://r__g.totallyexplained.com">Ríg Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
