Odin - source separation?

Started by Harald Tveit Alvestrand on Wednesday, October 13, 2010
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Showing 1-30 of 78 posts
10/13/2010 at 3:47 PM

I am having trouble just now with what to do with Odin, of whom many, inconsistent, stories are told.

It seems that Njord and Frøy have at least one set of profiles that follow Ynglingesoga closely - but this Odin profile seems to merge many stories into itself.

Should I just break the connection to the Ynglingesoga tree and create an "Odin (Ynglingesoga)" profile, which can be made consistent with that story?

(Cool picture, though!)

10/13/2010 at 4:04 PM

If you really want my sincere opinion, Harald (which you probably don't want :-9 ) I think these ole norse gods should be removed from Geni. This is not genealogy, this is fables and fairytales (or worse). I really don't like profiles like these in a genalogical site. Gods doesn't have anything to do with genealogy. But i also know that my opinion will be disregarded in this case, too bad, because my only wish is a genealogical database that is as correct as possible.

I can agree to keep Snorres sagas on Geni, except where he goes into the gods, it really should stop before we get into divinity. The next thing showing up on Geni is probably children born by alien abductees, and their green men ancestry......

10/13/2010 at 4:09 PM

just one litle historical thing to think about :

as the story goes,Odin came from eastern eruope or syria.
if you take the books,and follow his tracks in time.
his travels,brings you back in to Israel.
if you then look at maps dated back to around 1200,you will find 2 town`s in the old land under the names of :
ASIRAGARD.

some thing to think about ;-)

10/13/2010 at 4:31 PM

Remi, yes, we've discussed this before - my goal with the "god-work" is to establish what's written in the sources, separate from what generations of amateur genalogists and decades of Internet imagineers have layered on top of it. I don't think we can keep them off as long as the sources seem so obvious to so many - so let's make the best of it.

Martin, I've already cut links from Yngvi-Frey to a (quite historical) king of northern Turkey - there are many fascinating possibilities, but I don't want to use them to establish links. Documentation is everything..... and the 1200s were probably some 600 years after the time of the historical Odin (if any).

10/13/2010 at 4:41 PM

:-)

Jonathan Edward Stanley Paracy
10/13/2010 at 7:35 PM

YGGDRASIL

Jonathan Edward Stanley Paracy
10/13/2010 at 7:38 PM

sounds like...'the odyssey' ~ Welsh

Private User
10/14/2010 at 12:19 AM

Odin, translates to old turkish meanes overking, or king of kings, so the question must be if he was in fact a leader or chieftain, or a God.
The problem is the complete lack of documentation with excception of Snorri's saga.
The interesting fact is that Kaukasus, was the melting pot for many of the humans on the european map, and asian map. DNA samples are prove of that. However I am also skeptical of claims of being a decedenst of Odin, based on lack of documentation.
The ultimate question is if we will accept Snorri's saga as historical fact. something in betweeen, or just fiction. i believe there ar lot of historical fact. Helge Ingstad used Snorri's sage to find Vinland.

Private User
10/14/2010 at 12:20 AM

Odin, translates to old turkish meanes overking, or king of kings, so the question must be if he was in fact a leader or chieftain, or a God.
The problem is the complete lack of documentation with excception of Snorri's saga.
The interesting fact is that Kaukasus, was the melting pot for many of the humans on the european map, and asian map. DNA samples are prove of that. However I am also skeptical of claims of being a decedenst of Odin, based on lack of documentation.
The ultimate question is if we will accept Snorri's saga as historical fact. something in betweeen, or just fiction. i believe there ar lot of historical fact. Helge Ingstad used Snorri's sage to find Vinland.

10/14/2010 at 12:35 AM

Actually it was Grønlendingsaga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_the_Greenlanders) and the saga of Erik the Red (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eir%C3%ADks_saga_rau%C3%B0a) that was Ingstad's source for finding the Viking encampment at l'Anse aux Meadows - there are many sagas, some more fanciful than others, and not all of them are written by Snorri.

There's a long discussion of the etymology of Odin at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wodanaz - old Turkish is not mentioned. A nice critique of the drawing of such linkages is in Wikipedia's note on Thor Heyerdahl's search for Odin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakten_p%C3%A5_Odin

It's so easy to find support for theories.....

Private User
10/14/2010 at 12:59 AM

Thanks for the correction :)

1/2/2014 at 11:25 PM

Odin, {Norse God}
Óðinn / Woden / Woutan is your 63rd great grandfather.

1/3/2014 at 1:04 AM

Óðinn / Woden / Woutan is my 53rd great grandfather.

Private User
1/3/2014 at 2:52 AM

Óðinn / Woden / Woutan is your 38th great grandfather.

Private User
1/3/2014 at 4:30 AM

To: Remi Trygve Pedersen and Harald Tveit Alvestrand

Please DO NOT remove Odin from Geni. If you wish, unlink Odin from the genealogytree of nowadays living people. Because it is to many guessworks about the links between us nowadays living people and his. I guess we never will be able to find what is right about these links. We will never find any links because it is not any sources which can give us the answer.

If there are people out there in internet who want Odin in thieir trees I propose they made their own tree containing Odin. And that they never merge their Odin tree with the one Harald Alvestrand (and me) has made.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

Greetings from Norway
Arnfred Nilsen

Private User
1/3/2014 at 11:07 AM

Óðinn / Woden / Woutan is your 37th great grandfather.

It says on his profile where he is buried at! This sounds like a pretty solid source to me.

1/3/2014 at 2:38 PM

Private User I'm ok with having Odin on Geni, but there shouldn't be anyone that were able to link an ancestry to him, because there is no way of proving any genealogical link from a living person of today and back to him. All of us will have problems confirming links between us and Odin long before we are even getting close to him. Most of us will not be able to prove any ancestry through the Middle ages and specifically through tha Black Death period. So, Arnfred, I agree with you, hopefully everyone else on Geni will also see and understand this and not take any and every source out the for the truth, and start to be a bit more critical about their use of sources.

Private User, which source is used to say where Odin is buried? And how solid is it? There is no source to the statement of his burialplace on Geni. I'll put it to you to prove it, if possible. If you find a reliable source for his burial, I will give up my opposition, but until there is a reliable source, it is up to you that states facts like this (his burial place) to prove it, it's not up to me to prove you are wrong. Please prove me wrong!

Harald Tveit Alvestrand what is the history of this burialplace on Geni, what is the source, and how reliable is it?

Private User
1/3/2014 at 3:19 PM

Remi Trygve Pedersen
I'm not sure how reliable this source is? I am just suggesting that his profile does state where he is buried. Probably the managers of the profile added this source and obviously found this written somewhere to place it on his profile? Shouldn't be to hard to find? I will try and see if I can't find something more about it.

1/3/2014 at 3:26 PM

Private User you are still talking about a source to Odins death and burial, and I'm not able to see any sources for his death and burial in his profile. I'm only seing a statement that he is dead at "Logrinn, Gamla-Sigtun, Now Lake Malar, Sigtuna, Upsala, Sweden" and a statement that he is buried at "Vestergøtland i Sverige". None of these statements are sourced. I think it will be very hard to find reliable sources to collaborate and prove these statements.

Private User
1/3/2014 at 3:47 PM

Remi Trygve Pedersen

Óðinn / Woden / Woutan MP

Place of Burial:
Vestergøtland i Sverige

It clearly looks to me that it says place of burial.

Odin, {Norse God}

Private User
1/3/2014 at 5:27 PM

So far I can only find a burial place according to legend for Odin.

http://www.lk.envir.ee/aewa/upload/osmusaarevoldik_eng.pdf

The Osmussaar Island was most likely settled already in the Viking period, from
which time the legend comes about burying Odin, the Scandinavian chief God to
this island. The connection between Odin and this island is denoted by it's Swedish
name – Odensholm.

1/3/2014 at 5:45 PM

Yes, Odin is supposed to be buried at Odensholm, but there are also other legends. Somewhere in my notes is a list. I can't find it now. Someone claimed he is buried at Odense in Denmark. Not sure how early that claim was made. I don't remember Västergötland, but someone claimed Odensvi in Kalmar, Sweden.

Probably in every place named after him there was someone there who thought Odin was buried there ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_named_after_Wodanaz

Private User
1/3/2014 at 6:06 PM

I can't think of any towns or places "that physically exist" that are named for people that did not exist. Can you? Every place that I can think of with a name, is after a historical figure that existed.... all throughout time.

1/3/2014 at 6:29 PM

Sure: Santa Claus, Arizona ;)

I like your argument, Ian, but I can't quite buy it. When it comes to religion I would expect to have many places named after any god.

I hang out with some neo-pagans. Many of them would argue that Odin isn't dead at all. I always tell them that the sagas are clear: "The gods are dead; Freyja alone survives" (Snorri Sturluson). Besides, I'm descended from Odin and he never comes to family reunions so he must be dead ;)

Private User
1/3/2014 at 7:43 PM

OH, Now we don't believe in Santa? You must have been a bad bot this year! :)

Private User
1/3/2014 at 7:53 PM

Not so fast!

9people in the U.S. have this name View Santa Claus on WhitePages Raquote

2 in Washington»

2 in Florida»

1 in Nevada»

1 in Pennsylvania»

1 in Illinois»

1 in Texas»

1 in California»

Show all state populations
http://names.whitepages.com/Santa/Claus

1/3/2014 at 7:56 PM

;)

1/4/2014 at 1:06 PM

Private User wrote:

"Remi Trygve Pedersen

Óðinn / Woden / Woutan MP

Place of Burial:
Vestergøtland i Sverige

It clearly looks to me that it says place of burial.

Óðinn / Woden / Woutan"

Ian, this is not a source, this is just a statement. Legends like the one about Odin and Odensholm is flourishing in the nordic countries. None of them are reliable as a source to his death or burialplace.

There are hardly not a single town in Norway that hasn't a street named Odins street, We have Odins glacier, plenty of small islands called Odins rock or Odins reef. Both Norway and Sweden has several burial mounds called Odins Mound, ofcourse Odin can't be buried in all of them, probably he isn't buried in a single one of them.

My point being, if Odin ever existed as a real person, the writings about him is written more than 500 years after he could have existed, probably more. Not even at that time is it belieable that an oral culture could keep their oral history unchanged during a so long period of time. Therefore Snorris saga about Odin is untrustworthy as historical facts, therefore it is also untrustworthy facts in genealogy.

In fact there are better sources about Santa Claus existence than about Odin: http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/who-is-st-nicholas/

1/4/2014 at 1:31 PM

http://wadbring.com/historia/index.htm

Gefionmyten
Var låg Uppsala?

etc etc..

1/4/2014 at 1:55 PM

Many modern scholars believe that an oral tradition could exist unchanged for hundreds of years. This is one of the crucial arguments in the debate about Homer and the Iliad and Odyssey. One of the standard schools of thought is the Parry/Lord Thesis, which says that oral cultures are able to preserve epic traditions by using repetitive phrases designed to fit into a metrical formula. Exactly like the sagas. And, according to this view, the tradition can remain unaltered in its essentials until it is written down.

Showing 1-30 of 78 posts

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