Teutonic Mythology - The Original Classic Edition. Viktor Rydberg
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with its peninsulas extending into the Mediterranean, must doubtless have been outside of the boundaries of the Aryan land of Europe. The Greek Aryans have immigrated to Hellas, and the Italian Aryans are immigrants to the Italian peninsula. Spain has even within historical times been inhabited by Iberians and[Pg 25] Basques, and Basques dwell there at present: If, as the linguistic monuments seem to prove, the European Aryans lived near an ocean, this cannot have been the Mediterranean Sea. There remain the Black and Caspian Sea on the one hand, the Baltic and the North Sea on the other. But if, as the linguistic monuments likewise seem to prove, the European Aryans for a great part, at least, lived west of a botanical line indicated by the beech in a country producing fir, oak, elm, and elder, then they could not have been limited to the treeless plains which extend along the Black Sea from the mouth of the Danube, through Dobrudscha, Bessarabia, and Cherson, past the Crimea. Students of early Greek history do not any longer assume that the Hellenic immigrants found their way through these countries to Greece, but that they came from the north-west and followed the Adriatic down to Epirus; in other words, they came the same way as the Visigoths under Alarik, and the Eastgoths under Theodoric in later times. Even the Latin tribes came from the north. The migrations of the Celts, so far as history sheds any light on the subject, were from the north and west toward the south and east. The movements of the Teutonic races were from north to south, and they migrated both eastward and westward. Both prehistoric and historic facts thus tend to establish the theory that the Aryan
domain of Europe, within undefinable limits, comprised the central and north part of Europe; and as one or more seas were known to these Aryans, we cannot exclude from the limits of this knowledge the ocean penetrating the north of Europe from the west.[Pg
26]
On account of their undeveloped agriculture, which compelled them to depend chiefly on cattle for their support, the European Aryans must have occupied an extensive territory. Of the mutual position and of the movements of the various tribes within this territory nothing can be stated, except that sooner or later, but already away back in prehistoric times, they must have occupied precisely the position in which we find them at the dawn of history and which they now hold. The Aryan tribes which first entered Gaul must have lived west of those tribes which became the progenitors of the Teutons, and the latter must have lived west of those who spread an Aryan language over Russia. South of this line, but still in Central Europe, there must have dwelt another body of Aryans, the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans, the latter west of the former. Farthest to the north of all these tribes must have dwelt
those people who afterwards produced the Teutonic tongue. B. ANCIENT TEUTONDOM (GERMANIEN).
6.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF ANCIENT TEUTONDOM. THE STONE AGE OF PREHISTORIC TEUTONDOM.
The northern position of the ancient Teutons necessarily had the effect that they, better than all other Aryan people, preserved their original race-type, as they were less exposed to mixing with non-Aryan elements. In the south, west, and east, they had kinsmen, separating them[Pg 27] from non-Aryan races. To the north, on the other hand, lay a territory which, by its very nature, could be
but sparsely populated, if it was inhabited at all, before it was occupied by the fathers of the Teutons. The Teutonic type, which doubtless also was the Aryan in general before much spreading and consequent mixing with other races had taken place, has, as already indicated, been described in the following manner: Tall, white skin, blue eyes, fair hair. Anthropological science has given
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them one more mark--they are dolicocephalous, that is, having skulls whose anterior-posterior diameter, or that from the frontal to the occipital bone, exceeds the transverse diameter. This type appears most pure in the modern Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and to some extent the Dutch, in the inhabitants of those parts of Great Britain that are most densely settled by Saxon and Scandinavian emigrants; and in the people of certain parts of North Germany. Welcker's craniological measurements give the following figures for the breadth and length of Teutonic skulls:
Swedes and Hollanders, 75--71
Icelanders and Danes, 76--71
Englishmen, 76--73
Holsteinians, 77--71
Hanoverians, The vicinity of Jena, Bonn, and Cologne, 77--72
Hessians, 79--72
Swabians, 79--73
Bavarians, 80--74
Thus the dolicocephalous form passes in Middle and Southern Germany into the brachycephalous. The inves[Pg 28]tigations made at the suggestion of Virchow in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria, in regard to blonde and brunette types, are of great interest. An examination of more than nine million individuals showed the following result:
Germany, 31.80% blonde, 14.05% brunette, 54.15% mixed. Austria, 19.79% blonde, 23.17% brunette, 57.04% mixed. Switzerland, 11.10% blonde, 25.70% brunette, 61.40% mixed.
Thus the blonde type has by far a greater number of representatives in Germany than in the southern part of Central Europe, though the latter has German-speaking inhabitants. In Germany itself the blonde type decreases and the brunette increases from north to south, while at the same time the dolicocephalous gives place to the brachycephalous. Southern Germany has 25% of brunettes, North Germany only 7%.
If we now, following the strict rules of methodology which Latham insists on, bear in mind that the cradle of a race-or language-type should, if there are no definite historical facts to the contrary, especially be looked for where this type is most abundant and least changed, then there is no doubt that the part of Aryan Europe which the ancestors of the Teutons inhabited when they developed the Aryan tongue into the Teutonic must have included the coast of the Baltic and the North Sea. This theory is certainly not contradicted, but, on the other hand, supported by the facts so far as we have any knowledge of them. Roman history supplies evidence that the same parts of Europe in which the Teutonic type predominates at the present time were Teutonic already at the beginning[Pg 29] of our era, and that then already the Scandinavian peninsula was inhabited by a North Teutonic people, which, among their kinsmen on the Continent, were celebrated for their wealth in ships and warriors. Centuries must have passed ere the Teutonic colonisation of the peninsula could have developed into so much strength--centuries during which, judging from all indications, the transition from the bronze to the iron age in Scandinavia must have taken place. The painstaking investigations of Mon-telius, conducted on the principle of methodology, have led him to the conclusion that Scandinavia and North Germany formed during the bronze age one common domain of culture in regard to weapons and implements. The manner in which the other domains of culture group themselves in Europe leaves no other place for the Teutonic race than Scandinavia and North Germany, and possibly Austria-Hungary, which the Teutonic domain resembles most. Back of the bronze age lies the stone age. The examinations,
by v. Duben, Gustaf Retzius, and Virchow, of skeletons found in northern graves from the stone age prove the existence at that time of a race in the North which, so far as the characteristics of the skulls are concerned, cannot be distinguished from the race now dwelling there. Here it is necessary to take into consideration the results of probability reached by comparative philology, showing that the European Aryans were still in the stone age when they divided themselves into Celts, Teutons, etc., and occupied separate territories, and the fact that the Teutons, so far back as conclusions may be drawn from historical knowledge have occupied[Pg 30]
a more northern domain than their kinsmen. Thus all tends to show that when the Scandinavian peninsula was first settled by Ary-ans--doubtless coming from the South by way of Denmark--these Aryans belonged to the same race, which, later in history, appear with a Teutonic physiognomy and with Teutonic speech, and that their immigration to and occupation of the southern parts of the peninsula took place in the time of the Aryan stone age.
For the history of civilisation, and particularly for mythology, these results are important. It is a problem to be solved by compara-
tive mythology what elements in the various groups of Aryan myths may be the original common property of the race while the
race was yet undivided. The conclusions reached gain in trustworthiness the further the Aryan tribes, whose myths are compared, are separated