The Dead Moon and Aurvandil in Jotunheim

With the Solstice fast approaching I have been giving a lot of thought to the sun, the living Sun. But as I so often do my thoughts soon turned to a quasi-acedmic treasure-hunt.

Simek was of the belief that Sol/Sunna, a reverence for the Sun, was once important to the Norse with that religious significance fading by the time of the recording of the myths. This is of course just a theory, but I accept it on the grounds that the Sun is essential to all life. If Her importance faded then it is high time to revive Her worship. If you are not of an Animistic bent then this sounds a whole lot like ignorant superstition. I make no apologies. I'm neither ignorant nor stupid. I prefer the term 'open-minded' ...

Though Germanic paganism is the meat of my spirituality I find it impossible not to view it within a wider context. Germanic paganism is but a branch of Indo-European paganism, and I look to many traditions to inform my beliefs. So much has been lost that to look at Indo-European mythologyand  culture as a whole is very helpful for me.

So while I was supposed to be considering the living Sun instead I found myself thinking about Proto-Indo-European myth. From studying the divergent traditions that grew from Proto-Indo-European it has been suggested that there was an original myth of the Sun or the Dawn trapped within a rock/cave and freed by a hero - in one myth The Striker.

My mind made a connection that on the face of it makes little sense.

There is a folk tale from the Lincolnshire fens that tells of the radiant moon descending to the fenland where She becomes trapped under a rock by nasty fenland spirits until She is rescued by some heroic but unknown man.

This tale has always tugged at me as particularly pagan. In Germanic myth the moon is male though, not female. Today though I can't help but think this story could almost fit into the Proto-Indo-European myth of the Sun trapped in a rock if the Sun had been replaced with the Moon...

It also occurred to me that I know another tale where The Striker rescues a figure associated with the dawn. We know that Thor rescued Aurvandil while on His way through Jotunheim, though we're not sure what Aurvandill was doing there. It's a tenuous, but the name Auvandil implies a connection to the day and the dawn. In the Old English poem Christi I the cognate form Earendel is used in such a way that it implies a herald of the light, and in both Old English and Norse sources The name is used for the Morning Star. To tie this back into Proto-Indo-European mythology again the Morning Star is linked to the Ashvins, the divine horsemen, who accompany the Dawn Goddess, their sister.

These are my rambling thoughts as we approach the Summer Solstice.