Jakten på Odin

"The Search for Odin" (Norwegian: "Jakten på Odin") is the project title of Thor Heyerdahl's last series of archaeological excavations, which took place in Azov (Tanais) in Russia.

Theoretical background

Heyerdahl's intention was to prove the veracity of the account of Snorri Sturluson in the Ynglinga saga, written in the 13th century, about the origin of the Norse royal dynasties, and the pagan Norse gods. Snorri provides a euhemeristic account, in which he describes the Norse god Odin and some other Norse gods, the Æsir, as having been real people who emigrated from the area around the river Don to Scandinavia at the time of the Roman expansion into their old homeland. In Scandinavia, Snorri writes, they so impressed the native population that they started worshiping them as gods.

Heyerdahl tried to seek the origins of the Æsir, following the route set out by Snorri Sturluson in the Ynglinga saga, from the Black Sea and the river Tanais (former TanakvíslFact|date=July 2007) via Saxon homelands in northern Germany, Odense on Fyn, Denmark to Old Sigtuna, ancient Sweden. When he died, the second season of excavations were just finished.

Excavations

The excavations performed in Tanais, near the entry of the Don into the Black Sea, have shown that Tanais actually did have a population at the time of the emigration of the ÆsirFact|date=February 2007 (sometime around 60 B.C., according to the references to Roman expansion into the Caucasus).Fact|date=February 2007 Heyerdahl also claimed that findings and Russian written sourcesFact|date=February 2007 from the Caucasus area verify not only the existence of the Æsir or the Iranian Ossetians; whom he described as "the Odin people of today"Fact|date=February 2007—but also of an ancient tribeFact|date=February 2007 living around the area of Lake Van in today's Turkey.

Critique

Heyerdahl's Odin-project is considered by the academic community in Norway to be an example of pseudoarchaeology, based on a selective reading of sources, and a lack of understanding, or a lack of willingness to use, basic scientific methodology. Much of the foundation of his theory is based on the similarities of names of figures from Norse mythology, and geographical place-names of the present time in the Pontic steppe and Caucasus. Comparison of these names is done with complete disregard of all linguistic theory.

Azov is believed by Heyerdahl to have derived its name from "as-hof" - "temple of the Æsir". Mainstream linguists and historians will say that the city of Azov got its name from the Turks, over 1000 years after Heyerdahl believes the Æsir lived there. Heyerdahl also points to the similarities between the word Æsir and the Azeri and Ossetian peoples of the Caucasus, between the god Odin and the Caucasian language group Udi and between the god Tyr and Turkey, and between the Vanir (a group of Norse gods) and the word "Vannic", which was for a time in the 19th and 20th centuries the name used for the Urartian language, spoken in ancient times in the area around Lake Van.

Linguists and historians point out that there is no reason to believe that these similarities are any more than coincidences. In particular, Heyerdahl makes no attempt to look at the development of languages - he anachronistically compares modern day forms with ancient ones. For instance, diachronic linguists will say that the god Odin was called "Wōdanaz" 2,000 years ago, which no longer looks so similar to Udi. Similarly, his hypothesis completely fails to explain why there should be any relation whatever between antiquity/medieval Germanic names, and names that are to be attributed to extremely distant languages, if those be Indo-European at all (as Turkish and Caucasian languages have no relation whatever to Germanic, while Ossetic at least is Indo-European, although from the Indo-Iranian family).

ee also

*Mythological kings of Sweden
*House of Ynglings
*Pseudoarchaeology

Further reading

The background for the project is described in a book, "Jakten på Odin—På sporet av vår fortid", written by Thor Heyerdahl himself and Per Lillieström (ISBN 82-7201-316-9).

External links

* [http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai102_folder/102_articles/102_heyerdahl_storfjell.html Bjornar Storfjell's account] : A personal account of an anthropologist who worked with Thor Heyerdahl
* [http://www.hf.uib.no/i/Nordisk/MaalogMinne/artikler/heyerdahl-v1.pdf Maal og minne 1, 2002] : A scientific critique of Heyerdahl's Odin project