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TheoriesIt has been suggested by Hilda R. Ellis Davidson in Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (1964) that there was possibly originally a male and female pair of deities, Njord and Nerthus, with Freyja later replacing Nerthus. She also makes the point that there were other male/female pairings of Norse gods of whom little is known but their names, e.g. Ullr and Ullin. If so, Nerthus may have been the sister of Njord and the mother of his children, Freyr and Freyja, who also had a sexual relationship according to Loki in Lokasenna. This may be the reason why Snorri Sturluson wrote in the Ynglinga saga that brother-sister marriages were common and accepted among the Vanir, but not among the Æsir. She was then a logical counterpart of her brother Njord, in a society of fishermen and farmers, where she would have been associated with the harvest of the land, and her brother with the harvest of the sea.
The fact that Njord, Freyr and Freyja are Vanir has by some been suggested as indicating, along with the facts of place names mentioned above, that the Vanir, with Nerthus and her postulated consort as main goddess and god, represent the pantheon of an older religion in Scandinavia, possibly of Nordic Bronze Age origin and later overshadowed by the introduction of a new religion with the Æsir as pantheon. If so, Ullr could have been a name Nerthus's counterpart, or another important deity of this religion, later fading greatly out worship. The Æsir were described as having fought with the Vanir in the War of the gods, which could be seen as a mythological description of a shift of religion. This war resulted in Njord, Freyr and Freyja becoming war hostages among the Æsir. The difference in religious worship between Scandinavian Bronze Age and Iron Age (based on the archaeological material) is not controversial. As an example, the sun wheel symbol is abundant in the archeological material from Bronze Age Scandinavia, but was later much more scarcely used. The transition between these two practices has not been satisfactory explained, however. Older theories focusing on the invasion and conquest by a warrior culture are today seen as unlikely. In 'Beowulf and Grendel' (2005) author John Grigsby has suggested that the overthrowing of the Vanir religion by that of the Aesir is remembered in the Old English poem Beowulf. Grigsby argues that the monster Grendel's lake-dwelling mother is ultimately derived from the lake-dwelling Nerthus and that Beowulf's victory over her is symbolic of the ending of the Vanir cult in Denmark by the Odin-worshipping Danes. It should be clearly pointed out that accepting the view described above of the development of Nerthus and her counterpart into Freyja and Freyr along with their diminished importance does not implicate accepting the shift of religion hypothesis. Followers of the trifunctional hypothesis of Georges Dumézil see the Vanir as the gods of common Norsemen, whereas the Æsir were the gods of the warrior and clerical castes (represented primarily by Thor and Odin respectively). The fading of the Vanir's importance would then suggest a social rather than religious development. See also
External linkde:Nerthus el:Νέρτους lt:Nerta nl:Nerthus no:Nerthus ru:Нертус sv:Nerthus
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