Excavation

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The sleeping emperor Friedrich I. Barbarossa at the Kyffhäuser monument

The literary and mythological motif of the mountain rapture can be found in different forms in different European cultures. What all these ideas have in common is that people disappear from the world of people without dying and they continue to live in an underworld; therefore this is a special form of rapture .

The spread of the mountain rapture motif

In the Scandinavian cultural area, the mountain rapture is known as bergtagning (Danish bjaergtagning "mountain taking") and can be found, for example, in the Ynglingasaga . In this tale, the Swedish King Sveigdir is lured into a stone by a dwarf and is gone forever.

Bergtagning is a central concept in the Nordic troll belief. Here adults of both sexes are kidnapped, while the related belief in changeling infants and children come under the control of supernatural beings. Often times, a person is lured into a house in a remote location for food. Those who recognize the danger in good time and refuse to eat can escape.

In Irish-Celtic sagas and fairy tales, fairies play a major role in the rapture of the mountains. In this world of ideas, fairies are not good beings, but probably living beings of a species inferior to humans who now live hidden in the underworld. These fairy beings now take people into their subterranean world, whereby the causes of this rapture in the Irish and Scandinavian cultural areas can be both self-inflicted and not inflicted and fate can take both a good and a bad turn for the person concerned.

The Rapture of the Mountains describes a legendary motif in the German-speaking area, according to which heroes or rulers in particular do not die but are raptured into a mountain until they return to free the country from its enemies or from the antichrist . Especially the long prevailing popular belief in the return of an emperor of peace manifests itself in this legendary motif. The rapture is often thought of as a long sleep. The background is the old idea that the dead continue to live in the mountain (outside of earthly time). The fact that rulers continue to live in a mountain is a special German motive, in the Irish / Celtic / Anglo-Saxon cultural area there are rulers such as King Arthur or King Dunmail in other places until their return, but not in Bergen.

Mountain raptures in German tradition

Rapture from the mountains as a literary motif in Europe

The literary implementation by Friedrich Rückert in the poem Barbarossa is known , where it is said that Friedrich I , whose beard has grown through the table, will return and bring back "the glory of the empire" when the ravens no longer circle the mountain. The subject is ironically treated by Carl Amery (At the Fires of the Leyermark) by having Ludwig II of Bavaria “Kyffhäuserise” instead of abdicating under the influence of Richard Wagner .

According to the Irish writer Isabella Augusta Gregory and her book Gods and Fighting Men , the Irish warrior and hunter Fionn mac Cumhaill is said to sleep with other warriors in a cave somewhere under Ireland and to return when his hunting horn sounds three times. In the children's book Weirdstone of Brisingamen , Alan Garner lets King Arthur sleep in Alderley Edge , Cheshire .

The mountain rapture among other peoples

Other peoples and cultures also know people and mountains associated with sleeping heroes. For example:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katrin Alas: From Snow White to the Son of the Mushroom King. Fairy tale and myth structures in the works of Marie Hermanson. Dissertation. University of Vienna, Vienna 2009, p. 77 ( PDF ; 1.3 MB).
  2. ↑ Elizabeth Hartmann: The Troll performances in the legends and tales of the Scandinavian peoples. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Berlin 1936, pp. 86, 101 f.
  3. ↑ CS Lewis : The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0-521-47735-2 , p. 122; Carole B. Silver: Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-512199-6 , p. 47.
  4. ↑ Katrin Alas: From Snow White to the Son of the Mushroom King. Fairy tale and myth structures in the works of Marie Hermanson. Dissertation. University of Vienna, Vienna 2009, pp. 77–79.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Stammler: Bergentrück. In: HWA. 2006, Col. 2320 (=  HWA. 1927. Volume 1. Col. 1068).
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Stammler: Bergentrück. In: HWA. 2006, Col. 2314 (=  HWA. 1927. Volume 1. Col. 1064).
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Stammler: Bergentrück. In: HWA. 2006, Col. 2322 f. (=  HWA. 1927. Volume 1. Col. 1069).