Idun
Idun or also in Latin Iduna (Old Norse Iðunn "the renewing, the rejuvenating") is the goddess of youth and immortality in Norse mythology . She is the youngest daughter of the older children of the dwarf Ivaldi and the wife of the divine singer Bragi , who won her over with a song. Idun is the guardian of the golden apples , which give the gods eternal youth and thus also immortality. As the guardian of the golden apples, her tree is the apple tree.
When Loki was robbed by the giant Thiazi , the latter only wanted to release him if he delivered Idun to him together with her golden apples. When that happened, the gods immediately began to age and forced Loki to free the stolen from the giant's power. Loki, clad in Freya's hawk robe, turned the prisoner into a nut and brought her back to Asgard , pursued by the giant in the form of an eagle, from which the fugitives only escaped by a hair's breadth. Thiazi was killed by the sir by burning his wings.
Loki insults Idun as being mad because she puts her white arms around her brother's murderer. Otherwise nothing of this myth has come down to us in Norse mythology. According to our understanding, the said fratricide can only be her husband Bragi.
When the end of the world is heralded by ominous omens, Iduna sinks from the world ash Yggdrasil into the underworld, where her Bragi follows.
The goddess of the golden apples of immortality is reminiscent of the Greek myth of the golden apples of the tree of the Hesperides and may also have been borrowed from Greek mythology. A borrowing from the Bible (the apples from the tree of life in the Garden of Eden ) is also conceivable. The myth of the robbery of the Idun by a giant has some parallels with the relationship between the giants and Freya. A Celtic legend has come down to us from Ireland , in which three brothers in hawk robes steal the miracle apples from Hisbernas . They are pursued by the daughters of a king in the form of an eagle and only narrowly escape. Here, too, there seems to have been a loan from the Hesperides. According to this, Idun is not an original goddess of Germanic mythology, but only a late Nordic, poetic invention. According to another view, nothing proves that she did not belong to the Germanic world of gods under another name from ancient times.
The Idun peak in Antarctica is named after her.
literature
- Herder's Lexicon of Germanic and Celtic Mythology. ISBN 3-451-04250-9 .
- Dr. Vollmer's: Dictionary of the Mythology of All Nations. Hoffmann'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Stuttgart 1874, Reprint-Verlag Leipzig 2002.
- RLM Derolez: Gods and Myths of the Teutons. Wiesbaden 1974, p. 184.
- U. Diedrichs: Germanic doctrine of gods. With mythological dictionary. Eugen Diedrichs Verlag, Munich 1983, 5th edition 1993, ISBN 3-424-00746-3 .
- Wolfgang Golther: Handbook of Germanic mythology. Leipzig 1875, reissued Marix Verlag 2004, pp. 537-540
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hrafnagaldr Óðins 5
- ↑ Gylfaginning 26
- ↑ U. Diedrichs: Mythological Dictionary : "... the myth of the kidnapping and the associated aging of the gods is passed down as the Thjazi myth (the form Thiassi or Thiazi is more common) [...]"
- ↑ Herder's Lexicon of Celtic-Germanic Mythology. P. 97, keyword Idun
- ↑ According to a tradition by the skald Thjodolf von Hwin , 9th century, in his poem Herbst-Lange
- ↑ Lokasenna 17
- ↑ Hrafnagaldr Odins 6-7
- ↑ See Dr. Vollmer's Dictionary of Mythology of All Nations , p. 270; Diedrichs: Prosa-Edda - Der Skaldenmet , p. 179 f.