Vingólf

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vingólf is a place in Norse mythology . The name is Old Norse and roughly means "friendly house" or "house of friendship".

meaning

In Snorri Sturluson this place is mentioned several times: In chapter 14 of Gylfaginning Vingolf is the temple of the goddesses . In chapter 20 of Gylfaginning he writes that those who fell in battle ( Einherjer ) who were brought to Óðinn will be in Valhöll ( Walhall ) and Vingólf.

According to Wilhelm Braune , Snorri Sturluson invented the name of this place. According to Braune, the name is not Vingólf (“friendly house”), but Víngólf (“wine house”), and this is just another name for Valhöll .

It designates one of the fabulous meeting places in the style of a palace or a hall of old Germanic deities in Asgard . The visitors of Vingólf include primarily the inhabitants of the upper world, Asgard, but also the people, inhabitants of Midgard , for whom the presence in Asgard and not least the proximity to the gods is associated with deadly dangers.

Vingólf can be understood as an approximate counterpart to the Olympus of the Muses (Musenlymp) in ancient Greek tradition, according to Friedrich Schiller but also in the sense of Hesiod and Homer , in which mainly female deities reside who represent the principle of fertility and creation, similar to the muses were to be understood as patrons of spiritual growth and the arts. A precise differentiation of muses according to fields of activity, such as Klio for historical studies, is unknown to Germanic mythology.

reception

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock referred to Vingólf by publishing his ode "To the poet's friends" (1767), a series of songs in Germanic garb, under the name "Wingolf". He borrowed the word in the course of the rising enthusiasm for the allegedly rediscovered seals of the Celtic bard Ossian , which later turned out to be modern forgeries.

Christian student groups in various university towns took up the word around 1840 and called themselves Wingolf . To this day there are numerous so-called "Wingolf connections" in many university towns. The umbrella organization of these Christian student associations is the Wingolfsbund .

literature