From A. James
What would you do if one of your correspondents claimed, in passing, that Christians believe their God had been chewing tobacco and, needing to expectorate, created the world as a sort of primal spittoon?
I imagine you would reject the letter. To start with, the claim is untrue. Secondly, the ability to be so wildly wrong in such a veritable matter is hardly a recommendation for the rest of the writer’s letter. Thirdly, it would be offensive.
And yet you were willing to publish Ralph Estling’s claim that “the ancient Germans” believed that “Wotan had drunk a large amount of beer and urgently needed some place on which to relieve himself, so he created the world as a sort of primal chamber pot” (Letters, 18 March).
No ancient Germanic people believed anything of the sort. In fact, from all variants of the Germanic creation myths that have survived, it is clear that several worlds were seen as having come into being before any of the gods. In the most comprehensive surviving account, the Icelandic poem known as “The Song of the Sybil”, the gods only had a role in creating one of the nine perceived worlds, the realm of men and women. In my translation our world is described as having been “moulded in magnificence” – reverential language that is completely at odds with Estling’s strange and scatological claim.
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So what is going on here? Are the religious views of our own ancestors considered uniquely appropriate for undignified jokes. Or don’t you know that the indigenous beliefs of the Germanic peoples have been revived this century, and that versions of them are legally recognised as living religions by several Western governments?
Perhaps I am one of the few adherents of such a religion who reads every word in New Scientist, but on behalf of those who don’t I would like to lodge a friendly protest. Estling’s statement was not just completely false, but also offensive.
