Storegga Slide and the Connection to Norse Paganism

by Zacherot

I'm not very privy to all forms of Germanic Paganism, but I know Norse Paganism mentioned that Ymir's blood flowed from his body to create the ocean. While learning more about the Storegga Slide I thought to myself, could this possibly have a connection to that myth?

Because there were obvious survivors many oral stories must have been carried down generation to generation, eventually transforming from experience, to story, and then myth.

My question is, has this ever been debated before? I don't think me to be the first person to think of such a connection but my head is forming a connection between this example of raw power of the ocean to begin the formation that the power could only be that of a god, and thus the myth of Ymir slowly came to be.

Any incites on this would be great to read about. As a student of Anthropology I take great interest between real world event's and how they morph and change culture's.

Antiquarianism

Well, since the Storegga slide happened in the late 7th millennium BCE it isn't related to Ymir or any other Indo-European mythology because Proto-Indo-European speakers presumably begin to exist ca. 3000-2500 BCE in central Asia. While Ymir is the Old Norse word for that figure, his reconstructed PIE name is Yemos literally Twin, and his twin brother is Mannus literally Man. These figures were a part of the PIE creation myth, as Ymir still was by the time Snorri Sturlusson wrote his famous texts mentioning him in the early 1200's. As Bruce Lincoln says (1975; 139) the Indo-Iranian version of this myth has the sacrificed creature being a cow or ox, either instead of or in addition to a sacrificial human. Though the Rigvedic (Indian) tradition written down in the late bronze age has a human Yama becoming the ruler of the underworld after his death.

In the primordial time, Mannus sacrificed Yemos and formed the world from his body: stones from his bones, the sun and moon from his eyes, water from his blood...(Lincoln, 1986)...As the offeror of the first sacrifice, Mannus is the first priest, treating his brother as if he were a sacrificial bull. The first sacrifice offered by Manu becomes the archetype for later Vedic sacrifices (RV 1.26.4; Macdonell 1897, 139).

  • Ceisiwr Serith

...Yama [Yemos] is a personification of the cows which were killed and dismembered for food by the Indo-Europeans who were personified as "Man."

  • Piereligion.org

If you've read about Mesopotamian mythology this scenario may remind you of the Old Babylonian (middle bronze age) period Enuma Elish in which the hero Marduk slays the water-dwelling serpent-like embodiment of chaos, Tiamat, who is then dismembered and her body forms the world. This is another example of (imo) Semitic speakers taking stories from nearby Indo-Europeans, as they likely did with the story about the overthrow of the Annunaki; and notably in the story, Tiamat is said to have an udder. This cross-linguistic borrowing is a sensible enough explanation, considering there were at least two powerful Indo-European speaking groups in the Near East at this time: the Mitanni (in what is now Syria), and the Hyksos (who infamously conquered Egypt). Though, there is a paleolithic myth about a hero who slays a serpent being; and Semitic speakers were perhaps playing off this motif as well. I've written about this here.

And I have to add (because it's an obscure fact), that there's a possible continuation of that Mesopotamian myth in the Tanakh: Psalm 74:13-14...

It was you [Yahweh], who split open the sea by your power;

You broke the heads of the monster in the waters.

It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan...

As you can see, these figures and their origin are much more complicated than a metaphor for landscape knowledge. When indigenous people do record historical landscape knowledge, they simply record it as such. The Yidinj people of northeast Australia have a name for a spot of water, an unremarkable plot of ocean between Fitzroy island and King Beach, Queensland. This segment of water is called Mudaga, a word which literally means Pencil Cedar. The explanation is that this was the type of tree which grew on an island which used to be at that spot. When did this last island exist? About 10k years ago, says Nick Reid et al.

...a theme running through all the coastal Yidinj myths is that the coastline was once where the barrier reef now stands...but the sea rose and the shore retreated to its present position. The only common noun denoting 'island' is djaruway, which also means 'small hill' - contrasting with bunda, "mountain, big hill." The proper name of Fitzroy Island is Gabar, "Lower Arm," so called because most of this geographical feature [a promontory of the mainland] was submerged and only one extension remains above water...Green Island is said to have been at one time four times as big as it is now - only the northwest portion remains above water.

  • A Grammar of Yidinj, by R.M.W. Dixon, pg. 14-15

As Nick Reid et al have discovered, King Beach was last connected to the mainland ca. 10,500-9,900 years ago, and the coast would've been at where the barrier reef is now ca. 13,400-12,600 years ago. There's other stories about volcanoes, such as the Kinrara volcano which had a major eruption about 7000 years ago, an eruption perhaps recorded in Gugu Badhun oral history. Though, I have seen one example of landscape knowledge becoming mythologized into characters: the Gunditjmara say that four giants once roamed their area of Australia and one of them crouched down and became the volcano Budj Bim; his teeth becoming the lava. This volcano was formed in an eruption around 37,000 years ago and we know that people were living nearby at this time because an axe was found at a nearby site underneath the eruption layer. Erin Matchan et al think that since there weren't any other eruptions in the area during the last 37k years (and the volcano has been dormant for a while), its sudden eruption and quick growth could've been the impetus for the story.

Questions about the PIE religion come up rarely on this sub, but I think it'd be helpful to link these two questions...

(the first half is a great summary about indigenous knowledge keeping)