Huginn and Muninn a Few Archetypes of Old Norse Collective Unconscious

Huginn and Muninn or a few Archetypes of Old Norse Collective Unconscious Introduction A capital information needed for a better understanding of Óðinn’s mysteries consists in thinking of the main meanings of his two ravens’ names… up to the point of being able to guess, though without absolute certainty, some features of his conscious thinking and the archetypes controlling the unconscious of his ancient Norse devotees. In order to achieve this goal we will compare the various meanings of verbs and substantives upon which are based the names Huginn and Muninn. We will at first build lists of these meanings, then compare pairs of their content in order to pinpoint their differences and their common features. This analysis is quite lengthy, it may be useful to provide now the conclusions we will reach. The meaning of some Old Norse words and some quotations of poetic Edda will slowly lead us to discover that ‘obviously’, for old Norse heathen people, Huginn has been a representative of Óðinn’s conscious thought, whereas Muninn was the representative of his unconscious, featuring several archetypes structuring a collective unconscious of the Old Norse civilization that was strikingly different from ours. These concepts have been highlighted by our civilization around the end of the 19th century, then developed during the 20th by E. Freud and, more systematically, by C. Jung1. I am afraid that this conclusion would be seen as a complete oddity. It does not seem ‘rational’ to claim that the civilization of the colonized heathen Norse people might have been by some one thousand years ahead of the civilization of colonizing Christian Franks. That should surprise all specialists and experts of this topic who, as a whole, devoted so much argumentation in favor of a peaceful transition to Christianity of spiritually retarded pagans. Huginn and Muninn are carrying such strong pagan archetypes that it is practically impossible to understand them without referring to Old Norse, the language nearest possible to Óðinn’s one. For this work, I used three dictionaries in addition to latin-french Gaffiot for definitions given in Latin. The first gives words meanings according to their everyday usage in the Norse language (Cleasby-Vigfusson - ‘CV’). The second is rather based on etymology (de Vries - ‘dV’). The third provides meanings as used in poetry (Sveinbjörn Egilsson - Lexicon Poëticum, ‘Lpoet’). Each of these provides a particular view on the words meanings and all illustrate how much polysemic are verbs huga and muna, as well as substantives hugr/hugi and munr. 1 This 20th century genius has been inspired by a fervent Christian faith, which is completely obvious in his works, and brilliantly confirmed by his posthumous “Red Book.” He thus is himself stimulated by inconcient Christian archetypes. This fact has to be taken into account to see through the heaps of references to Christendom met in his work. Instead of seeking to know which is the ‘exact’ meaningof the names of Óðinn’s two ravens, we rather will try to understand how all these different meanings can coexist in the conscience of a Norse individual by suggesting several hints to several simultaneous meanings. We speak here of simple mental associations that may possibly have nothing to do with etymology. Nevertheless, and this is our basic hypothesis, they may have much to do with the feeling of an educated Scandinavian - a poet. It is quite probable that these words’ polysemy has been unconsciously created by Old Norse speakers, and this puts us on the track of their feelings towards these famed ravens. As announced, we will observe that these feelings far from being as primitive as allotted by triumphing Christianity. Section 1: Meanings associated to huginn 1. 1 Verb huga: CV translates it by ‘to mind’ with the comment that this word corresponds to Latin excogitare which, itself is not really polysemous: it means ‘to find, to solve using one’s mind, to invent, to think of’. This verb thus describes an inventive thought engaged in an assignment. This gives us a first indication on the importance of active thought. The substantives associated with this verb will bear many meanings, to each of them we will have to add the idea of activity. 1. 2. Substantives hugi and hugr (of identical meaning) evoke six different ideas. 1. 2. 1. The most significant one is provided by poetic texts (Lpoet) and rendered in Latin by animus, i. e. a principle of life which governs the activity of any living being, location of thought and desire etc. [Here ‘animus’ in italics indicates a word belonging to the Latin vocabulary. It should not be confused with a woman’s unconscious masculine side also named ‘animus’ by Carl Jung. ] It is, according to CV and dV: ‘thought’ with the special overtone carried by German Gedanke that means thought and project. This first meaning seems to result directly from verb huga which describes a thought implied in a project. 1. 2. 2. Temper, feeling (translating the meaning ‘sinn’ given by dV ( the same definition sinn is given for munr). ‘Temper’ and ‘feeling’ cover the mood, good or bad, we are into. It is again an expression of relations between the outside world and the individuals who put you in a good or bad mood, that is to say, surface reactions to the environment. This is not yet a sensitivity which describes a deeper state of mind. 1. 2. 3. This word takes the meaning of ‘desire, wish’ when it is associated to verbs of action like putting or running. For example to describe a major feeling as love, we can say “to put down one’s hugr in front of a woman” to assert to her that she is loved. Note in passing how much these wild plunderers (the meaning of víkingar) can become chivalrous in their way of courting a woman. 1. 2. 4. The fourth meaning is the one of ‘foreboding’. Imagination does not cover here a romantic daydream but an intelligent way to manage the future. In this meaning, it does not evoke creativity in general but the capacity to create by thought an imaginary image enabling to test ‘inside one’s head’ the validity of a prediction. In this case, prediction or imagination thus remain conscious. 1. 2. 5. In addition, CV is generally very honest in speaking of the vocabulary of magic. Without really insisting on the possible magic uses of hugr in omens, it tells of a use in the plural case (hugir) to describe the behavior of ‘ghostly spirits’ similar to the fylgjur or hamingjur where the hugir seems to venture out of their ‘material hugr’, or venture in the one of other persons. However, and opposing the other meanings of hugr, the magic seems to be undergone by the individual then rather than created by him/her. To forebode expresses the undertones given by hugir: there is a possible allusion to magic, but it is more of the nature of a presentiment than of a certainty. 1. 2. 6. Lastly, this word can still take the meaning of courage, heart (as in ‘to have a stout heart’). 1. 2. 7. We can still obtain other details on the meaning of hugr by considering the Norse word indicating a genius when it hints at an exceptional intelligence, which contains substantive hugr used as an adjective: hugvitsmaðr, that is hug-vits-maðr. Maðr means ‘human being’ and vit means ‘consciousness’ (to lose vit means ‘to become insane’), i. e. (Lpoet) sana mens, a healthy mind. A Norse genius is thus a ‘human of intelligent consciousness’, i. e. a human reasonable and intelligent. To be seen as a genius, it is thus enough that a human never loses reason and is well-equipped in hugr. This way of speaking shows that hugr means ‘large intelligence’ rather than ‘average intelligence’. This human nevertheless might ‘lose reason’ thus losing his/her genius status by acting stupidly. 1. 3. Conclusion. All this shows that Huginn is a being of deep active intelligence and it carries innuendos of temper, desire, imagination, foreseeing, courage. To simply call it ‘intelligence’ as does the classical way of speech is a correct simplification when, as a translator, we are more or less forced to translate hugr by one single word. Nevertheless, this hides the complexity of this concept which underlines the intellectual richness of old Norse civilization. At least, it would be better to translate Huginn by ‘Conscious Intelligence’. Section 2: Meanings associated to muninn Muninn could be associated to two different verbs: munu and muna. One would tend to eliminate without discussion munu because it is, in Norse as in English, primarily an auxiliary verb translated by ‘shall’. As a preliminary hint, consider that an auxiliary verb is by definition used without allotting to it any particular meaning. Such a verb is ‘transparent’ in the sentence while it structures the sentence. 2. 1. The verb muna has primarily four different meanings. First meaning: to keep, pay attention, to remember. Knowledge is seen as an acquired thing, and one necessary to preserve. Second meaning: to notice a difference (and to evaluate the size of this difference). Third meaning: to wish with passion which applies to both cupidity and sensuality. Fourth meaning: to move something (both to take it along and to bring it back). We note at first sight that these four meanings, somewhat flat ones, do not seem related to Muninn. This is due to Muninn being less obvious to understand than Huginn. But here are some indications that will be useful. We can notice that “to remember” (meaning 1) consists in accumulating knowledge and not in discovering some, which would correspond rather to verb huga.

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