Auðumbla: The Primeval Cow of Norse Mythology

Nicolai Abildgaard: Ymer dier koen Ødhumbla (c. 1777)

National Gallery of Denmark [Statens Museum for Kunst]

 

Readers might be interested to know that it's not just bear cubs and sinful human beings that require licking into shape [1]. 

 

According to Norse mythology, even the forefather of the gods was given form by the tongue of a primeval cow, Auðumbla, who, over a three day period, licked away at a salty-tasting block of ice until the figure of Búri came forth; fair of feature and mighty of build [2]. 

As if that weren't enough, Auðumbla also suckled the primordial frost giant Ymir with her milk, which flowed like four rivers from her udders (the first part of her name is thought to attest to the richness of this milk). 

 

Auðumbla is thus the mother of all; licking the Æsir into being and nourishing the jötnar. In her cowy mystery, antagonists are united and all contradictions contained. 

 

In the beginning, we might say, wasn't the Word, but a Moo ...

 

Notes

 

[1] See my recent post on being licked into shape by bears, cats, and virtuous women - click here. 

[2] The existence of Auðumbla is attested in the 13th century text composed by Icelander Snorri Sturluson known as the Prose Edda. Modern scholars have shown how her story probably derives from an earlier body of Germanic mythology and can ultimately be placed within a wider context of religious mythology concerning sacred cows, such as Kamadhenu, who is worshipped by Hindus. Readers interested in this topic might like to see a post published back in December 2017: click here.

 

I Shall Speak of Geist, of Flame, and of Glimpses

Glimpse of a goddess (2017) by Syd Mills (Vetyr)

See: V's art on tumblr.com 

Buy: on inprnt.com

 

 

I. 

 

One of my favourite English words of German origin is glimpse.

 

Whilst most people understand it simply to mean a brief or partial view - to catch a quick look, perhaps in passing, of something or someone - it has a more poetic and philosophical resonance for those with ears to hear ...

 

 

II. 

 

D. H. Lawrence, for example, was fascinated by the word glimpse and often used it in the verses found in The Nettles Notebook, suggesting that aspects of divinity are revealed in the faces and forms of people when they are momentarily unaware of themselves:

 

When men and women, when lads and girls are not thinking,

when they are pure, which means when they are quite clean from self-consciouness

either in anger or tenderness, or desire or sadness or wonder or mere stillness 

you may see glimpses of the gods in them. [1]

  

It's this glimmer of godhood which gives human beings their more-than-human beauty; which makes the flesh gleam with a kind of radiance or the bright flame of being:

 

O, if a flame is in you, be it so!

When your flame flickers up, and you flicker forth in sheer purity

for a moment pure from all conceit of yourself, and all after-thought

you are for that moment one of the gods [...] [2]

 

Without this flamy element, we cannot become who we are, says Lawrence.   

 

 

III.

 

German philosopher Martin Heidegger would surely appreciate what Lawrence writes here. For he too wrote of flame (as the being of spirit) [3] and he also privileged the word Blick, which I would translate as glimpse, but which is given here as glance:

 

"In the glance [im Blick] and as the glance, what is essencing enters into its own illumination. Through the element of its illumination, the glance shelters back in the glancing whatever it catches sight of; at the same time, glancing likewise guards in illumination the hidden darkness of its provenance as what is unilluminated." [4]   

 

A glimpse is thus a kind of lightning flash in which the truth of being is revealed. 

 

In other words, it provides what Heidegger describes as an insight into that which is. And that's important: for as long as we do not experience what is, then "we can never belong to what will be" [5].     

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'All sorts of gods', The Poems, Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 579. 

      See also the related verses 'Glimpses' [579], 'For a moment' [579-580], and 'Man is more than homo sapiens' [581-82]. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Be it so', ibid., p. 581.   

 

[3] Derrida picks up on the idea that in German Geist ist Flamme (rather than breath, as it is in Greek and Latin); see Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby, (University of Chicago Press, 1989). 

      Readers of Nietzsche may also recall at this point his famous closing line to the poem 'Ecce Homo': Flamme bin ich sicherlich! The poem can be found in 'Joke Cunning, and Revenge', Nietzsche's prelude of rhymes to The Gay Science.       

 

[4] Martin Heidegger, 'The Turn', from the 1949 Bremen Lecture series Insight Into That Which Is, see Bremen and Freiburg Lectures, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell, (Indiana University Press, 2012), p. 70.  

[5] Ibid., p. 72.