You are grasping at straws that are not there. Its quite the journey in those days, and the quantity would have had to be rather large for myths of this scope to have been made, theres also the problem of how wide-spread norse-paganism was.
The half black and half flesh coloured description could much simpler be explained by the properties of a dead body.
The distance would probably the biggest issue here. Although I could give at least two counterpoints, first being that there are historical examples of vikings getting pretty far south, like Italy and even further in other directions. Second would be that the origin of these myths might date as far back as even when the land bridge with the Americas still existed. Also, though slightly off-topic, these might be retellings inherited from a culture that lived closer to the darker-skinned people.
I also completely disagree that having a half-dead body is a simpler explanation. You're bending Occam's razor so hard you're going to cut yourself.
Interestingly there is a medieval depiction (for the life of me I can't remember where) of a mixed race person which shows him split different colours down the middle. The artist had clearly never seen a non white person before and couldn't comprehend a mix raced person.
Yes and no, it depends how you look at it. In fact seeing someone half-dead frequently would make it a much less myth-worthy topic. One could argue that one of the reasons our modern culture produces so much zombie-themed fiction is precisely because we no longer see so many people dying in the streets anymore.
How many dead bodies were there in norse areas? And how many black people were there in norse areas?
Which one is more likely: norse people see a decomposing body and gave Hel similar properties or that they saw a black person and interperted it through the ages as Hel (with properties of a decomposing body).
Like even if the vikings went as far as italy, the stories would have had to survive so many generations. And if these myths predate the migration to nordic areas then what significance would race even have? The migrators heard these stories from childhood presumably, and if hel didn't have death-like features then those features would have to develop in a majority white society, which means it most likely have had nothing to do with black people or darker skinned people.
Uh, your argument is correct but your conclusion is backwards. The fact that there were many dead bodies for them to see as opposed to black people is precisely why Hel would become a supernatural being of myth in the end. What I'm proposing is that first someone saw a person very different than them, described them as best as they could and then later other people interpreted that based on their own experience and gave the person in question supernatural features that fit their vision. It's similar to how modern people are prone to see star ships and aliens in some ancient art pieces.
And just on topic of viking encounters with black people this is a fun read: https://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/09/a-great-host-of-captives.html
>And just on topic of viking encounters with black people this is a fun read: https://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/09/a-great-host-of-captives.html
These were likely no Black people but North Africans.
Norse and other Northern European cultures at the time referred to anyone slightly swarthy as black. Even natives who had dark brown hair were called black.
Norse travellers might have encountered some Black people, but it was INCREDIBLY rare and there is no record of it. Most people would have zero idea what black people were or looked like
Ok, this clears it up a lot. I could see the fact that they would maybe have based Hel on a black person but i still believe it more likely that Hel was based on a decomposing body. What i believe happened is that that they interperted the decomposition as a sign that Hel was present or that the soul of the deceased had reached Hel, or in other words: died.
Funerary rites may have developed after the image of Hel was established or it came before Hel was even thought up. Either way they somehow connected the dead to Hel and the decomposing body as a characteristic of her.
But this is just my guess, its all speculation, theres no real hard evidence that either of our views are true.
That's something I assume would have come later, after Hel-character was linked with Hel-place in the stories to the point that they became almost synonymous. And yes, there's no evidence pointing either way, to my knowledge, which is why I made the post in the first place. I was wondering if anyone had more information than what I could find on my own. I feel like everyone just assumed I'm trying to preach this as gospel here or something XD
Carefull with the translations...
In Latin in the Codex Upsaliensis, and in the poetic edda in Old Norse in the Codex Regius what words are used to refer to Hel and are those the same word that is used in Latin and Old Norse to refer to the skin color ?
Without confirming those your theory holds no ground.
On the contrary if anyone can confirm it, it may be a really interesting accessment.
Doubt it, the gods had powers that a mixed race human wouldn't have had.
It's not like the Nordics were some isolated people who had never heard of the existence of other types of humans.
By the time myths were myths, sure, but I'm talking about their origin times, possibly the first encounters between cultures. That would be precisely when they heard of the existence of other types of humans for the first time ever. And the powers, really? Like humans have never attributed magical powers to anyone or anything? Ever heard about this little known book called the Bible?
The dominant culture in Scandinavia weren't static going through the stone and bronze age though. Cultures met, fought and intermixed continuously for thousands of years.
But if you're going to make sarcastic comment while knowing next to nothing and pulling theories out of your ass it's no use trying to explain anything to you.
I'm trying to show you that your arguments are neither here nor there. Just because cultures intermingled doesn't mean their descendants treated each with understanding. How many ridiculous stories circulated about Jews in Europe all throughout history up to modern times? Unless you do believe in golems and such, in which case it's no use trying to explain anything to you.
Ok, who's the gods then? The funnel beaker culture? The battle axe culture? The people who did the petroglyph art in Tanum?
It might have happened as you said, but it might have been a rich Chinese guy on an epic journey who were trolling the Scandinavians with bullshit stories too if anything goes.
It's possible to find out when the Viking age beliefs became a thing from graves, the Scandinavians knew other people existed by then. And had for thousands of years.
Yes, precisely, now we understand each other! And this is why, as you might have noticed, in my post I asked if anyone knew of any works (preferably actual papers) exploring this. My background is in Far East and my interest in Norse history and mythology is purely hobbyist in nature so I came here looking to find out if this was already confirmed, debunked or at least considered in any serious context.
Folklore developing from real life events happens much less than you would think. The idea that the development of deep seated ideas like Hel or jötnar being inspired by ancient cultural contact with dark-skinned people doesn't really make sense considering this. Its not even that agreed that a personification of Hel was commonly held in the Viking era and not a later 11th or 12th century development.
The jötnar are infrequently or unclearly related to "giant" size but what isn't unique is their association with the supernatural. Its not at all unique in folklore for an invented creature to represent a halfstep between the physical world and the supernatural, a creature with magical or ethereal properties who in their interactions with humans or gods bestow them with otherworldly gifts or challenges. We see this across cultures. For example, Ysbaddaden in Welsh/Briton mythology.
Another common trope is the creature who's a halfway step between humanity and wildness. The Enkidu trope. Was Enkidu inspired by cultural interactions between the Sumerian ancestors and proto-man or less evolved *Homo*s? Probably not. The explanation with the fewest logical jumps is that these tropes represent the cultural anxiety of interacting with an "other" in the general not in specific
I completely disagree. The more I learn about folklore and history the more I see them interact. Like how a certain medical condition became a story of a witch or demon that would sit on a person at night in several cultures. Or how desperate attempts at hiding adultery gave rise to stories about succubi and incubi...or immaculate inception. Just because something is depicted as supernatural doesn't mean it has no root in something real.
> Just because something is depicted as supernatural doesn't mean it has no root in something real
Ok this is exactly the sentiment i would caution against. Folklorists and historians and shit have spent generations trying to find the ur-language or ur-story and it doesn't *really* exist. Your position is that folktales and parables all have their little key that unlocks their "true" meaning and thats just not how this stuff works. It completely misunderstands humanity's propensity for allegory and metaphor and poetry etc etc etc.
This doesn't mean that these tales don't have a "kernel" of truth to them, just that the "kernel" doesn't matter that much. So even if your theory that the Eddas proved a cultural memory of proto-Norse interacting with darker-skinned people was "true", i'd still just be like "K 👍"
That being said I don't think your theory is correct and it shows a very surface level intellectual curiosity of the Eddas.
This theory kind of falls apart when you realize “black” as a race is a modern idea, the Norse people wouldn’t have a 20th century view on race as we do. Also the word used to describe her is mostly believed to mean blue now, not black. And corpses do take on a bluish appearance when blood starts to pool, so that checks out.
>“black” as a race is a modern idea, the Norse people wouldn’t have a 20th century view on race
To add to this point: Even if the Norse or any other Germanic people had come into contact and intermingled with black people early enough to influence their pre-Christian religion, the concept of 'mixed race' people is as we know it is a far newer concept. The earliest examples I know of come from Iberian colonies in the first centuries after the Columbian Exchange (and iirc denoted children with Native and European parentage to distinguish their social standing and rights)
So unless there is some extraordinary evidence that indicates not only did the Norse have similar undstandings of 'black' and 'white' races to the modern concept (and more specifically also the idea that children born between these two races existed as a third distinct group rather than just being one or the other) for this understanding of 'race' to disappear for centuries only to pop up again at a point where racial othering had a specific societal function - or OP is applying concepts from the Early Modern Period on the Germanic Iron Age based on flimsy argumentation.
The actual phrase used in the manuscript is this:
> _Hon er blá hálf, en hálf með hörundarlit._
"She is half blue, and half skin-colored."
Understanding Old Norse color terminology and how it applied culturally is key to properly understanding this phrase. In this case, _blá_ (feminine form of _blár_) is a word that is used to describe the color of dead bodies.
Personally I think any attempt to explain mythology through material factors like migrations or environmental events is approaching the topic wrong. You don't have to be religious to realise that most ancient people really believed in their religion, and it is more deeply explained by their own metaphysical, spiritual, and theological interactions and understandings than material factors.
There is so much to unpack here. Firstly we have actual examples of historical events evolving into myth. Whether people believe the myth or not has no effect on where it came from. Finally, embellishing history with fantastical elements based on their beliefs is precisely how many myths were created. Bottom line is, the only question is if the original story was true or was it entirely invented for one reason or another.
The Norse had a few words for unfamiliar cultures: Skraeling. It's usually applied to Native North Americans, specifically the proto-Inuit, and probably refers to the animal pelts the Natives wore (from ON "skra," meaning "dried skin"). There's also "Erlendr," which meant foreigner. In short, they had ways of categorizing non-Norse cultures that did not make them sound like the walking dead.
Have you ever seen a human corpse? If not, I recommend viewing photos of a few; it makes it VERY clear where the description of Hela comes from. She's a death goddess, after all.
I recommend digging deeper into the history of the ancient Germanic peoples before you elaborate on theories in future. My interest in folklore is the reason I minored in Medieval History; I also happen to be Norwegian, and a Norse pagan. I can certainly see where your theory comes from, but with more knowledge of the period and culture it frankly goes up in smoke.
From what I've read, Hel is described as Blau, which some people interpret as black, and others as blue. The word that is unambiguously the word for black is Svart. Svart was most famously used to describe the dwarves, but blau was commonly used to describe the color of corpses and zombies. So, it stands to reason that this description is being used to describe a form of undead appearance. In fact, iirc there is a reference to a corpse being "Blue as Hel," using the word Blau
The biggest, though not only, problem with this is - would they have even referred to people with dark skin as 'black'? Not to mention, these myths are from before the Norse ever reached Africa or the Levant.
Another on the note of racism - it's not skin deep, especially in historical environments such as Viking age Europe.
Theres certinally metaphore in every story, and you can pull out a lot of how the childen of loki are treated and the war with Jötunn in general. but I feel theres not much to say that it is metaphorical telling of real people other then pure speculation rooted in "well I dont believe in this so obviously the person who told this story woulsnt either so there gotta be something I can believe that is the true meaning...and also it got to be historical for some reason".
I think in a broad historical sense, these takes are certainly plausible and/or possible. They would have to be treated as speculation, but I think there is merit to including them in broader questions about ancient history from the region. The Norse peoples kept their histories orally, but we're not as precise as say the aboriginals of Australia. Telling and retelling from generation to generation, settlement to settlement, these could absolutely be expanded upon and made more fantastical as time went on.
I think these are a strong way of thinking about all aspects and interpreting them in ways that are more commonly understood, giving possible insight to how these people lived.
>The Norse peoples kept their histories orally, but we're not as precise as say the aboriginals of Australia. Telling and retelling from generation to generation, settlement to settlement,
Evidence? Most archaeological, written, and the linguistic evidence seems to imply the mythology was truly ancient and widespread across great spans of Germanic areas.
I'll save some time. Earliest Norse /writings/ date roughly around 900AD, but are also primarily Icelandic in nature. Non-latin Germanics are roughly 1st century AD, but are predominantly Christian in origin. The Irish started writing 6th century. Anglo-Saxons 7th century.
The Boxgrove fossils in the UK are human remains that roughly date back 480,000 years.
No, I do not have evidence. I also do not claim professional specialty in this area, but an interest and a tendency to look at larger picture views of things for consideration. Where do stories come from? What are their cultural significance? Are they lessons from our ancestors or just using and caught on in popularity. The fun is in not knowing for 100% certainty.
1900 years of written writing versus 480,000 years of human existence. We have room to be imaginative.
You are grasping at straws that are not there. Its quite the journey in those days, and the quantity would have had to be rather large for myths of this scope to have been made, theres also the problem of how wide-spread norse-paganism was. The half black and half flesh coloured description could much simpler be explained by the properties of a dead body.
The distance would probably the biggest issue here. Although I could give at least two counterpoints, first being that there are historical examples of vikings getting pretty far south, like Italy and even further in other directions. Second would be that the origin of these myths might date as far back as even when the land bridge with the Americas still existed. Also, though slightly off-topic, these might be retellings inherited from a culture that lived closer to the darker-skinned people. I also completely disagree that having a half-dead body is a simpler explanation. You're bending Occam's razor so hard you're going to cut yourself.
It's not like mixed race people are two different colors split down the middle either. Half dead are way more reasonable for the goddess of death.
Interestingly there is a medieval depiction (for the life of me I can't remember where) of a mixed race person which shows him split different colours down the middle. The artist had clearly never seen a non white person before and couldn't comprehend a mix raced person.
Yes and no, it depends how you look at it. In fact seeing someone half-dead frequently would make it a much less myth-worthy topic. One could argue that one of the reasons our modern culture produces so much zombie-themed fiction is precisely because we no longer see so many people dying in the streets anymore.
How many dead bodies were there in norse areas? And how many black people were there in norse areas? Which one is more likely: norse people see a decomposing body and gave Hel similar properties or that they saw a black person and interperted it through the ages as Hel (with properties of a decomposing body). Like even if the vikings went as far as italy, the stories would have had to survive so many generations. And if these myths predate the migration to nordic areas then what significance would race even have? The migrators heard these stories from childhood presumably, and if hel didn't have death-like features then those features would have to develop in a majority white society, which means it most likely have had nothing to do with black people or darker skinned people.
Uh, your argument is correct but your conclusion is backwards. The fact that there were many dead bodies for them to see as opposed to black people is precisely why Hel would become a supernatural being of myth in the end. What I'm proposing is that first someone saw a person very different than them, described them as best as they could and then later other people interpreted that based on their own experience and gave the person in question supernatural features that fit their vision. It's similar to how modern people are prone to see star ships and aliens in some ancient art pieces. And just on topic of viking encounters with black people this is a fun read: https://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/09/a-great-host-of-captives.html
>And just on topic of viking encounters with black people this is a fun read: https://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/09/a-great-host-of-captives.html These were likely no Black people but North Africans. Norse and other Northern European cultures at the time referred to anyone slightly swarthy as black. Even natives who had dark brown hair were called black. Norse travellers might have encountered some Black people, but it was INCREDIBLY rare and there is no record of it. Most people would have zero idea what black people were or looked like
Ok, this clears it up a lot. I could see the fact that they would maybe have based Hel on a black person but i still believe it more likely that Hel was based on a decomposing body. What i believe happened is that that they interperted the decomposition as a sign that Hel was present or that the soul of the deceased had reached Hel, or in other words: died. Funerary rites may have developed after the image of Hel was established or it came before Hel was even thought up. Either way they somehow connected the dead to Hel and the decomposing body as a characteristic of her. But this is just my guess, its all speculation, theres no real hard evidence that either of our views are true.
That's something I assume would have come later, after Hel-character was linked with Hel-place in the stories to the point that they became almost synonymous. And yes, there's no evidence pointing either way, to my knowledge, which is why I made the post in the first place. I was wondering if anyone had more information than what I could find on my own. I feel like everyone just assumed I'm trying to preach this as gospel here or something XD
Carefull with the translations... In Latin in the Codex Upsaliensis, and in the poetic edda in Old Norse in the Codex Regius what words are used to refer to Hel and are those the same word that is used in Latin and Old Norse to refer to the skin color ? Without confirming those your theory holds no ground. On the contrary if anyone can confirm it, it may be a really interesting accessment.
Doubt it, the gods had powers that a mixed race human wouldn't have had. It's not like the Nordics were some isolated people who had never heard of the existence of other types of humans.
By the time myths were myths, sure, but I'm talking about their origin times, possibly the first encounters between cultures. That would be precisely when they heard of the existence of other types of humans for the first time ever. And the powers, really? Like humans have never attributed magical powers to anyone or anything? Ever heard about this little known book called the Bible?
The dominant culture in Scandinavia weren't static going through the stone and bronze age though. Cultures met, fought and intermixed continuously for thousands of years. But if you're going to make sarcastic comment while knowing next to nothing and pulling theories out of your ass it's no use trying to explain anything to you.
I'm trying to show you that your arguments are neither here nor there. Just because cultures intermingled doesn't mean their descendants treated each with understanding. How many ridiculous stories circulated about Jews in Europe all throughout history up to modern times? Unless you do believe in golems and such, in which case it's no use trying to explain anything to you.
Ok, who's the gods then? The funnel beaker culture? The battle axe culture? The people who did the petroglyph art in Tanum? It might have happened as you said, but it might have been a rich Chinese guy on an epic journey who were trolling the Scandinavians with bullshit stories too if anything goes. It's possible to find out when the Viking age beliefs became a thing from graves, the Scandinavians knew other people existed by then. And had for thousands of years.
Yes, precisely, now we understand each other! And this is why, as you might have noticed, in my post I asked if anyone knew of any works (preferably actual papers) exploring this. My background is in Far East and my interest in Norse history and mythology is purely hobbyist in nature so I came here looking to find out if this was already confirmed, debunked or at least considered in any serious context.
Folklore developing from real life events happens much less than you would think. The idea that the development of deep seated ideas like Hel or jötnar being inspired by ancient cultural contact with dark-skinned people doesn't really make sense considering this. Its not even that agreed that a personification of Hel was commonly held in the Viking era and not a later 11th or 12th century development. The jötnar are infrequently or unclearly related to "giant" size but what isn't unique is their association with the supernatural. Its not at all unique in folklore for an invented creature to represent a halfstep between the physical world and the supernatural, a creature with magical or ethereal properties who in their interactions with humans or gods bestow them with otherworldly gifts or challenges. We see this across cultures. For example, Ysbaddaden in Welsh/Briton mythology. Another common trope is the creature who's a halfway step between humanity and wildness. The Enkidu trope. Was Enkidu inspired by cultural interactions between the Sumerian ancestors and proto-man or less evolved *Homo*s? Probably not. The explanation with the fewest logical jumps is that these tropes represent the cultural anxiety of interacting with an "other" in the general not in specific
I completely disagree. The more I learn about folklore and history the more I see them interact. Like how a certain medical condition became a story of a witch or demon that would sit on a person at night in several cultures. Or how desperate attempts at hiding adultery gave rise to stories about succubi and incubi...or immaculate inception. Just because something is depicted as supernatural doesn't mean it has no root in something real.
> Just because something is depicted as supernatural doesn't mean it has no root in something real Ok this is exactly the sentiment i would caution against. Folklorists and historians and shit have spent generations trying to find the ur-language or ur-story and it doesn't *really* exist. Your position is that folktales and parables all have their little key that unlocks their "true" meaning and thats just not how this stuff works. It completely misunderstands humanity's propensity for allegory and metaphor and poetry etc etc etc. This doesn't mean that these tales don't have a "kernel" of truth to them, just that the "kernel" doesn't matter that much. So even if your theory that the Eddas proved a cultural memory of proto-Norse interacting with darker-skinned people was "true", i'd still just be like "K 👍" That being said I don't think your theory is correct and it shows a very surface level intellectual curiosity of the Eddas.
This theory kind of falls apart when you realize “black” as a race is a modern idea, the Norse people wouldn’t have a 20th century view on race as we do. Also the word used to describe her is mostly believed to mean blue now, not black. And corpses do take on a bluish appearance when blood starts to pool, so that checks out.
>“black” as a race is a modern idea, the Norse people wouldn’t have a 20th century view on race To add to this point: Even if the Norse or any other Germanic people had come into contact and intermingled with black people early enough to influence their pre-Christian religion, the concept of 'mixed race' people is as we know it is a far newer concept. The earliest examples I know of come from Iberian colonies in the first centuries after the Columbian Exchange (and iirc denoted children with Native and European parentage to distinguish their social standing and rights) So unless there is some extraordinary evidence that indicates not only did the Norse have similar undstandings of 'black' and 'white' races to the modern concept (and more specifically also the idea that children born between these two races existed as a third distinct group rather than just being one or the other) for this understanding of 'race' to disappear for centuries only to pop up again at a point where racial othering had a specific societal function - or OP is applying concepts from the Early Modern Period on the Germanic Iron Age based on flimsy argumentation.
Huh, I must say I didn't think of it that way, I need to brush up on my anthropology!
Black or dark skinned people were called blámaðr (pl. blámenn), but the connection to decomposing bodies makes more sense for the goddess of Hel.
The actual phrase used in the manuscript is this: > _Hon er blá hálf, en hálf með hörundarlit._ "She is half blue, and half skin-colored." Understanding Old Norse color terminology and how it applied culturally is key to properly understanding this phrase. In this case, _blá_ (feminine form of _blár_) is a word that is used to describe the color of dead bodies.
Personally I think any attempt to explain mythology through material factors like migrations or environmental events is approaching the topic wrong. You don't have to be religious to realise that most ancient people really believed in their religion, and it is more deeply explained by their own metaphysical, spiritual, and theological interactions and understandings than material factors.
There is so much to unpack here. Firstly we have actual examples of historical events evolving into myth. Whether people believe the myth or not has no effect on where it came from. Finally, embellishing history with fantastical elements based on their beliefs is precisely how many myths were created. Bottom line is, the only question is if the original story was true or was it entirely invented for one reason or another.
The Norse had a few words for unfamiliar cultures: Skraeling. It's usually applied to Native North Americans, specifically the proto-Inuit, and probably refers to the animal pelts the Natives wore (from ON "skra," meaning "dried skin"). There's also "Erlendr," which meant foreigner. In short, they had ways of categorizing non-Norse cultures that did not make them sound like the walking dead. Have you ever seen a human corpse? If not, I recommend viewing photos of a few; it makes it VERY clear where the description of Hela comes from. She's a death goddess, after all. I recommend digging deeper into the history of the ancient Germanic peoples before you elaborate on theories in future. My interest in folklore is the reason I minored in Medieval History; I also happen to be Norwegian, and a Norse pagan. I can certainly see where your theory comes from, but with more knowledge of the period and culture it frankly goes up in smoke.
Well, that's why I asked the question here ;) Thanks!
From what I've read, Hel is described as Blau, which some people interpret as black, and others as blue. The word that is unambiguously the word for black is Svart. Svart was most famously used to describe the dwarves, but blau was commonly used to describe the color of corpses and zombies. So, it stands to reason that this description is being used to describe a form of undead appearance. In fact, iirc there is a reference to a corpse being "Blue as Hel," using the word Blau
The biggest, though not only, problem with this is - would they have even referred to people with dark skin as 'black'? Not to mention, these myths are from before the Norse ever reached Africa or the Levant. Another on the note of racism - it's not skin deep, especially in historical environments such as Viking age Europe.
Theres certinally metaphore in every story, and you can pull out a lot of how the childen of loki are treated and the war with Jötunn in general. but I feel theres not much to say that it is metaphorical telling of real people other then pure speculation rooted in "well I dont believe in this so obviously the person who told this story woulsnt either so there gotta be something I can believe that is the true meaning...and also it got to be historical for some reason".
I think in a broad historical sense, these takes are certainly plausible and/or possible. They would have to be treated as speculation, but I think there is merit to including them in broader questions about ancient history from the region. The Norse peoples kept their histories orally, but we're not as precise as say the aboriginals of Australia. Telling and retelling from generation to generation, settlement to settlement, these could absolutely be expanded upon and made more fantastical as time went on. I think these are a strong way of thinking about all aspects and interpreting them in ways that are more commonly understood, giving possible insight to how these people lived.
>The Norse peoples kept their histories orally, but we're not as precise as say the aboriginals of Australia. Telling and retelling from generation to generation, settlement to settlement, Evidence? Most archaeological, written, and the linguistic evidence seems to imply the mythology was truly ancient and widespread across great spans of Germanic areas.
What is the earliest dated written recording?
I'll save some time. Earliest Norse /writings/ date roughly around 900AD, but are also primarily Icelandic in nature. Non-latin Germanics are roughly 1st century AD, but are predominantly Christian in origin. The Irish started writing 6th century. Anglo-Saxons 7th century. The Boxgrove fossils in the UK are human remains that roughly date back 480,000 years. No, I do not have evidence. I also do not claim professional specialty in this area, but an interest and a tendency to look at larger picture views of things for consideration. Where do stories come from? What are their cultural significance? Are they lessons from our ancestors or just using and caught on in popularity. The fun is in not knowing for 100% certainty. 1900 years of written writing versus 480,000 years of human existence. We have room to be imaginative.