Jeff Russell

Hmm, that's a good question and I don't know the answer for sure, but if I had to guess, it would be because writing about the planets, whether what we would now call astrological or astronomical, was almost certainly done in Latin, even in Germanic lands, since that was the language of education and literacy (Anglo-Saxon England had a stronger than usual culture of writing in the "Vernacular" (meaning, the local non-Latin language), so I wonder if they might have some instances of referring to the heavenly bodies by their Germanic names, but I would guess probably not). I'm not positive on this, but I'm pretty sure that the days of the week were introduced much earlier, likely during the initial contact of the Germans and the Romans (German soldiers need to understand their Roman officer's orders, which might include days and times!), and that the planets would have come in later, likely in a more Christian context, where the Roman names for the heavenly bodies had been accepted as "just the names of those things in the sky" rather than "non-Christian Gods" - "translating" them to Germanic God name equivalents might have been a bridge too far for Christian monks.

All of this also points up that we don't know whether or not the ancient Germanic folks equated the Gods that ended up associated with the days of the week with the heavenly bodies of the same name in the Roman system - there's some evidence that Aurvandil/Earendil, for example, was seen as the Morning Star, and so that would seem to imply that the Germans didn't think that heavenly body was Frigg/Freyja. Likewise, Tyr/Tiw, from Whom Tuesday, might have been associated with Polaris, rather than Mars, despite being given "Mars's Day."

Once again, quite tricky and messy, unfortunately, but also again, if anyone else knows more, I'd love to hear it.

Cheers,
Jeff

1) Fair enough on Hyperborea and the inconsistencies in the description of Troy's locale. I was mostly going with the celebrated fact that Heinrich Schleimannn used the descriptions in the Iliad to find Hisarlik, which has many points of evidence pointing to its being the historical location of "Troy," at least as described by Homer. Of course, as with some of the examples I cited (like the historical events that got smashed together into the Nibulungenied and associated tales), it's quite plausible that more than one historical event "resonated" with the underlying myth, and they got merged (which fits pretty well with your third point below). One example I've given some thought to is the recurring pattern of the "War Between the Tribes/Functions" in various Indo-European bodies of myth, as especially highlighted by Dumezil in his Tri-Functional hypothesis - the Aesir and Vanir, the Asuras and the Devas, maybe also the two sides in the Mahabharata, the Romans and the Sabines, arguably the Dorian invasion of Greece, and so forth). Various historical-reconstruction-oriented folks have tried to find the "real" event that originated these myths - some going as far back as when the Indo-Europeans formed from two or more disparate groups, others going slightly farther forward, to when the Indo-Europeans started bumping into other established groups, like the "First Farmers" of Europe (referred to in the Ancient DNA literature as the "EEFs" - which I think stands for "Early European Farmers"). On this particular story, I've started to feel that all of the proposed historical antecedents might be "right" - for one reason or another, various Indo-European-derived groups had a story pattern of two groups with different proclivities coming into conflict and then finding some kind of uneasy peace, with a new order that incorporates elements from both. When that pattern played out multiple times historically (which isn't so surprising), each time got identified as when it "really" happened, even if elements from earlier versions got kept. So, according to my view, something like the "Rape of the Sabine Women" likely really did happen among the early Romans, but before that, the Early/Proto-Romans likely had similar stories about some other similar event, and some of those likely got incorporated as details to the story that may or may not have really happened with their Italian neighbors.

2) I was going to say about Baldr slaying Fenrir, then you corrected yourself with the follow-on comment :) That said, Baldr does have a less violent triumphant return - after Ragnarok, He comes back from Hel to rule the reborn world in His father's stead, so all is not lost. As for the Odin-Osiris equivalence, that's quite interesting! That also brings to mind the possibility of Loki as the Set equivalent, for His "dark counterpart" role to Odin and trouble-making ways, if nothing else.

3) Ah, fair enough! I find it easier to be onboard with this way of putting it than my interpretation of what you said before, which is likely a failing of mine. I agree that it's a mistake to view myths as "just" garbled versions of "real" historical events, and am primarily interested in teasing out what "really" happened historically to cast more light on what the myths related to them might mean. To go with my above example about the war between the functions, it's boring (to me) to posit that the Aesir-Vanir war is a dim memory of when the Germans ran into the earlier inhabitants of Scandinavia, or when the Indo-Europeans ran into the EEFs, or when the groups that merged into the Indo-Europeans ran into each other, or whatever. By that view, we get something like "Well, these other folks had a religion with more Goddesses and a greater emphasis on the land and fertility, and the Indo-Europeans/Germans had masculine war Gods, and so the historic Germans ended up with both, due to peacemaking, ethnogenesis, or whatever." It's much more interesting to propose that there is something "above" the material world (astral, mental, spiritual, whatever) with some kind of shape to it that has manifested in various ways in material history, and each of those manifestations might cast a little more light on that pattern by being slightly different.

All of which is a long way to say, it sounds like I agree with you :)

Cheers,
Jeff