Friday, August 31, 2012

God Vidar

God Vidar Image
Vidar is Silent God. Also the god of the really big shoe. He is the son of Odin and the giantess Grid. He never speaks, and has a giant thick-soled shoe he got from his mother. This is made from the scraps that are discarded when humans make shoes and is continually being added to. The shoe is so that when Odin is killed by the Fenris wolf at Ragnarok Vidar can avenge his father by tearing the wolf's jaw off by bracing against it with the shoe. Thus all who love the Aesir must take care to discard scraps from shoe-making, rather than saving them for future use.

Odin once saw and fell in love with the beautiful Grid, who dwelt in a cave in the desert, and, wooing her, prevailed upon her to become his wife. The offspring of this union between Odin (mind) and Grid (matter) was a son as strong as taciturn, named Vidar, whom the ancients considered a personification of the primeval forest or of the imperishable forces of Nature.
As the Gods, through Heimdall, were intimately connected with the sea, they were also bound by close ties to the forests and Nature in general by Vidar, surnamed “The Silent,” who was destined to survive their destruction and rule over the regenerated earth. This God has his home in Landvidi (the wide land), a palace decorated with green boughs and fresh flowers, situated in the midst of an impenetrable primeval forest where reigns the deep silence and solitude which he loves.

“Grown over with shrubs
And with high grass
Is Vidar’s wide land.” - NORSE MYTHOLOGY (R. B. Anderson)

This old Scandinavian conception of the silent Vidar is very grand and poetical indeed, and was inspired by the rugged Northern scenery. “Who has ever wandered through such forests, in a length of many miles, in a boundless expanse, without a path, without a goal, amid their monstrous shadows, their sacred gloom, without being filled with deep reverence for the sublime greatness of Nature above all human agency, without feeling the grandeur of the idea which forms the basis of Vidar’s essence?”

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