*animals having a conversation*
hunf...
I'm starving...
heeyyy....
hah ha hee :]
w00t?!
now you're mine! muahahaha
Aaaaahhhhh!
come here!
aaaahrrrrhggg
hahaha
???
muhahahahaha
miahu???
alright I'm back! Pour the wine, bring the pies! I have wonderful news!
hehehe
hey?!
Sir! Help us!
what's going on here?
huh... nothing, nothing...
he was trying to eat us!
again Mr. Thorstein??!
I'm starving!
I would eat a bear!
he would probably eat you first...
hey you gave me an idea
I did? Hue hehehe
yes...
uhh...
alright...
hello friends my name is Arith Härger and today I'm going to talk about the bear
as the king of all animals
now if you have seen my previous videos you know
that I usually talk about Scandinavian studies - history, archaeology, paganism and so on
but if you have seen the title of this playlist
it's called "blog themes" so I talk about the things I write at my blogs and today
I'm going to talk about something a little bit different so let's get started
when people ask you what animal is the king of all animals the first
creature that comes to mind is the lion but in truth before the church imposed
the lion as the king of all animals the bear was the king of the forest
at least in the European continent the bear was a symbol of power, strength and Majesty
it is possible that our ancestors during prehistoric times
already worshiped bears and we can see bear skulls aligned in niches in caves
and they weren't placed there at random so there might have been an early
bear cult but unlike that image we grow up with of people living in caves our
ancestors actually built houses made of huge animal bones, tusks, tree trunks
animal skins and so on so those caves with beautiful paintings were in fact our
ancestors first temples but let's not go back so much in history
anyway we can find traces of the utmost respect and even fear and also admiration our
ancestors had for these creatures for instance in folk tales of course changed
by time and different social and political realities throughout history
and of course the new faiths
we can also see it in sacred places, Christianized
but were once places of pagan deities but with the new faith became the dwelling
places of saints and christian mythological accounts
for instance the Celts used to worship a goddess represented with a bear on her side or in
front of her, the bear goddess called Artio whose name has a lot of
similarities with Arthur who in turn has a name connected with bears so Artio
was a primitive goddess linked to the fertilizing forces of the earth in a
time when gods had not yet been anthropomorphized and were still represented
as animals
there were early Christian accounts that show the importance the
bear had to the pagans and as such the devil often took the form of a bear to
come and terrorize the monks so this means that the king of all animals was
turned against those who admire it the most by demonizing the poor animal
in the Jewish and Christian traditions the bear often has a negative symbology and
you can see that in the Old Testament
when the missionaries began their
process of evangelization throughout Europe they encountered a variety of
pagan deities which were either associated with bears or were bears themselves
to the Germanic and Celtic populations of Europe the bear was associated with
royalty so it isn't a coincidence that the most famous legendary King Arthur
was also associated with the bear and it is interesting to see that the bear, well...
the she-bear is connected with the warrior goddess Brigid of whom the
Celtic kings were sons of, making them little bear cubs, therefore the
connection between the Kings and the bears
so there was necessity to
Christianize this goddess and so Saint Brigid was born and later this goddess
already Christianized, was connected with a real person a real abbess from Kildare
which was named Brigid who died in the year of 525 of our era
to the germanic and scandinavian peoples the bear was connected with the warrior spirit
personified by the god Thor and it appears that in certain germanic groups
one of the imposed trials to the young warriors was the solitary bear hunt
although it hasn't been proven yet if these initiation rites were real or just
mythical anyway what is real is that the strength and ferocity of this animal was
an inspiration to the germanic and scandinavian warriors
many ancient cities throughout Europe still have the representation of the bear in their coat-of-arms
the survival evidences of the bear being the king of all animals
before the church replaced the symbolic functions of the bear for the lion so
the lion was this exotic animal and by the time it replaced the bear sometime
in the year 1000, the lion didn't belong to the European fauna and as such
it was almost a mythical creature therefore it was easily adopted
but to this day some cities such as Bern in Switzerland and Berlin in Germany to
name a few, still have the represtation of the bear in their coat-of-arms
it's not a coincidence that during the reign of Charlemagne a lot of bears
were hunted down almost till extinction because of the cult of the Germanic
peoples and the gods associated with this animal
and of course loads of sacred trees were taken down but we have often heard about
the forest devastation held by Charlemagne and his Nobles but we do not
often hear about the bear hunt
to the church, during medieval times, the bear
was the personification of evil, ferocity and chaos because the creature lived in
the dense and almost unreachable forests the forests were the dwelling places of
the pagans (in truth the forests were the places the pagans considered to be
sacred, once, but now it was their refuge from the horrible acts of forced
Christianization) but the bear started to enter in the christian mythology in
another way it became the symbol of the divine dominating chaos because the only
ones who could contact with these terrible creatures and turn them into
docile animals were the Hermits those who would seek the most inhospitable
places to live in solitude, for spiritual reasons, only through their fate and the
connection with the divine and the power of God could they do such a thing
turning a ferocious beast into a docile companion
thus the bear became the symbol of the victory of the divine over chaos and we
can actually see this representation in the story of Saint Columbanus and his
many encounters with bears and befriending them
now for obvious reasons
I cannot speak about Saint Columbanus and the bear stories associated with this
saint because this video will be too long but if at least 20 of you ask me
about it I can make a video about-solely on Saint Columbanus and all these
accounts with bears and befriending bears so you can understand how the bear
entered in the medieval Christian mythology as a
sort of propaganda to bring more pagans into the new faith
the bear was also associated with the devil and a symbol of the many vices and sins condemned by
the church and there were many accounts of bears being the evil creatures of
chaos to the point that they became the creatures that would kidnap beautiful
young maidens and rape them and we can still see in many folktales
the bear being the "bad guy" of the story and this might be the beginning of the
creation of the story of the "Beauty and the Beast", highly infantilized and
softened by Disney and thank the gods for that because no child would want to
hear the real account
so in conclusion the fight of the church against the bear
was a symbolic way, and in some cases a very real way, of [to] free territories from
there pagan past and Christianize those same territories and place order over chaos
unfortunately the bear had a very
negative connotation during the Middle Ages but at the same time the symbolism
the bear had during pagan times somehow survived until nowadays and I'm sure all
of us remember the childhood stories of the she-bear being the kind and caring
mother and it isn't a coincidence that to this day there are many children that-
that still sleep with their teddy-bears
alright friends, I know this
subject was a little bit different than usual but I hope you have enjoy it all the same
all the links to my social media are down below at the description
thank you so much for watching see you on the next video and of course
tack för idag! (thank you for today!)
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