Author: 1st508th Airborne
86View
25m 41sLenght
11Rating

Footage from my Mississippi River valley hike with my 16wk Lycan Shepherd Kurgan and my German Shepherd Lobo. Innangard and Utangard "In Norse mythology and religion, geographical spaces and psychological states are often classified as being either innangard (pronounced “INN-ann-guard”; Old Norse innangarðr, “within the enclosure”) or utangard (pronounced “OOT-ann-guard”; Old Norse útangarðr, “beyond the enclosure”). A place or a state of mind is innangard if it’s orderly, civilized, and law-abiding. If, on the other hand, it’s chaotic, wild, and anarchic, it’s utangard. Pre-Christian Germanic society had an overwhelming preference for the innangard, but this preference was by no means an absolute one; it was recognized that the utangard had its place as well, as long as it could be kept in check. Society, Geography, and Cosmology In medieval Iceland, as in other Germanic societies where the influence of Christianity was still nominal or nonexistent, the distinction between the innangard and the utangard was mapped onto a number of social/political/economic/religious customs. For example, the fences that enclosed farms had a cosmological/magical purpose that was inseparable from their more immediate, practical purpose: they were not only there to keep livestock inside the enclosure, but also to keep trolls, giants, and other hostile denizens of the wilderness out.[1] Fences marked a boundary between two different states of being.Law served much the same purpose. Medieval Icelanders referred to their society as “our law” (Old Norse vár lög), a phrase which shows that they thought of “law” and “society” as two ways of expressing the same thing. Law was a psychological enclosure that separated the social from the antisocial, the innangard from the utangard. This is why the punishment for especially heinous crimes was outlawry, whereby a person lost all of his or her civil rights and could be killed on sight without any legal repercussions. Through the crime, the outlaw had demonstrated that he or she was an utangard being rather than an innangard one, and since the criminal was beyond society’s control, he or she was accordingly stripped of society’s protection. The very words related to outlawry demonstrate this transition from being a civilized person to a wild one: outlawry was called “going into the forest” (Old Norse skóggangr), and the outlaw was called a “man of the forest” (Old Norse skógarmaðr). Fittingly, outlaws often chose to flee as far from human habitations as possible, for obvious reasons.[2]The distinction between the innangard and the utangard was also mapped onto the Germanic cosmology. Three of the Nine Worlds have the suffix -gard in their name, and all three of these are quintessentially innangard or utangard places: Midgard, Asgard, and Utgard, another name for Jotunheim. The first two are innangard worlds – Midgard, literally “the middle enclosure,” is the world of human civilization, the realm of fields and fences, which is at least partially modeled on Asgard, “the enclosure of the Aesir gods.” These two realms must constantly defend themselves from attacks by the giants, the lawless residents of Jotunheim/Utgard. (“Utgard,” in fact, is simply another version of the word “utangard.”) This is yet another instance of how the Germanic spiritual universe lies at the heart of the physical world rather than somewhere apart from it. The myths contextualize the phenomena we encounter in our everyday lives and disclose their meaning, rather than allegedly offering a means of escape from them as monotheistic religions all too often do. Positive Aspects of the Utangard But the utangard was not seen as being entirely destructive and negative. In fact, at times, men and women would deliberately venture into the utangard for a particular constructive purpose. For example, the process of initiation into a warband (a particular kind of military society) involved spending time alone in the wilderness and overcoming a situation fraught with extreme vulnerability. If the warband had a totem animal, the candidate would likely have been expected to learn the ways of that animal during this time, achieving a state of semi-unification with the animal, and, by extension, with the warband itself. The new member of the warband gained strength and understanding from these trials, and, paradoxically, would then use these chaotic and antisocial abilities and urges for the service of his society. One of my grandmothers was Swedish and the other one was Danish. My love of Norse mythology and culture stems from that. If you’ve enjoyed this article quoted above and want to learn more about Norse mythology... http://norse-mythology.org/concepts/innangard-and-utangard/ http://norse-mythology.org/