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Tom Sewell

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On 3/22/2017 at 2:25 AM, Tom Sewell said:

How very true, but not in manga or comics. Well, more accurate. But more fun? Anyway, Fujishima did go to the trouble of doing some actual research, and at the end of the series threw us a spectacular curve: Most of us were expecting the Almighty to be Odin (although I was holding out for Thor) but the authorized daddy of Urd, Belldandy, and Skuld turned out to be Tyr, the Norse god of law. Turns out the Vikings were also very big on Law--and lawsuits. And it's thanks to their semi-conquest of England that we have trial by jury now.

As for the main American contender, I don't really care for the current Marvel versions of Thor & Co., although I was around for the Silver Age and back then Thor was awesome!

There is some evidence to suggest that in times of antiquity, the prime deity of the Norse pantheon was actually Tyr, and he was slowly supplanted by Odin over time. Odin was himself in the process of being replaced by Thor when Christianization began to take place.

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1 hour ago, Illjwamh said:

There is some evidence to suggest that in times of antiquity, the prime deity of the Norse pantheon was actually Tyr, and he was slowly supplanted by Odin over time. Odin was himself in the process of being replaced by Thor...

This parallels a pattern that happened with living royalty in several ancient cultures.  In Egypt, it was quite frequent.  When the old Pharaoh decided that his son was ready to rule, he would declare a Co-Regency.  The son would have the fun job of administrating the country while dealing with the nobility and politicians.  And the father would have solemn responsibilities of attending to the ceremonial and spiritual matters of state.

I postulate that the coup of Cronus over Uranus, as well as the overthrow of Cronus by Zeus, may have been peaceful transfers of power, with later writers fabricating the gruesome stories to make the guy in charge seem more intimidating.

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It wasn't so much a transfer of power as it was merely a shifting of prominence in who was worshiped. It was not in-universe, in other words. You won't find any stories of Tyr handing over the reins of power to Odin. Indeed, many of the myths that survive to today have recast him as Odin's son.

What you would find, anthropologically, is the people of the region gradually shifting the focus of their worship from Tyr to Odin, and then later to Thor.

This happened in Greece as well. Demeter and especially Hestia are much older than Zeus (perhaps why in the consolidated Olympian myths they are his older sisters), and even Athena and Poseidon were considered paramount deities in their own respective regions before the cult of Zeus came along and everything was more or less homogenized. Athena was even made into Zeus's daughter specifically to reduce her importance.

The Romans did it, too. The original Capitoline Triad (the three most important deities, named for their temple on Capitoline Hill) was made of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus. Many folks haven't even heard of the latter. He and Mars were later supplanted by Juno and Minerva, to form the Capitoline Triad most people would be familiar with today.

The Egyptians did it multiple times. Atum, Heka, Amun, Ra, Amun-Ra, Atun, Amun-Ra again...

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I postulate that the coup of Cronus over Uranus, as well as the overthrow of Cronus by Zeus, may have been peaceful transfers of power, with later writers fabricating the gruesome stories to make the guy in charge seem more intimidating.

 

This is easily plausible.

 

Sorry for the double post. Formatting got weird and I can't figure out how to delete posts on this forum.

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