The golden “Day ” side of the Trundholm chariots disc.
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That's a very lovely thing. I'm no doubt being dense, but how do we know that one side represents night and the other day? The patterns appear to be similar or the same, it's just the material that's different. What am I missing?
Well maybe not so dense , a lot of people buy the story without question ,and the Trundholm aspect is it's strongest hand .
It's a long one but really interesting , lots of twists and the fact that it was first noted in the 1960's in an obscure book by Åke Ohlmarks who suggested connections between Egyptian solar myths and Scandinavian material culture . It was ignored ,but when Flemming Kaul , a /the major Danish archaeo came up with something similar everyone paid attention , he then claimed he had never heard of the original theory .
It extends to other Indo -European myths ;essentially the sun is carried on a ship(or horse drawn chariot " from east to west during the day and at night it returns via the underworld again by ship or chariot .
The Rigveda has a similar story of the Ashvins , the heavenly horsemen twins who symbolise sun rise and sun set (elsewhere they are Castor & Pollux, Hengist & Horsa etc ).
The theory gets widened to include fish , serpents , cup marks etc and no attention is paid to directions of the various components all that matters is whether they are facing right which equates with day ,or left , night .
You can't go wrong .Whilst the comparative mythology is intriguing a lot of Scandinavian thinking simply fits BA imagery and material culture into the theory . It's incredibly lazy , anyway I'd better shut up .
Ace, thanks for that. A proper rabbit hole to fall down by the sounds of it :)
That was just the basis .
It's like a possible glimpse of the cosmology of BA has been used to explain everything , and it is widely accepted in Scandinavia ,with not too much dissent .
Well everyone will have done sun worship at some point and from there the logical step is to ask how it crosses the sky - and to provide a suitable answer (chariot/ship/horses). I was more interested in the idea that the two metals signify night and day on the disc, that seems rather more speculative.
The day gilded one is seen as being brighter going in one direction i.e.west /right to left and the other bronze one being duller is the night one going east /left to right . That's the least speculative it gets , the real speculation starts elsewhere and now includes Uffington .