"Even in comparatively modern times the Swedes and Pomeranians killed their old people in the way which was indicated in the passages quoted above". (page 91)
Pomerania is an historical religion which is situated on the southern shore of the Baltic sea in modern day Poland and Germany. The name is preserved in the modern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. A recent update of my autosomal DNA on LivingDNA has finally found * most but not all of my maternal ancestral DNA which originates from 3 main areas of German settlement in Europe; southern, northwestern and northeastern Germanic DNA. The latter pertains to the geographical area of Pomerania; so who knows, maybe my ancestors practised this custom!
There appears to have been two main forms of killing the elderly, via use of the 'family club' and jumping off the 'Valhalla cliffs' down to the 'Odin pond' below. Senicide appears to have been more common in times of famine which caused family units to make hard choices in terms of who should be allowed to survive. Mr Elton tells us that:
"One of the family clubs is said to be still preserved at a farm in East Gothland." (page 91)
Being beaten to death is obviously a far harsher form of senicide than jumping off a cliff and it appears that in the latter case this was usually a voluntary practice. An alternate and Swedish name for the Valhalla cliffs is attestupa (kin/clan precipice). Apparently ritual forms of senicide are said to have taken place during prehistoric times when the elderly were no longer able to either support themselves or assist their families. The use of the term attestupa dates back to the 17th century in Sweden and is based upon the 13th century Gautreks Saga about the legendary king Gautrek. In one part of the saga members of a particular family kill themselves by jumping off their family cliff. Whilst many modern scholars doubt the existence of these Valhalla cliffs they nevertheless persist in folklore. We should take what modern scholars have to say about the past with a pinch of salt when their research conflicts with ancient writings, folkore and oral traditions which are usually found to be quite reliable. Many modern academics are far from neutral with their research and are often guided by political instincts, often rooted in cultural Marxism.
"'Here by our home', says the hero, 'is Gillings-rock: we call it the family-cliff, because there we lessen the number of family when evil fortune comes. There all our fathers went to Odin without any stroke of disease. The old folk have free access to that happy spot, and we ought to be put to no further trouble or expense about them. The children push the father and mother from the rock, and send them with joy and gladness on their journey to Odin." (page 91)
The existence of these Valhalla cliffs is confirmed by Pliny the Elder in his The Natural History:
"Three such cliffs in West-Gothland and Bleking still bear the latter name, and to another the remarkable statement attaches, that the people, after dances and sports, threw themselves headlong from its top into the lake, as the ancients relate of the Hyperboreans and Scythians. (iv.12)
Sir Laurence Gomme in his Folklore as an Historical Science, 66-78 refers to some houses in Silesia and Saxony where a mallet hangs in front of the houses. In one example at Osnabrueck there is also the following inscription:
"Wer den Kindern gibt das BrodtAnd selber dabei leidet Noth,
Den schlagt mit dieser Kettle todt."
My translation:
"Who gives bread to the children,And thereby suffers need himself
With this mallet strike him dead."
Procopius relates in his The Wars that the Heruli burned their elderly and sick after fastening them to a stack of wood and stabbing them to death. Senicide is historically confined not just to the northern Germanic world but to other parts of Europe, India and also Japan. In ancient Rome people reaching 60 were said to be thrown from a bridge or used as human sacrifices to the gods. (Old Age in the Roman World, Tim G Parkin, 2003) Mr Parkin also tells us that in ancient Greece when the Athenians besieged the island of Keos in the Aegian Sea the inhabitants voted that all the elderly over the age of 60 should commit suicide by drinking hemlock. Another case was on the island of Sardinia where 70 year old fathers were sacrificed by their sons to the God of the Harvest, Cronus, the leader of the Titans.
The practice of senicide may be traced further back to the Hyperboreans who practised 'happy suicides:
"Their habitations be in woods and groves, where they worship the gods both by themselves and in companies and congregations. No discord know they. No sickness are they acquainted with. They die only when they have lived long enough: for when the aged have made good cheere, and anoynted their bodies with sweet ointments, they leape off a certain rocke into the sea. This kind of sepulture is of all others the most happie." (The Hyperboreans, Hecataeus, quoted by Elton, page 90)
It is clear that in the case of the Hyperboreans senicide was voluntary and entered into as a means of avoiding age-related sickness or when the elderly had finally tired of life. The practice was also clearly ritualistic and the method a forerunner of the so-called Valhalla cliffs and Odin ponds. Who were these 'Hyperboreans'? The ancients believed that they were a race of 'giants' who lived 'beyond the north wind.'
"Behind the Rhipoean hills and beyond the North Pole there is a blessed and happie people, if we may believe it, whom they call Hyperboreans, who live exceeding long, and many fables and strange wonders are reported of them. In this tract are supposed to be two points or poles about which the world turneth about, and the verie ends of the heaven's revolution. For six months together they have one entire day, and night as longe, when the sun is cleane turned from them. Once in the year, namely, at our midsummer, when the Sun entereth Cancer, the Sun riseth with them, and once likewise it setteth, even in mid-winter with us, when the Sun entereth Capricorn. The countrie is open upon the Sun, of a blissful and pleasant temperature, void of all noisome wind and hurtful aire." (The Hyperboreans, Hecateus, quoted by Elton, page 90)
It is clear that these Hyperboreans resided in the area of the Arctic at a time when the climate was temperate and the area covered by forests and rich in wildlife. This was the original home of the Proto-Indo-Europeans (the Aryans) before their dispersal. (See The Arctic Home in the Vedas, 1903 by B.G. Tilak) Echoes of this original Hyperborean arctic home are to be found in the recorded mythologies of many of the Indo-European peoples, including the Vedas and the Avesta. The whole subject of Hyperborea and its place in prehistory and geography will be dealt with in far more detail in a future essay (the gods willing!).
Returning to the subjects of the Valhalla cliffs and the Odin ponds:
"The situation of several of these 'Valhalla Cliffs' is still well known in Sweden. The lakes, which stretch below, were called 'Valhalla-meres' or 'Odin-ponds'. 'The old people, after dances and sports, threw themselves into the lake, as the ancients related of the Hyperboreans': but if an old Norseman became too frail to travel to the cliff, his kinsmen would save him the disgrace of 'dying like a cow in the straw', and would beat him to death with 'the family-club'. Similar stories are told of the Heruli in the dark forests of Poland'; and among the Prussians 'all the daughters except one were destroyed in infancy or sold, and the aged and infirm, the sick and the deformed, were unhesitatingly put to death': practices as remote from the poetry of the Greek description as from the reverence for the parents' authority which might have perhaps been expected from descendants of 'the Aryan household.'" (page 92)
Mr Elton quotes an example of the brutal practice of clubbing from Conversion of the Slavs, Maclear where:
"A Count Schulenberg rescued an old man who was being beaten to death by his sons at a place called Jammerholz, or 'woeful wood'; and the intended victim lived as a the Count's hall-porter for twenty years after his rescue. A Countess of Mansfeld, in the 14th century, is said to have saved the life of an old man on the Lueneberg Heath under similar circumstances." (p.92)
Here in England it was a common practice that when the old were lying on their death beds, in order to save them from any unnecessary suffering the family physician would be called for and the patient would be administered a 'little something' to 'help them on their way'. Occasionally a pillow would be laid gently over their head as an alternative.
* This is due to their recent 'German Project' which involved collecting and expanding their continental Germanic DNA database. I will expect my German DNA to increase in percentages as their database expands.
