In order to appreciate how ancient Indo-European poets utilized language and poetry to shape perceptions of the afterlife, it is helpful to acknowledge that the oral and aural nature of early Indo-European poetic texts served not only as artistic expressions but also as vehicles for social and eschatological transformation. Through an analysis of key examples from Greek, Iranian and Vedic traditions, the case is made that the poets envisioned poetry as a means to create so-called perlocutionary sites – spaces conjured by spoken or sung discourse that were considered to transcend ordinary existence and anchor the subject within a realm of imperishable fame and divine dwelling. While apparently once deeply rooted in Indo-European linguistic ideology, this assertion can be redefined in familiar analytical terms (drawing on J. L. Austin’s speech act theory) as the power of poetry to not merely describe but to actively bring about a desired state of affairs. The final excursus extends the scope to the Germanic world by suggesting a continuous influence of this underlying poetic ideology on Old Norse skaldic poetry.

Woran glaubte man in Europa in den Jahrtausenden vor der Ausbreitung des Christentums? Wie die Sprachen im Raum zwischen Westeuropa und Indien großenteils von einer gemeinsamen indogermanischen Sprache abstammen, so gilt Entsprechendes auch für die Religionen. Vor der Missionierung durch Christentum und Islam waren sie weiter entwickelte Fortsetzer derjenigen Religion, die die Sprecher jener indogermanischen Sprache einmal gehabt hatten. Diese Religion so weit wie möglich zu rekonstruieren war das Ziel, das sich ein Sprachhistoriker und ein Religionswissenschaftler im vorliegenden Buch gemeinsam gesetzt haben. Es handelt sich um die erste systematische Untersuchung nicht nur der Götternamen und Mythen, sondern des gesamten Spektrums der Erscheinungsformen jener Religion.

This chapter seeks to substantiate a few general assumptions about the social significance of cattle-stealing monsters in various IE traditions. By taking into account that these monsters appear under variously socially distinguishable guises – traversing the whole spectrum of an intruding guest, a bad host, a stingy patron and a malicious client – it can be argued that these myths mainly revolved around the perceived crisis of hospitality and ritual economy. Examples are given to illustrate particularities of this pattern in what seems to be offshoots of a linguistically encoded tradition: one with a possible Core Indo-European (CIE) basis (the tricephalus myth) and the other dating back at least to the time of Proto-Indo-Iranian (the Vala myth). In the final analysis, an attempt is made to demonstrate how the notion of the cattle-stealing monster – considered here as a variation of the milk-suckler reptile – can be rendered culturally meaningful in terms of certain prevalent ecological and socio-economic factors.

The controversial cases of the Anatolian Illuyanka myth and the visual representation of a tricephalic monster on the fifth-century CE lesser horn (B) from Gallehus are briefly commented upon in two additional excurses (addenda 1 and 2).

Ritual practices of cursing and heroic commemoration among speakers of ancient Indo-European languages exhibit numerous features of inherited juridico-religious vocabulary. Through its grounding in the ethos of a pre-ancient, semi-nomadic tribal society, this vocabulary can be linked to a set of contiguous notions, such as the poetic realization of glory, afterlife recompense, the wolfish persona of warrior chieftains, and the humiliating treatment of cowards and criminals through strangulation and phallic aggression. In what follows, an attempt is made to demonstrate the tenacity of this conceptual system by paying brief initial attention to a Greek funerary epigram from 6th BCE century Rhodes, and then by analysing two runic inscriptions from 6th to 7th century CE southern Sweden (Björketorp and Stentoften).

By proceeding from August Schleicher’s exercise in representing the character of spoken Proto-Indo-European through a self-invented fable, an attempt is made to extend the fable as a progymnastic tool of comparison in terms also of its moral so as to grasp the fundamentals of Indo-European sociology. Two fables from the Aesopean corpus (“The Lamb and the Wolf[Perry Index 261]” and “The Wolf and the Well-fed Dog [Perry Index 346]”) are selected for this purpose in order to create a model consisting of four parametric slots: that of (1) the pastoral obligations of kingship; (2) the merits of hospitality and patronage; (3) crime, deception, and prostitution; and (4) the punitive and martial obligations of wolfish kingship.

This text explores the influence of Ovid’s account of Orpheus’ death in Metamorphoses on Snorri Sturluson’s account of Baldr’s death in Gylfaginning. In examining the similarities and differences between the two narratives, particular emphasis is placed on elements such as the invulnerability of a mythic protagonist, his tragic death resulting from the breaking of an enchantment, and his lamentation by the animate and inanimate forces of nature. While acknowledging the differences in the narratives, the author suggests that Snorri drew on a specific motif from Ovid’s work to enhance his own account of Balder’s death. The text briefly touches on the complex relationship between classical and Norse mythology, highlighting the creative reinterpretation and adaptation of mythic themes in medieval literature. In conclusion, the author proposes that Snorri’s skillful synthesis of various sources reflects his role as a creative innovator within the living tradition of mythic storytelling. 

How have humans sought to prevent viable assumptions about themselves and their world from being in force, how does this propensity manifest itself, and in what terms has it been theorized and criticized throughout the ages?

Through a diversity of discrete case-studies spanning a vast time-scale (including topics such as paleolithic personal ornaments, pre-ancient ritual economy, ancient philosophy, and modern artful science), this study explores the means by which humans voluntarily suspend habitual patterns of judgement and disbelief in order to perceive the world differently. In recognizing how such modes of suspension can be variously traced back to religious comportments and institutions, a new sense of religious participation is identified beyond the credulous subjunction to artifice and its critical dismissal.

The relevant outcome of this long-term comparative approach is that sincere devotion to a (practical or theoretical, scientific or spiritual) cause and the temporary affirmation of artifice are not mutually exclusive comportments, but rather genealogically akin to the discretely sacred (alchemical, ataraxic, epistemological, spectacular, thaumaturgic, etc.) concerns of a pre-modern world.