Twin Gods -- Susan Price

The Dioskouri or Sons of Zeus - Wiki
Is the mortal or immortal who's checking his phone?

Most people know that, in Greek and Roman Mythology, there were twin heroes -- or, demi-gods. Some of you might even be born under the sign of the Gemini, which was their Roman name. To the Greeks they were the 'Dioskouroi' or 'Sons of Zeus.'

Today they are known mostly from the zodiac sign, where they are usually shown as cute little babies. I’ve even seen them, on the horoscope page of a woman’s magazine, drawn as cute and smiley baby girls with pony-tails and pink ribbons... Ha!

In myth, the Dioskouroi were Spartan warriors. In other words, well-hard. Forget the smiles and ribbons. The term 'laconic' refers to Lakonia, the region ruled by the city-state of Sparta. Spartan youth were trained, famously, to endure hardship and to despise anything uselessly showy or emotional. Their ideal was to say, bluntly, only what was needed to be said. Anything more was wet, indulgent wordiness.

When Philip II of Macedon (Alexander's dad) invaded Greece, he subjugated several city states and then threatened Sparta. "Submit without delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people and raze your cities." The Spartans' laconic reply? - "If."

So the Gemini represented as smiley, pink-beribboned girl babies? No. That's about as far from their original conception as you can get. And reveals an abysmal ignorance of Greek Mythology on the part of the magazine artist and editor. In Sparta, not even the baby girls wore ribbons of any colour and they were probably trained not to smile, on the grounds that smiling gave too much away. Don't throw your toys out of your crib either. Instead, stay calm, bide your time, and when nursie bends over you, nut her.

Zeus makes up to Leda, Leonardo's version (wikimedia)

The Gemini's mother was Leda. The god Zeus lusted after her (as He did everybody) but she was a faithful wife, so the ever-sneaky Zeus disguised Himself as her husband, Tyndareus, King of Sparta. Zeus became the king's twin, I suppose.

Leda conceived twins, one by her husband and one by the god. Castor was the mortal twin. His brother, Polydeuces, was the son of Zeus and therefore immortal. (Being immortal, he had all time to learn how to pronounce his name. For us time-poor mortals, it's said Polly-dyoo-seez. Or you can just go Roman and say, 'Pollux'.)

 (The Twins' sisters, by the way, were Helen of Troy, whose beauty supposedly caused the Trojan War,  and Clytemnestra, who murdered her husband, Agamemnon, on his return from Troy. She did it because he'd sacrificed their daughter to the gods, to gain a favourable wind for his war-ships. Clytemnestra was then murdered, in revenge, by her son, Orestes (with the help of his sister, Electra). Quite a family. Imagine the Saturnalia get-togethers.)

When the mortal Castor died, immortal Polydeuces faced eternal life without his twin and closest friend. His grief was so great that the gods turned them into the stars known as the Twins or Gemini, so death no longer parted them.

Twin gods exist in other cultures too: in Hindu myth, and in legends from Egypt, Eastern Europe and Celtic areas such as Gaul. As with the Dioskouroi, these twin gods were almost always associated with horses and ships, which seems an odd combination, but when you consider the importance of both the horse and ships for early civilisations, it was inevitable that gods were going to get involved. The Dioskouroi taught mankind how to tame horses, it seems, and they also protected shipping and sailors. The electrical glow which sometimes appears around a ship's masts during a thunderstorm, known as 'St. Elmo's Fire' in later centuries, was originally considered a sign of the Dioskouroi's blessing and protection. A later age may have relegated them to 'heroes' but they almost certainly began as gods.

But in my beloved Norse Mythology, written down for us by Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson, there are no twin brother gods.

The Saxons had the annoying Hengist (whose name means 'stallion') and Horsa, which means, well, 'horse.' They are said to have led the Saxon invasion of Britain, and to have been kings, but they are so hard to pin down-- even for early Saxon kings-- that many scholars have concluded that they are muddled memories of twin gods, very similar to the Dioskouroi. They are warrior brothers, named after horses, arrive in ships-- and certainly seem to be more mythical than historical.

But there is nothing like them in the Norse Myth that has come down to us. Some people suggest Frey and Freya, the brother and sister gods of fertility, but, well, hmm... Horses were sacrificed to Frey, and He does own a magical horse called Blodigofi (Bloody Hoof).  He is also associated with the sea by his ownership of the magical ship, Skidbladnir, which is big enough to hold all the gods, always has favourable winds, and can be folded up small enough to be put into a pocket. (I bet Authors Electric's Julia Jones is envious.) But still, His twin is Freya, the Norse Aphrodite, not a brother. They don't ride off to battle together.

Yet, there are hints, here and there, that Norse Myth once had its Gemini.

Elfgift by Susan Price

I use these hints in my fantasy books, Elfgift and Elf King. The hero, Elfgift, is the son of a mortal king and an elf-woman. His half-brother, Wulfweard, is wholly human. I describe them as looking so alike, they can hardly be told apart, and that they resemble the half-forgotten twin gods painted on the God-house wall.

It always has to be kept in mind that much of Norse Myth is lost to us. Because what we have of it doesn't contain any Gemini figures (or even Hengist-Horsa figures), it doesn't mean that it never did. 

The Greeks and Romans had a literate society and left us plenty of version of their myths, in retellings, in plays, hymns and satires, plus many references to them on tombs and public monuments. Whereas Norse Myth wasn't written down until the Christian period and, even then, was little valued. It wasn't 'Classical.'  It was barbaric.

In fact, when the Christian priest, Snorri, wrote down what he knew of the old pagan stories, he wasn't really setting out to record the myths for their own sake. He wrote it as a guide for poets, being a bit of a poet himself.

Elf King by Susan Price

There was a fashion at the time for using kennings in poetry. Kennings were big in Anglo-Saxon poetry too. The easiest way to define the meaning of 'kenning' is to give a few examples. Instead of saying, 'the sea', the poet used the kenning, 'whale's road.' Instead of saying, 'a ship' the poet might say, 'brine stallion.'

Or, instead of 'gold', you might say 'tears of Freyja' or 'the dwarfs' darling.' -- But this was only possible if you knew that, in myth, the dwarfs were obsessed with gold and that when the Goddess Freyja wept, Her tears were liquid gold.

The Norse Myths were a rich source of kennings, but as Christianity increased its hold, they were being forgotten. So Snorri, although a Christian priest, wrote up an account of the myths as a favour to his fellow poets. And, because he was a poet, he made a damned good job of it.

Even so, no hint of the Northern Twins appears in Snorri's retellings.

The Grevensvænge Hoard

In 1778, some bronze figurines were discovered in Zealand, in Denmark. Known as the Grevensvænge hoard after the place they were found, they dated from the Bronze Age and were thought to represent gods. Soon after the find, a drawing was made of the figures by the local pastor, Marcus Schnabel. His sketch survives and shows two identical male figures kneeling back to back with linked arms. They wear horned helmets and hold axes in their free hands.

The Marcus Schnabel sketch of the Grevensvænge hoard.  Public domain: Wikipedia

There were originally other figures, five in all: the two kneeling warriors, a standing woman, an arched figure presumed to be a dancer or acrobat and another, which, for some reason, wasn't sketched or described. (Perhaps it was considered rude, as figurines of Freyr, for instance, were. He was a fertility god.)

As for the kneeling axe-men, we have no way of knowing who these helmeted, armed figures represented, but since they're identical and side by side, with linked arms, is it too fanciful to think they were meant to be twins? If so, here we have twin warriors. And look at those 'horned helmets.'

It can't be repeated often enough that Vikings did not wear helmets with horns on them. Nope. They did not.

And anyway, these figures are far older than the Viking Age. They are Bronze Age, hundreds of years earlier. And these helmets with the curving, horn-like attachments, rather like gas-pipes, have been found all over Europe, and seem to be associated with supernatural or divine powers. So -- identical, twin, supernatural warriors?

The habit of museum pieces going AWOL (Absent Without Leave) has been in the news recently, and only two of these Bronze Age figures have made it through to the present day: the acrobat and just one of the kneeling warriors. Even that single warrior hasn't made it through the centuries intact. His axe-wielding arm is missing.

The immortal twin has lost his mortal brother.

The second hint of a Norse equivalent to the Gemini can be found in Ellis Davidson's  book, Scandinavian Mythology (1969). She quotes a legend from the period when Christianity was taking over from the Norse gods. Olaf Tryggvasson, the first Christian king of Norway, was sailing in his ship Long Serpent, when a small boat was spotted, rowed by a tall man.

Despite Long Serpent’s many oarsman and her famous speed, it was only with difficulty, after a long chase, that they overtook the lone rower. King Olaf hailed the man and said he would like to talk with him.

The man replied that he wanted nothing to do with the king, who had treated his friends so cruelly. (King Olaf converted many of his people to Christianity by force.) The man in the boat refused to give his name but said that if his ‘grey-haired brother’ had not been so far away, then he would never have yielded or fled from Olaf. The man then threw his oars into the water, upset his small boat and vanished into the sea.

The tall man rowing his small boat at tremendous speed, and who then plunges into the sea, is plainly supernatural. Ellis Davidson argues that, given that this story arose at a time when Olaf was forcing people to become Christian, even executing those who refused, it’s arguable that the rower’s cruelly treated friends were pagans and the rower was the god, or a god, that some of them worshipped.

When this story was first told, the identity of the tall man (or god) in the small boat was probably obvious to all who heard it. They probably knew who his brother was too, but these important details are lost to us.

I think it's an odd, but telling detail that the rower speaks of his absent, 'grey-haired brother.' It could simply imply that the brother is older than the one rowing the boat -- or it could mean that the absent brother is ageing and, therefore, mortal. The Brothers, one mortal and one immortal.

The lonely little bronze age figure, who has lost his axe and his twin...

The rower whose grey-haired brother is far away...

This may be all that survives, for us, of the Norse Twins.