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5 unusual facts about Geri and Freki


Geri and Freki

Philologist Maurice Bloomfield further connected the pair with the two dogs of Yama in Vedic mythology, and saw them as a Germanic counterpart to a more general and widespread Indo-European "Cerberus"-theme.

Bruce Lincoln further traces Geri back to a Proto-Indo-European stem *gher-, which is the same as that found in Garmr, a name referring to the hound closely associated with the events of Ragnarök.

Bloomfield, Maurice (1908) "Cerberus" in: Hastings, James (Ed.) Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol.

In skaldic poetry Geri and Freki are used as common nouns for "wolf" in chapter 58 of Skáldskaparmál (quoted in works by the skalds Þjóðólfr of Hvinir and Egill Skallagrímsson) and Geri is again used as a common noun for "wolf" in chapter 64 of the Prose Edda book Háttatal.

Michael Speidel finds similar parallels in the Vedic Rudra and the Roman Mars.


Beasts of battle

A mythological connection may be presumed as well, though it is clear that at the time that the Old English manuscripts were produced, in a Christianized England, there was no connection between for instance the raven and Huginn and Muninn or the wolf and Geri and Freki.


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