(5. 126. 40–6; cf. 8. 24. 120). Das ́aratha helped the gods in their war against
the Asuras (Rm. 2. 9. 9–12).
Norse myth told of a war between the Æsir and the Vanir, a separate group
of gods who seem to have had associations with sorcery, fertility, and the
earth.^146 The Vanir were initially successful and broke into Ásgarð. Peace was
concluded with an exchange of hostages, after which the distinction between
Æsir and Vanir appears to have lost definition and importance. The gods
collectively are known as the Æsir; the Vanir are as it were absorbed in them.
In Irish mythical history, as systematized in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the
pagan deities are euhemerized as a people who occupied Ireland before the
arrival of the Goidelic Celts. They are the Tuatha Dé Danann, ‘people of
the gods of Danu(?)’. They succeeded a series of earlier populations, among
them the brutish, misshapen Fomoire, who, when not in possession of
Ireland, were given to raiding it from the sea. Bres, a son of one of their kings,
ruled over the Dé Danann for a time, but so tyrannically that he was deposed.
A great battle between the two peoples followed, in which the Fomoire were
decisively routed. The event is described in a work of the ninth or tenth
century, the Cath Maige Tuired or Battle of the Plain of Pillars; the location
gives the encounter a megalithic setting. Buried in the story it is perhaps
possible to discern the myth of a war between the gods and a prior race of
demons, in which the latter were overthrown.
These Greek, Indian, Nordic, and Irish myths of wars between different
orders of gods are not linked togther by such strong similarities as to make
the hypothesis of a common Indo-European archetype irresistible. If there
was one, considerable modifications must have taken place in the different
branches of the tradition. The parallelisms are nevertheless suggestive.
Assaults on heavenThe heavenly gods live in regions that no one can reach from earth. But
according to the mythologies of various peoples they have on occasion had to
take action against attempts to climb to heaven. The Rigveda mentions one
Rauhin
̇
a who was struck down by Indra the thunderbolt-armed as he was
climbing to the sky (2. 12. 12, cf. 1. 103. 2). In another hymn Rauhin
̇
a’s place
is taken by the Dasyus, the dark-skinned Dravidian people who preceded the
Aryans in northern India and were subjected by them:
(^146) Ynglinga saga 1 f., 4 f.; Skáldsk.G57; allusions in Vo ̨luspá 21–4; Vaf þrúðnismál 38 f.;
Lokasenna 34; de Vries (1956), ii. 174 f., 208–14; Lorenz (1984), 329–32. On the nature of the
Vanir cf. de Vries (1956), ii. 203; Meid (1991), 23; M. E. Huld, SIGL 2 (1999), 139–46.
164 3. Gods and Goddesses