CONCLUSIONS
Long ago Georges Dumezil demonstrated that in Indo-European mythology the dual leadership of the first, divine function was a widespread phenomenon from India to Rome and Scandinavia (Dumezil [1948] 1988).
One might envisage that a ritual/political leader or king, supported by a war leader in periods of warfare, constituted local political leadership. The divine twin leadership would thus represent a higher level of leadership, for a whole chiefdom or kingdom, whereas the ritual leader and warrior chief would be the normal model at community levels. The Greek evidence supports this where in Mycenaean times the king was named wanax (“sovereign”), whereas the war leader was named lavagetas (“leader of the people”), and was subordinate to him. This relationship could often be one of foster brothers, as in the case of Achilles and Patrocles. Furthermore, in the catalogue of ships in the Iliad, twin leaders often represent the participating kingdoms. The Mycenaean and Scandinavian evidence suggests that dual kingship was common throughout Bronze Age Europe. The Spartan model of two equal kings would thus represent an old Bronze Age heritage that the Dorians brought into their new territories from the Balkans. Recently, based on textual evidence, Asko Parpola (2005) reassessed the historical role of the Asvins, or the Nasatyas as they are often named. He reaches conclusions similar to those presented in this contribution: that they were among the most important gods in the Bronze Age (cf. the section “The Asvins as the deified chariot team” in Parpola 2005), and that their dual roles imply dual leadership or kingship as a dominant principle during the Bronze Age (the section “The Asvins and dual kingship”). He further adds new important information about their role in burial rituals, including the chariot race, as seen on many Scandinavian rock art scenes, most explicitly in the Kivik burial. Thus, an archaeologist working with material culture and seeking textual support has come to conclusions virtually identical to those reached quite independently by a textual scholar seeking the support of material culture.The beginning of this dual leadership, instituted in heaven, is thus represented by the Leubingen burial and in the many twin depositions that followed, of which the Nebra hoard is the most prominent. Its origin may be found in the rare, but recurring, twin male burials of the third millennium BCE. From 2000 BCE onwards, it came to a wedding between old Indo-European religion and new astronomical knowledge from the Near East, which also characterized other areas of Bronze Age society, and which lends it a unique historical character. Shortly thereafter, steppe societies from the Urals to the Black Sea introduced a new form of chariot-based warfare and the concomitant institution of aristocratic military leadership supported by the chariot-driving Divine Twins (Kristiansen & Larsson 2005: ch. 5.2). These new institutions spread as a package through conquest and migrations to India in the east and to central Europe and the Aegean in the west, and from there to Scandinavia. The Divine Twins were the new Bronze Age gods with no clear antecedents in the late Proto-Indo-European-speaking societies of the third millennium BCE. They belong to a separate stage of the more complex and mature Indo-European-speaking societies of the Bronze Age in the second millennium BCE, which were distinctly different from later Indo-European- speaking Iron Age societies, when regional differentiation became more pronounced, chariot warfare came to an end and the Divine Twins lost their dominant position.
Thus, in this chapter, I have tried to place the study of the Divine Twins - as a central religious and political phenomenon of Bronze Age Eurasia - into the context of the historical changes in the study of religion by archaeologists. The concepts discussed here have been repeatedly discovered and discussed during the last century and a half, but only come to the fore as the paradigms move away from positivistic data-oriented studies, giving way to an interdisciplinary environment in which interpretation is allowed more leeway.
It is inevitable that such new interpretations inspire doubt. However, the rediscovery of the phenomenon and the complementary character of the archaeological and textual evidence suggest that the argument carries historical weight.NOTES
1. Late in life, Ake Ohlmarks (1979) summarized his views in a grand synthesis on the development of prehistoric religion in Scandinavia, based on a combination of Norse mythology and archaeology. The book was printed in 2000 numbered copies, and provides interesting reading, despite some rather bold interpretations of the archaeological evidence.
2. These are small round bronzes ca. 5 cm across, sewn into clothing.
SUGGESTED READING
Davidson, H. R. E. 1982. Scandinavian Mythology: Library of the World’s Myths and Legends. London.
Davidson, H. R. E. 1988. Myth and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions. Manchester.
Kaliff, A. 2007. Fire, Water, Heaven and Earth: Ritual Practice and Cosmology in Ancient Scandinavia: An Indo-European Perspective. Stockholm.
Kristiansen, K. 2010. “The Nebra Find and Early Indo-European Religion”. In Der Griff nach den Sternen. Wie Europas Eliten zu Macht und Reichtum kamen, 2 vols (Internationales Symposium in Halle (Saale), 16-21 February 2005. Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale), Band 5), H. Meller & F. Bertemes (eds), 431-7. Halle (Salle).
Kristiansen, K. 2010. “Rock Art and Religion: The Sun Journey in Indo-European Mythology and Bronze Age Rock Art”. In Representations and Communications: Creating an Archaeological Matrix of Late Prehistoric Rock Art, Ä. Frcdell, K. Kristiansen & F. Criado Boado (eds), 93-115. Oxford.
Kristiansen, K. & T. Larsson 2005. The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmission and Transformations. Cambridge. (See esp. ch. 6, “The Cosmological Structure of Bronze Age Society”, 252- 319.)