Nodens
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- This article is about the Celtic deity. For the Elder God from the Cthulhu Mythos, see Nodens (Cthulhu Mythos).
Nodens, or Nodons, is a Celtic deity worshipped in ancient Britain.
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[edit] Centres of worship
Altars raised to Nodens, who was revered in Roman Britain, have been recovered in the United Kingdom at Lydney Park, Lydney, Michaelchurch (305 [Mercurio? Nodontus], 306 [Nodentus], 307 [Nudens Mercurius?]), showing that Romans identified him with Mercury. He also had a shrine in Gloucester on the river Severn. Nodens was apparently also equated with Mars, probably as a healer rather than as a warrior, and with Silvanus, the god of hunting.
[edit] Parallels in Celtic mythology
The Irish deity Nuada (and Nechtan) is cognate with Nodens, and the Welsh Nudd is derived from him. It is also thought that Lud and Lludd Llaw Eraint are somehow related to him etymologically. This deity was sometimes worshipped as Bilis, King of the Otherworld, whose gates were said to be in the hollow hills.
[edit] Etymology
Reconstructed in Proto-Celtic as *Noudants, Julius Pokorny derives the name from a Proto-Indo-European root *neu-d- meaning 'acquire, utilise, go fishing' (q.v. [1] [2] [3]), suggesting that Noudants meant ‘grabbing spirit’.
However, another plausible etymology is a Proto-Indo-European compound such as "*Nou-da:nt-s " meaning ‘nourishment-giving (spirit)’ a possible byword for a deification of the notion of ‘wholesomeness’. This would tie in well with Nodens’ associations with water, as well as Nuada’s associations with youth, healing, sunlight, warriors and kingship.
*Noudants may also be derived from Proto-Indo-European *sneudh- "fog" (cf. Avestan snaoda "clouds," Welsh nudd "fog," Gk. nython, in Hesychius "dark, dusky"), suggesting that Nodens was the deification of a weather pattern frequent in the British Isles.
[edit] Tolkien's "The Name Nodens"
J. R. R. Tolkien wrote an appendix to "Report on the excavation of the prehistoric, Roman and post-Roman site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire", contained within the 1932 edition of the "Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London". Some quotes from the article:
- This name occurs in three inscriptions… d(eo) M(arti?) Nodonti… deo Nudente… devo Nodenti… donavit Nodenti… templum [No]dentis… The inscriptions most probably represent, therefore, a Keltic stem *noudont- (*noudent-?), provided with Latin case-endings. Now *noudont- (nom. *noudons>noudos>noudus, gen. noudontes, dat. noudonti or noudontai) is precisely the form required as the older stage of the (Old and Middle) Irish mythological and heroic name Núadu (later Núada),
- But the fact that outside Ireland (where the name figures largely) Nodens-Nuada occurs only in Britain, in the west, in one place, and nowhere else in the Keltic area, never in Gaul, has led to the more likely conjecture that Nodens is a Goidelic god, probably introduced eastward into Britain… It is possible to see a memory of this figure in the medieval Welsh Lludd Llaw Ereint (‘of the Silver Hand’) – the ultimate original of King Lear...
- The stem is extremely common in Germanic… there is in each of the chief older dialects a verb *neutan, in Gothic niutan (and ga-niutan), Old English neotan, Old Saxon niotan, Old High German nio3an (German geniesen), Old Norse nióta. In all these languages, and therefore perhaps in common Germanic, the secondary senses ‘acquire, have the use of’ are the usual ones.
- These senses are none the less probably not original. In Gothic, the earliest recorded of the Germanic group and preserved in a form spoken at a time when Nodens’ temple possibly still had votaries, clear traces remain of an older sense. There ga-niutan means ‘to catch, entrap (as a hunter)’…
- Whether the god was called the ‘snarer’ or the ‘catcher’ or the ‘hunter’ in some sinister sense, or merely as being a lord of venery, mere etymology can hardly say. It is suggestive, however, in this connexion that the most remarkable thing about Nuada was his hand, and that without his hand his power was lost. Even in the dimmed memories of Welsh legend llaw ereint we hear still an echo of the ancient fame of the magic hand of Nodens the Catcher.
[edit] In fiction
Perhaps inspired by the Lydney Park excavations, Arthur Machen's novella The Great God Pan (1890; revised and expanded 1894) has a Roman pillar dedicated to Nodens (or Nodenti in the Latin "original"). The dedication is made "on account of the marriage which he [the dedicator] saw beneath the shade", and there is a strong hint that Nodens is in fact Pan.
In H.P. Lovecraft's novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926), Nodens is portrayed as an "archaic" god served by the nightgaunts. He is also depicted as somewhat benevolent and opposes the frightening Nyarlathotep.
[edit] References
- Ellis, Peter Berresford (1994). Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, (Oxford Paperback Reference), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508961-8.
- MacKillop, James (1998). Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280120-1.
- Wood, Juliette (2002). The Celts: Life, Myth, and Art. Thorsons Publishers. ISBN 0-00-764059-5.
