Horizontale und vertikale Achsen in der vorchristlichen skandinavischen Kosmologie

The article analyses the cosmology of Old Norse religion before the arrival of Christianity to Scandinavia and strives to illuminate the image of the world upheld in this context on the basis of the scarce source material that is available. Special attention is given to the relationship between the so-called vertical and horizontal sub-systems included in the spatial model for understanding Scandinavian religion, proposed by E. M. Meletinskij. The article discusses the dichotomies of culture and nature, cosmos and chaos that are often alluded to in the source texts and their interpretation as symbols for order/un-order on the basis of a structuralist analysis