“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” -Henry David Thoreau
In Part 1, I covered the left most red box (see below). In this part, I will speculate on the meaning and location of the right most red box or “Drool” stream. Now that I have an area identified, I will look to investigate it further for any additional significances.
See below for a cropped in version of the above map picture with an edited version showing the focal point of my interest.
In the image on the right, the red highlighted area is the Volkhov River. This river connects Lake Ladoga (The Dog), the largest lake in Europe to Lake Ilmen. I believe the Volkhov river may represent a “Drool” stream as portrayed in the pictures above. In surmising this, I set off to find something of significance. Something that confirms my hunch is pointed in the right direction. That something is highlighted in the below map picture:
In tracing the Volkhov river south. I was looking for something interesting along the rivers route. The first (only) interesting object or geographical land feature along the route of the Volkhov river was Lake Ilmen. Before I dive into Ilmen Lake, I wanted to introduce a mythological concept called Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil is a mythical layout or map of the world. It suppositions things like the home of the Gods who are assumed to be the Rulers of the Universe and the purported location of Hell. This Yggdrasil concept IS the bigger picture for me as I believe it is a map. A map not of fantastically depicted places, but a map of real life places with fantastical names and stories attached to them. Essentially, I am looking to “See what they did there” with this concept and to try and find the real life places being depicted. To try and find “Hell” or the “Home of the Gods” as if they are located here on Earth. In reading the myth excerpt below, please pay special attention to the “well” references:
“Yggdrasil is the biggest and best of all trees, that its branches extend out over all of the world and reach out over the sky. Three of the roots of the tree support it, and these three roots also extend extremely far: one “is among the Æsir, the second among the frost jötnar, and the third over Niflheim. The root over Niflheim is gnawed at by the wyrm Níðhöggr, and beneath this root is the spring Hvergelmir. Beneath the root that reaches the frost jötnar is the well Mímisbrunnr, “which has wisdom and intelligence contained in it, and the master of the well is called Mimir“. Just-As-High provides details regarding Mímisbrunnr and then describes that the third root of the well “extends to heaven” and that beneath the root is the “very holy” well Urðarbrunnr. At Urðarbrunnr the gods hold their court, and every day the Æsir ride to Urðarbrunnr up over the bridge Bifröst.”
So here we have three Mythological “wells” depicted; Hvergelmir, Mimisbrunnr and Uroarbrunnr. Each with a purported specialty like “wisdom and intelligence” for Mimisbrunnr or is “very holy” like Uroarbrunnr. All in all, these places are received by the reader as very special\important places in the context of the universe. They play a pretty big role in the layout of the World. So much so, that if you can find one, you should be able to reverse engineer the others. In saying that, I believe Lake Ilmen to possibly be either Hvergelmir Well or Uroarbrunnr Well. I conveniently left out Mimisbrunnr because I believe I have found that “well” as a part of my not yet posted Aquarius series.
Uh… why is Lake Ilmen a “well” again?
I believe that Lake Ilmen could represent one of these mythical “wells” primarily due to the below\above depiction of FSG. I believe the drool stream discussed in this post and represented in this rendering, drools\streams into a “well”. I believe the “well” is the area referenced below:
I am interpreting the above highlighted area as a land based area of water and not the “door” it seemingly looks to depict. The area right below the drool stream or the Volkhov river. And from above, if we trace down the Volkhov river, we run right into Ilmen lake. Now, if you look close enough, you can see little swirls or ripple like textures within that representation. I again believe this signifies water. Now to look at this from a different vantage point, picture yourself pushing that door and the surrounding “white” area over, as if it were standing up. It would now look like round watery area surrounding by a “white” area on the ground. Or a lake like area surrounded by snow. “Well” we are dissecting land features in Upper Finland\Russia, where snow is aplenty and the FSG land image is featured. I think I have the right location but do I have the right water based “well” identified?
So why was it depicted as a Door?
This is very, very interesting to me as what are Doors used for? To separate spaces or rooms. To allow entrance to a different place from where one is coming. Overall, just a vehicle to allow or disallow the entering or leaving of something. To keep someone out or to allow someones in. My question is, if this was indeed an intentional depiction of a door, where does it open to? Is there a “doorway” in any sense of the word, here?? That’s what I want to find. In finishing as this is where my research ends for now, I have one last little “I see what you did there” thing that I noticed. I noticed it because of the hard time I had reading “Ilmen” Lake. I couldn’t tell if it was two “LL’s” an “i and an L” or what. The one thing I did find interesting after I sorted out that first world problem, was how it truly looked like two “LL’s”. See below. And if you interpreted them as “LL’s” with a little word play (flipping the m upside down and rearranging some letters) I came up with “Well-n” or “n-Well”. In particular, the “n-Well” arrangement had my attention as once its put together and sounded out loud, it reads like “nwell” and sounds like “in well”. Dum dum dummm:
I believe it could be one of these three mythological “wells” that are integral to the “supposed” but real, makeup of the World. Still more research here to be conducted but I am out. I will look to start wrapping up this Fenrir\Surma\Garm (FSG) series and begin working on the Aquarius series. You DON’T want to miss that…so be “well” and check back often.
Last chapter in the Fenrir\Surma\Garm series here