[[buildings]], [[architecture]], [[liminality]] # Doorways - The idea is to create a pathway to the Gods and to the ancestors through the Underworld. - Archaeologists have also noted that these gates or "portals" seem to have had a ritual function and would have been used near grave-mounds. I believe that the purpose of this is to create a replica of the Underworld so that we can reach the point of communication with the afterlife realm. The Gods are the most active in the Underworld, as we see in our lore, and the ancestors reside in Hel with the Norns. We build the gateways so that we can reach out to them. They also act as barriers to the outside world so that you can transition from the mundane into the sacred. #### Germanic - Hel has gateways - The horseheaded gables, known as Hors and Hengist, of northern German architecture , warding the threshold; similar to their descendant, the horse shoe. - Bede alludes to something with trees tied together that the heathens erected at their holy days. These are probably the same things that Ibn Fadlan describes as dooways, and that are depicted on the bottom right of one of these Gotland Stones. - I like the thought on Delling's door. I had assumed it was a kenning for the beginning of the day, but taken literally it could very well be an actual door way. Side question, does anyone know about the significance of the standing doorways in the Shinto faith? Many miles and years removed but could there be a correlation, since both systems have similar roots? -> those doorways have a similar connotation. They are the passageways to realms of Kami, which on earth is the shrine or temple. > Rusila 17: "At the time of the evening prayer on Friday they brought the slave-girl to a thing that they had constructed, like a door-frame. She placed her feet on the hands of the men and was raised above that door-frame. She said something and they brought her down. Then they lifted her up a second time and she did what she had done the first time. They brought her down and then lifted her up a third time and she did what she had done on the first two occasions. They next handed her a hen. She cut off its head and threw it away. They took the hen and threw it on board the ship." > Havamal 160: "For the fifteenth I know, what the dwarf Thjodreyrir (Folk-Burier) sang before Delling's Door: power to the Aesir! Glory to the Alfar! Wisdom to Hroptatyr (Odin)!" (Note that Delling is the Elf of the Dawn and thus the door would be situated in the east where he welcomes his son, Dagr). > Vegtamskvida 8: "Forth rode Odin - > the ground rattled - > until he came > to Hel's high hall. > Then rode Ygg > to the eastern gate, > where he knew there was > a Völva's grave." > Solarljod 39: "I saw the sun, true star of day, sink in its roaring home; but I heard Hel's grated doors heavily creaking on the other side." > Gylfaginning 49: "Then Hermod rode on until he came to the Helgrindar (Hel-gates). Then he dismounted from the horse and tightened its girth, mounted and spurred it on." #### Finno-Ugric - The Udmurts [a Finno-Ugric people from Udmurtia, Russia] had doorways nexts to totems.  ## Biblio https://www.indo-european-connection.com/words/door