Pages:  59-93 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp2625993

The author seeks to demonstrate that some oral traditions of the Algonquian peoples reveal a legacy of the European Bronze Age. According to Ojibwe beliefs, they once lived along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and their migration inland was linked to a command from a higher power to settle where food grew in the water. This command to settle in a place or under circumstances that seem impossible belongs to a specific type of story, well-attested in Greek material. Another Ojibwe belief — that of seven eras into which the history of the people is divided — finds a very close Etruscan parallel. A brief summary of our previous research shows that early Greek and Etruscan beliefs may coincide with Scandinavian ones or originate in Scandinavia. A Passamaquoddy story about a man’s stay in the village of Thunders finds parallels in Herodotus, and the description of Thunders is comparable to what one can see in Swedish petroglyphs. The plot of another Passamaquoddy story closely matches that of the History of Adapa, recorded in Akkadian in the 14th century BCE. Both stories can be shown to derive from Scandinavian imagery and ideas of very early times. The Algonquian peoples, and the Ojibwe in particular, had a unique social institution — the Midewiwin — that ensured the transmission of traditions from generation to generation, which helps us understand how certain ideas, stories, and narratives could have survived for three millennia.

Keywords: Bronze Age Scandinavia, Pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts, the Ojibwe, the Passamaquoddy, Greek mythology, Iranian mythology, Scandinavian mythology, Adapa, Etruscans, rock art

Information about author:

Dmitri Panchenko (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Saint Petersburg State University. Universitetskaya Emb., 7―9, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation; St. Petersburg Branch of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Soyuz Pechatnikov St., 16, Saint Petersburg, 190121, Russian Federation 
E-mail: [email protected]
Scopus Author ID: 56017568900