Is that 437 people on the digest groaning loudly I hear, while 68 are feverishly typing Massive Pan-Solar Monomyths, or rebuttals thereof? (The remaining 30 or 40 are merely saying "Huh? There's more than one Yelmalio?", I'd guess.)
Nano-theory: I think that for aldryami, Vronkal, High King Elf _is_ their (Y)elmal(io) figure. He guards the forest during Winter, and also during the Winter of the Gods; he gets into a lot of scrapes in the process, but Survives. While others sleep or are absent, he protects. Statements that HKE and Yelmalio "share" the same mythic deeds are better read as a proto-equivalence, I think, rather than them being a literal Double Act in the (original) mythology. Furthermore, he's a patriarchal so-and-so, proof positive he's a solar figure. ;-)
This doesn't mean to say that I think Vronkal is explicitly the Sun for elves. I'll pass for the moment on who/what/if anything actually is. That elves "approve" of human worship of Yelm (or perhaps that's of Generic Sun God?) may or may not significant, here.
> What did they do? Somehow, they got Yelm out of
> Hell, or perhaps manipulated the stupid human gods to do it for them?
I don't think Yronkalio's actions got Yelm out of Hell. My guess of the moment is that they don't think anyone's did: it's all just a Natural Process. The Green Mother sleeps, and then reawakens. Winter falls, and is followed by Spring. The Old Sun dies, there is Darkness, until after a time the Sun Seed grows, to provide New Light. Birth, growth, death, and renewal are truly primal forces that _cause_ these "historical events", not as they tend to be for humans, the result of the actions of their own gods in Recent Mythic Time.
Bonus Solar Schism: obviously Vronkal is worshipped mainly by green elves, but he'd also be handy for brown elves who were in need of extra winter protection. As Sandy alleges most (or even all) Gloranthan forests contain at least some evergreens, the majority just delegate this to their friendly neighbourhood vronkai cousins. But I think the local circumstances must surely on occassion fail to deliver enough compliant greens to go around, in which case emblymi might worship Vronkal themselves, in his Winter Guardian aspect, enabling them to stay awake all winter, arm-wrestle trolls (OK, maybe 'kin), and beat their wives for not being demure and respectful enough. (To wit, he grants to brown elf shrines a spell called something like Evergreen, or Watchfulness, or "Mainline lots of caffeine and mildly screw up the local ecology".)
Now, the Schism obviously comes in cases of Elf War. The emblymi have an even more clear and present need for a winter guardian figure, lest out of their growing season they get totally hosed by their rivals, and they have to make this figure _distinct_ from the Vronkal the Enemy (or the Ecological Rival, at least). Particularly since they've just been composting all their "own" vronkai as Horticularly Unsound, and hence Politically Unreliable. So, they end up with a rather High King Elf like cult, but one explicitly separated and differentiated from its forebear. If, and I think it's a bit if, Yelmalio (the Yelmalio Yelmalio, that is, for the confused 30-40) really has significant elvish origins, perhaps it is in such a fragment cult: Vronkal as the Winter Sun, divorced from his Green Elf Cultural God role.
Maybe.
Alex.
- ---
PS. "Scholar"-haters: Hey, I suggested a possible Rune Magic spell, what
_more_ do you want? ;-) I also plead Academic Freedom, Diminished
Responsibility, and for several hundred similar offences to be taken
into consideration, m'lud.
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #299
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