From totems to gods, and why Alduin went mad

This is an idea I came up with here, which I thought I'd expand on and explain a bit more in a less in-world fashion.

We know from The Dragon War that the Atmorans had a totemistic religion, based around the nine animal totems - fox, hawk, moth, wolf, bear, whale, owl, snake, dragon. We also know that that eventually evolved into the Nordic pantheon - Shor, Kyne, Dibella, Mara, Tsun, Stuhn, Jhunal, Orkey, and Alduin. It could be said that the totems were merely representations of the gods, but I think that's unlikely. Taking real-world totemic practises as a rough guide, I think it more likely that they venerated actual animals for the qualities they saw in them.

So, given that the Atmorans were worshipping animals, not gods, it seems an awfully large coincidence that they should pick those nine in particular, which have such a strong and definite connection to the Nordic pantheon. You can start to get into all sorts of interesting theological debates about cause and effect here - the presence of actual, genuine gods in the mix muddles everything up beautifully - but here's what I think happened.

In those early days, the divine essence of the nine spirits was floating around, fairly formless. We know that the price of the gift-limbs was a certain amount of the spirits' ability to hold on to their own identity, so I submit that, before their worship was properly established, they didn't really have identities. They were ownerless purviews, aspects of power without agency, demiurges, if you will. And so, when the Atmorans started to worship animals - who were, at the time, just animals - some of that faith resonated with the disembodied spirits and they latched on to whichever animal most closely embodied their sphere. I'm fairly certain that the Atmorans will have started out worshipping more than nine animals. It's far too much of a coincidence for me to swallow that they should just happen to pick the right nine animals first time. My theory is that, as nine creatures actually had become imbued with divine power, worship of the others gradually fell off. If praying to wolves gets you actual results and praying to saber-cats doesn't, saber-cats aren't going to get worshipped very long.

Hawks are worshipped for freedom, and as the mortal embodiment of the wind. The symbolism here is obvious - what is more free than flight? Hawks were probably the strongest-flying birds in Atmora, and they can soar on the wind for hours. None better to represent the spirit of the wind and the concept of freedom. Especially if that spirit has a warrior aspect, as hawks are iconic hunters.

Of every creature in the world, what do you most associate with simple beauty? I'd guess that it's either tropical birds - unknown in Skyrim and Atmora - or butterflies. So if a culture is venerating moths and butterflies for their beauty - there not being many other animals with beauty as a defining feature in the tundra - and there happens to be a demiurge of beauty around looking for a form, then it's not surprising that it would adopt them.

While many creatures protect their family - especially their offspring - fiercely, none is better known for it than the wolf. I can't think of any better representation for the concept of protecting your kin than the wolf. And as it would happen, there was a nascent goddess of familial love and protection to piggyback on the concept.

I imagine that mammoths and bears would both have been worshipped for strength, so a spirit of strength looking for a home would have been spoilt for choice. Ultimately, though, the spirit represented a more warlike strength, strength in battle - though was that cause or effect of the ancient Nords being a warlike people? - and bears, as the predatory species, won out as the spiritual icons of strength.

Whales will have been very important to the ancient Nords, especially as Atmora began to freeze. Whales provide meat, oil for light, bones for tools, and hide for shelter. Many real-world cultures have been heavily reliant on whales for survival, and I believe that they came to embody the concept of sanctuary. We know very little of the spirit that would become Stuhn, but what we do know - that he taught the Nords to take prisoners, and that he eventually became Stendarr, god of mercy, fits very well with the idea of sanctuary. If we accept Lady N's idea that Stuhn became the Whalebone Bridge, it fits even more - he is the bridge that leads to the sanctuary of the afterlife. Such a spirit, lacking an independent self, could very well latch onto whales as the embodiment of sanctuary.

Honestly, I'm not sure why owls get associated with wisdom, but several real-world cultures have done the same, so there must be something there. Regardless, it's not like a spirit of wisdom in an animal-worshipping culture has any better options.

Snakes are ambush predators, often, venomous, they slither across the ground, and they're all around creepy. It's no surprise they're frequently cast as the Adversary, the Antagonist, in real-world cultures, and if there's an antagonist spirit looking for a home, where better than the reviled snake?

The fox is an interesting one. I suspect Shor - Lorkhan - probably retained more of his individuality than the other aedra, the whole thing having been his idea. In real-world mythology, foxes quite often take the role of the trickster hero-protagonist, and as Lorkhan/Shor is a trickster hero-protagonist for humanity, it's a simple match.

Dragons are unique here, as the only creature that doesn't exist in the real world, and as the only immortal creature. It's not hard to see that they could come to represent inevitable destruction, things which are greater than men and cannot be withstood. And what is Alduin World-Eater, prime subgradient of Akatosh, if not the concept of eventual inevitable destruction, of power that men can never hope to endure?

Perhaps the Atmorans also worshipped squirrels for their planning, or elk for their endurance, or maybe ox for their stubbornness. But without a spirit of planning, of endurance, of stubbornness to attach itself to those animals, the practise faded out and has been lost to history. Regardless, these nine were worshipped. And through them, the spirits. And we know that, through mythopoeia, belief strengthens and shapes gods in the Elder Scrolls world. So the spirits regained their strength and began to assert their individuality again. The qualities that people once saw in every hawk, they now began to attribute to the goddess Kyne, and through mythopoeia, Kyne had the freedom of every hawk. The strength of every bear gradually coalesced into the god Tsun. The wisdom of every owl combined to be known as Jhunal. And so on.

But there was a problem, and the problem was dragons. Dragons embodied overwhelming power, rule by force, irresistible greatness, and inevitable destruction. And now all those qualities were being concentrated by belief in the being called Alduin. But the eldest dragon was also called Alduin, and mythopoeia is blind. And so all that power, all that all-conquering strength, was attributed to a single dragon, instead of a god. First Dragon Alduin mantled Alduin World-Eater by the collective belief of humanity, and it wasn't his fault. Men believed that the dragon was the god, and the Dream changed to make it so. The belief in an entire species, the belief in all dragons as something mightier than man, something above man, something that can no more be resisted than can a natural disaster, the belief that every single dragon embodies that concept, now concentrated into a single dragon.

Is it any wonder Alduin went mad?