The Vedic god Agni, which is invoked through the sacrificial fire, brings the gods from their abodes to men who invoke the refulgent Agni. He makes accessible, other gods to man. It suggests a parallel of Agni with Heimdall. Heimdall guards the Bifrost Bridge leading upto the gates of Asgard, the abode of gods. Like the Roman god Janus, Heimdall is also associated with everything in the beginning and everything in the end as well, a metaphor for the old and the new, with metempsychosis hinted. Phonetically, Janus cognates with Agni, which alludes to a common origin.

1) Agni purvabhi rishibhiringyo nutanairut| Sa Devam eha vaxate| RV 1.1.2
Devo devebhira gamat| RV 1.1.5

Agni was present to bless the old as well the new seers. With Agni, to the gods, goes the offerings of the invoker who gives those oblations.

Agni is the earthly sacrificial fire, and Shri Aurobindo derives the "undeflectable seeing of the will of truth which knows its way and communicates the truth in whom it is awake" that is the self from which Agni takes the oblations(truth) to the gods(self, for good). The Upanishads and the Brahmanas are of the essence that the sacrificial offering is the Self(truth), to the offerer self(truth), by the offerer truth(self). Now that is so clearly and thoughtfully said by Har in the poem Havamal:Words of Odin.

Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows
For nine long nights,
Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odhinn,
Offered, myself to myself
The wisest know not from whence spring
The roots of that ancient rood.

The word 'hem' in 'Hem-Kund'(fire's altar) again cognates with Heimdall. But this word is also used to refer to the orb of the sun in the Hindu tradition. Heimdall's name translates as "one who shines above the world", and this heim means "realm" in Norsk.

2) Dooredrisham grihapatim atharyarm| RV 7.01.1
Fire that sees afar, the flaming keeper of the self.

The keeper of the house(selfsame universe) is Agni. Heimdall is also the keeper of the house, as well as the cosmos, in the Norse Pantheon. This verse from the Rig Veda has been mentioned most prominently, in the commentary in Vrihadaranayeka Upanishad, by the seer Yajna Valkeya.

3) Vi ye te Agne bhejire aneikam martei narah pitryasa purutra |
uto na ebhi sumane ihasya|| RV 7:01.09

Agni, many a forefathers of ours', those who have died, who have, in many a distant lands, spread thy flame and name,- Be gracious to us here as thee grace them in thy right-minded abide.

In many lands? Over what distances?

It is not suspect that agni was the Athar for the Iranian people and it was also a leading god of pre-bronze age Skandinavia, but much of the Skandinavian mythology gives account of only 1100 years, from 50 BCE to 1084 AD, from King Yngve-Frey to Harald Sven "the sacrificer". Although King Sven of Sweden lived as the King for a very short period before the Judeo-Christian repression of what remained of the great past of Skandinavia in Sigtuna. It is indeed, a fallacy, all that the present establishment in the European countries is trying, in re-writing a christian history for Europe whereas the historical truth is otherwise. The traces of ritual sacrifices to the fire, some of which were preserved in blots/swamps sacrifices, provide a parallel to the Indo-Iranian sacrificial fire.

"The Dis Ting sacrifices of 1084 was then the last major official pagan gathering of the Scandinavian kingdoms, and the end of an 1100 year old religious tradition. In the new laws of the Christian kings we can read the final edict of the Asatru: The law of the Older Bjarkøy, chapter 69, says: "If a man sacrifices to the pagan gods or divine fortune or lend his house to such activities, he is an outlaw." And in the old Eidsivating law: "No man shall keep in his house the images of pagan gods, perform offerings of food or tokens to them or do any ritual that are part of the old beliefs." The punishments were either death or being banned from society, which often amounted to the same thing. That could have been the end of the story, but remains of the pagan belief lived on among the peoples of Scandinavia, greatly aided in later years by the chroniclers of the sagas." - Nordic History-Creation Myth: By Stein Jarving for Eutopia Forlagt, Norway.

Just as we find in Ferdowsi's Shahnema the saga of the Pars sub-race of our greater Aryan volk, the Sagas in the north helped in preserving the memory of gods and the religion of the ancestors. And as Mr. Jarving continues,

"And in our time the Asatru belief have again become an official religion on Iceland, and some people still perform ancient fertility rites in the Nordic lands to venerate the goddess. Other aspects of the old religion have survived as folklore and the ancient names of Thor, Freya and other gods are honored as names given to children as well as to North Sea oil installations. As for the giant Jotnir, who knows when they will awaken again."

And just how sincere is the "Indian scholarship" or even the "modern Indologist crowd", when it comes to their respective denkrichtungen, which is their basic underlying motivation, rather than the acceptance of the simple truths in incremental until we arrive at a place or time which makes a lot more sense and that which helps us to actually understand our unique life-view itself, in a better and positive way than it has been done before, and truthfully honest as well.

4) Yam ashve nityam upayati yajnam prajavantam svapatyam keayam nah |
svajanmane sheshase vavridhanam || RV 7:01.12

This is the eternal sacrifice to which there comes the Rider of the Horse, to our house full of progeny and good off spring, our house increasing with the self-born Son.

Punah patibhyo jayam da agne prajaya saha||RV 10:85.38
Give the wife, Agni, to the husband and also give her progeny.

Hearth fire of the poem Rigstula is the place, where Heimdall is seated by the hosts Ai & Edda, who later have a child. Heimdall is credited with the birth of the son. Heimdall is the blazing, shining, fierce will of truth, which brings life through the self-the first born of the blazing heat of pure desire & will. The second verse is from the famous Marriage Sukta (Rig Ved Samhita 10, Sukta 85). Considering its sacrosanct essence, Agni-the representative desire of the self, it has willed life. Perhaps we overlook too easily, sometimes, this fire ritual, the tying of nuptial bonds, monitored and facilitated by the Havan-Kund in marital rites. But here happens to be the most profound and real sense of this truth, conceived by our ancestors many times removed. Fire remains the greatest god who is local to the worldly realm of man-Midgard. And it is Heimdall-the immortal among the mortals, who takes up his abode within our selves to meet the divine and guards us from all evil to be one with our gods in Asgard. The fire on this earth is also the realisation in man of the divinity and the sensual perception of all life itself. It is light itself, which is finally brought in its refulgent wholeness by the primal desire and the heat of tapas which sets the proto-microcosmic 'tatva', and brings about the birth of the 'father'-to whom primogeniture can be attributed, not of this self, but of all that is alive with life in this realm of existence.

The local fire still persists, now with an ethical dimension and as a source of all light and fair awareness. It is the son of Reta(Retajata RV 1:36.19), Satya, therefore it cannot be anything less than all that there is. The warmth of life, the light keeps shining throughout our lives, the light which shines above us is the very Atman. Its not mere fire or the blower of the Gjallhorn, it encompasses all known worlds and is spread over into many places, he raises the sun up in the sky, he is the seed of all life, he is the lord of earth, king of oceans and at the same time he is born in the oceans, oceans are his mothers-the nine daughters of Aegir. He is the mediator of mortals with gods.He burns corpses and removes all stains from them, it does not pollute him even as he burns them and comes in contact with the dead corpses, such is the transcendental nature of Heimdall. He can destroy evil with the sacrifice, he can destroy by sacrifice the demons, the giants. He destroys Loki and he will come back again because he is born again and yet again, because Agni is Dvijanmana. The son of Reta destroys at the Ragnarok, the prime evil even as he sacrifices himself in the noble battle for redeeming purity and establishing Reta after the chaos. And thus Balder is born again.

Some scholars have remarked that Heimdall could very well have been a Vane. Since Agni is, other than being all that he has been talked about already, also the source of life, the will in I, desire to life, bringing about the primal germ, it has a character of fertility god too. It perhaps combines all the attributes of Aryan gods and comes to man's earthly realm as the god in whom man can sense that which is living in himself through the heat of life vigour-the breath (Prana). Talking about just one attribute, i.e., fertility, we will reduce the existential world conception of the ancients to a mere fable, whereas the truth of the evidence at hand speaks a lot more about Heimdall. The following hymn is poignant in suggesting that Agni's roles on earth and beyond are known to the poet.

vidmµ te agne tredhµ trayµõi vidmµ te dhµma v¡bhçtà purutrµ |
vidmµ te nµma paramáü g£hà yád vidmµ tám £tsaü yáta àjagántha ||RV 10:45.2

We know your three powers in three forms, O Agni,
your forms diversified in many places.
We know the supreme name you have in secret.
We know the source from which you have proceeded.

The usual "Indian scholarship" will reckon that the name supreme (Nama Paramam) can be known through special knowledge and priest craft only. But on the other hand, one might say that it expresses the sheer transcendental nature of the divine and its inherent inaccessibility, a potent religious hypocrisy. But if we know that there is a beyond, and since we know it, it is not a beyond yet, it is a part if this realm itself, in our knowledge.

This is the boldness of the Indo-European mind, which liberates and elevates without desecrating or demeaning, which informs without profaning, by the very assertion that its name is secret and yet we know it.

" It declares that his name is veiled, and secret, but declares nevertheless that we know it, that we know that his name is not noised abroad, is not this or that; that it is not to be expressed in any known name, because it is the most internal and hidden element of any name and may be concealed in any name. It is not a special name that nobody knows or that only specialists may discover. It is universal and also ineffable: What shall I utter, what my mind envisages?" - The Vedic Experience

h¡raõyadantaü ÷£civarõam àrµt kù‚tràd apa÷yam µyudhà m¡mànam |
dadàn¢ asmà amÆtaü vipÆkvat k¡m mµm anindrµþ kçõavann anukthµþ || RV 5:2.3

I saw him from afar gold-toothed, bright-coloured, hurling his weapons from his home,
When did I give him pure Amrta, how can the Indraless, the hymnless harm me?

'Heim' in Heimdall means gold itself, if we are to refer to its Sanskrit implication. Therefore we are offered an etymologycal puzzle to unravel its actual meaning. That is another subject altogether, open to a wholesome debate in its own spirit.

Gullentani is the closest friend of the Arya among the gods. The enemy of the Arya is ignorance and darkness therefore it is befitting for this god to accomplish the role of slayer of the Giant Loki. Loki has not taken Amrita-the drink of eternal life and is therefore bound to die. Since it is the very untruth, the giant Loki which represents the subconscious is without any sense at all, and it is also lacking in meaningful speech or real speech which conveys to the listener the truth in the word spoken. This is about the highest respect which the Norse people have given over the years to truthfulness and the Vedic Aryan ethical world conception, of which the Rik Ved is the primal and supreme Sittengeschichte. There can be no equal in the Indo-European world, not even the philosophical utterings of Greek metaphysics' speculators of the pre-christian era. Even West's Christianity fails miserably before this most Ancient Aryan ethical model, which is taken to its highest point by the very simple and yet ever-so-coherent Upanishads.

The noble wisdom of Aryan gods and their vast codex opens vistas which can lead us still higher into greater sense of the reality and the truth-tad ekam(that one).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Creation:

The poem Voluspa in the Edda and the Rig Vedic Nasidya Sukta (10:129) have most likely a common origin. Since, in both the cases, translations come out with the same meaning in English and express the highest doubt in simple honesty, as is typical of IE philosophical traditions.

From Voluspa-The Song of The Sybil

When Ymir lived long ago
Was no sand or sea, no surging waves.
Nowhere was there earth nor heaven above.
But a grinning gap and grass nowhere.

Verses from the Rig Veda Samhita 10:129

At first was neither Being nor Nonbeing.
There was not air nor yet sky beyond.
What was wrapping? Where? In whose protection?
Was Water there, unfathomable deep?
Darkness was there, all wrapped around by darkness,
and all was Water indiscriminate, Then
that which was hidden by Void, that One, emerging,
stirring, through power of Ardor, came to be.

RV 10:32.7

Kim svid vanem, ka asa vriksa esa yato dyauve prithiva nishnatakshrih|
Samtasthene ajare etaoti aheni porvarashaso jaranta||

What was the tree, what wood, in sooth, produced it, from which they fashioned forth the Earth and Heaven?
These Twain stand fast and wax not old for ever: these have sung praise to many a day and morning.

This has an almost similar parallel in the Ygdrassill in the Skandinavian pantheon, a world-tree which grew into the universe.
RV 10:121.1

Hiranyagarbha or the golden womb in the Prajapati Sukta in Rig Vedic Samhita 10 is another creationist paradigm. The Skandinavian equivalent is the 'golden beginning' after the Ragnarok.

Many more hymns from the Veda suggest, not only a common origin, but a unity of the cosmology in the two philosophies. What hasn't been mentioned here are the Indra-Thor, Varuna/Vishnu-Odin, and Asvins-Frey/Njord and Sarasvati-Freya to name a few parallels.

We shall find out about this and all other elements and their symbols in this ancestral world conception.

Other Points:

1) Some scholars such as Morten Backstrom, of Uppsala Univ. Sweden, point at the gradual merging of two or more Vedic gods into the Brahmanas as one powerful deity. Vishnu is one such god. And he had garnered the stature of a great preserver godhead by merging with, I believe, Mithra/Varuna and Vayu of the Veda. That itself provides the basis, that society had changed from a warrior shamanism, used in a generic context, to a priestly ritualism from the Early Rig vedic period.

2) The pattern of being also undergoes a transformation since the IE warrior people are now in a comparatively warmer climate as against the IE people of North who settled in a far colder region and had to contend with a struggle against all kinds of hostile forces ranging from primordial settlers and their beliefs to the new geographical setting of a different homeland.