Strong language you say? Strong ignorance, I say, to turn a blind eye to wisdom! Take that eye and hurl it into the Well instead! It's hard to keep from laughing at those whose mouths becry what the eye will not behold, and weep for what is lost and yet right before them! I shall not be meek in the face of willful ignorance, but will stand on the ground of my substantial knowledge and call out the true fools. No apologies for a brag grounded in deed.
Scoff at one of Sweden's greatest poets, who took that poet-mind (and keep in mind, that poet-mind was the pinnacle of our heathen wisdoms), and looked at the ancestral lore to see what patterns emerged? This was no shallow and baseless imposition, but an organic emergence over a decade of careful study of the primary sources!
If you are relying on Snorri alone, with little, pathetic snippets of the Poetic Edda, you, my friend, are an impoverished heathen. You have no clue and no idea how far and deep your lore really extends. It is not simply the "imagination" of some extravagant 19th century scholar, but solidly checks out when one truly reviews the lore. There are always small details to argue over in any field, but looked at broadly, as well as remarkably in the details, Rydberg's map, as a whole, checks out.
But "checks out" is a superficial evaluation. Fills out, broadens out, deepens : these are better words. A close study of Rydberg will fill your knowledge of the lore in a way no other study will. More importantly, this will not be vain, academic, dry, separative, will-to-keep-fragmented knowledge, but deeply interconnecting, fibrous knowledge, knowledge that will vibrate to the core of your soul and help you resonate to the wendings in the wind of the Tree itself. Here lies wisdom.
If you would refuse a quaff from Mimir's Horn because it lies in Rydberg's hands, be that flagrant fool you are, and cast yourself off into your parochial irrelevancies! Behold my command of lore, and ponder whether I have the resources to evaluate the claims of his investigations. I have done the homework, and the back-checking, and see the interconnection of myths and figures to whom you remain blind because you stand staring at the gaps between names, clueless to the polynymy that bridges the functional interstrewnness of variations! There is a composite picture herein, sir, if you would look! With mirth and gratitude, I will guide the eye to vistas, but I shan't waste a moment arguing with fools. I lay down the gauntlet and say, Drink, or go about your way, beggar.
