Honey and Poison

Jonas Wellendorf

doi:10.33356/temenos.83425

Abstract

The Ǫgvaldsnes episode from Oddr munkr’s Óláfs saga Tryggavasonar and Acallam na Senórach, two roughly contemporary and somewhat similar texts, show how different strategies have been employed to reframe the pagan past and neutralise the poison of this material that worried early doctors of the church such as St Basil. The two texts propose different answers to Alcuin’s oft-cited question about the relationship between Christianity and pagan traditions. Both solutions entail depriving the former divinities of their numinous powers, but each strategy also comes at a price. The Old Norse text opts for demonisation and exclusion while the Irish text strives for domestication and subordination. It is not claimed that these two texts are representative of the ways in which the Old Norse and Irish traditions at large handled this question. Rather, the choices of these strategies are probably dictated by the particular historical circumstances of each author, their respective aims, and the literary circuit to which they belonged. Some parallels with the two main texts and alternative ways of reframing the pagan past are also briefly discussed.

Highlights

The Ǫgvaldsnes episode from Oddr munkr’s Óláfs saga Tryggavasonar and Acallam na Senórach, two roughly contemporary and somewhat similar texts, show how different strategies have been employed to reframe the pagan past and neutralise the poison of this material that worried early doctors of the church such as St Basil
The church father Tertullian had a special fondness for this rhetorical device and employs it no less than twenty-six times in his writings, most famously when he wrote: ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem, what has the academy to do with the church, what have the heretics to do with the Christians?’6 The examples given all contrast pagan and Christian traditions, and the common stance of Paul, Tertullian, and Alcuin is clearly that the two are mutually exclusive and that pagan tradition is no match for Christianity
Towards the end of the text it is hinted that Patrick will eventually close the passages between the two worlds so that the supernatural beings will be confined inside the hills and rocks of Ireland (Dooley and Roe 1999, 210; Stokes 1900, 210)