Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions

Abstract

This volume begins with an introduction by Emily Lyle, in which she explores the relationship between the two concepts of “myth” and “history” and then goes on to present a comparison of the fight of Lug and Balor in the medieval Irish text Cath Maige Tuired, the combat between Thor and the giant Geirrod as described in the Snorra-Edda, and a broad range of other comparative material. This comparison leads her to propose a “cosmological approach” that aims to study the archaic mythical elements that, she emphasizes, underlie the medieval Christian literature while remaining aware of the literary and Christian character of the sources as they have come down to us.Following this introduction, the volume is organized into two parts under the headings “Celtic Tradition” and “Scandinavian Tradition.” The first part, “Celtic Tradition,” deals exclusively with medieval texts from Ireland and is given additional unity by the recurrent focus of its contributions on Cath Maige Tuired. Cath Maige Tuired, or “The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired,” is one of two main sources for an idea that has become widely held in studies of “Celtic” mythology: that the Fomoiri of medieval Irish literature represent demonic beings of darkness that stand in contrast to the Túatha Dé Danann as the old gods of light. In his study of the textual evidence for “The Nature of the Fomoiri: The Dark Other in the Medieval Irish Imagination,” John Carey shows that this assumed contrast is considerably less marked than it has been widely held, and that the relationship between Fomoiri and Túatha Dé Danann is a complex and ambiguous one. From a different perspective, this questioning of a fundamental opposition between Fomoiri and Túatha Dé Danann is continued in the contribution by Elizabeth A. Gray, which studies the relationship between “Tuatha Dé and Fomoiri in Cath Maige Tuired.” Gray shows the complexity of this relationship as characterized not only by hostility, but also by close kinship ties, attempts at establishing alliances, and a political striving to restore peace. Ina Tuomala then takes up a concept from postcolonial theory and proposes “Exploring Cath Maige Tuired through the Concept of Hybridity,” reading it as a literary construction of cultural identities in the specific sociopolitical context of late Viking Age Ireland: she suggests that the text discusses the consequences of the destabilization of a fixed Irish identity through the emergence of hybrid characters who hold powerful positions in society. Joseph Falaky Nagy pursues “How Time Flies in the Cath Maige Tuired,” presenting an interpretation of this text as concerned primarily with the question of what the future of the Túatha Dé Danann will look like after the battle: whether they will remain outside of time and death, or embrace them. For while medieval Irish literature generally presents the Túatha Dé, and the Dagda in particular, as free of the limits of time and mortality, the rise of Lug as their leader can be read as marking a concomitant rise of an irreversible flow of time. Alexandra Bergholm discusses “The Idols of the Pagan Irish in the Medieval Literary Imagination,” focusing on the most prominent example of such an idol: Crom Cróich of Mag Slécht, whose destruction medieval Irish literature presents as one of the great achievements of St. Patrick. Drawing on a broad range of Irish, biblical, and patristic sources, she compellingly shows the accounts of Crom Cróich as composed of ecclesiastical topoi that do not reflect a pre-Christian cult, but rather a learned Christian construction of the alterity of the pre-Christian period. Kevin Murray approaches “Myth as a Historical Resource” and uses “The Case of Orgain Denna Ríg (The Destruction of Dinn Ríg)” to show how medieval Irish literature employed fictional and mythological narratives to formulate ideas about the structure of society and to voice political concerns: in this literature, to take recourse to characters of the past was an important way not only to connect to this past, but also to communicate opinions, make claims, and formulate identities. The last chapter dedicated to Irish material again pursues the connection between politics and literature, but it does so through an example taken from Irish hagiography: Ksenia Kudenko analyses “Hagiography as Political Documentation” on “The Case of Betha Beraigh (The Life of St Berach).” In her contribution, Kudenko analyzes this twelfth-century saint's Life as a literary means to claim land, functioning practically as a charter, and to forge political alliances for the church of St. Berach, whereas the Church reform that was happening during the time when the Life was written plays remarkably little role in the text.The second part of the volume is dedicated to “Scandinavian Tradition.” Karen Bek-Pedersen starts this section of the book with a discussion of “Baldr's Achilles’ Heel? About the Scandinavian Three-God B-Bracteates,” which are gold medals from the Migration Period that show arguably mythological representations. Discussing the proposition of Karl Hauck that a certain group of these medals should be interpreted as representing the myth of Baldr's death, Bek-Pedersen points out important problems in Hauck's approach that lead her to discard his interpretation and to develop a new one based on medieval iconography, the iconography of Roman coins, Old Norse narrative traditions, and the internal logic of the representations. Joshua Rood then continues the focus on material culture and iconography by discussing “The Cult of Óðinn in the Early Scandinavian Warrior Aristocracy” with a focus on arguably mythological depictions of the Migration and Vendel periods, but also place-names and sparse early written material. His survey aims to support the argument that central traits of the cult of Óðinn should be correlated with the rise of a milieu of warrior aristocrats in Scandinavia during the centuries leading up to and including the early Viking Age. Morten Warmind studies “Myth to History in Saxo”: comparing the broad lines of two narrative complexes found both in Saxo and in other Nordic sources, especially Snorri's works, he concludes that Saxo and Snorri knew much the same mythological material, and that Saxo in comparison to Snorri should not categorically be seen as an inferior source for pre-Christian myths. Emily Lyle continues the focus on Saxo and, at the same time, returns to the theme of Balder, by analyzing “The Scylding Dynasty in Saxo and Beowulf as Disguised Theogony”: she presents a comparative study of the genealogy of the Scylding dynasty, which proposes to see this genealogy in the light of a reconstructed Indo-European theogony whose sequence of generations includes both Balder (and his death) and the mortal who avenges Balder's killing. James Parkhouse then returns from the broad vistas of an Indo-European perspective to a very closely text-focused approach, tackling “Loki the Slandered God?” by discussing “Selective Omission of Skaldic Citations in Snorri Sturluson's Edda.” Parkhouse analyzes the lists of kennings that Snorri gives for central mythological figures, showing that Snorri's selection for Loki is consciously tendentious and contributed to his demonization. Along the way, he also presents impressive and thought-provoking illustrations for how the preconceptions created by Snorri have shaped scholarly interpretations of the available evidence for the existence or non-existence of cults not only of Loki, but also of other major mythological figures. The volume then concludes with a contribution by Jonas Wellendorf on “Ymir, Baldr, and the Grand Narrative Arc of Mythological History.” Using a compelling combination of close reading and typological comparisons, he challenges the dominant assumption that the cosmogonic killing of Ymir should be viewed as a crime that foreshadows the later killing of Baldr and ultimately leads to the destruction of the world that had been created through this crime. Instead, Wellendorf makes a very strong case that the killing of Ymir was seen as a positive, creative act, and that the death of Balder had nothing to do with it and, rather, illustrated the inevitability of fate.As with any book, there are, of course, queries one could raise. For example, one could wonder why its first part, and indeed the title of the book as a whole, refer to “Celtic tradition” when all the examples treated there are specifically Irish; whether the forms of names of medieval mythological figures that are used in the different contributions should have been standardized; or whether the Dumézilian ‘three functions’ really have survived the compelling and devastating critique by Bernfried Schlerath (in Kratylos 40:1–48, 1995; 41:1–67, 1996). But these queries play no central role for the arguments proposed, and in this volume Lyle has succeeded in bringing together a remarkably balanced and coherent collection of essays that again and again make striking observations and major contributions to current discussions. The coherence of the collection is especially worth highlighting. Just as a focus on Cath Maige Tuired forms a leitmotif of most of the Celtic section, the Scandinavian part of the book is tightly woven together by the way how different contributions from different angles throw light on the myth of Baldr, on Saxo as a source, and on the problems of the Snorra-Edda. Having such foci adds considerable depth to the volume by creating fascinating overlaps, especially because the different authors so rarely agree with each other and through their different approaches showcase the breadth of current discussions. (Among my personal highlights were the repeated and strikingly different interpretations of Bres's Tuesday-rule [pp. 17–18, 65, 107–108].) While the volume does not present a sustained discussion of intercultural exchange between Celts (or maybe better: Ireland) and the Norse (recently, see, for instance, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World, by Colmán Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Brepols 2019), a connection between its two foci on “Celtic and Scandinavian traditions” is still established through the prominent role that the Norse presence in Ireland during the Viking Age plays for the interpretation of Cath Maige Tuired, the central text of the book's Celtic section. Such and similar interconnections run through this volume in a way that gives it an overarching unity, which perfectly balances the very different approaches taken by the individual contributors and which is one of the traits that makes it a pleasure to read not just as a collection of papers, but as an actual book.