Sewn Lips, Propped Jaws, and a Silent Áss (or Two): Doing Things with Mouths in Norse Myth

Abstract

Although it is hardly an unrecognized fact, it is worth recalling from time to time that Norse mythical beings are consistently imagined by our sources as having bodies, and that many of the myths feature things happening to those bodies. Such things can, of course, be interpreted as symbols that represent something or that communicate messages to the myth-world’s audience. Yet they can also be considered as events, as happenings that have consequences within the myth-world itself. In this article, I analyze a set of happenings in Norse myth involving mouths— things done to mouths and done with mouths or, as the case may be, not done with mouths—both as mythological symbols and mythical events. First, however, I will consider more broadly some of the types of things that happen to the bodies of different sorts of mythical beings, and what these happen ings have been taken to mean or represent. This consideration will provide textual and interpretive context for my discussion of mythical motifs involving mouths. The things that happen to bodies in Norse myth are often violent, and they often have lasting effects. when the victims of violence are jotnar (sg. jotunn) or giants, these effects are usually fatal. Specifically, many jotnar are described as having their skulls shattered by Þorr’s weapon, the hammer Mjollnir.1 while Þorr often states that this treatment will send his victims down to Hel or Niflhel, it is unclear whether they actually do experience any kind of afterlife existence; at any rate, they play no further role in the mythic world. when the victims of violence are aesir (sg. ass), the outcome is more often injury or defect, as when Oðinn loses an eye, Týr a hand, Heimdallr (perhaps) an ear, and Mimir even his whole body from the neck down. Scholars have frequently observed that these injuries and losses suffered by aesir tend not to signal or result, as in human experience, in