The Manifestations of Fate in Medieval Germanic Poetry and Lithuanian Folk Songs

Abstract

Reflections of mythical worldview are embedded in traditional oral poetry, viz. Old Icelandic collection of poems Poetic Edda, Old English poem Beowulf, and Lithuanian folk songs. Archaic motifs and archetypal imagery are conveyed by means of poetic grammar (alliteration, kennings, epithets, etc.). Through interpretation, the hidden (symbolic) meaning of the poetic grammar is unveiled, and the connection between the two worlds, the sacred (the divine) and the profane (the human) (Eliade 1959), is exposed. To advance the analysis of poetic narrative, the methodology employed in the paper combines comparative Indo-European poetics (Watkins 1995) and oral-formulaic theory (Kiparsky 1976; Foley 1996). The paper focuses on the poetic narrative’s motifs that encode the archetypal image of the goddess(es) of fate in the Germanic and Baltic traditions. Selected passages from Old Icelandic, Old English, and Lithuanian poetic texts reveal the motif of fate in the following contexts: the establishment of the laws governing human life, the courtship and wedding narrative, the inescapable decrees of misery and death, the warrior’s fame and fate, and the connection between the goddess of fate and the cuckoo bird (in the Lithuanian tradition). The poetic grammar and poetic formulas, in particular, reveal the prototypical characteristics of the supernatural beings who rule fate – Norns, Wyrd, and Laima – and present them as an integral part of the Indo-European mythological system.