Eddic Poetry Research Articles

Old Norse Women’s Use of Sacred Textures in Crisis Situations

The purpose of this article is to identify Old Norse sacred texts and contribute to insights into the entanglements between Old Norse women’s gender and their production and performance of sacred texts. By broadening the concept of text to include texture, the article proposes a definition that can identify some recorded Old Norse poetic speech acts as sacred textures. Empirically, the article analyses skaldic and eddic poetry composed by Old Norse women as a means to defend themselves and their communities against threats, and it examines how the production of sacred textures affected women’s gender. The article conjoins theoretical reflections by Paul Ricoeur, Émile Durkheim, Rudolf Otto, Judith Butler, Karen Barad, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, offering a platform for future analyses of sacred textures in other oral religious cultures.

Men Who Brew: Masculinity and the Production of Drink in Medieval Icelandic Literature

Men Who Brew: Masculinity and the Production of Drink in Medieval Icelandic Literature

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

Þrymskviða, Þrymlur, and Tord af Havsgaard—a Case of Early Antiquarianism?

<i>Þrymskviða</i>, <i>Þrymlur</i>, and <i>Tord af Havsgaard</i>—a Case of Early Antiquarianism?

Grundtvigs brug af det islandske digt Odins ravnegalder

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The article investigates N.F.S. Grundtvig‘s reception of the Icelandic eddic poem Hrafnagaldur Óðins / Forspjallsljóð and is a contribution to knowledge about the nineteenth century reception of Old Icelandic literature in Denmark. In his writings from 1807 to 1860 Grundtvig repeatedly returned to, reevaluated, and reinterpreted Hrafnagaldur Óðins. In his puzzlement over the poem Grundtvig was not alone: Since the beginning of research scholars have struggled with this poem, and hypotheses about its age, importance, and significance have varied to a greater extent than is true of most other eddic poems. In the nineteenth century, Hrafnagaldur Óðins was considered to be one of the most important sources to Old Norse mythology, whereas today it is largely forgotten and has been dropped from collections of eddic poetry, because it is no longer dated to the Middle Ages but is believed to be written in the seventeenth century. In 1807, Grundtvig quoted a stanza of Hrafnagaldur Óðins as an emblem for the gloomy destiny of the Æsir; in 1832, he considered the poem a little symbolic tale about sunrise and sunset; in 1847, he read it as a cheerful comedy about immortality and marriage; and finally, in 1860, the poem inspired him to give expression to a Christian utopia in his Dansk Ravnegalder. Thus, his attitude and use of the poem changed substantially throughout his oeuvre, which gives testimony to Grundtvig’s zealous and tireless philological work.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Encounters at the Mound in Old Norse Literature: Dialogues between Landscape and Narrative

Encounters at the Mound in Old Norse Literature: Dialogues between Landscape and Narrative

Echoing Retorts in Hárbarðsljóð and Lokasenna

Echoing Retorts in <i>Hárbarðsljóð</i> and <i>Lokasenna</i>

Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Preserving Blunders in Eddic Poems : Formula Variation in Numbered Inventories of Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál

The rise of interest in the orality of eddic poetry has tended to view the preserved corpus as oral poems without considering their transition into writing and its poten­tial implications. The pres ...

The Polish interest in the Eddas — Joachim Lelewel’s Edda of 1828

Abstract In the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century, a rising interest in Old Norse literature outside the Nordic countries could be noted that, to a great deal, focused on the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda as sources for Norse mythology. This interest is also reflected in the works of the Polish historian Joachim Lelewel (1786–1861) who, in 1807 and 1828, published translations and retellings of the Poetic and the Prose Edda. These were based on French, German and Latin translations. The second edition of 1828 is characterised by a more comprehensive section with eddic poetry, the selection of which is also explained by Lelewel, as well as an essay on pre-Christian religion that also includes a research overview and a list of editions/translations of the Eddas.

Dreaming the Hammer Back: On Teodoras Bieliackinas’s Translation of Þrymskviða

The paper deals with the legacy of Teodoras Bieliackinas (1907–1947), a Lithuanian exile in Iceland, the first Lithuanian professional Scandinavianist and the first translator of Eddic poetry into Lithuanian. With its background of the “biographical turn” in translation studies and with the help of the concept of “differential margin” proposed by Theo Hermans, the paper focuses on Bieliackinas’s rendition of Þrymskviða into Lithuanian. The aim is to trace the translator’s own ideological agenda, which appears to have been inscribed by him into the Old Norse song. It is claimed that the song about the loss and recovery of Thor’s hammer has been invested by Bieliackinas with a new – allegorical – meaning and can be read as a message of hope that Bieliackinas was sending to his countrymen who, like himself, were scattered around the world and mourned the loss of their state.

Emotion in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts by Sif Rikhardsdottir

Reviewed by: Emotion in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contextsby Sif Rikhardsdottir Matthew Firth Rikhardsdottir, Sif, Emotion in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts( Studies in Old Norse Literature), Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2017; hardback; pp. 223; R.R.P. £50.00; ISBN 9781843844709. As a corpus, the Old Icelandic literature is often characterized by an economy of expression. It is a literary style that can provide a narrative with a sense of detachment from its material, establishing characters who seem dispassionate and inexpressive. Indeed, the paucity of passages that verbalize the feelings and emotions of saga characters make those few that can be found remarkable within the corpus. However, readers familiar with the style of the sagas know that this apparent objectivity is merely a veneer. The sagas may not preference dramatic displays of emotion, yet the laconic exchanges and tersely described interactions of saga characters are imbued with subtle indicators of emotional engagement. When these narratives are understood within the cultural contexts of both setting and authorship, it becomes evident that the characters operate within a rich emotional landscape. It is this emotional landscape that Sif Rikhardsdottir seeks to explore in this volume, identifying both the literary formulas through which it finds expression, and the emotive and behavioural codes that inform its parameters. The book is comprised of five chapters, each taking a literary case study (or studies) as its framework for discussing a different aspect of emotion in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. It is not an unusual approach for such thematic examinations of Old Norse texts, and serves to make manageable a topic as broad as that which Rikhardsdottir has undertaken to explore. Yet this does mean that the book cannot be considered a comprehensive survey of emotion in Old Norse literature. Rikhardsdottir limits herself to three 'genres', putting forward two chapters framed around the Íslendingasögur, two focused on the adoption and adaption of romance literature into Old Norse, and one on Eddic poetry. Moreover, as Rikhardsdottir herself notes, the volume deals nearly exclusively with Old West Norse dialects, limiting the study to Iceland, with occasional shifts to Norway (p. 2). But these are minor criticisms and, at worst, it could be said that the volume title— Emotion in Old Norse Literature—is somewhat misleading. Rikhardsdottir makes the parameters of her study immediately accessible in the introduction, and her reasons for limiting the book to the selected 'genres' and regions are justifiable on the basis of what is representative of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Scandinavian literary production. Chapter 1 uses as its texts Ívens sagaand Tristrams saga ok Ísödar—Old Norse translations of Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lionand Tristan. Here Rikhardsdottir introduces two terms: 'emotive literary identities' and 'emotive scripts'. The former is defined as the cultural framework of values that guides a [End Page 220]text's intended audience in how to interpret a character's emotive motivations. The latter refers to the more generic codes of behaviour that are recognizable to the audience as literary tropes and thus inform the reading of emotions through generic formulas. These terms and their underlying theories are the foundation of the book. Rikhardsdottir tests them against the process of narrative transmission in the translation of courtly romance from one culture to another. By comparing the Old French texts with their Old Norse translations, she is able to demonstrate that the expression of emotion within the narratives also undergoes a process of translation. Gone are the overt concerns with courtly love and feudal society present in Yvainand Tristanas these emotive scripts are rejected and the literary identities of Ívenand Tristramare modified to adhere to Icelandic literary norms. The next four chapters shift to native literary traditions. Chapter 2 approaches Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, using it as a platform to explore emotional interiority and how to read emotion in a literary tradition that eschews outward display of internal emotion. Of particular interest is Rikhardsdottir's assertion that the scarcity of emotive words lends those that are there deeper meaning and greater complexity, while also lending non-emotive words a degree of emotive content. Chapter 3 looks at Eddic poetry and the...

"Liquid Knowledge" in Old Norse Literature and Culture

In an article from 2010, Judy Quinn argues that the metaphor of liquid knowledge in eddic poetry refers to the liquidity of the oral society where the eddic poetry was composed and transmitted. T...

A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia, ed. Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and Brittany Schorn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, xii, 413 pp., 12 b/w ill.

Eddic poetry constitutes one of the most important genres in Old Norse or Scandinavian literature and has been studied since the earliest time of modern-day philology. The progress we have made in that field is impressive, considering the many excellent editions and translations, not to mention the countless critical studies in monographs and articles. Nevertheless, there is always a great need to revisit, to summarize, to review, and to digest the knowledge gained so far. The present handbook intends to address all those goals and does so, to spell it out right away, exceedingly well. But in contrast to traditional concepts, the individual contributions constitute fully developed critical article, each with a specialized topic elucidating it as comprehensively as possible, and concluding with a section of notes. Those are kept very brief, but the volume rounds it all off with an inclusive, comprehensive bibliography. And there is also a very useful index at the end. At the beginning, we find, following the table of contents, a list of the contributors, unfortunately without emails, a list of translations and abbreviations of the titles of Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and then elsewhere, and a very insightful and pleasant introduction by Carolyne Larrington. She briefly introduces the genre and then summarizes the essential points made by the individual authors. The entire volume is based on the Eddic Network established by the three editors in 2012, and on two workshops held at St. John’s College, Oxford in 2013 and 2014.

Brittany Erin Schorn, Speaker and Authority in Old Norse Wisdom Poetry. Trends in Medieval Philology, 34. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017, viii, 198 pp.

This slim volume, 155 pages apart from the introduction and back matter, is the revised version of a recent dissertation on the dialogic and discursive exchange of wisdom in the Gnomic genre of Old Norse-Icelandic Eddic poetry. As the author notes in the introduction (Ch. 1), this genre is well attended in the scholarly literature and many studies have addressed similar or adjacent topics. Five chapters after the introduction describe and investigate narrative and discursive aspects of wisdom poetry informed by a pre-Christian past but located firmly within a post-conversion manuscript context.

Getting a Handle on Eddic Poetry

Getting a Handle on Eddic Poetry

A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia

Book Review| April 01 2017 A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia. Ed. Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and Brittany Schorn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 413. Lukas Rösli Lukas Rösli University of Basel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scandinavian Studies (2017) 89 (1): 139–148. https://doi.org/10.5406/scanstud.89.1.0139 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Lukas Rösli; A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia. Scandinavian Studies 1 January 2017; 89 (1): 139–148. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/scanstud.89.1.0139 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressScandinavian Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Mind’s Eye: The Triad of Memory, Space and the Senses in Old Norse Literature

AbstractThis article examines the intimate connection between the senses and memory. The focus lies on vision, which was believed to be one of the main routes of access to memory in medieval culture. Because descriptions of and reflections on memory are evident across genres, examples will be drawn from various corners of the Old Norse textual landscape and reference will be made to sagas, eddic poetry and the

John McKinnell. Essays on Eddic Poetry.

John McKinnell. Essays on Eddic Poetry.

Auf den Leib geschriebene Rollen und eingefleischte Eigenschaften

This survey investigates how body symbolism in Old Norse literature marks deviation from social roles or their emphatic fulfillment through bodily deformity. Firstly, the association of individual body parts with different mental properties is reconstructed through kennings from skaldic and eddic poetry using cognitive semantics in order to establish according types of kennings. In a second step the vices and virtues connected with these body parts and their mental properties are explored in saga narratives, demonstrating how deviance from and fulfillment of social roles is marked through deformation. This investigation thus broadens the approach of monster theory, the analysis of the monstrous body in literature, to bodies of all types of literary characters, paragons as well as outsiders.