Norse Sources Research Articles

Baldr, Ymir, and the Myth of the First Death in Old Norse Mythology (Part 1)

This study examines the myth of the death of the Norse god Baldr in a comparative framework. Scholars working in the fields of comparative mythology and religion have long argued that a myth concerning the sacrificial killing of the first man is represented in the ancient and medieval literatures of several languages in the Indo-European family. In the reconstruction of this myth, the first priest sacrifices his brother, whose corpse is integrated into the structure of the cosmos, and who rules the realm of the dead. It has long been argued that Ymir’s death and dismemberment and the use of his body to construct the world in Old Norse sources is a reflex of this myth; this study argues that the myth of the death of Baldr is also a cognate version of this myth. This article is the first part of a two-part study.

Heremod and Óðinn: From Beowulf to Snorri’s Prose Edda

This article reassesses the sources pertaining to Heremod (Hermóðr) in order to explore the nature of his relationship with Óðinn. In Beowulf, Heremod is presented as a Danish tyrant without any overt connection to Óðinn, whereas in Old Norse sources, Hermóðr is consistently presented as a mortal favourite or divine offspring of Óðinn. Closer scrutiny of the Beowulf passages in light of their analogues suggests that the disagreement results from the Beowulf poet’s obfuscation of a prior relationship between Heremod and Óðinn. An ancient connection between the god and his favourite appears to antedate Beowulf and persist into late sources concerning not only Hermóðr, but also Lotherus and Olo, recognized analogues to Heremod whose legends are believed to have absorbed aspects of the earlier Heremod tradition. An original legend, in which Óðinn patronized, sabotaged, and elicited transgressive deeds from Heremod, appears to have constituted the core tradition around which numerous variants emerged in subsequent centuries.

Parallels for cetacean trap feeding and tread‐water feeding in the historical record across two millennia

AbstractTrap feeding and tread‐water feeding are cetacean hunting strategies first recorded in the 2000s in two whale species at opposite sides of the globe. In both behaviors, whales sit motionless at the surface with their mouths open. Fish are attracted into the whale's mouth and are trapped when the jaw is closed. We identify striking parallels with the behavior of a sea creature named hafgufa in Old Norse sources. The hafgufa tradition can be traced back to the aspidochelone, a type of whale frequently described in medieval bestiaries, first appearing in the Physiologus, a 2nd century CE Alexandrian manuscript.

The Cult of Kollumkilli in Medieval Scandinavia

References to the veneration of Colum Cille in medieval Iceland and Norway use both versions of his name adapted to Old Norse conventions: Kolumba and Kollumkilli. Medieval primstaven refer to the saint distinctly as Kolbjørn med laksen ‘Kolbjørn with the salmon’. In the medieval Icelandic texts Landnámabók and Kjalnesinga saga, a presumed version of St Patrick presents Orlyg, a Norse settler wishing to migrate to Iceland, with several gifts intended to allow the successful foundation of a church dedicated to Colum Cille upon arrival. A church dedicated to the saint was also present in Bergen between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, indicating the presence of a cult in the area. Considering this evidence, this article discusses the way in which a cult dedicated to Colum Cille in medieval Scandinavia might be understood through medieval Norse sources, and especially the way in which they emphasise his eminence as an Irish saint.

Furious Feedback and the Revolutionary Ode to Noise

Furious Feedback and the Revolutionary Ode to Noise

When a King of Norway Became a King of Russia

When a King of Norway Became a King of Russia

Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders

Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders

Readings in Times of Crisis: New Interpretations of Stories about the Settlement of Iceland

Readings in Times of Crisis: New Interpretations of Stories about the Settlement of Iceland

Medieval Scandinavian Studies—Whence, Whereto, Why

Medieval Scandinavian Studies started emerging as a discipline in the 19th century, at a time when Old Norse literature had become an important source both for the reconstruction of an alleged Germanic worldview, and the substantiation of national political claims. Scholars in the early 20th century consolidated this view, and thereby even coined public ideas of a Germanic past that became influential in the reception of the Middle Ages in general. To the present day, the popular fascination with these Middle Ages thus is strongly informed by Old Norse sources, and a wealth of recent adaptations seem to perpetuate this view. However, the same sources, as well as earlier scholarship, are used by extremist groups to substantiate populist and racist claims. Scholars in Medieval Scandinavian Studies find themselves at the intersection of these conflicting and yet connected spheres of appropriation. Their task to take a stance in this situation is all the more challenging as the international field struggles with cutbacks of budgets, study programs, and institutes. The present special issue seeks to bring together current opinions on this ambivalent state.

Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Feeling at Home with Anymals in Old Norse Sources

While Viking-age and medieval Iceland was a place of domestic animals, studies of its literature and material culture have little considered the multi-sensory nature of anymal-human relationships. 1 A farming society necessarily shapes its places and society around the animals with whom its livelihoods are shared, but the ways in which the home (ON heimr) became, and continued to become a multi-species space in early Iceland cannot be simply assumed. This article considers ways in which the sights, sounds, and tangible bodies of domestic animals are implicit markers of the home in the Sagas of Icelanders, through investigation of dogs, cattle, and sheep, and their relations with human figures. Icelandic archaeology tells us about field and farm, but little about home, and this article aims to demonstrate that a focus on home in the Sagas enables us to think more deeply about the evocation of home-feelings in our archaeological material.

Of Pots and Porridge: Food, Cooking, and Serving in Old Norse Sources

This article explores the ways in which medieval Icelanders imagined the food and culinary practices of their Viking-Age ancestors. Through a critical synthesis of vocabulary and narrative in sagas, poetry, and law texts, it becomes possible to move beyond isolated references to food and culinary practice, and to begin to consider attitudes to particular foods and technologies. The survey identifies some apparent constants in culinary memory - boiling, the use of kettles - as well as contrasting cooking and eating practices in elite and non-elite circles, and in foreign and domestic settings. The textual evidence thus usefully augments and nuances what can be gleaned from the material remains of culinary practice in Viking and medieval Iceland.

Haraldr Sigurðarson’s arrival in Rus’ and his participation in the campaign against Poland in 1031

Haraldr Sigurðarson’s activity as a Varangian and a king, preserved and praised in skaldic poetry, allowed saga writers to make him one of the most colourful figures rooted in the popular mind of medieval Norway. While his deeds are described at some length in saga tradition, he seems to be, to some extent, a literary figure recreated by saga writers based on pieces of history found in the skaldic poems. The source material, supported by texts from beyond the Norse world, does not provide a clear picture of his acts. Incoherence, lack of detail, a narrative typical for sagas, and their late origin as well as the shadowy wording of the skaldic verses all raise questions concerning various aspects of Haraldr’s activity, including his deeds on the way from the Varangians to the Greeks. Nevertheless, the evidence concerning Haraldr’s service in Byzantium – regardless of its questionable reliability – is rich in comparison to the first part of his Varangian career, i.e. his engagement in the Rus’ forces of Yaroslav the Wise. Taking a closer look at the Norse sources – and skaldic poetry in particular – while studying Haraldr’s first steps in his Varangian career casts new light on the events that led directly to the political crisis in Poland in 1031.

Power over Men and Power over Words: The Poet-King Ragnarr Loðbrók

This article addresses an aspect of the image of Ragnarr loðbrók that often eludes scholarly attention - namely, his role as a poet. Ragnarr has a prominent position in Old Norse- Icelandic literature as a king, a hero, and an ancestor of powerful kings and chieftains. In Snorra Edda, especially in the redaction of Codex Uppsaliensis, Ragnarr is also remembered as a poet. Most prominently, in Skáldatal, found in Codex Uppsaliensis and Kringla, Ragnarr is named among the first skalds; moreover, according to this list, his wife Áslaug and their sons were also skalds. To understand this intriguing statement, I shall give an overview of poetry attributed to Ragnarr and his family in Old Norse sources, explain the contexts in which Ragnarr is seen as a poet, and follow Skáldatal in placing Ragnarr and his family alongside another legendary hero and poet, Starkaðr inn gamli. This line of argument makes it possible to shed light on the liminal position occupied by Ragnarr and his family in the skaldic tradition and on the ideas about the origins and development of skaldic poetry extant in the Old Norse-Icelandic literary sources.

Prospective Memory of Death in Old Norse and Icelandic Sources

This article borrows from the field of cognitive psychology to add nuance to Jan Assmann’s notion of a prospective cultural memory of death. Whereas Assmann’s view accounts primarily for those cultures that tend to rely upon external honor and social status to formulate a sense of prospective memory of death, those cultures that tend to rely upon internal conceptions of righteousness or culpability have little representation in Assmann’s theory. For more than two decades, the field of cognitive psychology has been developing its own theory of prospective memory. There, prospective memory is the memory of (typically mundane, everyday) tasks an individual must accomplish at some point in the future (e.g., buying milk, meeting someone, or running an errand). Certain memory aids (e.g., a note in a calendar or a string tied around a finger) might assist individuals in the retrieval of prospective memories. So too might material, literary, or folkloric aids be culturally employed to assist a culture in remembering its prospects for death, dying, and the afterlife. This article explores ways that cognitive prospective memory might be useful in understanding how prospective cultural memories of death and the afterlife might have changes in Old Norse-Icelandic sources as the region’s religious landscape developed during the transitions from pre-Christian to Christian, and then from Catholic to post-Reformation, worldviews.

In Melville's Mother Land

In Melville's Mother Land Søren Frank Click for larger view View full resolution Søren Frank. Photo courtesy of Kim Rune. Most interesting spot I have seen in England. Made tour of all colleges. It was here I first confessed with gratitude my mother land, & hailed her with pride. Herman Melville, journal, May 2, 1857 The Eleventh International Melville Conference, "Melville's Crossings," at King's College in London (June 2017) was my second Melville conference, the first being in Tokyo in 2015. This time around I was a little more relaxed. Not only because London was more familiar to me than Tokyo, a city (and country) that I had never been to before the Melville conference, but [End Page 115] also, and mostly, because I knew from Tokyo that Melvilleans were in fact, all things considered, very friendly people. In London, one of the first people I ran into was Alex Calder, whom I had also talked to in Tokyo. His first reaction in London was: "Oh, you were the guy who kept saying in Tokyo that you weren't a Melvillean." Well, I guess he was right. In London, having now earned the right to consider myself a semi-experienced Melville conference participant (and perhaps nearing the title of sub-sub-sub-librarian), I realized how the majority of the many young and middle-aged conference debutants began each conversation with a reservation, expressed with much gravity and sincerity: "I am not a Melvillean!" If Melville as an author is awe-inspiring to us all, this quality may rub off on the scholarly experts who become awe-inspiring whales in the eyes of their colleagues. But again, most of these whales turn out to be human after all, and, as I said, friendly and also genuinely interested in talking to the less familiar faces and newcomers. In London, I had such an experience with one of the distinguished figures in Melville scholarship. In the bus taking us from London to Oxford, with plenty of free seats to choose from, including seats next to old and familiar friends, John Bryant sat himself next to me. Admittedly, at first I felt a bit intimidated, having only spoken very briefly with John in Tokyo and knowing him to be a Leviathan of note in Melville studies, but very quickly we got talking about our respective work on Melville and on different principles and methods of writing biographies. The bus ride to Oxford, which took longer than expected because of traffic, turned out to be a very pleasant and inspiring ride—although it also included a moment of sadness when we passed Grenfell Tower. The afternoon in Oxford was spent listening to Anna Brickhouse's compelling plenary lecture "The Earthquake and the Whale" (reprinted in this issue), which situated Melville's writings in a comparative framework covering the Western Hemisphere and explored them through the lens of "the unsettlement of the Americas" in oceanic, cultural, colonial, racial, and literary dimensions. At the conference dinner, I was fortunate enough to sit opposite Professor Heather O'Donoghue, one of the guests of honor who elegantly instructed us all in Melville's influences from the Old Norse sources during her seven-minute talk, and the composed Edward Sugden, who collaborated with Janet Floyd and Wyn Kelley as the organizer-heroes of the London conference. Next to me on my right was Thomas Zlatic and to my left was Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, whom I had the privilege of visiting in Mystic, Connecticut, the previous fall. The Oxford dinner at Balliol College was a great way of ending the conference in terms of atmosphere, food, and conversation; it was also an appropriate place to end it since Melville probably stopped by there himself in 1857 when he enthusiastically visited Oxford and, according to his journal, "made tour of all the colleges." [End Page 116] Click for larger view View full resolution Heather O'Donoghue speaking at the Melville Society dinner at Balliol College Hall, Oxford, June 30, 2017. Photo courtesy of Brian Yothers. But I am getting ahead of myself. Back in London, a few events during the week were particularly memorable. The seriousness...

Connectedness with things. Animated objects of Viking Age Scandinavia and early medieval Europe

AbstractThis article examines a small group of artefacts of the Viking Age that may have been perceived as animated objects. These specific weapons and pieces of jewellery appear in narratives in the Old Norse sources as named, as having a will of their own, as possessing personhood. In archaeological contexts the same types of artefact are handled categorically differently than the rest of the material culture. Further, the possible links between these perspectives and the role of animated objects in early medieval Christianity of the Carolingian Empire are examined through studies of the reopening of Reihengräber and the phenomenon offurta sacra. By linking studies of the social biographies of objects with studies of animism, the article aims to identify aspects of Viking Age ontology and its similarities to Carolingian Christianity.

Rasmus Rask in St Petersburg 1818–1819: Russian-Scandinavian Scholarly Networks and the Old Norse Sources of Medieval Russia

Rasmus Rask, nowadays regarded as one of the founders of comparative philology, travelled to St Petersburg in 1818. During his stay, he attempted to draw the attention of local scholars to the Scandinavian languages. In doing so, he forged important connections with benefactors, such as Count Rumiantsev, as well as historians and philologists of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. However, the most important friendship he formed was with Ivan Loboiko, who acquired from Rask an intimate acquaintance with Old Norse literature. Loboiko went on to become one of the first Russian scholars to study Old Norse sources in the original and use them to throw light on early Russian history at a time, when romantic nationalism’s interest in the medieval past reigned supreme in Russian literature and scholarship. This article will map for the first time the extent, nature, and influence of Rask’s connections in St Petersburg.

Nem Tui, nem Gibraltar: Óláfr Haraldsson e a Península Ibérica

According to Heimskringla, Olafr Haraldsson, king and patron saint of Norway, sailed to the Straits of Gibraltar. It is told that he won several battles along the journey, some of which have been placed in Galicia. There are even those who say that Olafr was responsible for the looting of Tui, which appears in a Galician document from 1024. But how much truth is there in that theory? And how far can one trust the narrative on the journey of the Norwegian saint? The following article focuses on these questions, proposing an answer based in the analysis of the Norse sources, namely the process and context of transmission of the poem Vikingarvisur. It highlights the need for the poetic and prose narratives to be read separately, the silence of the Iberian texts and the ideological dimension found in the kings’ sagas, leading to the conclusion that Olafr may not have travelled beyond the Pyrenees.

Hagiography and History in the Icelandic Saga of Edward the Confessor

This article investigates the historical context of Jatvarðar saga, the Icelandic saga of the English saint, King Edward the Confessor (d. 1066). Compiled from a variety of Norse and Latin sources, the saga survives in four medieval manuscripts and demonstrates a persistent interest in Edward’s life and legacy. Yet although the saga has often been categorized as a saint’s life, there is no evidence that Edward was the subject of an Icelandic cult; moreover, the text focuses extensively on political history and lacks the hallmarks of Old Norse hagiographical writing. Accordingly, I propose that Jatvarðar saga was not composed as a devotional text. Instead, I argue that Edward was portrayed as a model of lay piety who supported the Church and clergy - a valuable exemplar for Icelandic magnates at a time of ecclesiastical reform.