Myth, Mythological Thinking and the Viking Age in Finland (original) (raw)
Related papers
Folklore and Old Norse Mythology (ed. Frog & Joonas Ahola)
FF Communications 323. Helsinki: Kalevala Society., 2021
The present volume responds to the rising boom of interest in folklore and folklore research in the study of Old Norse mythology. The twenty-two authors of this volume reveal the dynamism of this lively dialogue, which is characterized by a diversity of perspectives linking to different fields and national scholarships. The chapters open with a general overview of how the concepts of “folklore” and “mythology” have been understood and related across the history of Old Norse studies, which is followed by a group of chapters that discuss and present different approaches and types of source materials, with methodological and theoretical concerns. The interest in folklore is bound up with interests in practice and lived religion, which are brought into focus in a series of chapters relating to magic and ritual. Attention then turns to images that link to mythology and different mythic agents in studies that explore a variety of usage in meaning-making in different forms of cultural expression. The next group of studies spotlights motifs, with perspectives on synchronic usage across genres and different media, cross-cultural exchange, and long-term continuities. The volume culminates in discussions of complex stories, variously in oral traditions behind medieval sources and relationships between accounts found in medieval sources and those recorded from more recent traditions. Individually, the chapters variously offer reflexive and historical research criticism, new research frameworks, illustrative studies, and exploratory investigations. Collectively, they illustrate the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary discussion at the intersections of folklore and Old Norse mythology, where the transformative impacts were recently described as a paradigm shift. They open new paths for scholarly discussion with the potential to inspire future research.
Frog & Joonas Ahola (eds.): Folklore and Old Norse Mythology
FF Communications 323, 2021
The present volume responds to the rising boom of interest in folklore and folklore research in the study of Old Norse mythology. The twenty-two authors of this volume reveal the dynamism of this lively dialogue, which is characterized by a diversity of perspectives linking to different fields and national scholarships. The chapters open with a general overview of how the concepts of “folklore” and “mythology” have been understood and related across the history of Old Norse studies, which is followed by a group of chapters that discuss and present different approaches and types of source materials, with methodological and theoretical concerns. The interest in folklore is bound up with interests in practice and lived religion, which are brought into focus in a series of chapters relating to magic and ritual. Attention then turns to images that link to mythology and different mythic agents in studies that explore a variety of usage in meaning-making in different forms of cultural expression. The next group of studies spotlights motifs, with perspectives on synchronic usage across genres and different media, cross-cultural exchange, and long-term continuities. The volume culminates in discussions of complex stories, variously in oral traditions behind medieval sources and relationships between accounts found in medieval sources and those recorded from more recent traditions. Individually, the chapters variously offer reflexive and historical research criticism, new research frameworks, illustrative studies, and exploratory investigations. Collectively, they illustrate the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary discussion at the intersections of folklore and Old Norse mythology, where the transformative impacts were recently described as a paradigm shift. They open new paths for scholarly discussion with the potential to inspire future research.
In The Viking Age in Åland: Insights into Identity and Remnants of Culture. Ed. Joonas Ahola, Frog & Jenni Lucenius. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Humaniora 372. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Pp. 349–414. , 2014
This paper outlines a methodology for approaching mythology in earlier cultural environments for which written sources are limited or completely lacking. This methodology here specifically targets how to relate that mythology to evidence in the material record. This is illustrated through the case of the so-called clay paw rite of Viking Age Åland. Åland presents an interesting example owing to its position between linguistic-cultural areas on the one hand while the language and intangible culture of Åland remains otherwise unknown. The clay paw rite is a distinctively Ålandic phenomenon of the late Iron Age that is customarily interpreted as related either to a cult of the bear or a cult of the beaver. This rite is also interesting because it was apparently carried by Ålanders along the Eastern Route where it became established deep in a Finno-Ugric cultural area. The methodology outlined here includes a theoretical framework for approaching 'mythology' in terms of systems of symbols, relating these to narratives, magic and ritual practices. All of the systems of symbols within a cultural environment (which may include both e.g. Christian and vernacular systems, vernacular Germanic and Finnic systems, etc.) are together approached as a 'symbolic matrix' within which there can be different perspectives. The different perspectives are discussed in relation to different genres of performative practices and different institutions or social roles of ritual specialist, from ritual lamenters to Christian priests. The local and regional developments of mythology that are historical outcomes of both external contacts and internal change are viewed as producing 'dialects' of mythology. The long history of contacts and interactions in the Baltic Sea region are viewed as forming the equivalent of a language-dialect continuum for (at least certain areas of) mythologies cross-culturally. Åland is situated on this continuum between North Germanic and North Finnic cultures. This situation on the continuum enables certain reasonable inferences about the mythology current in the Viking Age irrespective of whether Åland was a Scandinavian- or Finnic-speaking area. The inferences that this approach enables are then applied to the case of the clay paw rite, the evidence of which is considered material outcomes of a mythologically informed symbolic practice.
Old Norse Mythology—Comparative Perspectives
2017
Hermann, Pernille, Stephen A. Mitchell, Jens Peter Schjødt, and Amber J. Rose, eds. 2017. Old Norse Mythology—Comparative Perspectives. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, 3. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Book Review: Myth and history in Celtic and Scandinavian traditions
North American Journal of Celtic Studies, 2023
The oppositional, yet often complementary, nature of the concepts of 'myth' and 'history' is explored in this expansive volume, which presents articles from prominent scholars in both medieval Celtic and Scandinavian studies. The collection's main aim is to offer new perspectives that challenge widely-held, entrenched views on mythological literature, hagiography, pseudohistories, and archaeology. The authors employ a wide range of innovative approaches to their respective topics, utilizing a number of the most current methodologies in comparative mythology, archaeology, political history, cosmology, and postmodern literary theory to achieve vibrant new insights into what might, at first glance, appear to be long-settled debates or oncevibrant discussions grown moribund through long neglect. The volume begins with editor Emily Lyle's introduction, which first addresses the relationship between myth and history as similar concepts that both concern information networks, but differ principally in their varying claims to fact and fiction. She goes on to compare the battle between Lug and Balor in the well-known medieval Irish text Cath Maige Tuired 'The [second] battle of Mag Tuired' and that of the fight between Thor and the giant Geirrod in Snorri's Edda. Along with providing a wealth of other comparative evidence, she proposes a cosmological approach to medieval narrative that reveals an older stratum of mythological elements undergirding the more explicitly Christian character of the medieval texts in question. The articles in the volume are arranged in two main categories under the headings 'Celtic tradition' and 'Scandinavian tradition'. The Viking invasion appears to function implicitly as the bridge between these related narrative traditions. The Viking connection is further suggested in the historical background to the first four articles in the Celtic section, which present different critical approaches to Cath Maige Tuired (hereafter CMT), a work that has been argued here and elsewhere to reflect the struggle between these two peoples within a mythological context. The first of these articles, 'The nature of the Fomoiri. The dark other in the medieval Irish imagination' by John Carey, challenges the standard interpretation of CMT as a conflict between gods of light and those of darkness and chaos, which has typically been viewed as a reflex of the Indo-European 'War of the Gods'. The author marshals a broad range of other
Norse myth. A cultural history of reception
Nordic references abound in contemporary popular culture, they are so common in fantasy literature, role-playing games, comics or cinematography that the time of their anonymity outside of Scandinavia has long gone by. Whether or not merely anthropological curiosities that serve for a good story or attempts to reconnect with the ancient past in the form of Neopagan revivals, the world of Asgard and Valhalla proves to be very potent in its adaption to different discourses.
UCL Eprints. London: University College London. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/19428/, 2010
The orientation of this study is to explore what the sources for each narrative tradition can (and cannot) tell us about their respective histories, in order to reach a point at which it becomes possible to discuss a relationship between them and the significance of that relationship. This is not intended as an exhaustive study of every element of each source or every aspect of each tradition. It will present a basic introduction to sources for each tradition ( §3-4) followed by a basic context for approaching the possibility of a cultural exchange ( §5-7). The APE and its "powers" are introduced with specific examples from both traditions ( §8-13). This will be followed by sections on the activation and manipulation of "identities" from the level of cultural figures to textual and extra-textual entities ( §14-16) followed by relationships of traditions to individuals and social groups who perform them, and the impact which this has on the evolution of tradition as a social process ( §17-18). The study will then address more specific issues in relationships between source and application in the medieval and iconographic representations of the Baldr-Cycle where so little comparative material is available to provide a context ( §19).
Folklore in Old Norse - Old Norse in Folklore. An Introduction
Folklore in Old Norse - Old Norse in Folklore (Nordistica Tartuensia 20), 2014
During the 20th century, Old Norse philology has been strongly textually oriented. This is evident in saga scholarship, where the book-prose ideology turned the issue of the origin of individual sagas into an issue of direct influences from other written works. This focus has methodological advantages, but it has also meant that valuable folkloristic knowledge has been neglected. The present volume targets the advantages, the problems and the methods of using folklore material and theory in Old Norse scholarship. An important theme in folklore is the encounter with the Supernatural and such stories are indeed common in saga literature. Generally, however, scholars have tended to focus on feuds and the social structure of the sagas, and less on encounters with Otherworld beings. In this volume, the supernatural themes in the sagas are discussed by means of several approaches, some folkloristic, some traditionally philological.
The Materiality of Myth: Divine Objects in Norse Mythology
Temenos, 2019
The vivid presence of material objects in Scandinavian cosmology, as preserved in the Old Norse myths, carries underexplored traces of belief systems and the material experience of Iron Age Scandinavia (400–1000 CE). This paper proposes an archaeological reading of Norse mythology to help explain how ancient Scandinavians understood the presence and role of deities, magic, and the supernatural in everyday life. The Norse myths retain records of material objects that reinforced Scandinavian oral traditions and gave their stories power, memory, and influence. From Thor’s hammer and Freyja’s feathered cloak to Sigyn’s bowl and Ran’s net, such materials and the stories they colour are informed by everyday objects of Iron Age life – spun with the magic, belief, and narrative traditions that made them icons. The mythic objects promoted a belief system that expected and embraced the imperfections of objects, much like deities. These imperfections in the divine Norse objects and the ways in which the gods interact with their materials are part and parcel of the Scandinavian religious mentality and collective social reality. This work ultimately questions the relationship between materiality and myth, and seeks to nuance our current understandings of the ancient Scandinavian worldview based on the available textual evidence.