From ancient geographers to the journey of the Argonauts: Ierne Island (Ireland), a landscape island between two worlds, in Marie Mianowski, Irish contemporary landscapes in literature and the arts, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2012, p.13-25 (original) (raw)
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This volume explores the intersection of landscape and myth in the context of north-western Atlantic Europe. From the landscapes of literature to the landscape as a lived environment, and from myths about supernatural beings to tales about the mythical roots of kingship, the contributions gathered here each develop their own take on the meanings behind ‘landscape’ and ‘myth’, and thus provide a broad cross-section of how these widely discussed concepts might be understood. Arising from papers delivered at the conference Landscape and Myth in North-Western Europe, held in Munich in April 2016, the volume draws together a wide selection of material ranging from texts and toponyms to maps and archaeological data, and it uses this diversity in method and material to explore the meaning of these terms in medieval Ireland, Wales, and Iceland. In doing so, it provides a broadly inclusive and yet carefully focused discussion of the inescapable and productive intertwining of landscape and myth. Table of Contents Introduction: ‘Landscape’, ‘Myth’, and the North-Western European Perspective – MATTHIAS EGELER Myth and Real-World Landscapes Spaces, Places, and Liminality: Marking Out and Meeting the Dead and the Supernatural in Old Nordic Landscapes — TERRY GUNNELL Aesthetic Appreciation of Landscape in the Sagas of Icelanders — REINHARD HENNIG Landscape Meditations on Death: The Place-Lore of the Hvanndalur Valley in Northern Iceland — MATTHIAS EGELER Myth and the Creation of Landscape in Early Medieval Ireland — GREGORY TONER Codal and Ériu: Feeding the Land of Ireland — GRIGORY BONDARENKO with NINA ZHIVLOVA) Finn’s Wilderness and Boundary Landforms in Medieval Ireland —ELIZABETH FITZPATRICK ‘Here, Finn… Take This and Give him a Lick of it’: Two Place-Lore Stories about Fi(o)nn Mac Cum(h)aill in Medieval Irish Literature and Modern Oral Tradition — TIZIANA SOVERINO The Mélusine Legend Type and the Landscape in Insular and Continental Tradition — GREGORY R. DARWIN Myth and the Landscapes of Literature King Sverrir’s Mythic Landscapes — NICOLAS MEYLAN Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape: Religion and History in Imago mundi, Image du monde, and Delw y byd — NATALIA PETROVSKAIA The Road Less Travelled: Cú Chulainn’s Journey to Matrimony and the Dindshenchas of Tochmarc Emire — MARIE-LUISE THEUERKAUF ‘If we settled in the forest…’: Tracing the Function of Wooded Spaces from Old Irish Literature to Contemporary Poetry — EDYTA LEHMANN
In this essay, I analyse how the distinct formal and literary qualities of saga prose and skaldic verse could be artfully juxtaposed to create complex, multifaceted depictions of life in medieval Iceland. Specifically, my focus is on how saga prose and skaldic poetry differ in the portrayal of space and spatialitydifferences that, I suggest, result in competing geographies being encoded when these literary forms are combined, in ways that enrich the text. I first consider some pertinent theoretical aspects of space that are useful for analysing conceptualisations of space in society and in literature. I then outline how skaldic poetry and saga prose generally depict space differently, with reference to the distinctive formal qualities of each medium. The main focus of the essay is a case study of Víga-Glúms saga, a narrative in which the contested demarcation of space is central to the plot, in which I show how the intertwining of poetic and prose geographies complicates and enriches the saga. While space in Víga-Glúms saga is consistently connected to notions of property, identity, and ownership, the ways in which those concerns are expressed vary considerably across the prose account and Glúmr's verse. I suggest that the differences in how these media construct space, when juxtaposed in saga narrative, encourage deeper interpretative engagement to make sense of the competing geographies that emerge from the mixture of distinct literary forms. The spatial and the social Space is a fundamentally social concept. While we may conceptualise the physical space in which we exist as a "primordial given", Edward Soja points out that "the organization and meaning of space is a product of social translations, transformations, and experience". 1 In Michel de Certeau's distinction between place and space, space is understood as the active, communal experience of a particular place. While place is "an instantaneous configuration of positions [which] implies an indication of stability", space is "composed of intersections of mobile ele
Landscape Speaks in Myth (Sicily)
Enkelados , 2016
As Robert Bringhurst notes, “a myth is the power of a place speaking”. Myths of place are stories in which the land teaches us how to communicate with it, teaches us to adapt our patterns to its own, sculpts the meaning of our own lives in its terms. Even more, specific landscapes are charged in specific ways. Said Diodorus Siculus: “Sicily is the first and most powerful of islands because of its history and its myths.” Arriving in Sicily, the ancient Greeks found themselves deep in the stony, tangible realities of Mediterranean mythome as Diodorus said: this new land was more unknown, more fertile, more full of possibilities (including dangers). The familiar feminine principle of the Earth was more alive here, in that sense the Goddess more active, the need to address the Goddess more acute. These Greeks already had incorporated into their sense of the divine the endless conflict between Mycenaean warrior social values of willful areté (excellence) struggling against Mother Earth groundedness. Their myths of Sicily subsequently express this competition, and I discuss several of them. The female principle of the earth also is the protagonist of classical Greek tragedy. The consistent theme of Greek tragedy is this tension between the aggressive human will (masculine) and fatal, final conservativeness of Nature (feminine). In other words, physical Nature contains our strivings, limits what we are permitted to do, punishes our excesses, holds us within limits our entire lives. Among the many narratives of this land, myth of Demeter and Persephone remains Sicily’s defining myth even today, because Sicily continues to live it. Myths (and accompanying rituals) about death and rebirth are central to religions of agricultural societies. They are archetypal stories of hope, hope that is implicit in the seasons. But Sicilians are not fooled; they and their land know where the promise breaks down. Cycles of death leading to rebirth are not universally joyful simply because for the individual and individual consciousness there only is one-directional movement through time. Gods are immortal, ever young. In life as humans experience it, innocence once lost cannot be recovered; death happens and cannot be undone. For humans, past pain and future loss are ever present. So, Mary, the Madonna, and Demeter both are sacrificed endlessly on the cross of grief, on the cycle of anxiety that is reality for every mother: every child is destined to leave. To worship either woman is to find community in grief. The farmer, Demeter’s worshipper, who stands in for us, also is on this wheel. Ovid tells how Demeter cursed the soil to betray the farmer’s trust, and indeed a land legendary for bounty and fertility became barren and a curse to those who tilled it . For the farmer, portents of disaster arrive with every spring’s hopes. That’s what myth tells here. If myth reveals patterns we are fated to follow, history reveals these mythic patterns after the fact by exposing patterns of how we actually lived out the myth in practice. The lesson that all hopes end in disappointment, compromised by reality, is the overriding message of much-trampled Sicily’s history, as she lives the Demeter-Persephone myth. In a land where the past is present and known to be prologue, the land itself shows itself a mentor of the human tragedy. The Sicilian landscape is empowered as a Mother, her small, human-scale limestone valleys and fields hold us close to her, the horizons of possibility very near. Fully in the embrace of our Mother, we do not develop distinct separate identities, delusory senses of self. And if we separate from her and develop a self, she will assert herself as we age and it will dissolve. This is the tragedy and the comfort: male willfulness dragged back to the cave by maternal powers of the Earth or the female being trapped in the endless cycle of loss and recovery and loss, or grief at the one-way door of death. In short, the tragedy is suffering, suffering we do not deserve, from which there is no escape, and in which there is no triumph, no glory. Yet, tragedy and myth also show that, in these curses, we are riding deep and timeless Earth rhythms. To worship Mary, Demeter, and the Earth is to settle into the assurance that all creation suffers, that when we weep, we do not weep alone. And that that is all the redemption that is on offer.
‘Mythology and Landscape Part 1: The Batle of Moytura and the Enchanted Forge’
, Sligo Field Club Journal, Vol. 6, 127-140, 2020
The paper is introduced with a discussion of Dindsenchas; the medieval Gaelic lore of places, especially as it relates to the site of the mythic Battle of Moytura, in Co. Sligo. This was fought between the Tuatha de Danann and the Fomorians; opposing forces of good and evil in the pagan Gaelic pantheon, who contested the sovereignty of Ireland. Moytura is especially rich in ancient monuments, especially megalithic tombs but also cairns, standing stones, natural caves and souterrains, ringforts and cashels. A rich mythology and folklore is associated with the terrain and its monuments, especially lore relating to Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. A stone fort called Corrigeenacartha is identified as the site of the legendary forge of Loinn Mhic Liomhtha, the Enchanted Smith who forged weapons for the Fianna and who was the owner of an enchanted cow called Glas Gaibhneach, the ever-yielding Cow of Plenty that also features in the local folklore and Dindsenchas. Comparative sites elsewhere are discussed such as Mohernagartan, Co. Clare and the cave at Kesh Corran, Co. Sligo. The Enchanted Forge as a theme in the folklore of Gaelic Scotland is also referred to.
Immaterial landscapes: Homeric geography and the Ionian Islands
To understand the human perception of landscapes in the past, archaeologists would require knowledge of the immaterial landscape elements: the stories that are connected to physical landscape features. One way of acquiring access to such stories is through written literature (poetry, prose), which has survived centuries and is connected to specific landscapes. In this article, a particular powerful example is examined: Homer’s Odyssey. It will be argued that the epic myth has strong interconnections to the landscape of the Ionian islands in Greece. Whether the Homeric Geography is reflected in the current landscape remains open for debate. However, the text itself has played an important role in the formation of the archaeological record, in the way classical scholarship in the region has developed and in public perceptions of archaeology and history. Because of the extremely long narrative history, Homer’s Odyssey has played a structuring role with regard to the cultural landscape.