Blótgyðjur, Goðar, Mimi, Incest, and Wagons: Oral Memories of the (original) (raw)
In Res, artes et religio: Essays in Honour of Rudolf Simek. Ed. Sabine Heidi Walther, Regina Jucknies, Judith Meurer-Bongardt & Jens Eike Schnall, in collaboration with Brigitta Jaroschek & Sarah Onkels. Leeds: Kismet Press. Pp. 141–175. , 2021
This paper is a contribution to the Vanir Debate that shows the 'Æsir' as a race of gods to be a modern construct and that the Old Norse word áss, æsir, was a poetic and elevated word for 'god, gods'. The study also points out that use of the word vanir in mentions of the cosmogonic war is not contrasted with æsir but with goð 'gods', which provides further evidence that the modern concept of 'Vanir' as a race of gods and thus subcategory of goð is incorrect. The long-held view of two races of Scandinavian gods called the 'Æsir' and the 'Vanir' is not an accurate representation of the religion. Rejecting current usage of these terms does not, however, require rejecting the view that Njǫrðr, Freyr and Freyja form a distinct group among the Old Norse gods, only that they were not collectively referred to as 'vanir' while other gods were referred to as 'æsir'. A better term for collectively referring to these gods would be masculine singular Njǫrðungr, neuter pl. Njǫrðung (i.e. including Freyja), masculine plural Njǫrðungar (i.e. not including Freyja).
Understanding diversity in Old Norse religion taking Þórr as a case study
The human memory is treacherous. Ideas can become forgotten, be misattributed and mutate. As a result, the mythologies of oral cultures change over time. Taking literature about Þórr as a case study, this thesis aims to understand the operations underpinning both this change and stability in Old Norse mythological representations. To do so, I adopt, develop and evaluate a methodology from the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), an amalgamation of disciplines including psychology, anthropology, neurobiology and zoology. I hope to contribute to the ongoing debate over the socio-cultural and cognitive roots of religion. Many of the major sources of Old Norse religion are Christian documents, negotiating with a pagan heritage through the prisms of Biblical and classical religious traditions. After discussing the problems this creates for modern commentators examining diversity, I analyse two competing schools of thought in CSR, a context-focused model of transmission and a concept-focused model. Certain factors are distinguished as key to stability in oral transmission: culturally inculcated expectations regarding a concept, counterintuitive breaches of these expectations and the capacity of a concept to adapt to novel textual and extra-textual contexts. In the following chapters, two major concepts now associated with Þórr are examined. Strength is shown to be integral to the deity’s mythological representation, but thunder and lightning, despite the breadth of sources considered, is not. According to the factors previously identified, therefore, thunder and lightning cannot offer a transmission advantage. However, a dichotomy between Icelandic and Scandinavian material is observed regarding the importance of thunder and lightning to Þórr’s characterization. Þórr is demonstrated to be a very flexible supernatural concept. The pivotal quality of strength facilitates the formation of new associations with culturally salient concepts like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, whilst irrelevant associations are shed. Coalitions of strongly associated concepts act as narrative vessels for the deity’s survival, preserving conceptualizations about the god over successive authors’ iterations on a narrative and perhaps assisting in the stability of traditional poetry in oral transmission.
2018
Religious practices and worship of and at natural landmarks such as hills, rocks, mountains, sacred groves etc. played an important part in Old Norse religions and was closely connected to the belief in various spirits and deities thought to dwell in these places. In this seminar paper I take a close look at what literary sources tell us about the Old Norse nature spirits called landvættir who were thought to live in the natural landscape and seen as having an important role for the land's well-being and protection as well as being able to influence the life and prosperity of its human inhabitants. I then mention examples of some related mythological beings who share characteristics with these spirits of the land, especially with regard to inhabiting certain landmarks. In the final part of my paper I consider the famous álfar and finish by looking at the development of meaning that finally led to the contemporary image of álfar or elves as inhabiting the Icelandic landscape as well as the popular place they inhabit in the contemporary imagination regarding Icelandic culture.
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.
An examination of the worship of the Old Norse gods, Freyr and Freyja, in the wider context of ancient Germanic culture.
Folklore in Old Norse - Old Norse in Folklore, ed. Daniel Sävborg & Karen Bek-Pedersen
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.
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.
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.