Distinguishing Continuities: Textual Entities, Extra-Textual Entities and Conceptual Schemas (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
When Objects Misbehave: Materials & Assemblages in the Ancient Scandinavian Myths
Fabula, 2020
This article explores new possibilities for the interpretation of myths. It asks how people in the past configured their world and its complex interactions, to which their orally-constructed stories bear witness. It is assumed here that myths contain structures of belief, cognition, and world-making beyond their immediate subject matter. This article focuses specifically on the preservation of material objects in myths throughout their transmission from changing oral narratives to written form. We should not assume that objects in oral traditions simply color the narratives; rather, these representations of materials can provide clues into the mentalities of past peoples and how they understood the complex interaction between humans and materials. As a case study, I examine the Old Norse myths, stories containing materials that reinforced Scandinavian oral traditions and gave the stories traction, memory, and influence. In doing so, this article hopes to help bridge materiality studies, narrative studies, and folklore in a way that does not privilege one particular source type over another. The myths reveal ancient Scandinavian conceptions of what constituted an “object,” which are not necessarily the same as our own twenty-first century expectations. The Scandinavian myths present a world not divided between active Subject, passive Object as the Cartesian model would enforce centuries later, but rather one that recognized distinctive object agencies beyond the realm of human intention.
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.
In Folklore and Old Norse Mythology. Ed. Frog & Joonas Ahola. FF Communications 323. Helsinki: Kalevala Society. Pp. 161–212., 2021
The (De)Construction of Mythic Ethnography I: Is Every þurs in Verse a þurs?
RMN Newsletter 6: 52-72, 2013
This paper addresses variation in lexical semantics by oral-poetic register and genre, including semantic variation in formulaic language. It reviews uses of the Old Norse term þurs (commonly translated 'ogre') in verse contexts, including runic inscriptions. It argues that the semantics of this term varied in relation to the genre in which it was used, including uses with reference to mythological giants (jötnar) in mythological narratives, agents of illness in charms, and as a vague synonym for 'monster' in death-songs more like the prose narratives in which these appear. It proposes that variation by genre includes genres embedded in narrative as speech acts, approaching these as 'registral irruptions' in mertical narrative. It shows that, especially in the fornyrðislag meter, use of this term was highly formulaic and considers the question of whether it may have indexed excessive or inappropriate sexuality.
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.
A Method for Analyzing World-Models in Scandinavian Mythology
A brief article where I consider the benefits of structural analysis as a method for world-model analysis in Scandinavian mythology. The approach is based on Propp's model for the folktale modified to fit the Old Scandinavian-Norse myths, which spatially operate with horizontal character movements. The article is based on a presentation I gave at the 15th International Saga Conference in Aarhus 2012. It is published in: Approaching Methodologies. Frog & Pauliina Latvala with Helen F. Leslie. Second Revised Edition with an Introduction by Ulrika Wolf-Knuts. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Humaniora 368. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. 2013. Pp. 377–398
Rhetorical Tropes and Body Symbolism: The Semiotic Approach to Old Norse Myth
The article offers one possible answer to the question 'Why are myths so weird?' by analysing a series of Old Norse myths with especially pronounced surreality connected to the loss or transformation of bodies or body parts. These myths are shown to fall into a fourfold typology which correspond to the so called 'master tropes', i.e. metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony. These four tropes are spread throughout languages and literatures across historical eras, from everyday speech to poetry, so it is no surprise we find them also in mythology. Mythology shares many features with other semiotic systems, especially the semiotic super-system of language, but it employs the features in a different way. In myth the tropes are intensified into whole stories based on these relationships. They are elevated into powerful magical connections between beings and objects that are much stronger than in real life and links that exist as a mere psychic associations or analogies become real principles of transformation in myth. Myths are so weird because they let the conceptual metaphors play out as stories and images and externalize into concrete and active images the organizing principles of our minds and of cultural semiotic systems. One (but surely not the only) function of myth therefore seems to be to playfully reflect upon and meta-analyse the rhizome of interconnected symbolic systems of a given society.
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).