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Snorri Sturluson Qua Fulcrum
MIRATOR 12/2011 1 Snorri Sturluson qua Fulcrum: Perspectives on the Cultural Activity of Myth, Mythological Poetry and Narrative in Medieval Iceland* Frog The present paper seeks to complement discussions of the social impacts of Snorri Sturluson’s (1179–1241) mythography, concentrating on Edda and the discourse it generated in medieval Iceland. It sets out to build an overview of Snorri’s impact on the cultural activity1 of mythology in medieval Iceland through a complementary set of specific examples with no pretence of a comprehensive survey. These examples concentrate on sites of probable innovation in Snorri’s handling of mythological material as contrasted with broader evidence of the traditions to which they are related. Each example could be presented in a paper-length discussion, but the emphasis here is on the construction of an overview in order to develop a broader frame for further discussion. Although no one example is unequivocally demonstrable, the outline of the broader social pattern presented here is not dependent on the specific details of each case nor on any one case independently. Moreover, the frame of the overview affirms that individual discussions are relevant and warranted when surveying and extending existing research. Of course, the recognition of the social impacts of Edda on the cultural activity of mythology does not demonstrate that individual examples are necessarily responses to Edda, it nevertheless shows that these would be consistent with a pattern and trend rather than arbitrary. For this reason, in addition to late or statistically demonstrable examples which are * I would like to thank my two anonymous reviewers as well as Haukur Þorgeirsson for their valuable comments and suggestions in the preparation of this paper for publication. -
Old Norse Gods and Heroes”
MEDI 360 (F01) 2006 Selected Topics in Medieval Culture: “Old Norse Gods and Heroes” David Strong Building - Required Texts C108 T. W. F: 1:30 - 2:20 1. Edda 2. The Poetic Edda Instructor: P. A. Baer 3. Nordic Religions.in Office: Cle C153 the Viking Age Office phone: 721-5484 4. Eyrbyggja Saga 5. The Saga of the. Office hours: Volsungs T. W. F: 2:30 - 3:20 Coursepack Email: [email protected] Reserve Texts Course Description This course will provide an overview of the myths, religious beliefs, and heroic traditions of the Vikings up to and including their conversion to Christianity. Primary sources will be studied (in English translation) to provide an understanding of how this knowledge has been preserved and the inherent biases of such material. We will read introductory excerpts from non-Germanic sources including Tacitus and Ibn Fadlan. The major focus of the course, however, will be on medieval Scandinavian sources such as Saxo Grammaticus, Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic Poetic Edda, and several Icelandic sagas. Examples drawn from archeological artifacts, art works, and movies will also be discussed. Course Objectives 1. To discuss the original sources that preserve knowledge of Norse mythology. 2. To consider concepts and theories relevant to mythological sources. 3. To discuss the Norse world view and religious practices. 4. To examine tensions inherent in the conversion to Christianity. 5. To explore how this mythology has been used in the past and the present. Course Outline for Fall 2006 Texts: NR = Nordic Relgions; SE = Snorri’s Edda; PE = Poetic Edda; SV = Saga of the Volsungs; ES = Eyrbyggja Saga; CP = Coursepack; CWeb = Course webpage Week 1: Sept. -
Introduction Carolyne Larrington
Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-13544-4 — A Handbook to Eddic Poetry Edited by Carolyne Larrington , Judy Quinn , Brittany Schorn Excerpt More Information Introduction Carolyne Larrington In the mythological eddic poem Hymiskviða the gods order the sea-ruler Ægir to entertain them all at a feast. Ægir responds with the claim that he does not possess a cauldron big enough for the purpose, and Týr and Þórr set off to find a suitable vessel at the home of Týr’s mother in Jo˛tunheimar (‘the lands of the giants’). Their success means that véar hverian vel skulu drekka o˛lðr at Ægis eitt ho˛rmeitið (‘the gods will drink well ale at Ægir’s every winter’, Hym 39/4–8). The most capacious of cauldrons is appro- priated from Hymir, whose hospitality is distinctly chilly, and brought to a hall where its contents can delight gods and elves alike. The mode of eddic poetry is just such a gigantic kettle, an all-encompassing container for the Old Norse myths and heroic legends which froth, bob, and jostle together within it, whether as substantial whole poems, fragmentary verse sequences, or single lausavísur (‘free-standing verses’). When in 1955 the English poet Philip Larkin eschewed drawing on the ‘common myth- kitty’ for the inspiration for his poems (Larkin 1955, 78), he was explicitly rejecting the recent Modernist poetic practice of employing wide-ranging cultural allusions. Yet Larkin’s metaphor for all that he refused has found resonance for those who write about traditional story. Thus, this Handbook engages closely with the ‘myth-kitty’, the shared resources of traditional knowledge that find their form within the accommodating mode of eddic poetry: the myths and legends of the Old Norse–Icelandic tradition. -
THE ORIGINS of ANACRUSIS in FORNYRDISLAG 1. Traditional
BEI134 $U18 Niemeyer - Beiträge 134/1 Ð 1. Bel. - 13-01-12 08:50:54 - Rev 17.02 THE ORIGINS OF ANACRUSIS IN FORNYRDISLAG This article discusses occurrences of fornyrðislag verses with apparent anacru- sis in the Poetic Edda, i.e. verses which are similar to normal verses except for an additional unstressed initial position. Suzuki’s (2010) view that this phenomenon is »rule-governed and integrated into the metrical system« is examined critically and contrasted with the traditional view, which holds that such verses are largely or entirely spurious. Anacrusis as a metrical principle is demonstrated in 14th century Icelandic poetry but its use before then must be regarded as questionable.1 1. Traditional (Sievers) analysis of Old Icelandic verse The traditional analysis of Germanic metrics (Sievers 1893) holds that each verse essentially consists of two lifts and two drops. The arrangement of the lifts and drops divides verses into five basic types. The A type is trochaic (/ x / x) while the B type is iambic (x / x /). The C type has both lifts in the middle (x / / x) while the D type has both at the outset (/ / x x) and the E type has them at opposite ends of the verse (/ x x /). Other structural elements, namely syllable quantity, resolution2 and the posi- tion of alliteration, divide the five basic types into a number of subtypes. It will be convenient to give Icelandic examples of the major subtypes at the outset. I have chosen examples from Vo˛ lospa´ 3 but omitted rare subtypes that are unimportant for the following discussion. -
RMN Newsletter 8 2014
The Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter May 2014 № 8 Edited by Frog Helen F. Leslie and Joseph S. Hopkins Published by Folklore Studies / Dept. of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki, Helsinki 1 RMN Newsletter is a medium of contact and communication for members of the Retrospective Methods Network (RMN). The RMN is an open network which can include anyone who wishes to share in its focus. It is united by an interest in the problems, approaches, strategies and limitations related to considering some aspect of culture in one period through evidence from another, later period. Such comparisons range from investigating historical relationships to the utility of analogical parallels, and from comparisons across centuries to developing working models for the more immediate traditions behind limited sources. RMN Newsletter sets out to provide a venue and emergent discourse space in which individual scholars can discuss and engage in vital cross- disciplinary dialogue, present reports and announcements of their own current activities, and where information about events, projects and institutions is made available. RMN Newsletter is edited by Frog, Helen F. Leslie and Joseph S. Hopkins, published by Folklore Studies / Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki PO Box 59 (Unioninkatu 38 A) 00014 University of Helsinki Finland The open-access electronic edition of this publication is available on-line at: http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/ © 2014, the authors ISSN 2324-0636 (print) ISSN 1799-4497 (electronic) All scientific articles in this journal have been subject to peer review. 2 Contents Editor’s Note ....................................................................................................................................... -
The Poetic Edda (The Elder Edda) Free
FREE THE POETIC EDDA (THE ELDER EDDA) PDF Anonymous,Benjamin Thorpe | 136 pages | 30 Jan 2010 | Digireads.com | 9781420937701 | English | United States Poetic Edda - Wikipedia By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Cookie PolicyPrivacy Policyand The Poetic Edda (the Elder Edda) Terms of Service. It only takes a minute to sign up. The Poetic Edda is the modern attribution for an unnamed collection of Old Norse poems. Several versions exist, all consisting primarily of text from the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript known as the Codex Regius. Together with the Poetic Edda, The Poetic Edda (the Elder Edda) comprises the major store of Scandinavian mythology. The work is often assumed to have been written, or at least compiled, by the Icelandic scholar and historian Snorri Sturluson around the year If you are interested in a closer look, you may find English translations of both on sacred-texts. The "Poetic Edda" is used to refer to a group of poems dealing with the Norse Gods and heroes. There doesn't seem to be a single version, but all versions draw from the Codex Regius. Although the Codex was written in the 13th century, the material it is comprised of may be older, as Old Norse poetry dates as far back as the 8th century. The poems constitute what may The Poetic Edda (the Elder Edda) termed "Eddaic poetry" as opposed to the more complex " skaldic poetry ". The poems themselves are unattributed and the author Codex is unknown. The Prose Edda, by contrast, is attributed to Snorri Sturluson, although he may have simply compiled it, as opposed to having been the author. -
The Eddic Poem Grímnismál As a Dramatic and Mythological Unity1
2012 ACTA UNIVERSITATIS CAROLINAE PAG. 7–35 PHILOLOGICA 1 / GERMANISTICA PRAGENSIA XXI VENI, VIDI, MORI: THE EDDIC POEM GRÍMNISMÁL AS A DRAMATIC AND MYTHOLOGICAL UNITY1 JIŘÍ STARÝ ABSTRACT The article deals with the Old-NorseLay of Grímnir, one of the mythologi- cal lays of the Poetic Edda. The first part of the article reviews the scholarly inquiries into the poem, especially the opinions on the relation between the framing epic story of the poem, which describes the capturing and torturing of the disguised god Óðinn, and the main body of the poem, which consists of enumerative stanzas depicting the Old-Norse mytho- logical world. The second part of the article analyzes the main motifs of the poem and tries to uncover their artistic and religious importance in the whole of the poem. Keywords Grímnismál, Old Norse myths, Old Norse religion, Old Norse literature Då sitter vid vår sida en gud förklädd. Hjalmar Gullberg Grímnismál, the fourth of the mythological poems of the Poetic Edda, is preserved in two manuscripts: in Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda (GkS 2365, 4to) and in the so-called Edda- fragment manuscript (AM 748, 4to). The extant poem consists of 54 stanzas of differing length and metre and of a prologue and epilogue in prose. Twenty-one stanzas – more than a third of the entire poem – are quoted (sometimes with different wording) by Snorri Sturluson in his Edda, and stanza 47 is quoted by Óláfr Þórðarson in his Third Grammatical Treatise. 1 The citations of Eddic poems in this article are taken from Jón Helgason’s edition (Eddadigte, 3 Vols., København: Ejnar Munksgaard – Oslo: Dreyer – Stockholm: Norstedt, 1955–1962). -
Icelandic Folklore
i ICELANDIC FOLKLORE AND THE CULTURAL MEMORY OF RELIGIOUS CHANGE ii BORDERLINES approaches,Borderlines methodologies,welcomes monographs or theories and from edited the socialcollections sciences, that, health while studies, firmly androoted the in late antique, medieval, and early modern periods, are “edgy” and may introduce sciences. Typically, volumes are theoretically aware whilst introducing novel approaches to topics of key interest to scholars of the pre-modern past. iii ICELANDIC FOLKLORE AND THE CULTURAL MEMORY OF RELIGIOUS CHANGE by ERIC SHANE BRYAN iv We have all forgotten our names. — G. K. Chesterton Commons licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. This work is licensed under Creative British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. © 2021, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds The author asserts their moral right to be identi�ied as the author of this work. Permission to use brief excerpts from this work in scholarly and educational works is hereby granted determinedprovided that to thebe “fair source use” is under acknowledged. Section 107 Any of theuse U.S.of material Copyright in Act this September work that 2010 is an Page exception 2 or that or limitation covered by Article 5 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive (2001/ 29/ EC) or would be 94– 553) does not require the Publisher’s permission. satis�ies the conditions speci�ied in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. ISBN (HB): 9781641893756 ISBN (PB): 9781641894654 eISBN (PDF): 9781641893763 www.arc- humanities.org print-on-demand technology. -
Thesis Cover Page
Háskóli Íslands Hugvísindasvið Medieval Icelandic Studies Nema ein Guðrún er hon æva grét Emotion, gender and revenge in heroic poetry Ritgerð til MA-prófs í Medieval Icelandic Studies Elizabeth Skuthorpe Kt.: 141075-4469 Leiðbeinandi: Ármann Jakobsson Desember 2015 Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis would have been impossible without support from various quarters. But at the risk of becoming overly emotional or sentimental (and hopefully not vengeful) the following people have my sincere thanks: my family, especially my parents and David Hollingworth; the professors and instructors of the VMN and MIS programs at Háskoli Íslands, who’s teaching and support confirmed that my decision to travel to the other side of the world was a good one; Katie Thorn for her eagle-eyed proofreading; and my supervisor, Ármann Jakobsson, for his advice and assistance throughout this project. Abstract Revenge is a central theme of the heroic poetry of the Poetic Edda as are the attendant emotions such as shame and honour. Similarly the role of men and women in feud and vengeance is one of the prime concerns of this corpus of literature. Despite this centrality the heroic poems also bear a reputation for grim stoicism and a supposedly barren emotional landscape. Recent scholarship into the history of the emotions and the affective turn has begun to focus on the expression of emotion in medieval literature. This thesis surveys the language of emotion, the physical expressions of sentiment and emotional interactions in the final four poems of the Vǫlsunga and Niflunga narratives of the Poetic Edda; Atlakviða, Atlamál, Guðrúnarhvǫt and Hamðismál. -
Scripta Islandica 72/2021
SCRIPTA ISLANDICA ISLÄNDSKA SÄLLSKAPETS ÅRSBOK 72/2021 REDIGERAD AV LASSE MÅRTENSSON OCH VETURLIÐI ÓSKARSSON under medverkan av Pernille Hermann (Århus) Else Mundal (Bergen) Guðrún Nordal (Reykjavík) Heimir Pálsson (Uppsala) Henrik Williams (Uppsala) UPPSALA, SWEDEN Utgiven med stöd från Vetenskapsrådet © 2021 respektive författare (CC BY) DOI: 10.33063/diva-439399 Sättning: Ord och sats Marco Bianchi Isländska sällskapet Institutionen för nordiska språk vid Uppsala universitet ISSN 0582-3234 (tryckt) ISSN 2001-9416 (digitalt) Innehåll FELIX LUMMER, Of Magical Beings and Where to Find Them: On the Concept of álfar in the translated riddarasǫgur .............. 5 FROG, Preserving Blunders in Eddic Poems: Formula Variation in Numbered Inventories of Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál ...... 43 LASSE MÅRTENSSON, The Change menninir > mennurnir, mennirnir in Icelandic ........................................... 93 MARTIN RINGMAR, Läsning för folket? Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu i skandinaviska nyöversättningar: Hur? För vem? Varför? ....... 107 MIKAEL MALES, Kan fornisländskans rúnar betyda ’bokstäver’? ... 127 Recension LASSE MÅRTENSSON, Rec. av Karl G. Johansson och Elise Kleivane (red.). Speculum septentrionale. Konungs skuggsjá and the Euro pean Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages ..................... 137 Författarna i denna årgång ................................. 143 Of Magical Beings and Where to Find Them On the Concept of álfar in the Translated riddarasǫgur FELIX LUMMER 1. Introduction The process of translation attempts to enable the understanding of for- eign concepts and ideas, something which naturally involves the use of both words and concepts that are already extant in the receiving culture. This natu rally involves linguistic problems, but more interestingly often results in the overlapping, alteration and merging of concepts, something that can have long-term consequences on language and cultural under- standing. -
ISL 1238784724 171 187 Pdf.Pdf (7.935Mb)
Satire and the Heroic Life: Two Studies (Helgakvida Hundingsbana I, 18 and Bjgrn Hitdrelakappi’s Gramagafltm) Scholars like Otto Rank, Lord Raglan, and Jan de Vries have pointed out a remarkably rigid patterning in the lives of many legendary “ heroes,” 1 and one of the most interesting recent tendencies in the study of heroic legend pursues such patterns to the influence of myth or ritual or, at least, to tradition in an oral culture.2 Another route to what might be called “ heroic conformity” begins with the elusive background in a heroic ethos, and George Fenwick Jones’ The Ethos o f the Song o f Roland can stand as a good representative of this more sociological (and hence less exact) scholarly direction.3 Strangely the two approaches—the one from traditional narrative structures and the other from the real-life ideological matrix supporting such 1. Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: a Psychological Interpretation of Mythology, tr. by F. Robbins and S. E. Jelliffe (New York, 1955); Lord Raglan, The Hero: a Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama (London, 1936); Jan de Vries, Betrachtungen zum Marchen. .., FFC 150 (Helsinki, 1954) and in more popular form in Heroic Song and Heroic Legend, tr. B. J. Timmer (London, 1963), ch. ii . 2. A few examples: Otto Hofler, “ Das Opfer im Semnonenhain und die Edda,” in Edda, Skalden, Saga: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Felix Genzmer, ed. by Hermann Schneider (Heidelberg, 1952), pp. i —67; Franz Rolf Schroder, “ Mythos und Heldensage,” GRM, 36(1955), 1- 2 1 and revised in Zur germanisch-deutschen Helden- sage, ed. -
The Dating of Eddic Poetry – Evidence from Alliteration
Haukur Þorgeirsson The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies The dating of Eddic poetry – evidence from alliteration ABSTRACT: Eddic poetry contains instances where the words reka and reiðr alliterate as if they had ini- tial v, corresponding to an earlier stage of the lan- guage (10th century or earlier). Traditionally, this has been understood as a sign that the poems in ques- tion are old. The alternative possibility is that 12th and 13th century Icelanders could have used vr-initial words in poetry in imitation of archaic poems and East Norse dialects. I argue against this latter pos- sibility. Icelandic poetry known to be from the 11th century or younger contains no examples of vr-ini- tial words. Furthermore, the manuscript spelling of the words in question strongly suggests that the scribes were unfamiliar with vr-intial forms. Finally, the evidence from the vr-initial and r-initial forms aligns well with other dating evidence. KEYWORDS: Eddic poetry, dating of poetry, allitera- tion, archaism. 34 | EDDIC AND OLD GERMANIC 1. INTRODUCTION1 The dating of Eddic poetry has long been a debated topic and since the dawn of historical linguistics various linguistic criteria have been brought to bear on it. A consensus remains elusive and many scholars are skeptical that any conclusions can ever be reached. In my view, the situation is not so dire. Already in the mid-19th century, useful contributions had been made to the problem, and in this article I reexamine and defend one of the first dating criteria to be proposed. In several poems of the Poetic Edda, the words reka (“drive, avenge”) and reiðr (“angry”) alliterate with words beginning with v.