The Image of the Female Deity in Migration Age Scandinavia
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Fra Solidarisk Samværskultur Til
FRA SOLIDARISK SAMVÆRSKULTUR TIL KUNNSKAPSSOLIDARITET Nina Volckmar FRA SOLIDARISK SAMVÆRSKULTUR TIL KUNNSKAPSSOLIDARITET Det sosialdemokratiske skoleprosjekt fra Sivertsen til Hernes Dr. polit.-avhandling Pedagogisk institutt Fakultet for samfunnsvitenskap og teknologiledelse Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, NTNU Trondheim 2004 Til mamma og pappa FORORD Denne studien har sitt utspring i prosjektet Utdanning som nasjonsbygging, finansiert gjennom Norges forskningsråd og programmet Kompetanse, utdanning og verdi- skaping. Takk til Norges forskningsråd for fullfinansiering under arbeidet med av- handlingen. En spesiell takk går til styringsgruppa i prosjektet Utdanning som nasjons- bygging; Sveinung Vaage (prosjektleder), Rune Slagstad, Alfred Oftedal Telhaug og Harald Thuen. Telhaug har vært min veileder og nærmest daglige diskusjonspartner under hele prosjektperioden. Takk for ditt sterke engasjement og smittende entusi- asme – og vel så mye – takk for til dels provoserende og frustrende motforestillinger underveis. Takk til Slagstad som har lest og kommentert tidlige utkast til deler av avhandlingen, og takk til Vaage for en fullstendig gjennomlesning av teksten helt i sluttfasen. 2000/2001 hadde jeg gleden av å være ”visiting scholar” Harvard University i Boston, USA. Takk til Julie A. Reuben som trakk meg med i seminarvirksomheten innen det utdanningshistoriske fagmiljø ved Harvard Graduate School of Education, og som åpnet mine øyne for mangfoldet og kompleksiteten i amerikansk utdannings- historie gjennom kurset ”The Elusive Quest of Equality: Historical Perspectives on American Education”. Takk til Eli-Ann Tandberg som med et våkent øye har lest korrektur og kommet med råd om språklige forbedringer. Takk også til Frode Myklebust som i siste runde har gitt meg teknisk assistanse i arbeidet med en god layout. Arbeidet med avhandlingen har strukket seg over år, og livets utfordringer i denne perioden har til tider satt meg litt ut av spill. -
Herjans Dísir: Valkyrjur, Supernatural Femininities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age
Herjans dísir: Valkyrjur, Supernatural Femininities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age Luke John Murphy Lokaverkefni til MA–gráðu í Norrænni trú Félagsvísindasvið Herjans dísir: Valkyrjur, Supernatural Femininities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age Luke John Murphy Lokaverkefni til MA–gráðu í Norrænni trú Leiðbeinandi: Terry Gunnell Félags- og mannvísindadeild Félagsvísindasvið Háskóla Íslands 2013 Ritgerð þessi er lokaverkefni til MA–gráðu í Norrænni Trú og er óheimilt að afrita ritgerðina á nokkurn hátt nema með leyfi rétthafa. © Luke John Murphy, 2013 Reykjavík, Ísland 2013 Luke John Murphy MA in Old Nordic Religions: Thesis Kennitala: 090187-2019 Spring 2013 ABSTRACT Herjans dísir: Valkyrjur, Supernatural Feminities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age This thesis is a study of the valkyrjur (‘valkyries’) during the late Iron Age, specifically of the various uses to which the myths of these beings were put by the hall-based warrior elite of the society which created and propagated these religious phenomena. It seeks to establish the relationship of the various valkyrja reflexes of the culture under study with other supernatural females (particularly the dísir) through the close and careful examination of primary source material, thereby proposing a new model of base supernatural femininity for the late Iron Age. The study then goes on to examine how the valkyrjur themselves deviate from this ground state, interrogating various aspects and features associated with them in skaldic, Eddic, prose and iconographic source material as seen through the lens of the hall-based warrior elite, before presenting a new understanding of valkyrja phenomena in this social context: that valkyrjur were used as instruments to propagate the pre-existing social structures of the culture that created and maintained them throughout the late Iron Age. -
Tangible Religion: Amulets, Illnesses, and the Demonic Seven Sisters Rudolf Simek University of Bonn
Tangible Religion: Amulets, Illnesses, and the Demonic Seven Sisters Rudolf Simek University of Bonn It is a well-known fact within Medieval studies that in Western Europe in the Middle Ages there existed, side by side, three major strategies of coming to terms with illnesses: Firstly, what we today would consider proper medical ther- apy, in its many variants from traditional monastic medicine (by the infirmarii) to itinerant barber surgeons (medici) to aca- demic medical science (phisici) as practised within and without the Salernitan school. Medical handbooks in manuscript form, containing collections of active ingredients (simplicia) and pre- scriptions for particular ailments (indicationes) as well as rules on dietetics and prognostics testify to this tradition even in Old Norse vernacular texts. Secondly, by taking recourse to miraculous divine help, usually in the form of asking the saints for intercession on the behalf of the patient or his kin, whether by prayer alone or the promise of votive gifts, resulting in the miraculous recovery of the patient – at least in the many successful cases reported and handed down in hagiographic literature, usually in the miracle collections tied to the lives of particular saints, certainly not as case histories on the recovery of particular patients and even less connected with particular illnesses – unless the saint in question was known to “specialise” in certain medical problems, such as St. Margaret for difficult births and St. Blaise for throat illnesses, to name but two of many. Thirdly, by taking resort to religio-magical practises, such as magical charms, amulets, and rituals. Although all of these were How to cite this book chapter: Simek, R. -
How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?
II. Old Norse Myth and Society HOW UNIFORM WAS THE OLD NORSE RELIGION? Stefan Brink ne often gets the impression from handbooks on Old Norse culture and religion that the pagan religion that was supposed to have been in Oexistence all over pre-Christian Scandinavia and Iceland was rather homogeneous. Due to the lack of written sources, it becomes difficult to say whether the ‘religion’ — or rather mythology, eschatology, and cult practice, which medieval sources refer to as forn siðr (‘ancient custom’) — changed over time. For obvious reasons, it is very difficult to identify a ‘pure’ Old Norse religion, uncorroded by Christianity since Scandinavia did not exist in a cultural vacuum.1 What we read in the handbooks is based almost entirely on Snorri Sturluson’s representation and interpretation in his Edda of the pre-Christian religion of Iceland, together with the ambiguous mythical and eschatological world we find represented in the Poetic Edda and in the filtered form Saxo Grammaticus presents in his Gesta Danorum. This stance is more or less presented without reflection in early scholarship, but the bias of the foundation is more readily acknowledged in more recent works.2 In the textual sources we find a considerable pantheon of gods and goddesses — Þórr, Óðinn, Freyr, Baldr, Loki, Njo3rðr, Týr, Heimdallr, Ullr, Bragi, Freyja, Frigg, Gefjon, Iðunn, et cetera — and euhemerized stories of how the gods acted and were characterized as individuals and as a collective. Since the sources are Old Icelandic (Saxo’s work appears to have been built on the same sources) one might assume that this religious world was purely Old 1 See the discussion in Gro Steinsland, Norrøn religion: Myter, riter, samfunn (Oslo: Pax, 2005). -
THOR and the GIANT's BRIDE by Riti Kroesen
THOR AND THE GIANT'S BRIDE by Riti Kroesen - Leiden When the first Scandinavian settlers arrived in Iceland, there was one god, whom they loved and worshipped above all others: Thor. The testimony of the Islendinga Spgur is abundantly clear on this point. Though we cannöt deal extensively with it here, these texts are amply supported by other evidence, both direct and indirect, Icelandic as weIl as non-Icelandic. It seems that in the beginning Thor was revered more than the other gods in at least large parts of Scandinavia.1 On the other hand, we have the stories of the two Eddas2, in which Thor generally plays a subordinate part and even cuts a sorry figure; sometimes he seems to be present only as a source of fun for both gods and men due to his silliness and lack of brains. His rashness is apt to cause hirn continual trouble, and his enormous appetite makes everybody shudder. But true - he is still the best fighter of all the gods - and he is the most htmest of them all, one might like to add. In the Eddas, Odin is the most important and in some in- stances the omnipotent god, the father and king of all gods and men. The explanation of this, which has often been given before, is that Odin must have pushed Thor to the background, at least in court-circles. Odin, the old god of war and death, was the protector of both the Danish and Norwegian kings - the latter from the southern part of Norway and like their Danish colleagues 1. -
Parallels Between Old Norse Cosmogony and Eschatology1
TEMENOS NORDIC JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION Temenos Vol. 57 No. 1 (2021), 103–26 DOI: 10.33356/temenos.100075 The Echo of Creation: Parallels between Old Norse Cosmogony and Eschatology1 JAN A. KOZÁK Charles University Abstract The article explores the idea of an echo, both literal and structural, that connects Old Norse cosmogony and eschatology. The motif of a bellowing sound or cry appears in cosmogony in the figure of Ymir, ‘Crier’, who is killed by the Æsir, and from his body the world is cre- ated. During the eschatological events the booming sound recurs when Heimdallr blows his horn shortly before the Æsir themselves are killed by their adversaries. A cry is also emitted by Óðinn when he sacrifices himself on the Cosmic Tree. The booming bellow is thus associated with death, especially in the context of implicit or explicit sacrifice. The structural resonance between cosmogony and eschatology is composed of a series of five motifs that reappear in the same sequence at both liminal moments. The eschatology seems to be structurally a repetition of the cosmogony, but with inverted roles: the victims are the gods, and the sacrificers are the giants, which is the inverse of the situation during the cosmogony. The present analysis sheds light on the sacrificial pattern hidden behind the two events, and helps contextualize the motif of the mighty sound that reappears at both moments in cosmic history. Keywords: Old Norse Myth, cosmogony, eschatology, sacrifice, sound, murder, creation, Heimdall, Gjallarhorn, Ymir In this article I will explore the parallels between Old Norse cosmogony and eschatology from two different but interconnected perspectives – first, by focusing on the motif of the bellowing sound or cry, and second, by focusing 1 This research was supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship of the Horizon 2020 Programme at the University of Bergen, SYMBODIN project. -
Economy, Magic and the Politics of Religious Change in Pre-Modern
1 Economy, magic and the politics of religious change in pre-modern Scandinavia Hugh Atkinson Department of Scandinavian Studies University College London Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 28th May 2020 I, Hugh Atkinson, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that these sources have been acknowledged in the thesis. 2 Abstract This dissertation undertook to investigate the social and religious dynamic at play in processes of religious conversion within two cultures, the Sámi and the Scandinavian (Norse). More specifically, it examined some particular forces bearing upon this process, forces originating from within the cultures in question, working, it is argued, to dispute, disrupt and thereby counteract the pressures placed upon these indigenous communities by the missionary campaigns each was subjected to. The two spheres of dispute or ambivalence towards the abandonment of indigenous religion and the adoption of the religion of the colonial institution (the Church) which were examined were: economic activity perceived as unsustainable without the 'safety net' of having recourse to appeal to supernatural powers to intervene when the economic affairs of the community suffered crisis; and the inheritance of ancestral tradition. Within the indigenous religious tradition of the Sámi communities selected as comparanda for the purposes of the study, ancestral tradition was embodied, articulated and transmitted by particular supernatural entities, personal guardian spirits. Intervention in economic affairs fell within the remit of these spirits, along with others, which may be characterized as guardian spirits of localities, and guardian spirits of particular groups of game animals (such as wild reindeer, fish). -
Children of a One-Eyed God: Impairment in the Myth and Memory of Medieval Scandinavia Michael David Lawson East Tennessee State University
East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works 5-2019 Children of a One-Eyed God: Impairment in the Myth and Memory of Medieval Scandinavia Michael David Lawson East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Cultural History Commons, Disability Studies Commons, European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Folklore Commons, History of Religion Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Medieval History Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, Scandinavian Studies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Lawson, Michael David, "Children of a One-Eyed God: Impairment in the Myth and Memory of Medieval Scandinavia" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3538. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3538 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Children of a One-Eyed God: Impairment in the Myth and Memory of Medieval Scandinavia ————— A thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of History East Tennessee State University ————— In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree -
Performance and Norse Poetry: the Hydromel of Praise and the Effluvia of Scorn the Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture for 2001
Oral Tradition, 16/1 (2001): 168-202 Performance and Norse Poetry: The Hydromel of Praise and the Effluvia of Scorn The Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture for 2001 Stephen A. Mitchell Performance Studies and the Possibilities for Interpretation How should we moderns “read” a medieval text?1 Thanks to the work of many scholars, not least the pioneering studies of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, we are today able to understand the nature and implications of a preserved medieval work’s background as an oral text much better than did the early and brilliant (but narrowly gauged) generations that included such giants within Old Norse as Jacob Grimm, Konrad von Maurer, Theodor Möbius, Rudolf Keyser, and N. M. Petersen.2 Given these advances in our understanding of orality, performance, and the ethnography of speaking, how do we decode the social, religious, and literary worlds of northern 1 By “read” I mean here the full range of decocting techniques employed by modern scholarship, including but not limited to those associated with traditional philology and folkloristics, as well as such emergent approaches as those collectively known as “cultural studies.” This essay was delivered as the 2001 Albert Lord/Milman Parry Memorial Lecture under the sponsorship of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri. For their encouragement, sage comments, and helpful criticism, I warmly thank John Foley, Joseph Harris, Gregory Nagy, and John Zemke. 2 Already as Parry was in the early stages of his research project in the Balkans, he envisioned its implications for the older works of northern Europe: “My purpose in undertaking the study of this poetry was as follows. -
The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology, , University of California Press, 2001, 0520234774, 9780520234772, 131 Pages
The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology, , University of California Press, 2001, 0520234774, 9780520234772, 131 pages. Prose Edda is a work without predecessor or parallel. Snorri Sturluson feared that the traditional techniques of Norse poetics, the pagan kennings, and the allusions to mythology would be forgotten with the introduction of new verse forms from Europe. Prose Edda was designed as a handbook for poets to compose in the style of the skalds of the Viking ages. It is an exposition of the rule of poetic diction with many examples, applications, and retellings of myths and legends. The present selection includes the whole of Gylfaginning (The deluding of Gylfi)--a guide to mythology that forms one of the great storybooks of the Middle Ages--and the longer heroic tales and legends of SkГЎldskaparmГЎl (Poetic diction). Snorri Sturluson was a master storyteller, and this translation in modern idiom of the inimitable tales of the gods and heroes of the Scandinavian peoples brings them to life again.. DOWNLOAD HERE Thunder of the Gods , Dorothy Hosford, 1957, , . The Poetic Edda The Mythological Poems, Henry Adams Bellows, 2004, Fiction, 251 pages. The vibrant Old Norse poems in this 13th-century collection known as the 'Lays of the Gods' recapture the ancient oral traditions of the Norsemen. These mythological poems .... The Prose Or Younger Edda Commonly Ascribed to Snorri Sturluson, Snorri Sturluson, 1842, Literary Criticism, 115 pages. Njal's Saga , , 1997, Fiction, 416 pages. Njal's Saga is the finest of the Icelandic sagas, and one of the world's greatest prose works. Written c.1280, about events a couple of centuries earlier, it is divided into ... -
The Correspondence of Just Qvigstad, 1.0 and 2.0 – the Ongoing Story of a Digital Edition
The correspondence of Just Qvigstad, 1.0 and 2.0 – the ongoing story of a digital edition UiT Digital Humanities Conference Tromsø, 30 November – 1 December 2017 Øyvind Eide, University of Cologne, Germany Per P. Aspaas & Philipp Conzett, UiT The Arctic University of Norway Outline • Just Qvigstad • Qvigstad’s correspondence 1.0 – Documentation Project in the 1990s • Qvigstad’s correspondence 2.0 – digital edition(s) project • The role of university libraries in digital edition/humanities projects Just Knud Qvigstad Born 4th of April 1853 in Lyngseidet, near Tromsø Died 15th of March 1957 in Tromsø Norwegian philologist, linguist, ethnographer, historian and cultural historian Headmaster at Tromsø Teacher Training College (= one of UiTs “predecessors”) Expert on Sami language and culture (“lappologist”) (Photo: Wikimedia Commons – S. Blom (ed.): Extensive correspondence with other experts Den Kongelige Norske St. Olavs Orden, A. M. on Sami Hanches Forlag, 1934) The Documentation Project “From Drawer to Screen” Nationwide digitisation project aiming at transferring the various university collections from paper to computers Started in 1991 at the University of Oslo. Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø joined in 1992 Range of disciplines: archaeology, ethnography, history, lexicography, folklore studies, literature, medieval studies, place names, coins/numismatics Qvigstad’s correspondence 1.0 Qvigstad to Magnus Olsen 1909-1956 (65 letters). National Library of Norway. Qvigstad to K. B. Wiklund 1891-1936 (96 letters). Uppsala University Library. Qvigstad til Emil N. Setälä 1887-1935 (96 letters). National Archives of Finland, prof. Setälä’s private archive. http://www.dokpro.uio.no/perl/historie/ qvigstadtxt.cgi?hand=Ja&id=setele066&fr http://www.dokpro.uio.no/qvigstad/setele-faks/set004.jpg ames=Nei Qvigstad’s correspondence 1.0 20 years have passed .. -
Reading Cult and Mythology in Society and Landscape: the Toponymic Evidence
Reading Cult and Mythology in Society and Landscape: The Toponymic Evidence Stefan Brink Across all cultures, myths have been used to explain phenomena and events beyond people’s comprehension. Our focus in research on Scandinavian mythology has, to a large extent, been to describe, uncover, and critically assess these myths, examining the characteristics and acts not only of gods and goddesses, but also of the minor deities found in the poems, sagas, Snorra Edda, and Saxo. All this research is and has been conducted to fathom, as far as possible, the cosmology, the cosmogony, and eschatology—in short, the mythology—of pagan Scandinavia. An early branch of scholarship focused on extracting knowledge of this kind from later collections of folklore. This approach was heavily criticized and placed in the poison cabinet for decades, but seems to have come back into fashion, brought once again into the light by younger scholars who are possibly unaware of the total dismissal of the approach in the 1920s and 30s. Another productive area of the research has been the examination of the cults and rituals among pre-Christian Scandinavians as described and indicated by written sources, iconography, archaeology, and toponymy. When preparing for this paper I planned to do two things: First, to paint, with broad strokes, the toponymic research history of the study of sacral and cultic place names. The goal here is to provide a broad picture of the current state of research in this field, hopefully revealing how toponymists work and think today. Second, I aimed to look at the myths not descriptively—retelling and analyzing the stories in the written sources—but rather instrumentally.