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Praise and Censure in the Heroic Poems of the Poetic Edda

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Praise and Censure in the Heroic Poems of the Poetic Edda Master’s Degree programme in Language Sciences D.M. 270/2004 Final Thesis Praise and Censure in the Heroic Poems of the Poetic Edda Supervisor Ch. Prof. Marina Buzzoni Assistant supervisor Ch. Prof. Massimiliano Bampi Graduand Francesco Bergo Matriculation Number 840838 Academic Year 2016 / 2017 Praise and Censure in the Heroic Poems of the Poetic Edda 2 Contents Praise and Censure in the Heroic Poems of the Poetic Edda ............................................... 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 5 1. The Sources and their Origins ................................................................................................... 9 1.1. The Historical and Cultural Context ................................................................................... 9 1.2. Eddic poetry: Medieval texts from an oral tradition ........................................................ 12 1.3. Transcribed Eddic poetry in the Codex Regius ................................................................. 15 2. A Framework for the analysis of Heroism ............................................................................... 19 2.1. A textual approach for the description of heroes ............................................................ 20 2.2. A synthetic view of characters ......................................................................................... 22 2.3. Differentiation at the reception level .............................................................................. 27 2.4. Textual evidence of Judgement ....................................................................................... 28 2.4.1. The Cycle of Helgi ...................................................................................................... 30 2.4.2. The Cycle of Sigurðr ................................................................................................... 32 2.4.3. The Cycle of Brynhildr ............................................................................................... 34 2.4.4. The Cycle of Guðrún .................................................................................................. 37 3. Praise and Censure in Context ................................................................................................ 43 3.1. Vǫlundr ............................................................................................................................. 43 3.2. Helgi .................................................................................................................................. 47 3.3. Gold, Power, Sociality: the Dragon as the Outcast .......................................................... 58 3.4. Sigurðr .............................................................................................................................. 61 3.4. Atli .................................................................................................................................... 70 3.5. The Niflungar: Gunnar and Hǫgni .................................................................................... 72 3.6. The sons of Guðrún: Hamðir and Sǫrli ............................................................................. 80 3.7. Sigrún/Sváva ..................................................................................................................... 84 3.8. Sigrdrífa/Brynhildr ............................................................................................................ 85 3.9. Oddrún ............................................................................................................................. 91 3.10. Guðrún ........................................................................................................................... 92 4. Heroism, Honour and Glory .................................................................................................... 99 4.1. Old Norse Heroism and the Honour code ........................................................................ 99 4.1.1. Honour as the social definition of an individual ..................................................... 100 4.1.2. Honour and Oaths: defining the plot ...................................................................... 103 4.1.3. Loyalty and Leadership ............................................................................................ 104 3 4.1.4. Women and Marriage ............................................................................................. 105 4.1.5. Women, Subversion and Vengeance ...................................................................... 107 4.2. Destiny and Heroism ...................................................................................................... 113 4.2.1 Fate as the ultimate and necessary enemy .............................................................. 113 4.2.2. Tragedy as a magnifier of Heroism and a trial for Glory ......................................... 114 4.3. Valour and Courage as requirements for Glory ............................................................. 115 4.3.1. Inglorious main characters ...................................................................................... 115 4.3.2. Courage as a key variable and a turning point ........................................................ 117 4.3.3. Successful vengeance as the initiation of the virtuous hero................................... 118 4.4. The Path to Glory ........................................................................................................... 119 4.5. Heroism between Epitomes and Glorious Characters .................................................. 120 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 125 Primary Sources ........................................................................................................................ 127 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 128 4 Introduction In this dissertation, I am discussing the Norse heroism as it is represented in the main characters in the so called heroic poems of the Poetic Edda, as they appear in the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, GKS 2365 4°, in function of the possible cultural role they had in the Norse society of the Viking and Middle Ages. Even though the poems are not a coherent whole designed by one author, each of them is related to the others through the same mythology and corpus of legends. By heroes and heroism, I mean a loose synonym of main characters and their behaviour, which in the heroic poems turn out to be a stance characterised by a strong individuality, which in turn develops in various expressions, fitting for a role as cultural models. My purpose here is to understand how the main characters or heroes of the heroic poems of the Edda were portrayed, understood and possibly perceived by their Viking Age and Medieval Norse audiences. Hence, here I am treating praise and glory on hand, and censure on the other, as evidence of judgement applied on characters of the heroic poems and their Eddic heroism, implying discussion and confrontation, between authors/interpreters and their audiences, about social and moral issues, at least during the Viking Age, when earlier versions of the texts under analysis were transmitted orally, and possibly during the Medieval Age, in Scandinavia and Iceland. Praise and censure can assume various textual forms in the Eddic poems, from epithets to full judgements, and those will be my starting point for a deeper analysis, in context. I am here assuming a stance analogous to that of neotraditionalism in Old Norse scholarship: if Icelandic Medieval sagas are a form of fictionality that should still be understood as meaningful regarding the social constructions of their settings, so the Eddic poems should reflect core cultural matters that were variously developed and re- elaborated since the Migration Age and relevant throughout the Viking Age and beyond. We can avoid falling into pointless speculation by means of careful generalisation and analogy. In particular, praise and glory are attributed to fictional characters, which means there is no direct gain for poets or narrators: praise and censure in the Eddic poems must be based on a moral system, although possibly adapted and formalised for poetic necessities and dramatic tones in performance. 5 The Vǫlsunga Saga, which is a Medieval production that stems from the same tradition and involves the same characters and the same events as the heroic poems of the Edda, obviously constitutes a valuable term of comparison. I am considering these texts as an expression of the culture that produced them, and a relevant one as they possibly reveal core matters of the cultural heritage at their roots. It is important to notice that various elements or parts of the poems or prose sections within the Edda explicitly stem from a continental (German) tradition, for example about the murder of Sigurðr. This suggests that the southern Germanic tradition about the cycle was present in Scandinavia, even in earlier Viking Age and Medieval times, when these poems reached the form as we know them in the Edda. However, these elements co-existed with more typical versions or re-elaborations, that in time brought to a harmonisation within the
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