Edda 2000
Around the turn of the last millennium, the Anglo-Saxon monk Ælfric wrote a homily on the ‘false gods’ (De falsis diis) of the heathens.1 In part following an earlier Latin source, Ælfric gives a Christian, euhemeristic view of the origins of Roman paganism; he treats the Roman gods as having originally been men who were then deified in error. In ancient times, Ælfric tells us, men worshiped the sun and moon as gods. Next they venerated certain evil and powerful rulers, namely Saturn, his son Jove, Mars, Mercury and Venus. To his source, Ælfric adds a few comments regarding the Danish heathens of his own time, many of whom had settled in northern England. They used the name Þόr for Jove, Óðon for Mercury, and Fricg for Venus; they honored Þόr above all their gods and considered him to be the son of Óðon (Pope, 683–6). The pagan Romans established a day for each of these ‘gods’. Ælfric gives the Old English names for Sunday and Monday and says that the third day was named, in Latin, for Mars. The fourth was named for Mercury, the fifth for Jove, the sixth for Venus and the seventh for Saturn. He does not specify (but surely knew) that the Old English names for these days of the week, like the Danish names, commemorated Germanic heathen gods, the equivalents (in some sense) of the Roman ones: Tiw (Old Norse Týr) on Tuesday, Woden (Óðinn) on Wednesday, Thunor (Þόrr) on Thursday and Frige (Frigg) on Friday.2 Ælfric probably also knew that some Anglo-Saxon noblemen, including his own patrons, claimed to be descended from Woden (see Johnson, 59–62); what more he might have known about the Danish or Anglo-Saxon pagan gods is open to debate.3 But Ælfric’s reticence in this matter is typical of Old English sources as a whole, which tell us precious little about the gods venerated by the English before their conversion to Christianity beginning in the sixth century.4 Information about Tiw, Woden, Thunor and Frige is hard to come by; fortunately, more can be learned about their Old Norse counterparts.
The Scandinavians were only just converting to Christianity in Ælfric’s time, the Danes starting in the 960s, the Icelanders just in time for the millennium.5 Perhaps because they converted so late and were comparatively remote from and resistant to ecclesiastical and royal authorities,6 the Icelanders recorded more of their pagan mythological and heroic material than any other Germanic people.7 Some of that material survives from before the conversion in skaldic poetry: formally complex verse, often in praise of Norwegian kings, that alluded to Norse gods in its imagery.8 Snorri in his Edda was in fact recording mythic narratives in order to explain the earlier skaldic allusions9—luckily, for us, because it is in his Edda and the related Poetic Edda that the bulk of Old Norse myths and legends are now preserved.10
Snorri Sturluson (1178/9–1241), voted the Icelandic ‘scholar of the millennium’ in a recent poll,11 was one of the most powerful chieftains in the last decades of the Icelandic Commonwealth, often called the Sturlung Age for the prominence of Snorri’s family in that era.12 Snorri’s scholarly output included a number of biographical sagas about the Norwegian kings (most of them collected in Heimskringla) and the Edda, known variously as Snorra Edda (Snorri’s Edda), the Prose Edda, or the Younger Edda (the latter two names to distinguish it from the Poetic or Elder Edda, discussed below). The name itself is not definitively understood. In Icelandic “Edda” can mean ‘great-grandmother’ (as in the poem Rígsþula, st. 2); or it may have been a new coinage based on Latin “edo,” ‘I compose’, hence ‘poetics’ (which it came to mean in any case); or perhaps it was a playful combination of the two, as in effect the ‘great-grandmother of all poetic handbooks’.13 The work begins with a Christian prologue that euhemerizes the Norse gods in something of the same way Ælfric had done for the pagan Roman gods. After Noah’s flood (so this account runs), people forgot the name of God, although they reasoned through their ‘earthly understanding’ that a being controlled the heavens. In Troy, which we (that is, Snorri and his contemporaries) now call Tyrkland (Turkey), there lived a grandson of Priam named Tror, whom we now call Þόrr. He came to rule in Thrace, which we now call Þrúðheimr (Þόrr’s residence). He married a prophetess named Sibyl, whom we call Sif (Sif is Þόrr’s wife); one of their descendants was Voden, whom we call Óðinn. He set out for the Northern lands and established his sons as founders of dynasties in Denmark, Norway and Sweden; because they were from Asia they were called Æsir.
The background of this prologue in learned Latin culture with its (false) etymologies, Trojan origins and neo-Platonic explanations of heathen religion, is apparent enough.14 Just as Aeneas left Troy to found Italy (in Virgil’s Aeneid) and Brutus to found Britain (in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae), so Þόrr, via his descendant Óðinn, founded Scandinavia. Having once made this accommodation of the erroneous ideas of his non-Christian forefathers, however, Snorri then proceeds to narrate authentic Old Norse myths without further apology.15 As he does so he often stops to cite stanzas from his sources, skaldic poems but also anonymous poems such as Vǫluspá and Grímnismál.16 Most of the poems of this type from which Snorri quotes are also found in complete versions in a single manuscript written down in about 1270, the Codex Regius (’King’s Book’).17 When this manuscript of poetry came to the attention of the Icelandic bishop Brynjόlfur Sveinsson in 1643, he and his contemporaries thought the author was Sæmundr Sigfússon ‘the learned’ (1056–1133) and that Snorri had derived his Edda from it; hence the collection was called Sæmundar Edda (see Jonas Kristjánsson, 25). That attribution of authorship no longer stands, but the poems in the manuscript are still referred to as the (Poetic or Elder) Edda. In addition, a few poems of the same type from other manuscripts are usually added to the canon of Eddic poetry, as defined by modern editors such as Sophus Bugge18, Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn.
The first eleven poems in the Codex Regius treat mythological themes,19 and they are the focus of the present collection of essays. To them are added three mythological Eddic poems not found in the Codex Regius (Baldrs draumar, Rígsþula and Hyndluljόð).20 Taken together, the poems convey an outline of Old Norse mythic history, from the creation of the earth, heavens, giants, gods and humans; through the war of the Æsir and Vanir (two classes of gods) and the accidental killing of Óðinn’s son Baldr; and ahead to the ultimate battle against evil beings at Ragnaǫk (the ‘doom of the gods’).21 Individually the poems present mythic episodes: Óðinn consults with vǫlur or sibyls (Vǫluspá and Baldrs draumar), then speaks several stanzas of proverbial wisdom and recounts a few of his own adventures (Hávamál). In Vafþrúðnismál, he engages in a deadly wisdom contest with a giant; in Grímnismál he outlines mythological geography while seated shamanlike between two fires. Freyr pines for the giantess Gerðr and sends his servant Skírnir to woo her with presents, threats and curses (Skírnismál). Þόrr exchanges insults with a disguised Óðinn (Hárbarðsljoð); then goes in quest with Týr for a brewing cauldron owned by the giant Hymir, with whom he goes fishing and snags the World-Serpent (Hymiskviða). Loki insults all the gods in turn at a feast (Lokasenna), then acts as Þόrr’s bridesmaid to prevent a giant from marrying Freyja (Þrymskviða). An elf-like smith weds a swan-maiden, loses her, is imprisoned and then exacts revenge (Vglundarkviða). Þόrr questions a know-it-all dwarf to prevent him from running off with his daughter (Alvíssmál). Heimdallr travels among humankind and fathers the progeni tors of the three social classes (Rígsþula). Freyja consults a giant sibyl to learn the ancestors of her human protégé, Óttar (Hyndluljoð).
Some of these poems have prose introductions or narrative frames, but the dominant mode is monologue22 and dialogue, with stanzas spoken by the gods, both Æsir (chiefly Óðinn, Þόrr and Loki) and Vanir (chiefly Freyr and Freyja)23; νǫlur and giants (Vafþrúðnir, Hymir and his unnamed wife, Þrymr, Gerðr, and Hyndla); an elf (Vǫlundr); a dwarf (Alvíss) and a few humans (Skírnir?; King Níðuðr and his family in Vǫlundarkviða).24
Most of the mythological poems of the Edda are represented in this volume by a single essay, except Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál which are discussed together, as are Vǫluspá, Baldrs draumar and Hyndluljόð (with Vǫluspá also being treated first in a separate essay). We have added a second essay (by Frakes) relating to Lokasenna but focusing more on the figure of Loki, bringing the total appropriately enough up to thirteen.25 Four of the essays (those by Larrington, Clunies Ross, Acker and Quinn) were written expressly for this volume. Two others, those by Lönnroth and Svava Jakobsdόttir were translated (from Swedish and Icelandic respectively) for this volume. The other articles are reprinted from the journals cited in the acknowledgments. Harris has added an afterword to his article, and the authors and/or editors have added some translations of foreign phrases, amplified some bibliographic citations, corrected a few misprints, and made minor revisions.
The essays reflect a range of critical and theoretical approaches. All of the essays benefit from (and, in varying degrees, contribute to) the long history of philological studies; all employ close readings, whether of episodes, poems or groups of poems. Lönnroth applies ideological criticism and reception theory to reveal the social and political messages underlying Vǫluspá as they might have been received by a thirteenth-century Icelandic audience. In her 1987 Icelandic novel Gunnlaðar saga, Svava Jakobsdόttir received Hávamál for a modern Scandinavian audience, interweaving a story set in contemporary Denmark with the medieval poem’s episode involving Gunnlgð and Óðinn. Her essay elaborates on her interpretation of that episode, employing feminist and comparative mythological approaches. Larrington’s reading is ideological and anthropological. She argues that Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál delineate the proper relationship between men and gods in the Old Norse mythic universe. Harris, as in much of his other work, emphasizes the function of genre (a Germanic tradition of cursing in Skírnismál) as revealed via a comparative approach with Old English literature and later folklore. Clover, too, focuses on a Germanic genre, the senna or flyting on which she has written elsewhere and which she sees as parodied in Hárbarðsljoð. Meulengracht Sørensen compares Viking Age sources for the myth of Þόrr’s fishing for the World-Serpent— picture stones and skaldic poems —with medieval sources for the same myth in the Eddic poem Hymiskviða and in Snorri’s Edda.
Philip N. Anderson’s essay employs formalist, stylistic and dramatic criticism. He elucidates the interplay between speakers and stanzas, repetitions and metrical effects in Lokasenna. Jerold Frakes responds to the structuralist mythological approach of Georges Dumézil, who had claimed a tripartite set of functions for Norse and other Indo-European gods but had difficulty placing Loki in his schema. On the basis of Lokasenna and other sources, Frakes argues that Loki plays an anti-functional role. Margaret Clunies Ross’s essay, like her two-volume study of Old Norse mythology, is informed by anthropology, feminism and cultural studies. She reads Þrymskviða against other myths concerning relations between gods and giants and in light of societal norms for gender roles in medieval Iceland. In the first part of his article on Vǫlundarkviða, John McKinnell supplies lexical and metrical evidence to suggest that the poem was composed not in Iceland or Norway but in a Norse-speaking area of Yorkshire, England. Arguing in the second half of his essay that approaches to the Weland legend can rely too heavily on a constructed archetype, he employs literary historical methods to determine the Vǫlundarkviða poet’s particular aims in adapting the legend. Paul Acker challenges structuralist approaches to mythology, or more particularly to lore about one class of mythological beings: dwarves. Against Motz’s isolation of an archetypal dwarf that would find Alvíss aberrant in the poem named for him (Alvíssmál), Acker suggests that mythological lore varies according to different narrative and generic demands. Throughout his scholarly career, Thomas D. Hill has explored the interaction of medieval literature and medieval Biblical commentary, whether scholarly (patristic) or more in the nature of ‘popular Christian mythology’. For Rígsþula’s myth of the creation of three social classes, Hill finds analogues in medieval (chiefly insular) glosses on the three sons of Noah. Finally, Judy Quinn examines a sub-genre of poems involving a vǫlva or prophetess in order to determine that figure’s function in the overall Old Norse mythological scheme. As in her other work, this essay is informed by feminist, speech-act and oral theories, and pays particular attention to variations in the manuscript record.
Each essay is preceded by a brief introduction that summarizes the poem and gives an overview of recent criticism. The articles themselves provide detailed bibliographical references to scholarship in various languages. For the convenience of beginning students, however, we append below a general bibliography that focuses on English-language monographs.
Paul Acker
1. Ed. John C. Pope, Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, EETS o.s. 259–260 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967–8), 2:667–724; see esp. 680–87. Partial translations in Albert S. Cook and Chauncey B. Tinker, Select Translations from Old English Prose (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), 186–191; and in David F. Johnson, “Euhemerisation versus Demonisation: The Pagan Gods and Ælfric’s De Falsis Diis,” in Pagans and Christians: The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, Germania Latina 2, ed. T. Hofstra, et al. (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995), 35–69. Pope (1: 147) dates De falsis diis between 992 and 998. Wulfstan adapted Ælfric’s homily, concentrating on the portion discussed here; ed. Dorothy Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 221–24, notes 333–39. Some time around 1200, Ælfric’s homily was translated into Old Icelandic; see Arnold Taylor, “Hauksbόk and Ælfric’s De Falsis Diis,” Leeds Studies in English n.s. 3 (1969): 101–09.
2. Johnson (55–7) points out that Byrhtferth of Ramsey in his Enchiridion does explicitly correlate the Roman gods and the English names for weekdays, as does a marginal commentator of Wulfstan’s homily.
3. See A. L. Meaney, “Æthelweard, Ælfric, the Norse Gods and Northumbria,” Journal of Religious History 6 (1970): 105–32.
4. For a conservative appraisal of the evidence for Anglo-Saxon paganism, focusing on the archaeological record (especially grave finds), see David Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism (London: Routledge, 1992). For a more speculative approach focusing on written evidence, see Richard North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
5. See Peter Foote, “Conversion” in Pulsiano, et al., 106–08, with bibliography. The dates given are for what Foote calls major “moments” in the conversion, when Christianity becomes officially adopted; missionary work and individual conversions will of course have begun earlier. The “moment” for conversion in Norway began ca. 995 under King Óláfr Tryggvason (who sent his emissaries to Iceland) and continued under King (later Saint) Óláfr Haraldsson (d. 1030). Sweden lagged behind; its heathen temple at Uppsala was not destroyed until the twelfth century, according to Martin (42), who also argues against there being any millennial motivations behind the Scandinavian conversion (45–8).
6. Iceland was first settled in about 870; its early history is usually divided into an age of settlement from 870 to 930, when an Alþingi or parliament was established; and a commonwealth or free state period until 1262–4, when Iceland submitted to Norwegian rule. See Jόn Jόhanesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth: Islendinga saga, tr. Haraldur Bessason (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1974) and Richard Tomasson, Iceland: The First New Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980).
7. The only comparable source is the Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes), written in Latin by Saxo Grammaticus around 1216. Relying in part on Icelandic informants, Saxo imbeds euhemerized Norse mythological material in a legendary history of the Danish kings. See Eric Christiansen, “Saxo Grammaticus” in Pulsiano, et al., 566–9, with bibliography.
8. See Roberta Frank, “Skaldic Poetry,” in Clover & Lindow, 157–9; Bjarne Fidjestøl, “Skaldic Verse,” in Pulsiano et al., 592–4.
9. This applies mainly to Skáldskaparmál, the second of the three parts of Snorri ‘s Edda.
10. Other sources besides those already mentioned (none of them without accompanying problems of interpretation) include place name and other linguistic evidence (including a few runic inscriptions), classical accounts (e.g. Tacitus, regarding Germania), travel accounts (notably that of Ibn Fadlan among the Norsemen in Russia), conversion accounts (e.g. Adam of Bremen, concerning Uppsala), picture stones and other representations (see Meulengracht Sørensen in this volume), other Icelandic prose sources including the kings’ sagas, family sagas and legendary sagas, and later folklore. See Turville-Petre, ch. 1; Martin, chs. 2 and 4; Davidson, chs. 1–2.
11. As reported on the website “Daily News from Iceland,” Dec. 1, 1999; www.icenews.is. I thank my student Eve Siebert for conveying this information.
12. We learn much about Snorri’s life in the collection of contemporary accounts known as the Sturlunga saga, part of which was written by his nephew Sturla Þόrðarson (ed. Kristján Eldjárn, et al. [Reykjavik: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946]; tr. Julia McGrew and R. George Thomas [New York: Twayne, 1970–74]); see also Marlene Ciklamini, Snorri Sturluson (Boston: Twayne, 1978) and Einar Ól. Sveinsson, The Age of the Sturlungs: Icelandic Civilization in the Thirteenth Century, Islandica 36, tr. Johann S. Hannesson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953).
13. See Anthony Faulkes, “Edda,” Gripla 2 (1977): 32–9.
14. On this background, see Anthony Faulkes, “Pagan Sympathy: Attitudes to Heathendom in the Prologue to Snorra Edda,” Edda: A Collection of Essays, ed. Robert J. Glendinning & Haraldur Bessason, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1983, 283–314; and “Descent from the gods,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 11 (1978–9), 92–125.
15. Snorri returns briefly to his euhemeristic frame at the end of Gylfaginning (Faulkes Edda ed. 54–5; tr. 57–8) and early on in Skáldskaparmál (tr. 64–5). See Margaret Clunies Ross, “The Mythological Fictions of Snorra Edda,” Snorrastefna, ed. Ulfar Bragason (Reykjavik: Stofnun Sigurðar Nordals, 1992), 204–16, which also comments on Snorri’s narrative technique.
16. According to Faulkes (Edda ed. 1:xxvi), Snorri most often cites these two poems and Vafþrúðnismál among Eddic poems; the last he does not name but says e.g. “And here it is told by the giant Vafthrudnir” (Faulkes, Edda tr. 10).
17. In 1662 Bishop Brynjόlfur gave this manuscript to the king of Denmark; it was housed in the Danish Old Royal Collection (gammel kongelige Sammlung, abbreviated GkS), under the siglum GkS 2365 4to. In 1971 the Codex Regius was returned to Iceland and it is now housed in the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavik. For the transcription date of 1270, see Harris, 75.
18. Norrœn fornkvœði (Christiania [Oslo]: Mailing, 1867).
19. The remaining poems treat legendary and heroic themes, especially concerning Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, the Dragonslayer (the Siegfried of Wagnerian opera). As Turville-Petre points out (11–12), some of the heroic poems include mythological matter, e.g. references to Óðinn. Vǫlundarkviða is sometimes felt to belong neither with the mythological nor the heroic poems and in some editions is moved to a place after Alvíssmál (see Hallberg, 30; Paul Beekman Taylor, “ V–lundarkviða,” in Pulsiano et al., 711–13.). Dronke includes Vǫlundarkviða among the mythological poems.
20. A fourth such poem, Grottasǫngr, found in manuscripts of Snorra Edda, is not included. We consider that its association with the legendary Danish king Frόði places it among the heroic poems.
21. This mythic history is imparted principally in Vǫluspá, Vafþrúðnismál, Baldrs draumar and Hyndluljόð (see Quinn’s article in this volume), but is alluded to in other poems. Grímnismál fills in more details of mythic geography (see Larrington’s article in this volume).
22. Vǫluspá is a monologue spoken by a vǫlva or prophetess. Hávamál is spoken by Hávi, presumably Óðinn; some stanzas are addressed to one Loddfáfnir. Grímnismál is also spoken by Óðinn, to Agnarr and Geirrøðr, with a prose introduction setting the scene more clearly.
23. Óðinn’s wife Frigg speaks a few stanzas at the beginning of Vafþrúðnismál; Týr speaks a few lines in Hymiskviða; most of the assembled gods speak stanzas in response to Loki’s insults in Lokasenna. Rígsþula contains no dialogue until the end, when a crow speaks to the young king, at which point the poem ends incompletely.
24. On the relation of vǫlur and giants, see Quinn in this volume. Vǫlundr is said to be a ‘prince of elves’ but also ‘the most skillful of men’; Dronke (262) regards him as a ‘mixed being’. As Clunies Ross points out (131), Skírnir in st. 18 of Skírnismál states that he is ‘neither elf nor Áss nor wise Vane’; he is Freyr’s “skόsveinn” or servant. A herdsman and a serving-maid also speak stanzas (12 and 15) in Skírnismál; servants also speak in Lokasenna.
25. On Loki as the thirteenth god, see Orchard, 2 (s.v. Æsir) and ed. Faulkes 2: 153 n. 1/9–11.