OF FIRE AND WATER
THE OLD NORSE MYTHICAL WORLDVIEW IN AN ECOMYTHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
A. MATHIAS VALENTIN NORDVIG
MA, PHD CANDIDATE| AARHUS UNIVERSITY
CONTENT
PREAMBLE
1
Statement of purpose ........................................................................................................................................ 1
The structure of this dissertation ....................................................................................................................... 5
A note on translations and editions ............................................................................................................... 5
The Old Norse language in this dissertation ................................................................................................... 6
On the term Ragnarǫk or ragnarøkkr ......................................................................................................... 6
A note on certain Old Norse appellatives ................................................................................................... 7
On the term Útgarðr/Útgarðar ................................................................................................................... 7
A note on references to primary sources ....................................................................................................... 7
List of abbreviations ....................................................................................................................................... 8
INTRODUCTION
9
Chapter introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 9
Method ............................................................................................................................................................. 11
Approaching myth ........................................................................................................................................ 15
Myth, culture, and collective memory ..................................................................................................... 17
Eco-mythology: the production of myths from place and space ............................................................. 24
The definition of myth .............................................................................................................................. 29
Source Reading ............................................................................................................................................. 30
Hypothesis for the analysis of eco-myths................................................................................................. 32
A practical method for analysis of eco-myths .......................................................................................... 36
The sources....................................................................................................................................................... 39
The internal relationship of the sources....................................................................................................... 39
Skaldic poetry ........................................................................................................................................... 43
Eddic poetry.............................................................................................................................................. 45
Snorri’s Edda ............................................................................................................................................. 53
The state of the sources ............................................................................................................................... 56
The discussion of worldview in Old Norse scholarship .................................................................................... 57
The early discussion of the Old Norse worldview ........................................................................................ 58
Contemporary scholarship ........................................................................................................................... 60
Commentaries on the research tradition in the Old Norse worldview .................................................... 67
II
Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 69
The consecutive definitions of myth ............................................................................................................ 70
The view of the sources and the modus of analysis and interpretation ...................................................... 71
The research tradition of worldview in Old Norse scholarship .................................................................... 72
Concluding remarks ...................................................................................................................................... 73
CONFRONTING THE SEA
74
Chapter Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 75
Þórr’s Fishing Expedition .................................................................................................................................. 77
Þórr’s relationship with the sea in other sources ......................................................................................... 91
Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki ................................................................................................................... 92
Thorkillus’s Journeys to Geruthus and Ugarthilocus .............................................................................. 100
The Fishing Expedition: from stomach to soul ........................................................................................... 108
Chapter conclusion: the Fishing Myth as an eco-myth .................................................................................. 113
The early aspects of the Fishing Myth ........................................................................................................ 113
Later developments in the Fishing Myth .................................................................................................... 116
Concluding remarks .................................................................................................................................... 117
THE CREATION MYTH, THE MYTH OF THE MEAD OF POETRY, AND VOLCANISM
120
Chapter Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 121
The research background of early Icelandic volcanism in medieval literature .......................................... 122
The analyses in this chapter ....................................................................................................................... 124
Creation from Ymir ......................................................................................................................................... 126
The Ymir Myth ............................................................................................................................................ 126
The puzzle ................................................................................................................................................... 129
Eitr, Élivágar and Aurgelmir .................................................................................................................... 130
Surtr and Muspellzheimr ........................................................................................................................ 138
Collecting the pieces................................................................................................................................... 141
The Convulsions of Kvasir and the Odinic Eruption ........................................................................................ 145
The mead mystery ...................................................................................................................................... 145
Háleygjatal, Óðinn, and the Mead of Poetry .......................................................................................... 147
Kvasir’s convulsions .................................................................................................................................... 155
Kvasir ...................................................................................................................................................... 155
Vǫluspá 47–52 ........................................................................................................................................ 158
Óðinn’s eruption ......................................................................................................................................... 163
III
Lava and mead, change and variation in the Mead Myth .......................................................................... 171
Latin influence on the Mead Myth ......................................................................................................... 173
The two mead myths .............................................................................................................................. 176
Chapter conclusion: the Creation Myth and the Mead Myth as response to volcanism ............................... 180
The Creation Myth as response to volcanism ............................................................................................ 180
The Mead Myth as response to volcanism ................................................................................................. 181
Concluding remarks .................................................................................................................................... 184
CONCLUSION
186
Chapter introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 186
Confronting the sea ........................................................................................................................................ 187
Chapter summary ....................................................................................................................................... 187
Level one: the Fishing Expedition ............................................................................................................... 188
Level two: the journey out and new discoveries ........................................................................................ 189
Level three: new realizations and the conversion ...................................................................................... 190
Confronting the sea in an Old Norse worldview ........................................................................................ 191
The Creation Myth, the Myth of the Mead of Poetry, and Volcanism ........................................................... 194
Chapter summary ....................................................................................................................................... 194
The Creation Myth ...................................................................................................................................... 195
The Mead Myth .......................................................................................................................................... 196
The place of the land and volcanism in the Old Norse worldview ............................................................. 197
Concluding remarks ........................................................................................................................................ 199
The three questions of this dissertation ..................................................................................................... 199
The constitution of the Old Norse mythic worldview ............................................................................ 199
The question of the internal relationship of the texts ........................................................................... 201
The relationship of the texts to their surrounding environment ........................................................... 202
BIBLIOGRAPHY
203
Primary sources .............................................................................................................................................. 203
Dictionaries, compendia, lexica and translated sources ................................................................................ 204
Secondary sources .......................................................................................................................................... 205
APPENDICES
221
Summary in English ........................................................................................................................................ 221
Problem and purpose ................................................................................................................................. 221
The analyses ............................................................................................................................................... 223
IV
Resumé på dansk ............................................................................................................................................ 228
Problem og formål ...................................................................................................................................... 228
Analyserne .................................................................................................................................................. 230
OF FIRE AND WATER
© A. Mathias Valentin Nordvig, 2013.
PhD Dissertation
Aarhus University
Department of Aesthetics and Communication
Section for Scandinavian studies
Submitted on December 19th 2013.
Supervisors: Pernille Hermann, MA, PhD. Aarhus University.
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, MA, Dr. Phil. Aarhus University.
Terry Gunnell, MA, PhD. University of Iceland.
Front page picture: © Sigurður Hrafn Stefnisson.
V
THANK YOU!
There are several people, who have had direct impact on my personal choices and academic
development leading towards the completion of this dissertation. I would like to thank my wife Stinne
for the love, support and mind-blowing academic conversation and in-put that she has given me over
the years. She has been very patient with me in the process of writing.
I would also like to thank Henning Kure and Jannik Thiberg Thalbitzer for initially guiding me
in the direction of Old Norse studies, and for expanding my horizon in our many fruitful debates over
the years. I am grateful to Pernille Hermann and Agnes Arnórsdóttir for the many years of teaching
and guidance they have provided me with when I was a student and as my supervisors during my
time as a Ph.D.-candidate. Terry Gunnell, Jens Peter Schjødt and Stephen Mitchell also deserve my
gratitude for all the support, conversation and useful advice they have offered me. I am thankful to
Frog for having patiently helped me improve my writing skills more than once. A special thanks to
Felix Riede, too, and his Laboratory for Past Disaster Science. Much of this dissertation has been
conceived as a result of our academic exchange. Finally, I owe Steven Shema a big thank you for
putting so much time and effort into helping me with the editing process of this dissertation. Thank
you all!
1
PREAMBLE
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
The overall purpose of this dissertation is to address the subject of worldview in the context of Old
Norse mythology. To this end, I ask the question:
(1) What is the constitution of the Old Norse worldview according to the literary mythological
sources in terms of man’s relationship with nature? What is the relationship between the
conceptual categories of culture and nature, or civilized and wild (byggð and óbyggð,
innangarðs and útangarðs) as it is expressed in the æsir’s dealings with the surrounding world
in the myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition, the Creation Myth, and the myth of the Mead of
Poetry in the Edda version? How do the actions of the gods in these narratives express man’s
mythical notions of his relationship with the land and sea in the Scandinavian and North
Atlantic ecoystems?
To answer this question we must first establish what is meant by the term ‘worldview,’ because this
is not at all clear or consistent in Old Norse scholarship. The term is used widely by scholars of
different disciplines, from literature and religion to archaeology. The subject has grown in popularity
over the past forty decades (see pages 60-72), and the term ‘worldview’ has become commonplace
in scholarship. It often supplants the term ‘cosmology’ in the context of Old Norse mythology in
interdisciplinary discussion (e.g., Hultgård 2008, 213–15; Schjødt 2008b, 220), or in the juxtaposition
of paganism and Christianity (Gräslund & Lager 2008, 637). It may also be used to describe a popular
understanding of Old Norse religion and mythology contrary to a dogmatic or authoritative one
(Raudvere 2008, 235–42). In other instances, the term is applied by some scholars as a designation
for a social ideology that is essentially unconsciously implemented in society and individual life
(Clunies Ross 1994, 11–19; Hastrup 1990, 25–66).
The term ‘worldview’ is diffuse and originates in the German philosophical term
Weltanschauung as it is used by, among others, Dilthey, Jaspers, and Scheler, to denote an overall
comprehension of the world by an individual or a people. This all-encompassing understanding of the
world synthesizes, generalizes, and transcends the scientific as well as the non-scientific perception
of reality and prescribes social conduct, values, and explanations for the surrounding world (VTF
1982 I, 33–4, 107, 200). This is a very broad definition and it is thus no wonder that the term finds
many uses in Old Norse scholarship. Because of the lack of clarity regarding the term ‘worldview’
and its application, the above question, when paired with the fact that there are no verifiably concrete
2
first-hand sources for the pre-Christian worldview of Scandinavia, brings with it two other important
questions, namely:
(1) If the literature of Old Norse mythology contains a specific worldview, what is the internal
relationship between these texts? And;
(2) What is the external relationship of the mythology to the surrounding world?
Answers to these questions have not been attempted by the various scholars who deal with the subject
of an Old Norse mythological worldview. The broader discussion of the internal relationship of the
texts is often lacking when it comes to trying to understand the worldview that the mythological
narratives project. An exception is, to some extent, Nanna Løkka in Sted og landskap i norrøn
mytologi (2010), but her restriction of source material to the use of eddic poetry at the expense of
other texts—not least skaldic poetry and Edda—brings with it a series of problems (see pages 68-70).
The case is similar with the question of the external relationship of the mythology to the surrounding
world; it is hardly addressed in Old Norse scholarship. Only Stefan Brink in Mytologiska rum och
eskatologiska föreställningar i det vikingatida Norden (2004) points out the relationship between
worldview and the physical world of the people whose conceptions are being examined. However,
his treatment of the problem is only superficial (see pages 66-67). As described below, the main
interest of current scholarship on worldview in an Old Norse context has been to reconstruct a
worldview in terms of values, primarily expressed in oppositional pairs. The discussion revolves
around a model of the spatial stratification of cosmic realms as an indicator of the relationship
between social groups and supernatural beings. In Island of Anthropology, Kirsten Hastrup describes
the prevailing paradigm of the Old Norse worldview, which prescribes a binary opposition between
an upper realm and an underworld, as well as an inner realm and an outer realm, with the added
opposition of land to sea (1990, 26–30). This opposition of realms is understood to be expressed in
social groupings of the supernatural beings of the cosmos, and the discussion of worldview primarily
concerns whether or not this division of the Old Norse cosmos is correct (Løkka 2010, 17–34). A
common misconception that is expressed in this regard is that eddic poetry offers a fragmentary
worldview, while Edda demonstrates an ordered perspective that supports the binary model of the
worldview (p. 22; Brink 2004, 297–306; Clunies Ross 1994, 230–3). This will be discussed more indepth in the research overview of the following chapter.
The problem with this discussion is that it essentially neglects a wide range of parameters that
pertain to the constitution of a worldview as it is described in the philosophical term above. It
overlooks the influence of the natural world, of environments and ecosystems, on mythopoesis. It
also overlooks the possibility of an evolution of mythopoesis, as well as an evolution in conceptions
3
of the world and its many spaces and places. As such, the discussion primarily takes an interest in
structuring models with regard to social stratifications of supernatural beings and groups.
By contrast, this dissertation addresses conceptions of the natural world itself in order to
understand the Old Norse mythic worldview, instead of social groups or races and their territories in
the mythology. I have named this approach the eco-mythological approach, and it is conceived of as
a tool for addressing aspects of the myths as worldview narratives, which are not always clear when
the interpretive focus is solely on the social significance of the individual characters’ and groups’
actions. To demonstrate the value of this approach, I have chosen to focus on Old Norse conceptions
of land and sea in the mythology.
To address the conceptions of the sea in Old Norse myths, I have chosen the myth of Þórr’s
Fishing Expedition as my focal point. This myth is widely known in the early medieval or Viking
Age of Scandinavia, and it is featured on picture-stones as well as in mythic narratives. In my analysis
of the myth, I take an interest in its development as a mythic narrative in various literary forms and I
combine its importance as a myth with the observable facts about the significance of the sea in early
Scandinavian culture, thereby addressing the above-mentioned questions. With this approach I seek
to answer the initial question in a more nuanced perspective. I find, in that respect, that the binary
opposition of land and sea, civilized and wild, is a much more complex issue that does not easily let
itself be grafted onto a fixed model. Notions of civilized space versus the wild and of the ‘safe’
landmass versus the outer, ‘unsafe’ sea—the Úthaf—in the models of current scholarship are
disproportionate in light of the social significance that the sea had according to the mythological
sources, as well as Saxo and several saga narratives.
For the purpose of addressing Old Norse conceptions of the land, I have chosen to focus on the
myth of the Creation of the World from Ymir’s body and, by extension, the myth of the Mead of
Poetry in its prose version from Skáldskaparmál. At first glance it may not seem entirely obvious to
pair these two myths with one another, or for that matter to seek out conceptions of the land in the
myth of the Mead of Poetry, but under the auspices of eco-mythology both of these myths are relevant
to the study of one primary aspect of the Icelandic landscape that is unavoidable: volcanism. This has
a different relationship to worldview than the subject of the sea, but it is in no way less important to
an understanding of the conceptions of land in the Old Norse worldview. While the study of Old
Norse mythic representations of the sea fits into the category of worldview studies as a conceptual
mapping of a natural space that directly influences ideas of the self and society, the study of myths
about volcanism in Old Norse mythology relates first to explanations of extraordinary natural
phenomena, but likewise contributes to our understanding of Old Norse conceptions of the self and
society. In addition, the study of volcanism in the mythology may lead towards a more thorough
4
understanding of the evolution of mythic narratives that may have been transported from the
Scandinavian mainland and continental Europe to Iceland. This is because, as a natural feature,
volcanism represents the major difference between Iceland and Northern Europe, and also because
an investigation into how myths may have been involved in relaying knowledge and explanations of
volcanism can help illustrate hitherto unrecognized aspects of developments in mythic narratives
from Scandinavia to Iceland. Furthermore, it is because volcanism is an overlooked subject in Old
Norse scholarship (see chapter IV, pages 124-127), and until recently Old Norse myths have not been
associated with volcanism in any noteworthy capacity. In that respect, it stands to reason that if the
myths are the basis from which we can reconstruct a pre-Christian worldview, they must also contain
knowledge about the volcanism of Iceland as much as they contain knowledge of such things as
fishing, social conduct, and ideas about the end of the world. In this dissertation I examine the Ymir
Creation Myth and that of the Mead of Poetry as two types of myths about volcanism and argue that
they take their place as technical myths about volcanism and the response to volcanism in the Old
Norse worldview as a consequence of the chthonic associations attributed both to Ymir and to the
Mead.
5
THE STRUCTURE OF THIS DISSERTATION
This dissertation is divided into three chapters and a conclusion: (1) Introduction; (2) Confronting the
Sea, and; (3) The Creation Myth, the myth of the Mead of Poetry, and Volcanism. The introduction
provides a frame for the discussion by setting up methodological standards for analysis and
interpretation. It also contextualizes this study in relation to other research that has been done in the
field. The introduction has a rather lengthy discussion on the method of myth analysis. This is
attributable to the history of Old Norse scholarship. When addressing aspects of the natural world in
Old Norse myths, it is important to construct a strong theoretical foundation that can support the
analyses, otherwise there will be an array of pitfalls on the way, such as was experienced by the
naturist schools of myth analysis in the nineteenth century. There is no single chapter on the state of
the art in this presentation. There are instead several sections of the introductory chapter that deal
with different aspects of the scholarly tradition that is relevant to the study. These are primarily the
sections ‘Approaching myth’ and ‘The discussion of worldview in Old Norse scholarship,’ but in the
case of the chapter on ‘The Creation Myth, the myth of the Mead of Poetry, and Volcanism,’ there is
a prolonged introduction addressing the research history of volcanism in medieval Icelandic literature
and historical records.
Since there are considerable differences in subject matter and perspective between the two
main chapters of this dissertation, they are each designed as a closed analysis. However, in each
chapter conclusion the meta-perspective of worldview as it relates to the research tradition of Old
Norse scholarship is addressed. This is also the case with the final conclusion, which addresses the
subjects of worldview, mythopoesis in the context of traditional technical knowledge, and the
conceptions of sea and land (including volcanism), in Old Norse myths.
A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS AND EDITIONS
All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. In several instances the translations have been
made in consultation with authoritative published translations. This is indicated in the text. For
sources in the original languages, I have sought to use the most recent authoritative editions, or the
ones that are philologically considered to be standard editions. I use Anthony Faulkes’s edition of
Edda: Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning (2011) and Snorri Sturluson. Edda.
Skáldskaparmál (2007). I also use Faulkes’s edition of Edda for references to the skaldic poems that
are cited here. For eddic poems, I use Neckel and Kuhn’s Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst
verwandten Denkmälern (1962). In the case of Ovid, I use R. J. Tarrant’s P. Ovidi Nasonis.
6
Metamorphoses (2004) and for Gesta Danorum, I use the Friis-Jensen/Zeeberg edition Saxo
Grammaticus Gesta Danorum I–II (2005). In the cases of Gesta Normannorum and Muspilli, I have
used online resources from, respectively, the universities of Augsburg (1996) and Bochum (1994).
The edition of Tacitus that I am using is the fifth edition of Ferhle-Hünnerkopf’s standardized text
with translation: P. Cornelius Tacitus. Germania (1959). For Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae
pontificum, I use Bernhard Schmiedler’s editon from 1917. As for the sagas and Landnámabók, I
make use of the Íslenzk Fornrit editions, except in the case of Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns, where I
use Gúðni Jónsson’s edition (1954). In the case of Konungs Skuggsjá, I use Ludvig Holm-Olsen’s
edition from 1945; and for the annals, I use Storm’s 1888 edition.
THE OLD NORSE LANGUA GE IN THIS DISSERTATION
In this dissertation I use normalized Old Norse as a standard for isolated words and phrases. However,
all quotations respect the form of the original source. This means that there will be considerable
differences in the spelling of quotations between Neckel and Kuhn’s edition of the eddic poems,
Holm-Olsen’s edition of Konungs Skuggsjá, and the quotations of Faulkes’s Edda and the saga
editions. It may serve to note that I use the older standard for Old Norse, which still uses ‘z’ and ‘ǫ,’
although in the cases of referring to genre categories such as ‘íslendingasögur’ I use the modern ‘ö,’
because it is a modern word.
ON THE TERM RAGNARǪK OR RAGNARØKKR
The reader will note that I use both the form ‘Ragnarǫk’ and ‘ragnarøkkr’ in this dissertation. This is
based on the linguistic discussion of the correct semantics of –rǫk/–røkkr. In his article Old Icelandic
ragnarök and ragnarøkkr (2007), Haraldur Bernharðsson has made a convincing case for the two
versions being related and interchangeable (2007, 35). He identifies the origin of the second element
–røk(k)r from a strong class 5 verb in Old Icelandic: røk(k)va, rek(k)va, to Proto-Germanic *rekwan, which is related to Gothic riqis ‘darkness’ (p. 32-3). He concludes that both –rǫk and –røk(k)r refer
to twilight as a phenomenon that occurs both in the beginning and the end of the day, and this may
have lead to their interchangeability in terms of destruction and rebirth. As such there seem to be two
traditions for the word: one tradition points towards ‘Ragnarǫk’ (with a capitalized ‘R’) in the
commonly accepted sense of ‘The Fate, Destiny, or Process of the Gods’; and the other points in the
direction of a form pertaining to darkness associated with, among other things, weather phenomena
and battle (p. 33). The polysemantic nature of this word is fully-fitting with the subject of this
dissertation: the first meaning associates it with a cosmic apocalypse and the second meaning
7
associates it with observable natural phenomena and human activity. I will therefore in the following
employ the term ‘Ragnarǫk’ whenever I wish to stress the eschatological—and generally Christian—
association with this term, and when I am mentioning it in relation to volcanic events, I will use the
term ‘ragnarøkkr.’ This seems to be consistent with the worldview projected by the sources, and it
underscores the importance of keeping in mind the polysemantic nature of this type of literature.
A NOTE ON CERTAIN OL D NORSE APPELLATIVES
I do not capitalize or italicize the group appellatives æsir, vanir, regin, asynjur, valkyrjur, nornir,
dvergar, hrímþursar, and jǫtnar. These are not considered proper names in this dissertation, but rather
group designations comparable to ‘gods’ and ‘giants’ and ‘dwarves’ as they would be used in standard
English. I find that capitalizing these designations is inconsistent with their actual usage in the Old
Norse texts, where certain designations are interchangeable, such as æsir, tívar, and regin.
ON THE TERM ÚTGARÐR/ ÚTGARÐAR
In the discussion of Old Norse cosmology and worldview, the term ‘Útgarðr’ or ‘Útgarðar’ has
enjoyed much attention (Løkka 2010, 9-11 and 254-5). The term does not play a significant role in
this dissertation, but it is being used primarily in connection with the analysis of Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition, as I investigate the narrative of Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki. In that context, the reader
will note that both the singular form ‘Útgarðr’ and the plural form ‘Útgarðar’ are used. This is due to
the forms in Faulkes’s edition of Edda, where the singular form is used in reference to the place of
Útgarðaloki—more specifically his castle—and the plural genitive form is used in the name of
Útgarðaloki (Gylf. XLV-XLVI). My usage of Útgarðr refers to Útgarðaloki’s castle, whereas the
plural form refers to the entire area beyond the Úthaf that he presumably governs.
A NOTE ON REFERENCES TO PRIMARY SOURCES
In the case of primary sources, I refer to the smallest singular unit in a work. This means that I refer
to the chapters of Prologus, Gylfaginning, and Skáldskaparmál in Edda. In Saxo’s Gesta Danorum,
I refer to the author with the individual books and the Praefatio, including numbered chapters and
sections. To save space, I only give the full bibliographic details on Saxo’s work once in each section
of the text where it is used, and subsequently refer to the book (lib.), and then chapter (cap.) in
question: (Saxo 2005 I, VIII 15,1) > (lib. VIII 17,1) > (cap.14,1). When referring to Ovid, I give the
book number in the same manner as in Saxo and then refer to the verse line: (Metamorphoses 2004,
8
IV,647). All eddic and skaldic poetry is referred to by the title of the poem and the number of the
stanza. There are some references to notes and commentaries in relation to the poetry, particularly in
the eddic poems and Hallmundarkviða, and in those cases I refer to page numbers in the edition that
I am using. This is also the case with the prose of Bergbúa þáttr. Finally, in the cases of the sagas,
Landnámabók, Konungs Skuggsjá, and Gesta Normannorum, I refer to the chapters of the text, not
page numbers in the edition. In the case of the sagas from Heimskringla, I indicate which saga I am
referring to as well. In Heimskringla I also refer to the Prologus without chapter indication since it is
not sectioned into chapters. It is a general rule that if I refer to parts of the text in the editions of the
primary sources that do not belong to the text body of the primary source, but to notes or editorial
remarks, it is indicated unambiguously.
LIST OF ABBREVIATION S
Cap. = Capitulum (Saxo).
DgF = Danmarks gamle Folkeviser.
EOV = Encyclopedia of Volcanoes.
Eyrb. = Eyrbyggja saga.
Grm. = Grímnismál.
Gylf. = Gylfaginning.
Halkv. = Hallmundarkviða.
Hál. = Háleygjatal
Heimskr. = Heimskringla
Hvm. = Hávamál.
Hkv. = Hymiskviða.
Landn. = Landnámabók.
Lib. = Liber (Saxo).
Musp. = Muspilli.
Praef. = Praefatio (Saxo).
Prol. = Prologus (Edda).
ODNS = Lexicon poeticum antiquae linguae septentrionalis. Ordbog over det norsk-islandske
skjaldesprog.
ONP = Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog.
Rgm. = Reginsmál.
Skáld. = Skáldskaparmál.
SnE = Edda.
SPD = Skaldic Project Database.
Vfm. = Vafþrúðnismál.
VTF = Vor tids filosofi.
Vsp. = Vǫluspá.
9
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
In the following chapter, I account for the working hypothesis and theory of myth that is applied
throughout this study. These are formulated in close conference with leading theorists of myth and
history in the field of narrative research in historical texts, combined with observations made by
anthropologists and ethnologists studying non-literary cultures. I take this approach to Old Norse
myths because of the realization that at any point from the Viking Age to the High Middle Ages in
Scandinavia, we are dealing with a culture that is primarily oral and in which literacy is a secondary
operational and communicative mode. Even the most literary personalities of this period, men like
Saxo and (presumably) Snorri, must be understood to have been more bound to an oral-aural culture
than to a written one. It neglects the true state of the texts of Old Norse literature to treat them only
as literature in the sense known to modern scholarship of the recent centuries.
With this recognition of the contextual status of the literature of Old Norse mythology, I
formulate a functional understanding of myth in relation to the society and social processes of the
transition age of early Scandinavia: the period from the early ninth century until the late thirteenth
century. This social and societal understanding of myth becomes the background against which I
justify the association of certain myths with natural phenomena and processes. I argue that the
ecosystem of any given culture has a strong impact on the development of human society, and that
we may thus expect to find more aspects of natural phenomena in myths than is typically
acknowledged. Primarily, it is the impact of the sea on cultural development and conceptualizations
of human existence—its central status in the Old Norse worldview—that I associate with the myths.
This is a broad perspective that is common to all regions of early Scandinavian culture: from Danmǫrk
to Svalbarð, and from Svíþjóð to Vínland. A more narrow context is found in the experience of
volcanism: a phenomenon peculiar to Iceland, a region and an ecosystem that represents a new
experiential frame—social as well as environmental—in the context of the broader Scandinavian
cultural perspective. It thus represents an expansion or redistribution of conceptions in the worldview.
With this I account for my source reading and interpretational mode. I make use of linguistic
theories of how natural phenomena are expressed in analogies, metaphors, and with metonymic
references in order to conceptualize and narrativize experienced space and place.1 In conference with
these theories and their associated methods, I present a method of analysis and interpretation of Old
1
For a philosophical backdrop that accounts for the importance of experienced space to human cognition and
conceptualization of the world, see J.E. Malpas’s Place and Experience (1999).
10
Norse eco-myths as cultural response narratives to important sites and spaces in the ecosystem of the
Scandinavian and North Atlantic region.
The last part of this introductory chapter deals with the source material and scholarly tradition
relevant for this dissertation. I describe the various sources and their interrelatedness, as well as the
difficulties in approaching them as texts of myths and mythologies. I limit detailed description of the
sources to the primary ones that are of most importance to this presentation. Details relevant to our
understanding of an individual minor source in the context of analysis are relegated to the various
chapters of analysis. This means that I treat the Latin and historiographical sources briefly in the
introduction to the sources, but otherwise discuss their status as sources and representational modes
in the context of carrying out analyses. The same is the case for the skaldic poems. For the eddic
poems and Snorri’s Edda, however, I provide a deeper and more detailed discussion of their status as
sources of mythology, their relationship with the pre-Christian era, and their status as cultural texts
in Scandinavian culture. In my discussion of the texts’ status, I also provide an overview of the most
important content of the eddic poems and the chapters of Edda relevant to this presentation. These
poems are Vǫluspá, Hávamál, Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, and Hymiskviða, while the chapters of
Edda are Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál, and Prologus. This overview of the content and themes of
these poems and chapters is conducive to our understanding of the misleading idea of the preChristian worldview that might be gleaned from a superficial reading of them, if one is not attentive
to the narrative layers and the problems of the texts as sources of a pre-Christian condition of life or
a cultural evolution.
Following this exposition on the sources, I provide an overview of the scholarly discussion of
the subject of cosmology and worldview. This contextualizes the present investigation in the recent
debate of the worldview of Old Norse myths in the pre-Christian era. The worldview debate is
relevant to this dissertation insofar as it postulates certain models and representational modes of how
Vikings and pre-Christian Scandinavians may have perceived and conceived of their world. Although
this dissertation does not, per se, follow a similar path of discussion as any of the scholars who are
represented in the section on the state of the art of the worldview discussion, this study is very much
a comment on the subject, and the discussions of these scholars are therefore highly relevant to keep
in mind when reading this presentation.
In the end, this chapter is closed off by a brief conclusion on the discussion of Old Norse myths,
sources, and the worldview that they may reveal. This conclusion highlights the most important
aspects that the reader must keep in mind when progressing to the first chapter of analysis and
onwards.
11
METHOD
In the following section I develop a theory of myth that can explain on what grounds and to what
purpose Old Norse myths were useful as explanatory models for the world in a broad temporal scope,
from the Viking Age until Snorri’s time, and beyond. The analyses conducted in this dissertation rely
on a particular view of the concept of myth, which in turn informs the method of source reading. I
have formulated this view on myth in accord with what may be defined as the cultural life of myth,
in the sense that my view on myth takes into account the ways in which the concept has been received
by scholars and philosophers from Antiquity until the present. To map out these different views in
their details in this presentation would be too extensive, but a brief overview based on Lauri Honko’s
article The Problem of Defining Myth (1984 [1972]) is appropriate. Honko enumerates ten different
theories on myth that are expressed by philosophers in Antiquity: (A1) Mythographic interpretation;
(A2) Philosophical criticism; (A3) Pre-scientific interpretation; (A4) Allegorical interpretation based
on natural phenomena; (A5) Allegorical explanation based on spiritual qualities; (A6) Etymological
interpretation; (A7) Historical (comparative and derivative) interpretation; (A8) Euhemeristic
interpretation; (A9) “Sociological” interpretation (deceit of the masses by authorities), and; (A10)
Psychological interpretation (Honko 1984, 45–6).
Honko notes that these theories did not begin to wane before empirical research became the
norm in the early twentieth century (p. 45), and they were supplanted by a set of approaches that
belong to four primary focuses of research: the historical, the psychological, the sociological, and the
structural perspectives (p. 46). On the basis of this, Honko lists the following twelve modern scholarly
approaches, which are seen as overlapping on different levels: (B1) Myth as source of cognitive
categories; (B2) Myth as form of symbolic expression; (B3) Myth as projection of the subconscious;
(B4) Myth as an integrated factor in man’s adaptation to life: myth as worldview; (B5) Myth as a
charter of behavior; (B6) Myth as the legitimization of social structures; (B7) Myth as marker of
social relevance; (B8) Myth as mirror of culture and social structure; (B9) Myth as result of historical
situation; (B10) Myth as religious communication; (B11) Myth as religious genre, and; (B12) Myth
as medium for structure (p. 47–8).
It is clear from this overview of a total of twenty-two different approaches to myth that the
term has always been widely applied—this is also true in the study of Old Norse myth. It is also clear
that there are aspects of the antique definitions that are still very much relevant in modern scholarship.
One can find aspects of pre-scientific interpretation (A3) and allegorical interpretations based on
nature (A4) in the modern approaches to myth as a source of cognitive categories (B1) and myth as
worldview (B4). The allegorical explanation of myth as spiritual qualities (A5) is relevant to the
12
approach to myth as a projection of the subconscious (B3), while the comparative and derivative
approach (A7), the euhemerist approach (A8), and the interpretation of religion as the deceit of the
masses by authorities (A9) are relevant to studies of myth as mirroring culture and social structure
(B8), as well as the relation of myth to historical situations (B9). Finally, the psychological
interpretations of myth (A10) may have some relevance to the notion of myth as a projection of the
subconscious (B3). These correlations may be illustrated in the following manner:
A1
B1
B2
B3
B4
B5
B6
B7
B8
B9
B10
B11
B12
A2
A3
x
A4
x
x
x
A5
A6
A7
A8
A9
x
A10
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Figure 1: The relationship of modern to pre-modern theories of myth.
This study of Old Norse myth departs from a focus on myth as a source of cognitive categories
(B1). Honko explains B1 as: “an explanation for enigmatic phenomena. The intellect needs to
conceptualise certain aspects of the universe, to establish the relationship between different
phenomena” (p. 47). Honko does not explain the relationship between the different modern
approaches to myth any further in the article, but one may see clear commonalities between B1 and
B4, myth as worldview: “In myths man is faced with fundamental problems of society, culture and
nature. Myths offer opportunities of selecting different elements which satisfy both individual
tendencies and social necessities. From these elements it is possible to create an individual, but at the
same time traditional, way of viewing the world” (ibid). My approach to myth in this presentation
resembles these two definitions. The myths of Þórr fishing for the World Serpent, the Mead of Poetry,
and the Creation of the World are as such human attempts to conceptualize aspects of the universe.
They explain (enigmatic) phenomena of our world and they conceptualize these in a social structure.
They are examples of man, who is faced with fundamental problems—in this case of nature—and
they are representative of a specific worldview. Because they associate mythic material with natural
phenomena, they also represent a kind of pre-scientific interpretation of the world.
The object of this study is not to revive the approach of the school of “naturism,” the Oxford
School, and the theories of Max Müller, G.W. Cox, and M. Bréal. To reiterate the words of Jan de
13
Vries describing Müller’s theories (see Müller 1899) in his article Theories Concerning “Nature
Myths” (1984 [1967]): “It is not necessary [any more now] to waste words on such fanciful reasoning”
(de Vries 1984, 37). In this article de Vries delivers a fine but short overview and critique of naturism
and nature mythology. A longer and more in-depth critique is expounded by Émile Durkheim in The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1965 [1915], 89–106), where he writes:
[And] this argument [that a disease of language is a disease of thought] is not valid
merely against Max Müller and his theory, but against the very principle of naturism, in
whatever way it may be applied. Whatever we may do, if religion has as its principal
object the expression of the forces of nature, it is impossible to see in it anything more
than a system of lying fictions, whose survival is incomprehensible” (Durkheim 1965,
100 [my italics]).
Durkheim’s purpose here is to underscore that religion and the activities of religion are inherently
social and are not banal attempts of primitive man to explain the mysteries of the surrounding world.
Religions and their mythologies are cultural systems (e.g. Geertz 1973, 5). I readily concede to the
validity of this argument and most certainly the notion that the expression of natural forces is not the
principal object of religion and thus myth. Mythogenesis is not a function of man’s perception of
natural phenomena, as it is suggested by the naturists, but we must ask ourselves whether or not
natural phenomena and ecosystems play a part in mythopoesis, the continual cultural use and reuse
of myths. I will argue that not only do myths associated with nature in fact occur, they occur at a
much higher frequency than is usually credited, and their conceptualizations of social phenomena are
much more important than is typically believed by established scholarship. There do exist myths
about natural phenomena and processes, which may be termed more than just “lying fictions,” in the
sense that they are misunderstandings of what natural sciences will reveal. Such myths were the prescientific narratives created by human beings to conceptualize their ecosystems, and the survival of
these myths is indeed comprehensible. Such myths cannot be termed lying fictions, because of their
primary function in society, namely: survival. The survival of humans, groups, and societies. The
fundamental truth of this is that if myths of natural phenomena and processes preserve technical
knowledge about these phenomena and processes, they do not only have a social function, their
survival in oral and literary narratives is also crucial to the survival of human society.
The core of this position is that no idea makes its way into these narratives without reason,
intention, or some existence prior to the narrative, even though it may seem indiscernible, enigmatic,
or mysterious. Set in practical terms this means, for instance, that when Saxo and Kongungs Skuggsjá
both claim that there are wells that taste like beer in Iceland (Saxo 2005 I, Praef. 2,7; Konungs
skuggsiá 1945, XV), this assertion will not be cast aside as the ramblings of a fool, the fantasies of a
drunk man, or for that matter, the misconceptions of a clerk. It seems more reasonable to assume that
14
the conceptual distance between Iceland and a writer such as Saxo is not as great as it is usually
perceived to be, and his representations of the natural phenomena there may reveal some ties to
conceptions of the physical reality of the ecosystem. The assertion should instead be scrutinized for
its truth-value in terms of conceptions of natural phenomena: not in terms of searching for the
corresponding natural phenomenon, but in terms of asking why would it be meaningful to the
worldview associated with these texts to reproduces this idea? This approach also means that, for
instance, the revelations of Ragnarǫk in Vǫluspá and Gylfaginning will be taken seriously as part of
the worldview that created them, either as a fear of a moral apocalypse or as an actual apocalypse that
was believed to be looming in the future. It may seem trivial to point this out, but it is necessary. In
fact, with everything that is known of mythopoesis as an integrated part of human worldviews, not to
point this out would bring this study in danger of becoming trivial, in that without this realization any
discussion of the development of motifs and narratives would drag us into the realm of literary
borrowings, and thus guide us to a dead end in terms of new realizations in Old Norse myths. Our
discussion would then, as Durkheim points out, revolve around fictions distanced from reality and we
would fail to see the possibility of actualized, useful meaning in the mythical material at hand. For
this reason I have set out to formulate a dynamic and evolutionary understanding of myth that is
derived from observed aspects of Old Norse mythology with reference to the Scandinavian cases of
the wagons in the bog at Dejbjerg and the Telemark tale of Torsvegen over Urebøuren. These two
examples demonstrate in full the concept of eco-mythology that I present in the following as the
narrativization of natural Memory Spaces: places or sites in nature that for various reasons—
particularly emotional reasons—produce enduring memories among human beings in their vicinity.
Myths that consist of narratives with social and experiential significance in reference to the ecosystem
are retained in such social memories. They are formulated as technical knowledge that, for the sake
of preservation, is narrativized and has, in linguistic terms, undergone the “Memory Crunch” (Barber
& Barber 2004, 9–10). 2 This is a functional approach to myth, and it will be developed in the
following in relation to established theories of history and myth.
2
This will be explained in chapter II, pages 34-38.
15
APPROACHING MYTH
The broadest description of myth is that it, like any other narrative produced by humans, is a
structured account of a part of human reality. More narrowly we may express the nature of myth with
Stephen Mitchell’s words from his eminent study Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages
(2011): “Myths are alive, and they resonate in the lives of the individuals who hear, tell, know and
use them. In other words, they are more than just words on a page about the characters and tales from
a society long since gone” (Mitchell 2011, 117). On par with Clunies Ross’s approach to myth in
Prolonged Echoes vol. 2 (1998) and ultimately also Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By (1972),
Mitchell states that it is myth “in this sense of invented, renewed, actualized, and ‘narrativized’ dogma
and Weltanschauung” (p. 117 and endnote 1, p. 258) that he intends to articulate. To my mind, the
nature of myth cannot be stated more clearly. Myths are evolutionary narratives that are constructed
on patterns made up of common cultural currency, and they are used for the primary purpose of
enhancing human experience of reality and for making sense of the non-human world.
It is, however, not without difficulty that one applies the term ‘myth’ to the narratives of what
is commonly known as Old Norse mythology. Annette Lassen has pointed out in Odin på kristent
pergament (2011) that the term myth is, in essence, foreign to medieval Icelandic literature. In
medieval rhetoric the term myth became associated with the term fabula due to the classical
distinction between mythos and logos. The fabula is defined as neither realistic nor truthful and it
stands in contrast to historia (ancient events) and argumentum (realistic fiction). The classical
definition of fabula does not involve stories of gods and heroes. It is an entirely false account, and in
Isidore’s Etymologiae it is primarily associated with animal tales (Lassen 2011, 83–4). Lassen asserts
that the medieval, Latin-Christian literary culture of the Icelandic authors and composers would have
viewed the term fabula as the proper definition for the Old Norse myths, and it is therefore an
anachronism and subversive to understanding the literary context of the pagan tales to apply the term
‘myth’ to them (p. 87).
The major problem with Lassen’s conclusion in this is a failure to distinguish between function
and content. The above definition of the myth as an evolutionary narrative constructed on patterns of
common cultural currency, suggests a wider perspective on myth than one that is simply based on the
Eliadean definition, used by Lassen, of a tale of supernatural beings in the beginning of time (Eliade
1963, 5–6), which may be revered as truthful or not. Eliade’s definition is primarily (although not
exclusively) concerned with the content of a narrative in order to determine whether it is a myth,
whereas the view on myth as an evolutionary narrative based on common cultural currency addresses
the function of myth, and defines a narrative as myth based on its cultural function.
16
Lassen is concerned with the internal definition of the narratives of Old Norse mythology in
the Medieval Era, an activity that defines these narratives in terms of their content, not their function.
With this focus on Old Norse myth, Lassen overlooks the seriousness with which these tales are
treated in the primary medieval Icelandic literature on Old Norse mythology: Snorri’s Edda. Lassen
glosses over the mythography of Snorri’s Edda in this context, treating it with only three sentences
(Lassen 2011, 83), then proceeding directly to the reception history of Old Norse mythology. She
suggests instead that the terms ævintýr, lygisǫgur, or skrǫksǫgur could have functioned as Old
Icelandic translations or derivations of the term fabulae, and that they are more suitable to describe
the Old Norse myths (p. 85–6). This focus ignores the terminology that is applied in context of Edda
and the function of the interpretive strategies of euhemerism and typology that are employed in this
text and elsewhere in Old Norse–Scandinavian literature that makes use of the myths. Since the text
of Edda employs such terms as saga, mál, and frásǫgn, not ævintýr, lygisǫgur, or skrǫksǫgur, to
designate the mythic narratives that are described here as ancient pagan tales (cf. Clunies Ross 1992),
it seems that the tradition is aware of the historically pregnant status of these narratives. This
sentiment is also expressed in the Prologus to Heimskringla, where the author refers to the close ties
that Ari fróði had to important men and women with knowledge of the conversion era. He expresses
trust in the information value of the (skaldic) poetry: “En kvæðin þykkja mér sízt ór stað fœrð, ef þau
eru rétt kveðin ok skynsamliga upp tekin” (And the poems I think will give the most, if they are
properly composed and sensibly received [Heimskr. 1979 I: Prologus]). This is a historical view and
a view of certain genres that may be termed as learned-indigenous, one which differs greatly from the
one outlined by Lassen. It is a view of the ancient mythic genres of poetry, and perhaps even the prose
narratives, which attributes to them a historical reality and an importance as narratives with primary
cultural function, and thus sees them as evolutionary narratives based on patterns of common cultural
currency—in so many words: as myths. Here, this historical view is applied to poetry, but arguably
it seems that a similar view is expressed on the mythic narratives in Edda. The fact is that this
approach established by the medieval ‘mythologists’ demands that their literary productions must be
understood as part of the whole tradition, ranging from an early state of Germanic culture in the Iron
Age to the High Middle Ages of Iceland and Scandinavia. Their texts are medieval creations that to
some extent retain a historical reality that reaches far back in time. They do this in different ways: by
postulating antiquity, by preserving ancient motifs, by preserving ancient narrative structures, and not
least by displaying influence from the European literary tradition as it has developed from classical
Roman times into the Medieval Era.
This understanding of Old Norse myths is a ‘text in context’ approach, which draws upon
recently developed theories on myths, historical sources as literary texts and the concept of collective
17
and cultural memory. The interpretive mode of this study relies on a dynamic understanding of myth,
in which ‘myth’ is perceived as a conceptual term for culturally important narratives that are used
and reproduced under varying temporal and spatial conditions. In order to develop this approach, I
combine the theories of two primary modern theoreticians on history, religion and memory, Jacques
Le Goff (1992) and Jan Assmann (2006), with the term eco-mythology that is developed in conference
with Åke Hultkrantz’s largely overlooked ecological approach to religion (1966, 1979 and 1986).
This approach to myth is described in the following.
MYTH, CULTURE, AND C OLLECTIVE MEMORY
My initial description of myth as an evolutionary narrative that is constructed on patterns made up of
common cultural currency, which defines myth in social-functional terms rather than as a specific
literary genre, is derived from a certain view on history and narratives as historical sources. This view
is formulated as a consequence of the literary circumstances of thirteeth and fourteenth century
Iceland and the development from an oral-aural society in the preceding centuries, reaching back into
the Viking Age in Scandinavia and the North Atlantic.
With the advent of Christianity in Scandinavia and the establishment of churches and clerical
infrastructure, the technology of writing and the production of texts were introduced into society in a
new way. The early literary activity in Scandinavia consisted in its entirety of the production of short
sentences and words in runes on artifacts and commemorative stones. This changed with the
conversion of Scandinavia by the book—a change that is monumentally signified by the runic carving
on the large Jelling rune stone where the letters are arranged as illuminated medieval script.3 This
runic activity was based on a conceptual universe, which revolved around ritualized practices and
tradition. In her article Memorials in Memory and Speech (2005), Judith Jesch suggests that both
runic and skaldic commemoration are products of the cultural situation of their time. They allude to
mythology as shared, basic cultural knowledge, which is assumed to be present in the minds of the
audience (2005, 98–9). The skalds, she argues, were not just composers of aesthetically valued poems
in the sense of modern poetry. They were first, probably not only poets but more than anything rune
carvers, and second, their social function was to record and preserve essential cultural information
for posterity. This, she points out, is what is maintained in Snorri Sturluson’s designation of the skald
as a frœðimaðr (p. 99–100).
3
For an overview of runic script in the North, see Larsson 2007. For a good recent study of the conversion of Scandinavia,
see Anders Winroth’s The Conversion of Scandinavia (2012).
18
The frœðimaðr, the principal carrier of tradition, ensures the continuity of culture by verbally
transmitting knowledge from one generation to another. Brian Stock describes this situation quite
well in The Implications of Literacy (1983), where he writes that knowledge in an oral society is:
[…] passed on in a series of face-to-face encounters. Such meetings are rich in gesture,
ritual and ceremony: men communicate not only by what they say but by how they
behave […] Meaning arises as a compromise between a standard set of rhetorical figures
and an individual interchange to which they are adapted. The single great storehouse of
meaning is memory. The mnemonic devices through which epic, legal and religious
information is recalled help to structure the way in which the individual thinks about the
facts transmitted (Stock 1983, 14–15).
This characterization fully fits the frœðimaðr that Jesch describes and it is important to note that Stock
asserts that meaning, in terms of what is transmitted by this frœðimaðr, is a compromise between
standard rhetorical figures and individual interchange. This realization demands that our
understanding of the Old Norse myths in writing, which we may for many reasons assume to have an
oral background (Gunnell 1995, 182–235; Gunnell 2007; Meulengracht 2006, 16–22; Jónas
Kristjánsson 2007, 25–114), cannot be entirely fixed to the manuscript tradition. The manuscript is
the latest compromise between the standard set of rhetorical figures and an individual interchange to
which they are adapted. The prose commentaries in the Codex Regius GKS 2365 4to manuscript of
the eddic poems attest to this, as the authors use them to distance themselves from the folk belief
expressed in the poems (Gunnell 1995, 195–7), but also because they function as interjections
explaining the course of events in the otherwise indiscernible stanzas. Here, the poetry stands as a
last remnant of the arcane mythic knowledge of the frœðimenn and in recognition of this, the medieval
author has chosen to curate some assertions with his contemporary knowledge. The same is the case
for the Epilogus in Skálskaparmál (Skáld. Epilogus), where the author warns against believing in the
tales that are related by him. This is a similar cautionary statement that serves to distance the author
from the content. Gylfaginning has, on the other hand, incorporated this in its style, with the format
of Gylfi’s questions to the æsir. The exchange is an oral setting borrowed from the dialogic form of
Vafþrúðnismál where arcane knowledge is transmitted by frœðimenn, who are in this case the æsir
themselves. The setting and style, with a prologue that explains the origins of the misconceptions of
the æsir, distances the contents of the rhetorical figures of the æsir from the author. In both instances
it is the oral depth of the culture that is the basis for the expositions of the myths. And both are
medieval expressions of the literarization of cultural knowledge, functioning as the written expression
of what Stock defines as a “conceptual filter for image formation and recollection,” in which the
“social group, together with its ‘folk-memory,’ determines the relationship of the new elements to the
19
old. The past, whether conceived abstractly or concretely, can be present if relevant to ongoing
cultural needs” (Stock 1983, 15).
This conceptual filter for image formation and recollection may be defined in Jacques Le
Goff’s and Jan Assmann’s terms of Collective Memory and Cultural Memory. By invoking their
terminology I intend to bridge the gap from mediality to culture, which I see implied in the discussion
of the binarism of orality and literacy that is carried by the above argument. All too quickly, in
discussing issues of orality in writing, the focus shifts towards the medial aspects of the text and its
rhetorical figures, and with that to the subject of genre and a discussion similar to the aforementioned
one that Lassen delivered. My purpose here is not to analyze the text, but the culture in the text, the
myths and their function in the Old Norse-Scandinavian worldview.
In Le Goff’s term ‘Collective Memory’ we find a suitable understanding of what myth is, while
Assmann’s term ‘Cultural Memory’ helps us to understand what myth does. But before we proceed
to the application of these terms, it is prudent to dwell for a moment on the term ‘memory.’ Early in
the twentieth century Maurice Halbwach used the term ‘Collective Memory’ systematically,
advancing it in the two studies of Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1952 [1925]) and La topographie
légendaire des Evangiles en Terre saint: Etude de mémoire collective (1941). He argues, essentially,
that an individual’s memory is formed from the present, and that memory is purely a social construct
that belongs to a collective consciousness. The field of memory studies has since then fragmented,
and the term ‘Collective Memory’ has taken on a plurality of meanings. This fragmentation has made
it difficult to charter the problems and approaches to the term systematically (Confino 1997, 1387). I
shall not delve too deeply into this discussion, but simply note that the broad scope that the term has
gained over the years seems to stem from its utility as an alternative to ‘factual, objective’ history. In
History and Memory (1992), Le Goff understands this distinction between Collective Memory and
factual history, and develops his notion of Collective Memory in contrast to a history of objective,
universal criteria. He calls the type of history pertaining to Collective Memory ‘ideological history’
(Le Goff 1992, 55–6). Ideological history, he says, conflates history with myth and is primarily
focused on the earliest era of (social) existence. He adopts Bronislaw Malinowski’s expression for
this, calling ideological history or Collective Memory the “mythical charter of the tradition” (p. 56).
Collective Memory, or the Mythical Charter of Tradition, generally takes an interest in three major
subjects:
(1) Collective mythical identity, typically perpetuated by origin myths;
(2) Narratives of prestigious families often arranged in genealogies;
20
(3) Technical knowledge transmitted in practical formulae, deeply imbued with ‘religious magic’
(p. 58).
All three subjects are detectable in the core material of Old Norse mythology and literature, and
examples of studies of different genres of Old Norse literature as either subject 1 or 2 above are not
difficult to find (cf. Clunies Ross 1994, 1998; Lindow 1997; Glauser 2007; Hermann 2007, 2009).
For this dissertation, however, it is particularly subject 3 that is of interest, as it is our working
hypothesis that the myths subjected to analysis here are a form of technical knowledge that is
transmitted in practical formulae. We shall return to this below, but at this point it serves to mention
that several eddic poems and some instances in Snorri’s Edda seem to be strewn with examples of
technical knowledge imbued with some form of religious magic or numinosity. In Edda there is the
famous example of the ship Naglfar that in the tradition of Gylfaginning is said to be made of the
untrimmed finger nails of dead people. Therefore one must remember to cut his finger nails (Gylf.
LI). Another example seems to be the mythic recollection of the character of Mundilfœri in
Vafþrúðnismál and the celestial horses Skinfaxi and Hrímfaxi (12, 14), which are also mentioned in
Edda, as well as Árvakr and Alsviðr from Grímnismál (37). In the poems these characters seem to be
reminiscent of calendar myths (Nordberg 2006, 125–30) and the tradition of Gylfaginning remembers
them, but in a slightly different way, adding to the narrative what seems to be a myth of a celestial
event in the strange story about Bil and Hjúki carrying the tub Sœgr on the carrying-pole Simul away
from the well called Byrgir (Gylf. XI). Other examples of this tendency to retain technical knowledge
in the mythic material are the magically instructive stanzas of Hávamál 142–64 and Sígrdrífumál 5–
37.
For Le Goff, the Mythical Charter of Tradition—Collective Memory—retains certain varieties
of knowledge important to the existence of cultural groups or units. A part of the function of this
Mythical Charter of Tradition must be presumed to retain specific technical knowledge of the
surrounding world. This is in essence the function of myth: the preservation of useful knowledge that
can be applied to life. As the above examples show, there is abundant evidence for its existence in
the core sources of Old Norse mythology. But for this study it is necessary to establish that there is a
possibility that culturally essential myths can be formulated as technical knowledge about the spatial
expanse of the sea and the potentially devastating natural phenomena of volcanoes, in terms of sea
migration and the collection of food at sea in Scandinavia and the North Atlantic, and in terms of the
volatile underground of Iceland. To that end we will now address Jan Assmann’s concept of Cultural
Memory in Religion and Cultural Memory (2006).
21
In defining his term ‘Cultural Memory,’ Assmann draws on both Gadamer and Derrida to arrive
at a concept of Cultural Memory as an archive of tradition: “Cultural memory,” he says, “in contrast
to Communicative Memory, encompasses the age-old, out-of-the-way, and discarded; [and is] in
contrast to collective, bonding memory” (Assmann 2006, 27). Cultural Memory opens up the
Memory Spaces of many thousands of years, but the term is in the view of Assmann inextricably
linked with the technology of writing (p. 28). This distinction between Cultural Memory and
Communicative Memory is founded on the knowledge that oral societies, which, in Assmann’s view,
operate exclusively with Communicative Memory, may nurture a memory horizon of only eighty to
one hundred years back in time. The stock of what is needed of memory corresponds to the totality
of Cultural Memory in oral societies (p. 24). Oral societies are characterized by ritual and immanence,
and religions in such societies are thus cult religions. It is the principle of ritual repetition that ensures
reproduction of culture through generations. The ‘cultural texts’ that are reproduced through the ages
are to be understood as sign complexes encompassing not just (written) texts, but also rites, dances,
symbols, and everything that supports the normative formation of meaning and identity. Cultural texts
structure the world of meaning in society (p. 123). Cultural texts develop and change over time, and
because of their primacy within a culture, they are subject to substantial modifications. They tend to
adapt to changing realities and changing environments, and in oral transmission the extended context
of the text as ‘cultural text’ requires a radical shaping process that often takes the form of ritual (p.
124). As such, Cultural Memory has the same function as myth. It would seem that Assmann’s term
‘Cultural Memory’ is at times contradictory to Le Goff’s term ‘Collective Memory,’ but with the
following, we will see that the terms coalesce when applied to the Old Norse myths in the right
proportions.
With this we have now arrived at a characterization of the function of myth in societies that are
oral or quasi-literate: we may define the function of myth as a cultural text that structures the world
of meaning in society. Its primary function is to develop and change over time, to survive and carry
normative conceptions of the cultural unit into the future. In societies without writing, this occurs
primarily in context of ritualistic enaction of myths, as the horizon of the past in non-written
memory—in Communicative Memory—is, according to Assmann, no greater than one hundred
years. The reinforcement of ritual, the creation of a ‘past-in-present’ and a physicalization of myth,
is what can transcend this horizon. And even once the ritual is no longer productive, the myth will
still carry the cultural meaning.
Studies of this function of myth as a cultural text that remembers rituals have been carried out
in relation to Old Norse mythology in the two monumental works of The Origins of Drama in
Scandinavia (1995), by Terry Gunnell and Initiation between Two Worlds: Structure and Symbolism
22
in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religion (2008a), by Jens Peter Schjødt. Gunnell uses oral-narrative
theories to prove that eddic poetry is closely linked with the origins of drama in Scandinavia, tracing
the tie to rituals far back in time.4 Schjødt, on the other hand, provides the convincing argument that
structures of ancient Scandinavian initiation rites are embedded in the medieval narratives.5
However, neither of these scholars makes use of Assmann’s studies, and in both cases the
historical scope of their work reaches beyond the time span of one hundred years in terms of
remembered ritual structures in narratives. And rightly so, one must assume that the survival of a
cultural text, when it is understood in the above terms of a part in the Mythical Charter of Tradition,
not as an objective account of events, may reach far beyond two or three generations, depending on
its attachment to certain mnemonic phenomena, among which are eco-spaces and landscape. In fact,
later in his study, Assmann states that “[t]he principle of ritual coherence is based on the media that
make the sacred visibly manifest in the world. These media include holy places, trees, sources, stones,
grottos, groves, but also and above all, images, statues, symbols, and buildings such as temples …”
(Assmann 2006, 128–9). Assmann, still focusing on ritual, points out that landscapes imbued with
numinosity can have mnemonic functions. He is thus open to the notion that memories may live on
in Communicative Memory if there are extra-human objects to which they can connect, primarily in
relation to rituals. In Scandinavia there are several of such features in the landscape, cultural as well
as natural. Lakes, bogs, mounds, rune stones, ridges, mountains, ravines, and other remarkable places
in the landscapes have rich folklore attached to them, and some of these sites most certainly were
mnemonic places of myth prior to the advent of Christianity. Gunnell identifies sites for ritual and
dramatic activities in Scandinavia associated with the concept leikr (Gunnell 1995, 30–6) and he does
not fail to mention a compelling example of the memory of an ancient ritual practice that may at its
core have been preserved because of its relation to features of the landscape: the cult wagons of the
early Scandinavian Iron Age (p. 53–60). Such sites can be termed as ‘Memory Spaces’ in the
ecosystem. The story of cult wagon rituals lives on in Old Norse literary forms in Rǫgnvalds þáttr ok
Rauðs, Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar hin mesta, Hauks þáttr hábrókar, and Gunnars þáttr helmings (p.
54), but the most interesting account is the one by the Roman ethnographer Tacitus in Germania (cap.
XL) from c. 100 CE. Tacitus’s description of the Nerthus ritual connects the sanctuary (“deam
templo”) of the goddess in the wagon with the bog lake (“secreto lacu”), as if to underline that the
bog lake is the Memory Space for the cult wagon ritual. There have been at least six of such cult
wagons found in bogs in the Danish region: Kraghede, Fredbjerg, Dejbjerg, Dankirke, Langå, and
4
See e.g. chapter 1: Dramatic Activities in Early Medieval Scandinavia 1: The Evidence of Archaeology and Literature
(Gunnell 1995, 23–-92).
5 For an easily digestible discussion of the relationship of myth with ritual, see Schjødt’s article Myths as Sources for Rituals
(2003).
23
Husby (in Schleswig). Of particular interest to this discussion are the two wagons found in 1881 and
1883 in the Dejbjerg bog in western Jutland.6
In this instance the natural and cultural topography of the site interacts directly with local
memory to perpetuate narratives about the wagons. The wagons are 100 years older than Tacitus’s
account (Storgaard Pedersen 1921, 24), and this accords with the memory horizon outlined by
Assmann. If such rituals were not still taking place at his time, Tacitus could have received reports of
them, which had been preserved orally. Challenging Assmann’s horizon, though, there was at the
time of the discovery of the wagons in 1881-3, a local tale about a king’s wagon that had been sucked
into the bog at Dejbjerg (ibid). This extends the survival of the oral account of the event to nearly
eighteen-hundred years beyond what, according to Assmann, seems possible in oral societies.
The reason for this enduring preservation is in the topography of Dejbjerg and in its place name.
Storgaard Pedersen refers the notation made by the local mound examiner J. Kierckeby, some fifty
years prior to his article, in 1871: “Intetsteds saa jeg dog saa mange Høje samlede som paa
Hedebakkerne i Dejbjerg Hanning Pastorat nordenfor Skjernaamundingen” (Nowhere else did I see
so many mounds gathered at one place as I did the heath-mounds in Dejbjerg Hanning parish north
of the Skjern delta [ibid]). The place name of Dejbjerg seems to signal an involvement with the sacred
and with ritual activities, as it is originally recorded in 1340 as a ‘Døthbyergh’ (Death-Mountain
[Lundberg 1911, 308]). This type of place name fits with a widespread typology for sacral place
names in Scandinavia and Iceland. The prominent case of the mountain of Helgafell (Holy Mountain)
in Eyrbyggja saga also belongs to this typology (Lundberg 1911, 313–17). Helgafell is in Eyrbyggja
saga closely associated with stories of a Þórr cult that is reminiscent of certain ritual activities,
although the description of these may be strongly influenced by thirteenth century conceptions of
pagan rituals (cf. Hultgård 1993).
The essence of this example is to demonstrate that Collective Memory may preserve cultural
texts longer—much longer—than is claimed by Assmann. I claim that this is possible under certain
circumstances which may involve, but do not require, rituals, and which most certainly always
involve the topography of the landscape. Features of the landscape, whether they are manmade or
natural, as long as their characteristics may harbor meaning for a population, can serve as mnemonic
pegs for the perpetuation of myths in the same manner as rituals. A rune stone site, a mound, a
mountain, a bog, a lake, a lava field, or the vast expanse of the sea can be a Memory Space and an
open-air vessel for myth.7 This is essentially a fusion of Collective Memory/Communicative Memory
On the relationship of Tacitus’s account of the Nerthus procession with the actual cult, see Allan A. Lund’s Nordens
barbarer 1979, 138–40.
7 Halbwach sees this in terms of space as a medium for the transmission of memories in La topographie légendaire des
Evangiles en Terre saint: Etude de mémoire collective (1941). It is ingrained in the title itself.
6
24
and Cultural Memory. Where the Memory Spaces of Cultural Memory—preserving thousands of
years of knowledge—are books and archives, the Memory Spaces of Collective Memory are ecospaces and landscapes. Both definitions of memory retain the Mythical Charter of Tradition. This
notion has to some extent been formulated by Stefan Brink in his article Mythologizing Landscape.
Place and Space of Cult and Myth (2001). Brink turns to Malinowski and his studies of the
Trobriands, and suggests on the basis of what Malinowski says about the physical omnipresence of
the Trobriand myths in their landscape, that the surrounding territory of a people becomes a
topographic history. A landscape is, according to Brink, who borrows the term from the narratologist
Mikhail Bakhtin, a chronotope in which space and time fuse and history materializes in monuments
(Brink 2001, 79–81). To think of the relationship between myth and topography in this sense will be
helpful to our further endeavors to establish an understanding of myth in terms of an eco-mythology.
Unfortunately, Brink makes a common error in his view of the dynamics of a sacred or numinous
landscape when he writes: “During pre-Christian times, all nature and landscape were metaphysically
‘charged’ in different ways, with different degrees of energy […] Under the influence of Christian
culture, we saw a division between the profane and the holy, where the sacrality became
‘institutionalized’ in certain buildings and structures, whereas the environment that surrounded these
built-up structures became profane” (p. 81–2). To adopt this view in terms of the function and
evolution of myths, not to mention mythogenesis, would be to return to the Oxford school and Max
Müller’s theory of myth. There is no reason to assume such widespread romantic pantheism in any
pre-Christian religion. We will have to take another route: one that acknowledges more nuance in
these matters. In the following, we will investigate how ecosystems and natural places may facilitate
a long life of tales and myths without the requirement of any form of ritual activity, and without
subjecting them to theories of mythogenesis from a romantic pantheistic view of the sacredness of
nature as a special catalyst of mythogenesis. We will investigate the term eco-mythology as a branch
on the tree of myth, whose canopy stretches far and wide.
ECO-MYTHOLOGY: THE PRODUCTION OF MYTHS FROM PLACE AND SPACE
The Dejbjerg example of the tale of the king’s wagon hardly involved ritualized activity in the late
nineteenth century. Subjected to relatively mundane peat digging at the time, the bog must be said to
have lost any sense of nūmen that may have been attributed to it in the Iron Age. This leaves a question
to be answered: if there is no ritual activity to ensure the preservation of the wagon-tale in
Communicative Memory, and there was no written record to reproduce the memory of it through ages
25
of relative indifference to its ritual past, what is it about this and other sites that can keep tales and
myths alive?
An answer to this may be in emotions that are generated as a response to the environment. In
Religion Explained. The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (2001), Pascal Boyer outlines an
evolutionary theory of religion where he argues that religious concepts are linked to our emotional
systems, which are in turn tied to the experience of life-threatening situations and fear in general. The
emotional programs are the heritage of evolution and they influence religion (Boyer 2001, 22–6).
This is based on the recognition that religious narratives and myths are inextricably bound to
emotional states.
In the case of Dejbjerg, where there is no (known) ritual context or written record to preserve
a narrative about the site for so long, it is possible that an emotional response connected to the local
ecosystem of the bog and the manmade features of the mounds may have been the basis for retaining
the myth of the king’s wagon in Communicative Memory. The primary emotion evoked in this
instance would be fear or apprehension with the bog identified as a ‘death-place.’ It is uncertain
whether the place name itself in its later forms would have prompted this response to the site, as the
vowel changed some time prior to 1446 from ‘ø’ to ‘e’ (Dedbierg), and later the consonant from ‘d’
to ‘j’/’y’ in 1532 (Deybierge) (Lundberg 1911, 308), thereby making it difficult to distinguish and
understand the original form ‘død’ (death) that was otherwise discernible prior to the fifteenth
century. There is, however, little reason to deny the notion that the site can have retained the
association with death into the fourteenth century, because of the folk memory of sacrifices and
burials in relation to the mounds. The bog, however, would not have been chosen as a site to swallow
offerings to the other world in the first place if it were not for the basic human understanding of such
a site as being closely related to death. After all, a bog can swallow a person if he is not careful where
he steps. It is this acknowledgment that bogs are dangerous features in the ecosystem, which created
the basis for ritual activities there and which has kept the myth of such activities alive long after the
rituals stopped.
Another Scandinavian example of a myth, whose persistence in Cultural Memory/Collective
Memory is most certainly driven by the emotions of fear and apprehension, is the tale of Torsvegen
over Urebøuren (Bø et al 1995, 89–90). This is a tale of how the troll Toer (Þórr) is a guest at two
weddings in the Telemark region. Angry that he is denied more beer, he takes up his hammer and
tears down a mountain next to the farmstead, causing a rockslide over the farm. With this act he
creates the ridge of the Urebøure. But it is said that he made a pathway through the ridge and spared
a single farm there, because there was one man who was nice to him and gave him beer. In the process,
however, Toer lost the head of his hammer, and had to go in search of it. Both the motif of the
26
destruction of the mountain and the motif of Þórr searching for his hammer suggest a connection to
known medieval mythology. The motif of the destruction of the mountain has cognates in the tale of
Þórr’s attempt to kill Skrýmir from Gylfaginning, where instead of the jǫtunn, he is beating mountains
with his hammer. A similar episode of mountain destruction is also related in the tale of Þórr’s duel
with Hrungnir. The motif of the lost hammer, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the eddic poem
Þrymskviða. Although the Norwegian tale mentions ritual in the form of weddings, it is unlikely that
it was a tale that was told in relation to a wedding ceremony—Toer’s presence at two weddings in
the tale is more likely a memory of an ancient cult or of the storyline in Þrymskviða than it is a
reference to a living tradition at the time the tale was recorded. It is rather the natural feature of the
landscape, the ridge, which is the central mnemonic peg of this tale and hence the cause of the
preservation of the myth in Cultural Memory. It is the knowledge that movement through the ridge
can be dangerous and such features of the ecosystem can cause rock- and landslides. This myth too,
then, takes its place among the technical myths in the Mythical Charter of Tradition, as a tale that
preserves knowledge for survival in a particular landscape and ecosystem.
With the Dejbjerg example and that of Urebøuren we have established that in Scandinavia there
are occurrences of localized tales about natural features in the landscape—components of the
ecosystem—which seem to combine the memory of ancient rituals (Dejbjerg) and the memory of
very old mythology (Urebøuren) with the specificity of the site, based on its relevance to human
activities. The bog at Dejbjerg functions as a Memory Space for the preservation of the memory of a
ritual that was enacted there nearly eighteen-hundred years before, while the ridge at Urebø carries
the memory of myths about Þórr who destroys mountains in narratives of the thirteenth century, some
500 years before.
These are not isolated incidents, neither as mythogenesis on the basis of response to natural
phenomena in the sense of naturism, or as mythopoesis as human conceptual dialogue with sites and
spaces of the natural landscape and ecosystems in the way that it is perceived in this dissertation. As
established above with the reference to Brink and Malinowski, it seems that landscapes and
ecosystems as well as natural processes and events play an important role in the perpetuation of myth.8
We may draw forth other examples, such as the Daribi myth of the origin of the Genaa River in Papua
New Guinea. The Daribi tell a tale of how the Genaa floods the terrain, folding myth and space in
imagery of bodily fluids. Roy Wagner describes the process of mythopoesis from spaces and places
in his article about this myth Condensed Mapping (2001): “Condensed mapping recondensed in the
body, liquid space folded in and out of the body as the reflective surface of the lake folds and unfolds
8
See also Vitaliano: Geomythology: geological origins of myths and legends (2007); Hamacher & Norris: Australian
Aboriginal Geomythology (2011), and; Haas, Peekna & Walker: Echoes of Ancient Cataclysms in the Baltic Sea (2003).
27
the figures and distances around it” (Wagner 2001, 78). Here, the knowledge of the floods caused by
Genaa is formulated in terms of the human body and in terms of the landscape, metaphorically
associated with the folding of the surface of the water body. This is an extreme case of mythopoesis
in close reference to an important feature of the ecosystem, the life-giving river. Another example of
the close connection between religion and ecosystem in Papua New Guinea is Roy A. Rappaport’s
studies of the Maring people in Pigs for the Ancestors (1968), Ritual Regulation of Environmental
Relations among a New Guinea People (1979) and On Cognized Models (1979). In On Cognized
Models Rappaport describes how the Maring practice ritual war-cycles based on the growth of the
population of semi-domesticated pigs in their village. He focuses primarily on the interplay between
ecosystem, meaning, and ritual activities (among which we count warfare). However, he also
describes parts of the Maring mythology, telling of a separation between upper and lower spirits. The
upper spirits, dwelling in the highest altitude of the forest, are called Raua Mugi, the Red Spirits, and
they are hot and associated with war and the pigs. The Kun Kaze Ambra, the Smoke Woman, also
lives at the high ground, and she sometimes flies to the highest peak in the area: Mount Oipor
(Rappaport 1979, 103). The other class of beings, called the Raua Mai, Antecedent Spirits, is
associated with the lower levels of the valley, with water, fertility (food and procreation is contained
in the word mai), and with eels (p. 104). Rappaport does not make note of it, but the Simbai valley in
which this people lives is an active volcanic area. It seems that this cosmology is directly associated
with the primary features of the ecosystem, the features of it that are essential to keep track of for
survival: fertility and the destructive power of war and volcanism. This tendency for mythopoesis
grounded in ecosystems is not reserved to the tribes of Papua New Guinea. It occurs among such
different peoples as the Daur Mongols of Manchuria, the Hohodene Baniwa of the Rio Negro in
Brazil, the Apache, the Caribou Inuit of the Hudson Bay, and the Anishnabe/Ojibway who inhabit
the area around the Great Lakes (Grim 2006, 298–303). To these people, different parts of the
ecosystem play central roles in the myths of their societies, and their religions built around these
myths may be said to associate with the term eco-religion as it was coined by Åke Hultkrantz in a
series of articles in the sixties and seventies.9
As a result of his studies of the Wind River Shoshoni in Wyoming, Åke Hultkrantz has
formulated the ‘religio-ecological method’ of cultural analysis of pre-historical peoples in his article
An Ecological Approach to Religion (1966) and subsequently developed it further in another article
entitled Ecology of Religion: Its Scope and Methodology (1979). In the former article he states that
9
Hultkrantz has based his theories of eco-religion on the theory of multilinear evolution based on the impact of ecosystems
on culture by Julian H. Steward in Theory of Culture Change (1963). It would reach too far to discuss the parameters of this
theory in this context, and therefore I limit my discussion to Hultkrantz’s articles.
28
the environment of a people may furnish us with clues as to the religion of pre-historical peoples,
letting us trace religious configurations of the past in the same setting (Hultkrantz 1966, 132). He
criticizes nature-mythologists such as E.B. Tylor and Max Müller, and states that the influence of
nature on religion has never been formulated in an empirically sound way (p. 133).10 The approach
of Hultkrantz sees nature as a promotional force in human life, manifesting its influence through a
religious filter. He adopts the term cultural ecology as a tool for determining in what capacity a
culture’s adaptation to an environment may entail change to its social structures and habits (p. 137).
It is a theory of cultural response to environmental variation that may explain the origins and patterns
that characterize the cultures of different areas (p. 138). Hultkrantz sees the environment of a culture
as the provider of materials for religious action and conceptions. In his view, beliefs pertaining to the
supernatural are to some degree modeled over environmental, social, and cultural features, while
myth is to a large extent determined by tradition, but these elements combine in a reflection of the
surrounding environment: “The storyteller, in other words, alters the details of the mythical picture
to suit his listeners; or he reinterprets the tale unconsciously, to enhance its reality value” (p. 144).
In light of the above discussion, this view of the function and development of myth is too
simplistic, but in essence Hultkrantz is correct that changing environmental conditions will affect the
way in which myths will be told. Hultkrantz, however, assumes that those aspects of religion and
myth that are “less tinged with rigid tradition” (p. 143) are more affected by environmental changes,
believing that core myths which constitute the self-conception and identity creation of a group will
be more conservative. This again, in light of the above discussion of the involvement of myth in
cultural life—myth as cultural texts—does not necessarily have to be the case. ‘Tradition,’ as it were,
seems to be more complex than that and at times it seems that identity-constituting myths may be
highly susceptible to change.
This constitutes a working model for an eco-mythological approach to Old Norse myths. It
consists of the understanding of mythopoesis in concert with the surrounding environment and
ecosystem. It is not an attempt to perceive nature that sparks mythogenesis and subsequently propels
mythopoesis. It is rather the case that landscape, nature, ecosystems, and environment offer Memory
Spaces with which myth can be associated. This can be myth in terms of folktales preserved in
Communicative Memory, telling about a landscape feature connected with ancient ritual practice
(Dejbjerg), or it may be myth in terms of the narrativization of natural landscape features, providing
them at times with etiologies that involve supernatural species and events (Urebøuren). This is myth
as a function of the Mythical Charter of Tradition that preserves technical knowledge which is crucial
10
He is seemingly unaware of the studies being carried out by Rappaport.
29
to survival. With this understanding of the status and function of eco-myths, we will move on to the
definition of myth under these terms.
THE DEFINITION OF MYTH
We may thus define myth as a function in the Mythical Charter of Tradition that exists mainly to
preserve culturally significant knowledge that is important for the survival of a cultural unit. Myth
structures the world of meaning and develops over time in the form of texts that are used and redefined
in a cultural system. It is the primary function of myth to stay alive in cultural systems and myths are
therefore from time to time subject to extensive modifications. This condition of myth is the function
of myth’s ability to carry into the future normative conceptions that are important to the survival of
the cultural unit. The extensive life of a myth in a cultural unit makes it a conceptual filter for the
formulation of images, mental categories, and memory. The cultural unit will re-actualize, invent, and
renew knowledge of the past in myths and make it relevant to their contemporary condition in a
process of evaluating the relationship of new cultural elements to old ones, and vice versa. Myth
exists as narrativized ideology and the expression of worldview.
A segment of this Mythical Charter of Tradition retains technical knowledge. Technical
knowledge is often transmitted in practical formulae, often in the form of religious magic, but there
is another side to technical knowledge in myths: survival. The need for the preservation of knowledge
crucial to the survival of a society may result in the formulation of myths. Technical knowledge is
not only the knowledge of healing charms or the memory of such technologies as iron ore processing,
it is also vital knowledge about seafaring—collection of food and migration at sea—and most
certainly knowledge about the different aspects of geological activities. The preservation of this type
of knowledge in Cultural Memory/Collective Memory is intimately linked to Memory Spaces in the
ecosystem and the natural environment.
These Memory Spaces are, in the very sense of the word, physical and mental spaces in oral
cultures: condensed mapping. Landscape features harbor meaning for a population and serve as
memory pegs in our mental landscapes to which myths are connected. One such connection of
Memory Spaces to meaning and myth is that of fear and apprehension, central features of our survival
instinct. Dangerous and significant features of an ecosystem may have myths attached to them that
live on for centuries, maybe thousands of years, in spite of large cultural changes. The primary
features of an ecosystem may even be generative in the formulation of cosmologies, combining myth,
social life, and environment into one. Mythopoesis occurs in dialogue with the ecosystem of a cultural
unit. Elements of the ecosystem may be reflective of cognitive categories in myths, but in turn, the
30
cognitive categories in myths may have a need to process elements of the ecosystem to re-actualize
them in stories and thus secure the survival of a culture. This is not an attempt by the culture to
perceive nature and as such formulate theories of cause and effect in a misguided pre-scientific stage
of existence. This is the narrativized perseverance of a technical knowledge, whose role is to ensure
existence in a certain environment with certain features. It is the memory of the “dos and don’ts” in
situations where humans are faced with threatening natural forces.
Myth must then be understood as a superstructure, which incorporates systems, which can in
turn be activated in certain contexts and by certain cultural needs. These systems in myths are
mechanical structures that produce images, which are activated in specific contexts and are
recognizable in the mind of the cultural participant as functions of existence, such as survival, coping
mechanisms, and cultural categories. They extend from a singular tale to many more and it is possible
to follow their trace. As an example we may consider that the myth of the Mead of Poetry is not just
the myth of Óðinn bringing the mead to the æsir, it is also a myth about the cosmic constitution, about
the dominance of the æsir over the jǫtnar, about the deceptive character of Óðinn, about the cultural
significance of skaldic recitation, and not least about a volcanic eruption. This view on myth is
foundational to my approach to the source material and thus also to the choices made in relating and
combining the sources to one another. In the following I will describe how I read and combine the
sources that I use for this study.
SOURCE READING
In the previous section we briefly considered the fictionality or truth-value of myths in relation to
Annette Lassen’s statements about the use of the term ‘myth’ in the research of Old Norse mythology
and her rejection of the term as anachronistic to the narratives. Above, I have argued that there is
good reason to apply the term ‘myth’ to the narratives of Old Norse mythology, because myth as a
category is a functional definition, not a generic one. Lassen’s primary argument is built on genre
definition from content, primarily the evaluation of the content as either truthful or not—its
fictionality. So far, it has not been addressed to what level the contents of these myths are truthful
and what their fictionality consists of. The process of reading and interpreting these myths is deeply
rooted in certain notions on how myths fictionalize reality: the question of how reality is mediated in
the process of narrativization. This question is at the heart of most discussions of Old Norse literature,
be it the mythology, saga genres, or learned literature. The typical question for the scholar of saga
literature has long been whether or not the saga relates actual historical knowledge or if it is a literary
fancy (Meulengracht 1993, 22). For the historian of religion dealing with myths, the question has
31
been—and still is—whether or not the content of the mythic material is Christian or pagan (Schjødt
2008a, 85–100). Regardless of the great differences between the genres of the mythology and the
sagas, it is fundamentally the same structural question: can certain narratives be trusted to reveal
anything of the actual past? In reality, as Meulengracht observes, the answer to this question relies on
belief (Meulengracht 2006, 67). I would modify this assertion to say that, in the least, the answer to
this question depends on trust: the trust in the ability of narratives—not authors, writers, or scribes—
to convey ancient knowledge.
In Fortælling og ære Meulengracht has formulated what is to date the most functional
understanding of the relationship between fiction and reality in Old Norse literature. This was done
for the purpose of reading sagas, but it is my opinion that the approach can be easily adjusted to fit
the reading of the mythology. In his considerations of the literary approach to the saga, Meulengracht
underlines that it is methodically unsatisfying to settle with an interpretation of the text as either a
historical text or a piece of fiction that is independent of reference to the reality of history.
Interpretation must rely on the wider meaning-complex of the text and it must be recognized that the
texts are both accounts of a past culture as much as they are the narrativized representation of this
past. As such, these texts cannot be considered to be sources for a historical reality in the traditional
sense (Meulengracht 1993, 23).11 This situation is in no way different when it comes to Old Norse
mythology. As these myths claim to be ancient and pre-Christian, they will not be satisfyingly
interpreted as fictions bereft of reference to historical reality. They do, as has been outlined above,
relate to a wider meaning-complex and they account for a past culture as much as they function as
fictions of that same culture. They are of course in no way traditional historical sources, they are not
the all-encompassing dogma of Old Norse–Scandinavian religion, but rather an expression of
normative conceptualizations—the worldview. They are part of a diverse universe that at no time had
one singular expression, but at all times was influenced by variations of geography, social structures,
cognition, psychological conditions, and many other factors (Schjødt 2007a, 2009, and 2011). Some
of the more recent studies in Old Norse mythology outside the history of religion have realized this
consideration that Meulengracht points out. Clunies Ross treats the mythology with due deference to
historical reality in Prolonged Echoes vol. 1 and 2, as does Lindow in Murder and Vengeance among
the Gods (1997), but like Meulengracht they refrain from investigating the myths beyond their
existence as medieval narratives. In the article Freyr in der Isländersagas (1992) however,
Meulengracht points out another aspect of these texts: even though there was a shift in religious
continuity with the advent of Christianity, there was sufficient continuity between the pagan religion
11
For a similar view expressed in relation to broader historical research, see Stein 2005.
32
and the cultural institutions of Iceland that much of the pre-Christian mythology and worldview could
have lived on into the Christian era (Meulengracht 1992, 734–5). Building on this, Jens Peter Schjødt
argues that there are two types of manifestations of paganism in the Old Norse material: conscious
assertions and unconscious assertions (Schjødt 2007b, 180).
The conscious assertions, one can expect, are in one way or another influenced by the event of
the conversion, while unconscious assertions can be understood as more genuine expressions of older
layers of culture. In terms of truth-value, the relaying of historical events, and the fictionalization of
reality, we may expect that these unconscious assertions in the corpus of written texts are reliable
under certain conditions. These conditions relate to the way in which the human mind shapes myth
and they seem to follow a set of principles that can be observed in a wide range of myths across the
landscape of human cultures. In the following I will describe in what way I find that these unconscious
assertions may be identified and interpreted in eco-myths within the parameters of the so-called
mytho-linguistic principles.
HYPOTHESIS FOR THE AN ALYSIS OF ECO -MYTHS
In the monograph When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth (2004),
Elizabeth W. and Paul T. Barber describe how the human mind linguistically processes ecological
disasters and natural phenomena. Some myths have developed from actual events. They have been
subjected to universal principles for memory storage in oral cultures. Not all myths are the product
of historical events, but many more, according to Barber and Barber, turn out “to stem from actual
events and real observations of the world [more] than twentieth-century scholars have commonly
believed” (Barber & Barber 2004, 3). Barber and Barber formulate a universal theory of mythogenesis
in the same way as the naturist school, arguing its specific interest for students of cognition and for
archaeologists with a penchant for restoring a lost history of the world before writing (p. 4). In earnest,
this goal seems both too ambitious and a causeway for precariously far-reaching speculation. I have
in the main sought to take into account the issues in their theory that I see as flawed in my utilization
of those of its aspects that I do find useful. The overarching problem with the theory is that it lacks
reference to established theories of myth such as the aforementioned by Le Goff and Assmann and as
such it does not take into account the function and application of myth in societies, other than the
aspect which the authors postulate: that a large part of mythogenesis is due to observations of natural
phenomena.12 We have already discussed the reasonability of this assumption, and with the theory of
the functions of myth that I have formulated above, I intend to avoid such complications and focus
12
There is no criticism of the naturalist school in the work.
33
on the aspects of their theory (which are the larger part) that concern mythopoesis in concert with
natural phenomena. I shall, in the following, clarify how the principles of mythopoesis according to
Barber and Barber interact with my above-outlined theory of myth.
There is one overarching principle that encapsulates four fundamental mytho-linguistic
principles. The overarching principle is called “the Memory Crunch,” and the four fundamental
principles are the following:
(1) Silence: “What everyone is expected to know already is not explained in so many words” (p.
17).
(2) Analogy: “If any entities or phenomena bear some resemblance, in any aspect, they must be
related” (p. 34).
(3) Compression: “Once the stories around something (e.g., a hero) achieve sufficient mass, that
thing (or whatever) attracts yet other stories to him/her/itself, via any “significant” point of
event, same place, and same name or clan name” (p. 113).
(4) Restructuring: “Whenever there is a significant cultural change, at least some patterns will
get restructured or reinterpreted. Successive changes on a given pattern will render the form
of the pattern un-understandable to its users—it goes from a matter of logic to one of faith,
and finally to a matter of disbelief” (p. 138).
The overarching principle of the Memory Crunch is based on the observation that information may
be passed on for thousands of years in what is termed by the authors as the “oral pipeline,” if the
information is viewed as important, if it corresponds to something visible to the users of the myth,
and if the information is encoded in a highly memorable way (p. 9–10). To this realization is added
the notion that what is encoded in language becomes the explanation for events. In societies without
permanent accumulation of knowledge and stable recording of events to refer to in order to
demonstrate cause and effect, a primary tool for explanation becomes analogy (p. 15).
Within the framework of the four primary principles, Barber and Barber have identified another
forty-four principles. It is beyond the purpose of a description of my method of analysis and
interpretation to give a detailed account of all these subsidiary factors. The following provides
detailed descriptions of the four primary points with which Barber and Barber constitute the Memory
Crunch.
The silence principle is the basic principle of shared cultural knowledge that need not be
explained. A case of the opposite, which Barber and Barber call forth, is the information given both
in Edda and in the prose postscript to Lokasenna that the binding of Loki in the underground with
snakes dripping venom above him is the cause of earthquakes (p. 20). This, according to Barber and
34
Barber, is a situation where the author (they know only the version in Gylfaginning) divulges some
information that is available to him in his perception of the cultural myth, which the readers may not
have, because they have been culturally removed so far from the original information of the myth that
they are unable to perceive it. Seeing in (the Gylfaginning version of) Ragnarǫk/ragnarøkkr a myth
of volcanism (p. 204), and unaware of the version in Lokasenna, Barber and Barber presume that this
is part of the original myth. This is not necessarily the case. It is, after all, an instance of a conscious
assertion by the author about pagan mythology and one may be inclined to suppose that this is a
medieval interpretation of Loki’s mythic role: an example of a conscious statement about paganism.
However, if we accept this as a breach of the cultural silence of this myth, we may understand
why the narrative of Bergbúa þáttr contextualizes volcanism in relation to the pagan gods in the
twelve dróttkvætt stanzas of Hallmundarkviða. It does not seem to be exclusively related to
Gylfaginning and the postscript of Lokasenna, the latter of which may be derived from the explanation
in Gylfaginning. This situation essentially describes the main point that Barber and Barber are making
about the silence principle: as long as a culture does not undergo major social and technological
changes, their myths will not change drastically either. When the circumstances to which the myths
refer change, their information may become meaningless or obscure to younger generations (p. 22).
In terms of the Icelandic literary material, there are conditions which may have perpetuated a long,
transparent life of certain myths, while others may have become obscure. In terms of Old Norse
myths, it is important to be aware that the migration from Scandinavia and the British Isles may have
contributed to the obfuscation of some myths, while others have been kept alive and understandable
because of this event. The same can be said for the conversion to Christianity, the inclusion of Iceland
into the Norwegian kingdom, the Reformation, and not least the emergence of natural sciences. One
can therefore expect that culture-altering events of Icelandic—indeed Scandinavian—history have
obscured certain aspects of the myths and an objective in terms of analysis is to investigate a possible
principle of silence in both conscious and unconscious assertions in the material.
The analogy principle pertains to the description of reality. Where the principle of silence is a
function of culture, the principle of analogy is a function of the language that is employed to describe
the world. If several phenomena bear resemblance in terms of form, behavior, cause, or significance,
it is often assumed that they are related (p. 35). We saw this above in the case of the Maring, who
associate the Red Spirits and the Smoke Woman with war, smoking, and high altitudes. With analogic
thinking, humans will also assume that if X can be retrieved from Y, then X resides in Y. If we can
get fire from flint, fire resides in flint (p. 38). This means that humans tend to attribute to an object
the quality of that which this object causes: if a mountain creates fire, it has a quality of fire and can
thus be associated with all the conceptual elements particular to fire. If lava flows like water, it has
35
the qualities of water and vice versa. If the viscosity of lava resembles that of honey, mead, or beer,13
it is believed that these substances have similar qualities. If gold shines like fire, it can be designated
“eldr allra vatna” (fire of all waters).14 This also means that if a god is related to one phenomenon,
and another phenomenon is comparable to the first phenomenon, it is likely that the god will be
associated with the second phenomenon as well (p. 62–6). If Þórr was originally associated with the
thunderstorm that brings lightning over the fields, he can just as easily be associated with the winds
of a storm at sea, and eventually the lightning storm in a volcanic eruption caused by super-charged
static electricity. Likewise if his thunderstorm in the fertile summer months gave water to crops, he
can just as well be associated with fertility and good harvest, and eventually, the procurement of food
at sea.
The principle of analogy also extends from the realization that if humans act in the world with
intention, then non-human phenomena must do the same: if something happens, it must have been
willed (p. 41). If there was an eruption somewhere, or if the sea sets you off course, there is a great
chance that either a human or a non-human entity has caused this as an act of its or his will. An aspect
of the principle of analogy is also that the process of narrativization bears a tendency to make things
interesting: explanations and descriptions are encapsulated in an interesting cultural form, which is—
within the perimeters of that particular culture—analogically referential to the event (p. 91). An
example is thus the tale of the Urebøure, where the socially attractive setting—that which makes the
story interesting—is a merry time of wedding celebration. The willfulness of the narrative is of course
the troll (Þórr/Toer), who brings down a mountain upon the dwellings of men.
The next principle is that of compression, with which we encounter the concept of metaphoric
reality: if the simile of the analogy is lost there is nothing to separate the event or phenomenon from
the cultural tale (p. 97). Compression works with metaphoric reality to pack knowledge and
information in myth, so that when the distinction between two things that are perceived as similar is
erased—that Y stops being simply like X and eventually partakes in X or becomes X—there is less
to remember and additional room for encoding more important knowledge (p. 114), such as the forms
of knowledge that ensure survival.
We have seen this in the example of the Dejbjerg wagons: no one remembers why the wagons
were initially put in the bog, but it is understood that the danger a bog presents is drowning and it is
therefore significant to remember that something has sunk there previously: to underline the
significance of this, the ‘something’ is coded as a king’s wagon (not a common, uninteresting
13
Note that beer made of fermented cereals in pre-industrial times was a much thicker substance than it is today.
Compare with the Incan expression for gold: “Sweat of the Sun”. Cf. Peter Lourie’s book by the same title: Sweat of the
Sun, Tears of the Moon: A Chronicle of an Incan Treasure (1998).
14
36
peasant’s wagon) that was taken from the community. In fact, this mode of compression was even at
work in the scholar’s mind when he recorded the information of the tale: he simply recorded that
there was a tale of a king’s wagon, not the specific details of it, seeing as they were not culturally—
or, rather, scientifically—relevant to him.
This is a basic economization that serves to preserve the message of the cultural relevance of
the natural phenomenon rather than the explanation. It poses an immediate problem in the attempt to
identify the referent of a representation. Myths are distorted by “the peculiarities of our cognition,”
and if the referent is lost, the information encoded in myths can become unintelligible. Some of the
original information may be reconstructed by examining these cognitive peculiarities and if one has
access to the referent, this becomes all the more easily done. This is the basic component of
restructuring (p. 163). Barber and Barber maintain that it is relevant to still speak of a myth about a
natural phenomenon or historical event even if the factor of time has contributed immensely to the
restructuring of the myth. If time or spatial conditions alter the myth, they say: “[T]his doesn’t just
allow changes in the myth, it speeds them. In time, the story needs revisions to make any kind of
sense at all” (p. 138). When it has come to this point, I see no reason to still consider the myth in
question a myth of a historical event or a natural phenomenon. At this point, it is removed from its
Memory Space and from its relevant cultural context and has—if it is still being used—obtained a
new social and cultural position. As such, this exposition is to be considered a hypothesis for the way
in which information is fictionalized in myth.
In combination with the understanding of the function of myth in culture in the foregoing
chapter, this hypothesis for the cognitive and linguistic processing—the fictionalization of myths
from events or features in the habitat of human cultures—can support an approach to the literary
evidence of Old Norse myths, where the referent of the text is assumed to be a natural phenomenon.
This will be developed in the following.
A PRACTICAL METHOD F OR ANALYSIS OF ECO -MYTHS
The practical method for analyzing eco-myths in this presentation assumes that any type of myth may
become culturally relevant for the description or remembrance of events and features of the
ecosystem—and thus the subject of mythopoesis—rather than as Barber and Barber assume, that such
events or features must have generated the myth in the first place (mythogenesis). Concretely put: the
myth of Þórr fishing for Jǫrmungandr was not originally generated because of a need to perceive the
sea, it has instead become entangled with Scandinavian conceptions of the sea in order to preserve
knowledge and memories of seafaring, the collection of food at sea, early societal constructions, and
37
social change. Similarly, the myth of the Mead of Poetry was not conjured as a response to a volcanic
eruption in Iceland, it was, rather, used by the early inhabitants of Iceland to convey important
knowledge and memories about eruptions, because the myth—just like the volcanic event itself—is
culturally relevant.
Practically, this means that analysis is carried out as a literary and linguistic investigation of
the narrative patterns, words, and expressions in the myths which fit the criteria laid out in the above
description of the goal of the investigation. I investigate their repertoire of meaning and their context
in the cultural environment. In essence, this means that there is more than one option for
interpretation. A word can carry multiple meanings and the choice of meaning relates directly to the
choice of referent for the myth. My method of analysis depends on choosing a suitable referent for
the myth. This referent is not the product of thin air, but rather the result of recognizable features
within the myth in question. In other words, when hrím is associated not with frost but with soot in
the myth of the Creation of the World, it is because other parameters of the myth seem to relate more
to fire than to ice. These parameters are Surtr, Muspell, the inconsistency of the Élivágar freezing up
upon leaving the realm of the eitr-cold Niflheimr, and thus, subsequently, the enigmatic meaning of
eitr itself in this context of a strange analogy to the cinder of the fire (see chapter IV, pages 133-137).
Eventually, this is contextualized in a broader, comparative perspective where such can be retrieved.
I rely mainly on cultural reports from scientists of religion, anthropology, and ethnology, but in more
than one instance I refer to reports from volcanologists and geologists.
My interpretations are thus a result of a contextualized bottom-up analysis of the singular
components of the myths. They rely on the clarification of the term ‘myth’ as a cultural vocabulary
that can be activated in response to the surrounding ecosystem, as a narrative of technical knowledge
in the Mythical Charter of Tradition. This informs the investigation of the referent in the selected
myth, which in turn informs the various analytic choices that are made in the pursuit of
comprehension of the mythic image, motif, or narrative. Finally, the results of these choices are
compared with a range of related phenomena to ensure the durability of the interpretation. This, in
turn, informs the conclusion of the analysis and interpretation.
The hermeneutics of this analytical approach and interpretive method may be illustrated in the
following manner:
38
Myth
Provides
meaning to
social, cultural
and natural
phenomena and
processes.
Identification of
singular
components of the
myth, which relate
to natural phenomena.
Language and
nar-rative
analysis with the
identified natur-al
phenomenon as
referent.
Comparative reflection
based on known,
verified material from
other indigenous or local
cultures, or from reports
of comparable scientific
material.
Interpretation of the myth as a myth of natural
phenomena, which is culturally relevant to the
user group and thus consistent with the
function of the myth as a provider (and creator)
of meaning to social, cultural and natural
processes.
The myth’s statement
in the culture about a
given natural
phenomenon: the
conceptualization of
the phenomenon in the
worldview.
Conclusion about the cultural function of the eco-myth
Figure 2: Flow chart for analysis and interpretation.
This chart illustrates how the offset in the functional understanding of eco-myths as a technical
subspecies of myths in the Mythical Charter of Tradition inspires the search for one or more
components in the myth that are compatible with conceptualizations of a natural phenomenon that is
relevant for the local ecosystem of the cultural unit. This natural phenomenon is utilized as a referent
for the analysis of the meaning of the narrative structure and the linguistic content of the myth. The
analysis results in an interpretation of the myth as a cultural narrative about said natural phenomenon
and its conceptualization in that cultural frame—with reference back to the functional understanding
of myths in a societal context. Finally, the result of this analysis and interpretation is the myth’s
statement about the natural phenomenon, which leads to a conclusion about the myth and about that
which other scholars have said about the myth or its cultural concepts in a broader context. With this
outline of the approach to myth and the method of analysis and interpretation derived from it, we will
now turn our attention to the sources of interest to this investigation.
39
THE SOURCES
THE INTERNAL RELATIONSHIP OF THE SOURCES
The total sum of sources used for this study ranges from early Latin literature to late vernacular
narratives: it includes histories, myths, literary genres of poetry and fiction, as well as didactic works,
and even annals. The primary sources are Snorri’s Edda, skaldic and eddic poems, and Saxo’s Gesta
Danorum. In addition to these, I use the early Latin texts of Tacitus’s Germania and Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. I include parts of the later Latin-Christian historiography of Dudo’s Gesta
Normannorum and Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. I also use the
vernacular histories of Heimskringla, Landnámabók, and Guta saga. There are also references to
didactic works in the vernacular, such as Konungs Skuggsjá and Muspilli. There are references to
biblical tales, and finally there is a corpus of vernacular medieval texts consisting of the
íslendingasögur of Flóamanna saga, Eiríks saga rauða, Eyrbyggja saga, the Icelandic translation of
the life of St. Clemens, Clemens saga, as well as Bergbúa þáttr and Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns.
It would range too far beyond our scope to give a detailed account of the age, provenance, and
manuscript traditions of all of the above-mentioned sources in this presentation. The core material of
this investigation has been chosen because it is perceived as, by and large, the product of indigenous
Scandinavians who used and reproduced the myths of the Edda, skaldic and eddic poetry, and Saxo’s
Gesta Danorum. The other narratives that have been included in the investigation have been selected
because of their relationship to the core material. This selection is informed by the above-described
conception of myth as a cultural text and Mythical Charter of Tradition. Tradition is in that sense
many things, and it is not believed here that pre-Christian Germanic, Nordic, or even Icelandic
tradition evolved in a vacuum: no culture is an island. It is, however, with reference to the above view
on myth, believed that any culture harboring the conceptions of another, distant culture, may process
these conceptions in new ways in response to the ecosystems of relevance to the recipient culture. It
is therefore the perspective of this presentation that one cannot speak much of literary borrowings
between Old Norse mythology and continental literature of various kinds, but rather cultural
borrowings, which may occur at any given point in time. We may see this as the proliferation of
mythic images, motifs, and narratives over time, much in the same manner as has been demonstrated
by Frog in his article Circum-Baltic Mythology? The Strange Case of the Theft of the Thunder
Instrument (ATU 1148b) (2011).15 In this article, Frog traces the variants of the myth of the theft of
15
For a more recent article by Frog discussing only the Germanic proliferation pattern, see Germanic Traditions of the Theft
of the Thunder-Instrument (ATU 1148b): An Approach to Þrymskviða and Þórr’s Adventure with Geirrøðr in Circum-Baltic
Perspective (2013 [in press]).
40
the thunder-instrument. He demonstrates how the proliferation of this myth in the Circum-Baltic
region is a consequence of cultural contacts, and that the evolution of the narratives and the motif is
dependent on historical exchanges between the Indo-European and Finno-Ugric peoples in the region.
In another article discussing the methodologies of situating traditions in long-term perspectives, The
Parallax Approach: Situating Traditions in Long-Term Perspective (2012), Frog graphically
demonstrates the proliferation of the motif of the theft of the thunder-instrument in Circum-Baltic
tradition (Frog 2012, 52):
Figure 3: The proliferation of the ATU 1148b motif in Circum-Baltic traditions. The chart shows how the motif
originates in an ancient, unknown form and evolves into the known forms of the literatures. The red arrows
signify cross-cultural interaction, demonstrating how, while the narrative develops in one tradition, it is
influenced by cultural exchange with another tradition. The black arrows show cultural expansion, while the
grey, dotted arrows signify uncertain developments (Frog 2011, 52 [reproduced with permission]).
We may utilize this visualization to understand the relationship of Old Norse myths internally and
externally. A similar graphic description can be made internally for Old Norse myths for the
dispensing of, for instance, the narrative pattern of Þórr’s battle with a jǫtunn (McKinnell 1994), or
externally for the evolution of the mythic image of muspilli from Heliand in the mid-ninth century to
the Old High German poem fragment of the late tenth century and eventually to its appearance in the
Old Norse myths of Vǫluspá and Snorri’s Edda in the thirteenth century. It is important in this view
to make a distinction between mythic image, motif, and narrative. This enhances our understanding
of the different ways myths can develop: a mythic image may be designated as a simpler form, a
signifier of a myth that is distributed in cultural systems; a motif is a more complex structure that can
41
be transposed from one context to another; while a narrative is a fully-realized pattern on which myths
can be structured in a process of telling and retelling.
The mythic image is one such as muspilli (see chapter IV, pages 141-143) from the Christian
Old High German poem Muspilli from the tenth century, which seems to connote a mythic image,
but may become redefined once it has left its earlier context, thus creating the Nordic interpretations
Muspell, Muspellzheimr, and Muspellz synir/lýðir. The word is the only aspect that is retained, and
there are certainly traces of the original understanding of muspilli as an apocalypse of fire in the Old
Norse version, but in the medieval North its meaning has evolved to designate a place or even some
demonic beings, far removed from the Day of Judgment and Elijah’s battle with Satan. A motif may
be defined as more complex, including elements of narrative action intended to be recognizable to an
audience. If, however, the structure of the motif is deconstructed in the transmission process, it will
become unrecognizable. Thus Þórr’s battle with the jǫtunn is a motif that is found in many variations,
but it should always include the direct confrontation of Þórr and the jǫtunn to function as that
particular motif. This means that the narratives of Þórr and Geirrøðr and Þórr and Hymir share a
common motif, but the story of Þórr and Útgarðaloki differs: it is a parody, a novel exposition of the
motif. Narrative patterns are shared between the story of Þórr and Hymir and the story of Þórr and
Útgarðaloki, and even though the latter is a parody of the former, the confrontation situation is
recognizable as belonging to the same motif.
It is with this understanding of the textual examples of the myths that I approach them and find
reason to combine different genres from different eras, areas, and languages. Mythic images are
exchanged between cultural spheres, motifs are used and reused in cultural systems, and within textual
and oral narrative systems, patterns are redistributed.
Saxo, Dudo, Adam, and the author of Heimskringla belong to roughly the same tradition of
medieval history writing. Saxo and Heimskringla are the youngest sources, from c. 1208–23 (Saxo
2005 I, introduction: 58–9) and c. 1230 (Heimskringla 1979 I, formáli: viii). Saxo16 mentions Dudo
and shows knowledge of Adam’s text, as well (Lassen 2011, 199—200). They are writing histories,
but they do not refrain from sprinkling their tales of ancient deeds of kings and heroes with mythical
material, be it in a mythic image, a motif, or an entire narrative. Saxo uses countless mythic images,
among which we find the forest troll Mimingus, the reused mythic image of Mímir. In the same
manner, we find a reference to Orcus in Dudo’s history of the Normans and Adam gives us the
(mythic) location of Ghinmendegop, his version of Ginnunga gap, while Heimskringla has
Ásgarðr/Ásaheimr in Ynglinga saga. Of motifs, Saxo again offers many, such as the poetic exchange
16
On Saxo as a source to mythology, see Lassen 2011, 196–-217, and: Saxo og Snorri som mytografer: Hedenskaben i
Gesta Danorum og Heimskringla (2009). See also Meulengracht: Moderen forløst af datterens skød (1989.).
42
between Haddingus and his wife about their different preferences in land and sea, in which we find
the motif of Njǫrðr and Skaði’s failed marriage. Saxo is also the one to reproduce entire narrative
patterns, such as the narrative pattern of Þórr and Útgarðaloki/Geirrøðr in his tale of Thorkillus’s
travels.
There are other types of problems with the older Latin sources. Tacitus and Ovid are from the
same era, only decades apart, with Ovid’s death in c. 17 CE and Tacitus’s birth in 56 CE, but they
should not be grouped together. Tacitus17 is writing an ethnographic description of the Germanic
peoples and Ovid a pagan mythological poem. They share cultural ties and language, but beyond that
they have little in common. However, Tacitus in his descriptions of the Germanic peoples reveals
some mythic motifs that are useful to the understanding of a long-term tradition of Germanic religion
and mythology. It is a similar case with Ovid although his revelations are not directly tied to the
Germanic, Nordic, or Norse world. What we find in Ovid is instead mythic representations of the
Greco-Roman mythology that may have served as inspiration—even direct knowledge—for the
interpretation of Nordic mythic elements at any given time in the Medieval Era, due to the enduring
popularity of his works.
In terms of the vernacular Old Norse sources, it may serve the purpose to distinguish between
the learned literature and indigenous literature, but this distinction does not come without costs. While
Konungs Skuggsjá is most certainly a learned, didactic work—displaying, for instance, some
familiarity with Ovid—its didactics are specifically relevant to the indigenous population of the North
Atlantic, accounting for the geography and knowledge particularly relevant to this cultural sphere.
The development of Icelandic literature from the advent of the first texts of the Latin world to the age
of saga writing is a complex and intriguing process (cf. e.g., Vésteinn Ólason 1998, 38–62).
Landnámabók is in many aspects an indigenous work, but it too has been formed under influence
from the Latin textual authority, and this is true also for the various sagas. We recognize the same
condition in Bergbúa þáttr with its late medieval prose narrative, framing the skaldic poem in
dróttkvætt meter, which is certainly older (Bergbúa þáttr: ÍF 13 1991, cciii–ccv). Even in the tenth
century poem of Muspilli this tendency to appropriate the foreign in a familiar form is visible, as it
seems to utilize an ancient Germanic formulaic style in relaying the apocalypse (de Vries 1970, 361
and 392–3).
The primary sources of Old Norse mythology are just as much a product of this cultural and
literary condition of Western Europe. The circumstance pertaining to how these texts came into being,
and what life they had prior to their codification and creation, must however, be treated more
17
On the source value of Tacitus, see Allan A. Lund: Nordens barbarer (1979), p. 52–78.
43
profoundly. In the following, I will present an overview of the literary tradition that relates to the
skaldic and eddic poetry and Snorri’s Edda.
SKALDIC POETRY
The individual poems that are used as sources in this dissertation will be presented in the context of
the analysis. At this point it serves the purpose of this presentation better to give a brief overview of
the poetry as a mythical genre.18 Skaldic poetry is perhaps most easily understood in contrast to eddic
poetry: at an early stage the distinction between the two types of poetry is unclear, seeing as the poems
of Haraldskvæði and Hákonarmál are usually considered skaldic poems due to their subject matter,
but they are composed in eddic meter. The opposite is the case in Ragnarsdrápa and Haustlǫng where
skaldic meter is employed to relay legendary and mythological material (Jónas Kristjánsson 2007,
83). As the genre of skaldic poetry develops, it becomes more removed from eddic poetry.
Stylistically skaldic poetry is distinguished from eddic poetry by its hendingar and its end rhymes.
Eddic poetry is to some extent a part of a common Germanic poetic culture that shows similarities
with Beowulf and the Old High German Hildebrandslied, whereas it is often said that skaldic poetry
is inherently Scandinavian and primarily Norse. Skaldic poetry employs complex and specialized
diction and generally makes use of complex word order to accommodate the rhymes. The content of
eddic poetry is heroic legends and pagan mythology in a distant past, while the content of skaldic
poetry is recent and contemporary to the poet, treating events of warfare and praising kings and
chieftains. Finally, it may be added that skaldic poetry is composed by named—and often famed—
poets, while the poets of the eddic poems are entirely anonymous (ibid).
That skaldic poetry was not exclusively a Norse type of poetry, however, is evident from the
skaldic meter on the Karlevi rune stone, which was raised on Öland around the year 1000 in honor of
a Danish chieftain who died there (p. 91). The Danes seem to have been particularly interested in
skaldic poetry as a form of cultural identifier, seeing as Danish kings kept skalds at the court all
through the period from the ninth century well into the thirteenth century. Even after the twelfth
century, when the east Norse dialects had removed themselves so far from the Viking Age language
that skaldic compositions in the west Norse dialects must have seemed archaic and in some ways
indiscernible, Danish kings such as Erik Ejegod kept Icelandic skalds at their court (Meulengracht
2006, 115).
18
A review of the genre as a source to history of religion (and thus myth) is given by Marold in Die Skaldendichtung als
Quelle der Religionsgeschichte 1992, 685–719. For a good overview of the reception of skaldic poetry, see Würth 2007.
44
Saxo, too, made use of the knowledge of Icelandic skalds in his writing of Gesta Danorum
(Saxo 2005 I, Praef. 1,4), and it is most noteworthy that his long narrative about the advent of
Christianity in Denmark in the Thorkillus tales, built on Old Norse mythic motifs and narrative
patterns, employs an Icelandic storyteller, a skald, as the guide of king Gormus on the dangerous
mission to the far North. This, if nothing else, attests to the cleric’s need to deconstruct authoritative
pagan tales, mediated by skalds in the service of the Danish court. That he does so by placing the
Icelandic skald in the favored leading role as the one who literally sees the light would in turn,
underscore the reverence that the skalds and their poetry enjoyed at the Danish court of his time (see
chapter III, pages 104-117).
This usage of skaldic poetry in historical writing is one of the primary reasons for its
preservation. As has been noted above, the author of the prologue to Heimskringla finds that skaldic
poetry (kvæðin) can yield historical truths if the verses are composed properly and interpreted
correctly. Saxo must have shared this view, although he put the poetry to work in a much different
way. The prehistory of kings’ sagas given in Ynglinga saga attests to a different usage of skaldic
poetry than Saxo’s: one that is much closer to its source. Where Ynglinga saga quotes the poem and
presents its judgment of its content as historical events, Saxo generally implements in his text the
narrative structures of myths he must have been familiar with in poetry. It is in such contexts that
entire poems or singular lausavisur have been preserved, in sagas of various kinds and, of course, in
Snorri Sturluson’s monumental didactic work of Edda, which was created for the purpose of
preserving this art form (Jónas Kristjánsson 2007, 89). The poem Háleygjatal, which is important to
this study, has for instance been preserved in manuscripts of Snorri’s Edda.
What initially inspired this art form is unclear, but it is a notable aspect of the earliest skaldic
poems that they are predominantly ‘word-pictures,’ image-describing poetry that is very often
composed in conference with—not simply reference to—images on shields. That is, they were not
conceived as commentaries on the images, but rather as counterparts to the image; they do not refer
a complete narrative but instead to events within the narrative, like the images (Meulengracht 2006,
115). Bragi inn gamli’s Ragnarsdrápa is such a shield poem relaying four images, one of which is
Þórr fishing for Jǫrmungandr. Meulengracht describes the style in this manner:
Fra alle fire myter er det kun selve scenen, som billedet fremstiller, der er digterens
motiv. Fra fisketuren er det således øjeblikket, hvor Thor har trukket Midgårdsormen op
til overfladen […] Her lykkes det så at sige skjalden at få sproget til at stå stille i en
visuel fastholdelse af det dramatiske øjeblik, og samtidig skaber det komplekse sprog et
sidestykke til billedstilen.
It is only the singular scene of each of the four myths depicted in the image that is used
as motif by the poet. From the fishing trip it is thus the instance in which Þórr has drawn
45
the World Serpent to the surface […] The poet succeeds in bringing the language to a
halt in a visual ossification of the dramatic moment, and at the same time the complex
language creates a counterpart of the image (Meulengracht 2006, 116).
It thus seems that one purpose of the mythological aspects of skaldic poetry was to capture images
from myths in their most acute, dramatic state. This can be compared directly to the Viking Age
picture-stones depicting known myths, although their focus is different, because they depict not a
narrative but a specific scene or situation of the myth in question (cf. Meulengracht 2002 [1986]).
It stands to reason that the genre of skaldic poetry developed from a Nordic-Germanic tradition
of mythical poetry that, due to the social circumstances where it was tightly knit into the hegemony
of Scandinavian rulers, developed into praise poetry of kings, earls, and chieftains. Several myths
known in their prose forms in Edda can be found in skaldic verse: Ragnarsdrápa and several other
poems recount the myth of Þórr’s fishing trip, and Haustlǫng accounts for the theft of Iðunn and
Þórr’s battle with Hrungnir, while Þórsdrápa details Þórr’s encounter with Geirrøðr. But, again, it is
important to remember that the genre did not develop in a cultural vacuum. The great corpus of
Christian skaldic poetry is an obvious testimony to this, but external influence on the genre extends
beyond local Christian adoption, seeing as both Ynglingatal and Háleygjatal seem to have been
inspired by Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies (see chapter IV, pages 151-159), while the World-Body
imagery in skaldic poetry seems to have been formulated in conference with continental sources
(Nordal 2001, 273–308; see chapter IV, pages 129-132).
EDDIC POETRY
The fifth century Tune stone in Østfold, Norway, with its alliterative lines, is an early example of
verse forms commonly associated with eddic poetry (Jónas Kristjánsson 2007, 27–8). With the
information from Tacitus that the Germanic peoples celebrated their mythology in carminibus
antiquis (ancient songs [Germania 1959, II]), the Tune stone suggests that the form of alliterative
poetry that would eventually evolve into the types of poetry commonly known as ‘eddic poetry’19 is
the oldest form of verbal Germanic art. As noted above, there are strong commonalities between eddic
poetry and the ninth century Old High German Hildebrandslied, as well as the Anglo-Saxon poems
of Beowulf, Widsið, and Deor from the eighth to the tenth centuries (Gunnell 2007, 93). Eddic poetry
as we know it is, however, preserved from the thirteenth century and there is good reason to assume
It is little more than a coincidence that this type of poetry came to be known as ‘eddic poetry.’ In a letter to Stephan
Stephanius, bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson writes that he considered Snorri’s Edda to be a part of a greater work, which he
associated with Sæmundr fróði, and when he was later presented with the collection of Codex Regius, he thought that this
was a version of Sæmundar Edda (Lassen 2011, 309).
19
46
that the form in which the known poems have been transmitted is recent rather than ancient (Harris
1985, 68, see also Harris 1983, Kellogg 1990 and Gunnell 1995).20
The primary collection of eddic poetry is the Codex Regius GKS 2365 4to from c. 1270. It
contains 29 poems, ten of which are concerned with matters of mythology, while the remainder are
Scandinavian and Germanic heroic legends. The term ‘eddic poetry’ covers a wide span of metres,
among which the most widely used are ljóðaháttr, fornyrðislag, and málaháttr. The unassuming
medieval manuscript of Codex Regius is, as such, more a thematic collection of different types of
folk-poetry comparable to such other medieval collections as the medieval German compilation of
(folk-)songs Carmina Burana (Gunnell 2007, 82). Little is known of the life of the Codex Regius
manuscript before it was presented to bishop Brynjólfur in 1643. It is possible that the Codex Regius
was written at the Þingeyrar monastery and that it was kept there from c. 1300 (Lassen 2011, 309). It
seems that the heroic poems were copied from a single, older source, while the mythological poems
may have been pieced together from various sources. This would essentially identify the writer of the
manuscript with its redactor (p. 311–12), thus indicating that the 1270 version of the Codex Regius
is the first (and only) collection of its kind, and that the mythological poems may come from various
minor collections.
There is another manuscript in fragmentary form from c. 1300, the AM 748 I a 4to, which also
contains eddic poems. The AM 748 contains five eddic poems that are nearly identical to their
counterparts in the Codex Regius (Gunnell 2007, 83). Aside from these it also contains Baldrs
draumar, which is to be found nowhere else.
Some other poems that are traditionally considered to be ‘eddic’ in their genre are preserved in
other manuscripts. These are: Rígsþula, which is preserved with Snorri’s Edda in Codex Wormianus;
Hyndluljóð in Flateyjarbók; Grottasǫngr in various manuscripts of Snorri’s Edda; and finally, the
post-medieval poems of Gróugaldur, Fjölsvinnsmál, Sólarljóð and Hrafnagaldur Óðins, which have
been preserved in paper form (Lassen 2011, 313).
The poem of Vǫluspá is extant in three different versions: one in Codex Regius, one in Snorri’s
Edda, and one in the fourteenth century collection of Hauksbók. The different manuscript versions
and the poems found outside of Codex Regius are not essential to the present study, but it is beneficial
to our understanding of the tradition of eddic poetry in medieval Iceland to consider this proliferation
pattern. The fact that poems of the eddic type occur outside a single collection and that some of the
poems occur in variant forms attests to a more widespread interest in the material than the humble
appearance of the Codex Regius manuscript would suggest.
20
For a discussion and overview of the research history in the dating of eddic poetry, see Fidjestøl 1999.
47
The organization of the poems in Codex Regius follows a certain disposition: Vǫluspá,
Hávamál, Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, Skírnismál, Hárbarðzljóð, Hymiskviða, Lokasenna,
Þrymskviða, the heroic poem of Vǫlundarkviða, and finally Alvíssmál. Alvíssmál is followed by the
heroic poems (see Wimmer & Finnur Jónsson 1891). Vǫluspá accounts for eschatological cosmic
time, laying bare the events of the pagan cosmos from beginning to end. Hávamál is the first of the
Odinic poems giving instructions for proper conduct and the social life of the (pagan) world.
Vafþrúðnismál gives an account of the pagan cosmos in a dialogic contest between Óðinn and the
jǫtunn Vafþrúðnir, while Grímnismál is set as a monologue of Óðinn at the hall of the human king
Geirrøðr. In Grímnismál, the cosmology ties in with the moral aspect of the king mistreating his
guests, and the cosmological recitation of the bound Óðinn has ritualistic character. Skírnismál relays
the events of Freyr’s appropriation of Gerðr and is thus the only poem in the collection about Freyr.
The subsequent poems except for Vǫlundarkviða and Lokasenna are about Þórr. Hárbarðzljóð,
Þrymskviða, and Lokasenna are kept in a more or less burlesque tone of parody (Meulengracht 2006,
80–1), letting Þórr endure the insults of the ferryman Hárbarðr in Hárbarðzljóð and the
embarrassment of having to dress up as a woman in Þrymskviða, while in Lokasenna, Loki scolds the
gods for infidelity and other improper behavior. Hymiskviða tells the story of Þórr’s visit to Hymir,
where he catches the Miðgarðsormr. Unlike the others, it is kept in a relatively serious tone. Alvíssmál
is a didactic poem set in a dialogue between Þórr and a dwarf. Alvíss recounts the names of the cosmic
elements among the various supernatural beings of the mythology, while Þórr keeps asking him new
questions until the sun comes up and the dwarf turns to stone.
It is hard to reach a final conclusion in terms of the source value of the eddic poems. They are
most certainly oral in origin, but the form in which they were recorded is inherently medieval
(Gunnell 2007, 93; Meulengracht 2006, 65–6). There are few—if any—objective criteria for such an
evaluation, and a fundamental problem has long been that the object of the discussion of the orality
of eddic poetry has been to postulate a set of hypothetical poems identical to the written ones, which
were presumed to have existed in oral culture (p. 66). This is in essence a discussion that pertains to
genre and the question of whether or not the eddic poems as they are known in medieval script
preserve details that had acquired formulaic status. With the above-defined view on myth, I seek to
transgress the boundaries of this discussion and talk instead of myths in Cultural Memory/Collective
Memory—the eddic myths as features of the Mythical Charter of Tradition. In his article Om
eddadigtenes alder (1991), Meulengracht expresses this need to transgress the written form of the
poem to discuss its content instead, and see the preserved form of the poem primarily as an aid to
understanding the content (Meulengracht 1991, 222). With this, Schjødt argues that the knowledge
preserved in the content of the poems must have its root in the pagan world of ideas (Schjødt 2008a,
48
93), and that is exactly on a par with the notion of the Mythical Charter of Tradition that preserves
much needed knowledge for posterity. This is therefore the approach that I take in this presentation:
I discuss not the poems as much as their content and I consider all of that content inherently mythical.
The specific eddic poems of interest to this presentation are the Vǫluspá, Hávamál,
Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, and Hymiskviða. The poem Vǫluspá is a carefully structured monologue
of direct speech in sixty-six stanzas of fornyrðislag. It provides a view of the eschatological
temporality of the Old Norse cosmos.21 It seems to have been written either in the tenth century or in
the early eleventh century (Simek 2007, 366). The vǫlva tells of the beginning of the world, the
creation of the world, and the eschatological progress towards Ragnarǫk. This apocalyptic event
seems to be based partially on imagery from the Book of Revelation (North 2003, McKinnell 2008,
Steinsland 2009). As mentioned, Vǫluspá is extant in three different versions: one in Snorri’s Edda,
one in Codex Regius 2364 4to, and one in the fourteenth century collection of Hauksbók. There are
some variations between the different versions, but the overall perspective presents a poem that
recounts the life of a pre-Christian cosmos. Stanzas 1 to 2622 describe the creation of the world and
its most important features. The vǫlva describes how the world was created in a time when mjǫtvið
mœran, the ‘mighty measuring tree’ Yggdrasill, was below the ground and nothing existed except the
primordial creature Ymir23 (sts. 1–3). The Burs synir, presumably some of the æsir, create Miðgarðr,
make a calendar, and build a city complete with temples and industry (sts. 4–8). At this point some
þursa meyjar (þurs [troll] maidens) come to the gods from the Jǫtunheimar and this leads to the
creation of the dwarves (sts. 8/9–16). Afterwards the three gods Óðinn, Hœnir, and Lóðurr create the
first pair of humans, Askr and Embla (sts. 17–18). Now, the tree of Yggdrasill has grown out of the
ground and has become a mighty tree. Below it come some meyjar, the nornir, who determine the
fate of humans (sts. 19–20). This is followed by a recollection of the first war of the world, when the
æsir killed Gullveigr/Heiðr and denied the vanir wergild for the deed, with a devastating war as the
result (sts. 21–6). Óðinn ventures to seek knowledge of the eschatology (sts. 27–9), and this leads to
the prophecy of Ragnarǫk that is subsequently uttered by the vǫlva in grisly specters of death and
doom. It begins with Baldr’s death (sts. 31–33) and the binding of Loki (sts. 34–5). The vǫlva
describes a mythic locale of a river of swords and a hall built on the Beach of Corpses, Nástrǫndr,
where serpents spew venom through the roof. Here, the oath-breakers and murderers walk the heavy
streams, and in the east there are witches in the woods breeding wolves that will destroy the world
For two thorough investigations and translations of Vǫluspá, see Sigurður Nordal 1927 and Dronke 1997, 3–154.
This is the normalized text in Neckel and Kuhn (1962).
23 In the version of Snorri’s Edda, there is no primordial being. Both Codex Regius and Hauksbók mention Ymir in stanza
3: “Ár var alda, þat/þar er Ymir bygði …” (In the beginning of time, when Ymir lived [Vsp. 3]), while Snorri’s version has:
“Ár var alda þat er ekki var …” (In the beginning of time, when there was nothing [Gylf. IV]). This will be addressed in
chapter IV, pages 129-132.
21
22
49
(sts. 36–41). Crowing roosters and barking dogs signal the coming of the battle and Heimdallr blows
his horn (sts. 42–6). The evil powers break their bonds and approach the battlefield (sts. 45–52). The
gods meet them and they destroy each other in a cosmic clash (sts. 53–6). Earth sinks, the sun is
darkened, and flames reach as high as the sky (sts. 57–8). The last seven stanzas describe how a new
world emerges, possibly with the coming of a Christ figure named inn ríki in stanza 65 (sts. 59–66).
The primary stanzas of interest to this study are the so-called ‘volcanic stanzas’ of 47 to 52.
Hávamál follows Vǫluspá in the Codex Regius manuscript without any prose to separate the
two poems. The poem is typically ascribed to Óðinn because of its title’s association with the Óðinn
heiti Hárr, which is preserved in the manuscript (Lassen 2011, 333). The poem relates gnomic
knowledge mixed with runic and magic wisdom. As such, it is an outstanding example of technical
mythical knowledge in an Old Norse literary context. It is possible that Hávamál is an indigenous
Norse version of a tradition for didactic poetry inspired by the early medieval Latin poem of Disticha
Catonis (c. third century CE), to which also Hugsvinnsmál belongs (cf. von See 1981; McKinnell
2005b; Lassen 2011). It has also been observed by Hermann Pálsson that there are Latin parallels to
several stanzas in Hávamál (1990) and both he and McKinnell have suggested some influence on
Hávamál from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (Hermann Pálsson 1999; McKinnell 2005b; see chapter IV, page
154). This seems to indicate a relatively late dating for the poem, around the twelfth or early thirteenth
century (Simek 2007, 134).
It has often been assumed that Hávamál is a compilation of several minor poems, since it does
not follow a single metrical pattern. Most of the stanzas are in ljóðaháttr, but stanzas 73, 85–87 and
144 are in málaháttr and stanza 145 is in fornyrðislag. In addition, stanzas 80 and 142–143 are in an
unknown meter (Gunnell 1995, 188–9; see also Lassen 2011, 335, footnote). The traditional division
of the poem was devised by Müllenhoff, who separated it thus: stanzas 1–79 are a ‘gnomic poem’;
stanzas 95–102 are an episode designated ‘Óðinn and Billing’s girl’; stanzas 103–110 are ‘Óðinn and
Gunnlǫð’; stanzas 111–137 are Loddfáfnismál; stanzas 138–145 are Rúnatal; and stanzas 146–163
are Ljóðatal (Müllenhoff 1891). This sectioning of the poem was last amended by McKinnell in his
Hávamál B: A Poem of Sexual Intrigue (2005b), where he divides the poem thus: stanzas 1–79 are
‘The Gnomic Poem’; stanzas 84 + 91–110 are ‘The Poem of Sexual Intrigue’; stanzas 111, 4–8 + 11,
112–136 are ‘Loddfáfnismál’; and stanzas 138–141, 146–161, 1–3 and 163 comprise ‘Ljóðatal.’ It is
possible however, to understand the poem as one singular composition that, if nothing else, was
meaningful to the thirteenth century compiler. The subject matter of Hávamál ranges from aspects of
personal conduct in social settings to magic formulae for healing and warfare, and not least myths.
The primary myth of interest here is the stanzas 104–110 referring to the myth of the Mead of Poetry,
or as in other designations, ‘Óðinn and Gunnlǫð’.
50
Vafþrúðnismál is composed as a contest of wisdom between Óðinn and the jǫtunn Vafþrúðnir.
The entirety of this poem is devoted to cosmic knowledge as it deals with the cosmogony, the celestial
elements, and all the aspects of an ideal existence in the Old Norse cosmos. It is impossible to safely
date Vafþrúðnismál. The contents of the poem show encyclopedic interest in pre-Christian
mythology, indicating a dating as early as the late tenth century, whereas the style of the poem with
its dialogic form points to medieval influences and thus suggests a dating as late as the thirteenth
century (Simek 2007, 345).
The first stanzas of Vafþrúðnismál are a dialogue between Óðinn and Frigg, where Óðinn
announces his intention to test Vafþrúðnir’s knowledge, leading Frigg to caution him (sts. 1–5). Then
follows an introduction of Vafþrúðnir and Óðinn, now with the name Gagnráðr. Here the god
challenges the jǫtunn and refuses to respect the customs of Vafþrúðnir’s home (sts. 6–10). The first
questions are posed by Vafþrúðnir to Óðinn and they concern the origin of night and day, the river
Ífing that separates the jǫtnar from the æsir, and the place where the gods will meet Surtr in the final
battle (sts. 11–18). In stanza 19, Vafþrúðnir acknowledges the wisdom of Gagnráðr and now the
dialogue shifts to Óðinn questioning Vafþrúðnir. First Vafþrúðnir tells how the world was created
(sts. 20–1), then he relates the details of the celestial elements, the causes of night and day and the
causes of the seasons (sts. 22–7). The subject then changes to the oldest beings of the cosmos, their
origin and their qualities (sts. 28–35). Óðinn then inquires about the origins of the winds, of Njǫrðr,
about who the einherjar are, and about the secrets of the jǫtnar (sts. 36–43). At this point the poem
changes to a form where Óðinn begins each question with a formulaic sentence that he uttered to
Frigg in the beginning: “Fiǫlð ec fór, fiǫlð ec freistaðac, fǫlð ec reynda regin” (Much I journeyed,
much I tempted, much I tested the regin [Vfm. 3]). This sequence focuses on the particulars of
Ragnarǫk (sts. 44–53), and constitutes the ending of the poem. In stanza 54 Óðinn asks Vafþrúðnir
what the god whispered in Baldr’s ear on his funeral pyre, and it is by this that Vafþrúðnir realizes he
has lost the contest, because he cannot answer this question (st. 55).
The poem of Grímnismál is similar to Vafþrúðnismál insofar as it relates cosmic knowledge.
But where Vafþrúðnismál is preoccupied with the contest between Óðinn and Vafþrúðnir, and
dispenses its cosmological information in a seemingly less structured form, Grímnismál is a more
structured exposition of a cosmic landscape with focus on the feudal ruler who is personified in the
main god Óðinn and his dwelling (cf. Larrington 2002). This structure seems to relate directly to a
ritualistic scene that incorporates the cosmology in a performance aspect (Gunnell 2001, 24–5).
Grímnismál has a prose frame that likely belongs to the redaction in the thirteenth century manuscript.
The poem may however, be understood as a late pagan didactic poem because of the tendency to
systematize the mythology in the poem (Simek 2007, 118–9). The prose frame tells of two princes
51
and brothers, Geirrøðr and Agnarr, who went fishing. They are lost on the sea and drift ashore on a
distant island. There they are taken in by an old couple who give them shelter during the winter. When
summer comes the old couple takes them to their boat and leads them on their way. Before letting
them sail away, the old man who has cared for Geirrøðr takes him aside and tells him some secrets.
When the brothers come back home, Geirrøðr is the first to jump on land and when he does so, he
pushes the boat out at sea again and lets Agnarr drift far away. By doing this, Geirrøðr inherits the
kingdom of his father. It is then revealed that the old couple who took care of the boys during the
winter away were Óðinn and Frigg. They argue over the success of each boy and Óðinn taunts Frigg
because her favorite, Agnarr, is breeding with a troll-woman in a cave while Geirrøðr, his own
favorite, is king. Frigg claims that Geirrøðr is stingy with food and the two gods wager on that claim.
Óðinn seeks out Geirrøðr to find out if he indeed is stingy with food, disguising himself as Grímnir.
Frigg has in the meantime sent her servant Fulla to warn Geirrøðr of the wandering Grímnir and that
he is a wizard. When Grímnir comes to Geirrøðr’s home, he is caught and put between two fires
without receiving food or drink.
The poem’s brief introduction in the stanzas describes how Óðinn has been captured and placed
between the two fires for eight nights. Only the boy Agnarr, Geirrøðr’s son, has brought him any kind
of sustenance. Agnarr is praised for this, and Óðinn begins reciting cosmic knowledge (sts. 1–3). He
begins by declaring that the land is holy near the æsir and álfar, whereafter he proceeds to enumerate
thirteen divine dwellings (sts. 4–17). Stanzas 8–10 linger by the features of Óðinn’s hall, here called
both Glaðsheimr and Valhǫll. After the enumeration of the divine dwellings, the poem describes
Óðinn’s mythic locale in more detail, mentioning the einherjar, Geri and Freki, and Huginn and
Muninn (sts. 18–20). The world of the einherjar is described more thoroughly in the following stanzas
(21–5) before the focus shifts to a catalogue of mythic rivers that seem to stem from the well of
Hvergelmir below the mighty tree Læráðr/Yggdrasill (sts. 26–9). The tree of Yggdrasill is then
described in more detail and the various creatures associated with it are mentioned (sts. 29–35). A
lone stanza 36 mentions the primary valkyrjur or nornir but then focus shifts to the celestial elements
(sts. 37–9), and the creation of the world from Ymir’s body (sts. 40–1). Stanza 42 praises the one who
can quench the flame first. This may be directed at Agnarr but the poem quickly shifts focus again to
recount the best parts and objects of the æsir’s world (sts. 43–4). Finally Óðinn reveals himself to
Geirrøðr who is present at this recitation, but seems unable to fully understand the message of the
poem. Óðinn invites the æsir to come into Ægir’s hall, and it seems as if the mythic world—the ideal
cosmos—converges with the hall in which the speaker is seated (st. 45). Óðinn recounts his many
names (sts. 46–50), and then he directs his speech to Geirrøðr saying that the ruler has lost favor with
the god. Here the poem ends. A final prose comment tells how Geirrøðr rises to free Óðinn from his
52
bonds as the king realizes who Grímnir is, but Geirrøðr’s sword falls on the floor and he trips over it
so that it pierces his body and he is killed. Agnarr is installed as king after his father.
Where Vǫluspá is a cosmological temporal exegesis, the poems of Vafþrúðnismál and
Grímnismál are catalogues of what may be presumed to be standard pagan cosmological spatial
knowledge. Together, these three poems relate basic, important knowledge about how the pagan
cosmos should be perceived, what elements it consists of, and how these elements come together in
a logical and consistent way. This is surely the way they were used as sources in the tradition of
Gylfaginning. As such they may be understood as embodying everything that is held in LeGoff’s
definition of a Mythical Charter of Tradition. Not only do these narratives relate visions of the
cosmology, they demonstrate clear notions of ethics and morality, and they set these notions in direct
relation to conceptions of civilization and its beginning. The social and esoteric dynamics that are at
play between the æsir and other groups of natural and supernatural beings in Vǫluspá are reiterated
in the meeting of Óðinn and Vafþrúðnir, and again in his meeting with Geirrøðr (see e.g., Clunies
Ross 1994). This is also the case with Hymiskviða, where Þórr exerts these dynamics in his meeting
with Hymir. This poem is a narrative enactment of these dynamics set in a theme of resource
procurement.
Hymiskviða 24 relates in fornyrðislag the story of how Þórr and Týr venture to procure a
cauldron large enough to brew beer or mead for all the æsir (sts. 1–6). They journey to Hymir at the
end of heaven, east of Élivágar, where they are greeted by a jǫtunn who is less than welcoming (sts.
7–14). They sit down to eat, setting off a pattern of contests between Þórr and Hymir, based on a lack
of food to feed Þórr (sts. 15–17). They row out to sea to catch whales and, eventually, the
Miðgarðsormr (sts. 17–25). Back in the home of Hymir, the jǫtunn challenges Þórr to break his crystal
goblet and the god does so, using the jǫtunn’s forehead for the purpose (sts. 26–31). After some
deliberation, Hymir then gives up a cauldron that is large enough, and the two gods are off (sts. 31–
4). But they are pursued by Hymir and his army, and because one of Þórr’s goats is lame in its leg,
they must stop and fight. In the fight, Þórr manages to kill Hymir and his men (sts. 35–9).
The poem seems to be a pastiche combining several tales with their own, individual themes
(von See 1997, 259–65). These are the motifs of the fishing trip, the motif of the lame goat, and the
motif of the feast in Ægir’s hall, which in turn incorporates the motif of collecting the kettle. They
are combined in a form that is described as Märchencharakter (p. 266): Þórr is sent to procure a
difficult-to-obtain object from a hostile otherworldly being. In this aspect, as well as in the subject of
Þórr’s hunger, it seems that Hymiskviða is related to Þrymskviða, but Hymiskviða is older than
24
For an in-depth overview of Hymiskviða, see von See et al 1997, 253–77.
53
Þrymskviða (p. 277). In Both One and Many (1994), John McKinnell analyzes Hymiskviða as part of
a common narrative pattern of Þórr’s visit to a jǫtunn’s hall (1994, 57–86). Hymiskviða shares its
structure with a number of narratives about Þórr battling a jǫtunn as well as several secondary tales
derived from this motif. These tales are Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns, Saxo’s Thorkillus narratives,
Þórr’s Visit to Geirrøðr, Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki, and the skaldic poem Þórsdrápa.
As mentioned above, the three poems Vǫluspá, Vafþrúðnismál, and Grímnismál are the
primary sources to Gylfaginning. In its form in Codex Regius, however, Hymiskviða seems to be a
concoction that has come to life after the writing of Gylfaginning (von See 1997, 259). Not only does
the poem recount the fishing trip, but it also combines it with the trials in the hall of the jǫtunn as it
is known from Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki. In Gylfaginning, the narratives of Útgarðaloki and the
Fishing Myth relate to one another analogically (see chapter III, page 96), and it is reasonable to
assume that the form in which Hymiskviða, the story of Útgarðaloki and the story of Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition in Gylfaginning belong to the same tradition of narrative interpretation and
reformulation—a tradition that is close to that of Saxo’s Thorkillus tales.
SNORRI’S EDDA
Snorri’s Edda is the most comprehensive redaction of Old Norse mythology. Written in the early
thirteenth century around 1220, it represents a Christian and learned medieval interpretation of Old
Norse mythology (cf. Mogk 1923; Baetke [1950] 1973; Holtsmark 1964; Dronke & Dronke 1977;
Faulkes 1983; von See 1988). Written as a didactic book on skaldic poetry (Weber 1986; Clunies
Ross 1987; Guðrún Nordal 2001), the discourse of Edda seems to have been influenced by early
medieval theories of the conversion of pagans (Abrams 2009), and the cosmogony is inspired by
neoplatonic teachings on the elements (von See 1988, 52–5). Surely the myths of Edda have their
root in oral tradition, but they seem to have been skillfully handled by Snorri and his medieval
tradition as forn fræði in a literary context (Meulengracht 1992).
The Edda has been preserved in full in four different manuscripts: Codex Regius 2367 4to
(1300–1325); Codex Wormianus AM 242 fol. (c. 1350); Codex Upsaliensis DG 11 (c. 1300); and
Codex Trajectinus Traj. 1374 (c. 1595). From the contents of these manuscripts it seems reasonable
to conclude that the original parts of Snorri’s Edda were the main chapters of Prologus, Gylfaginning,
Skáldskaparmál, and the poem Háttatal.25
25
To this discussion the poem of Háttatal is not important and its description has thus been left out. Concerning the problems
of defining Edda as Snorri’s original book with its original content, see Krömmelbein 1992.
54
The prologue gives a learned account of the origins of pagan religion. It describes how
humankind developed paganism in a Christian dogmatic perspective. God created Earth and sent the
Flood, but as time progressed men forgot the name of God and started worshiping wealth and
prosperity instead. With the engaging of reason (jarðligri skilningu) in perception, humankind
deduced that the world was a living creature with the same qualities as men, and so they counted their
origins from it, sacrificed to it, and told stories about it. They also reasoned that, since the celestial
elements moved with a course over the sky, they were guided by a Supreme Being, and so they started
to worship Him (Prol. I–II). In the further description of the development of paganism, Prologus
refers to etymologies and migration of the æsir from Troy in Asia, and essentially claims that Old
Norse myths are correctly interpreted as classical Greek history (Prol. II–X; Skáld. Epilogue). Finally,
Prologus outlines the migration history and the fellowship between the different Germanic nations.
Prologus attributes this to Óðinn’s placement of his sons as kings over the countries, and finally
describes how Óðinn set up his center of worship in Sweden, with the same laws and customs that
were performed in Troy (Prol. X–XI).
The structure of Gylfaginning relates to the poems of Vǫluspá, Vafþrúðnismál, and
Grímnismál. The dialogic style of this chapter is borrowed from Vafþrúðnismál (Teilgård Laugesen
1942, 306; Holtsmark 1964, 16; Beck 1992, 613): the Swedish king Gylfi goes to the æsir to enquire
about the mythology and this develops into a contest of questions and answers comparable to the
dialogue of Óðinn and Vafþrúðnir. Gylfi asks questions of the three æsir Hár, Jafnhár, and Þriði,
hypostases of Óðinn.
First Gylfi enquires about the greatest god and asks how the world was created. Following this,
he asks about the beings in the world: humans and their creation, Óðinn and Frigg and what they
possess, the goddess Jǫrð (Earth), and the gods of night and day and who they descend from. Then it
is told how All-father made the cycle of night and day. The dialogue continues to revolve around the
subject of the celestial beings, Sun and Moon. To this is added information about the wolves that
threaten the sun. In the following, the world above the natural or physical one is described. First, it is
told how to get there on the rainbow bridge Bifrǫst. Then the text describes the multitude of abodes
that the gods have in heaven, the holy center of Yggdrasill, the qualities of Yggdrasill, and the realms
where its roots reach out to. When Gylfi asks how the gods’ place in the sky will be safe when Surtr
burns the world, it is related that there are two other heavens above the one populated by the æsir,
these are called Viðbláin and Andlangr.
From this point, the dialogue focuses on more earthly matters. The origins of the wind, summer,
and winter are discussed. Gylfi asks questions about the æsir, and the individual gods are enumerated.
After having listed the asynjur and having told of Loki’s offspring, including the tale of the Fenrizúlfr,
55
Gylfaginning dwells on descriptions of Valhǫll and not least the undead life of the einherjar.
Eventually the talk falls on the subject of the most magnificent belongings of the æsir, the best horse
Sleipnir and his origins, as well as the tale of Þórr’s journey to Útgarðaloki. After this, the matter of
cosmology is no longer discussed, and the narrative moves towards treating eschatology.
Gylfaginning relates the tale of Þórr and the World Serpent, Baldr’s Death, and subsequently
Ragnarǫk.
In this way, Gylfaginning provides a synopsis of the cosmology of pre-Christian Nordic
mythology that is fully governed by a canonical view comparable to Christian doctrine of thirteenth
century Iceland and, indeed, Europe. Notably, Gylfaginning represents a highly eschatological view
on the mythology: first it describes the spatiality of the cosmos and then, in the end, its temporality.
This is consistent with the poems of Vǫluspá and Vafþrúðnismál.
Skáldskaparmál is a different matter. Compared to Gylfaginning, the structure of
Skáldskaparmál seems incomplete in the sense of common Aristotelian composition.26 The frame is
set at the banquet at Ægir’s where Bragi is teaching Ægir the language of poetry. He enumerates
several mythological fictions (Clunies Ross 1992), which explain some of the circumlocutions of
skaldic poetry. First27, he explains the circumlocutions for gold relating to jǫtnar by giving an account
of the myth of Þjazi stealing Iðunn. Next, he accounts for the myth of the Mead of Poetry. Then comes
an epilogue warning against believing in these tales, even though they should not be considered
entirely untrue. Skáldskaparmál thus explains how the poetry may be analogically interpreted as the
events of the story of Troy. It is explained how, for instance, Þórr fishing for the Miðgarðsormr with
the ox-head is an analogue to Hector using the head of Volucrontes to lure Achilles out for the fight
(Skáld. Epilogue). The warnings in the epilogue and the outlined interpretative mode relate to the
prologue, and suggest the preferred approach of the medieval redactor to his material. Afterwards,
the chapter proceeds to enumerate kennings and to garnish the lists of kennings with myths about
Þórr and Hrungnir, Þórr and Geirrøðr, the skaldic poems of Haustlǫng and Þórsdrápa, and several
more tales.
26
27
On the relationship between Edda and the Aristotelian tradition, see Magerøy 1991, 204–5.
This description follows Faulkes’s standard.
56
THE STATE OF THE SOURCES
The source material is a diverse body of texts which are first and foremost medieval literary
productions, but at the second level, they are cultural texts and cultural knowledge, which was
perceived as useful in one way or another, at least until the fourteenth or fifteenth century. In Snorris
fræði (1992), Meulengracht writes that Snorri was writing his Edda on ‘our’ side of the grand divide
between a Christian and a pre-Christian worldview (Meulengracht 1992, 271). This is, in my opinion,
not entirely correct. Snorri, like those who recorded eddic poetry and, in fact, also Saxo, belongs to
the tradition of producing and reproducing Old Norse myths, as a kind of fræðimaðr. Snorri and his
peers have recorded the mythic material for various reasons, the primary one being that these myths
held cultural currency in the thirteenth century, and even beyond into the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. It was only with the Modern Era and the religious change of the Reformation—which in
many aspects was more disruptive than the conversion to Christianity—that ancient myths and folktradition lost their usefulness. This is primarily evident in the lengths to which the medieval writers
went to incorporate the ancient myths into their literary culture. Finally, it should not be forgotten
that in other cultures where the advent of Christianity caused a paradigmatic shift in terms of literary
representation, the infusion of Christian myth was an important factor in the survival of indigenous
material. This is realized in relation to the Mayan Popol Vuh of the 1550s, both in terms of its
preservation of indigenous language in Roman letters and in terms of its preservation of myth. As
such, it is comparable to Snorri’s Edda (Damrosch 2007, 215–19) and to some extent Saxo, insofar
as the content of these texts is a catalogue of indigenous myth that undergoes a restructuring under
the hegemony of another script world. This cultural hegemony brought about by the impositon of a
script world other than the one that is fully indigenous results in a certain representational mode of
the indigenous material. This is mostly expressed in the cosmological and eschatological
representations of Old Norse mythology as they have been outlined above. The perspective given to
the cosmology and eschatology of Old Norse religion in these sources is an imposed structure, not so
much in terms of pagan vs. Christian, but rather in terms of its function in relation to the ecosystem:
it does not accord with the actual functional worldview of pre-Christian Scandinavians and their
relation to the environment. As the object of this presentation is a discussion of key elements of the
worldview of Old Norse mythology, the topic of cosmology and the ideological organization of the
worldview is important to the following investigation. Now I will therefore provide an overview of
the research in Old Norse cosmology and worldview.
57
THE DISCUSSION OF WORLDVIEW IN OLD NORSE SCHOLARSHIP
The subject of cosmology and worldview has been an integrated part of analyses, interpretations, and
representations of Old Norse mythology for more than two centuries. Considerations of how the
cosmos is arranged and what the worldview consists of is part of any standard work on Old Norse
mythology and religion. The standard of worldview description as it is commonly known in works
on Old Norse mythology seem to have been set by Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie I–II from 1835. It
is focused on beings, particular elements, and certain concepts of the pre-Christian (Teutonic)
mythology and religion, and it does extend to the description of cosmological aspects. Grimm devotes
one chapter to Óðinn, one to Þórr, and another to Freyr (Grimm 1854, 120). He also discusses groups
of beings: gods (p. 88) and giants (p. 485) amongst others, as well as concepts of fate and the soul (p.
816 and 786). His treatment of cosmic components is divided into chapters on creation (p. 525) and
celestial elements (p. 661), separated by a chapter on the elements (p. 548), and one on trees and
animals (p. 613). More than one hundred years after Grimm’s publication, such standard works as
Jan de Vries’ Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte I–II (1956 and 1957) and E.O.G Turville-Petre’s
Myth and Religion of the North from 1964 present this subject matter in much the same way, leaving
the discussion and description of the cosmology and worldview as a part of a greater whole. As a
systematically addressed topic, cosmology and worldview do not find their way into many studies of
Old Norse–Germanic or pre-Christian Scandinavian religion and mythology prior to the articles of E.
Meletinskij and the studies of Kirsten Hastrup. In spite of the primacy of the subject of worldview
and thus the subject of the way in which pre-Christian Scandinavians structured narratives about their
world, it is only in the more recent works that cosmology and worldview as a singular subject are
given sufficient attention. These works are, among others, Britt Mari Näsström’s Fornskandinavisk
Religion (2001), John Lindow’s Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals and Belief
(2002), Rudolf Simek’s Religion und Mythologie der Germanen (2003), and particularly Gro
Steinsland’s Norrøn Religion from 2005. In the following, I will give a presentation of the research
history that discusses the subject of cosmology and worldview as an independent theme among the
other important facets of the mythology. I acknowledge that cosmology and worldview are part of
any scholarly discussion of Old Norse–Germanic mythological components, but as a singular subject,
I find that the scholarly debate of the constitution, structure, and conceptual importance of the term
worldview—and thus the question of how early Scandinavians interacted with their ecosystem—is
relatively young and overlooked.28 To date only one dissertation has been completed on the subject:
28
An exception to this is perhaps the Vägar till Midgård 1-4 project, where no. 4 is focused on cosmology and worldview.
See Andrén, Jennbert and Raudvere: Ordning mot kaos (2004).
58
Nanna Løkka’s Steder og landskap i norrøn mytologi from 2010. Others have discussed the
Scandinavian cosmological system or worldview in articles and brief chapters in books, but her
dissertation is the first scholarly work devoted to the subject of the pre-Christian Scandinavian
worldview, per se.29
THE EARLY DISCUSSION OF THE OLD N ORSE WORLDVIEW
The subject of an Old Norse worldview or world-model was first addressed by Aaron Ya. Gurevich
in his article Space and Time in the Weltmodell of the Old Scandinavian Peoples (1969). This article
approaches the phenomenon from a sociological-developmental angle and divides the Old Norse
cosmos and worldview in a vertical and a horizontal axis (Gurevich 1969, 44), in addition to pointing
out that there is a prevalent binary theme of Miðgarðr vs. Útgarðr (p. 44–46). The opposition of
Miðgarðr vs. Útgarðr has been observed previously, but Gurevich’s focus on its social implications
brings a new dimension to the debate of an Old Norse mythological worldview, and makes this his
contribution central to the subsequent research in Old Norse cosmology.
Eleazar Meletinskij follows four years later in 1973 with the article Scandinavian Mythology
as a System I–II, consolidating the systemic or structuralist30 approach to the mythology. Meletinskij
makes use of the same basic terminology as Gurevich by describing the cosmos in axes and
associating the opposition between Miðgarðr and Útgarðr with the horizontal axis. His most important
contribution to the field is that he connects these axes of the cosmos with conceptual categories and
thus links his research directly to Claude Levi-Strauss’s structural theory of myth. With the two axes
and the two temporal systems of cosmogony and eschatology, Meletinskij skillfully combines the
binary conceptual oppositions of known vs. unknown, culture vs. nature, order vs. chaos, home vs.
forest, and center vs. periphery (Meletinskij 1973, 47) to the spatial and cosmological categories that
are available in the Old Norse mythological vocabulary.
With a base in Meletinskij’s conceptions of the Old Norse cosmology, Kirsten Hastrup applies
historical anthropological methods to construct models of the pre-Christian worldview of the Old
Norse culture in Iceland in three publications, spanning from 1981 to 1990: the article Cosmology
and Society in Medieval Iceland (1981) and the two books Culture and History in Medieval Iceland
(1985) and Island of Anthropology (1990). A general theme of her research is to connect the cosmic
ordering of the Old Norse world with the arrangement of the Icelandic farmstead and medieval
Icelandic law. This approach is mainly inspired by Gurevich, but Hastrup’s schematics (see below)
29
Another dissertation is currently being written by Lukas Rösli in Zurich entitled Topographien der eddischen Mythen.
For a recent overview of the structuralist and post-structuralist debate in context of Old Norse cosmology, see Kozák
2010.
30
59
are reproduced from Meletinskij’s work (Hastrup 1990, 31–2). As a notable contribution, she applies
indigenous Icelandic linguistic concepts from the law-codes to the model of oppositions, so that the
conceptual opposition of center versus periphery is related to terminology found in the Icelandic
language. Thus ‘innangarðs vs. útangarðs’ and ‘innihús vs. útihús’ correspond to the cosmological
opposition of Miðgarðr vs. Útgarðr (Hastrup 1985, 60; 1990, 28). In addition to this, Hastrup accepts
and reproduces Meletinskij’s trichotomic structure of the vertical cosmic axis in accordance with the
world tree Yggdrasill (Meletinskij 1973, 48). Represented in the zoomorphic catalogue of the cosmos
(ibid) with the eagle above, the reindeer in the middle, and the serpent below, this model places the
home of the gods, Ásgarðr, in the top of the tree—in heaven. Humans are placed on Earth and the
dead below ground (ibid; Hastrup 1990, 30–1). Meletinskij’s partial association of the temporal
concept of cosmogony with the horizontal axis and the concept of eschatology with the vertical axis
(Meletinskij 1973, 50–6),31 is interpreted by Hastrup as two fixed concepts of temporality, which are
associated directly with the axes. She applies the notion of ‘temporal irreversibility’ to the vertical
axis and ‘temporal reversibility’ to the horizontal axis (Hastrup 1990, 31–2). Below are displayed
Hastrup’s models of the cosmos:
The Úthaf
Specific
Útgarðr
innihús
útihús
innangarðs
útangarðs
land
sea
familiar
foreign
‘we’
‘the others’
‘inside’
‘outside’
civilized the wild
Ásgarðr
Miðgarðr
Útgarðr
Miðgarðr
General
Center
Periphery
The Úthaf
Figure 4: The horizontal model of the cosmos reproduced on basis of Hastrup (1990, 29).
31
It should be mentioned that Meletinskij is not as strict in his division as he is often criticized for (Schjødt 1990, 54–5).
He sees the eschatological temporal system as permeating the entirety of Scandinavian mythology and thus acknowledges
an integration of the temporal system in both axes (Meletinskij 1973, 52).
60
The World Tree of Yggdrasill
Oppositions related to the vertical axis of the cosmos
Óðinn; The eagle
Valhǫll
Ásgarðr
human inhabitance
reindeer
Urðarbrunnr
The norns
gods
immortals
humans
mortals
heaven
living
earth
dead
underworld
male
Hel
dead
female
Serpent
Figure 5: The vertical model of the cosmos reproduced on basis of Hastrup (1990, 31).
CONTEMPORARY SCHOLARSHIP
The year 1990 marks a change in the scholarly debate about the system of Old Norse cosmology and
worldview with the first critique of Meletinskij’s and Hastrup’s models in Jens Peter Schjødt’s article
Horizontale und vertikale Achsen in der vorchristlichen skandinavischen Kosmologie (1990).
Schjødt’s critique is not only directed at the conclusions of the above scholars, but also addresses
their use of the sources. Both Meletinskij and Gurevich have only sparse references to their primary
source material and few references to other scholarly works.32 In fact, it is unclear if the two are aware
of each other’s works.33 Meletinskij refers to Edda (Meletinskij 1973, 41 and 51), to Vǫluspá (p. 47–
53), and more broadly to “Eddic poetry” (p. 41 and 68). Hastrup, on the other hand, seems entirely
focused on Edda as the only primary source alongside Meletinskij’s work. In Island of Anthropology,
she specifically refers to Edda as the text from which she retrieves her information (Hastrup 1990,
26). In Culture and History in Medieval Iceland, however, she mentions eddic poetry briefly as her
only reference to Old Norse mythological texts (Hastrup 1985, 67). As such, we are faced with the
problem of a very narrow scope when it comes to the collection of empirical data to support these
assertions about an Old Norse mythic worldview. This does not go unnoticed by Schjødt. Aside from
challenging Meletinskij’s notion of corresponding semantic elements on the vertical and horizontal
axes (Schjødt 1990, 47) and the association of different temporal modes with the axes (p. 54–5),
Schjødt refers to eddic poetry as a source in order to correct some of the assertions put forth by both
32
33
For another brief critique of Meletinskij’s article, see Schjødt 2008a, 143.
This is also pointed out by Løkka (2010, 24).
61
Meletinskij and Hastrup (p. 40–45). One of Schjødt’s most important contributions to the discussion
is the rejection of any idea that the gods dwell in the heavens. With reference to the fact that this is
an idea picked up in Edda (p. 40), Schjødt concludes that the sky is empty space. It is mainly used
for movement by different beings, but it is not—as is seen in Christianity—an actual cosmic site, a
place where supernatural beings dwell (p. 46). The revised model of the cosmos is thus rather a Tshape as the one displayed below:
The
Skysky
Periphery
The Center
Figure XX: Schjødt’s modified world
The Underworld
Periphery
model.
Figure 6: Schjødt’s amended model of the cosmos
Joining the critique of the Meletinskij/Hastrup worldview as one based mainly on the mythology of
Edda, Margaret Clunies Ross introduces elements of narratology to the discussion in Prolonged
Echoes vol. 1 (1994). In her view, the reason that the mythology of Edda governs Hastrup’s view is
that these “Aristotelian narratives” serve the modern predilection for extended prose narratives with
a beginning, a middle, and an end, and are therefore preferred at the expense of the fragmentary
information in the eddic poems (Clunies Ross 1994, 230–2). Clunies Ross’s contribution to the
discussion of the world-model is of great importance, as she points out that the term ‘Útgarðr’ is in
fact a rare definition in Old Norse mythology. It appears only in the story of Þórr’s journey to
Útgarðaloki and is not found elsewhere. Notably, this Útgarðr is the home of a being that along with
other cosmic forces such as the Fenrizúlfr and the Miðgarðsormr are beyond social control and are
more akin to natural forces (p. 51–2). The most common term for the antagonistic zone, she finds, is
the Jǫtunheimar. The plural form of this word, ‘the homes of the jǫtnar,’ forms a foundation for
conceiving the outer realm as more of a series of territories or garðar, arranged in concentric halfcircles around the home of gods and humans (ibid).
62
As the reader may have noted at this point, neither Meletinskij nor Hastrup in their approaches
to the subject of a worldview in pre-Christian times—even in the Medieval Era—take into account
the actual natural conditions of the milieu that produces these texts, in terms of an attempt to assign
some significance to the impact of the conditions of the ecosystems and natural environment of these
cultural units.34 There is no discussion of the parameters of the ecosystems and environments, and
what these may afford in terms of economy and social order. It is the other way around; social
ideology is imposed on a world that is not perceived in terms of its ecosystems or its physical aspects.
Neither is any attention given to the activities of characters in the narratives, nor is there any
association with the cultural function of places in the natural environment, in terms of how the use of
the ecosystem may affect its conceptualization by the culture. However, an attempt to refer to
ecosystems appears in Stefan Brink’s article Mytologiska rum och eskatologiska föreställningar i det
vikingatida Norden (2004).
With reference to Clunies Ross’s comments on the binary model of the Old Norse worldview,
the critique of Meletinskij and Hastrup is taken even further by Stefan Brink. Brink criticizes the
entire notion of structuralism and the tendency to construct simplified maps and diagrams from the
source material. It is seen as too simplistic and as an unsatisfying method for describing the preChristian Scandinavian cosmology and worldview (Brink 2004, 297). Brink takes his critique so far
as to comment that the binary model of the Old Norse mythological worldview seems to be an
example of how the minds of contemporary scholars intellectualize and seek out spatial logics that
were never present in pre-literate society.35 In Brink’s view, oral cultures did not need to structure
their metaphysical world—their cosmology—as a logically coherent system (p. 295–6). Brink is of
course right in his critique that the simplistic structuring of a worldview, in the sense that any attempt
to distill it into a coherent system of religious dogma that can be said to have been widespread and
fully understandable throughout Scandinavia in the pre-Christian era, is impossible (cf. Schjødt
2007a). But at the same time it must be pointed out that Brink is not at all correct when he seeks to
discard the notion that human beings—whether they live in oral or literate societies—are not prone
to constructing binary models in their conception of the world. If nothing else, the prevalence of the
binary models in structuralism and the scholarly milieu around pre-Christian Scandinavian mythology
seems to indicate that there is something to be said for the usefulness of operating with such structures.
34
Hastrup uses law-codes as an alternative (1990, 44–65). Clunies Ross takes some aspects of the natural world into account,
but she stays within the boundaries of the farmstead as a unit (1998, 122–54). While she investigates the migration to Iceland
as a cultural theme, a theme of the worldview, she assumes that the spatial categorizations are imposed onto the ecosystem,
they are not developed in relation to the ecosystem (p. 124–27).
35 On the complexity of cosmic structures, see also Wellendorf 2006.
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Brink, however, identifies the notion of binary oppositions—in an amplified echo of Clunies Ross—
as a phenomenon derived from the literary, Christianized text of Edda:
Snorre var en kristen författare, som visserligen beskrev en äldre, förkristen epok, men
troligen eller uppenbarligen (här tvekar forskare) har han i sin version av de förkristna,
isländska kosmologiska föreställningarna färgats av den kristna, retoriska polariteten
mellan himmel och helvete. Att Snorre och hans kolleger påverkats av samtida
mentalitet, retorik, teologi och kanske också ideologi torde vara uppenbart
(Snorri was a Christian author who described an older, pre-Christian epoch, but surely
or apparently (here the scholars differ) he was influenced by the Christian rhetorical
polarity between heaven and hell in his version of the pre-Christian Icelandic
cosmological imagery. It is obvious that Snorri and his colleagues were influenced by
contemporary conceptions, rhetoric and theology and possibly also ideology [Brink
2004, 297–8]).
Brink follows the path set out by Clunies Ross in criticizing Edda as a highly literate work and the
source for the binary model. He adds the perspective of Christian influence to underline the difference
in mentality between those who wrote about the pre-Christian era of Scandinavia in thirteenth century
Iceland and their actual pre-Christian ancestors in Scandinavia prior to the conversion. In this regard,
it is worth noting that his purpose seems to be to underline the usefulness of landscape analysis and
onomastic evidence as a factor in attempts to reconstruct the worldview of pre-Christian Scandinavian
peoples. His emphasis on the problems with Edda as a source and the singular focus on Gylfaginning
(p. 295) and Grímnismál (p. 306) serve this purpose well. This conclusion, though—regardless of the
purpose it serves—is entirely erroneous. While a superficial glance at a text such as Edda may support
such notions of a strictly binary worldview based on Christian dualism, a more in-depth investigation
of the worldview of the myths of Old Norse mythology, be they related in Edda, eddic and skaldic
poetry or elsewhere, yields a much more complex world of myths. While Brink’s assertions do not
do justice to the source material in any way, his focus on the habitat and ecological backdrop of
various Scandinavian peoples in relation to the mythology is a useful aspect of the argument. Brink
makes clear—as does this present dissertation—that the surroundings, the ecosystem, and the
environment of a people influence their conceptions of the world. In reality there should be nothing
controversial in such a statement, but it seems that its self-evidence has not yet been fully recognized
by a wide range of scholars dealing with the topic. Gro Steinsland also directs criticism towards the
approach of the early structuralists in her article The Late Iron Age Worldview and the Concept of
‘Utmark’ (2005). In regard to the limitations of her article, she does not treat the issues of
structuralism as a tool for worldview interpretation, but instead briefly mentions its methodological
problems. Referring to the critique of Claude Lévi-Strauss by Clifford Geertz in his The Cerebral
Savage from 1973, she writes:
64
The limits of this paper do not permit any discussion of the basic assumptions of
structuralism itself, namely that human beings will, independent of time and space,
always think in binary oppositions, and that the same basic oppositions may be found
underlying every mythology, every social system, no matter how different they may
seem. Here, I will only briefly call attention to the fact that some researchers in the field
of society and culture are not convinced by the basic theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss,
for instance the social anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) (Steinsland 2005, 142).
It thus seems that in relation to the discussion of the pre-Christian Scandinavian worldview, a
discourse built around the critique of structuralism as a method has formed in recent years. This
relates particularly to the original notions of Meletinskij and Hastrup that perceive the cosmology and
worldview as based on a system of binary opposition, but extends to a basic critique of Edda as a
source. Steinsland only briefly addresses Edda as a text (p. 141), but like Brink, is focused on the
(perceived) differences between a Christian and a pre-Christian worldview. Steinsland’s brief
recapitulation of the mythological system is in this context a gendered approach, where she calls
attention to the oversimplified notions of both Hastrup and Clunies Ross, who have posited that there
is a basic cosmological opposition between the creative male powers and chthonic female powers
related to the concept of ‘death’ (ibid).36 She proceeds to state that:
It was, in particular, the giants who were the opponents of the gods. But – and that is an
important lesson from Norse mythology – the antagonism between Gods and giants
cannot be explained as a parallel to the Christian dichotomy between God and the Devil,
good and evil, light and darkness […] The gods needed the giants, their knowledge their
competence and their powerful objects, just as the giants for their part desired objects
belonging to the gods (p. 143).
Steinsland is softening up the division between the home of the æsir and the outer territories belonging
to the jǫtnar. In her view, interaction and exploration are important keywords in describing the
relationship between the spheres and she expresses this best when she writes: “It is the crossing of
borders, the negotiations and agreements, the mixture, which is the clue. The energy and the potential
for life seem to occur at the crossing-points between Asgard and Utgard” (p. 144). With this,
Steinsland is emphasizing another important aspect of borders: that these often function as points of
interaction between two groups, and that the dynamics of life can unfold in border areas just as well
as in a protected and perhaps static center.
This attempt to reform the scholarly understanding of the dynamics between Ásgarðr and the
Jǫtunheimar also lies at the heart of Nanna Løkka’s PhD thesis Steder og landskap i norrøn mytologi
(2010). As a student of Steinsland (Løkka 2010, iii), Løkka develops some of the above notions in
For a good, brief overview of the gendering of death in the Old Norse worldview, see Judy Quinn’s article The Gendering
of Death in Eddic Cosmology (2006).
36
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her dissertation. Her analysis is based only on eddic poetry and does not include Snorri’s Edda
analytically, but does discuss some of its contents (p. 8). The object of Løkka’s dissertation is twofold:
(1) It seeks to redefine the cosmic model of the Old Norse universe by adopting a monistic
principle of causality, rather than a dualistic one, and;
(2) It attempts to redeem the status of the jǫtnar in the mythology (p. 9–15).
Even though the title of the thesis indicates a focus on places and landscapes, Løkka devotes most of
her pages to the status of the jǫtnar in the mythology. This is not entirely without reason, as the outer
space—the Jǫtunheimar—are defined by the beings that are confined to it, and it is logical to focus
on the jǫtnar and their status in relation to the æsir. The methodological approach in Løkka’s
dissertation is of fundamental importance, as it relates directly to the preceding discussion on the
subjects of structuralism and Snorri’s Edda as a source for knowledge about Old Norse cosmology.
Unlike the overview of the research in the cosmology and worldview in this presentation, Løkka
begins with Anne Holtsmark’s Studier i Snorres mytologi from 1964.37 The purpose for this is stated
as follows:
Snorre har tradisjonelt blitt betraktet som en viktig kilde til det førkristne verdensbilde,
nettopp fordi han gir en sammenhengende lære og ikke et fragmentarisk puslespil som
eddadiktningen kan tilby. Til tross for at førkristen kosmologi ikke er det sentrale i
Holtsmarks analyse, bliver avhandlingen likevel ytterst viktig, fordi den så tydelig viser
hvordan Snorre-Edda krever finmeislede redskap av den forsker som bruker den som
kilde til førkristen kosmologi. Når Holtsmark tydeliggjør forbindelsen mellom
middelalderens kristne teologi og kosmologi og Snorres beskrivelse av den førkristne
kosmologien, fordrer det en omfattende revurdering av Snorre-Edda som kilde til
førkristen kosmologi. Av denne grunn mener jeg det er avgjørende å holde Snorre-Edda
atskilt fra eddadiktningen.
(Because he provides a coherent lore and not a fragmented jigsaw puzzle like that of the
eddic poems, Snorri has traditionally been considered an important source to the preChristian worldview. Although that pre-Christian cosmology is not the focus of
Holtsmark’s analysis, her dissertation is extremely important in this regard, because it
so clearly shows how Snorra-Edda requires refined equipment of scholar who seeks to
use it as a source. When Holtsmark exposes the relation between Christian theology and
cosmology of the Middle Ages and Snorri’s description of pre-Christian cosmology, it
requires an exhaustive reevaluation of Edda as a source to pre-Christian cosmology.
Because of this, I find that it is crucial to keep Snorra-Edda separate from eddic poetry
[p. 22])
I have not included Holtsmark’s important studies here, because she is not specifically focused on the issue of
reconstructing a systematically organized model of the cosmos, but rather on the analysis of the reception of pre-Christian
mythology in Edda as a Christian text. Her important contribution is of different value to this study than to Løkka’s and will
not be dealt with at this stage. Instead I use Holtsmark’s analysis of the cosmogony in relation to the Creation Myth in
chapter IV, pages 132-145.
37
66
With this, Løkka addresses directly the issues mentioned earlier by the various scholars that are
critical of Meletinskij and Hastrup (with the exception of Schjødt). For them, the Christian influence
on the representation of pre-Christian cosmology in Edda is a fundamental problem and complicates
the use of this source in the studies of Old Norse mythology.38 Løkka’s solution to this critique is to
simply select a different group of texts as her sources: eddic poetry. She deals only with Edda
corroboratively, in the sense that the text either reaffirms or contradicts the poems’ information on
spatiality (ibid; p. 53). In her treatment of Hastrup, Løkka returns to the issue of Edda as a source and
to the use of Edda without proper attention to the circumstances pertaining to its representation of
pre-Christian subject matter. At this point, however, it is combined directly with structuralism as an
analytical approach:
Hastrup understreker riktignok at det ikke er hennes agenda å analysere selve tekstene,
og at det er strukturelle forhold i kildematerialet som hun vil avdekke. Men selv om
strukturalistiske undersøkelser ikke skulle være underlagt samme kildekritiske forbehold
som andre undersøkelser, er det vanskelig å akseptere konklusjonene Hastrup trekker,
all den tid Snorre-Edda fungerer som undersøkelsens viktigste kilde.
(Hastrup does actually emphasize that it is not her intention to analyze the texts, and that
it is the structures in the source material that are the object of her focus. But even if
structuralist analyses are not to be submitted to the same source critical reservations as
other analyses, it is hard to accept the conclusions drawn by Hastrup whenever that Edda
functions as the main source of her analysis [p. 26])
The general assumptions in this citation are the following:
(1) Structuralism as a method operates without proper attention to its source material, though it
is the common approach in studies by philologists and textually-oriented scholars of religion
(p. 34), and;
(2) It is the use of Edda as a source that is the direct cause of the model of the worldview that
Hastrup develops for Old Norse cosmology.39
38
Løkka expands on the problems of Edda as a source in chapter four, where she discusses her view on the sources in the
dissertation (Løkka 2010, 51–3). Here she makes clear that it is possible to find some traces of the pre-Christian worldview
in Edda, but asserts that these are not to be found in Gylfaginning where they are typically sought (p. 53).
39 This is in itself interesting, as the above schemas reproduced from Hastrup indicate, she ignores vital information in Edda
that relates to her binary oppositions. As an example, one can point out that Hastrup places ‘immortals’ next to ‘gods’ in
the top of the tree of the vertical axis. In Gylfaginning it is described how Baldr dies and goes to Hel (Gylf. XLIX–L), This
dissolves Hastrup’s schema, since it would mean that ‘god’ is also to be found in the bottom; that ‘mortal’ also appears in
the top; and with the addition of the einherjar to Valhǫll, we are also faced with—as Meletinskij described it—the dead in
the top of the vertical axis. It seems that it is neither the method of structuralism nor the source used, which contains the
origins of these confusions, but perhaps rather Hastrup’s willingness to consult the actual text. Not once does she refer to
specific chapters or citations in Edda in her chapter on the cosmology in Island of Anthropology (1990, 26–43), nor is the
work featured in the bibliography. Her only access to Edda is through the interpretations of other scholars.
67
Towards the end of her chapter on the relevant scholarship, Løkka concludes that, despite critique of
the method, no research has yet been presented on the cosmology that has been able to sever the
traditional ties to structuralism (p. 34). Neither does she attempt to do so in her chapter on method.
She admits that her own work is influenced by several structuralists, among others Claude LéviStrauss (p. 35), and that the method by which she analyzes the eddic poems draws heavily on literary
structuralist and formalist traditions such as narratology (p. 37–50).
COMMENTARIES ON THE RESEARCH TRADITION IN THE OLD NORSE WORLDVIEW
The scholarly tradition of worldview analysis in the narratives of Old Norse mythology can be
described as a general discussion of the source value of one text and its applicability in terms of what
the individual author holds to be either ‘Christian’ or ‘pagan.’ Much of the discussion of what exactly
it is that is pagan in terms of the worldview described in the narratives of Edda relies on how the
individual scholar seeks to define his work in relation to the paradigm of structuralism, and, as noted
earlier, the scholar’s belief or trust in the capacity of the source to relay knowledge of the preChristian worldview. Somehow, along the lines of critique of the early scholars of this tradition, the
method of structuralism became synonymous with binarism, which in turn became synonymous with
a Christian worldview that is supposedly exclusive to Snorri’s Edda, because it is perceived as a
structured and highly literate text that was conceived in an exclusively learned and Christian milieu.
As such, the discussion is lacking a dimension. We do not need to search long to find that some sense
of cosmic binarism is realized in every culture on Earth. We saw it above in the case of the Maring
and it has been observed as a primary feature of worldview among an array of cultures by various
prominent scholars in the discussion, such as van Gennep (1909), Eliade (1959 and 1971), LéviStrauss (1967 and 1983), and Turner (1967 and 2009), as well as in Old Norse religion by one of the
field’s most outstanding scholars, Jens Peter Schjødt (2008a). Furthermore, it is also a highly
questionable disposition to simply rule out Snorri’s Edda as a source for Old Norse mythology and
the worldview of the pre-Christian era because of its Christian elements. In many respects, Snorri’s
Edda is neither better nor worse than the eddic poems as a source of pre-Christian mythology. Nor
can the eddic poems be said to be more ‘fragmentary’ in their worldview than Edda. They belong to
the same cultural whole. They are, each in their own way, medieval narratives conveying the
compromise between the tenets of the traditional worldview and the frœðimaðr. Each type of source
has its advantages and disadvantages in terms of its representationality and fictionality. We have dealt
with this extensively above. A final and fundamental element that has evaded the research concerning
the worldview, is that it should be made clear what is contained in such a term. This is not done by
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the above-mentioned scholars. The term is loosely applied and may mean anything from ‘how
individuals perceive their position in life’ to ‘how to make a fictitious model of the cosmos from the
sources.’
In the above section ‘Approaching myth’ I have outlined a theory of myth and its function in
society. This theory is easily combined with a notion of worldview comparable to Lauri Honko’s
definition of “myth as an integrated factor in man’s adaptation to life: myth as worldview” (Honko
1984, 47). This is hardly the same perspective that is at the root of the schematics of Hastrup and
Meletinskij, but it does have some affinity to the views expressed by both Brink, Steinsland, and
Løkka. However, where Løkka and Steinsland focus deeply on the social processes and relationship
between æsir and jǫtnar, I contend that this is a narrow scope on worldview. In fact, in the case of
Løkka, it seems to lead towards a discussion that forgets or neglects a clear definition of the cultural
unit associated with the texts. Her argument is unclear about who is being talked about and when
these people exist, insofar as her discussion of a pre-Christian Old Norse worldview is more than just
a discussion of the contents of one limited set of texts written down in Iceland in 1270. We cannot
simply assume that the content of these texts are applicable to any type of ‘Norse’ or ‘Scandinavian’
existence before the conversion to Christianity. Brink is, in that sense, more in line with this study,
as he expresses awareness of differences of peoples and ecosystems. He seems to fully understand
the approach to myth analysis that Åke Hultkrantz formulated in his article An Ideological
Dichotomy: Myths and Folk Beliefs Among the Shoshoni in 1984: that one must broaden the spectrum
of variables to be included in the study, and draw on many more disciplines than the dogmatic system
of one’s own (p. 152–4). With the concept of worldview as myth that functions as an integrated factor
in man’s adaptation to life, it becomes clearer that much more than just a text must be integrated into
the method of analysis in order to study the worldview itself. In another article entitled Oral Epics
and World View (1998), Lauri Honko expands on his definition of worldview. He defines worldview
as “living systems of values and meaning,” and goes on to say that such living systems “are culturally
adapted and locally functional, i.e. tradition-ecologically fit to carry out basic tasks of orientation for
man and society” (Honko 1998, 155). This definition is much more open and much more useful for
the approach to myths as eco-myths in a Mythical Charter of Tradition, than a perspective on
worldview that seeks to fit mythic information into a neat schema. It is with this definition of
worldview that I carry out my analyses of Old Norse myths as eco-myths, and discuss their status in
the worldview of Viking Age and medieval Scandinavian society.
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CHAPTER CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have developed a functional definition of myth to carry my analyses of the Old Norse
Creation Myth, the myth of the Mead of Poetry and the myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition as ecomyths. These myths are seen as fully-integrated technical narratives of a Mythical Charter of
Tradition in Old Norse–Scandinavian culture. This means that they have a specific function of
relaying meaning and values in the context of significant aspects of the ecosystem and environment
of early Scandinavian culture. As technical myths, they are discernible as functions in the worldview
as culturally adapted and locally functional. They are tradition-ecological narratives that assist in the
orientation of man and society. The term ‘tradition-ecological’ simply means ‘technical myths about
the ecosystem in the Mythical Charter of Tradition’ insofar as ‘ecology’ means ‘the knowledge
humans draw from dealing with an ecosystem.’ As such, they have the ability to alter behavior in
connection with accumulated knowledge of a natural phenomenon of the ecosystem. They are
response narratives that can be employed in situations of social need, societal change and imminent
disaster—we will see concrete examples of that in the next chapters. This approach to the myths is
distanced from the traditional discussion of the Old Norse worldview insofar as it does not seek to
formulate, define, or redefine models and schematics of a worldview, but instead seeks to understand
the function and impact of particular myths in human responses to the ecosystem. However, while
this approach avoids the ‘bird’s eye’ perspective on Old Norse mythology that is contained in the
tendency to construct models, it does not mean that it removes the cosmological character of the
myths that are subjected to analysis. On the contrary: this approach, I believe, assigns more
cosmological significance to the myths than any attempt to design models from reading them, because
it understands its subject matter as actualized narrativization of useful knowledge about ecosystems
in an evolutionary reality. Where model-making is two-dimensional, this approach seeks to be threedimensional by adding the element of spatial reality to social reality. The following sections
summarize the main points of argument and conclusions from this chapter.
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THE CONSECUTIVE DEFINITIONS OF MYTH
Myths exist, both orally and in written form, as texts in context and the term may be defined as a
conceptual designation for culturally important narratives or narratives that take primacy in a
worldview. Myth is the sum of shared knowledge in a cultural unit: it is Collective/Cultural Memory
or a Charter of Tradition. This charter has three primary functions in terms of preserving vital social
knowledge:
(1) Myth preserves mythical identity;
(2) Myth preserves genealogies, and;
(3) Myth preserves technical knowledge.
As such, myth exists to instruct and orient the life of a cultural group—and with this we understand
that myth always has cosmological implications.
The life of myths is in Communicative Memory (in pre- and quasi-literate societies), where
they exist as cultural narratives that provide the world with structure and meaning. This means that
they change over time and develop for the purpose of carrying normative conceptions. However, it is
not just social processes that accelerate change in myths. The ecosystem affects mythopoesis in
various ways, because it is inherent to the myths as cultural texts that they will develop to ensure
survival—of themselves and of their society. The ecosystem may present humans with natural
processes and events, or permanent sites, which have a direct effect on the existence and survival of
a society, and therefore parts of the cultural texts which develop contain narrativized technical
knowledge about the ecosystem. This means that the ecosystem has a direct effect on the formulation
and redefinition of normative conceptions in the worldview. The experience of a new ecosystem or a
new natural process will alter these conceptions to the degree that the event is interpreted within the
existing frame.
This is the essence of eco-mythology: sites and spaces in the ecosystem that are of relevance
to human activity—essentially everything that is visible and sometimes even imagined 40 —may
function as Memory Spaces for localized myths. In this context, nature is a promotional force in
human life, and it manifests its influence in the worldview through myth. This is the narrativization
of landscape features and ecosystems.
Myth is the sum and function of the Mythical Charter of the Tradition belonging to a cultural
unit. Myth is a conceptual filter for the formulation of images, categories, and memory, which
40
Cf. the above argument of Brink about narrativized landscapes. In terms of imagined parts of the ecosystem, we may
consider such places as the underworld.
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preserves knowledge about the surrounding world as much as it preserves knowledge about human
behavior within a society. The preservation of both types of knowledge is for the purpose of ensuring
survival and it must be realized that the two types are mutually dependent—therefore we may expect
to find the two aspects of knowledge for survival more often than not combined. In this we recognize
the condition of myth as a superstructure that incorporates systems of meaning, which can be activated
by certain cultural needs whenever they arise. Such needs can be social and societal change or natural
processes, often in combination with one another.
THE VIEW OF THE SOU RCES AND THE MODUS O F ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
The consequence of this approach to myth is a de facto dissolution of the boundaries of genre and the
chronological differences in the selected corpus of sources. The perspective is that the various
narratives applied in this study are—with few exceptions—contextualized in a Scandinavian
worldview, and they are thus perceived as a Mythical Charter of the Tradition of the cultural unit that
is the Nordic linguistic group of Scandinavia and, by extension, the North Atlantic region. This is true
regardless of the narrator’s predilection for writing in Latin or a Germanic language, and it is also
true regardless of whether or not a particular author is in fact part of that ethnic system: as long as the
author is mediating knowledge about this cultural unit, he comments on its worldview and supplies
information about its Mythical Charter of Tradition.41 Interpretation thus becomes a matter of sifting
through the layers of representationality and fictionality in the texts. The modus of interpretation
relies on the wider meaning-complex of the text and it is recognized that the texts are both accounts
of a past culture as much as they are the narrativized representation of this past and products of a time
different from that past. This is an unconventional understanding of the texts as historical sources; it
is an understanding that accepts their value as tradition in a worldview. The practical approach to
analysis is then a matter of employing techniques to discern the layering of the texts and discuss their
representationality and fictionality in mythopoesis. This method is the fourfold principle of the
Memory Crunch, which consists of:
(1) Silence
(2) Analogy
(3) Compression
41
This is applicable to Tacitus, Dudo, Adam, and the German contributions to the source material of this study. Ovid stands
out as a contributor that has nothing invested in the Nordic tradition, and he is thus of course not included in this view. He
and the indigenous Roman tradition (see chapter IV, pages 176-186) are points of reference for cultural influence on the
Nordic worldview.
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(4) Restructuring
This methodological approach assumes that any type of myth may become culturally relevant in the
description or remembrance of events and features of the ecosystem and that any given corpus of
myths may therefore be interpreted as such if the proper conditions are in place, such as references to
aspects of an ecosystem or natural processes. It does not assume that mythogenesis is caused by
natural events and processes: mythogenesis is, for this approach, an entirely social activity that refers
inwards to a group structure. Mythopoesis, however, may become active as a function of human
interaction with an ecosystem.
The practical result of this view of mythopoesis is a methodical approach to the analysis based
on literary and linguistic investigation of narrative patterns, words, and expressions in the myths that
have been chosen for their references to natural phenomena in accordance with the goal of this
dissertation. These interpretations are in that sense the result of a contextualized bottom-up analysis
of the singular components of the myths, the images, motifs, and narrative structures. They rely on
the clarification of the term myth as a cultural vocabulary that can be activated in response to the
surrounding ecosystem.
THE RESEARCH TRADITION OF WORLDVIEW IN O LD NORSE SCHOLARSHIP
This dissertation inscribes itself into the research tradition of worldview and cosmology in Old Norse
scholarship. It does so not on the grounds of understanding the concept of worldview as a model or
diagram that maps out conceived spatial relations between social groups, but rather on the basis of
seeing worldview as an intricate web of values and meaning, as a life system that is localized and
culturally adapted—both to a social form and to an ecosystem.
The scholarly discussion of worldview in relation to Old Norse mythology has been
preoccupied with an interest in devising models for a spatial conception of the Old Norse cosmos,
and in that process, with the exception of Schjødt (1983),42 an investigation of the individual myths
has been neglected. The few scholars who have attempted to approach the discussion from another
perspective, mainly Brink, Steinsland, and Løkka, have been too focused on confronting either the
analytical method of structuralism or the compatibility of Snorri’s Edda with a pre-Christian
worldview, to free their discussion from the constraints under which both Melentiskij’s and Hastrup’s
analyses suffer: the problem of whether or not there is a division between the supernatural social
42
In his article Livsdrik og vidensdrik (1983) Schjødt actually contributes to the worldview discussion with an in-depth
analysis of the myth of the Mead of Poetry, but the article does not address this general discussion of the worldview. We
will deal extensively with Schjødt’s analysis in chapter IV, pages 149-186.
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groups and therefore the cosmos as a whole. As has been pointed out, it is a futile discussion, since
(as recognized by Schjødt) there are always binaries in a worldview and narratives generally tend to
have protagonists and antagonists. This is most certainly true in the case of Old Norse mythology. In
that respect it should also be mentioned that an investigation of the Old Norse worldview that does
not take into account the myths of the monumental work of Snorri’s Edda is an incomplete analysis.
This conclusion is not reached without a certain sense of apprehension. It should be recognized that
a study of the Old Norse worldview that seeks to encompass the entirety of the material would be a
massive endeavor and it would greatly surpass the parameters of a dissertation of this size. Some
selection is therefore in order, but one that discounts Edda is in the view of this author incomplete.
It is therefore the perspective of this dissertation that if one seeks to investigate the worldview
of Old Norse mythology, approaching the material as a Mythical Charter of Tradition and focusing
on one or a few aspect of this charter, is the most appropriate angle. The worldview of Old Norse
mythology has been investigated in light of the first two of the three components of Le Goff’s term
Collective Memory—much has been written on foundation myths, genealogies, sagas, social, and
societal aspects of the myths. However, little has been done in terms of understanding the aspects of
Old Norse myths as technical knowledge about the natural world and the ecosystems of Scandinavia
and the North Atlantic region.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The exercises in this chapter to define myth and discuss the basis on which the Old Norse worldview
is investigated in scholarship have been undertaken in order to address some of the pitfalls that I have
observed in the debate in this field. In the following, the steps I have taken to formulate a method and
a theoretically sound foundation for my analyses will be put to work. In that context, it should be
remembered that there is still much work, which can be done in terms of analyses of the primary
narratives of this dissertation. This research touches upon a few aspects of the myth of Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition, the Creation Myth and the myth of the Mead of Poetry, and points them out as integral
parts of the Old Norse worldview, but it must be remembered in that respect that myths are
polysemantic and that a single myth can have many meaning-complexes associated with it. In this
presentation I have chosen to focus on the meaning-complexes that relate to the ecosystems of
Scandinavia and the North Atlantic region. This disposition obviously guides the perspective of the
analyses in a certain direction, leaving blind angles in terms of other perspectives. Such is the nature
of scholarship: it is an open landscape and one must choose a path, but in choosing one path, the
others close behind you.
74
CONFRONTING THE SEA
© Nordvig
“There is something primordial about traveling on water, even for short distances. You are informed that
you are not supposed to be there not so much by your eyes, ears, nose, palate, or palm as by your feet,
which feel odd acting as an organ of sense” (Brodsky 1992, 14).
75
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
If it is possible to single out a mythic motif that may be said to represent an ancient Scandinavian
understanding of the relationship of man to sea, it is certainly Þórr’s Fishing Expedition. The god, an
anthropomorphic figure, journeys out on the great sea and faces the might of a creature, Jǫrmungandr,
that is conceived as a giant serpent which lives in the depths of the ocean. This myth is relayed in
various versions in medieval literature, and because of its popularity in Scandinavia it seems to have
taken on several forms. It appears in picture-stones and runic inscriptions from the Viking Age; and
it is referred to by skalds in the late Viking Age and early medieval period. In the medieval period,
the Fishing Myth is also relayed in more discernible narrative form in eddic poetry, and not least in
mythic prose in Snorri’s Edda. It is a common Scandinavian narrative that has existed in oral form
for centuries (Gísli Sigurðsson 2004). In addition to that, it seems that the popularity of the primary
character of the myth, Þórr, has resulted in the creation of certain prose tales about the Christianization
of the North which draw upon themes and motifs related to the myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition.
Saxo’s hero of the Christianization process of Denmark, Thorkillus, is most certainly derived from
the mythic Þórr figure, and the story as Saxo relays it includes borrowings from several Þórr myths,
including his meeting with Jǫrmungandr. The same seems to be the case with Þorsteins þáttr
bœjarmagns, although in this tale the elements of the Fishing Expedition seem to have been reduced
to no more than a faint undertone.
With such wide cultural currency and use throughout the Viking Age and the medieval period,
the Fishing Myth is an ideal candidate for eco-mythological analysis. The myth takes on many forms
as it is reproduced in various literary genres, no less than in the visual media. As it seems to be one
of the oldest and most widespread myths in Scandinavia, and since it seems to appear in forms that
can be more or less distinctively associated with pre- and post-conversion paradigms in Scandinavia,
it is also a useful myth for analysis in terms of understanding the pre-Christian worldview and its
development in medieval narratives.
In the following, I will analyze the Myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition from the perspective of
its earliest form as a myth relating primarily to the activity of collecting food at sea. From that point
of view, I will expand the scope of the analysis to include the relevant saga literature and historical
sources in which evidence of a common structural association of Þórr with the sea and seafaring can
be found. On that basis I argue that, because of the prominent conceptual position of the sea as an
important resource, the Fishing Myth held such primacy in early Scandinavian culture that it later
came to be associated with themes of discovery, and subsequently it was used as a narrative frame in
memory narratives to account for the journey to Vínland. Eventually, I argue that the cultural impact
76
of the discovery of Iceland, Greenland, and Vínland, alongside the association of the sea with the
appropriation of wealth and power, offered the myth a place among the foundation narratives of the
Mythical Charter of Tradition, insofar as the myth carries the justification for a certain social
structure. The status of this myth as a foundation narrative and an eco-myth about fishing, seafaring,
and sea exploration prompts the use of its patterns and motifs in medieval tales of Christianization
and Christian critiques of paganism, namely in Gesta Danorum and Gylfaginning. By employing the
Fishing Myth in his tale of Christianization in Denmark, Saxo not only reactualizes an old narrative,
he deconstructs its pagan tenets while maintaining its motifs, and brings Christianity to Denmark in
narrative form by way of a seafaring Icelander.
At the end of this chapter, these interpretations are contrasted with the assertions about Old
Norse cosmology and worldview put forth by Kirsten Hastrup and Nanna Løkka. Both Hastrup’s
argument that the Old Norse mythic worldview is based on binary oppositions and Løkka’s argument
that the Old Norse worldview is monistic and inherently fated, are criticized on the basis of my
analysis and interpretation of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition.
77
ÞÓRR’S FISHING EXPEDITION
Þórr’s Fishing Expedition has been treated by Preben Meulengracht Sørensen in its different sources
in the article Thor’s Fishing Expedition (2002 [1986]43). There are four different picture-stones that
depict Þórr fishing for the serpent: Altuna and Ardre VIII in Sweden, Hørdum in Denmark, and the
Gosforth Cross in England (SPD 2013, Þórr’s fishing expedition). The age of Altuna is unspecified
(SPD 2013, U1161),44 while Ardre VIII is broadly dated to the period 700–900 (SPD 2013, SHM
11118: VIII). The same broad dating is the case for the Hørdum stone, which is dated to the period
800–1250 (SPD 2013, NJy30),45 while the Gosforth Cross seems has been dated more narrowly to
900–950 (SPD 2013, Gosforth6). The myth is referred to in skaldic poetry by Ǫlvir hnúfa and Bragi
Boddason in the ninth century, by Gamli gnævaðarskáld and Eysteinn Valdason in the tenth century,
and by Úlfr Uggason in Húsdrápa, also in the tenth century (SPD 2013, Ǫlv; Bragi; Ggnæv; EVald;
ÚlfrU; Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, 10). The eddic poem Hymiskviða, possibly from the earlier parts of the
twelfth century (McKinnell 1994, 59; see also Simek 2007, 167), gives an account of the Fishing
Expedition as part of a pattern of competitions between Þórr and the jǫtunn Hymir in the stanzas 17
to 27. Finally, there is a prose version of the myth in Snorri’s Edda (Gylfaginning 48), where the tale
follows immediately after Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki, and it seems to have been incorporated into
a narrative whole that contextualizes the story in an exposition of the false divinity of the æsir, which
anticipates the demise of the gods and the coming of Ragnarǫk as part of the Christian worldview
(Clunies Ross 1994, 265). With this great variety of sources, all connected by oral tradition (Gísli
Sigurðsson 2004, 10-17), it seems that the myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition is the most widespread
myth of Old Norse mythology.
It has been pointed out by Meulengracht that there are relatively big differences in the elements
of the myth that are relayed by the various types of sources (Meulengracht 2002, 121–2). The myth
consists of the following elements: (1) Þórr gets ox-head as bait; (2) Þórr in boat; (3) Hymir in boat;
(4) Þórr and Hymir row out to sea; (5) the fishing line is baited with ox-head; (6) Þórr lets out fishing
line; (7) serpent below boat; (8) serpent bites fishing line; (9) fishing line tightens; (10) Þórr pulls
serpent; (11) serpent spits poison; (12) Þórr and serpent glare at each other; (13) Þórr raises hammer;
43
Meulengracht originally published this article in Words and Objects (1986), but I am using the posthumously published
version in The Poetic Edda. Essays on Old Norse Mythology (2002), by Carolyne Larrington and Paul Acker, due to the
usefulness of the introduction to the article written by the editors.
44 Otto von Friesen dated it to the 11th century in Tors fiske på en uppländsk runsten 1924, p. 425.
45 Brøndsted believes it is from the Viking Age in Thors fiskeri (1955, 102).
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(14) Þórr strikes serpent; (15) Þórr’s foot goes through boat hull; (16) Hymir cuts fishing line; (17)
serpent sinks back into the sea. These elements are distributed in the following manner:46
Figure 7: The distribution pattern of motif the elements of the Fishing Myth
Altuna
Ardre
VIII
Hørdum
Gosforth
Húsdrápa
Bragi
Hymiskv.
Gylf. 48
1
x
x
2
x
x
x
x
x
x
3
x
x
x
x
4
x
x
x
x
5
x
x
x
x
6
x
x
x
x
x
7
x
x
x
8
x
x
x
x
9
x
x
10
x
x
x
11
x
x
12
x
x
x
13
x
x
x
x
14
x
x
(x)1
15
x
x
x
16
x
x
17
x
x
x
The stanzas of Ǫlvir hnúfa, Gamli gnævaðarskáld and Eysteinn Valdason have intentionally not been included
in this schema.
1
It is unclear whether or not Þórr strikes the serpent in Gylfaginning.
The images of the picture-stones may be considered the earliest representation of the myth, since at
least the Gosforth Cross is from 900–950. They tell the tale of an anthropomorphic being sailing in a
boat (Altuna, Ardre VIII, Hørdum, Gosforth), who is accompanied by another anthropomorphic being
(Ardre VIII, Hørdum, Gosforth). The sailor is fishing (Altuna, Hørdum, Gosforth) for a large sea
creature (Altuna) and he means to strike it with a hammer (Altuna, Gosforth), while his companion
rushes to assist him (Hørdum).
For more than a century, a wide range of scholars have, in different capacities, argued that the
myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition may have Christian origin and find its immediate report in the
Biblical legend of Leviathan (deVries 1970, 142–3).47 The Christian context in which the myth is
found on the Gosforth Cross, coupled with the linguistic equation of Jǫrmungandr and Leviathan in
later translated religious literature in medieval Iceland, has certainly given credence to this position
The disposition for this schema is available at the Skaldic Project Database (SPD 2013, Þórr’s fishing expedition). I have
constructed the schema on the basis of a similar one that I have found among the notes that Preben Meulengracht Sørensen
collected for the original version of his article in 1986. These notes and the schema are in my personal archive.
47 The latest case is Örn Sævar Thorleifsson (2000), who dismisses the notion that the Miðgarðsormr is originally Nordic
and argues that it has been inspired by Leviathan (p. 422). He also dismisses the idea that Jǫrmungandr and Miðgarðsormr
should be the same mythic figure (p. 345). Eldar Heide dismisses Örn’s sentiments on the basis that his argumentation has
little substance and weak reasoning (Heide 2006, 260).
46
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(Simek 2007, 324–5). It is beyond the scope of this discussion to delve deeply into the arguments for
and against a possible Biblical origin of this myth or the motif of the celestial god and an aquatic
dragon in combat. It must, however, be pointed out that there is no sailor with a companion in a boat
in the Biblical versions of God’s battle with Leviathan. In the Book of Psalms 74:14, God brings the
sea to an uproar as He crushes the dragon heads of Leviathan: he masters the floods, masters day and
night, gives places to the sun and moon, sets the boundaries of Earth, and creates the seasons (Book
of Psalms 1992, 74:14). In the Book of Psalms 104:25, the poet simply mentions the sea and Leviathan
in conjunction, along with the humans sailing on the ocean and the animals in it, praising God for
having created the ocean.
The story of God and Leviathan is in its essence entirely different from the visible elements of
the story of the two anthropomorphic beings that are sailing in a boat, fishing for a sea creature on
the Scandinavian picture-stones. This is not a vision of a cosmic struggle as much as it is the image
of two fishermen or travelers dealing with the creatures that dwell in the sea. Is the raised hammer a
representation of the celestial god crushing the skull of the chthonic and aquatic monster, or is it an
image of a sailor having baited a large sea animal preparing to beat it over the head as he hauls it in?
Why would a celestial god be humbled to a place in a fishing vessel, when he started out by floating
above the waters? There are several reasonable questions that can be drawn from the assertion that
Þórr and Jǫrmungandr should be derived from the Biblical tale of God and Leviathan. In fact, the
conclusion that the fishing trip is derived from the Biblical narrative raises more questions than it
answers, the most important of which is: if it is derived directly from a Biblical narrative, why is it
only the motif that is shared, and not the names of characters, the original context of the tales and
their function in a cosmological sense? Why would the activity of fishing have been introduced in the
first place? It must therefore be concluded that even if this tale was originally conceived under
influence from the battle of God and Leviathan, it found an entirely new purpose and place in the
story-world of the North Atlantic.
A similar critique can be made of the later patristic interpretations of the images, where the
crucifixion is represented as Christ fishing for the Devil, using the cross as a hook (cf. Meulengracht
2002, 119–20 [foreword by Carolyne Larrington] and 122; Clunies Ross 1989, 10). The picturestones focus on the sailing characters—in the case of Ardre VIII, it is the only element—and they
seem to indicate that the fishermen are the important element; the image of the god/monster
confrontation is secondary to the image of the sailors at sea. Furthermore, the foot through the hull,
the presence of a second character with a hook or knife, and the raised hammer are not explained by
the interpretation of Christ fishing for the Devil, nor by the battle of God and Leviathan in the Bible.
80
The composite image of the picture-stones tells a wordless tale of two fishermen in a boat.
These men are engaged in an important and iconic activity to Scandinavian culture of all times: they
are collecting food at sea. The image is perfectly understandable in an independently-formulated,
native context which relies only on the features of life in tenth century, pre-Christian Scandinavia.
Since that is the case, the scene may not necessarily have much to say in terms of a cosmic struggle
that symbolizes the dichotomy of cosmos and chaos, as Meulengracht suggests (p. 134). The myth as
it appears in picture-stones may belong to a much more mundane, yet fundamentally more significant,
realm: the everyday action of procuring food and combatting the elements to survive. The two
fishermen on the picture-stones are not dispensing the order of things, or upholding the cosmos, any
more than they are catching their supper—but that is in itself a cosmological commentary. If we
approach the written sources, this notion may become much clearer.
In the skaldic sources, Meulengracht sees an effort to create a so-called ‘word-picture,’ a
description of the singular scene in which Þórr and Jǫrmungandr are face to face, staring at each other
(p.123). In Bragi’s version this scene is expressed thus: “Hamri forsk i hœgri hǫnd þar er allra landa
œgir Ǫflugbarða *endiseiðs *of kendi” (Ǫflugbarði’s terrifier heaved his hammer in the right hand,
when he saw the end-thread of all lands [Skáld. IV]). It is indicated that the critical moment of the
myth, which the skalds wanted to capture in this word-picture, was the situation where the god and
the monster of the sea meet face to face and glare into each other’s eyes. Meulengracht points out that
in Húsdrápa stanza 4, it says that Þórr’s eyes “skaut œgisgeislum” (shot rays of terror) and the serpent
stared with flashing eyes (Meulengracht 2002, 128). This singular focus on the meeting of Þórr and
Jǫrmungandr eye to eye was seemingly the most important element to the skalds.
The images conjured by these sources hardly seem to interest themselves with a similar type
of cosmic struggle as the one we hear about in a Biblical and Christian context. Here rather, it is a
face-to-face confrontation between the god and the creature of the sea. Of course, the skalds do
employ circumlocutions with cosmic overtones, especially those used for the serpent. Thus Bragi
calls Jǫrmungandr “allra landa endiseiðr” (the end-thread [of] all lands), Ǫlvir hnúfa calls him
“umgjorð allra landa” (the encircler [of] all lands), and Eysteinn Valdason calls him “jarðar seiðr”
(the earth-thread). These kennings suggest that Jǫrmungandr represents a spiritual quality of the
ocean. In his doctoral thesis Gand, seid og åndevind (2006, 260–4), Eldar Heide argues for the
interpretation of the name of the world serpent Jǫrmungandr as “den kjempestore tråden” (the giant
thread). Heide sees this name as parallel to *gandreyðr, which is derived from some disputed forms
(p. 28). According to Heide this word or name means trådfisken (the thread-fish) or trådkvalen (the
thread-whale). The kenning *gandreyðr landa from Hrafns saga, in the view of Heide, thus means
81
verds-trådfisken (the world-thread-fish) (p. 264), and this is consistent with the above kennings for
Jǫrmungandr (p. 262).
Heide’s overall conclusion is that the semantics of seiðr and gandr conflate with one another.
He notes that both may mean ‘thread,’ but gandr may have multiple meanings, among which are
åndeutsending (literally: sending-out-[of-]spirit) and (ånde)storm ([spirit-]storm) (p. 312), and—as
others have noted before him—the core semantic of gandr is “utsend ånd / sjel” (released spirit/soul)
(p. 308). It seems reasonable to suggest then, that ‘the Giant Thread/Spirit’ or ‘the WorldThread/Spirit-Fish,’ which is otherwise known as ‘the One Who Encircles All Lands,’ or as ‘the
Earth-Belt,’ is the spirit of the sea—the embodiment of the sea. The word-picture then, is that of the
sailor who glares into the depths of the sea as he is fishing in his boat. The living body of the sea
swells its salty waves to the gunwale and sprays its spindrift at the man staring fearlessly back.
This word-picture of the skaldic poetry is fully consistent with the images of the picture-stone.
Both types of sources express the same conception of a human’s, or an anthropomorphic being’s,
encounter with the aquatic element. Meulengracht supposes that it is an aesthetic difference between
the sources that results in another representation of the myth in skaldic poetry, where the moment of
a dramatic eye to eye meeting between Þórr an Jǫrmungandr is favored over the narrative sequence
that expounds the fishing activity in the way that it is seen both on the picture-stones and in the other
types of literature (Meulengracht 2002, 123). But in this interpretation, the sources are aligned and
express the same idea: the sea is a dangerous and powerful element that man must negotiate in order
to procure food. Meulengracht’s interpretation of the myth is that it is essentially a story of cosmic
proportions (p. 131–4). There is no reason that it should not be so, and that the myth should not
indicate cosmic relations, but there is much to suggest that the cosmic implications of this myth in all
senses are engaged with themes particular to the immediate factors of human existence rather than
ideas of eschatology and cosmic order in the sense of ‘the big picture’ that is offered in the universal
perspective of existence in the Christian worldview. Both Hymiskviða and the version of the myth in
Gylfaginning can shed light on this subject.
The narrative situation in Hymiskviða 17–27, where Þórr goes fishing for Jǫrmungandr, occurs
as part of a series of competitions between Þórr and Hymir, which follow a pattern of Þórr competing
with different jǫtnar (cf. McKinnell 1994, 58–86, especially 74–5; Clunies Ross 1989, 10). Þórr and
Týr have journeyed to the Élivágar “at himins enda” (at the end of heaven [Hkv. 5]) to fetch a cauldron
big enough for the æsir’s brew. In Gylfaginning III–IV, the Élivágar are icy rivers flowing from
Hvergelmir in Niflheimr. This interpretation is combined with the catalogue of rivers mentioned in
Grímnismál 27–8, and it seems to rely on Vafþrúðnismál 30–1. In Gylfaginning, the primeval jǫtunn
Aurgelmir is understood to be the same as Ymir who is created from the Élivágar gushing
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‘venomously’ cold ice from the waters, building a hrímþurs. Gylfaginning probably relies on the
information from Vafþrúðnismál 16 that the never-freezing river Ífing separates the æsir from the
jǫtnar, though it does not mention this name (see Simek 2007, 172). In this interpretation, the Élivágar
of Hymiskviða 5 seem to be the ice-cold proto-sea surrounding the world (p. 73). It is also in
Hymiskviða 5 that Týr says his father Hymir lives to the east of Élivágar at the end of heaven. When
Hymir is introduced in the poem we are told that his beard is frozen with icicles hanging from it
(Hkv.10). The theme of cold in Þórr’s and Hymir’s meeting is not further expanded upon in the poem,
but from the version of the Fishing Expedition in Gylfaginning, we learn that the coldness is a theme
in this myth, as Hymir says that Þórr will freeze out on the ocean (Gylf. XLVIII).
To Clunies Ross in Snorri Sturluson’s use of the Norse origin-legend of the sons of Fornjótr in
his Edda (1983), there is no doubt that Hymir is firmly linked with the quality of coldness (p. 50).
When Þórr has fought Hrungnir in their duel and comes to Gróa to have her chant the piece of the
whetstone out of his head, he tells her that he waded south across Élivágar back from the Jǫtunheimar
with her husband Aurvandill in a basket. The man’s toe had been sticking out of the basket and
became frozen, so Þórr broke it off and threw it into the sky to make a star (Skáld. XVII). This
situation is mirrored in Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns, where the hero Þorsteinn, derived from Þórr,
crosses a river that is so cold that it causes his toe to freeze. This river is the border to Geirrǫðr’s
lands and it is related how its freezing temperatures make any limb that touches it immediately
gangrenous (Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns 1954, V).
These are the later interpretative traditions of the Élivágar, consequently understood as ‘the
stormy waves,’ and thus associated with the sea or rushing rivers. In the following chapter on
volcanism in Iceland, we will explore how the early image of the Élivágar in Vafþrúðnismál 30–1
seems to share a connection to volcanism, rather than the cold sea, but in this context the interpretation
of the Élivágar as the sea is a reasonable disposition. There is nothing to hinder a dual association of
the Élivágar both with the sea and with a volcanic event, especially given that volcanism is often
described in water analogies (see below in chapter IV, pages 133-141).
In Hymiskviða, Hymir announces that he and Þórr will have to go hunt for food in order to
sustain them all while Þórr and Týr are visiting. This is because of Þórr’s great appetite, which
prompted the god to gorge down two oxen at dinner. Þórr then proclaims that he wishes to go fishing,
and the jǫtunn tauntingly says that he can go get his bait among the ox herd (Hkv. 17–8). Stanza 19
describes how Þórr tears the head off an ox to use it for bait, and Hymir comments: “Verc þiccia þín
verri myclo, kióla valdi, enn þú kyrr sitir” (Your deed seems much worse to the ruler of ships, than if
you sit still [Hkv. 19]).
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In Gylfaginning, the object is not a contest between Hymir and Þórr: Þórr has gone to the sea
to purposefully confront the Miðgarðsormr and avenge the humiliation that he suffered at
Útgarðaloki’s hall—and he has done so “svá sem ungr drengr” (as a young boy [Gylf. XLVIII]).
Meulengracht interpolates this into the temporal frame of the Rangarǫk eschatology. In Bragi’s poem,
it is mentioned that Þórr’s confrontation with Jǫrmungandr took place snimma (early), and to
Meulengracht this means that the fight takes place early in the mythic sequence of cosmic time
(Meulengracht 2002, 133–4). This may well be, but the indications of age both in Hymiskviða and in
Gylfaginning reveal an interesting relational dynamic between Hymir and Þórr. It must also be
pointed out that, regardless of the formulation “svá sem,” Þórr is dealt with as a young boy in both
narratives. Hymiskviða indicates a generation gap between Þórr and Týr on the one side, and the jǫtnar
they are visiting on the other side. In stanza 8, Týr is greeted in Hymir’s hall by his grandmother, and
he is referred to as sonr (son) in stanza 11. In stanza 10, it is indicated that Hymir is bearded as wouldbe an older man, coming inside the hall with frost in his beard, and in stanza 16 he is referred to as
grey-haired. In Gylfaginning this generation gap is openly expressed when Hymir calls Þórr small
and just a youth, and says that he will get cold out on the journey: “En Hymir sagði at lítil liðsemð
mundi at honum vera er hann var lítill ok ungmenni eitt. ‘Ok mun þik kala ef ek sit svá lengi ok
útarliga sem ek em vanr.’” (But Hymir said that he would be of little use since he was so small and a
young man. “And you will get cold if I sit as long and as far out as I am used to” [Gylf. XLVIII]). In
light of this articulated age difference and thus the suggestion of unreliability and weakness, the fact
that Þórr tears the head off an ox has great technical implications: it is the expression of the young
man’s (provoked) desire to prove himself. In his attempt to prove himself, he kills a very expensive
animal with great economic potential, both in terms of producing more cattle and in terms of its own
food-value. Therefore, Hymir, unaware of (or unwilling to recognize) Þórr’s might and status,
comments as he does in Hymiskviða 19 (Gylfaginning leaves it out). Þórr’s action is foolish; the
killing of an ox to provide bait for fishing is a pointless expenditure. You get less reward at greater
cost and it is a horrible deed in the eyes of the fisherman, the ruler of ships (Hkv. 19).
The pattern of the young man’s desire to prove his worth continues as they row further and
further out. Hymiskviða 20 states simply that Hymir is not eager to go further out at sea: “enn sá
iǫtunn sína talði litla fýsi at róa lengra” (but the jǫtunn said for his part that he was uneager to row
further [Hkv. 20]). Gylfaginning is more expansive:
Þórr gekk á skipit ok settisk í austrrúm, tók tvær árar ok røri, ok þótti Hymi skriðr verða
af róðri hans. Hymir reri í halsinum fram ok sóttisk skjótt róðrinn. Sagði þá Hymir at
þeir váru komnir á þær vaztir er hann var vanr at sitja ok draga flata fiska, en Þórr kvezk
vilja róa myklu lengra, ok tóku þeir enn snertiróðr. Sagði Hymir þá at þeir váru komnir
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svá langt út at hætt var at sitja útar fyrir Miðgarðsormi. En Þórr kvezk mundu róa eina
hríð ok svá gerði, en Hymir var þá allókátr.
(Þórr went onboard the ship and sat himself in the well, took two oars and started rowing,
and Hymir thought that his rowing had momentum. Hymir rowed in the prow and the
rowing went fast. Then Hymir said that they had come to the place where he usually sat
and dragged flat fish, but Þórr said that he wanted to row much further out, and they took
another spurt. Then Hymir said that they had come so far out that it was unsafe to sit
further out because of the Miðgarðsormr. But Þórr said that he wanted to row a bit more
and so he did, but then Hymir was very unhappy [Gylf. XLVIII]).
The will to prove himself inspires Þórr to row far out beyond the usual fishing grounds that Hymir is
familiar with. At this point a second relational element is introduced: fear. Hymir has, presumably
because of Þórr’s appearance as a young boy, underestimated Þórr’s courage and his willingness to
take chances. Now Hymir is paying the price of his pride by having his limits challenged by someone
whom he thought less able than himself. In Hymiskviða Hymir is simply uneasy with the situation
and stanza 25 tells that after Þórr caught Jǫrmungandr and they were rowing back, Hymir was very
unhappy. Gylfaginning tells a different version: “Þá er sagt at jǫtunninn Hymir gerðisk litverpr,
fǫlnaði, ok hræddisk er hann sá orminn ok þat er særinn fell út ok inn of nǫkkvann. Ok í því bili er
Þórr greip hamarinn ok fœrði á lopt þá fálmaði jǫtunninn til agnsaxinu ok hjó vað Þórs af borði, en
ormrinn søktisk í sæinn.” (Then it is said that the jǫtunn Hymir changed color, became pale and
became scared when he saw the serpent and that the sea fell in and out of the boat. And in the same
instance as Þórr took the hammer and raised it aloft, then the jǫtunn grasped for the bait-knife and cut
Þórr’s catch from the gunwale, and the serpent sank into the sea [Gylf. XLVIII]).
Both in Hymiskviða and in Gylfaginning there is a human-to-human relational dynamic based
on age, skill, and courage, which centers on the activity of catching fish at sea. In Hymiskviða stanza
21, Hymir hauls two whales aboard and subsequently Þórr surpasses him in skill by catching the
Miðgarðsormr, not only the largest fish in the sea, but the sea itself. The sequence in stanzas 17–27
is a comment on the activity of gathering food at sea, as it outlines the proportional relationship
between daring to complete a task, being capable of it, and successfully completing it, in the context
of the fishing trip.
In Two of Þórr’s Great Fights (1989), Clunies Ross points out that the gods live only as hunters,
while Hymir and his world also includes pastoral activities. She sees the events of Hymiskviða as an
exploitative situation in which the gods as a superior hunter-gatherer aristocracy act as opportunists
using their wits, strength, and mobility to appropriate the goods of the pastoralists (p. 21). It is an
image of cunning nomads preying on sedentary dwellers. While the overarching purpose of Þórr’s
journey is certainly to obtain the cauldron that Hymir harbors, it seems unlikely that Scandinavians
of the Viking Age and medieval period, living off a mixed economy of farming and pastoral activities
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supplemented by hunting and fishing (Bender Jørgensen 2002), would formulate a disposition for a
tale in which a hunter-gatherer society would prey on farmers and pastoralists, and not function as
the antagonists of the narrative. With such a mixed economy, the image based on antagonism between
modes of resource exploitation would not accurately represent their society.
In fact, if Hymiskviða sets forth a representational modality other than one that can be aligned
with Christianity (Clunies Ross 1989, 23), which is to say a pagan one, it seems unlikely that, unless
that paganism in Hymiskviða is understood as otherness in a polemic Christian discourse, the
dichotomization of the hunter vs. the pastoralist farmer seems more likely to be a comment on how
to make use of food as a scarce resource in an economical way. As mentioned above: it is foolish and
a waste to catch fish with ox-meat.
This distinction between hunters and agricultural pastoralists expressed as otherness in
connection with paganism is in fact found elsewhere in Old Norse literature. A primary example
would be the dichotomy of Þorfinn karlsefni and Þórhallr veiðimaðr in Eiríks saga rauða. The
antagonism between the two men—who both have Þórr-names—is expressed in religious terms, but
also in a strife over food and sustenance. During a food crisis, Þórhallr prays to Þórr for food and he
receives a whale. The whale turns out to be rancid and the men become sick. Matters worsen as
Þórhallr tells them that he has obtained it through help from Þórr. This makes the largely Christian
traveling party throw the rest of the meat out (Eiríks saga rauða 1935, VIII).
Þorfinn’s epithet ‘karlsefni’ (man’s ability/quality) as opposed to Þórhallr’s ‘veiðimaðr’
(huntsman) suggests a dichotomy between civilized agricultural or pastoral activities, and the more
primitive activity of hunter-gatherers. The pagan huntsman is a marginalized figure, a denizen of the
periphery. The rich, Christian explorer who establishes civilization (builds houses) in Vínland, on the
other hand, is the social epicenter, hence his epithet ‘karlsefni.’ This dichotomy is further underscored
by Þórhallr’s preference for going north in search for food. Þórhallr only convinces nine of the men
to follow him, while the rest follow Þorfinn to the south to establish the Vínland civilization (cap.
IX). These directional preferences refer to the tendency of placing otherness in the North. In this tale,
the dichotomization between pastoralists and hunters is completed when Þorfinn and his company
bring with them a large bull that scares and sparks enmity with the natives who represent a similar
hunter-gatherer culture as the pagans (cap. XI). The natives in Vínland and the pagans inhabit the
same conceptual space in the rim of the cosmos alongside giants and pygmies.
The underlying mythic pattern of Þórr and Hymir is clear in Þorfinn’s journey to Vínland: the
appropriation of a large sea creature by a pagan huntsman who receives it from Þórr is contrasted
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with a Christian héros civilisateur, who brings pastoralism48 and housing to Vínland–and fights the
native hunter-gatherers. In this tale, however, a choice has been made in terms of association:
agriculture and pastoralism are civilized and belong to proper Christian men, while relying on the
gods to bring you food from the sea is pagan. This is a comment on the tale of Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition.49 Here, this exposition simply serves to note that the dichotomy between hunters and
pastoralists that Clunies Ross sees in Hymiskviða only can be functional if paganism is accepted as a
complete otherness, as it is the case in Eiríks saga rauða. One may assume that it is generally a
different situation in eddic poetry, where the æsir are largely positively portrayed as protagonists.
Rather it seems that what has indeed been turned into a cultural and civilizational strife in Eiríks
saga rauða may have started out as a myth about fishing in Hymiskviða and to some extent in
Gylfaginning. It is clear that Gylfaginning contextualizes the Fishing Expedition in the Christianized
eschatology of Ragnarǫk, and that, as a continuation of the preceding narrative events in Útgarðar, it
functions as a comment or criticism of paganism and the æsir (Meulengracht 2002, 134; Clunies Ross
1989, 22). This new aspect of criticizing paganism seems to be carried over to other related tales. This
will be examined below, but before we do so, it seems appropriate to return to the picture-stones to
understand the above-described relational dynamics between Þórr and Hymir.
The only possible pagan pre-medieval/Viking Age source, the Hørdum picture-stone, depicts
the figure that is interpreted as Hymir attempting to cut the fishing line. As one man is fishing, the
other man seems to be rushing towards him with a hook in his hand. From the story in Gylfaginning,
as given above, we speculate that this is the panicking Hymir who is cutting the line with a bait-knife.
But the information about the instrument is quite different from the image on the Hørdum stone. The
rounded hook-shape that the person is holding in his hand on the Hørdum stone is not comparable to
what Gylfaginning describes as an agnsax (Gylf. XLVIII). Rather, the Hørdum stone seems to
intentionally depict a hook, and given the fact that a hook certainly would not be the first choice to
quickly cut a fishing line with, it seems reasonable to question whether the character with the hook
actually intends to cut the line. Perhaps it is his intention to use a hook to haul in the catch, rather than
to cut the line.
In Prolonged Echoes vol. 1, Margaret Clunies Ross argues that the Fishing Expedition is
ingrained in a narrative frame that anticipates Ragnarǫk. She links the three main narratives of
Gylfaginning: the Journey to Útgarðaloki, Þórr’s Fishing Expedition, and Baldr’s Death, to the frame
of Ragnarǫk and states that it is significant that Hár favors a version of the Fishing Myth in which
In this context it should not be overlooked that “hvalr” can be used in kennings for oxen (Meissner 1921, 111).
Kabell (1976) has also noted this dichotomy of a monster and an ox, but he relates it to Jewish tales that may have
spread to the North.
48
49
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Þórr loses his catch (Clunies Ross 1994, 265). The only reason Þórr loses his catch in this telling is
because Hymir cuts the line with a bait-knife. Yet in the only pre-medieval source, the only tool that
appears other than the fishing line is a hook. It thus seems perfectly valid to question the supposition
that Hymir foiled Þórr’s attempt to catch the Miðgarðsormr in order to save the cosmic order
(Meulengracht 2002, 133–4), and simply see this notion as a product of the applied frame of Ragnarǫk
in the eschatology of Gylfaginning. It is in Gylfaginning, with its primary source of Vǫluspá, that the
overall ‘bird’s eye perspective’ on Old Norse mythology is developed, and Jǫrmungandr is assigned
the same type of cosmic role as the deep sea demon Leviathan, when it is postulated that Alfǫðr cast
him into the sea (Gylf. XXXIV; cf. von See 1988; Holtsmark 1964; Baetke 1950).
Taken out of the cosmological and eschatological frame, the myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition
is a tale that may have much more immediate significance to an audience of tenth century
Scandinavians, but certainly also to an audience of thirteenth century Icelanders. The central theme
of the myth is that of the sailors’ and fishermen’s negotiations with the open sea. Hymiskviða states
initially that the purpose of the Fishing Expedition is to catch food, and in the images on the picturestones this is certainly affirmed by the depictions of fishing lines and bait. Even the skalds, although
more concerned with the scene of the dramatic encounter between the god and the sea, recognize the
fishing activity as a strong element. Also in the myth, the subject of too little, enough, and too much
courage is addressed. Similarly, the practical subject of too little, enough, and too much bait is also
addressed. The subject of courage sets focus on the dangers at sea, while the subject of bait adds the
focus of procuring food and using resources wisely. Þórr and Hymir each play their part as
representatives of two extremes. Þórr is young, eager, and insensitive to caution at sea, while Hymir
is old, hostile, and too overwhelmed with caution in his dealings with the sea. Fear plays a strong role
in the narratives, and it is underlined by comic relief: when Þórr tears the head off the ox in
Hymiskviða and Hymir says it would be better if he had just sat in his seat, it is a comically
underplayed response to a ridiculous hyperbole. Likewise, it is a comic double standard that Hymir
taunts Þórr for being young and small and sensitive to cold, when he is himself afraid of going further
out than his usual fishing grounds. The fishing grounds where Hymir would normally sit and catch
flatfish may be the shallows nearest to land, where Scandinavians would usually encounter such
flatfish as dabs and types of flounder. It is only the halibut and the turbot that are known to go into
the deep sea. There is of course the possibility that the myth takes this into account, and therefore by
assuming that the jǫtunn, who takes in whales, is afraid of going further out than the very deep sea,
the distance that Þórr reaches is so far out to sea that the depths are unthinkable. Regardless of the
scale in terms of depths and distance, the difference between Hymir’s and Þórr’s preferred fishing
grounds is the essence of this scene, and it demonstrates the comic double standard of the narrative.
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With its theme of apprehension, the myth addresses two types of fear that the fisherman must
relate to and negotiate in his dealings with the sea: the fear of losing your life at sea and the fear of
hunger. The first type of fear will promote cowardice and prevent the fisherman from taking chances,
while the second type of fear may lead to being imprudent and promote reckless and daring behavior
in times of distress. Daring and reckless behavior can be both good and bad. We see Þórr being
reckless when he tears the head off the ox, but in turn he capitalizes immensely from his daring
behavior at sea: he rows further out and “við vélar vað gorði sér” (cunningly laid out his line [Hkv.
21]). While Hymir may catch a couple of whales, Þórr catches the largest creature of the sea—its
spirit.
In this way, this myth addresses the most important factors of journeying and collecting food
at sea, which a maritime or partially maritime society will wish to preserve. The subject of too little,
too much, or enough fear in hunting, fishing, and food gathering is the most basic subject in a preindustrial context, where the acquisition of food relies on individual skills rather than trade and mass
production—and the need to address this correctly is possibly the epitome of the hunter-gatherer’s
and early farmer’s mind: the appropriate portion of fear combined with the appropriate portion of
daring leads to good results. That such a mindset was regarded as wise in context of Old Norse
mythology is attested in Hávamál. Stanza 48 warns against being an “ósnjallr maðr” (cowardly man)
who is afraid of everything, and stanzas 54–6 extol the “meðalsnótr maðr” (averagely wise man) as
the desirable male archetype. This mindset may be illustrated thus:
Enough: no death from hunger;
no death from accidents.
FEAR
Too much:
risk of death
from hunger
Figure 8: The three aspects of fear of hunger.
Too little: risk of
death from hunger;
risk of death from
accidents.
On the basis of this interpretation, it seems reasonable to conclude that the myth of Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition may have played a central role in Viking Age and early Scandinavian society. It may even
have been the most important myth to a large part of the Scandinavian population. It is a formidable
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example of the preservation of Cultural Memory and an eco-myth in the Mythical Charter of
Tradition. The myth is a cornucopia of technical knowledge that can be applied directly to living
conditions in the North Atlantic. With the mention of the flatfish it even indicates where a certain
type of fish can be located in the space of the sea. It is in no way surprising to apply this myth to a
mundane situation, rather than the context of eschatology that it is assigned in Gylfaginning. When
one compares it with another myth of the events leading up to Ragnarǫk in Gylfaginning, the search
for Loki after he caused the death of Baldr, the technical, mundane function seems right at hand. As
Loki had escaped the æsir and found his way to a secluded area, he sat by the fireplace and tied linen
together into a net. By doing so he invented the fishing net. Realizing that the gods had spotted him
and were on their way, he threw it into the fire and jumped into the Fránangrsfors and tried to escape
in the shape of a salmon (laxlíki). Kvasir50 recognizes the shape of the net in the fire and the gods
make a net just like the one Loki made. Then the story goes:
Ok er búit var netit þá fara Æsir til árinnar ok kasta neti í forsinn. Helt Þórr enda ǫðrum
ok ǫðrum heldu allir Æsir ok drógu netit. En Loki fór fyrir ok legsk niðr í milli steina
tveggja. Drógu þeir netit yfir hann ok kendu at kykt var fyrir ok fara í annat sinn upp til
forsins ok kasta út netinu ok binda við svá þungt at eigi skyli undir mega fara. Ferr þá
Loki fyrir netinu, en er hann sér at skamt var til sævar þá hleypr hann upp yfir þinulinn
ok rennir upp í forsinn. Nú sá Æsirnir hvar hann fór, fara enn upp til forsins ok skipta
liðinu í tvá staði, en Þórr veðr þá eptir miðri ánni ok fara svá til sævar. En er Loki sér
tvá kosti—var þat lífs háski at hlaupa á sæinn, en hitt var annarr at hlaupa enn yfir netit—
ok þat gerði hann, hljóp sem snarast yfir netþinulinn. Þórr greip eptir honum ok tók um
hann ok rendi hann í hendi honum svá at staðar nam hǫndin við sporðinn. Ok er fyrir þá
sǫk laxinn aptrmjór.
(And when the net was done then the æsir went to the river and cast the net out into the
waterfall. Þórr held one end and all the æsir the other and they dragged the net. But Loki
went in front of it and tucked himself between two stones. They dragged the net over
him and realized that there was something alive down there and the second time they
went up to the waterfall they cast out the net and held it down so heavily that nothing
could pass beneath it. Then Loki went in front of the net and when he saw that there was
only a short distance to the sea, he jumped over the net and swam up into the waterfall.
Now the æsir saw where he was going, they went back up to the waterfall and separated
into two groups, but Þórr waded after them in the middle of the river and they headed
towards the sea. And when Loki saw that he had two choices—to risk his life in the sea
or to try once more to jump over the net—this is what he did: he jumped quickly over
the net. Þórr reached out for him and gripped around him and he slithered in his hand so
that the hand grasped by the tail. And this is why the salmon is thinner by the tail [Gylf.
L]).
50
In the chapter on volcanism, we will see that Kvasir plays the primary role of the embodiment of Cultural Memory in
connection with volcanism, see chapter IV, pages 159-167.
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This story of the æsir’s search for Loki is in essence Þórr’s second fishing trip, as it is primarily Þórr
who leads the hunt. Interestingly, this narrative not only instructs in the making of a fishing net, it
also gives detailed instructions on how to fish for salmon in a river. It details how it is useful to weigh
down the net so that nothing can slip under it; it gives indications as to where it is useful to stand
when fishing for salmon (waterfall); it details salmon behavior in rivers (jumping); and it indicates a
technique of wading in the water, perhaps to scare the fish in a certain direction. It also retains the
important information that the salmon will not turn back out to sea (because they are going upstream
to spawn). There may even be a detail hidden in this story concerning the behavior of bears catching
salmon in Þórr’s wading in the water. The bear will wade into the water and snatch the salmon when
it jumps, either with its mouth or with a paw. Þórr is also known under the name Bjǫrn in the þulur
(Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning 1973 I, 660). This is another example of an eco-myth that
retains technical knowledge about catching fish under certain circumstances. Þórr and Loki both seem
to have their place in this complex of gathering food at sea, and it seems to reach further into the
legendary myths, considering the pre-history of the Sigurðr Fáfnisbáni story. The events that lead to
Fáfnir becoming a greedy dragon in possession of a gold treasure begin with Loki catching a salmon
and afterwards an otter by throwing a rock. The otter turns out to be the son of the farmer Hreiðmar
and the brother of Regin and Fáfnir. They demand wergild for him, and Loki is therefore sent by
Óðinn to Svartálfheimr where he catches the dwarf Andvari, who lives in a lake there in the guise of
a fish (Skáld. 39; Rgm. 1–5). For this mythical tradition to preserve several narratives that associate
with fishing activities and their technical aspects is not surprising given the many fishing
opportunities there are in Scandinavia and Iceland.
The myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition takes its place in the Mythical Charter of Tradition
among these technical myths that preserve important Cultural and Collective Memory. The fact that
it is represented in picture-stones from the Scandinavian diaspora in Britain all the way to Gotland in
modern day Sweden, and that it occurs in literary forms in medieval Iceland, suggests that it was a
myth that Scandinavians could relate to and seamlessly reproduce in various forms over centuries,
regardless of social changes. In fact, it seems that this myth was so important and carried so much
meaning in early medieval Scandinavia that it, along with its main character Þórr, was chosen to carry
the most important social change in medieval Scandinavia: the conversion to Christianity.
In the following we shall examine how the memory of Þórr as a fishing god and provider of
food and good weather conditions at sea seems to have played an important role in other literary
sources. Above, it has already been noted that it seems the stories of the Vínland expeditions carry an
echo of the Fishing Myth. This echo also resonates with Christian moralizing against the old religion,
and given the widespread complex of narratives involving Þórr, sea journeys, and the theme of
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paganism in opposition to Christianity, this is no surprise. It seems that not only was it important to
reject Þórr specifically in certain conversion narratives, it was also an obvious choice to construct
conversion narratives in direct relation to his exploits at sea.
ÞÓRR’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SEA IN OTHER SOURCES
The association of Þórr with the sea occurs in several medieval literary sources of varying genres.
The earliest source that connects Þórr with seafaring is Dudo de St. Quentin’s Gesta Normannorum
seu de moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum from c. 1015. Dudo writes about the Norman
Vikings and claims that they sacrificed to Þórr for favorable winds (Gesta Normannorum 1996, II).
Landnámabók provides four examples of an association of Þórr with journeys at sea. The most
famous example may be Helgi inn magri Eyvindarson, who was a Christian but relied on Þórr at sea
and in times of hardship (Landn. 1968 II, CCXVIII [S]). Þórr guides the landnám of Þórólfr
Mostrarskegg (vol. I, cap. LXXXV [S]; LXXIII [H]; XXV [M]) and Kráku-Hreiðarr Ófeigsson (vol.
II, cap. CXCVII [S]; CLXIV [H]), but in the Hauksbók version of Landnámabók there is an instance
of him failing to do the same for a man named Kollr (vol. 1, cap. XV [H]). The obviously Christianbiased (Perkins 2001, 23) story of Kollr pits Þórr against ‘biskúp Patrekr’ as patrons of seafaring.
Kollr invokes Þórr to guide him at sea while Ørlygr Hrappsson calls on Patrekr. Kollr is shipwrecked
and Ørlygr is safely guided to Patreksfjǫrðr.
Among the saga material there are three cases where Þórr holds sway over seafaring. Eyrbyggja
saga retells the landnám of Þórólfr (Eyrb. 1935, IV) with no notable deviations from Landnámabók.
As mentioned earlier, Þórr—hinn rauðskeggjaði (the red-bearded)—acts as a provider of food for
Þórhallr veiðimaðr, causing strife among the pagans and the Christians in Eiríks saga rauða. In
Flóamanna saga (Flóam: ÍF 13 1991, XX-XXII), the hero Þorgils used to make sacrifices to Þórr,
but when Christianity came to Iceland, he converted to the new faith. This angered his old patron,
causing Þórr to persecute him. Þorgils gets tidings from Eiríkr rauði and decides to go to Greenland,
but Þórr comes to him in a dream and threatens him with a storm at sea. This does not, however, deter
Þorgils from leaving Iceland. At sea, the wind drops and Þorgils and his men are stranded for three
months. They begin to starve and run out of water. At this point, some of Þorgils’s men suggest that
they could make offerings to Þórr, but he refuses this and threatens to avenge such an act (cap. XXI).
Eventually Þorgils and his men wash ashore on a desert beach in Greenland.51
Another highly interesting comparison between the case of Þorgils and Þórr’s Fishing Expedition is in chapter eleven,
which tells how Þorgils rowed far out to sea as a young boy at the age of nine and caught a big flatfish (Flóam. XI). This
narrative seems to have some comparison with the rowing scene in Gylfaginning.
51
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These different narratives combine Þórr with the ocean, seafaring, and not least the matter of
staving off hunger and thirst at sea. Dudo’s account tells of a situation where Þórr receives human
sacrifices for favorable winds, and in Landnámabók, Þórr’s role is to guide seafaring Icelanders,
sometimes in competition with Christian icons. In the saga literature the matter becomes a bit more
complex as Þórr seems to master the bounties of the sea in Eiríks saga rauða, and to some extent also
in Flóamanna saga where he causes hunger and thirst. There are two traditions in the literary sources:
one that seems to recollect the role that Þórr has played for seafarers in the Viking Age, and another—
Christian—tradition of the medieval period that purposefully deconstructs Þórr’s abilities as a god of
seafaring and fishing. The cases of Kollr, Þórhallr and Þorfinn, and not least Þorgils, certainly indicate
that Þórr was a force to be reckoned with at sea (i.e. Perkins 2001, 18–26), and subsequently one to
be discredited in tales biased towards the Christian mission.
A notable feature of several of the tales about seafaring Icelanders and their dealings with Þórr
as a sea god is that the protagonists have Þórr-names. These Þorsmenn seem to be archetypal
worshipers of Þórr, appearing in narratives to process, in literary form, what may be termed the
Christian religious trauma of an early Icelandic belief that Þórr, because of his role in the myth of the
Fishing Expedition, was instrumental in the landnám. In Eiríks saga rauða, we have even seen the
Þórr character split in two, as if it were the case that early Icelanders told a tale of Þórr having guided
them and sustained them on their journeys to Vínland, inspiring later storytellers of the Christian
persuasion to split the Þórr character in two, as Þórr-the-huntsman who goes north and as Þórr-thecolonist who goes south.
Another set of narratives attach themselves to this complex. These are the tales that directly or
indirectly connect with Þórr mythology: the tale of Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki and Saxo’s tale of
Thorkillus. In the following these narratives will be examined in relation to the Fishing Myth and the
mythic complex of Þórr as a sea god.
ÞÓRR’S JOURNEY TO ÚTGARÐALOKI
Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki is the longest narrative about a god in Edda. Clunies Ross and
Meulengracht regard the narrative as an “elaboration of the idea at the centre of the story of Þórr’s
fishing-expedition” (Clunies Ross 1989, 22), and “a variant of the fishing-trip myth” (Meulengracht
2002, 131). As noted earlier, Clunies Ross (1994, 265) sees Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki, Snorri’s
version of Þórr’s unsuccessful Fishing Expedition, and the tale of Baldr’s Death as a trio of carefully
selected narratives that in different ways expose the fallibility of the æsir. Prior to the tale of the
Journey to Útgarðaloki, the æsir have told tales of the best horse among them, Sleipnir, and the best
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ship Skiðblaðnir. Gylfi thus asks if Þórr—the strongest of the æsir—has ever been overcome by magic
or strength (Gylf. XLIII), and this prompts the three æsir to produce the tale of Þórr’s Journey to
Útgarðaloki. This is a consequence of the motif of the head-ransom, which Beyschlag has argued is
at the root of the literary form in Gylfaginning, presumably taken from Vafþrúðnismál (Beyschlag
1954; Lindow 2000, 173). The Journey to Útgarðaloki, the Fishing Expedition, and Baldr’s Death,
arguably the heart of Gylfaginning (Frog 2011, 18), thus constitute the beginning of the end. After
the story of the Fishing Expidition, where Þórr has failed, the æsir relate the tale of Baldr’s Death,
which is essentially the story of the death of the perfect god (Gylf. XXIII). Baldr’s Death leads directly
to the destruction of the æsir’s society in Ragnarǫk. Together, the three stories form an exposition of
the æsir’s inability to control natural forces and death. In the Journey to Útgarðaloki, Þórr and his
company face wildfire, sea, thought, and old age as adversaries. With the exception of thought, these
are natural forces beyond social control, and the æsir are proven to be powerless in this novelistic tale
(Mogk 1923; see also Liberman 1992, 94–9), which seems to have as a later thematic analogue the
fourteenth century English poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In this poem, Sir Gawain
travels to a land of giants, ruled by the Green Knight, and here he discovers that he is a mere human
bound by the same laws as everyone else. Even if Þórr might not, then most certainly the reader may
take the same lesson from the Journey to Útgarðaloki (Clunies Ross 1994, 266–7): Þórr is a mere
human.
As noted earlier, it seems that Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki shares a common story pattern
with Hymiskviða and Þórr’s Visit to Geirrøðr (McKinnell 1994, 59). John McKinnell argues that
where Hymiskviða may have been the popular version and Þórr’s Visit to Geirrøðr—especially in the
skaldic form—could have been an aristocratic version of this common story pattern, the Journey to
Útgarðaloki seems to have been a satiric version (p. 67–8). As with Hymiskviða and Þórr’s Visit to
Geirrøðr, the Journey to Útgarðaloki is constructed around the plot of Þórr visiting a jǫtunn’s hall
(Frog 2011, 19). The narrative has a tripartite structure where Þórr and Loki first encounter a peasant
and his family, next they cross the Úthaf and meet the giant Skrýmir, and at last Þórr and his company
come to Útgarðaloki’s hall and are tricked there (p. 18; Lindow 2000, 173–80).52
The journey is a series of tests that the god endures in the worlds in which he travels. The first
one to test Þórr is Þjálfi, the representative of the human world, who breaks the bone of one of Þórr’s
goats. This is described in the narrative as a situation where Þórr has to manage his fierce temper:
“Eigi þarf langt frá því at segja, vita megu þat allir hversu hræddr búandinn mundi vera
er hann sá at Þórr lét síga brýnnar ófan fyrir augan. En þat er sá augnanna, þá hugðisk
hann falla mundu fyrir sjóninni einni samt. Hann herði hendrnar at hamarskaptinu svá at
52
On the tradition and structure of this tale, see also Chesnutt 1989.
94
hvítnuðu knúarnir, en búandinn gerði sem ván var ok ǫll hjúnin, kǫlluðu ákafliga, báðu
sér friðar, buðu at fyrir kvæmi allt þat er þau áttu. En er hann sá hræzlu þeira þá gekk af
honum móðrinn ok sefaðisk hann ok tók af þeim í sætt bǫrn þeira Þjálfa ok Rǫsku ok
gerðusk þau þá skyldu þjónustumenn Þórs ok fylgja þau honum jafnan síðan”
(There is little reason to say much about this, everyone knows how terrified the peasant
must have become when he saw Þórr’s brows sink before his eyes. And when he saw the
eyes then he thought that he would crumble under his glance. He hardened his grip
around the handle of the hammer so much that the knuckles went white, and the peasant
and his household did as would be expected and pleaded for grace, and offered to atone
with all their belongings. And when he saw their terror then his anger left him and he
calmed down and took instead of them their children Þjálfi and Rǫskva and he made it
so that they would be his servants and they have followed him ever since [Gylf. XLIV]).
In his article Thor’s Visit to Útgardaloki (2000) John Lindow argues that Þórr is reacting in a manner
that is fully consistent with his nature as a protector of humans. If Þórr had killed the peasants he
would have reacted like a jǫtunn: instead he enters an agreement, accepting Þjálfi and Rǫskva as his
servants (p. 174). This situation is in two ways completely the opposite of the next test that occurs
across the Úthaf, where Þórr meets Skrýmir. When he is in Miðgarðr, the potent god is able to provide
the humans with food, his hammer is a fearsome weapon, and he can restrain his temper. When Þórr
and his companions enter the foreign world, after having journeyed through the Jǫtunheimar and
crossed the deep sea, he faces challenges that are impossible for him to overcome: his abilities to
provide food are foiled, his powerful weapon loses its might, and as a result of his powerlessness he
becomes increasingly hysterical.
As Skrýmir playfully tests Þórr while they journey through the woods, it becomes apparent that
those elements which are in the god’s command in the world that he came from are out of his control
in the otherworld. Lindow points out that when Þórr and Loki sought a place to stay in the world of
people, they found an inhabited house where hospitality was immediately offered, but what they
believe to be a house in the otherworld is not only uninhabited, it is merely Skrýmir’s glove (p. 175).
In addition, Lindow sees a “Snorronic joke” in the belief of Þórr and his companions that Skrýmir’s
snoring is an earthquake. This is a contradiction to the information later in Gylfaginning that reveals
that earthquakes are caused by the bound Loki beneath the earth (p. 176). 53 Both instances are
examples of how the familiar—that which is in Þórr’s control—is turned upside down on the opposite
side of the Úthaf.
Prior to this narrative, Gylfaginning has described the world of the gods in detail, and it has
given indications of certain norms among gods and humans, such as hospitality. But the world beyond
the Úthaf is another world altogether and so an earthquake, like hospitality, is not controlled by the
53
It is, however, not in harmony with the linear perspective to the eschatology of Gylfaginning. It is late in the progression
towards Ragnarǫk that Loki is bound.
95
gods. This is also indicated in the fear that Þórr apparently feels when he means to defend himself.
When he sees the size of Skrýmir, he is no longer eager to attack him (Gylf. XLV).
Þórr’s ability to provide food is taken away from him soon after he meets Skrýmir. When they
come ashore it is Þjálfi who carries the food, and it is told that he is the quickest among men: “Þjálfi
var allra manna fóthvatastr. Hann bar kýl Þórs” (Þjálfi was the fastest of all men. He carried Þórr’s
knapsack [Gylf. XLV]). But when they decide to go with Skrýmir through the forest, it is the giant
who takes over carrying the knapsack, and the æsir have a hard time keeping up with him because he
takes long steps (cap. XLV). Þjálfi and Skrýmir are thus parallelized, the latter taking over the
responsibility that was relegated to the former, Þórr’s servant. And Skrýmir proves to be much more
difficult to deal with in this capacity. Lindow notes that Þórr becomes almost impotent in his meeting
with Skrýmir, because the giant steals the food from the æsir and Mjǫllnir is ineffective against him.
In fact, Mjǫllnir is compared to leaves and twigs (Lindow 2000, 176–7). This is a strong contrast to
the situation with the peasant and his family in the beginning, in Miðgarðr where Þórr was powerful.
Before heading off, Skrýmir warns Þórr about Útgarðaloki and his men:
“Heyrt hefi ek at þér hafið kvisat í milli yðvar at ek væra ekki lítill maðr vexti, en sjá
skuluð þér þar stœrri menn ef þér komið í Útgarð. Nú mun ek ráða yðr heilræði: látið þér
eigi stórliga yfir yðr. Ekki munu hirðmenn Útgarðaloka vel þola þvílíkum kǫgursveinum
kǫpuryrði”
(I have heard that you have been whispering among yourselves that I am not of small
size, but if you go to Útgarðr you will see men there who are even bigger. Now I will
give you advice to your health: don’t act too big with them. Útgarðaloki’s warriors will
not tolerate such things from children [Gylf. XLV]).
The narrative has been building towards this, and now it is finally revealed that Þórr is in over his
head; he is in a different world than he is used to, and his ways and abilities are useless there. The
narrative establishes a dichotomy between the world from which Þórr and his companions came and
the world in which they now are.
The world that consists of Ásgarðr, Miðgarðr, and Jǫtunheimar, which is described in the
mythology of Grímnismál and Vafþrúðnismál, and not least in the preceding chapters of
Gylfaginning, belongs to gods like Þórr. The world beyond the Úthaf though, belongs to a different
type of beings whose powers supersede those of the æsir. Back in the known world Þórr has a retainer,
he can provide food, and can use his hammer. There Loki is the cause of earthquakes. In this world
Skrýmir takes the place of Þjálfi, takes away the food, and removes the usability of the hammer. He
even (seemingly) makes earthquakes. This is a literal belittling of Þórr, the most powerful áss. With
the stage set in this way, Þórr and his companions then squeeze through the bars into the hall of
Útgarðaloki and face the final humiliating series of tests. In the hall of Útgarðaloki, Þórr and his
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companions are subjected to different tests: Loki competes with Logi (fire) in an eating contest, Þjálfi
competes with Húgi (thought) in a race, and Þórr competes with Útgarðaloki in three trials. First, he
attempts to lift the cat Grábakr (the Miðgarðsormr), then he tries to drink the vítishorn (the sea) and
third, he wrestles the old lady Elli (old age).
There are different opinions among scholars as to the nature and purpose of these tests. As
mentioned above, Margaret Clunies Ross sees in them a division of those forces that are within the
sphere of control for the æsir as opposed to those that are not, basically relegating the dominance of
the æsir to the social sphere—the world that is encircled by the Úthaf—arguing that Þórr and his
companions are faced with insurmountable natural forces in Útgarðr (Clunies Ross 1994, 265–7).
In Snorri qua Fulcrum (2011), Frog argues that these tests are allegories of the interpretation
of poetic language. Logi, Húgi, and Elli have transparent names but the two other tests to which Þórr
is subjected are intricately designed kennings: the giant grey cat (grábakr = snake, kǫttr = jǫtunn) is
a kenning for the Miðgarðsormr, and the vítishorn filled with the sea is the Mead of Poetry. When the
word ‘drink’ or ‘cup’ is associated with Óðinn, the gods, a jǫtunn, or a dvergr it is a conceptual
metaphor for the Mead of Poetry. Poetic synonyms for the sea such as brim, unnr, or vágr also mean
‘drink,’ and so the kenning is: ‘the sea in the drinking-horn of the giant-host.’ This is the Mead of
Poetry (p. 19).
Clunies Ross, Frog, and McKinnell agree that in these contests the æsir—and especially Þórr—
are a failure. Frog sees a contrast of Þórr and Óðinn in the drinking contest where Þórr’s failure to
empty the horn in three draughts, as opposed to Óðinn’s three draughts of the Mead of Poetry, means
that Þórr is unable to interpret the poetic language (ibid). McKinnell sees a “total failure on Þórr’s
part” (1994, 84), and in Útgarðaloki he finds a courteous, well-mannered, and even chivalrous host
(p. 84–5).
In contrast to this notion, John Lindow finds Útgarðaloki to be a poor host who does not fulfill
the requirements of hospitality. To Lindow, the world of the Útgarðar is negative and lacks the basic
elements for human life in the sense that food and drink is denied the guests. Loki, Þjálfi, and Þórr
are in fact the victors of the competitions because they stick to the common rules of social conduct
(p. 177–8). Finally, Lindow arrives at the conclusion originally posited by Folke Ström that
Útgarðaloki must be a doppelgänger of Óðinn (p. 180).
While there are some common features that link the interpretations of these four scholars
together, their conclusions lead in many different directions. McKinnell and Lindow both see social
processes as the primary fabric of this tale, but disagree on whether or not Þórr is a failure. Frog
disagrees with Lindow on the subject of Þórr’s success, but in turn he recognizes the Odinic pattern
behind the tale, which Lindow proposes, if for no other reason than the tale’s fixation on poetic
97
language. Clunies Ross sees no social processes in the narrative per se, but agrees with Frog and
McKinnell that Þórr fails, and with Lindow she seems to agree that this narrative is an integrated part
of Old Norse mythology, in the sense that she is not immediately willing to discard it as ‘foreign’ or
‘fictitious.’
The question of whether or not this tale is foreign or fictitious has been discussed by many
scholars (cf. deVries 1970, 141). Dumézil has identified the glove/cave motif in Ossetian folklore
(1930, 146), and von Sydow (1910) identified Skrýmir as originally an Irish invention, while he also
seems to have a counterpart in the giant Svyatogor of Russian folklore (Chadwick 1961). The
argument for Irish origin seems to be the most pervasive one (e.g. Bugge 1907 and 1908; deVries
1933; Krappe 1937; van der Leyen 1938; Rooth 1961). While this discussion shall not be elaborated
further, there are some important realizations to take from the discussion of the genesis of the
narrative, which are valuable to the purpose of discussing Þórr’s relation to the sea, and ultimately to
the conceptualization of the sea in the mythology: it seems there is a direct line of association from
the goat sacrifice, over Skrýmir’s behavior in the Útgarðar, to Útgarðaloki’s strange inhospitable
castle.
In Two of Þórr’s Great Fights according to Hymiskviða, Clunies Ross ruminates over the
possibility “that Snorri got the idea of juxtaposing Þórr’s visit to Útgarða-Loki with the god’s fishing
expedition from his knowledge of a version of Hymiskviða in which there was already an allusion to
the episode of the laming of the goat” (1989, 22–3). It would seem then—at least according to Clunies
Ross—that stanzas 37–8 in Hymiskviða, which refer to the laming of Þórr’s goat, may be the cause of
the tale of the peasant in Gylfaginning.
According to Hymiskviða it was Loki who caused Þórr’s goat to get lame, and it was also Loki
who paid for it with his children: “Fóroð lengi, áðr liggia nam hafr Hlórriða hálfdauðr fyrir; var scirr
scǫculs scaccr á banni, enn því inn lævísi Loki um olli. Enn ér heyrt hafið – hverr kann um þat
goðmálugra gørr at scilia –, hver af hraunbúa hann laun um fecc, er hann bæði galt born sín fyrir”
(They had not gone far before Hlórriði’s goat lay half-dead before them; the shackle-beast shook in
its bones, the cunning Loki had caused this. But you have heard this—anyone with more god-speech
can make that clearer—how he got wergild of the lava-dweller, how he paid with both his children”
[Hkv. 37–8]).
This difference between Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning suggests that the tradition of
Gylfaginning deliberately relates an alternate interpretation. Hymiskviða 7 tells how Þórr and Týr
journeyed for a whole day out of Ásgarðr until they came to a herdsman named Egill. The herdsman,
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a denizen of the frontier between civilization and the wilderness,54 secures their goats on the pasture
there and the two gods proceed to Hymir’s dwelling—a farm setting comparable to any other in the
world of the gods (Løkka 2010, 237).
These three stanzas of Hymiskviða represent a different version of the beginning of the same
pattern (Clunies Ross 1989; McKinnell 1994) as that of the Journey to Útgarðaloki: Þórr and Loki
reside with the farmer, they give him food, and they perform the goat ritual. Afterwards, because the
one goat was harmed from Þjálfi breaking its bone, they leave the goats behind to travel to the
Jǫtunheimar and beyond: “Lét hann þar eptir hafra ok byrjaði ferðina austr í Jǫtunheima ok allt til
hafsins, ok þá fór hann út yfir hafit þat it djúpa” (He left his goats there and began the journey east
into to the Jǫtunheimar and all the way to the ocean, and then he went out over the deep sea [Gylf.
XLV]). Þórr’s journey to the east and the deep sea is consistent with the information that Hymir “býr
fyr austan Élivága” (lives to the east of Élivágar [Hkv. 5]).
It seems, then, that a certain interpretative modus has formulated a sequence of events which
takes Þórr out to sea (Élivágar), corresponding to the three stanzas of Hymiskviða:
Hymiskviða
St. 7: Þórr and Týr leave the goats with the
shepherd Egill and enter Hymir’s farmstead.
St. 37: The goat carrying Þórr collapses because of
Loki’s malice.
Gylfaginning 45
Þórr and Loki (with Þjálfi and Rǫskva) leave
Miðgarðr without the goats, because one of them is
lame on its leg.
Þjálfi breaks the bone of one of the goats during an
episode where his father—the farmer corresponding
to the shepherd Egill—gives lodging to Þórr and
Loki, who are on their way to the Úthaf. This is a
situation where Þórr offers the farmer and his
family his goat to eat, and afterwards revives it in a
pagan ritual.
For his breech of the ritual taboo of destroying the
bones, Þjálfi and his sister are taken by the god, and
the goats are left behind. The farmer thus pays for
this food with his children.
Figure 9: The goat-motif of Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning.
St. 38: Loki pays the price for this with his children.
Lindow interprets the goat scene as a ritual structure where Þjálfi violates a ritual procedure, invoking
the god’s anger. Þjálfi is subsequently forced to atone for it. The result is a binding of the two children,
Þjálfi and Rǫskva, to the god in a similar manner as Odinic warriors such as Starkaðr (Lindow 2000,
173–5). However, Lindow misses an important aspect in this supposed ritual structure: the gods leave
54
Compare with Skírnismál 11: the first person Skírnir encounters on his journey to Gerðr is the herdsman on a mound. The
pasture and the mound are situated in the periphery of the inhabited space (Gunnell 2006, 240).
99
the two goats with the peasant. If this is indeed a ritual structure it seems to express an exchange in
which the pagan gods require humans in turn for food: the peasant receives food, the son—quite
naturally—breaks a bone to eat the marrow and this leads to the son being offered to the god as
atonement.
Leaving the goats behind and travelling to Útgarðar with only the children and a knapsack,
Þórr is out of luck. Earlier we encountered another example of Þórr failing to provide edible food on
a journey with a strong Christian overtone, namely the case of Þórhallr in Eiríks saga rauða. This
situation is basically the same in Gylfaginning when Þórr is confronted with Skrýmir and Útgarðaloki.
Food becomes a scarcity when the æsir enter the Útgarðar: Skrýmir actively withholds food from
Þórr, and Útgarðaloki does not offer any food until the various trials have been completed. At this
point, as soon as the æsir have left the known world, Þórr is incapable of supplying them with food.
This situation makes the goat sacrifice in the beginning of the story all the more significant.
As Clunies Ross points out, it does indeed seem as if the Journey to Útgarðaloki reproduces
and elaborates the central idea of the Fishing Expedition: first, there is a sacrifice of a pastoral animal
(the ox, the goat); then there is a journey ‘at sea’ with an antagonistic being (Hymir, Skrýmir); finally
there is a confrontation with the ‘the sea’ (Jǫrmungandr, Útgarðaloki’s trials). The subject of
procuring food is as much part of the Journey to Útgarðaloki as it is in the Fishing Expedition, but in
the case of his Journey to Útgarðaloki, Þórr is unsuccessful. Þórr is also unsuccessful in his attempts
to overcome the aquatic element that he is otherwise known to skillfully negotiate in Gylfaginning.
We may even read into the scene of Þórr staring angrily at the peasant and his family a parody of the
staring contest between Þórr and Jǫrmungandr in the skaldic poems and Hymiskviða. Furthermore, it
seems as if Skrýmir’s warning to Þórr about being too little to venture into Útgarðar echoes Hymir’s
assertion that Þórr is too young to go out on the boat. All in all, this narrative is the antithesis to the
original Fishing Expedition.
Just as in the case of Kollr in Landnámabók, this journey demonstrates how Þórr is unable to
navigate at sea, and just like Eiríks saga rauða it demonstrates how Þórr fails to provide edible
nutrition on a journey. Finally, just like Dudo’s account, Þórr demands human sacrifices for his
favors. Dudo’s description of these sacrifices seems even more important to this complex, as a
connection to cattle is reiterated in the instrument with which the victims are killed. An ox-yoke is
used:
“[sed] sanguinem mactabant humanum. holocaustorum omnium putantes
preciosissimum eo quod sacerdote sortilogo predestinante. iugo boum una uice dirtier
iacebantur in capite. collisoque unicuique singulari ictu; sorte electo cerebro. sternebatur
in tellure. perquirebaturque leuorsum fibra cordis scilicet uena. Cuius exausto sanguine
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ex more sua. suorumque capita linientes librant caeleriter nauium carbasa uentis. illosque
tali negotio putantes placare uelociter nauium insurgebant remis.”
([but] sacrificed human blood, the most valuable of all offerings. It would proceed
thusly: the divinatory priest would predetermine the course. The victims were viciously
struck in the head with an ox-yoke, with one single blow; when the brain of each victim,
who had been selected by a lot, had been crushed by another blow, he was spread out on
the ground and the fibers of his heart, that is the veins, were carefully examined on the
left-hand side. After exhausting the blood, according to their custom, they would smear
it in their own head and in their comrades’ head, and immediately spread the sails of
their ships for the winds, thinking to placate them by such actions. Then they would
rapidly ply the oars of their ships [Gesta Normannorum 1996, II]).
It is likely that Dudo is dramatizing his tale of the sacrifices, to follow in the footsteps of so many of
his peers who readily discredit the pre-Christian Scandinavians as bloodthirsty savages, but
nonetheless he joins in a widely accepted discourse about human sacrifices to the pagan gods.
To this complex belongs the first episode of Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki that tells how the
false god snatches men’s children and performs rituals of necromancy (cf. Lassen 2011, 252–65): if
one receives food from Þórr, one must pay the price of one’s children. These are the tenets of
demonology: one must pay a high price for making deals with the agents of the Devil, here presented
as the pagan gods. This is described in Guta saga from c. 1350: “Firi þan tima oc lengi eptir siþan.
troþu menn a hult. oc a hauga. wi. oc. stafgarþa. oc a haiþin guþ. blotaþu þair synnum oc dydrum
sinum Oc fileþi. miþ matj oc mundgati. þet gierþu þair eptir wantro sinnj” (Before that time and long
after men believed in groves and mounds, sanctuaries and stave-yards and in pagan gods. They
sacrificed their sons and daughters and gathered with food and drink. This they did according to their
infidelity [Guta Saga 1999, V (p. 4)]). In light of this, the apparent mercy that Þórr shows the peasant
by taking only his children, when he is offering everything he has, seems highly ironic, and it is hard
not to see this literary construction of Gylfaginning as a critical comment on a previously existing
tradition of votive offerings to Þórr before seafaring. In the following, we shall see how this notion
also unfolds in Saxo’s stories of Thorkillus.55
THORKILLUS’S JOURNEYS TO GERUTHUS AND UG ARTHILOCUS
The enigmatic character Thorkillus undertakes his journeys to Geruthus and Ugarthilocus in Saxo’s
eighth book of Gesta Danorum. Denmark has suffered from a natural catastrophe—a prolonged
winter due to King Snio—and much of the land has been overgrown by forests (Saxo 2005 I, VIII 11,
1–13, 3). Snio is followed by Biorn, then Haraldus and his son Gormus (lib. VIII 14,1). Gormus is a
55
On the treatment of mythic narrative in Edda and Gesta Danorum, see Clunies Ross 1992a, 47–59.
101
different type of king from his predecessors because his interests are not in warfare but in new
discoveries of the natural world—he is an explorer (Skovgaard-Petersen 1987, 182). In her
dissertation Da Tidernes Herre var nær (1987), on Saxo’s view of history in Gesta Danorum, Inger
Skovgaard-Petersen identifies in the journeys a theme of the revelation of the impotence of the pagan
gods (p. 185). This revelation is part of the process towards the introduction of Christianity in
Denmark (p. 186), and Saxo seems to be modeling these narratives on the theme of Ragnarǫk and
resurrection as it is known from Vǫluspá (p. 187–90). Aside from Vǫluspá, Skovgaard-Petersen
recognizes that the Thorkillus Journeys somehow are indebted to Odysseus’s journeys, particularly
his encounter with Circe, although the classical version seems to have been unknown to medieval
scholars (p. 184). She summarizes that the material on which this narrative has been modeled must
originate in the same medieval narrative tradition as Dante’s story of Odysseus’s last journey past
Hercules’s columns, although with approximately 100 years between them there is nothing to suggest
that the works of Saxo and Dante are related (p. 185).
The characters Thorkillus, Geruthus, and Ugarthilocus are reminiscent of the mythic figures
Þórr, Geirrøðr, and Útgarðaloki, while Guthmundus or Guðmundr, the brother of Geruthus, is, along
with Geirrøðr, also a character of Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns, but it seems unlikely that Saxo’s
narrative had any Norse prototype (Liberman 1992, 98). In later Icelandic saga literature, the
fornaldarsögur, Guðmundr rules over the Elysian realm of Glæsisvellir in the far North (Simek 1986,
264–6).
It is also in the Norse material that we find the narrative tradition to which the Thorkillus
Journeys belong. McKinnell treats the Thorkillus Journeys in Both One and Many as cognates of
Hymiskviða and Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki, but it is uncertain to him whether Saxo’s version is
derived from the Norse versions or they simply belong to the same tradition (1994, 60).
That Saxo’s narrative deviates from the Norse tradition, to which it so obviously is closely
related, has also been pointed out by Mats Malm in his article The Otherworld Journeys of the Eighth
Book of Gesta Danorum (1992). Malm finds the literary inspirations for Saxo’s narrative in the
medieval visionary literature, and argues that the Thorkillus Journeys display many features of
medieval moral philosophy (p. 163–5). Saxo interprets Danish history typologically in accordance
with sensus allegoricus (p. 166), thus he infers apocalyptic features in the Thorkillus Journeys,
expressing the eternal truth of salvation (p. 171–2). Malm’s perspective seems overall to be
convincing.
Thorkillus undertakes two journeys for King Gormus. The first journey goes to Geruthus’s hall
in Byarmia in the far north (Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,6). On this journey, the pagan Icelander Thorkillus
takes the role of a guide for the passive Gormus, who hardly speaks throughout the voyage. As an
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Icelandic pagan, Thorkillus is a mediating figure between the pagan otherworld that is the goal of the
journey, and the more civilized parts of Europe whence Gormus comes. Thorkillus is the Vergil of
the tale. As Denmark is ripe for Christianization at this point, it may be assumed that the area, from
a Christian point of view, can be considered to be nearly included in the civilized world. To Saxo, the
subarctic nation of Iceland is both much further north (“ultimę Tyles” [Saxo 2005 I, VIII 2,2]), much
less civilized (Praef. 2,7), and the source of many wondrous tales about pagan gods (lib. VIII 14,1).56
In this perspective, it is natural to have Thorkillus lead the king and take on the role that Vergil, for
example, has in Dante’s La Divina Commedia, as a guide well-acquainted with the realm of the
otherworld. The guide is indispensable in visionary literature, as he or she ensures a safe journey and,
familiar with the scenery, interprets the otherworldly specters for the guest. This type of visionary
quest is in Old Norse as a leizla. Presumably a neologism of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, the
term is derived from leiða ‘to lead’ and thus underlines the importance of the guide (Wellendorf 2008,
138).
In his article True Records of Events that Could Have Taken Place (2012), Jonas Wellendorf
explains that the genre of the visionary literature begins with St. Paul’s second letter to the
Corinthians, where he states that he was taken to the third Heaven to learn the secret words that no
man should utter (Corinthians 12:2–4). The vision quest known as Apocalypsis Pauli, a fiction based
on St. Paul’s statement, is most certainly very old as St. Augustine knew a version of it, but its age is
disputed. It relates how St. Paul was led by an angel to Heaven to see, among other things, the City
of Christ. St. Paul is then led across the ocean that encompasses the earth to a ghoulish and dark world
where the sinners are tormented. Afterwards, he sees Paradise (Wellendorf 2012, 141–2). From
around 1200 the later version Visio Pauli is known in Northern Europe, and the rubric Visio sancti
Pauli apostoli in the Norwegian book of homilies demonstrates some knowledge of the tale in the
Norse world (p. 143). It is possible that the circulation of this text as well as another, Visio Tnugdali,
from 1149 have inspired Saxo’s tale of Thorkillus. Visio Tnugdali (ON: Duggals Leizla) belongs to
the youngest generation of visions and it represents an expressly horizontal perspective that
formulates a ‘terrestrialization’ of the visionary voyage, letting the visionary journey in corpore to
the otherworld, across the ocean where Hell and Purgatory seem to be situated (Wellendorf 2006,
52).
Indeed, Thorkillus and Gormus do seem to journey to a world that has much in common with
that Hell which is described in certain examples of the visionary literature. Initially, Saxo explains
that: “sed iter omni refertum periculo ac pene mortalibus inuium ferebatur. Ambitorem namque
56
On the subject of the Icelandic cultural capital in Saxo, see Gottskálk Jensson: Thylensium thesauri: Den islandske
kulturkapital i Gesta Danorum og Heimskringla (2009).
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terrarum Oceanum nauigandum, solem postponendum ac sydera, sub Chao peregrinandum ac demum
in loca lucis expertia iugibusque tenebris obnoxia transeundum expertorum assertione constabat” (but
the journey there was full of dangers and nearly impossible to complete for mortals. For one may
understand from the assertions of experts that it was so that one had to cross the Earth’s Ocean, leave
the sun and the stars behind and journey through the Abyss in order to reach the lands of no light
[Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,1]). The dark and misty city that Thorkillus and his men reach by undertaking
this journey is a similar kind of Hell as the one that is described in Visio Tnugdali where, as Mats
Malm has pointed out, Roman mythology plays an integrated part in the scenery. Volcanus has been
transposed there to function as a tormentor of souls (Malm 1992, 163). The misty city is guarded by
fierce dogs (“Eximię ferocitatis canes” [Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,12]), which Thorkillus manages to calm
by giving them a horn with fat on it to lick. Both the vision of Cerberus and the bloody Hel-hound of
Baldrs draumar 3 seem appropriate analogues to this scene, and as Skovgaard-Petersen remarks, the
obvious analogy to the impaled Geruthus—who Thorkillus says was punished by the mighty Þórr
(Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,15)—is Prometheus, who was punished by Zeus-Jupiter (Skovgaard-Petersen
1987, 189).
The dilapidated stone house in which Thorkillus and Gormus find Geruthus when they venture
further into the misty city, is ripe with pagan symbolism. Here sits the ghoulish retinue of bloodless
shadows on iron benches, railed with lead gratings, and the roof of the house is made of spears and
arrows (Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,14). This echoes the arrangement of Óðinn’s hall in Grímnismál 9:
“skǫptom er ran rept, skiǫldom er salr þakiðr, bryniom um bekki strát” (spear-shafts as rafters, the
hall thatched with shields, mail-coats strewn on the benches [Grm. 9]). Saxo’s description of
Geruthus’s hall is obviously designed to remind the reader of Óðinn’s hall. This is seen elsewhere in
his Gesta Danorum: in the story of Haddingus’s trip to the underworld, the einherjar appear, not as
Óðinn’s merry warriors who eat and drink in the festive Valhǫll, as it is told in Gylfaginning (Gylf.
XXXVIII–XLI), but as tormented souls of warriors who are doomed to an eternity of acting out the
fights they engaged in, when they were alive (Saxo 2005 I, I 8,14). This mirrors the changed attitude
in the royal family of Denmark: as noted above, Saxo explains that Gormus is more interested in the
study of the natural wonders of the world than he is interested in warfare and the glory of battle (cf.
lib. VIII 14,1). What Haddingus saw on his short trip to the underworld was a pagan afterlife teeming
with energy, but Gormus sees inactive and bloodless (“exanguia”) monsters confined to the aging,
dirty abode of a punished ruler (lib. VIII 14,14). This narrative is a robust critique of paganism based
on the same tenets as Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki—and thus ultimately to Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition. The comparable motifs are identifiable from the beginning.
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After having reinforced the ships with ox-hides, the three hundred man expedition sets off and
journeys as far as Halogia, but when they have passed Halogia they lose the good winds and are cast
about in the sea with no bearing. Soon their supplies run out and they begin to starve (lib. VIII 14,3).
Luckily they spot a lone island populated only with cattle and the sailors, ignoring Thorkillus’s
warnings against taking too much, start gorging on the animals (cap. 14,4). At night the sailors are
attacked by howling monsters led by a giant with a club:
Nocte insequenti monstra littori inuolantia ac toto concrepantia nemore conclusas
obsedere puppes. Quorom unum cęteris grandius ingenti fuste armatum profundum
passibus emetiebatur. Idem propius admotum uociferari coepit non ante enauigaturos,
quam fusi gregis iniuiriam expiando uiris pro nauium numero traditis diuini pecoris
damna pensassent.
(In the following night the beach swarmed with monsters, their howls resounded in the
forest, and they surrounded the ships. One of them, who was larger than the others and
armed with a club, stomped with big steps into the sea. It came all the way out to them
and roared that they would not be allowed to leave until they had paid for the animals
that they had killed and delivered one man for each ship in exchange for the holy cattle
[cap. 14,5]).
This situation of extortion bears some similarities to the preceding cases that have been
examined so far: oxen are slaughtered or killed in a context, or for the purpose, of seafaring; there is
a sense of excessiveness combined with the killing of the oxen; starvation at sea is retained as a theme;
human sacrifices for a favorable wind are preserved as part of a causal complex: “Quo facto optato
uento excepti” (As soon as this was done they gained the wind they needed [cap. 14,6]). The passage
concerning the slaughtered cattle shares with Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning the problematization of
excess, but it does not use the theme in the same way. Where Hymiskviða seems to point to a genuine
Scandinavian tradition of weighing expenses against gains in the context of collecting food at sea,
and Gylfaginning seems to use the motif to display Þórr as an irrational and brash character who is
seeking conflicts with forces that are too great for him, Saxo uses this motif to moralize and ultimately
assert that the mortal sins of greed and human sacrifice were at the heart of the pagan religion. This
is developed even further in the following visit at Guthmundus’s house, where Saxo articulates this
moralizing as some of the Danes fall for the vices offered by Guthmundus: “Qui si mores suos intra
debitos temperantię fines continuissent, Herculeos ęquassent titulos, giganteam animo fortitudinem
superassent perenniterque patrię mirificarum rerum insignes extitissent auctores” (If they had
restrained themselves to the limits of moderation they would have been able to match Hercules in
fame, conquered the might and courage of the giants, and forever been great men who did the most
wondrous deeds for the patria [cap. 14,10]). A part of Saxo’s purpose of telling this tale is to
demonstrate Christian moral philosophy (Malm 1992, 165), and in particular to show how paganism
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deviates greatly from these virtues. As a result, his narrative addresses the subject of trading food and
sacrifices with the pagan gods in the same way as the story of Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki in
Gylfaginning. Although the Gylfaginning narrative is much more ironic and much more subtle in its
display of divine extortion, it expresses the same notion of having to trade the people in your care for
food when dealing with pagan gods, regardless of whether they be irrational sorcerers battling the
wind and sea, or howling giants in the far North. At the heart of this is the same sentiment that is
expressed in Guta saga: the pagan practice of giving sacrifices to the gods in turn for prosperity,
known by the formula “at blóta til árs ok friðr” (to sacrifice for good year and peace [cf. Ström 1967,
81–2]), is based on the mortal sins of greed and gluttony, and to nurture this condition, pagans are
willing to sacrifice those who are in their care. In Gylfaginning and Guta saga it is the children of the
humans, in the case of Thorkillus it is the men of his ships. In this way, the Thorkillus Journeys join
the other sources which represent Þórr as having close relations with the sea: a theme of each one of
them is sacrificial ritual either for good weather for passage or for food at sea. On different levels and
in different capacities, the sources display common elements throughout. These elements are: (1) Þórr
controls sea passage; (2) Þórr controls food and drink at sea; (3) the protagonist has a Þórr-name (a
Þórsmaðr); (4) the protagonist is Þórr; (5) Þórr crosses or sails on the ocean; (6) rituals for passage,
food or drink are conducted, mentioned, or implied; (7) the protagonist is subjected to trials; (8) there
is a complex related to the lack of food, which is beyond the control of Þórr or a protagonist with a
Þórr-name; (9) the story is biased towards Christianity; (10) Þórr fails as a god. The themes combine
in the following manner:
Figure 10: The motif of the Fishing Myth
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Gesta Nor.
x
x
Helgi inn magri
x
x
Þórólfr Mostrar.
x
x
x
Kráku-Hreiðarr
x
x
Kollr
x
x
Eiriks s.
x
x
x
x
Flóamanna. s.
x
x
x
x
x
x1
Saxo 1*
x
x
x
x
Saxo 2*
x
x
x
x
Hkv.
x
x
x
x3
x
Gylf. 1*
x
x
x
x
x
Gylf. 2*
x
x
x
x3
x
*Saxo 1 = Thorkillus’s Journey to Geruthus; *Saxo 2 = Thorkillus Journey to Ugarthilocus;
*Gylf. 1 = Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki; *Gylf. 2 = Þórr’s Fishing Expedition.
9
x
10
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x2
x
x
x
x
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The protagonist with a Þórr-name suffers from lack of food, but it is the god Þórr who denies him the
food, because Þórr is an anti-Christian antagonist.
2
Þórr does not exactly fail as a god, but due to his quality as antagonist (cf. note 3) he denies the
protagonist that which he would otherwise provide: food and guidance at sea.
3
Þórr rips the head off the ox. Furthermore, it should not be denied that the myth of the god fishing for
the sea creature conceptually corresponds to acts of ritual and prayer to said god for food and nutrition
of the sea.
1
In this chart it can be observed that of the twelve individual narratives belonging to the complex
of sources indicating a relationship between Þórr and the sea, every one of them displays a theme of
rituals for food or sea passage. Gesta Normannorum is the oldest account and, as related above, it
indicates that humans were sacrificed to Þórr for sea passage. The cases of Landnámabók indicate
that Þórr protects at sea (Helgi) and guides at sea (Þórólfr and Kráku-Hreiðarr), except for the
youngest example, which is biased towards a Christian interpretation and thus deconstructs Þórr’s
ability to guide at sea (Kollr). Like the Hauksbók case of Kollr versus Ørlyggr, the two incidents in
the saga literature are favorable towards a Christian representational mode. Flóamanna saga reflects
Þórr’s abilities as a controller of seafaring and fishing, but conversely represents him as a demonic
figure. Eiríks saga rauða, on the other hand, takes the middle ground by acknowledging Þórr’s
abilities to provide food, but then it shows that his food is not good enough. As mentioned above,
Eiríks saga rauða also displays an embedded structure of equating paganism with wilderness in
contrast to a Christianity equated with civilization, which seems to be modeled in concert with the
myths of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition. The most basic statement of the two saga accounts and the case
of Kollr is that Þórr fails as a god (10), and he is thus not a god, he is either superstition or a demon.
This is contrasted in the cases of Þórólfr and Kráku-Hreiðarr, where Þórr’s status as a pre-Christian
god seems unproblematic. Dudo’s account is obviously biased towards a Christian representational
mode that displays the pagan Vikings as savages with bloody rituals, but he does not take part in the
same polemic discourse as Flóamanna saga, Eiríks saga rauða, and Hauksbók. Presumably this is
because he is not invested in rejecting a pagan past that belongs to his ancestors in the same way as
the Icelanders.
Based on this overview it seems possible to detect a development in the source material, which
begins with an early association of Þórr with seafaring and navigation at sea (Dudo, Þórólfr, KrákuHreiðarr) that is in some capacity consistent with the picture-stones of the Viking Age. As a result of
Christianization in the North, this association is deconstructed in narratives polemics against
paganism (Kollr, Flóamanna saga, Eiríks saga rauða). Saxo’s Thorkillus Journeys take their place
among these polemics in an effort to rationalize the existence of paganism in a Christian world order.
With the Journey to Útgarðaloki and its version of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition, the tradition in
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Gylfaginning does the same. In addition, it seems that the tale of Útgarðaloki only relies on references
that are available in the other sources.
Saxo’s narrative can only be devised if there is a preexisting conception of the seafaring Þórr
(picture-stones and Hymiskviða) and journeying Vikings associated with Þórr (Þórólfr, Þórhallr,
Þorfinn, Þorgils, Eiríkr), who are led to new discoveries in the North Atlantics (Þórólfr,
Þorfinn/Þórhallr, Eiríkr) and are saved from hardship at sea by Þórr. This last subject is addressed in
the critique of rituals and sacrifices in relation to Þórr as a god, and it is displayed in the structural
parallel of the killing of oxen, cattle, and goats:. This is a recurring theme:
(1) Dudo associates ox yokes with human sacrifices to Þórr;
(2) in Hymiskviða Þórr kills (sacrifices) Hymir’s ox and there is a vague reference to the ‘goat
sacrifice’;
(3) when Þórr and Loki journey to Útgarðaloki, the story begins with the goat/child sacrifice;
(4) in the version of the Fishing Expedition in Gylfaginning, Þórr rips the head off Hymir’s ox;
(5) Thorkillus and his men slaughter cattle, sacrifice some men to the monsters and gain
favorable wind, and;
(6) Thorkillus and his men oversee the goat ritual in Geruthus’s house: “Quorom alii consertis
fustibus obstrepentes, alii mutua caprigeni tergoris agitatione deformem edidere lusum (Some
of them were rattling bundles of sticks, others were playing a hideous game where they were
throwing a goat-skin between each other [Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,14]).
The allocation of the goat sacrifice to Geruthus’s house seems to be part of Saxo’s agenda to represent
the old unity of kingship, warrior customs, and paganism as obsolete. The goat-skin seems
reminiscent of the same ritual situation that is expressed in the Journey to Útgarðaloki, and the rattling
bundles of sticks may perhaps be meaningfully interpreted as a variant of the hlautteinar “þat var svá
gǫrt sem stǫkklar” (that were made as bundles of twigs [Heimskr. 1979 I: Hákonar saga góða, XIV])
and which seem to have been part of the common, normative description of rituals in Old Norse
literature (cf. Hultgård 1993). This reference to the hlautteinar also occurs in Eyrbyggja saga in
connection with the temple that Þórólfr Mostrarskegg erects after having taken land with the help of
Þórr (Eyrb. 1935, IV).
Indeed all the signifiers of typical Viking kingship are there in Geruthus’s neglected house, and
the situation where some of the men, including Thorkillus, succumb to their greed underscores this
association with kingship by lining up the ornate buffalo horn, the heavy, golden arm-ring, and a tusk
from an unknown animal (Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,16). Coincidentally, at least two of these items have
metonymic affinity to the Miðgarðsormr if juxtaposed with the selected trials for Þórr in Útgarðaloki’s
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hall: the horn refers to the sea and the vítishorn, and the golden arm-ring metonymically refers to
Jǫrmungandr as the world’s circumscriber insofar as the importance of the snake to kennings for gold
is commonly understood (cf. Meissner 1921, 112–16). As such, this narrative forebodes the end of
the Viking Era, the end of paganism, and the coming of Christianity. But that is not all. This
foreboding is represented as a physical journey through the northern seas, which results in the
alteration of the mental state of the head of Denmark and thus the country itself. While Gormus is
curious about the world, and unlike his forefathers is not a petty warlord, he has still much to learn.
This is demonstrated in the second journey that Thorkillus undertakes, this time without the king.
THE FISHING EXPEDITI ON: FROM STOMACH TO SOUL
In the analysis of complex of the Fishing Expedition and its related narratives, we have seen how the
subject of hunger and food is a reccurring theme. The picture-stones undoubtedly relay a tale of two
men fishing—there can be no question of that, though other aspects and connotations may be
discussed. Similarly, the saga reconfigurations of the Fishing Expedition consistantly stress the
subject of food or hunger, with the only deviation being the cases in Landnámabók that focus on the
journey to Iceland—and this is no wonder considering that it is the primary theme of the book. The
theme of food is also a very strong undercurrent in Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki, where it is
combined with a comment on human sacrifice and the sharing of food as it is known from other
Nordic traditions, including Saxo and Guta saga. In Saxo this theme is given extra attention and
concern, as it is first set up similarly to—although in a much more transparent demonological context
than—the case of the peasant and Þórr in Gylfaginning. Here, it is stressed that it is greed, the
excessive expenditure of meat, which is the cause of human grief and the ‘pagan monsters’ coming
to claim victims. Saxo plays on this theme once more in the hall of Guthmundus, where food and
drink (and women)—whatever appeals to the nether regions of the human body—are the causes of
the madness that is paganism, and which will condemn the soul. This is the basic materialism that is
mentioned as the original cause of paganism in Prologus to Edda (Prol. I). The interest taken in
worldly matters such as food and riches is described as the direct cause of why mankind lost faith and
obedience to God: “þá var þat allr fjǫlði mannfólksins er elskaði ágirni fjár ok metnaðar en afrœktusk
guðs hlýðni” (then it turned out the way that all the kinds of Man who cultivated prosperity and fame
neglected obedience to God [Prol. I]). In the same manner, it is argued that it was the contemplation
of the world’s natural wonders that caused the early pagans to deduce wrongly that the earth was
similar to a human being and therefore a god (Prol. I–II). We will return to this below, but in this
context it is worthy to note the direct similarity between the causes for paganism that are described
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in the Prologus to Edda, and the interests and behavioral patterns of the pagans in Saxo’s narrative.
The worst kinds of pagans are the ones who only think with their stomach, while the more acceptable,
yet still damnable, pagans are the ones like Gormus, who cannot see the world’s true existence, but
wonder about its mirabilia—the noble heathens (Lönnroth 1969).
In this manner, there is a development in the narrative from the desires of the stomach to the
desires of the soul. Gormus sees the calamities that gluttony, vanity, and pride cause and steers clear
of them, but he is still curious about the world and oblivious to the threats of having condemned his
soul. As Gormus escapes the chaos of the north and is cast adrift on the ocean once more, he prays to
Ugarthilocus for favorable winds. The prayer is successful, and Gormus and Thorkillus come safely
back to Denmark (Saxo 2005 I, VIII 14,20). When Gormus has grown old, some men “cum
probabilibus quorundam argumentis” (with some plausible arguments [lib. VIII 15,1]) succeed in
persuading him that the soul is eternal and will never perish. This makes him wonder if this
Ugarthilocus can help him, presumably by saving his soul in the same manner as Christ, and thus
Thorkillus is sent on a mission to find Ugarthilocus.
Although the tale of Thorkillus’s Journey to Ugarthilocus is much shorter than the tale of his
Journey to Geruthus, it is a repetition of the same story pattern. Thorkillus journeys out to sea and
gets lost in the northern ocean. He and his men suffer from eating raw food because they have no fire.
While on their previous journey they only suffered from hunger, this time their ailments are described
as a sickness of the stomach that spreads to the vital parts of the body: “Primum enim paulatim
stomachis inusitato partus edulio languor irrepsit, deinde latius manante contagio uitalia morbus
appetiit” (The unfamiliar food slowly caused discomfort in the stomach, but soon it spread until the
illness reached the vital parts [cap. 15,3]). Eventually they reach an island on which Thorkillus sees
an inhabited cave. He spots it because they have fire within. Inside the cave he meets “dous eximię
granditatis aquilos” (two colossally giant eagles [cap. 15,4]).57 After answering some riddles he is
supplied with both fire and directions to Ugarthilocus’s cave, and he is on his way. In Ugarthilocus’s
filthy cave Thorkillus finds Ugarthilocus in a disgusting, unwashed state, with coarse hair, chained to
a rock. Thorkillus pulls one hair out from the god’s face and they leave as they get attacked from all
sides by venomous snakes in the pit. On their way back, they are once more adrift at sea and they
pray to different gods. When Thorkillus prays to “uniuersitatis deum” (the god of the universe [cap.
15,10]), they see light and come back to the world—to Germany, that is. Here, Thorkillus converts to
Christianity and sets off on his journey back to Gormus. When he comes back, Gormus suspects that
Thorkillus has bad news, so he tries to have him assassinated. Thorkillus averts this attempt on his
57
One recognizes in the catalogue of monsters in the Thorkillus Journeys, the protective vættir of Iceland: the giant with
the club; the cattle; the eagles and the dragons (these follow Thorkillus and his crew on their way home).
110
life, and confronts Gormus. When Thorkillus reveals the hideousness of Ugarthilocus to Gormus, the
king dies of grief (cap. 15,13). Thus the king receives his due pay for his cowardice and paganism.
Saxo’s narrative plays on the subject of hunger at sea. In this version there is little to connect
the tale with Þórr’s Fishing Expedition except for the underlying theme of sea journey and hunger,
but there is another Old Norse myth that is active in this complex, and it also relates to the subjects
of food, hunger, and the sea: the myth of Þjazi’s Theft of Iðunn. We recall in the beginning of
Skáldskaparmál that Óðinn, Hœnir, and Loki are out exploring the world, crossing both fjall and
eyðimǫrk (mountains and wastelands [Skáld. GLVI]). As they become hungry on their journey, they
encounter a herd of oxen in a valley, and they try to cook one of them. This, however, does not
succeed, and as they ponder why, an eagle in the oak tree above them declares that he is using his
magic to prevent the ox from cooking. By making a deal with the eagle, agreeing that he can have the
first share, they manage to cook the ox. But then it happens that the eagle snatches the best, most
meaty parts, and Loki gets angry. As Loki beats the eagle with a stick, the stick becomes attached to
the eagle and the bird flies off with him. The eagle extorts Loki and makes him help steal Iðunn and
her apples. Once he does so, the æsir realize that they are growing old and need Iðunn and her appels
to ward off old age. In other words: it is the apples that keep the gods alive.
The subject is again a matter of food. Like the eagle-giants in Saxo’s narrative, Þjazi is the key
to solving a food crisis. And like Þórr, Skrýmir, and Útgarðaloki in the tales of the Journey to
Útgarðaloki, as well as to Guthmundus and the monsters on the island with cattle in Thorkillus’s first
journey, he is a tricky bedfellow in that respect: he demands more than a fair share for letting the
humans or protagonists eat. Þjazi snatches “the child, the life source” (de Vries 1961, 283), Iðunn,
from the æsir. This is comparable to the child-snatching of Þórr, the loss of the sailors in Thorkillus’s
care, and the combination of feasting and child sacrifice in Guta Saga. As has been established, this
is a commentary on paganism, but in being just that, it is an interesting construction, seeing as the
main analogy is that physical hunger and disease of the stomach is comparable to the spiritual hunger
that causes Thorkillus to convert. It is from eating raw meat that Thorkillus and his crew fall ill and
search for fire. As such, they have the same realization as Þorfinn karlsefni and his Christian
colonizers in Vínland: the primitive (pagan) life is not for them. Fire is a building block of civilization.
The eagle-giants supply Thorkillus with the fire he needs for his journey, and we must ask
ourselves why Saxo associates these creatures with eagles. The reasonable answer to this is the
association with the eagle Þjazi. As Thorkillus journeys north to find the eagles, so does Loki fly
“norðr í Jǫtunheima” (north into the Jǫtunheimar [Skáld. GLVI]), when he is sent to retrieve Iðunn
from Þjazi. Although his daughter Skaði hates the sea (Gylf. XXII), Þjazi seems to be associated with
the sea, or at least the northern wind coming from across the sea. Þjazi is out sailing when Loki arrives
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in Þrymheimr, and when he sees Loki flying away with Iðunn, it is said that he “dró arnsúg í flugnum”
(dragged a storm-wind as he took off [Skáld. GLVI]). The term arnsúg literally translates to ‘eaglesuck’ and it is comparable to Hræsvelgr at the end of the world, who, like Boreas, sits there “í arnar
ham; af hans vængiom qveða vind koma alla men yfir” (in the shape of an eagle; from his wings, it
is said, come all the winds that blow over men [Vfm. 37]). We are able to spot in this complex an
intricate web of intertwined elements that align towards a certain idea: the northern wind is
treacherous and threatens food supplies and the continuation of life.58 This is fully -realized in the
Þjazi narrative, but it is virtually impossible to deduce if the other narratives are not brought in for
comparison. The revelatory narrative of Thorkillus’s Journey to Ugarthilocus is naturally not as
focused on this aspect of being safe from weather conditions as much as on the issue of Christianity.
In that respect, it is peculiar that Saxo deconstructs the central pagan myth of Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition along with several other known mythic narratives in order to create a tale where an
Icelander brings Christianity to Denmark, and—in a manner comparable to the reappearance of the
world after Ragnarǫk in Vǫluspá 5959—a new world emerges out of the sea before the eyes of the
journeying pagans: “Iamque alium sibi orbem atque ipsum rerum humanarum aditum perspicere
uidebantur” (And it was as if they were looking into another world, and saw the entry to the land of
Man itself [Saxo 2005 I, VIII 15,10]). After having seen this and come to Germany, Thorkillus
undergoes a transformative scene where all the dirt from the otherworld is washed off him, and he is
as such reborn. This realization of new land and the rebirth that comes after having been tossed around
in the stormy sea of the North Atlantic, is in no way coincidental. It is the result of experience. It is
the result of new discoveries in the North Atlantic, made by generations upon generations of
Scandinavians traversing the waves for fame and fortune. The fact that Thorkillus undergoes his
cognitive transformation at sea, which prepares him to convert and ‘take new land,’ is based on the
same revelation and experiential frame that is contained in the landnám. The landnám was, with its
new discoveries of islands in the North, a mind-expanding experience to the Scandinavian cultures.
It brought with it new realizations about the world. It is for the same reason that it is an Icelander that
introduces proper Christianity to the Danish court. As an inhabitant of the newly discovered northern
region, his mind is the most receptive to change.
With this development in Saxo’s narrative, the myth has progressed from cares of the stomach
to cares of the soul. Where the Fishing Expedition originally was a myth of seafaring and food
58
This also indicates a certain relationship of Þórr to Hræsvelgr as two cosmic forces, who creates two types of winds.
Þórr guards against the dangerous northern wind.
59 A notable feature of this stanza is the eagle that hunts fish from the mountain. It does not seem to be a coincidence
considering the role that Vǫluspá seems to have had in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As Stefanie Würth points out
in her article The Role of Vǫluspá in the Perception of Ragnarǫk (2003), it seems to be purely a political statement (2003,
230).
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collection at sea, it has been reformulated and recast as a foundation myth of conversion to
Christianity—a myth that reinterprets the physical journey over the northern sea as a spiritual journey
with the same terms as a vision journey; and it reinterprets the hunger and the subject of food as a
spiritual hunger that will lead to its fulfillment in the conversion. In the images of Thorkillus meeting
the eagle-giants, it even reappropriates the eagle of the northern wind as a force to be negotiated with,
only in this respect on the terms of riddles in the dark.
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CHAPTER CONCLUSION: THE FISHING MYTH AS AN ECO-MYTH
The myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition is originally an eco-myth about the economics of catching
food at sea. It is the most widespread myth in early Scandinavia and the Viking diaspora, with several
sources to account for it. The picture-stones indicate its relevance in a very wide cultural context,
from England to Sweden, and given the subject of the myth, it is perhaps no coincidence that these
depictions are all located close to the sea. As society, mythopoesis, and literature developed in
Scandinavia, the Fishing Myth took on new forms. With around 126,000 kilometers of Scandinavian
coastline and thousands of islands in the Baltic Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, the sea was a
constant force to be reckoned with for the Vikings and early medieval Scandinavians. As such, the
ocean is continuously a factor in the cultural narratives of these peoples, and the Fishing Myth is a
primary example of that. It is a myth that has been formulated in direct response to the ecosystem and
the disposition of the surrounding natural environment. As a core foundation myth of the sea in early
Scandinavian culture, the Fishing Myth undergoes great evaluations evolutions and changes, but it
retains its cultural prominence, it seems, throughout the ages.60
THE EARLY ASPECTS OF THE FISHING MYTH
It seems that in its earliest form, the Fishing Myth was formulated as an eco-myth about negotiating
the sea when fishing and seafaring. Where the picture-stones clearly indicate a focus on the activity
of fishing, Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning both address issues that are useful in relation to venturing
out at sea and collecting food. The eddic sources indicate that part of the tradition of the Fishing Myth
associated excessive baiting with foolishness, and advocated a proportionate dispensation of caution
and daring to one another in relation to choices of fishing grounds and when to go to sea. This tradition
places Þórr in the leading role as the fishing god and assigns him the office of providing food in
context of fishing as well as controlling the favorable winds. This is essentially congruent with the
tradition that is known from Adam of Bremen’s account of the temple in Uppsala. Here, it is said that
Þórr: “praesidet in aere, qui tonitrus et fulmina, ventos ymbresque, serena et fruges gubernat”
(presides over the air, the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather and crops [Gesta
Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum 1917, XXVI]). It is likely that with expanded activity at sea,
Þórr’s government over the winds and the sky, as well as his control over the crops is directly
transposed upon the sea, too. It is for the same reason that he is the primary protagonist in the search
It is noteworthy that the late Danish ballad derived from a version of Þórr’s search for the hammer as it is known in
Þrymskviða, is entitled Thord aff Havsgaard (cf. DgF 1966 I, 3—7) and thus retains the memory of the Þórr character’s
connection to the sea.
60
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for Loki, which describes directly applicable methods for fishing in rivers and catching salmon. As
Þórr is placed in this mythic situation, he is effectively assigned control over the sea. However, the
tradition recognizes the anthropomorphic character of the god, associating him closely with humans
as “verjandi Miðgarðs” ([guardian of Miðgarðr] Skáld. IV), not as an element or natural phenomenon,
and for that reason his offices are shared with Jǫrmungandr as the spirit of the sea, and
Hræsvelgr/Þjazi as the spirit of the northern wind. Considering that Þórr in later sources is
euhemerized to the extent that he functions as the human protagonist of several tales, it is perhaps not
too far of a leap to say that in his early form in these myths, he is the spirit of man who confronts the
spirits of the sea and the northern wind.
When the ships set their sails towards the new lands in the North, it was once again the tale of
the human god’s—Þórr’s—encounter with the raging sea of the North Atlantic that was used to
express conceptions, details, and routes to the distance destinations. The skalds carried the memory
of man’s encounter with the waves, and of the unforgiving sea reaching out for the sailor, who
fearlessly stared back at it, defying its might. The tales of the landnám also kept the memory of Þórr’s
guidance of the early settlers, making him the primary god of Landnámabók, indeed of Iceland. In
fact, the narrative of the sea journey and Þórr’s Fishing Expedition, “umgjorð allra landa,” as a
memory narrative was so useful that the first stories of the Vínland journeys used its parameters to
carry knowledge of how to reach the far lands in the west. It became in every sense of the term a
foundation myth.
This is an early eco-myth of Scandinavia, where the cultural significance of the sea is fully
formulated. The sea represents a massive force, both as a natural phenomenon and as a concept in the
life of the Scandinavians. It provides food, goods, bounties, and riches, but it takes lives, and brings
storms and enemies. When the sea is mild and generous, it is beloved and wondrous, but when it is
stormy and steals from you, either goods or families and friends, it is a strong force to be reckoned
with. This is fully expressed in a Scandinavian context in the stanzas of Haddingus and his wife in
Gesta Danorum. First Haddingus praises the sea and the life as a Viking: “Officiunt scopuli rigentes
difficilisque situs locorum mentibus ęquor amare suetis. Nam freta remigiis probare officii potioris
esset, mercibus ac spoliis ouare, aera aliena sequi locello, aequoreis inhiare lucris quam salebras
nemorumque flexus et steriles habitare saltus” (Steep and defiant rocky terrains, wild, trackless places
deter everyone who loves the great seas. Indeed, to scour the ocean’s bays, rejoice in joy over stolen
goods, to fill the coffers with someone else’s money, to gaze covetously at the spoils of the sea; that
would be a more precious achievement than to live in these sinister woods, to live in these desolate
and barren lands [Saxo 2005 I, I 8,18]). Then his wife comments with the exact opposite evaluation
of the sea: “Hinc sonorus ęstuosę motionis impetus ex ocello dormientis mite demit ocium, nec sinit
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pausare noctu mergus alte garrulus auribus fastidiosa delicatis inserens, nec uolentem decubare
recreari sustinet tristiore flexione dira uocis obstrepens” (The resounding roar of the wave and the
clashing combers rip the sleeping one from his sleep, permits him no rest. The gull cries loudly all
night, allows no peace and calm, it fills my sensitive ears with ghastly noise, gives me no rest even
though I long for sleep, because its cries bring dark omens with its horrid voice [cap. 8,19]).
If these two very different statements are taken to be expressions of a broader Scandinavian
discourse on conceptions relating to the sea in the same manner as the Fishing Myth, they could be
said to convey a cultural message that sets certain parameters for how the sea is perceived. Haddingus
attributes positive notions to the pirate life of a Viking at sea, and he expresses outright love for the
ocean as an environment of great opportunity. In contrast, he sees the land with its mountains and
forests as desolate and barren. His wife opposes this view, finding the sea disturbing to the sedentary
life. The waves and the movements of the sea keep agriculturalists like herself alert and make them
uneasy. The gull, the representative of the life at sea, screaks in a manner that is foreboding to her: it
heralds the coming of war, Vikings, storms, famine, and similar calamities. We recognize in this
exchange the same narrative as that of Gylfaginning XXIII, where the failed marriage of Njǫrðr and
Skaði is decribed (Dumézil 1970, 20–2). Njǫrðr rules over Nóatún, the “ship-enclosure” (p. 21), and
Skaði is consecutively associated with the high mountains and activities there, another name for her
being Ǫndurdís (ski-goddess [Hál. 4]). Njǫrðr loves the sea and Skaði the mountains, and they
eventually decide to live apart, because as much as they love their own home, they hate its opposite.
But where Haddingus is a king and Njǫrðr is known as “manna þengill,” who rules over
“hátimbroðom hǫrgi” (prince of men; high-timbered sanctuaries [Grm. 16]), the institutions of society
itself, the lands that Skaði and Haddingus’s wife praise are characterized as the habitat of wolves and
ferocious animals of prey (Saxo 2005 I, I 8,18; Gylf. XXII).61 Haddingus is in Saxo’s view a real
Viking warrior, but glorious as he may be, he is condemnable as a pagan. The life of the Viking solely
in search of material wealth will eventually lock him in an eternal battle in the underworld, and he
will not receive salvation. This is the lesson that is drawn from Haddingus’s trip to the underworld
and Thorkillus’s Journey to Geruthus. As Haddingus is to Saxo the epitome of a Viking warrior
king—one like those whom Gormus is so different from—he represents everything that belongs to
the pre-Christian worldview. We may therefore understand that according to Saxo—and, I would
argue, the narrative tradition as a whole—the pre-Christian worldview of Scandinavia recognizes the
sea as the most important space in the realm of the world. It is the sea that is the source of food,
wealth, and power. This is contained in the narrative of the Fishing Myth and it is directly expressed
61
One also easily recognizes the dichotomy of male/female and associated values in this. The male is associated with society
and riches, the female with the wilderness and fear.
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by the male proponent of Viking society, Haddingus, and the proponent of religion, Njǫrðr, the lord
of the temples. As such the Fishing Myth is in its core also a foundation narrative for Scandinavian
society.
LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FISHING MYTH
We have traced the development from this pragmatic view of the sea as a source of food and the
primary space for journeys to the conceptual embodiment of societal foundations themselves. We
have also seen how these conceptions are expanded with new meaning in highly Christianized
narratives. The journey to Vínland imposes the diametrically opposite dichotomy, associating the
untamed, wild and pagan with the fisherman, and the civilized order with the pastoralist and
agriculturalist, even though it makes use of the same motif and structure as the Fishing Myth. This
tale, along with the tale of Ørlýgr Hrappson and Kollr in Landnámabók, is an example of the need in
the post-conversion era to deconstruct the association of Þórr, the Fishing Myth, and civilization itself,
with the sea. The conceptual status of the sea in the pre-Christian worldview is a problem, because it
is undeniable that the society of the early medieval period in Scandinavia functions largely on the
same terms, and therefore, the sea as part of the ecosystem occupies the same conceptual position in
this worldview. Regardless of social change and upheaval, the daily needs that are supported by
fishing activities will still be relevant. For this reason, the tales of Þórr’s encounter with the
Miðgarðsormr, or sea-spirit, are reconfigured and reconstructed. Similarly, the god who would
originally have been assigned the function of guide and savior at sea is now assigned the role of a
vicious demon that persecutes sailors who reject him.
The tales of Þórr and his function as a protector and provider at sea did not die out with the
coming of Christianity (cf. the case of Helgi inn magri), undoubtedly because of the continued
importance of the sea to the culture, and thus it seems at some point that it became necessary to
deconstruct and appropriate the myths into a Christianized context. Gylfaginning ridicules Þórr for
his inability to complete the tests of Útgarðaloki—tests which should have been transparent to him if
he were able to see the true nature of the world and not just its material appearance. Saxo, however,
is more shrewd in his development of the narrative. Where Gylfaginning only allots the ocean a minor
narrative role, as an undercurrent of signifiers referring to the Fishing Myth, Saxo exploits the cultural
role and ideological potential of the sea and cunningly attributes to it a new dimension. Þórr is no
longer the demon that harasses sailors at sea in a crude reversal of his original role, but neither is he
the foolish man who believes himself to be a god and is tricked by the mirages of an otherworldly
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being. For Saxo, Þórr is again the positive protagonist, and his exploits at sea bring Christianity to
Scandinavia.
The sea is thus transformed from the conceptual root of societies, wealth, and power in the
Viking Age to a space of discovery and recognition—the road to insight. Saxo introduces Christianity
in Scandinavia by way of the sea—a journey that transforms the parameters of the ancient Fishing
Myth to aspects of spiritual longing, with the Icelandic Þórr hypostasis, Thorkillus. He skillfully
associates the physical hunger of the sailors with the spiritual hunger of the nation of Denmark, and
essentially presents the same argument or precaution that the early Fishing Myth did, recast in
spiritual terms: moderation is the best virtue. While Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning assert that
moderation is useful to the fisherman because it can mean the difference between life and death, Saxo
argues that moderation in life is the one virtue that is needed to fill the spiritual void of pagan
materialism. In doing so, the sea that binds Scandinavian culture together is equated with the social
space in which a journey towards revelation can—and must—be undertaken. This association only
becomes possible if the eco-myth of the sea already contains the building blocks of themes such as
hunger, death, caution, discovery, and new realizations. The first three of these themes are present
from the beginning. The themes of discovery and new realizations are supported by the gradual
movement of the Scandinavians towards the West, especially in context of the settlement of Iceland.
It seems possible that early conversion narratives in Scandinavia—if Vǫluspá is counted among
them—may have recognized the potential of the sea as conveyer of new social ideas and societal
change, giving us the image of a new world emerging from the sea after Ragnarǫk.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
It is the conclusion of this chapter that the dichotomized mythic landscape presented by Kirsten
Hastrup in Island of Anthropology (1990, 29) is an insufficient model of the conceptual world of Old
Norse mythology for any given point in time. It cannot be derived from the above analyses that
peoples impressed by either the pre-Christian worldview or the post-conversion worldview were more
or less inclined than the other to transpose upon their natural habitat a conceptual zoning based on a
binary in-group–out–group dynamic. While there is an expression of the binary opposition land/sea,
civilized/wild, it is not based on associating fixed phenomena with fixed zones. Rather, the system of
associations is fluid and may be employed differently according to the needs of the narrative and the
perspective of the culture. It is the conclusion here that the ecological significance of the sea is a
constant factor in Old Norse–Scandinavian mythology and culture. It is not the Úthaf as much as it is
a realm of resource appropriation, acquisition of wealth, and most importantly the foundation of
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society itself: without the ocean and its bounties, early Scandinavian culture would not have
developed towards the Viking culture. This means that the sea should be understood more as a
unifying force of the culture than only a distant space of danger and peril. The sea even represents a
cognitive force that can alter human perception of the world in some of the Old Norse and
Scandinavian narratives. The guiding light of a spiritual quest can be recovered in the farthest away
place, among eagle-like monsters in a cave. In fact, the association of the eagles of the northern wind
with the underground, which seems to have had wide currency (see below in chapter IV on Boreas
Aquilo and earthquakes, page 167), indicates that even the vertical dichotomy in Hastrup’s model is
inadequate as a description of the conceptual worldview of Old Norse mythology. This does not,
however, mean that there are no polarizations or that a sharp division of protagonists and antagonists
cannot be distinguished in Old Norse myths. On the contrary, the myths are full of such polarities. It
just means that the division of Ásgarðr/Miðgarðr vs. Jǫtunheimar/Útgarðar (p. 28) is a stale metaphor
for a rigid notion of the worldview that is not applicable when the mythology is scrutinized in depth.
In that respect it should also be kept in mind that the term Útgarðr/Útgarðar linguistically seems to
be a late addition to the cosmology (Vikstrand 2006, 355).
At this point it would be prudent to ask whether Nanna Løkka’s conclusion (2010, 248–9) is
appropriate: that there is no dualism to be found in Old Norse mythology that is not a result of
Christian influence. Løkka argues that the worldview of pre-Christian Norse mythology is based on
monism. Her argument for a monistic worldview in relation to Old Norse mythology is based on the
idea that everything is the result of fate, and that both jǫtnar and gods have their origins in Ymir (p.
260–2). For this same reason the gods are nothing more than the agents of fate. It seems, however,
that this conclusion is based on a narrow interpretation of the eschatological system alone. We have
seen above that an entirely different worldview appears once a myth of Old Norse mythology is
removed from the eschatological and cosmological frame in which it is found in the medieval context,
primarily of Gylfaginning, and associated instead with the immediate ecosystem of the cultural unit.
This pragmatic view of the Fishing Myth as an eco-myth that takes its place in the Mythical Charter
of Old Norse–Scandinavian Tradition in order to relate useful knowledge of daily existence in the
North indicates a much wider perspective than the one applied by Løkka. In that light, it seems
implausible that a monistic causal complex would be ingrained here in the pagan context. It seems
more realistic to search for a monistic causal complex and an all-embracing fate in Saxo’s version of
the Fishing Myth given that he is operating with a notion of a divine plan behind all the events
described in his history of Denmark. In addition to that, it may be noted that in the day-to-day
pragmatic application of the eco-myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition to Viking Scandinavian life and
culture, very little seems to correspond to this sense of fatedness that Løkka describes. As a guide and
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provider of food at sea, it seems rather that Þórr assists Scandinavians in taking control over their
existence and fortune. In fact, this seems to be exactly the sentiment ingrained in Haddingus’s praise
for the sea. When fate does come into the picture in relation to the character of Haddingus, it is in the
context of Saxo’s eschatology and the plight that this Christian cleric believed his Viking ancestors
suffered in Hell.
As such, it may be said that the myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expidition and the catalogue of
associated narratives and mythology, in their conceptualizations of life in the Scandinavian
ecosystem, exceed the limitations set by fixed models and structures. This was a narrative that could
be charged and recharged with mythic energy and interpretation throughout the Viking and Medieval
Era, because of its profound relationship to the regional ecosystem. In the next chapter we will see
how the Creation Myth and the myth of the Mead of Poetry have functioned in the same way, although
much more closely in concert with the ecosystem of Iceland in particular. These myths have also
undergone evolutions in mythopoesis that have been set in motion by human reflections upon the
ecosystem, and in that way they have become key myths of the Mythical Charter of Tradition of
Icelandic society, as mythical conceptions of the land in a region with highly active volcanoes.
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THE CREATION MYTH, THE MYTH OF THE
MEAD OF POETRY, AND VOLCANISM
© Stefnisson
「山は生きています」と筆者はその本の序文に書いていた。「山はそれを見る角度、季節、時
刻、あるいは見るものの心持ちひとつでがらりとその姿を変えてしまうのです。従って我々は常
に山の一部分、ほんのひとかけらしか把握してはいないのだという認識を持つことが肝要であり
ましょう」
(“Mountains are living entities”, it said in the foreword of the book. “Depending on the perspective, the
time of the year, the time of day, the mood of the beholder, or any other factor, mountains will actually
change their appearance. It is therefore essential to understand that one can never know more than one
side of a mountain, one tiny aspect” [Murakami 2004 II, 29])
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CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we will address the subject of volcanism in Old Norse mythology as an integrated part
of conceptualizations of land in the Icelandic and Norse Mythical Charter of Tradition. When
searching for Old Norse conceptions of the land under the premises set by the method and perspective
of eco-mythology, it can be difficult to locate narrative examples that are safely associated with a
specific ecosystem, especially in the Old Norse myths. Without a specific point of focus, the
discussion may quickly become generic rather than specific. If, for instance, one would discuss
mountains in relation to land, it would be hard to distinguish between a Scandinavian and a North
Atlantic landscape, and we would lose track of the specific evolution of the narratives. We would lose
the cultural unit that consumes these texts and whose worldview we are examining. A solution that
has often been imposed on this issue, though with little success, is to focus on where the myths in
question come from: are they from Iceland? Are they Norwegian? Are they Germanic or IndoEuropean? Arguments for and against each position will draw forth aspects of language, places of
text production, and features of the contents of the texts, such as catalogues of animals and trees. As
we are discussing the evolution of these myths in relation to ecosystems as part of the general
examination of the Old Norse mythical worldview, we should not seek to resolve these questions, but
instead focus on where the myth places itself in a Mythical Charter of Tradition which extends over
a long period of time. It is irrelevant to fix the myth in a national or regional perspective, but it is
conducive to our discussion to associate it with landscapes, and in that respect there is one aspect of
the Icelandic landscape that stands out from the rest of Northern Europe: its volcanoes. We will
therefore treat the two cosmic myths of the Creation Myth and the myth of the Mead of Poetry in
Skáldskaparmál in terms of how they are cultural narratives about volcanism and about existing as a
society in an Icelandic landscape marked by extensive volcanic activity.
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THE RESEARCH BACKGRO UND OF EARLY ICELANDIC VOLCANISM IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
The subject of volcanism in relation to Old Norse mythology has not been fully investigated. It
simmers as an undercurrent in different scholarship, but the full importance of volcanic imagery and
motifs in the mythology has not yet been brought to the surface. Bertha Phillpotts (1905) was one of
the first scholars to investigate the impact of volcanism on Old Norse mythology. She composed a
nearly exhaustive interpretation of Surtr as a volcanic jǫtunn, one that is still accepted today (Simek
2007, 303–4). Sigurður Nordal (1927, 100–4), referring generally to Phillpotts, saw this interpretation
as completely natural and added only a few details to it in his interpretation of Vǫluspá. Hilda R. E.
Davidson added to this discussion the obvious points of reference to descriptions of actual Icelandic
eruptions in the eldrit (1964, 208–9). She briefly compares the events of ragnarøkkr in Vǫluspá to the
1783 description of the Laki eruption, and notes how well the imagery of the poem fits with the
features of this eruption. Since then very little has been added to the discussion of the imagery of Old
Norse mythology in relation to Icelandic volcanism, except for Oren Falk’s comment in The
Vanishing Volcanoes (2007) that the volcanic imagery in Vǫluspá and Bergbúa þáttr may “represent
a naturalising, or even paganising” adaption of the obviously Christian moralistic conceptions of
subterranean fires revealed in such authoritative works as Konungs Skuggsjá (Falk 2007, 9).62 In
2013, Heimir Pálsson wrote a short article on Surtr and Þórr’s role in the eruption of Hallmundarkviða
called Surtur og Þór Hallmundarkviða túlkuð. This interpretation is closely linked with the
presentation on Hallmundarkviða and Hallmundarhraun given by the geologist Árni Hjartarson at
Hið íslenska náttúrufræðifélag on the 28th November 2011, which the author refers to in the article.
Surtr is connected to the Eldgjá event in the Katla system in 934–8 and the poem Hallmundarkviða
is associated with Hallmundarhraun in the bottom of Borgarfjörður. Lastly, it should be mentioned
that Bo Gräslund and Neil Price in Twilight of the gods? (2012), provide an archaeological angle to
ragnarøkkr, arguing for a Migration Age catastrophic event related to volcanism as a source for the
concept of the Fimbulvetr.
Very little written material comparable to the later eldrit survives from the medieval period.
The eldrit, the first of which was written by Þorsteinn Magnússon in 1625 about the Katla eruption,
are highly methodical reports that meticulously document the eruptive events (Þór Þórðarson 2010,
289). Their style seems to have prompted scientists in search of historical records of Icelandic
volcanism to primarily search records with a seemingly comparable discourse for information about
early Icelandic conceptions of volcanism, leaving the mythological sources unexplored. In Perception
62
As will become apparent below, this notion seems unacceptable in light of the prevalence of volcanic imagery in Old
Norse mythology.
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of Volcanic Eruptions in Iceland (2010), the geologist Þór Þórðarson focuses on Landnámabók for
one example of an eruption and on Kristni saga for another. According to him, the early Icelandic
attitude to volcanism was “remarkably to the point and strictly a matter-of-fact” (Þór Þórðarson 2010,
288), and he believes this is evidenced in the Icelandic annals, where the minimalistic recording of
events leaves little room for interpretation. Þór Þórðarson compares the Icelandic accounts with the
account of Herbert the monk of the Clairvaux monastery, who is presumably writing about Icelandic
volcanism in his Liber Miraculum in 1178–80 (ibid). Herbert’s account, he says, is “overpowered by
the religious overtone and insinuations, whereas the Icelandic one is a “matter of fact” (p. 289). In
the account of Kristni saga, Þór Þórðarson sees an expression of the supposed fact that “the pragmatic
perception recurs consistently and prevails […] Even though the matter-of-fact perception revealed
by written sources may be biased towards the official or authoritarian view, the connotation is that it
is representative of the view held by the majority in Icelandic society” (p. 293).
This is an unacceptable assertion. The account in Kristni saga of the formation of
Kristnitökuhraun and Snorri goði’s dismissal of the pagans’ claim that the gods burned this hraun
because they were enraged, is more likely to be tied to the saga’s soteriological agenda (Falk 2007,
5), and Snorri goði is more likely being represented as a noble heathen (cf. Lönnroth 1969) in the
process by dismissing the power of the pagan gods. One must expect that the authoritative Old Norse
view is expressed in such a text as the Konungs Skuggsjá, since it is a handbook of standardized
knowledge for the Norse upper class. Konungs Skuggsjá firmly associates Icelandic volcanism with
the same religious overtones and insinuations as Liber Miraculum: “og er mier suo sagt j dialogo at
hinn helgi Gregorius hafi suo mællt at pijslar stadir sie j sikil ey j þeim elldi er þar er. Enn draga þo
meiri lijkindi til þess. j þessum elldi er a islandi er at þar sie vijst pijslar stadir (and I have been told
in the Dialogus that St. Gregory has said that there are places of torment in Sicily in the fire that burns
there. But there is thus the more reason to assume that in the fires of Iceland there are certainly places
of torment [Konungs Skuggsjá 1945, XIV]). This view on volcanism is based fully on continental
teachings, just as is the case with the seemingly pragmatic view of Kristni saga.
But what of the indigenous Icelandic view? Phillpotts, Sigurður Nordal, and to some extent
Davidson argue that the volcanism they find in Vǫluspá is Icelandic. The imagery, however, is
unclear. Only a few stanzas may be interpreted with an eye to volcanism and as long as there is little
comparative reference outside Vǫluspá, we are left with only postulates. Phillpotts knew of Bergbúa
þáttr and its poem Hallmundarkviða as a source to compare to, but she was seemingly so focused on
arguing that Vǫluspá was originally an Icelandic creation (1905, 26) that she overlooked the fact that
Hallmundarkviða, from which she picks out only one stanza in her entire article, has abundant
descriptions of volcanism.
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Bergbúa þáttr (ÍF 13 1991, 441–50) is preserved in the AM 564 a 4to vellum, but the
manuscript is in poor condition, so the text has been reconstructed by the use of paper versions that
are no older than 1686. These were copied by Árni Magnússon from Vatnshyrna (p. ciii–iv).
Suggested dating ranges between the twelfth and the mid-thirteenth century, and Guðmundur
Finnbogason has even suggested that it describes the eruption in Sólheimajökull in 1262 (p. ccv).
Hallmundarkviða may, on the other hand, be much older than its prose frame in Bergbúa þáttr.
Another suggestion connects it with the formation of Hallmundarhraun in the first decade of the tenth
century (p. ccix), and this is also the view held by geologists. The name of Hallmundarhraun is first
attested only in 1844, but it may be older (p. ccvii). Regardless of its age, the poem draws upon mythic
imagery to describe volcanism.
Whether it is a thirteenth century poem or much older, Hallmundarkviða describes Icelandic
volcanism in the traditional authoritative voice of Old Norse culture: the skaldic meter. It is
completely different in style and content from the medieval authoritative source of Konungs Skuggsjá.
As such, it is an entirely indigenous source to volcanism, and this source involves the gods and
demons of Old Norse mythology in its conceptions of geothermal acitvities in the Icelandic
underground.
THE ANALYSES IN THIS CHAPTER
In the following chapter, I will analyze the Creation Myth of the world from Ymir as it is related in
Gylfaginning. This analysis involves some contemplation of the role of Surtr and Muspell, and the
factors by which their relation to the creation have been established. After the treatment of the
Creation Myth we proceed to the myth of the Mead of Poetry in Skáldskaparmál. Here, I examine the
tradition of the Mead Myth and how the versions of Skáldskaparmál and Hávamál fit together. Both
myths are reviewed in light of the mythic tradition as it can be detected in medieval and classical
literature. I perceive both the Mead Myth in Skáldskaparmál and the Creation Myth as early Icelandic
adaptations of the Mythical Charter of Tradition to the challenging aspects of the local ecosystem:
seismic activity and volcanic eruptions. These are eco-myths that have been formulated as responses
to the experience of volcanic events in the early period of the Icelandic settlement.
Throughout this chapter, I will compare mythic elements with the volcanic eruption described
in Hallmundarkviða. I will also draw upon other elements of the mythology, such as eddic and skaldic
poetry. The applied theory necessary for volcanological interpretations in this chapter comes from
Barber and Barber’s book on mythopoesis, When They Severed Earth from Sky (2004). This
comparative study of mythopoesis from geological and biological processes is not unproblematic,
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claiming too often that behind obscure myths of various cultures there are natural explanations and
historical events that can be identified. A certain level of caution is best in these instances; but on the
other hand, there is something to be said for an interpretative strategy built around mythic references
to geological activity, especially in the case of Old Norse mythology. Throughout their book, Barber
and Barber refer to Nordic myths and treat parts of Old Norse mythology in relation to their theory,
but I find that their knowledge of Old Norse mythology is generally superficial (compare: p. 65, 143–
4, 204, and 227–9). It is with such reservations that I apply their theory to Old Norse mythology.
Beyond the scope of theoretical usefulness, Barber and Barber also provide comparable examples
from other cultures that are highly enlightening when juxtaposed with Old Norse mythology. This is
also true for other scholars, archaeologists, and geologists. I include several comparative examples,
of which the article of Beaudoin and Oetelaar entitled The Day the Dry Snow Fell (2006a), is highly
useful. Beaudoin and Oetelaar examine the impact of the 7,627 year old Mazama eruption on the
cultures of some of the Canadian First Nations tribes, and compare archaeological data with human
response in oral narratives, or Collective Memory. Unfamiliar with volcanism, the tribes of the
Canadian plains had no vocabulary to express what they saw, and their tales may therefore function
as applicable analogies to how the first settlers to Iceland may have tried to develop a vocabulary
based on cultural luggage from homeland Scandinavia. The scientific data of the geologists, on the
other hand, provides a strong foundation for discussing the relationship between mythic imagery and
volcanism in a more concrete sense. The result is an analysis of central myths of Old Norse mythology
in light of the habitat they were reproduced in, with a strong focus on the different cultural sources of
inspiration, from a pre-Christian Scandinavian environment to the Medieval Era where Latin
literature and continental teachings provide a new frame of reference.
This chapter has two primary sections: “Creation from Ymir,” and “The Convulsions of Kvasir
and the Odinic Eruption.” The sections are followed by a conclusion which summarizes the arguments
and contextualizes the analysis in relation to the overarching focus of this presentation. The first
section analyzes the creation of Ymir in relation to the very common low-scale effusive volcanic
events of Iceland. The second section analyzes the Mead Myth in Skáldskaparmál as a narrative about
an explosive-eruptive volcanic event. It is argued that these myths have been constructed on the basis
of a much older tradition from Scandinavia and the European continent, which does not discriminate
strongly between notions of ‘Christian’ and ‘pagan,’ but is in its essence syncretic. The object of this
type of mythopoesis is to relay patterns of premodern human response to problematic places and
spaces in the surrounding ecosystem and larger environment.
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CREATION FROM YMIR
THE YMIR MYTH
The status of Ymir in Old Norse mythology is an interesting one. Gylfaginning gives an account of
cosmogony that is fully based on the figure of Ymir, but Vǫluspá only includes him as far as a mention
in stanza 3, when the vǫlva commemorates the beginning of the world: “Ár vas alda, þar er Ymir
byggði” (It was the dawning of time, there where Ymir lived). Gylfaginning tells of the killing of
Ymir committed by the sons of Bor: Óðinn, Vili, and Vé, but in Vǫluspá these same Bors synir seem
only to ‘lift’ (yppa) the ground63 and subsequently go about their business. The passage concerning
Ymir is opaque and we are forced to infer, referring to the story of Gylfaginning and the references
in Vafþrúðnismál 21 and Grímnismál 40–1, what happened with Ymir in the time that passed between
when the cosmos was void and when Bors synir lifted the ground in stanza 4. The result of their
ground-lifting is not that the missing elements of the world appear, but rather that plants grow from
the ground. We may then surmise that the missing elements of the world, the sea, earth, and trees,
have appeared in the meantime by some other means. The effect of the Bors synir lifting the ground
to create Miðgarðr in stanza 4 is that the sun then shines “á salar steina” (on the hall’s stones [Vsp.
4]), and green plants grow from the ground. This activity of lifting the foundation of the earth may
then refer to the agricultural activity of plowing barren fields to make them fertile. Earth appears over
the course of stanza 3 into the beginning of stanza 4, and in stanza 5, the seemingly chaotic movement
of the celestial bodies indicates that heaven has become part of the cosmos (it does not exist in stanza
3).64
Vafþrúðnismál 21 reveals what the Bors synir apparently did to Ymir: “Ór Ymis holdi var iǫrð
um skǫpoð, en ór beinom biǫrg, himinn ór hausi ins hrímkalda iǫtuns, en ór sveita siór” (From Ymir’s
flesh earth was created, and from the bones the mountains, heaven from the skull of the ice-cold giant,
and from the blood the sea [Vfm. 21). Grímnismál 40–1 supplement this with the information that
Ymir’s brains became the hard clouds of the stormy sky, his hair became the trees and from his
eyebrows the gods created Miðgarðr. In this respect, Gylfaginning adds to the tale of creation the
vivid images of a process of ice and fire coming together to create the matter that would later become
the world. In the beginning there was Niflheimr, where the well of Hvergelmir was to be found.
63
Schier argues in Die Erdschöpfung aus dem Urmeer und die Kosmogonie der Völospá (1963) that they are lifting the
earth out of an ancient ocean, but as Simek notes in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology (2007), this would be the only
evidence for such a cosmogony in the entire mythology, and it is therefore unlikely that such a notion can have played a
strong role.
64 On this subject, see Sigurður Nordal 1927, 27–30.
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Niflheimr was ice-cold and located in the north. Conversely, to the south there was a place called
Muspell or Muspellzheimr, a place of fierce heat inhabited by the fire-demon Surtr (Gylf. IV).
This myth has been analyzed with critical scrutiny by mythologists throughout the twentieth
century. Anne Holtsmark takes the descriptions of Muspellzheimr as evidence that the author of
Gylfaginning was influenced by the Christian teachings of Elucidarius. The vocabulary of the text
points towards a notion of Heaven and Hell, making use of such formulations as “logandi ok
brennandi” (smoldering and burning), associated with both realms of the Christian cosmology and
fused into one by the use of the Surtr figure, who, with his flaming sword, takes on the role of a
cherub. She arrives at the conclusion that the convergence of the heat and cold from the two realms
must be a derivation of the widespread teachings of the classical four elements (1964, 29–30). Klaus
von See dismisses this relationship with the four elements and instead argues that since there is only
‘warmth’ and ‘cold,’ the underlying principle must be the neoplatonic notions of dualism propounded
by Guillaume de Conches and Lactantius (von See 1988, 53). To de Vries, the notion of
Muspellzheimr as a demonic location in the south contradicts the idea that otherwise seems
widespread in the North, namely that the southerly region of the world is inhabited by people of
culture, and thus he concludes that the placing of Surtr in this region must be an entirely non-original
concept (de Vries 1970, 374).
Regarding Ymir, Holtsmark writes: “Myten om urjotnen er utvilsomt norrøn hedendom. Men
Gylfaginnings nøyaktigere utmaling av hvordan det har foregått, bør stå for Snorres regning” (The
myth of the ancient giant is undoubtedly Old Norse paganism, but Gylfaginning’s precise images of
the process is on Snorri’s own accord [Holtsmark 1964, 31]). Holtsmark identifies the line in
Gylfaginning that offers an alternative to Vǫluspá 3 “þat er ekki var” (there was nothing), as opposed
to “þar er Ymir byggði” (there where Ymir lived), with the teachings of Elucidarius. These teachings
state that God created the world “af engu efni” (from nothing), thereby suggesting that the Creation
Myth of Gylfaginning is in alignment with contemporary thirteenth century doctrine. This fashions
Ymir as matter that is formed from the ice in Élivágar, which has been melted by the evil Surtr—a
product of evil from which the gods will create the world (Holtsmark 1964, 28–9). The creation of
the world from Ymir is thus explained in a frame that recognizes this myth fully pagan and preChristian. Holtsmark is convinced that the myth is pre-Christian, since it is prevalent in the mythology
of skaldic diction, and thus, because skaldic poetry was one of Snorri’s sources, his object was to
explain this myth as heresy (p. 32).
Believing that the Prologus to Edda is an argument for a far-reaching anticipation of
Christianity in native tradition, Peter and Ursula Dronke in The Prologue of the Prose Edda:
Explorations of a Latin Background (1977, 173–4) argue that the pagan idea expressed in Prologus
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that all things were created from a substance is a substrate of neoplatonic philosophy (p. 172). The
body–earth analogy that is extant in the Ymir Myth is identified by Anthony Faulkes in his article
Pagan Sympathy: Attitudes to Heathendom in the Prologue to Snorra Edda (1983) as widespread in
European literature with possible origins in the works of, among others, Guillaume de Conches, Peter
Comestor, and Ovid (Faulkes 1983, 288). According to Faulkes, nature worship and the notions of
the body as a microcosm expressed in Prologus seem to reach back to Lactantius, Isidore, St.
Augustine, and Plato (p. 289–90). However, there is evidence for the conception of the world as a
giant body in the Ṛgveda, and it may be that the notion is as old as some of the first Indo-European
peoples (deVries 1970, 367–8). There may also be a cult myth present where the dismemberment of
Ymir corresponds to the dismemberment of a sacrificial victim during rituals (Simek 2007, 377–8).
The more recent study of the Ymir Myth by Guðrún Nordal in Tools of Literacy (2001)
establishes the influence of Plato’s Timaeus on Edda through the neoplatonists (p. 273–7). Guðrún
Nordal points out that skaldic poetry contains very little that refers to the Creation Myth of
Gylfaginning and writes: “It is, however, a fact that there is no trace of the story of Ymir’s role in the
creation of the world in pagan skaldic verse outside Snorra Edda, the oldest example being Arnórr
jarlaskáld’s eleventh century stanza preserved only in Snorra Edda” (p. 281). Skaldic verse knows
no kenning for the earth as “Ymis hold” (the flesh of Ymir). Eyvindr skáldaspillir refers to the corpse
of Jǫrðr once and uses hold as a heiti for earth in another instance, though without including Ymir (p.
282). Ormr Barreyjarskáld uses “Ymis blóð” (the blood of Ymir) in a single instance (ibid), but
beyond that there is little in skaldic verse that refers to the Ymir Myth at all. Guðrún Nordal is,
however, cautious, and instead of dismissing the myth as a pure construct of the thirteenth century,
she writes:
The myth of the creation of the world out of Ymir’s body may have old roots in
Scandinavian paganism, even though it left little trace in the skaldic diction of the early
poets, but its popularity with the writers of mythography and skaldic poetics in the
thirteenth century is well attested and was most probably induced by its analogy to
current trends in philosophical thinking (p. 283).
This is a reasonable disposition given the external evidence for a myth of anthropogenesis from a
being that has grown out of the earth in Germania (Germania. 1959, II; de Vries 1970, 363; Martin
1981, 368), and the prevalent conception of the world as a human body throughout Indo-European
mythologies (de Vries 1970, 364–5; Martin 1981, 369). The idea of a primordial being that delivers
the building materials for the cosmos is so widespread that Schjødt in his Initiation between Two
Worlds (2008a) simply sees the Ymir Myth as the Scandinavian variant of a more or less universal
phenomenon (Schjødt 2008a, 93). Guðrún Nordal demonstrates how cosmological imagery and body
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imagery are intimately linked in skaldic verse in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Carefully, she
suggests that this enduring simile between the human body and the world-body is, if not generated
from the influence of neoplatonic philosophy, then at least kept alive by its popularity. As she puts it:
“[t]he circumstantial evidence presented in this chapter may seem rather persuasive” (Guðrún Nordal
2001, 307).
Two trends thus currently prevail in scholarship: one points to obvious relationships between
literary motifs, while another makes a persuasive case for a deeply rooted phenomenological
relationship between Ymir as the world-body and similar myths throughout European and Central
Asian history. There is nothing to hinder the possibility that Guðrún Nordal cautiously keeps the door
ajar to, namely that both circumstances are the reason that the myth is related in Gylfaginning and
elsewhere. If we accept this notion, then the question of how this myth of the world-body came to
Iceland—which seems to boggle the minds of several of the above-mentioned scholars—must take
the back seat to the more pressing question of why? If the World-Body Myth is older than the advent
of neoplatonic philosophy in Iceland, why would it be reproduced and written down? This question
will be explored in the following.
THE PUZZLE
There are several inconsistencies in the Creation Myth in Gylfaginning which have been pointed out
by the various scholars who have dealt with it. The three most important elements of the Creation
Myth that puzzle scholarship are:
(1) Why is Muspell or Muspellzheimr involved in the Creation Myth (Holtsmark 1964, 29;
Sigurður Nordal 1927, 100; Clunies Ross 1994, 65 and particularly p. 155)?
(2) Why is Surtr involved in both the Creation Myth and in the ragnarøkkr (Holtsmark 1964, 29;
Sigurður Nordal 1927, 101–3)?
(3) What is the image of the eitr referring to (Holtsmark 1964, 30–1)?
These questions are the subject of the following analysis. They relate to the Ymir Myth insofar as
they explain the origins of Ymir. If the neoplatonic and Christian interpretation is stripped away from
the description of the natural process of creating Ymir, another very interesting image emerges. This
is an image of a volcanic event.
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EITR, ÉLIVÁGAR AND AURGELMIR
In conjunction with the above questions, Holtsmark also wonders about the convergence of heat and
cold and why the process of the quickening of the flowing eitrár is seemingly reversed. 65
Gylfaginning explains that before the earth was created there was the realm called Niflheimr, which
contains the well of Hvergelmir, from which eleven rivers flow. Muspellzheimr is in the South. It is
a realm of extreme heat that burns and is very bright. This place is guarded by Surtr (Gylf. IV). From
Hvergelmir in Niflheimr, these rivers flow towards the great void in Ginnungagap, and thus
Gylfaginning explains the process of the flow and quickening of the Élivágar:
Þá mælir Hár: ‘Ár þær er kallaðar eru Élivágar, þá er þær váru svá langt komnar frá
uppsprettunni at eitrkvikja sú er þar fylgði harðnaði svá sem sindr þat er renn ór eldinum,
þá varð þat íss, ok þá er sá íss gaf staðar ok rann eigi, þá héldi yfir þannig úr þat er af
stóð eitrinu ok fraus at hrími, ok jók hrímit hvert yfir annat allt í Ginnungagap.’
(These rivers that are called Élivágar, when they had come far enough away from the
source, so that the poisonous flow that followed hardened like the cinders that run out of
the fire,66 then it turned to ice, and when this ice stopped and did not run, then the vapor
that stood off the poison froze to rime on top of it in the same direction, and this rime
increased in layers all over Ginnungagap [Gylf. V]).
In order to make more sense of this image, it will be beneficial first to examine the term eitr, which
gives Holtsmark some grief. She has some difficulties reconciling the terminology surrounding eitr
with the described process of smelting, quickening, and freezing. She writes:
Naturbilledet er ikke slående: elver som fryser til is, frostrøk over isen som rimer, det
går an; men rim over hele Ginnungagap som senere blir beskrevet som hlætt sem lopt
vindlaust er merkelig; det spørs om isen og eitrdropar fra Élivágar ikke tar omveien om
rimet bare for å forklare navnet hrímþursar
(The nature image is not obvious: rivers freezing over, rime over the ice, that is
reasonable; but rime over the whole of Ginnungagap which is later described as hlætt
sem lopt vindlaust is strange; one wonders if not the ice and eitrdropar from Élivágar
take a detour over the rime only to explain the name hrímþursar [Holtsmark 1964, 30–
1]).
Holtsmark proceeds to attempt an explanation based on examples of the use of eitr in other instances.
Eitr does not only mean ‘poison,’ but may also denote the pus in a wound. It is also used in the word
65
Klaus von See does not consider this in the above reference to his explanation for the origins of heat and cold in the Ymir
Myth.
66 The fire of a smelter. Faulkes translates ’eldinum’ to ’a furnace’ (Faulkes 1995, 10). The word sindr is firmly associated
with the cinders or slags from the smelting process in a smithy (Zoëga 2004, 360; ONP http://www.onp.hum.ku.dk/,
search ‘sindr’).
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for a special type of glaciers both in Norway and Iceland, which are called eitrár. The use of eitr can
then be explained as an image that refers to a frozen waterfall coming over a cliff (p. 31). It would
therefore seem that there is some reasonable explanation for the use of the term eitr in this context.
Holtsmark goes on to discuss the term sindr. Similarly, while she accepts the image of the sindr as
reasonable to anyone who has seen the process of iron ore smelting, she goes on to wonder:
Men der kommer jo motsetningen inn igjen, Élivágar er kalde, og en blåstermile er varm,
og sindr størkner når det kommer i kaldere luft, mens eiter-elvene skulle fryse til is når
de kom fra selve kulden ut i det varmere strøk, i Ginnungagap.
(But here comes the contradiction again, Élivágar are cold and the wind gust is warm,
and the sindr quicken when it comes into colder air, while the eitr-rivers are supposed
to freeze when they come from the cold itself into the warmer region of Ginnungagap
[ibid]).
The image is that of the eitrár that flow from a cold source and then freeze when they have flowed
far enough from their spring. From this flow of eitr rises vapor which turns to rime that builds layer
upon layer over Ginnungagap. This rime persists in Ginnungagap even though the region is as mild
as a windless sky, and the flow of the eitr is likened, not to water freezing over, but to the cinders that
flow from a smelter. As such, the image is ripe with ambiguity and this begs the question of why. To
answer this question, it is worthwhile to revisit the theories on analogic descriptions in mythopoesis
posed by Barber and Barber:
“Analogy pervades our thinking.” Thus begins the chapter on metaphoric reality in Barber and
Barber (2004, 97). Knowledge and information are continually transmitted in metaphors and
analogies, especially in circumstances where there is no ready vocabulary to address phenomena.
Analogy is one of the most active tools in mythopoesis (p. 35–40). It is ubiquitously used, especially
in situations with seismic occurrences. For example, Barber and Barber recount that “a woman who
witnessed the great Alaska earthquake in 1968 from her house on a hillside reported that the ground
opening up in multiple furrows looked like something being raked open by an invisible giant’s claw”
(p. 36).
When the simile in the description is lost, a new level of metaphoric reality is reached, as the
distinction between representation and referent becomes blurred over time or as a result of
interpretation. Volcanism, Barber and Barber note, is one of the most prevalent themes of human
mythmaking (p. 87–8), yet one of the more complicated phenomena for humans to convey. It is in
instances like these that analogies like the one above become highly useful. Descriptions of the 1980
eruption of Mount St. Helens abound with analogies: “[It was] like sticking your head in the fireplace
and stirring up ashes”; “[…] the blast ‘sounded like artillery’” (p. 73). Adding a temporal lapse and
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the interpretations of posterity, the description of such an event becomes subject to metaphoric reality.
Barber and Barber point this out:
Then the eruption is artillery fire – an enormous battle – or the most horrendous of all
storms (depending on what zone you are in). Add a dash of Willfulness and we find the
Storm God engaged in an apocalyptic battle with some other, very ill-willed force […]
“It’s like, therefore it is”. Red liquid trails down a mountain “like red hair”, “like snaky
locks”, “like blood”; presently it is the red hair or snaky locks or blood of a giant (p. 97).
As the examples show, human attempts to describe seismic events and volcanism make ample use of
analogies—even in relation to very recent events. Quite easily, the referentiality of these analogies
will become blurred and a new metaphoric—or mythological—reality is created.
A lava flow from an effusive eruption behaves just like water turning to ice. To understand this
image of analogy, it is useful for us to consult a scientific description of the behavior of certain
eruption types. In explaining the process of lava shield formations in Iceland, the geologists Þór
Þórðarson and Larsen write:
Lava shields are the principal representatives of low-discharge (≤ 300 m3/s) flood lava
eruptions. These eruptions produce vast pahoehoe flow fields (up to 20 km3) that are fed
by a lava lake residing in the summit crater. The lava cone of each shield is essentially
constructed by fountain-fed flows and overspills from the lake, whereas the surrounding
lava apron is produced by tube-fed pahoehoe where insulated transport and flow inflation
enables great flow length (up to 70 km; e.g. Rossi, 1996; Thordarson, 2000). The highdischarge (> 1000 m3/s) flood lava events, such as the 1783–1784 A.D. Laki and 934–
38 A.D. Eldgjá fissure eruptions, represent some of the greatest spectacles of Icelandic
volcanism (Thordarson & Larsen 2007, 131).
Lava flows from a lake in the crater and advances upon an area where it quickens, resulting in the
build-up of a hraun, a lava field. It is the rubbly pahoehoe caused by pulsating discharges that
characterizes the most common basalt flow types of Iceland (ibid). From the decade just before the
landnám until the mid-fourteenth century there are roughly fifty-six verified eruptions. Thirty-nine
of these occurred before 1220, the approximate time of the writing of Edda. Out of these, four were
effusive events, an additional four were of a mixed effusive and explosive nature, and twenty-four
were explosive events (p. 137). In the period from 1179 to c. 1200, both an explosive and an effusive
event occurred in the Katla system (p. 134), and in the period 1201–1220 two mixed eruptions and
one explosive one were recorded to have occurred ‘somewhere in Iceland’ (p. 137). This is evidence
that every generation of Icelanders, from the time of landnám to the time when the mythology is
recorded in writing, would have experienced volcanic eruptions and that, in these eruption types, there
is sufficient material to inspire the imagination of Icelanders attempting to describe the subterranean
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processes particular to Iceland. Even if one is inclined to ascribe the entirety of the mythology of
Gylfaginning to the creative genius of Snorri Sturluson alone, there is sufficient volcanic activity in
his lifetime to suggest that an eruption could have inspired him to describe the process of the creation
of the world on these terms.
Strip the description of the formation of a hraun from its scientific-geological discourse and
the description may be reduced to: a liquid substance flows from a reservoir, freezes, and creates a
hraun. But the liquid itself must then be described: it is poisonous (eitr), it flows (at renna) from its
source (uppspretta), and it becomes hard like the slags (sindr) from the smelter (eldr). Vapor (úr)
rises from the flow, it lands—or freezes (at frjósa)—on top, becoming rime (hrím) that builds in
layers.
The Old Icelandic vocabulary is surprisingly poor when it comes to terminology pertaining to
volcanism. There is no discernible single word for ‘volcano’; ‘lava’ is hraun, the Scandinavian word
for a rugged stone formation; ‘eruption’ is merely eldzuppkváma (coming-up-of-fire) and in some
instances jarðeldr (earth-fire).67 Ash fall is commonly referred to as sandvetr (sand-weather) or aska
(ash) (cf. Storm 1888). If one attempts to describe the process of a lava flow that quickens, there is
little but water and ice analogies available in the language.
The term eitr is ambiguous. It refers both to poison and to ice-cold rivers, the eitrár. But from
Holtsmark’s information, it does not seem to refer to the quality of being cold in relation to the eitrár,
so much as it refers to the yellow color and a thick, flowing substance. Holtsmark herself mentions
that the common referent between the frozen ice and the pus seems to be the color (Holtsmark 1964,
31). Eitr is thus poisonous and yellow just like lava.68 If the eitr is in fact lava, there should be nothing
contradictory in the notion of it flowing from a well69 and freezing up when it flows too far, even
though, as Holtsmark wonders, it flows into a warmer climate. Neither is there any conflict between
the image of the eitr-rivers and the image of the slags flowing from a smelter: they are analogous.
The vapor that freezes and turns to rime did not as such cause any distress for Holtsmark, but
there is one problem with this image: the rime builds layer upon layer as if it were ice. Rime is an
Cf. the Icelandic Annals in Storm’s Islandske Annaler indtil 1578 (1888). The annals consistently use the term
eldzuppkváma. Jarðeldr is only used once in the annals of Flatey. The term iarðeldr seems to be reserved for a select group
of texts, whose connectivity is not clear. ONP lists 11 notations of the word, where four occur in the Sturlubók and Hauksbók
editions of Landnámabók. It occurs once in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, in Trójumanna saga,
in Barthólómeuss saga postula, in Kristni saga, in Stjórn, and in the Alfrǿði. See ONP ‘jarðeldr’:
http://www.onp.hum.ku.dk/
68 That the volcanoes and related phenomena could be poisonous (from gasses) was known to Icelanders. This is attested in
Konungs Skuggsjá (1945, XIV). The emission of hydrogen flouride gasses over long periods of time has been observed both
in relation to Laki 1783–5 and the various eruptions in Hekla (EOV 1985, 1003). In describing volcanism in Iceland, Saxo
also mentions that there are wells in Iceland which contain water that will kill you as if it were poison: “Illic etiam fama est
pestilentis undę laticem scaturire, quo quis gustato perinde ac ueneno prosternitur” (It is also told that there are springs up
there with water that is so dangerous that if you taste it you die instantly, as if it were poison [Saxo 2005 I, Praef 2,7]).
69 The base word spretta in uppspretta is also used to describe the eruption in Hallmundarkviða 6.
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accumulation of already frozen moisture particles in the air and does not generally build in layers. Ice
may do so, and when one interprets this image as a process of ice formation, this inconsistency is
easily overlooked. I will presumptuously suggest that if the author was looking for a frozen, watery
substance to build in layers across Ginnungagap, the image of snow would be more suitable. Where
rime would start depositing on the surface and keep accreting in a leeward direction, snow builds
layers upon layers across any exposed surface. But snow melts in the warmth, and Holtsmark pointed
out the inconsistency between Ginnungagap being mild as a windless sky and the rime being able to
build layers there. This is not an unresolvable inconsistency: when the secondary meaning of hrím is
considered, it vanishes. Hrím has a secondary meaning of ‘soot,’ and the jǫtunn Hrímnir’s name may
mean ‘sooty’ or ‘the one that causes soot’ (fire) (ODNS 1966, 284–5). Hrímnir is also mentioned in
Hallmundarkviða in connection with the volcanic disaster described in the poem. 70 This poem also
describes the ashes as mjǫll (newly fallen snow [Halkv. 11]), confirming the analogy between the
ejecta from a volcanic eruption and frozen precipitation. Unlike rime, soot—or ash—builds up layer
upon layer when ejected in an eruption, and unlike snow (and rime), it persists even though it enters
a climate that is milder: it cools down rather than heats up. Beaudoin and Oetelaar (2006a) provide
some interesting points of comparison with the image of rime, vapor, and eitr. The First Nation
peoples of the Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces in Canada relate a tale of the 7,627 year old
cataclysmic Mazama eruption in Oregon. The Mazama event is remembered by the First Nation
peoples as “the day the dry snow fell” and it tells how the ‘dry snow’ (cf. hrím, mjǫll) fell for days
from a darkened sky. It built up in layers, and when you walked in it, dust (úr) would rise up and
choke you (eitr), and the rain would turn the dust into a thick and slimy substance that eventually
dried to a crust (sindr, aurr, íss) (p. 41–3).
This comparison may explain the apparent inconsistencies that Holtsmark noticed in the ice
and rime that did not behave as those elements are supposed to. The Creation Myth of Gylfaginning
draws upon images of ice and water because there is nothing in the vocabulary to provide an
independent description. In the same way that the falling tephra became ‘dry snow’ to the First Nation
peoples in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the ashes of an Icelandic eruption became hrím and úr. Such a
description is provided as a consequence of the principle of analogy in mythopoesis. The principle of
metaphoric reality may blur the referent so that analogies soon become actualities, and the
descendants of the first generation to tell the myth simply forget or misunderstand the proper context
and referents of the analogies.
For polysemic reference in skaldic diction, I refer to Meulengracht’s brilliant analysis of Egill skallagrímson’s stanza in
honor of King Æþelstān, see Meulengracht 2006, 109–13.
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I believe this shift from analogy to actuality is evident in the introduction of the Élivágar into
the myth. We learn that Niflheimr is the site of Hvergelmir from where the rivers flow,71 and that one
of these rivers flows past the Hel-gates. At this point, it is not even mentioned that Niflheimr is cold,
but the text proceeds to describe the southern realm and its guardian Surtr as warm. After this
description and a citation from Vǫluspá inn skamma, we learn about the Élivágar that flow from some
place (Gylf. V). The phrasing “Ár þær er kallaðar eru Élivágar” (These rivers, which are called
Élivágar [Gylf. V]) naturally leads to the assumption that these rivers must be the same as those that
flow from Hvergelmir, even though this has not been stated in the text. This is also most likely the
intention, but it is important to note that Niflheimr is not yet described as cold, the description of the
Élivágar is not precisely pinned to Niflheimr, and most importantly, the Élivágar do not seem to be
an original name for these rivers. The individual names of the rivers come from Grímnismál 27–28
and their association with Élivágar is entirely a result of the narrative tradition in Gylfaginning (Simek
2007, 73).
We saw earlier that the Élivágar, possibly a term for the stormy sea (ODNS 1966, 117), seem
to be associated with extreme cold (see chapter III, page 38). However, this association is not
exclusive of other uses and interpretations in other cases. If the process of the eitr is supposed to be
silmilar to a lava flow that freezes and forms a hraun, it is admittedly a paradox that the rivers bringing
the eitr are named after the Élivágar, which are generally described in the tradition as the cold, stormy
waves. There are, however, a few aspects of the above-mentioned myths that provide an explanation
as to why the Élivágar are broadly represented here. The Élivágar are represented as a body of
extremely cold water in Hymiskviða, and this is also the case in Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns.
According to John Mckinnell (1994), the shared story pattern of Hymiskviða and Þorsteins þáttr
bœjarmagns is ultimately comparable to the narrative of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition (1994, 59-68).
Interestingly, Hallmundarkviða actively takes part in this complex too, but it shapes this image of the
Élivágar in quite different terms. The bergbúi describes the volcanic eruption as a ‘fight in Élivágar’
(“bág, í Élivága”) (Halkv. 7). In this way, there is a direct association between the Élivágar and
volcanism in one mythological situation.
This does not, however, explain the apparent inconsistency in naming lava flows after the
extremely cold Élivágar. However, this too can be resolved. It is possible to connect the Élivágar to
volcanism in another instance: Óðinn asks Vafþrúðnir in Vafþrúðnismál 30 where Aurgelmir came
from. Vafþrúðnir answers: “Ór Élivágom stucco eitrdropar, svá óx unz varð ór iǫtunn” (From Élivágar
sprang poison drops, so they grew until there came a jǫtunn from them). This stanza is also included
Given the information from Grímnismál 26 that water flows from Eikþyrnir’s horns into Hvergelmir and from there come
all flows of waters, the association of Hvergelmir with a body of water in Niflheimr is not unreasonable.
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in Gylfaginning, but it is interpolated after we learn that Niflheim is cold. This may be because of the
reference to Aurgelmir’s offspring as hrímþursar in stanza 33 of Vafþrúðnismál, using the term for
‘ice demons,’ but as it has been noted above, hrím may well refer to soot, not rime. If we stay with
the volcanic image of the flowing eitr from Gylfaginning, the image in Vafþrúðnismál 30 fits this
well. The eitr in this instance springs from its source, the Élivágar. It is a description of a flow of
‘stormy waves’ that eject their poisonous material, which then coalesces into a human figure. This is
a description of a gushing effusive eruption comparable to the ones that are so common in Iceland.
Vafþrúðnismál is one of the most prominent sources for Gylfaginning (SnE I 2011, xxv), and
is most probably the oldest source to the Élivágar, yet it does not give any clear reason to assume that
the Élivágar are cold. In fact, it tells of two separate figures related to creation imagery. Stanza 31
tells of the jǫtnar being made from the gushing eitrdropar. Aurgelmir is formed from the quickening
of the eitrdropar and becomes the ancestor of all the terrible jǫtnar. Stanza 21 tells of the world being
made from Ymir, his flesh becoming earth, his bones becoming the mountains, and “himinn ór hausi
ins hrímkalda iǫtuns” (heaven from the skull of the rime-cold giant [Vfm. 21, italics mine]). It is only
in Gylfaginning that these two figures are postulated to be one and the same, and there are strong
indications that this association of the two figures is a conscious construction. It seems to be a
construction to introduce into the Creation Myth what has been expressed by Clunies Ross as a
“polarization of the giant race into representatives of hrím and hiti” (Clunies Ross 1983, 51). This
would, in accordance with von See’s theory (1988, 52–55), be an attempt to reconcile elements of a
seemingly pagan complex of mythos with medieval, neoplatonic theories.
Underneath this attempt we find a widespread terminology that can be associated with
volcanism: the first part of the name Aurgelmir is probably aurr- ‘wet sand, gravel’ (Simek 2007,
24). Vafþrúðnismál 29 tells that Aurgelmir fathered Þrúðgelmir, who fathered Bergelmir. Þrúðseems to mean ‘power’ (p. 329), and the first part of Bergelmir, ber(g)-, may be interpreted as
meaning ‘bear’ (ODNS 1966, 44) or ‘mountain’ (Simek 2007, 34). The last part of these names,
-gelmir, seems to mean ‘roarer’ (p. 24). This word is also associated with wells and rivers such as
Hvergelmir (of hverr- meaning ‘kettle-roarer’ [ODNS 1966, 300]) and Vaðgelmir (ODNS 1966, 587).
If -gelmir refers to the roaring, churning violence of the rivers and wells of the underworld, the image
of the roaring, churning, violent gravel and sand is highly interesting, as it is so readily applicable to
a jökulhlaup and to volcanic ejecta. The powerful roar of Þrúðgelmir and Bergelmir, regardless of the
latter meaning ‘bear-roarer’ or ‘mountain-roarer,’ is similarly easy to apply to volcanism, but the
association of these names to volcanism should not rest on this assumption alone.
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The bergbúi of Hallmundarkviða mentions Aurnir as someone to whom he sends a boat of
stone.72 Aurnir is involved in the last stanza of the poem as well, where the bergbúi closes the poem
and puts an end to the eruption, saying that Aurnir’s well is dry (Halkv. 12). Here Aurnir, whose name
is probably derived from the same aurr- as Aurgelmir (cf. Simek 2007, 252),73 seems to preside over
a well that provides skaldic abilities and so ‘Aurnis brunnr’ may mean the Mead of Poetry (Bergbúa
þáttr: ÍF 13 1991, 450, fn.), but given the analogy that is being drawn between the skáldskapr of the
bergbúi and volcanism throughout this poem, it is not unreasonable to assume that it also refers to the
well from which all the volcanic terrors come. In fact, this notion coincides with stanza 7, where the
bergbúi describes the eruption of lava with the term aurr: “aurr tekr upp at fœrask undarligr ór
grundu” (a strange new clay begins to flow from the ground). The poem simply establishes
metonymic reference between the Mead of Poetry and lava, using the term aurr (but a strange kind)
as the primary word for describing the lava. This word is already known to the tradition from its
association with Aurgelmir as the man who was built from the eitr of the Élivágar.
And so we return to the Élivágar. These ‘stormy waves’ produce a thick substance that flows
or springs from their source, a brúðr or uppspretta in Hvergelmir, the ‘kettle-roarer.’ They freeze and
accumulate wherever they end. They bring with them fumes and depositions falling in layers.
According to Vafþrúðnismál, their growth produces a giant called Aurgelmir. It is at this point, when
the author of Gylfaginning chooses to interpolate a neoplatonic interpretation of the creation of the
world as a process of ice and fire, that the interpretation of these processes as thawing and quickening
ice becomes relevant. With the neoplatonic dichotomy of fire and ice, the author utilizes a known
image of volcanism in a new context to describe a new version of the creation of Ymir and the world:
Ginnungagap, þat er vissi til norðrs ættar, fyltisk með þunga ok hǫfugleik íss ok hríms
ok inn í frá úr ok gustr. En hinn syðri hlutr Ginnungagaps léttisk móti gneistum ok síum
þeim er flugu ór Muspellsheimi […] Svá sem kalt stóð af Niflheimi ok allir hlutir
grimmir, svá var þat er vissi námunda Muspelli heitt ok ljóst, en Ginnungagap var svá
hlætt sem lopt vindlaust. Ok þá er mœttisk hrímin ok blær hitans svá at bráðnaði ok
draup, ok af þeim kvikudropum kviknaði með krapti þess er til sendi hitann, ok varð
manns líkandi, ok var sá nefndr Ymir.
(Ginnungagap, the part that faces north, was filled with the weight of the ice and rime
and into it blew vapor and dampness. But the southern part of Ginnungagap cleared
towards the sparks and embers that flew out of Muspellzheimr […] Just as there came
coldness and everything evil from Niflheim, so was that part facing Muspell hot and
glowing, but Ginnungagap was as mild as a windless sky. And when the rime and
blowing heat met, then it thawed and dripped down, and these quickening drops
The boat motif will be treated in the following section “Kvasir’s convulsions”, pages 159-167.
It serves to mention here that there seem to be several jǫtunn names derived from the association with aurr- and berg(cf. ODNS 1966, 24 and 44–5)
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quickened from the power they were sent from the heat, and that became a man’s
likeness, and he was named Ymir [Gylf. V]).
This quotation assigns Muspellzheimr the role of adding fire to ice. As we have seen earlier,
Muspellzheimr is introduced in the beginning of the Creation Myth, and it is told that it has a guardian
called Surtr, who has a flaming sword. In the poetry this guardian of Muspellzheimr, Surtr, is
primarily associated with the destruction of the world in ragnarøkkr. In Fáfnismál 14, it is stated
directly that the æsir will meet Surtr exclusively—no one else—at the end of the world. The grounds
for this confusion of the primary destructive power with the process of creation will be investigated
in the following, where we will discuss the association with Muspell, too.
SURTR AND MUSPELLZHE IMR
The word Muspell has cognates in Old High German and Old Saxon. It occurs in the poem Muspilli74
and in the Old Saxon gospels Heliand, in both cases as a term for the apocalypse (Simek 2007, 222–
3). In Old Norse, apart from the term Muspell and Muspellzheimr, it also occurs in the formulation
of Vǫluspá 51, “Muspellz lýðir” (Muspellz’ People), as well as “Muspellz synir” (Muspellz’ Sons) in
Lokasenna 42. Gylfaginning also has “Muspellz megir” (Muspellz’ Powers) (Gylf. XIV and LI).
Anthony Faulkes comments in the index to his edition of Edda that the word was probably an abstract
noun that was personified in eddic poems and through misunderstanding became a place,
Muspellzheimr, in Edda (SnE I 2011, 173, index). It is Sigurður Nordal, though, who in 1927 hits the
nail on the head with his comment in Völuspá: “Angående Muspell er det bedst ærligt at bekende, at
det endnu ikke er lykkedes at forklare ordet, til trods for alle de forsøg, forskerne har gjort derpå”
(With regards to Muspell, it is best to be honest and confess that the word has not yet been satisfyingly
explained, despite the many attempts from scholars to do so [Sigurður Nordal 1927, 100]).
Suffice it to say, the history of the word Muspell is opaque. Its earliest occurrence is, as
mentioned, in Muspilli:
… gotmanno, daz Elias in demo uuige aruuartit uuerde. So daz Eliases pluot in erda
kitriufit, so inprinnant die perga, poum ni kistentit enihc in erdu, aha artruknent, muor
varsuuilhit sih, suilizot lougiu der himil, mano uallit, prinnit mittilagart, sten ni kistentit,
uerit denne stuatago in lant, uerit mit diu uuiru uiriho uuison: dar ni mac denne mak
andremo helfan uora demo muspille. Denne daz preita uuasal allaz uarprinnit, enti uuir
enti luft iz allaz arfurpit, uuar ist denne diu marha, dar man dar omit sinen magon piehc?
Diu marha ist farprunnan, diu sela stet pidungan, ni uueiz mit uuiu puaze: so uerit si za
uuize
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The poem is a fragment that was named after the occurrence of this word in the text.
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(God-men [believe] that Elias in this battle will be injured, so that Elias’ blood on the
earth drips, so the mountains burn, no tree stands back anywhere on earth, water dries
up, the moor swells itself, slowly burns the heaven, moon falls, Middle-Earth burns, no
stone stands back during these signs in the land, during the day of judgment, it comes
with fire to punish: then no person’s kin can help him before the muspille. Because when
the whole existence is burned up, and fire and air sweeps everything away, where is then
the field that man fought for with his kin? This field is burned away, the soul stands there
not knowing how to [make] amend[s]: so it will be punished [Musp. 1994, 88]).
Here Muspell is fully associated with the destruction of the world in the Christian apocalypse of fire:
the mountains burn, heaven burns, fire sweeps the land. It cannot be established that Muspilli (or
Heliand for that matter) were known in Iceland, though the occurrence of the word in these German
texts and in the Icelandic mythology of Gylfaginning as well as Vǫluspá indicates that there must
have been some cultural exchange with the continent, which has brought the word to the North. This
notion is only strengthened in light of the word’s associations in both cultural contexts. Given their
subject matter, it is not unreasonable to assume that texts like Heliand and Muspilli were in the
curriculum when Icelanders went abroad to study in Saxony and the Rhineland. Iceland’s second
bishop, Gizurr Ísleifsson (d. 1118) received his education in Saxony and Sæmundr inn fróði (d. 1130)
studied in ‘Frakkland,’ which may well have been the Rhineland (Vésteinn Ólason 1998, 44–5). They
and their peers could have learned about muspille at the continental schools and may have brought
the term with them to Iceland.
In the Icelandic context, the People or Sons of Muspell are assigned a role in the apocalypse of
ragnarøkkr. Gylfaginning tells that amidst the eitr-spewing of the Miðgarðsormr and the advance of
the mouth-gaping Fenrizúlfr with fire burning from its eyes and nostrils, the Muspellz megir will
come out of the torn sky, with Surtr to lead them, and that: “fyrir honum ok eptir bæði eldrbrennandi”
(before and after him fire is burning [Gylf. LI]). In Vǫluspá 51, the Muspellz lýðir are not directly
associated with Surtr, but will instead advance on Naglfar with Loki as the steersman. As will become
apparent below, this too is a volcanic image. Gylfaginning relates that Surtr will fling fire over the
earth and burn the entire world (Gylf. LI), and then it quotes Vǫluspá on the battle of ragnarøkkr.
Alongside this quotation, Gylfaginning adds stanza 18 of Vafþrúðnismál, where it is related that Surtr
will meet the gods on the Vígríðr plain (Gylf. LII).
The juxtaposition of Surtr and Muspell is vague and seems to rely mainly on Gylfaginning. But
on the other hand, it seems a fair disposition given that muspille is described with terms similar to the
functions of Surtr. In the Hauksbók version of Vǫluspá 47, it is added that Surtr’s kin will swallow
either those who tread the Hel-way or the Hel-way itself (Neckel & Kuhn 1962, 11: commentaries).
This happens after, or as a result of, Yggdrasill’s collapse. In Vafþrúðnismál 50–1, ragnarøkkr is
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referred to as “Surta logi” (Surtr’s flames), and finally, in Vǫluspá 52: “Surtr ferr sunnan með sviga
lævi, skínn af sverði sól valtíva; griótbjǫrg gnata, en gífr rata, troða halir helveg, en himinn klofnar”
(Surtr comes from the south with branches’ harm, the sun of the war-gods shines off the sword;
precipices crumble and troll-women roam, men tread the Hel-way, and the sky rips asunder). The
image of Surtr in these different descriptions is very close to the image of muspille in the Old High
German poem. Surtr’s fire will sweep the world, he will burn heaven, swallow the ground, burn the
trees, and destroy the mountains. Man is caught in the midst: in Muspilli he will be punished for his
sins, now that the ground is taken from underneath his feet. When Surtr comes in ragnarøkkr, man
will tread the Hel-way to his punishment. There is thus nothing remotely problematic in associating
Muspell with Surtr (cf. Sigurður Nordal 1927, 102) in the apocalypse of Gylfaginning—but why is
he associated with the creation?
The conjoined image of ‘Muspell-Surtr’ exists in terms of fire as the tertium comparationis.
This is also the quality that is useful in the process of creation in the Ymir Myth. As we have seen
above, the dualistic representation of the creation of the world from heat and cold assigns all things
grim and evil to Niflheimr, while sparks and molten particles burst out of Muspellzheimr. We may
assume, on the basis of what we know from other mythic sources, that this Fire-being, ‘the black one,’
is the cause of the conditions in Muspellzheimr.
In her article Surt, Bertha Phillpotts concludes that Surtr is entirely a volcano demon (Phillpotts
1905, 26). The association of Surtr with volcanism in Icelandic culture is found in numerous
instances. Phillpotts lists both the Surtshellir75 mentioned in Landnámabók and the Icelandic word
for lignite surtarbrandr as links between Surtr and volcanism (p. 16–18). She interprets the above
stanzas from Vǫluspá and Vafþrúðnismál as images of volcanism (p. 18–24), and finally, she directs
our attention to Surtr’s role in Hallmundarkviða, stating that “this poem may be said to set the seal of
confirmation on the view of the volcanic nature of Surt” (p. 26). The bergbúi relates a situation where
he journeys “niðr í Surts ens svarta sveit í eld enn heita” (down into Surtr the black one’s companyin/[of]-the-hot-fire [Halkv. 9]). Next he bursts out and becomes an ash plume that darkens the world
(Halkv. 10). Surtr causes the eruption. This association of Surtr with volcanism is fully acceptable,
and even the above reference to the sun of the war-gods shining off his sword (flame) finds a place
in the association. This is the so-called “bishop’s ring,” an intensely bright corona around the sun,
which is fringed by a halo that appears in the veil of ashes in the atmosphere after an eruption
(Beaudoin & Oetelaar 2006a, 43).
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Such formations as the Surtshellir are caused by tube-fed lava flows from low discharge effusive eruptions, where the top
layer of the lava cools and creates a crust. Beneath the crust, the lava is still fluid and will slowly flow away, so that caves
are formed. Such processes may take years to complete, and such a hraun will be warm for centuries to come afterwards.
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If we return to the image of the eitr splattering out of its source, flowing, and hardening like
slags; the ashes and poisonous fumes being ejected, falling down, and building up layers upon layers,
then the molten particles and sparks flying out of Muspellzheimr fit right in. Surtr, the warden of this
world of fire, produces these things. It is his fire that bursts out and creates these phenomena—in the
words of Phillpotts “Surt’s fuel” (Phillpotts 1905, 18). The image is clear: we are told of a place called
Muspellzheimr, which takes its name from an ancient warning of how the world will perish in fire
(muspille). This place must be guarded by the volcano warden: he whose fuel causes eruptions.
Sparks, molten particles, and slags are ejected from this place and these slags—which are poisonous
to humans in every way—turn into a being: the first jǫtunn.
And so we find answers to our questions: the observable volcanic phenomena of Iceland, like
the creation of Surtsey in 1973, are fundamentally ambiguous. They can destroy our world when Surtr
comes forward with flames, but they may also add new life to it when his fuel flows more peacefully
and builds its slags into a man, a world-body. This is how Ymir/Aurgelmir is created.
COLLECTING THE PIECE S
Old Norse scholarship has had difficulty explaining the apparently inconsistent parts that fire and ice
play in the Creation Myth: how can rime be of a mild temperature, and how can the eitr-flow come
from a cold source only to freeze up in the milder climate of Ginnungagap?
An approach to these questions that recognizes the analogic references of water, rime, and ice
to lava as well as ashes and the hardening of a lava flow into a hraun in a culture with no apparent
vocabulary for volcanism, can explain this. The poisonous river (eitr) of the stormy waves (Élivágar)
is the lava that flows from an eruption (Hvergelmir, ‘kettle-roarer’) like the slags (sindr) from a
smelter. It freezes like ice into a hraun and creates a man—a notion that is fully acceptable to a
premodern worldview that is presented with the fantastic shapes of a volcanic landscape like Iceland,
which until recently has been subject to many a tale of cliff-trolls (see, for instance, Simpson 2004,
77–104). From this flow rises vapour (úr), gasses, and smoke, and ashes are ejected in the process.
The ashes fall like dry snow, rime, or soot (mjǫll and hrím) and cover the primordial void.
Not only does the imagery of the volcanic analogy explain the apparent contradictions in the
different elements of the Creation Myth, it also explains why Gylfaginning insists that Ymir and
Aurgelmir are the same figure. Furthermore, it explains what happens in the poetic source from which
this imagery of both Ymir and Aurgelmir seem to originate: Vafþrúðnismál 21 and 30–3.
Subsequently this provides a frame of reference for Aurgelmir’s offspring. Ymir and Aurgelmir seem
to have been interpreted into a neoplatonic scheme, where Ymir is the rime-cold giant from which
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the world is made in a micro-macrocosmic complex, and Aurgelmir is his fiery counterpart that comes
from the ground-fire. Behind the conjoining of these two jǫtnar we find a dualism of fire and ice in
Niflheimr and Muspellzheimr.
The fire-world of Muspellzheimr is constructed on references to Muspell as the fiery end of
the world and Surtr’s volcanic/apocalyptic role in Vǫluspá, essentially placing the volcanic element
in direct reference to the creation process of a low-scale effusive volcanic event that must have been
observed by Icelanders time and time again, not least in the creation of the Hallmundarhraun where
the Surtshellir is located. 76 This is a paradox, yet it is fully understandable in the terms of the
apocalyptic tales that medieval Icelanders may have known and compared with the observable
phenomena of their surroundings. The (Germanic) world is supposed to perish in a biblical
catastrophe of fire known as muspille. The expressions of this cataclysm in Vǫluspá and Muspilli are
so close to one another that one may speculate whether they are related.77 In Iceland, the conception
of the world being destroyed in flames gains a new, more immediate dimension. For one, the volcanic
phenomena of the island must have certainly reinforced any notion the Scandinavian settlers may
have had of a muspille event to end the world, regardless of whether their knowledge of muspille
came from a common pre-Christian Germanic background possibly influenced by the Christian
mission, or from post-conversion teachings on the apocalypse as it is known in the Book of
Revelations. But the observations of volcanic phenomena—destructive as they may be—provide
another perspective: as much as they destroy, they also create.
Fáfnismál 14–15 informs us that the æsir are supposed to meet Surtr in battle at the island
Óskópnir and, as we have seen above, this battle between the æsir and Surtr is echoed in
Vafþrúðnismál 17–18, where they meet on Vígríðr. The image of “in sváso goð,” the mild (fertility)
gods who represent the stable and peaceful condition, joining in battle with the utmost representative
of the destructive forces of the world, Surtr, ‘the black one,’ is useful in a description of volcanism
on terms of ascribing such events to the willfulness of mythic inhabitants of the ecosystem. The
volcanic eruption is Surtr’s attack on the world, and the function of the gods, as described in the
beginning of Vǫluspá, is to bring agricultural order to the world after his attack. At this point, as soon
as an eruption is experienced by the Scandinavians in Iceland, Surtr and muspille will be intimately
linked with the ‘earth-fire.’ They are the willful spirits causing the catastrophe (cf. Barber & Barber
2004, 41–4).
76
See Landnámabók (1968 II, CLXXV [H]), where Þórvaldr holsbarki is said to have composed a drápa to Surtr in a cave.
I am not arguing that there is a direct relationship between the actual poems of Muspilli and Vǫluspá. Rather, I am
speculating that they are closely tied to the same image of the end of the world, and that is of course one that originates in
the Book of Revelation. John McKinnell and Richard North have provided excellent examinations of the relationship
between Vǫluspá and the Easter sermon, and Vǫluspá and the Book of Revelation in, respectively, Vǫluspá and the Feast
of Easter (2008) and Vǫluspá and the Book of Revelation (2003).
77
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But something else happens as the Scandinavians experience how this volcanic phenomenon
works its magic: Surtr’s fire breaks out of the ground. There are sparks and bursts of molten particles,
and a poisonous flow that looks like slags from iron smelting. Vapor, smoke, and ashes—sand or
(dry) snow—rise from it. The ejecta build up, layer upon layer. The world does not come to an end.
Instead, the poisonous flow freezes over, the dry snow builds ground, and soon a new landscape has
been formed. This is the creation process observed: eitr, mjǫll, and úr build up and produce a
landscape, and this landscape is a roaring, unfriendly creature, a barren wasteland that must be
cultivated by the milder powers of the cosmos. The unfriendly, unaccommodating Ymir/Aurgelmir
must be refined in the hands of capable gods. In this scheme the Muspell People, Surtr, and the gods
seem to inhabit the exact same conceptual roles as the Red Spirits, the Smoke Woman, and the
Antecedent Spirits in the above described cosmology of the Maring people: there are the Fire Spirits
with their swarthy leader, who attack our world and there are the Ancestor Spirits as a collective, who
ensure fertility and procreation. Surtr and the Muspell People are associated with fire and war, and
the gods are beloved, kind, and sweet (sváss). When the Fire Spirits and their leader send the eitr and
the earth-fire that is so dangerous to humans, it takes the power of the beloved Ancestor Spirits to
make the world inhabitable again.
Behind the figure of Ymir there seems to be a common Germanic traditional conception of
creation from a primordial chthonic being. This is supported by the story of the earth-borne (terra
editus) Tuisto in Tacitus’s Germania, and to some extent the tales in Hversu Noregr byggðiz and
Fundinn Noregr of Fornjótr (cf. Clunies Ross 1983), who—not surprisingly, considering the Creation
Myth in Gylfaginning—fathers the various elements: Hlér (sea), Logi (fire), and Kári (wind). Kári
was the father of Frosti (frost), who in turn was the father of Snær (snow). Snær was the father of
Þorri, whose name is the name for the primary winter month of the Old Norse calendar (cf. Nordberg
2006, 56). This genealogy explains the origins of the winter season and its pagan rites (cf. Clunies
Ross 2003). As such it is in agreement with Prologus insofar as it expresses the same theory of pagan
religion: that pagan religion is a materialistic worship based on the experience of natural processes
(Prol. I–II). The description of the cosmogony in Gylfaginning combines eddic poetry with theories
on religion, history, and language as it has developed in the Christian world in the centuries prior to
the thirteenth century. As previously mentioned, the Creation Myth seems to rely on the neoplatonic
notion that the convergence of the two extremes, ice and fire, created a mild climate in which life
could grow (von See 1988, 52–5). The tradition of Gylfaginning associates two known mythic
concepts from the poetry, Muspell and Niflhel, with the elements of fire and ice to explain the origins
of the cosmos in a ‘pagan worldview’ that is consistent with the authoritative medieval theories on
this subject. This occurs by aligning parts of the Creation Myth in Vǫluspá with parts of the myth of
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the apocalypse in that very same poem. In this Creation Myth it is possible to detect a certain influence
from the eleventh and twelfth century philosophical discussion of creatio ex nihilo that is also referred
to in Prologus (Dronke & Dronke 1977, 170–2). The pagans, according to Prologus, reasoned that
everything must have been created from a substance (Prol. II). It seems that there is already substance
in the Creation Myth of Gylfaginning, in accordance with Prologus, but the interpolation of the altered
stanza 3 of Vǫluspá that substitutes Ymir with nothingness seems to accommodate the position of
creatio ex nihilo: “Ár vaz alda, þat er ekki var” (Gylf. IV). This position, however, contradicts the
tradition based on experiences of volcanic activities and lava flows combined with the Mythical
Charter of Tradition: we have seen the burning of a hraun; we have seen how lava bursts out of the
ground and creates new layers of rock and muddy substance; we have seen this mud eventually
become overgrown with shrubs and grass; and we have even seen that it may even become a highly
fertile area on which fields can be sown and animals may graze.
This is an eco-mythological description of the creation of the world that incorporates
experiences of the surrounding ecosystem to give an account of what might have happened in illo
tempore. It accounts for the world as a living being, governed by forces much greater than human
beings. These forces are living in the ground, and they are still very much alive. They are encountered
in caves and inside the bowels of mountains. They sit in darkness and await the time when, for one
reason or another, they will manifest their powers. They come from the giant being that was originally
created when the liquids of the fire-world poured into the void, filled it up, and cooled down. They
are the jǫtnar, the dvergar, the hrímþursar, the bergbúi, and the gýgjar that we see and hear in the
mountains.
To safeguard against their activities, the gods created a man of cosmic wisdom in a similar
manner as the original Ymir-being was created by liquids in the vat of the world, Ginnungagap. This
man came from the liquid of the mouths of the gods and he is called Kvasir. He traveled far and wide
to relay cosmic and social wisdom to people, until he became a victim of the evil forces in the shape
of men that reside in the flesh of Ymir, the dvergar (Gylf. XIV). In the following section we will
examine the story of Kvasir and the Mead Myth in Skáldskaparmál and its relationship with
volcanism.
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THE CONVULSIONS OF KVASIR AND THE ODINIC ERUPTION
THE MEAD MYSTERY
Contemporary Old Norse scholarship tends to focus on the connection of the Mead of Poetry to
knowledge and the significance of mead as alcoholic drink to Old Norse mythology and religion
(Fleck 1970; Meletinskij 1973; Drobin 1991; Schjødt 1983, 2008a; Svava Jakobsdóttir 2002; Quinn
2010), a complex that possibly hearkens back to the distant Indo-European heritage of the early
Scandinavians (Dumézil 1924, 1959; McKinnell 2005, 170). Both Schjødt (1983) and Larrington
(2002) recognize that this complex is intimately linked with cosmology.78
In her article Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál: Cosmic History, Cosmic Geography, Larrington
points out that the ingestion of the mead by Óðinn in Grímnismál sparks a geographic mapping of the
divine cosmos, which is not only mapping out the divine ‘lay of the land,’ but also prescribes proper
social conduct for rulers (2002, 73–4). This aligns with the ritual of the sacred feast, culminating in
the divine archetype of the human feast, when stanza 45 of Grímnismál bids the æsir enter and drink
the vilbiǫrg. Grímnismál, she says, “thus plots the boundaries of the human and the divine, laying
bare the ritual and sacrificial structures which underpin both the worlds of Ásgarðr and Miðgarðr” (p.
74). The mead is thus the social glue that holds the worlds together.
Schjødt sees cosmic functions in the spatial structures of the myth of the Mead of Poetry in
Edda. In Livsdrik og vidensdrik (1983), and later in his Initiation between Two Worlds (2008a, 134–
72), Schjødt argues for the special function of Hnitbjǫrg, and Óðinn’s visit to Gunnlǫð deep inside
the mountain, as the chthonic space in the cosmos whence numinous knowledge can be retrieved:
“Dette bjerg er i denne myte at forstå som en axis mundi, der ellers i Norden symboliseres
ved Yggdrasil, og det er i de nederste lag, at Gunnlød sidder og ruger over mjøden, for
det er her, at Odin som orm når ind til hende. Det konstituerende træk ved en axis mundi
er imidlertid, at den skaber forbindelse mellem de forskellige stokværk i kosmos, hvilket
også udnyttes i denne myte, hvor Odin efter at have indtaget mjøden flyver mod Asgård
og oververdenen”
(The mountain is in this myth an axis mundi, which is in the North normally symbolized
by Yggdrasill, and it is in the deepest layers that Gunnlǫð is sitting, guarding the mead,
because it is here that Óðinn can reach her in the guise of a worm. The constitutive aspect
of an axis mundi is however that it connects the different parts of the cosmos, and this is
also utilized in this myth, where Óðinn after having ingested the mead, flies towards
Ásgarðr and the upper realm [Schjødt 1983, 92]).
78
In a recent article by Jan Kozák Óðinn a medovina básnictví (2010), it is argued that the dualistic aspect of the cosmos is
crucial to the understanding of the supposedly shamanic initiation aspects of the Mead of Poetry.
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Schjødt sees this journey of the mead into the bottom of the mountain as a cosmic journey into the
underworld, to the realm of the dead and the feminine, where it gains its numinosity so that Óðinn
may undertake an initiatory journey to procure it for the skalds (1983, 94–7; 2008a, 163–7). As such,
the mead is both a cosmic and chthonic substance.
In the preceding section of this chapter, we noted that the Mead of Poetry may have been related
to volcanism in Hallmundarkviða. The footnote in ÍF 13 explains the last stanza of Hallmundarkviða
where the bergbúi says “enn er at Aurnis brunni” (Aurnir’s well is not yet dry [Bergbúa þáttr: ÍF 13
1991, 450, fn.]), and offers the interpretation of “Aurnis brunnr” as ‘the well of (a) jǫtunn,’ the Mead
of Poetry. This seems reasonable since, as we saw earlier, ‘jǫtunn’ is commutable with ‘áss’ and
‘dvergr’ in the composition of conceptual metaphors for the Mead of Poetry (Quinn 2010, 224–5).
But Aurnir’s well seems to mean much more in Hallmundarkviða, as it is not only the skaldic stanzas
that come to an end when the well dries up, it is also the eruption. The verse line implies that there
will be more cause for poetry in the future. This is a conceptual conflation of mead and lava.
We have already seen how it may be that eitr is not connected with the flood of the Élivágar
because both elements are extremely cold, but instead may have been linked by way of the “lava
stream of the Élivágar,” because the tertium comparationis of eitr as the pus that comes out of boils
and eitr that is frozen ice on a cliff, is the yellow color. The yellow color of eitr is shared with lava
and notably, mead. The colors of mead range from light golden to dark golden. In the beginning of
Hallmundarkviða, in stanzas 2 and 3, the bergbúi is describing how the fire, the effusive activity,
comes before the explosive eruption. He plays on the similitude of the color of gold to the color of
fire, and thus to the color of the molten rocks of lava. The volcano is called the “seima særi sáman”
(swarthy gold-dispenser [Halkv. 2]), and those humans who become victims of the jökulhlaup are
referred to as “lyptidraugar liðbáls” (the arm-fire’s [the gold-ring’s] lifting-ghosts [(dead) men]
[Halkv. 3]). The bergbúi is thus quite aware of the comparison of ‘fire’ to ‘gold’—an awareness that
is also made clear in the list of gold kennings and heiti in Skáldskaparmál (cf. Skáld. XLV–XLVII).
There are no skaldic stanzas that specifically link mead and gold in terms of their color. There are,
however, a couple of stanzas in Eyvindr skáldaspillir’s Háleygjatal that seem to associate the origins
of the Mead of Poetry with the volcanic dwellings of Surtr. We will explore this connection below,
but first the tradition of the poem of Háleygjatal must be examined in order to establish on what
grounds it is reasonable to connect the Mead of Poetry with volcanism.
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HÁLEYGJATAL, ÓÐINN, AND THE MEAD OF POETRY
Háleygjatal was presumably composed by the Norwegian skáld Eyvindr skáldaspillir in the time
around 985 as a praise poem for Hákon Jarl (Steinsland 1991, 214). Richard North (1997) suggests
that Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri’s return to Norway from England in 945 as a Christian, baptized by King
Æþelstān, prompted the Háleygjar to copy the West Saxon tradition of using Wōden’s name in regal
lists, in order to legitimize their position in Norwegian society (North 1997, 13–14). Eyvindr’s
Háleygjatal was the prime propaganda tool of the Háleygjar, and it is evident from its composition
that it was deliberately contrived as a response to Ynglingatal, on which it depended for structure
(Ström 1981, 446). Where Ynglingatal establishes the legitimacy of the genealogy of the Vestfold
rulers, Háleygjatal firmly asserts the divine descent of the Háleygjar on an equal scale (p. 447–8;
Steinsland 1991, 219). This poetic activity of the magnates in Hálogaland, traditionally an area closely
tied to Iceland, may have inspired the growth of historiography and antiquarian mythography in
Iceland. It is a literary activity that assigns Óðinn numerous roles in numerous types of narratives. In
this tradition according to North, Óðinn is a “witch, shaman, patron of poets, war-god and All-Father
(Alfǫðr) of the Æsir whom he rules” (North 1997, 14).79 The mythological and mythographic material
from Iceland on Óðinn is a rich tapestry,80 and as North remarks: “it was mostly Snorri’s achievement
to glamorize this figure beyond the status he would have had […] in heathen Scandinavia in the tenth
century” (ibid).
In these terms it seems Óðinn could have been assigned multiple roles in narrative creativity.
To the tradition of the myth of the Mead of Poetry belong the two initial stanzas of Háleygjatal, a
stanza of Einarr skálaglamm’s Vellekla (c. 990), and the stanzas 104–10 in Hávamál. These various
stanzas, also known to the tradition of Skáldskaparmál, seem to have been the only other literary
references (that we know of) to the Mead Myth available in the thirteenth century, except for the
extended narrative in Skáldskaparmál. It is hard to grasp the extent of the myth without referring to
the extended narrative, but there are differences between the version in Hávamál and the version in
Skáldskaparmál. Our concern is the Mead Myth in Skáldskaparmál; its components are the following:
(1) Prologue: At the truce of the æsir and the vanir, the conjoined divine beings spit in a vat. From
the spittle comes the wise man called Kvasir.
79
The multifaceted figure of Óðinn is echoed by a veritable horde of scholars: Dumézil 1959, 46; Turville-Petre 1972, 9;
Simek 2007, 240; Kaliff & Sundqvist 2006, 212; Schjødt 2008a, 451; Lassen 2011, 77.
80 See Annette Lassen’s Odin på kristent pergament (2011) for the most extensive recent overview of Óðinn in the literature.
See also Baetke’s critique of the Odinstheologie in Die Götterlehre der Snorra-Edda ([1950] 1973, 230–44). Úlfar Bragason
offers a concise and comprehensive discussion of the role of genealogies as a return to the past in the period of the ‘Old
Norse Renaissance,’ c. 1150–1300 in his article Genealogies: a return to the past (2007).
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(2) The Kvasir Myth: Kvasir journeys all over the world. He comes to the dwarves Fjalarr and Galarr,
who murder him and drain his blood to mix it with honey to make mead. They pour the substance
into two vats (ker) called Són and Boðn and a kettle (ketill) called Óðrørir. They inform the gods
that there was none among them wise enough to absorb Kvasir’s knowledge, and thus he drowned
in his own wisdom.
a)
The jǫtunn Gillingr and his wife visit the dwarves. Gillingr drowns when he goes sailing
with the dwarves. Gillingr’s wife cries loudly out of sorrow, and because Fjalarr cannot stand
her noisiness, Galarr kills her with a quernstone.
b) Suttungr, Gillingr’s son, receives knowledge about the deaths and demands wergild from the
dwarves. He sails out on the ocean with the dwarves and put them off on a rock in the water.
They beg him to let them back on land, and when they offer him the mead in recompense, he
accepts, takes the mead and puts it in Hnitbjǫrg with Gunnlǫð as its guardian.
(3) Óðinn enters the tale as Bǫlverkr. He goes to Suttungr’s brother Baugi, causes the death of his
slaves with a whetstone and agrees with Baugi that in turn for doing the harvesting job of the
slaves before winter, Baugi will help him get a drink of Suttungr’s mead.
a) Suttungr denies Óðinn the mead and Bǫlverkr goes with Baugi into the mountain Hnitbjǫrg,
where they drill into the mountainside. Bǫlverkr blows into the hole to see if there is a passage
and rocks fall out. He realizes that Baugi means to trick him, but he orders Baugi to drill
again. Bǫlverkr transforms into a snake and slips into the hole, Baugi, having tried to cheat
Bǫlverkr, stabs at him with the drill. Bǫlverkr escapes.
(4) Bǫlverkr sleeps with Gunnlǫð inside the mountain for three nights and takes three draughts of the
mead, gulping up the entire substance.
a) He transforms into an eagle and flies out of Hnitbjǫrg. Suttungr follows him, also in the shape
of an eagle.
b) The two eagles approach Ásgarðr. Óðinn regurgitates two of the draughts into two containers.
The last third of the mead he sends out backwards in the face of Suttungr and thus he manages
to escape the pursuing jǫtunn.
(5) Epilogue: The narrator explains that the third part of the Mead of Poetry is the part that everyone
can have, and it is disregarded.
Skáldskaparmál informs us that the reason we call the Mead of Poetry “Kvasis dreyri” (Kvasir’s
blood [Skáld. III]) is Einarr skálaglamm’s single stanza of Vellekla 1: “Hugstóran bið ek heyra – heyr,
jarl, Kvasis dreyra – foldar vǫrð á fyrða fjarðleggjar brim dreggjar” (The great-minded I ask to listen
– hear, Jarl, Kvasir’s blood – guardian of the land, to the ale’s surf of the fjord-bone’s men [ibid]).
149
In her article Snorri and the mead of poetry (1981), Roberta Frank argues that certain kennings
and heiti were misinterpreted to create the Kvasir Myth (p. 157).81 The above kenning is the only
extant example of ‘Kvasir’s blood’ and the foundation for the exposition of Fjalarr’s and Galarr’s
murder of Kvasir. Frank argues that it originally referred to the intoxicating drink (as in fermented
crushed fruit [cf. Mogk 1923, 25]), and that it must have been recognized as such in its time, not as a
‘wise man named Kvasir’ (Frank 1981, 158–60). Another misinterpretation, according to Frank, is
Eyvindr’s “Gillings gjǫld” in stanza 1 of Háleygjatal: “Vilja ek hlj‹ó›ð at *Hárs líði meðan Gillings
gjǫldum yppik, meðan hans ætt í hverlegi gálga farms til goða teljum” (Silence I pray for Hár’s ale
while I raise Gilling’s ransom, while his kin in the kettle-sea of gallows-cargo we tally to gods [Skáld.
III]). Frank argues that this is not originally ‘Gillingr’s payment’ but in fact ‘Gillingr’s draught.’
Gillingr (noisy, resounding) is only attested in one other instance, in the list of river heiti in
Grímnismál, and Frank thus surmises that if Eyvindr intended to refer to the river name in his poem,
his kenning could be a variation on Einarr’s “Lopts vinar vínheims Vína” (the river of Loptr’s wineworld) in Vellekla 12 (Frank 1981, 165).
The same skeptical scrutiny is performed in relation to the appearance of the vats Són, Boðn,
and Óðrørir in the Kvasir Myth (p. 161–3). At this juncture we will restrict our focus to deal with
Óðrørir, which Skáldskapármál claims is a kettle (Skáld. GLVII). This word appears in Vellekla 2
with reference to water and the sea: “Eisar *vágr fyrir vísa, verk Rǫgnis mér *hagna, þýtr Óðreris
alda aldr hafs við þes galdra” (The wave rushes before the prince, Rǫgnir’s deeds benefit me, the
swell of Óðrørir pounds against the song’s skerry82 [Skáld. III]). Óðrørir may mean ‘that which stirs
the soul’ (ODNS 1966, 442) or ‘stimulates ecstasy’ (Simek 2007, 250). It also occurs in Hávamál
107 and 140. In stanza 140, Óðinn receives the Mead of Poetry from Bǫlþor “ausinn Óðreri” (poured
from Óðrørir), thus presumably indicating that Óðrørir may be a vessel of some kind. In stanza 107
however, Óðrørir seems to be synonymous with the Mead of Poetry itself (de Vries II 1970, 71–2;
Frank 1981, 162): “þvíat Óðrerir er nú upp kominn á alda vés iarðar” (because Óðrørir has now come
up to earth’s old sanctuaries [Hvm. 107]).
This eventually leads Frank to the conclusion that: “the early skalds had as their base a single
concept – that of verse as an intoxicating drink – and as their definer a single concept – that of divine
or chthonic existence” (Frank 1981, 170). She surmises that the old core of the Mead Myth is that of
Hávamál 104–10, where Óðinn retrieves the underground mead from the jǫtnar and leaves Gunnlǫð
and her father betrayed. The dwarves, she says, though missing in Hávamál, must have been
81
So also Mogk 1923.
The last verse is borrowed from Faulkes’ translation. In the first verse, Faulkes has ‘Wave of time’s sea rushes before the
prince.’ Compare with Frank (1981, 161).
82
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introduced at an early stage (p. 168, fn.). The mead as a chthonic substance that was once retrieved
from the underworld may be the core of the myth, originally the Germanic expression of a common
Indo-European mythic complex about alcoholic drink and its ritual significance (de Vries 1970 II,
67–73), but something decisive happens from the time of this Urzeit to the early medieval period in
Iceland. The subject matter of Hávamál suggests that Óðinn marries a jǫtunn and brings the Mead of
Poetry to the world of men.
McKinnell believes the stanzas 104–110 of Hávamál are from the twelfth century and echo
Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (McKinnell 2005, 164). Here, he says, the Gunnlǫð myth, which is scarcely
mentioned in skaldic verse, serves the purpose of illustrating the sexual treachery of men (ibid).
McKinnell’s chapter on ‘Seducing the Giantess’ (p. 147–71) compares the different mythic examples
of Óðinn seducing female jǫtnar for the purpose of producing offspring. He concludes that “[W]ithin
the Old Norse material, the motive of Óðinn’s seduction of Gunnlǫð looks unusual” (p. 171),
assigning the Gunnlǫð myth to the very late heathen period. But it must be questioned why this myth
has come to be so unusual in terms of fitting the pattern of jǫtunn seductions. It seems there may be
a clue to this in Eyvindr’s second stanza of Háleygjatal: “Hinn er Surts ór søkkdǫlum farmagnuðr
fljúgandi bar” ([the mead] which the Fierce-journeyer flying carried out of Surt’s sinking-dales
[Skáld. II]).
If we focus on what these stanzas say about the relationship between the Mead of Poetry and
its source, we see that it can be associated with volcanic origins. Phillpotts identifies the mention of
‘Surtr’s sinking-dales’ as an example of Eyvindr’s knowledge of Iceland and the existence of the
Volcano-jǫtunn in the pre-Christian Era (Phillpotts 1905, 28), while to various philologists the
mentioning of Surtr, not Suttungr, has been puzzling, leading to absurd suggestions that there is a
linguistic relationship between Surtr and Suttungr (in *Surtungr). This is rejected by de Vries, who
in turn—referring to the kenning “Hnitbjarga lǫgr” (Hnitbjǫrg’s water)—suggests that we are dealing
with a notion of a well of the water of life (de Vries II 1970, 70–2).
The problem is, however, that ‘Surtr’s sinking-dales’ is only used in Háleygjatal (ODNS 1966,
547). ‘Surtr’ in this kenning is usually taken to mean just ‘jǫtunn’ and we may then conclude that
either we are dealing with a kenning for valleys or mountains, or if we believe Phillpotts, a kenning
for Iceland itself. This may be the case, but as we learn in Landnámabók, Iceland is generally
associated with ice and snow and was early on given the name “Snæland” (Snow-land [Landn. 1968
I, III–IV (S)]). Volcanic phenomena are seldomly mentioned in Landnámabók, and they are not
associated with the country of Iceland itself. The related term “Snjógrundr” (Snow-ground) is used
in Hallmundarkviða in direct association with the effects of volcanism in Iceland (Halkv. 5). If there
were any tradition in early times of associating Iceland with volcanism as the primary factor, it seems
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reasonable that it would occur in Hallmundarkviða, now that this poem is focused on volcanism as
an activity in Iceland. So it seems that in terms of referring to Iceland, the snow-and-ice terminology
is more widespread, and ‘Surtr’s sinking-dales’ must be less common. It seems more likely that it
refers to places of volcanism in Iceland, rather than it refers to them as a feature of Iceland. Moreover,
it is unlikely that the ‘sinking-dales of the Volcano-jǫtunn’ would be chosen just to construct a
kenning for valleys belonging to jǫtnar. The only way this would be a probable assertion is if Eyvindr
was aware of the causalities of seismic activity, volcanism, and geological phenomena, and could link
the activities of the Volcano-jǫtunn of the underground directly to the formation of valleys and
mountains. It is hard to find any evidence that he—or any other inhabitant of Europe at that time—
was aware of the complexities of geology at that level.
At this point we must revisit the well of Aurnir, the conceptual metaphor for the Mead of Poetry
which juxtaposes mead with lava. The composition of “Aurnis brunnr” is no different than “Surts
sǫkkdalir.” We saw that Aurnir’s well gains volcanic credence from its poetic context and possibly
from the prefix aurr- of both Aurnir and Aurgelmir. Here ‘Surtr’s sinking-dales’ similarly gain
volcanic credence from Surtr’s uncontested mythic function as a Fire-being and Volcano-jǫtunn. His
“sǫkkdalir” parallel the events that pass in stanza 10 of Hallmundarkviða, where Hallmundr sinks
down into the ground, into ‘Surtr’s company.’ This is the site of Surtr: a volcanic cave. This is fully
realized and recognized in the place name of Surtshellir in Hallmundarhraun.
In this light we must ask ourselves why Skáldskaparmál is so focused on Óðrørir as a kettle.
The Kvasir Myth specifically distinguishes between the two ker of Són and Boðn, and then the ketill
of Óðrørir, as if there is an underlying tradition of Óðrørir as a kettle. We have seen above that the
evidence for this is scarce. In Háleygjatal stanza 1, Eyvindr calls the Mead of Poetry the ‘kettle-sea
of gallows-cargo.’ The term ‘kettle-sea’ is explained in Skáldskaparmál with reference to the Kvasir
Myth: “fyrir því at Kvasis blóð var lǫgr í Óðreri áðr mjǫðrinn væri gjǫrr, ok þar gerðisk hann í
katlinum, ok er hann kallaðr fyrir því hverlǫgr Óðins …” (because Kvasir’s blood was liquid in
Óðrørir until the mead was made, and then it was made in that kettle, and therefore it is called Óðinn’s
kettle-sea … [Skáld. III]). The terms ketill and hverr are significant. Mead is not normally made or
kept in a kettle—one would rather be inclined to use a wooden vat for such a process. Kettles,
constructed of materials that can withstand the temperatures of a fire, seem better reserved for cooking
processes that require high temperatures. Of course there is something to be said for using a kettle if
there is no wooden vat at hand, but this is mythopoesis, not an individual practical situation. We must
assume that both the composer of Háleygjatal and the writer of Skáldskaparmál were aware of the
difference of ker and ketill/hverr and the fact that there is no heating process involved in making
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mead. In the Kvasir Myth, it seems there is a certain awareness of this fact, now that Óðrørir is a
kettle and Són and Boðn are vats.
It seems there is a very conscious linking of Óðrørir with a kettle in order to explain hverlǫgr,
but given the context of Eyvindr’s kennings there is a straight forward explanation: volcanism. If the
hverlǫgr comes out of Surtr’s sinking-dales—that place in which Surtr keeps his fiery heat—then this
‘kettle-liquid’ must be lava rather than water. It is hard not to associate this with Hvergelmir in this
context, and the fact that this source of the eitr of Élivágar means the ‘kettle-roarer.’ This image could
be understood in terms of Hvergelmir as the volcanic caldera and hverlǫgr as its liquid, the lava. As
such, in the context of the Mead Myth in Skáldskaparmál, we can parallel the terms ‘Aurnir’s well,’
‘Surtr’s sinking-dales,’ and the ‘Kettle-roarer,’ under the theme of volcanism. This draws to light the
above-mentioned kenning of “lǫgr Hnitbjarga” (Skáld. III), which de Vries had troubles resolving.
This kenning seems to conceptually parallel hverlǫgr in the same way that ‘Surtr’s sinking-dales’
parallels ‘Aurnir’s well.’ This ‘liquid of the mountain’ is not just water—we can see that in the name
of Hnitbjǫrg: ‘Clashing rocks’ (ODNS 1966, 270).83 This image of the clashing rocks in connection
with volcanism and seismic activity is also mentioned by Saxo, who describes the wonders of Iceland:
“Est et saxum, quod montium pręrupta non extrinseca agitatione, sed propria natiuaque motione
perucolitat” (There is also a rock there that flies over steep mountains without external force, but only
by its own force [Saxo 2005 I, Praef. 2,7]). We may thus surmise that the Mountain of Clashing Rocks
is not an opaque image to medieval Scandinavians, and an interpretation of the ‘Liquid of the Clashing
Rocks’ in connection to volcanism is not out of bounds.
As we dwell on the names of the Mead Myth’s various characters, we may note that it is not
only Hnitbjǫrg that carries metaphoric reference to volcanism. We identified above the name Gillingr,
which seems not to have a strong tradition behind it in skaldic poetry, although it is used by Eyvindr
in what may be termed his volcanic stanzas. Probably a river heiti meaning ‘noisy, resounding,’ it fits
well into the analogic parallel of water and lava that we saw in the preceding section of this chapter.
Fjalarr (‘hider’ [Simek 2007, 84]), the name possibly assigned to the same figure as Suttungr in
Hávamál 14, does not connote any type of volcanism, but may on the other hand relate to underground
activity and death, as it is he who seems to instigate the deaths in the underworld. Galarr, however, a
name that occurs only in the Mead Myth and in the þulur (as a jǫtunn’s name), seems to mean ‘the
According to ODNS in Arkiv för nordisk filologi 10 p. 39, it is claimed there is a place name in Iceland called Hnitbjǫrg.
It is not, however, a place name that is mentioned there. Instead it says that Hnitbjǫrg is compared by Bugge with the
Συμπληγάδες of the tale of Jason and the Argonauts (Falk 1894, 39). The Symplēgades as a volcanic image seems to have
been overlooked by Barber and Barber. McKinnell connects Hnitbjǫrg with stones in which different beings may live in
folklore (2005b, 106). His assertions do not, however, contradict an interpretation of Hnitbjǫrg in relation to volcanism.
Hnitbjǫrg appears as a place name in Landnámabók (1968 I, XLV [S] XXXIII [H]). It may, however, be a misunderstanding
of Hvítbjǫrg (see index ‘Hnitbjǫrg’, vol. II 1968, 471).
83
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singing one,’ or more probably ‘the screaming one’ (ODNS 1966, 168). Together with Gillingr,
Galarr forms an alliterative pair. The jǫtunn name Suttungr does not relate to anything comparable to
volcanic or seismic activity, but it is conspicuous that Óðinn takes on the name of Bǫlverkr,
‘Evildoer,’ (ODNS 1966, 75), when he goes to fetch the mead. Whether Baugi and Gunnlǫð can be
related to volcanism is a matter of how far one wishes to go in interpretation. Baugi is possibly derived
from baugr ‘ring’ (of gold) (ODNS 1966, 37), and Gunnlǫð may mean ‘Invitation to Battle’ (Simek
2007, 124). A somewhat daring suggestion for Baugi’s connection with volcanism could be on
account of a ‘fire ring’ or circular pit of fire similar to that of a volcanic caldera, which establishes
metonymic reference to gold and gold rings in similar terms as they have been seen above in relation
to stanzas 2–3 of Hallmundarkviða. It is also worth noting in this connection that Baugi and Bǫlverkr
form an alliterative pair like Galarr and Gillingr, and in that respect, that Galarr and Gillingr represent
the underground rumbling heralding the coming eruption, whereas Baugi and Bǫlverkr, with their
activities in the mountain, represent the eruptive event itself. It is also useful to consider the
association of the name Gunnlǫð to battle or war. War metaphors are not scarce in Hallmundarkviða,
nor as we have seen, in relation to the Maring, in other tales of volcanism from elsewhere in the
world.
This means that regardless of whether we accept that the mead myth as it comes to us in its
current form in Skáldskaparmál is of late origin as McKinnell suggests, or even, as Frank believes,
that it was constructed at the time Edda was written, we are able to trace key elements directly to
volcanism. Óðinn assigns the name of Bǫlverkr to himself in Grímnismál 47 and it occurs in the
þulur, but otherwise it is not used in the poetry (ODNS 1966, 75).84 With knowledge of its meaning
from a vague tradition in the poetry of Grímnismál, the name can at any point in time have been
associated with Óðinn to give him the character of a Volcano Spirit.
It should be remembered in regard to this that the Mead Myth is highly polysemantic, its subject
matter pointing in many different directions based on a variety of older traditions that presumably
have been assigned a frame of causality in the tradition of Edda (Mogk 1923, 33). The stanzas of
Hávamál 104–10 involve both the topic of the jǫtunn seduction and the retrieval of the mead. The
Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál includes the motif of seducing the jǫtunn and the retrieval of the mead,
84
There is a curious case of the use of the name in Landnámabók XLIII (S)/XXXI (H), where we learn of Músa-Bǫlverkr
who lived in Hraunsás (Lava-ridge). He was apparently instrumental in the guidance of the river Hvítá with his virki: “þá
lét hann gera þar virki ok veitti Hvítá í gegnum ásinn, en áðr fell hon um Melrakkadal ofan” (then he made there his
stronghold and guided Hvítá around the ridge, but before that it fell through Melrakkadal [Landn. 1968 I, XLIII (S), XXXI
(H)]). The word virki may also refer to spells in compounds (Zoëga 2004, 495), and it is likely that the virki is not at all a
stronghold, but a supernatural activity that has caused a geological event. It may also be noted that if the original tradition
actually meant ‘stronghold,’ the size of the building itself would be unlike anything seen elsewhere in Iceland. It must be
asked in that connection, whether ninth and tenth century Icelanders had the capacity to stem rivers and redirect their course
without the use of supernatural abilities.
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but goes one step further by giving the Mead Myth a cosmic dimension that can result in nothing
else—in an Icelandic context—than to introduce a volcanic aspect. We have seen in the beginning of
this section that the Mead of Poetry as knowledge-drink incited the recitation of Grímnismál, an
exegesis on cosmology paired with proper social conduct. The interpretation of the mead as ‘blood
of Kvasir,’ Mogk writes, is the basis for the embodiment of Kvasir in Edda, led on by river- and
water-kennings such as “sals dreyri” (hall’s blood) and particularly “jarðar dreyri” (earth’s blood)
(Mogk 1923, 28). Frank assumes that these kenning constructions allude to the Ymir Myth and his
blood becoming the sea, and that the model of the Ymir Myth could have corroborated the Kvasir
Myth (Frank 1981, 160–1). This parallel is also recognized by both Clunies Ross (1994, 76,197–218)
and Schjødt (2008a, 133). The Mead Myth is thus a fully-realized narrative of cosmic knowledge. It
associates mead with cosmic fluids and therefore knowledge of these as well as basic proper behavior
and conduct.
The common scholarly focus on the Mead of Poetry is generally on its role in social life. Even
those interpretations that recognize a cosmological complex in relation to the Mead of Poetry tend to
be preoccupied with the socially constitutive aspects of the cosmos, plotting the social upon the
cosmic. However, if the social aspects of the Mead Myth are approached as an explanation for natural
processes in the cosmos, it is possible to see in it elements of active volcanic imagery that refer to the
poetic bits of Eyvindr’s Háleygjatal and Hallmundarkviða, where the mead is directly activated in
reference to volcanism. It is possible to trace the role of Óðinn as a jǫtunn seducer in relation to the
Mead Myth back to Eyvindr’s poem of Háleygjatal, which contains kennings for the mead which
specifically refer to volcanism. This poem belongs to a similar tradition of telling the Mead Myth as
it is developed in Skáldskaparmál, whereas the stanzas 104–10 of Hávamál seem to be focused only
on relaying knowledge of social interaction in the iconic setting of the hall of a jǫtunn. The Mead
Myth in Skáldskaparmál seems to be a mix of motifs that has puzzled some scholars. It involves an
etiological explanation for the Mead of Poetry and the Odinic seduction of a jǫtunn, confusingly
wrapped in a cosmological packaging with reference to the Ymir Myth. Underneath these motifs we
find a simmering tradition of volcanic referentiality that may originate in Eyvindr’s kennings. These
are the primary cause of confusion, because it is only by the terms of volcanism that it makes sense
to connect these different motifs.
It is paramount to our further understanding of this myth, its cosmic referentiality and function
in the Mythical Charter of Tradition, and not least the Icelandic conceptions of volcanism ingrained
in it, to consider the processes that Kvasir undergoes. We shall examine his transformations, and
building on that, we will examine Óðinn’s eruption from Hnitbjǫrg afterwards. All these elements of
the Mead Myth are recognizable in the patterns of other Icelandic medieval narratives and an ancient
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pagan tradition, and they seem to have been combined in a narrative tradition of telling the Mead
Myth as a volcanic event in order to preserve knowledge of the volcanic activities of the Icelandic
underground.
KVASIR’S CONVULSIONS
Cosmology was important to skaldic diction (Guðrún Nordal 2001, 280), which recognized a variety
of landscape kennings based on body imagery (p. 283–95). With such a foundation for the poetic
activities of skaldic diction, it is nearly unthinkable that the source of this poetry, the mead, does not
have a cosmic origin itself. It seems only natural that the mead as the primary mnemonic source from
which social and technical knowledge is shared in the form of myth, as it is so well described in the
course of Grímnismál, would connect to notions of cosmic origins. In fact, what we find is a full
parallelization of cosmos and body in the Kvasir Myth.
The prologue to the myth of the Mead of Poetry tells how the æsir had warred with a group
called the vanir, and when they made peace, they all went up to a vat and spat in it. The æsir kept this
symbol of truce and made from it the man called Kvasir (Skáld. GLVII). Schjødt sees the coming
together of the æsir and the vanir in the truce as the foundation of the creation of a viable society
(Schjødt 1983, 1984, 1991). As such, this part of the myth is a sociogony, a foundation myth, that
provides an etiology for divine society (2008, 167). As a myth of sociogony, we may note that the
Kvasir Myth parallels the Ymir Myth in more than one aspect. We noted earlier that scholarship has
focused on the comparable aspect of Ymir with Kvasir in their roles as victims of killings, which are
to be interpreted as sacrifices (cf. Drobin 1991). But Kvasir’s role is more elaborate than that. He is
the embodiment of cosmic knowledge dispensed among the realms of existence, and as such—both
in the form of body (himself) and the form of liquid (mead/lava), he permeates the World-body of
Ymir. He is the microcosmic parallel to the macrocosm of Ymir, and with this parallelization he
becomes the carrier of cosmic wisdom given to society literally from the mouths of the gods.
KVASIR
Ymir and Kvasir are both created from liquid that flows into a container. Ymir comes from the eitr
in Ginnungagap, the cosmic container, while Kvasir comes from the spittle of the gods in a smaller
container. Kvasir mirrors Ymir in a way comparable to the microcosm mirroring the macrocosm and
vice versa. The associations of the vanir with fertility and a chthonic character (de Vries II 1970, 203;
Schjødt 2008a, 383), as opposed to the culturally oriented æsir is an important dualistic aspect of the
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Mead Myth. In the Old Norse mythological conceptual schema, the æsir enjoy the role of improvers
of nature. They give raw material shape and impose order. This is the basic event of the Ymir Myth:
the raw, hostile jǫtunn or primordial being is refined through killing (sacrifice) so that it can become
useful to men and gods. The same occurs in the Kvasir myth, where poetry becomes an agent in the
expression of culture (Clunies Ross 1994, 83). The creation of Kvasir is in effect an inversion of the
Ymir Myth. Where Ymir was dismembered by the æsir, Kvasir is assembled by them. Ymir came
from a natural process of eitr building up to form a human being, while Kvasir is the result of a
cultural process of sociogony, a cultural imitation of the natural process where the oral liquid of the
constitutive powers of society become a man. This puts the culturally dominant æsir in diametric
opposition to the chthonic and socially inferior vanir (p. 95–102), 85 thereby contrasting the two
creative forces from which the saliva flows into the container just as Niflheimr and Muspellzheimr
function as a neoplatonic fire-and-ice duality dispensing their qualities in the big vat of Ginnungagap.
A qualitative difference in this respect is that when the gods create nature from Ymir, they need to
destroy his body. When they create culture, they assemble an amorphous substance and create a
person who can spread his wisdom.
Kvasir roams the world spreading wisdom and culture to people. Because Kvasir is a man and
his blood becomes the mead, interpretive focus tends to be on the transformation of the figure (cf.
Schjødt 1983, 90). But if we examine the more systemic aspect of Kvasir’s journey, we can see that
his action of spreading wisdom far and wide to people is an act of spreading culture. As the product
of the sociogony, the establishment of society after the first war, Kvasir is culture itself. His journey
“víða um heim at kenna mǫnnum frœði” (widely across the world to teach wisdom to men [Skáld.
GLVII]) is a systemic act of spreading culture to the world 86 rather than the movement and
transformation of a singular unit—a man.
The question is, then, what the purpose of the dwarves is in this narrative. Schjødt is
presumably correct when he assumes that Kvasir enters the underworld when he comes to the dwarves
Fjalarr and Galarr, chthonic beings as they are (Schjødt 1983, 91). To understand the process that
unfolds in the underworld, we should consider Hávamál stanzas 13–14, where we learn that the poet,
85
Whether this strict association of the æsir with cultural dominance and the vanir with social inferiority and
fertility has wide currency in the mythology, or it is perhaps overemphasized by the interpreters—Clunies
Ross in particular—is a matter of personal judgment.
86
Given that the preceding myth in Skáldskaparmál is the Þjazi Myth, this is a noteworthy theme of Kvasir’s
activities. As we saw above in chapter III, pages 114-115, the theme of the Þjazi Myth is the relationship
between culture and nature, food and the lack of food. The journey of the three æsir into the wild echoes the
actions of the three æsir in the cosmogony as well as in man’s genesis in Vǫluspá 17 and Gylfaginning X, where
the three æsir move about in the world. Another example of this echo is in the Edda version of the Myth of
Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, where we also learn that the three æsir went to explore the world in Skáldskaparmál
XXXIX.
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Óðinn, was fettered by the feathers of the heron of forgetfulness “í garði Gunnlaðar” (Gunnlǫð’s hall)
and that he was drunk “at ins fróða Fialars” (at the wise Fjalar’s). This, we may presume, is the origin
of the dwarf name Fjalarr in the Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál. Fjalarr is mentioned in the dwarf list
of Vǫluspá 16, but in the þulur it is the name of a giant (Simek 2007, 84). The stanzas 104–10 of
Hávamál seem to indicate that Fjalarr and Suttungr are identical, but it seems that this figure of
Hávamál has been split in two in the narrative tradition of Skáldskaparmál87 The possible meaning
of Fjalarr as ‘Hider,’ derived from fela (ibid), fits well with the role of Suttungr in the Mead Myth.
He hides the mead in Hnitbjǫrg. But it is also quite congruent with the role of Fjalarr as an underworld
being who causes the death of several individuals in the Myth of the Mead of Poetry in
Skáldskaparmál. In Hávamál 104–10, Óðinn procures Óðrørir from Suttungr/Fjalarr and brings it to
the world of men. This is an expression of cultural dominance of the æsir over the jǫtnar and as such
it is a narrative of social relevance. It expresses in full the negative social reciprocity between jǫtnar
and æsir (Clunies Ross 1994, 103), and for that purpose the narrative needs only a male representative
of each part, Óðinn and Suttungr/Fjalarr, the desired object that is stolen from the losing side, and not
least an exploited female. In the Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál, however, the object is to tell a tale
of cosmic and natural processes, and therefore it is purposeful to introduce more characters to the
tale. It is simply a structural doubling that occurs here: Suttungr/Fjalarr becomes two characters and
both of these characters are assigned a brother. With this doubling is introduced the pair of dwarves
called ‘Hider’ and ‘Screamer,’ who kill Kvasir.
A mythic visit to the underworld is often synonymous with structural death (Turner 1967, 95–
7; Schjødt 2008a, 171). It may be so that Fjalarr and Galarr kill Kvasir when he visits them, but as he
has already entered the underworld, we may take him as dead to begin with. That this underworld is
bereft of anything human, anything remotely cultural—and that it is therefore pure nature—we can
see from the fact that it is a perfectly acceptable explanation for the death of Kvasir that he choked
on his own human knowledge (mannvíti), since there was no one educated enough to ask him
questions (Skáld. GLVII). The æsir accept this explanation from the dwarves, because they do not
expect culture to flourish among the dead. The underground is not populated by humans: it is
populated by creatures such as Hider and Screamer, those who kill and drain (liquefy) men like Kvasir
and pour his dreyri in vats and kettles. As much as the destruction of Ymir by the gods is a process
towards creating habitable nature, and the formation of Kvasir into a cultivated man from the
amorphous substance of spittle in a vat is a process of creating culture in habitable nature, the
destruction of Kvasir by the dwarves represents his return to nature in the underground. He is fully
87
Schjødt is not willing to accept that Fjalarr and Suttungr are one and the same (2008a, 153–4), and it is not certain that
they are. On the other hand, this has little significance to the analysis.
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absorbed and assimilated in his death: he becomes one with the world’s liquids, the underground
waters that burst out in geysers and jökulhlaups, and not least with the lava that runs from the cracks
of volcanic eruptions. When culture meets Hider and Screamer it means that it is lost, it is out of reach
of humans, and we have now only our memory to employ in order to understand what happens when
Hider and Screamer are visited by Noisy, the jǫtunn Gillingr, and his wife.
One could be so inclined as to accept the boat scene of this narrative as simply a (rather clumsy)
explanation for how the dwarves accidentally killed Gillingr, not questioning the inclusion of a boat
ride in the midst of a tale that compiles so many motifs, seeing as sea metaphors in relation to the
mead are bountiful. It is, however, at this point the myth starts to become particularly interesting in
terms of volcanism. With Kvasir out of reach, it is necessary to employ memory of the tradition to
understand the image of the boat.
We have seen the boat before: in Hallmundarkviða 9 the eagles are arriving and Hallmundr
says: “en steinnǫkkva styrkvan stafns plóglimum grǫfnum, járni fáðan Aurni” (and I sent Aurnir a
strong stone-boat, its stern iron-braced). In Landnámabók we also see this image of an iron boat with
a jǫtunn, and it is common in Norwegian giant-tales; although in Iceland we find it in connection with
jarðeldr:
Þá var Þórir gamall ok blindr, er hann kom út síð um kveld ok sá, at maðr røri útan í
Kaldarós á járnnǫkkva, mikill ok illiligr, ok gekk þar upp til bœjar þess, er í Hripi hét,
ok gróf þar í stǫðulshliði; en um nóttina kom þar upp jarðeldr, ok brann þá Borgarhraun.
(Þórir was then old and blind, when he came out late one evening, and saw a man, big
and evil, rowing out in Kaldarós in an iron-boat, and he went up to a dwelling that was
called í Hripi, and there he dug in the cowshed door; but during the night there came up
earth-fire and Borgarhraun was burned there [Landn. 1968 I, LVI (H)]).
Supernatural volcanic beings from the underworld are, it seems, not unaccustomed to moving about
in boats of stone or iron—or both—in connection with eruptions. We must then ask ourselves how
far the image of Hider, Screamer, and Noisy sailing on an underworldly sea is from the above volcanic
stone-and-iron-boat examples. To understand this image, we will examine Vǫluspá 47–52.
VǪLUSPÁ 47–52
We have already treated stanza 52 above and seen how this image of Surtr compares well with
volcanism—it is an image of an eruption recognized before by several scholars. We have also seen
how it has been hard to align the Muspellz lýðir on Naglfar in stanza 51 with an apocalypse of fire,
because the image of the boat seems out of place.
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Stanza 47 tells that Yggdrasill shudders (skelfr) because the jǫtunn is loose, and as we have
seen above, it has been added in Hauksbók that “Surtar sefi” (Surtr’s kin) swallows the people
treading the Hel-way. The shuddering of Yggdrasill, especially considering the use of the word skelfr
(as in landskjálfti ‘earthquake’), seems to be the premonitory initial quaking that frequently occurs in
volcanic eruptions. Such volcanic-related quakes usually come in series rather than in one shock as
is the case with usual seismic events (EOV 1985, 1017–19). Stanza 48 repeats the premonitions:
“Hvat er með ásom, hvat er með álfom?” (What is there with the æsir, what is there with the álfar?).
Like the shuddering of Yggdrasill there is an ominous sound from the Jǫtunheimar: “gnýr allr
iǫtunheimr” (all Jǫtunheimr groans). The æsir meet in council at the þing, assembling in their cultural
safe zone88 to discuss what is going on and reactivate their cultural memory, their Mythical Charter
of Tradition. An image of the activity of the dwarves is conjured: “stynia dvergar fyr steindurom,
veggbergs vísir” (the dwarves howl before the stone doors, princes of the mountain-wall).
Garmr bays and almost breaks his chain before Gnipahellir in stanza 49. The word “garmr”
simply means ‘dog’ (ODNS 1966, 173), but it is notable that at least one kenning exists where garmr
is involved with fire: “glóða garmr” (dog of embers [ibid]). Gnipahellir is not explained further in
ODNS except for the suggestion that it is the opening to Hel (p. 192). There is, however, a word in
the þulur for ‘fire’ that is gnipall (ibid). Simek refutes any association of Garmr with the Hel-hound
of Baldrs draumar (Simek 2007, 100), and he sees no connection of Gnipahellir with Hel, either.
Instead he translates Gnipahellir to ‘overhanging cave,’ but gives no reference for it (p. 114). With
this translation, the first part of Gnipahellir, gnipa-, would presumably be the word gnípa that means
‘mountain peak’ (ODNS 1966, 192; Zoëga 2004, 168). Without any more cognates or a stronger
underlying philological tradition it is hard to fully assess the meaning of Gnipahellir, but regardless
of its association with gnípa or gnipall, it can sustain a volcanic image of a caldera, either as
‘Mountain-peak-cave’ or as ‘Fire-cave.’ When the dog that can appear as embers barks89—makes
ominous noise—before the ‘Mountain-peak-cave’ we may expect an eruption from the grumbling
mountain. And so the vǫlva continues: “fiǫlð veit hon frœða, fram sé ec lengra um ragna rǫc, rǫmm,
sigtýva” (she has much wisdom, further ahead I see to ragnarøkkr, the victory-gods’ destruction [Vsp.
49]).
Stanzas 47 to 49 compile the same image of the premonitions of an eruption. In each case there
is a reference to:
88
89
Compare with the Mazama event, see Beaudoin & Oetelaar 2006a, 37.
Compare with the whimpering and barking dogs of the Mazama event, Beaudoin & Oetelaar 2006a, 37.
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(1) Noise and rumbling: the shuddering and groaning of Yggdrasill, the barking Firedog in the Mountain-peak cave, the howling dwarves in the mountain wall.
(2) Premonitions and alertness: Surtr will come and men will tread the Hel-way, “I see
ahead to Ragnarǫkr/ragnarøkkr”; “What is up with the gods?”; they are assembling
at the þing.
The next thing that happens is that Hrymr, whose name is obscure (Simek 2007, 163; ODNS 1966,
288),90 drives from the east and holds a shield in front of him in stanza 50. Though the name of Hrymr
is unresolvable, one may be reminded of Hrungnir and his shield of stone. 91 Hrymr who comes
rumbling with his shield in front of him may easily be compared to a pyroclastic flow (compare EVO
1985, 945–55).
Eventually, we arrive at the sea: “snýz iǫrmungandr í iǫtunmóði; ormr knýr unnir, enn ari
hlaccar, slítr nái neffǫlr, Naglfar losnar” (Jǫrmungandr writhes in giant-rage; the snake churns the
waves, and the eagle shrieks, the pale-beaked92 rips the corpses, Naglfar loosens [Vsp. 50]). The
following stanza 51 relates that “Muspellz lýðir,” People of Muspell, advance on a ship with Loki as
steersman, referring also to the enigmatic character of Býleistr (p. 12). The image of Muspellz People
on a boat was opaque to us earlier in this chapter, but in light of the complex that seems to emerge in
comparison with the Mead Myth, the example of Hallmundarkviða, and that of Landnámabók, it
becomes clearer: each case involves a supernatural boat. In Hallmundarkviða it is a boat of stone and
iron and in Landnámabók it is made of iron. In both cases the boat is directly associated with the
activities of jǫtnar in connection with an eruption. Here in Vǫluspá, the boat is called Naglfar. It is
associated with the underworld, and is said to be made of finger nails in Gylfaginning LI. The
association with the underworld is consistent both with Hallmundarkviða, Vǫluspá, and the ship of
the Mead Myth, and it may be presumed that this is a very old conception. The idea that the beings
of the underworld will assemble a ship from the finger nails of the dead seems to be associated with
the Devil in other Scandinavian and Finno-Karelian tradition (Krohn 1912, 154–5). This may not,
however, be the only association of the first part nagl- in the name of the ship. Based on the
association of the ship of the underworld with volcanism in Hallmundarkviða and the ship of the
jǫtunn in Landnámabók, it is equally as likely that it refers to nails of iron. This seems to gain support
from comparison with the word for ‘sword’ naglfari (studded with nails/spikes) in the þulur (ODNS
It may mean ‘ancient.’ See Sigurður Nordal 1927, 96.
As a note to Hrymr’s driving (see Dronke 1997, 57): Sigrdrífumál 15 mentions “reið Rungnis” (Hrungnir’s wagon), but
this is unknown from elsewhere. It is tempting to see in this an image of Hrungnir, the stone-man, riding a rumbling wagon
and holding a shield up in front of him. It is, however, quite difficult to substantiate on basis of the sparse tradition available
in this. See ODNS 1966, 287.
92 The word for ’pale,’ fǫlr, is also the stem of the word for ’covered with ashes,’ fǫlskaðr, and ‘white ashes, fǫlski (Zoëga
2004, 157).
90
91
161
1966, 422). It may thus be the ship of spikes and studs—fully comparable to the iron-braced stone
ship in Hallmundarkviða—that comes sailing with the Fire Spirits of Muspell and the god of
earthquakes, Loki.
Býleistr is another complicated name. Simek explains it as ‘the one who makes lightning in the
storm’ (from bylr ‘wind’ and leiptr ‘lightning’), and lists him in accordance with Vǫluspá as a brother
of Loki (Simek 2007, 51). However, this interpretation overlooks the long ‘ý.’ ODNS convincingly
interprets the name as “den der farer over bygder” (the one who hurries over dwellings), and explains
the figure as originally identical with Loki (ODNS 1966, 73). As in the case of Garmr in Gnipahellir,
both interpretations of this name fit with volcanism, either in terms of the characteristic static electric
lightning storm that is frequent in an eruption, or as the pyroclastic flow, a flow of lava, or a
jökulhlaup that rushes over the dwellings of men in an explosive eruption. This image seems
comparable to the bergbúi, who in stanza 7 strides from peak to peak, bringing the eruption with him,
and erupts with ashes, going world-to-world in stanza 11 of Hallmundarkviða. The image here, of the
People of Muspell with Loki/Býleistr, sailing on the ship of spikes and studs, is thus very clearly
associated with an eruptive event.
With Býleistr/Loki and Muspellz’s People on a spike-boat, we can possibly see a new
dimension to Fjalarr, Galarr, and Gillingr, who go sailing on the sea of the underworld. It is the
foreboding of the eruption. These are the warning signs, but the image is not complete. Gillingr’s
wife—the hypostasis of Noisy—cries unstoppably when she learns that her husband drowned in the
sea. Fjalarr cannot stand “óp hennar” (her crying/shouting [Skáld. GLVII]), and so he sees to her
murder by persuading her to go stand in the doorway and look out over the sea to find consolation.
This is an image comparable to that of the dwarves before their stone doors in Vǫluspá 48. Like the
dwarves, we see Gillingr’s wife howling before the stone door of the dwarf dwelling in the
underworld. She enacts the characteristic sound of effusion, the gushing of lava, or the venting of
steam and gasses. An eruption is imminent. In Vǫluspá 52 the eruption comes immediately: “Surtr
ferr sunnan med sviga lævi, scínn af sverði sól valtíva; griótbjǫrg gnata, enn gífr rata, 93 troða halir
helveg enn himinn klofnar” (Surtr comes from the south with the enemy of branches, the sun of the
war-gods shines from his sword; stone-mountains crumble and troll(women) roam/tumble, men tread
the Hel-way). This image is surely one of an explosive volcanic eruption.
It should be noted in this regard, that there is a sense of travelling in these stanzas, which may
be seen as comparable to the travelling of Kvasir and Óðinn/Bǫlverkr in the Mead Myth. The stanzas
of Vǫluspá refer to the risk of the jǫtunn breaking loose and Garmr breaking his chain, and when
93
Hauksbók, Codex Uppsaliensis, Codex Trajectinus and Codex Wormianus all have hrata (stagger) instead of rata. And
Codex Uppsaliensis has guðar (gods) instead of gífr (cf. Neckel & Kuhn 1962, 12, footnote).
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everything is set in motion, Naglfar is loose: it journeys from the east, Hrymr journeys from the east,
Surtr journeys from the south, and the trolls roam. The powers are approaching the dwelling of the
gods, but more importantly they are sweeping the landscape, moving around above and below ground.
This seems to be echoed to some effect in the Mead Myth where the auger Rati (‘roamer,’ from rata
[Zoëga 2004, 329]), guides Óðinn’s journey. Rati is represented as the guide for Óðinn’s underworld
journey in the Mead Myth in both Hávamál and Skáldskaparmál. It seems to make an underworld
passage in both cases, thereby creating caverns in the ground for the god to sweep through. This
image is not without substance in terms of volcanic activity, insofar as it seems to have been a
widespread notion of classical and medieval learned literature that earthquakes and eruptions were
associated with the wind of Boreas Aquilo being blown into caverns in the underground, and that
such phenomena were not fixed in one place, but travelled the land. This will be detailed below. For
now it is simply useful to note that it is a commonality between the two myths, and before moving
on to the eruption of Óðinn, we shall have a brief summary of this section:
We have seen how Kvasir and Ymir are comparable in more than one way. They are both
formed by liquid: Ymir comes from eitr, Kvasir from the gods’ spittle. As the gods spit in the vat,
they perform the same creative act of duality that is represented in Niflheimr/Muspellzheimr. As a
product of the sociogony, Kvasir roaming through the world is a systemic act of spreading cultural
knowledge. His death sends him to the underworld where the dwarves Hider and Screamer live. They
make him into mead. They invite Noisy to go sailing. Here we touch on a boat-complex that is seen
in several instances of volcanism—a motif that we shall examine more in depth below. Hider and
Screamer have done their deed: they have killed Kvasir and drained him of his liquid. They keep him
in two vats and the kettle Óðrørir, which is perhaps rightly interpreted in this context as ‘Rage-stirrer’
rather than ‘Mind-stirrer,’ seeing as it is involved in volcanism. Hider and Screamer have taken Noisy
out to sea—an image that is not at all clear to us at this point, but none the less fully associated with
the activities of volcanism. At this stage, however, the noise has died out: Noisy drowned in the sea
of the underworld. His wife, too, has stopped howling. She was hit in the head with a quernstone.
This may be another image that reflects volcanism. For now it is quiet. As we have seen both in
Hallmundarkviða and in Vǫluspá, it requires the flight of an eagle to carry out an eruption—so we
wait for Bǫlverkr, the Evildoer.
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ÓÐINN’S ERUPTION
At the center of the Mead Myth is the mountain Hnitbjǫrg, the Clashing Rocks. When Suttungr learns
that his father and mother (or uncle and aunt [Skáld. GLVII]) have been killed in the underworld by
Fjalarr and Galarr, he goes there and demands recompense. This scene re-enacts the scene where
Gillingr drowned. The dwarves are once again out on the sea with the giant, but now the mead is
taken from them, transported from the sea of the underworld to the central site of cosmos: the
mountain. Here, Suttungr puts his daughter Gunnlǫð in charge of its safe-keeping.
Bragi, the narrator of the myth in Skáldskaparmál, thus tells Ægir that: “Af þessu kǫllum vér
skáldskap Kvasis blóð eða dverga drekku eða fylli eða nakkvars konar lǫg Óðreris eða Boðnar eða
Sónar eða farskost dverga, fyrir því at sá mjǫðr f[lut]ti þeim fjǫrlausn ór skerinu, eða Suttunga mjǫð
eða Hnitbjarga lǫgr” (For this reason we call poetry Kvasir’s blood, or dwarves’ drink, or full, or
some term for Óðrørir’s liquid, or Són, or Boðn, or dwarves’ transportation, because the mead
provided them deliverance from the skerry, or Suttung’s mead, or Hnitbjǫrg’s liquid [ibid]).
Ægir then comments that he thinks this is an obscure way to talk—as indeed it is. Roberta
Frank has already resolved that the underlying tradition for these kennings is relatively vague and has
only a sparse amount of references. On this basis it is not at all strange that Ægir would find these
references obscure. They are not widespread loci in the poetic language.
As Óðinn enters the stage, we should recall Richard North’s remark about the Icelandic
tradition of Óðinn that assigned to him a long list of abilities, among which are the functions of
witches and shamans. It is probably no coincidence that Óðinn in the Mead Myth, who comes to
Baugi in the guise of Bǫlverkr, vaguely parallels the character of Grímnir of Grímnismál. In the prose
introduction to Grímnismál, we learn that Óðinn disguised himself when he went to Geirrøðr and was
captured. Later, when it is time for Geirrøðr to die for his ignorance, we learn in stanza 47 that Óðinn
is called Bileygr, Báleygr, and Bǫlverkr: ‘Blind-eye’ (ODNS 1966, 47), ‘Fire-eye’ (p. 38), and
‘Evildoer’ (p. 75). There does not seem to be a unified overall logical disposition in the recitation of
the Óðinn heiti in Grímnismál 46–50, but the names of each line of verse have obviously been chosen
for alliterative purposes. Bǫlverkr is associated with the Mead Myth in Hávamál 109, but if the
composer of the Mead Myth in Skáldskaparmál wanted a name for Óðinn that signified his abilities
as a sorcerer, he could for instance have chosen the name Fjǫlnir (‘he who can take on many forms’
or ‘he who knows many things’ [ODNS 1966, 137]).94 This name, along with Grímr and Grímnir, is
mentioned right after Bǫlverkr in Grímnismál, and each of them seems to associate closely with the
In fact, Fjǫlnir, who drowns in a mead-vat in Ynglinga saga (Heimskr. 1979 I, Ynglinga saga, XI), would be a very
suitable name for Óðinn to take under this journey—that is, if the only object of this journey was the alcoholic beverage.
94
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idea of Óðinn as a sorcerer. One could simply argue that Bǫlverkr is used in Skáldskaparmál because
it also occurs in Hávamál, but on the other hand, the naming tradition of Skáldskaparmál does not
seem to be coincidental, and if the intent were to represent Óðinn as an evil sorcerer fooling the jǫtnar,
it is a notable inconsistency that in both versions he is the one in danger, not the jǫtnar.
Here we will hazard a guess as to why Bǫlverkr is specifically useful in Skáldskaparmál: it fits
the dual role of Óðinn in this tale. He is both a culture-hero bringing the Mead of Poetry to the world
of gods and men (Schjødt 1983, 93), and the Evildoer that causes an eruption in the mountain. The
name Bǫlverkr fits with Óðinn’s tricky demeanor—almost worthy of Loki himself—as a sorcerer
who comes to Baugi’s farm and makes the slaves kill each other over a whetstone.95 Afterwards Óðinn
performs the work of these nine men in the course of the summer (Skáld. GLVIII). Annette Lassen
has pointed out that this scene may be reminiscent of Clemens saga, which tells of Simon magus,
who can make his scythe cut grain at the same rate as ten men. Simon magus goes on to tell that: “Ek
má fliúga í lopti í eldslíki […] Ek má fara í gegnum fiǫll, hvars ek vil […] Stundum bregð ek á mik
kykvenda líki ýmissa, fogla eða orma …” (I can fly in the air in the shape of fire […] I can walk
through mountains wherever I want to […] Sometimes I take on different animal forms: birds and
worms … [Clemens saga 2005, V]). This passage, Lassen says, originates from Recognitiones
(Lassen 2011, 304). Under the auspices of medieval learned literature it is only people who commit
bǫlverkr that are capable of such things, which would include sorcerers. In medieval Scandinavia,
these shamanic aspects of Óðinn are entirely associated with otherness and outsiders such as the
Saami, who are perceived as diabolic and heathen (Lindow 1995; 2003, 100–3). This does not,
however, contradict the association of Bǫlverkr with volcanism. As noted above, myths are inherently
polysemantic and can have several meanings for those who reproduce them. In terms of the survival
of the myth from a state of pagan mythopoesis to Christian literacy, it is hardly a paradox that
characters and motifs associate with cultural material of the new literature. In fact, this is a perfect
example of the transformations that narratives which function as the core of the Mythical Charter of
Tradition—as foundation myths and technical myths—may be transformed with greater social
changes.
In the context of a myth about an eruption, the choice of the name Bǫlverkr is useful as a
mnemonic device: there is an alliterative chain of Bileygr, Báleygr, and Bǫlverkr. Early scholarship
had a tendency to focus on interpretations of Óðinn as a sky god or a sun god (Grimm [1835] 1854;
Eiríkr Magnússon 1895; Much 1898), and in this complex the one, flaming eye (Bileygr/Báleygr)
was compared to the sun. That Óðinn’s one eye has a long-standing tradition in Old Norse literature
95
The whetstone reappears in volcanism in relation to Þórr and Hrungnir.
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is quite evident (cf. Lassen 2011, 49; see also Lassen 2003), but in this case there is something to be
said for an interpretation of the ‘eye’ as a caldera.
Barber and Barber argue that Odysseus’s encounter with the Cyclops (Round-eye) called
Polyphemus (Wide-known) is a myth of a volcanic event. The encounter begins with Odysseus seeing
smoke in the distance and it ends with the Cyclops hurling rocks at our hero. During the visit, the
Cyclops eats several of Odysseus’s men. This, Barber and Barber suspect, is an ancient myth of
volcanism, and they compare it with their own experience of an effusive eruption of Mauna Ulu in
Hawai’i in 1972: “you could well have said that we watched two terrible monsters, as alike as twin
sisters, passing an eye back and forth between them” (Barber & Barber 2004, 108–9). Of course, this
image would not be much more to us than the imagination of the two scholars in question, were it not
for the fact that we encounter the image of eyes in the context of Icelandic volcanism in Bergbúa
þáttr before the bergbúi recites Hallmundarkviða. In this instance, Þórðr and his servant have crawled
into the cave in order to escape the blizzard and here they see two eyes: “þat, er þeim þótti því líkast
sem væri tungl tvau full eðr törgur stórar, ok var á millum stund sú ekki svá líttil” (that which to them
looked to be two full moons or huge shields, and they were not at all little [Bergbúa þáttr: ÍF 13 1991,
442]).
So how may the little rhyme of Bileygr, Báleygr, and Bǫlverkr function in this context? If we
can accept these three names as sequentially associated beyond their alliterative aspect, we may detect
a reference to a caldera. The first part of Bileygr, bil-, is interpreted as a derivation of bila (ODNS
1966, 47), and thus the name may mean ‘failing eye.’ Bila means ‘to give way, break, crack’ (Zoëga
2004, 52), and also ‘to fail’ (ODNS 1966, 46). The adjective bilgjarn means simply ‘weak’ (p. 47).
The word blindr seems much more suitable to describe blindness; Bileygr is thus as much, if not
more, the failing, weak, and cracking eye as it is the ‘blind eye.’ The ‘Weak, Failing, Cracking eye’
is followed by the ‘Fire eye.’ If we understand the caldera as an eye, it is in a frail condition and may
crack. When it does, it becomes the ‘Fire eye.’ When Weak-eye becomes Fire-eye it will surely
become Evildoer: Bǫlverkr. This is a sequential causality that is readily comprehensible if one can
accept moving beyond the images of medieval literature that enjoy displaying Óðinn as a one-eyed
sorcerer with grey beard and a floppy hat—the highly tendentious konungasögur and fornaldarsögur
(Lassen 2011, 135–77).
Beyond this scope we can see another side to Bǫlverkr as the Volcano Spirit that comes to
Hnitbjǫrg. At this point Bǫlverkr has helped Baugi with the harvest and it is now time to receive his
reward, but Suttungr is not willing to let him get to the mead (Skáld. GLVIII). We thus approach the
crucial moment of the eruption, but first there will be more noise in the mountain, because now Baugi
and Bǫlverkr take their drill. It is of course because Bǫlverkr needs an opening into which he can pry
166
himself in the form of a snake that he instructs Baugi to drill a hole, but in terms of volcanism there
is more to say than that. Rati, we may assume, is made of (magic) iron so that it is strong enough to
cut through stone, and thus it is understood that the drilling with an auger into a mountain by a
supernatural being, a jǫtunn, must make an awful sound. This is once more the rumbling in the
mountain. This scene echoes the sailing scene with the alliteration of the names and the activities in
the underground. This time, however, the eruption is right at hand.
When Bǫlverkr wishes to enter the hole, he blows into it and the bits of rock fly back out at
him. As stated above, this presumably reflects the classical and learned explanation for earthquakes
that finds its Icelandic form in Kongungs Skuggsjá:
[…] Grunduollur þess mun vaxinn med morgum ædum og tomum smugum edur storum
holum Enn sijdan kunna þeir a(t)burdir at verda annat huort af vindum edur af afli
gnyanda gialfurs at þessaR ædar edur holur verdi fuller af vindum suo miog at þær þoli
eigi wmbrot vindsins. og kann þadann af þat at koma at land skialftar þeir verdi hinu
storu sem verda aa þui landi
(The underground of this [land] must have been created with many indentations or
caverns or large caves. Then it could happen either because of the wind or the might of
the roaring water that permeates these indentations or caves were filled so much with
wind without being able to bear it. And from that it may be that the great earthquakes
come in that land [Konungs Skuggsiá 1945, XIV]).
This explanation for earthquakes is also found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “idem ego cum subii
conuexa foramina terrae supposuique ferox imis mea terga cauernis, sollicito manes totumque
tremoribus orbem” (it is also I who force my way into caves in the ground and ragingly put my back
against the ceiling of the caverns and with my great earthquakes bring terror to the worlds of the
living and the dead [Metamorphoses 2004, VI.697–9]). These words in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are
uttered by Boreas Aquilo, the Eagle of the Northern Wind. It is not impossible that the image of
Bǫlverkr blowing into the hole in Hnitbjǫrg and flying out of there as an eagle is reminiscent of
Boreas Aquilo. The interpretation of Hræsvelgr as an eagle beyond the North, who creates the winds
with his giant wings in Gylfaginning XVII, seems to be part of this same tradition. In Vafþrúðnismál
37, Hræsvelgr represents the wind, and by extension the sea, with its treacherous whirlpools (Jón
Hnefill Aðalsteinsson 1998, 28–9), and we have in the preceding chapter seen how this connects with
Þjazi as a representative of the northern wind. With this image of the raging winds in the rocks we
revisit Hallmundarkviða. Here we can see that at the very beginning of the eruption in stanza 1, stones
and cliffs rumble and tumble down before the jǫtunn’s step. Hallmundr is heard stamping through the
rocks, the winds howl in the mountains. Hallmundr enacts the same activities in the mountains as
Baugi and Bǫlverkr—and Boreas Aquilo. These giant beings, in the form of birds (Hallmundr flies
167
as well), and very often in the form of eagles, send their winds into the caverns and cracks of the
stony mountains, stepping through the rocks, with loud noises and falling rocks as the outcome.
As Bǫlverkr slips into his serpent form and barely escapes Baugi jabbing at him, we should
consider the snake in relation to volcanism. We have seen above that the shape-changing charades of
the shamanic Óðinn, who walks among us as a sorcerer, are easily explained from deviant figures in
league with the Devil in medieval literature (see also Lassen 2011, 249–63). But, more importantly,
Schjødt points out in a note in Livsdrik og vidensdrik that: “[At] ormen og ørnen er repræsentanter
for henholdsvis den chthoniske og den celestiale sfære er der en mængde eksempler på, både i
religionsfænomenologien og i den nordiske mytologi” ([That] the worm and the eagle represent,
respectively, the chthonic and the celestial sphere is evidenced in several examples, both in the
phenomenology of religion and in Nordic mythology [Schjødt 1983, 100]). In his Initiation between
Two Worlds, on the other hand, Schjødt explains why the Skáldskaparmál version of the Mead Myth
includes the shape-changing, whereas the Hávamál version does not. He refers to the notion that
Skáldskaparmál is focused on the theft of the mead and Hávamál is focused on the relationship of
Óðinn to Gunnlǫð (Schjødt 2008a, 155–6).
If we examine the snake first, we find that—as Schjødt makes clear—it is abundantly
represented as a chthonic guardian of the underground. But more importantly, it is also directly
involved in volcanism elsewhere in the world. Barber and Barber see in Medusa’s snake-locks the
image of hissing lava streams running down a mountain side (Barber & Barber 2004, 109–11), and
they provide a comparable example from a description of the Mayon eruption on 1928: “lava poured
out through the notches in the crater wall and followed the gullies, forming snake-like trickles
radiating from the summit … There was a periodicity of three to five hours in the spells of roaring,
hissing, cracking and tumbling noise” (p. 112 [from Jaggar 1945, 61]). Here, in the Mead Myth,
Bǫlverkr is performing the snake-act, gliding in the furrows of the mountain, the hollows that have
been cut by the jǫtunn,96 hissing and trickling until he reaches the core of Hnitbjǫrg, the ‘Clashing
Rocks.’
Inside the mountain, Bǫlverkr sleeps with Gunnlǫð and drinks the mead in three draughts
(Skáld. GLVIII). Schjødt points out that this is a visit to the realm of the dead (Schjødt 1983, 90–5),
a notion that is fully acceptable in this context. This makes Gunnlǫð a guardian of the underworld.
The meaning of her name as ‘Invitation to Battle’ (Simek 2007, 124–5) may fit into the volcanic
perspective considering the use of battle references throughout Hallmundarkviða, but this is only of
minor importance. The meeting of the upper world with the underworld in the Mountain of Clashing
96
Since Baugi keeps jabbing at Óðinn we can perhaps assume that he keeps making noise with the drill.
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Rocks is, to the contrary, the most important aspect of this part of the myth. The North American
Klamath people record the story of the eruption in Crater Lake as a battle between the Sky and Earth:
[…] the Chief of the Below World was very angry. In a voice like thunder, he swore he
would have revenge on the people of Loha, that he would destroy them with the Curse
of Fire. Raging and thundering, he rushed up through the opening and stood upon the
top of his mountain. Then he saw the face of the Chief of the Above World shining
among the stars that surrounded his home. Slowly the mighty form of that chief
descended from the sky and stood on the top of Mount Shasta. From their mountaintops
the two spirit chiefs began a furious battle. In a short time all the spirits of earth and sky
took part in the battle (Barber & Barber 2004, 6).
This is a meeting of the upper world with the underworld, much in the same way as it is portrayed in
the apocalypse of ragnarøkkr: the Volcano jǫtunn, the Fire People, and the Ancestor Spirits in a raging
battle. The elements of the world converge in battle, not in a distinctly Christian apocalypse like it
has been seen in Muspilli, but in a natural disaster that brings the spirits of Earth’s insides to converge
with the spirits of Sky—on top of a mountain. It is a similar event of the elements of the sky
converging with the elements of the ground and creating disaster in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, though
primary agency is ascribed to Boreas, when the wind blows through the caves of the underworld. This
is similarly realized in Hallmundarkviða and it is also the case with Bǫlverkr and Gunnlǫð: Evildoer
and Invitation to Battle converge and create disaster.
It is at this point that we see the eagle flying: Bǫlverkr bursts out of the Mountain of the
Clashing Rocks bringing the liquid of the dwarves with him. As noted earlier, the flying eagle, a
portentous bird of prey, is used in several instances. It is expected to come in Hallmundarkviða 9,
right before Hallmundr sends Aurnir the stone boat. In Vǫluspá 50, the eagle with the ash-pale beak
screaks and rips the corpses, as Jǫrmungandr writhes in the ocean. Subsequently Naglfar is set loose
and approaches with Muspellz’s People and Loki/Býleiptr, then comes Surtr.
Is the eagle then only an image of death, as is the case with many birds of prey in Old Norse
poetry (see Meulengracht 2006, 112)? Barber and Barber argue that Hesiod’s story of Zeus, who
chained Prometheus to a cliff in the Caucasus and let an eagle feed on his liver, is in fact a volcanic
image (Barber & Barber 2004, 219–30). Indeed, the Nart sagas of the Caucasus record the story of
Nasran, who is bound by Paqua and has his chest torn by a giant eagle. Nasran roars and moans, and
the wingspan of the eagle reaches from mountain top to mountain top and darkens the valley below
until Pataraz shoots an arrow at the wing so that light shines through it (p. 224–5; for the whole
narrative, see Colarusso 2002, 158-74). It is hard not to recognize in this image the same tendency to
use the eagle or birds in general as a common analogy to the ash cloud of an explosive eruption. The
Yakama tribe of the state of Washington also tells of eagles in an eruption on Pahto (Mt. Adams).
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They tell that the Great Spirit sent down a big white eagle with his son, a smaller, red eagle, on his
shoulder. This image, it seems, is based not only on comparison to ashes and lava, but also on the fact
that eagles nest quite close to the top of the Pahto Mountain (Barber & Barber 2004, 222). Nesting in
high places is not particular for North American eagles, it is also the case for Northern European
eagles and those in the Caucasus Mountains. It is therefore also reasonable to keep in mind that if
there were any kind of activity going on in a mountain, the eagles would be some of the first birds an
observer would notice flying around near the summit.97
There is an even more striking image that can be drawn forth: in the Flatey annals it is recorded
in relation to an eruption in Hekla in 1341 that some brave Icelanders: “foru til fiallzins þar sem vpp
varpit var […] þeim synduzst fuglar fliuga i elldinum bædi smair ok storir med ymsum laatum” (went
to the mountain where the up-throw was […] it seemed to them that birds flew in the fire, both big
and small with different bearings [Storm 1888, 401]). Here, Icelanders themselves see birds in the
eruption, and thus we find the notion of birds associated with volcanic ejecta in the same cultural
frame as the Mead Myth. This is an image of the ‘Fire-bird.’
When Bǫlverkr erupts as an eagle from Hnitbjǫrg, Suttungr follows him, also in the guise of
an eagle. Just as in the Yakama story, the eruption takes form of one eagle followed by another: ash
cloud on ash cloud, Fire-bird on Fire-bird. Bǫlverkr flies through the air as a fire-bird, bringing the
lava as he regurgitates the mead. He explodes in golden liquid, sending two-thirds of it into the vats
that the æsir have put out for him in Ásgarðr. But Suttungr follows him, and the last third is sent out
into the face of Suttungr (Skáld. GLVIII). This carries the imagery of an explosive eruption bringing
debris to the dwellings of men. Bǫlverkr has brought the wisdom of the cosmos and the wisdom of
Icelandic volcanism back to the dwellings of the gods, back to society and culture. The knowledge
has been retrieved even though (maybe even because) Kvasir died.
The knowledge of volcanic eruptions in Old Norse myths takes the form of a string of mythic
motifs. It combines Fire Spirits and noisy jǫtnar and dwarves with supernatural boats and the flight
of birds and gods in an early attempt to account for volcanic eruptions in Iceland. Another motif that
is often used seems to be war. Hallmundarkviða abounds with references to war and battle, and the
same is the case for Vǫluspá. The Mead Myth begins with peacemaking after a war, it has several
characters killed off, and it has some war-references, such as the name of Gunnlǫð.
The last part of this mythic complex of volcanism is the mnemonic device of the alcoholic
drink. The alcoholic drink is associated with volcanism in the Mead Myth, in Hallmundarkviða, and
97
It is not entirely unthinkable that J.R.R. Tolkien may have recognized this image too. When the Ring has fallen into the
fire-pit of Mount Doom, the mountain erupts and Mordor crumbles. After this event, the hard pressed armies of Middle
Earth on the plains of Cormallen see the eagles coming towards them (Tolkien 1966, 229–31). Tolkien did, after all, write
his epic during an eruption in Hekla.
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in Eyvindr’s Háleygjatal, but Konungs Skuggsjá (cap. XV) and Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (Praef. 2,7)
also associate the volcanism of Iceland with volcanic wells (ǫlkeldur) where water tastes like beer.
This is a very strange notion that does not have any immediate relationship to actual volcanic
phenomena, and there seems to be very little to substantiate the image aside from the mythic sources.
The reasons for this will be examined in the following, but for now it is useful to present an overview
of the mythic complex in its various sources and to generate a summary of the argument so far:
Figure 11: The mythic motif of volcanism
Noisy
jǫtnar
and/or
dwarves
Skáldskaparmál
Hallmundarkv.
Vǫluspá
Eyvindr
Landnáma.
Flatey annals
Konungs Sk.
Saxo
x
x
x
x
Jǫtunn in a
boat/giant
sending a
boat
of stone/iron
x
x
x
The eagle,
flying,
birds
x
x
x
x
Beer or
mead
x
x
x
x
x
(x)1
x
x
Surtr
x
x
x
Description
of an
eruption
x
(x)2
x
x
x
x
1
Konungs Skuggsjá repeats the notion that Boreas Aquilo makes earthquakes and eruptions by blowing his
winds into caves in the underground. This seems to accord with the acts of Bǫlverkr in the mountain.
2
While it is supposed by this author and several other scholars that Vǫluspá indeed does relate aspects of an
eruption, it cannot be taken to be a fact.
The Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál places Hnitbjǫrg centrally in the narrative when Suttungr takes
the mead there. This makes the Mountain of the Clashing Rocks the focal point of this tale and sets
the stage for an eruption from the mountain. The myth plays on the ambiguity of Óðinn as a sorcerer
and a cosmic force, drawing analogies to medieval literary figures. Ægir, who is receiving this cultural
knowledge about the Mead of Poetry, is rightly confused in the midst of all this, because this
information process plays on so many levels of reference. Physical processes of the world are coupled
with physical processes of the body, analogies between alcoholic drinks and knowledge are being
drawn, and this complex is built on a raging undercurrent of a subtext of volcanism. This is a process
of culturalization, an initiatory process of cosmic dimensions, and we may understand it in terms of
the Silence Principle: that which is commonly understood by the culture is not mentioned. In that
respect it is interesting that Skáldskaparmál is so focused on explaining the kennings in terms of
water, only.
Underneath the veil of the narrative tradition we find important cultural knowledge in the
names and the narrative structures of the Mead Myth. This is not just a story of the wizard who cheats
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local farmers, drinks their good liquor, and runs off with their daughters, in the process transgressing
the boundaries of natural human abilities: this is a tale of how Evildoer, the Spirit of the ‘Unstable
eye’ that became the ‘Flaming eye,’ made noise in the mountain with the help of a jǫtunn and a drill
to make holes so that he could blow his raging storms into it and create eruptions. The tale tells how
Evildoer first blew into the caverns and cracks of the Mountain of Clashing Rocks and made it rumble,
made stones tumble down. Then he slipped into the furrows and made his way as a hissing snake,
while the giant stabbed at him. Inside the Mountain of Clashing Rocks, Evildoer copulated with
Invitation to Battle and drank the golden liquid of the underworld. In the shape of an eagle, Evildoer
came bursting out of the Mountain of Clashing Rocks, bringing another eagle with him. They flew
rapidly over the plains, the one chasing the other. And when they came to the dwellings of men,
Evildoer exploded in golden liquid at the walls.
As we saw above in the section on the mead mystery, the Mead Myth is a central cultural myth
that extends far into the cultural domain, and on various levels connects with cosmology: it is a central
myth in the Mythical Charter of Tradition. This connection of the Mead of Poetry to volcanism in
relation to the prevalent complex of numinous knowledge and cosmology calls for further
investigation. In the succeeding section on change and variation in the Mead Myth, we will consider
this issue as well as the issue of why Gunnlǫð and Óðinn must meet for an eruption to happen.
LAVA AND MEAD, CHANGE AND VARIATION IN T HE MEAD MYTH
At this point we have successfully interpreted the Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál into a frame of
volcanism. It has been shown how the various elements of the myth seem to harbor references to
themes of volcanism in other narratives, in which there is little or no doubt that we are dealing with
volcanic phenomena. It remains, however, to be explained why the Mead Myth would possibly come
to be associated with volcanism in the first place. It is simply not enough to point to a possible
complex of meaning, if this complex is not readily meaningful outside of the text and its
interpretation, that is: it is all very well that the singular elements of the Mead Myth may find their
place in a frame of volcanism, but if this frame only becomes meaningful when it is applied to the
text by the interpreter, there is no guarantee that the parameters of the interpretation are defensible
beyond a mere possibility offered by the text. For this myth to be accepted as a true Icelandic myth
of volcanism, it is therefore of paramount importance that the volcanic frame of interpretation is not
merely possible, but justified by reasons that are latent in the tradition prior to the time when the
Mead Myth was written down in Skáldskaparmál. In other words, we must find out what possible
factors of a pre-existing tradition could have conspired together in mythopoesis to work towards the
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Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál, and we must identify singular factors pertaining to the human
response to volcanism that may relate to this tradition, in order to verify the myth as a myth of
volcanism.98
It has already been touched upon that the Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál does entirely conform
to known patterns. As noted above, McKinnell points out that the Mead Myth as told in Hávamál is
irregular in terms of fulfilling the pattern of Óðinn’s seduction of the jǫtunn, but even Óðinn’s
prominence in the pattern of jǫtunn seductions has been drawn into question. In her Det hellige
bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi (1991), Steinsland does not accept the notion of jǫtunn seduction as
an original Óðinn tradition. Going back to Eyvindr skáldaspillir’s postulation that Óðinn and Skaði
originally married, she sees the unification of these divinities as one that has been created by Eyvindr
on “det mytiske mønsteret som er latent til stede i Ynglingatal i Fjolnes skikkelse” (the latent mythical
pattern that is present in Ynglingatal in the figure of Fjǫlnir [Steinsland 1991, 219]).
Against this background, it is readily acceptable to wonder if the myth of the Mead of Poetry
relates to a tradition that did not, in its beginning, allot Óðinn a role in the mythic complex. This
chapter began with an allusion to Óðinn’s role as a god in the late heathen period, and his role as a
literary figure in medieval Iceland. We noted that Richard North believes that Óðinn received his role
as progenitor of royalty in Anglo-Saxon England in relation to the process of Christianization, and
that this role came from the English realm to Norway in the late heathen era, resulting in the work of
Háleygjatal by Eyvindr skáldaspillir.
This calls for an investigation into change and variation in the Mead Myth from its early
background in a European context to its Germanic tradition. The Mead Myth of Hávamál is
fundamentally different from the one in Skáldskaparmál, and the reason for this is that the version in
Hávamál relates to the Latin tradition and cults of the Liberalia and Bacchanalia, whereas the myth
of Skáldskaparmál is fully integrated into an Icelandic context, and this integration occurs, if not prior
to, then at the time when Eyvindr composed his stanzas of Háleygjatal. Eyvindr composed
Háleygjatal in c. 985, which is some 50 years after the landnám ended in Iceland. From the beginning
of the landnám in the 860–70s until its end around 930, there were around ten volcanic events in
Iceland. These were of different types, mainly explosive, but there were also some singular effusive
events. Finally, in 934–8 the Settlement Era volcanic activities culminate with a major eruption in the
Katla system. This is known as the Eldgjá event and it is presumably one of the biggest eruptions in
human history (Þór Þórðarson & Larsen 2007, 137). With no experiential frame of reference for
This aspect of justification is widely lacking in Barber and Barber’s interpretations. They interpret various myths with
the theme of volcanism, but in many aspects they fail to explain what function these myths would have had in relation to an
existing tradition and notions of human disaster response mechanisms. For a myth to be important to a society, it requires
more than a relationship to a disastrous event that took place at ‘some time.’
98
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volcanic phenomena, these migrants coming from Scandinavia and the North Atlantic islands were
forced to resort to the cultural knowledge they brought with them from Europe, their Mythical Charter
of Tradition, in order to explain, process, and cope with the volatile underground of Iceland. Eyvindr
skáldaspillir’s two stanzas in Háleygjatal seem to be the earliest attempt to do so. As mentioned, he
combines Gillingr, the flying Farmagnúðr (Óðinn), and the sǫkkdalir of Surtr with the origins of the
Mead of Poetry. This suggests an early acceptance of the mead as a chthonic substance that could,
because of its association with the underground, be compared to lava.
LATIN INFLUENCE ON THE MEAD MYTH
In order to address and consider why it would make sense for Eyvindr both to link the Mead Myth
with volcanism and—beyond the propagandistic aspect of a simple rivalry of two royally-aspiring
clans—to postulate a marriage between Óðinn and Skaði, it is necessary to attempt to trace the mythic
complex back to its possible state of origin in Latin culture. This will enhance our understanding of
how the Mead Myth could possibly carry meaning in terms of volcanism to the Scandinavians from
the time they colonized Iceland and far into the medieval period. It is not directly comprehensible
that a myth of intoxicating drink can be involved with volcanism, but if the myth is scrutinized in
terms of a broader European cultural frame, it may be possible to understand the link. The link occurs
at the point where the god of the intoxicating drink is united with the Earth goddess.
An ancient ritual of the Latin culture was the Liberalia, which was celebrated on the 17 th of
March. This ritual is described both by Ovid and St. Augustine. Based on Varro’s descriptions, St.
Augustine delivers an extensive account of the Liberalia, which includes ritual processions through
the countryside with a phallus and representations of sexual organs in the temples (De Civitate Dei
1924, VII.21). It appears that Liber and Libera, the divinities celebrated at the Liberalia, were
associated broadly with fertility, but Liber also presided over the grapes and this caused him to be
associated with Dionysus. Liber was often paired with Ceres and it seems that his name, like that of
Ceres, etymologically connected him with birth and harvest (Dumézil [1966] 1996, 377–8). Ceres
had her own cult ritual, the Cerealia on the 19th of April, but she was consistently associated with
Liber-Libera, and from the late third century BCE her cult was in heavy competition with the Greek
cult of Demeter. Eventually this resulted in the interpretatio graeca of the Ceres cult and it became
so that at the sacrum anniversarium Cereris celebrated in summer time, the reunion of Demeter and
Persephone in the guise of Ceres and Proserpina, was celebrated. Likewise, Liber was also gradually
assimilated into a Greek form, namely with Dionysus-Bacchus as the wine god (p. 380).
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In Metamorphoses, Ovid
99
gives an account of the myth of Ceres’s loss of
Proserpina/Persephone. In book V, he tells how she was kidnapped by the lord of the underworld
Tartarus/Saturnus. The giant Typhoeus had been buried with his head under the volcano Aetna, “sub
qua resupinus harenas eiectat flammamque ferox uomit ore Typhoeus” (under which Typhoeus lies
on his back, spewing fires and ashes out of his mouth [Metamorphoses 2004, V.352–3]). Therefore
Tartarus had left his dark realm to have a look at the state of Sicily’s underground (V.361). Cupido
thus sent an arrow and made Tartarus fall in love with the first woman he saw. He found Proserpina
playing in the grove, and he kidnapped her to his realm, driving his chariot “perque lacus altos et
olentia sulphure fertur stagna Palicorum rupta feruentia terra” (over the deep lake of the Palices and
hot pools reeking of sulphur boiling up from fissures in the ground [V.405–6]). In the following, Ovid
tells how the nymph Cyane rose from the bay in which she lives and tried to stop Saturnus from taking
Proserpina to the underworld, but he smote her with his scepter and made a crater in the bottom of
the ocean, all the way down to the caverns of Tartarus (V.409–24). As a result of the kidnapping of
her child, Ceres let her anger loose on the fertile lands of Sicily and caused droughts and heavy rain
that left no crops standing (V.464–86).100
Under the auspices of eco-mythology, this myth is easily examined as a story using the imagery
of volcanism, seismicity, tidal waves, and weather conditions causing famine. This is, however, not
the object here. We shall simply note that the complex of Ceres/Demeter as the Earth goddess in the
Ovidian mythology is not only linked with the underworld, 101 but with natural disasters and
volcanism. Liber/Dionysus-Bacchus does not appear in this myth, but his legacy is detected
elsewhere.
It seems that a variant of the Bacchanalia or Liberalia resurged in the medieval period.
According to a tenth century Spanish penitential, the wild man Orcus dances in intoxicated frenzy
with Maia at the frivolous festivities that were once celebrated throughout Catholic Europe. Popular
versions of Orcus survive in French (ogre), Italian (orco) and German (orke) throughout the medieval
period, but also in the Anglo-Saxon version: wudewāsan (Bernheimer 1979, 42–3), a name that seems
to connect with óðr (mad, frantic [Zoëga 2004, 323]); in Old English wōd (zeal, ardor [de Vries 1961,
416]), and thus also Óðrørir and Óðinn. In early Roman religion, Orcus is a relatively obscure figure,
but already Plautus assimilates Orcus into Pluto (Dumézil [1966] 1996, 369), essentially assigning
him the same role as Tartarus/Saturnus. Ovid also aligns the realm of the dead with Orcus
99
We saw above that Ovid may have contributed to the Ymir Myth, and it seems that he was widely known from early on
in Iceland and Scandinavia (Dronke 1971, 146–7).
100 Evidently, aspects of this myth remind us of Þjazi’s Theft of Iðunn: the being of the otherworld (the death realm) steals
a young woman and this causes a food crisis.
101 That Ceres has ties to the underworld in other capacities is well-known (Dumézil [1966] 1996, 375–6).
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(Metamorphoses 2004, XIV.116), and Orcus as a popular medieval term for the underworld appears
in Gesta Normannorum: “atque franciscae gentis laceros plagis horco detrusit” (and smote the
mangled French people down to Orcus [Gesta Normannorum 1996, XL]).
Maia, essentially the same Earth goddess as Ceres, was associated with Volcanus in early
Roman religion. This is deduced from the expression “Maia Volcani.” This formulation belongs to
an ancient tradition of uniting mythic female entities with certain divinities of which they represent
an aspect or mode of action (Dumézil [1966] 1996, 397). At the Roman Volcanalia, celebrated on the
23rd of August, it was customary to make sacrifices to Volcanus to avoid fire in the crops and granaries
(p. 321),102 and it may possibly be such risks that the above expression as well as the sacrifices refer
to. In the medieval period, we find Volcanus relegated to Orcus’s realm in the underworld as a
tormentor of souls in visionary literature such as Visio Tnugdali/Duggals leizla (Malm 1992, 163).
On the shoulders of this complex, it seems, stand different Germanic and Scandinavian
interpretations. Richard North makes a strong argument for a long-standing tradition of a Germanic
version of the Bacchanalian cult realized in its earliest form in the Nerthus-Terra Māter complex in
Tacitus’s Germania (cap. XL). Possibly the king with the epithet Ing- was the embodiment of
Nerthus, and this Ing- figure was, according to North, later deified. This perspective, North argues,
has roots in Ovid’s version of the Bacchus/Dionysus myth (North 1997, 32). Furthermore, North
suggests that the Freyr of the medieval Icelandic texts was in his early aspects analogous to the Liber
figure (p. 31). 103 His cult, as described in the fourteenth century Gunnar Helmings þáttr in
Flateyjarbók, in which he was, in a fashion similar to Nerthus, driven around the country in a wagon
with a female consort, reflects the Roman Ceres-Liber festivals (p. 33). Freyr is alluded to as the
progenitor of the Ynglingar in Ynglingatal (sts. 17 and 21), and so it seems that Þjóðólfr ór Hvíni
wished to claim Freyr as the most ancient ancestor of the Ynglingar (p. 39).
The consequence of this allusion to Freyr as the Ynglingar ancestor is taken in Ynglinga saga,
where it is claimed that Fjǫlnir is the son of Yngvifreyr (Heimskr. 1979 I: Ynglinga saga, XI). The
unfortunate Fjǫlnir tripped and drowned in the mead-vat at a feast in the hall of the Danish king Fróði
(p. 26). Both Fjǫlnir and Fróði are, in the opinion of several scholars, associated with Freyr, not
Óðinn, even though the name is applied to the former in Grímnismál (Falk 1924, 9; Ström 1954, 64;
Turville-Petre 1964, 166, 169–71; de Vries 1970 185–6; Steinsland 1991, 192–3). Saxo’s story of
102
This combination of harvest and fire is very interesting to compare with the aforementioned Simon Magus, who flies
through the air as a fire-ball, who harvests like ten men with his magical scythe, and is associated with the underworld
through his abilities to go through the ground and turn into the chthonic form of a snake. One may speculate whether or not
this evil sorcerer of the Christian tale of Clemens saga is a compilation some known images of underworld beings from the
Latin culture: Volcanus’s fiery abilities and harvest, or; Saturnus’s scythe and the chthonic association of these underworld
beings, including Orcus.
103 Also, Dronke alludes to Freyr as an analogue to Dionysus in War of the Æsir and Vanir 1988.
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Haddingus—a character who is to some degree modeled after Njǫrðr (Dumézil 1970; Turville-Petre
1964, 215; de Vries 1970, 175)—reveals at its end a tale analogous to the Fjǫlnir story of Ynglinga
saga. Haddingus’s archenemy, King Hundingus of Sweden, celebrates what he believed to be the
death of Haddingus by brewing a large vat of ale and serving it to his guests. Because Hundingus is
so drunk, he ends up drowning in the beer tub, which Saxo comments was: “deditque poenas siue
Orcho, quem falsa exequiarum actione placabat, siue Hadingo, cuius interitum mentitus fuerat” (to
punish him for having with no reason celebrated Orcus, or perhaps because he had lied about
Haddingus’s death [Saxo 2005 I, I 8,27]).
It may be entirely coincidental that Saxo chooses this wording, but on the other hand, the fact
that Saxo pairs vivid intoxication with a ritual to Orcus and drowning in the alcoholic drink points
toward the above-described mythic complex that relates Orcus to the Liberalia and the Bacchanalia.
In this complex there is a general association of the intoxicating drink with the underworld. The
Ceres-Liber unification in the early mythology conflates intoxicating drink and the Earth-mother, and
this is reflected in the later medieval traditions that are analogous to this myth. Saxo’s version of this
is a worship of Orcus with beer and extreme, life-threatening intoxication. This is most certainly one
of the moralizing comments on pagan gluttony, of which we have seen several in the preceding
chapter. The drunkenness of the bacchanalia survives both in Saxo and Ynglinga saga, but also in
Hávamál, which also includes the sexual aspects. The Mead Myth of Hávamál preserves all the
features that are present in the Roman complex: in stanzas 13–14, where Óðinn is highly intoxicated,
it is the drunkenness; in stanza 105, it is the drink and the unification of the two gods; in stanzas 108
and 110, there is also allusion to coitus or marriage (although Óðinn breaks the agreement) between
the gods; and in stanzas 106–7, there is a preservation of the chthonic association of the myth: Óðinn
brings the alcoholic drink to the human world, just as Liber would have done. It is thus possible to
see the Mead Myth of Hávamál as a Scandinavian-Icelandic analogue to the persevering European
Maia-Orcus/Ceres-Liber/Dionysus-Demeter unification. The connection of Óðinn to this tradition
seems to be reflected furthermore in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the wild man, where there may be
an overlap in naming tradition: Óðinn, Óðrørir, and Wudewāsan. But in the Icelandic tradition, it has
generated two distinct uses of the myth in relation to its ecosystem.
THE TWO MEAD MYTHS
As has been established, Hávamál and Skáldskaparmál relate two very different versions of the Mead
Myth. These variations can neither be reduced to differences in genre or situations of oral
transmission: they constitute essential functions of the myth in its specific variant as a central myth
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of the Mythical Charter of Tradition. The Mead Myth of Hávamál displays aspects of certain cultural
institutions, while the one in Skáldskaparmál is—even though it retains a strong focus on cultural
institutions—entirely focused on natural features and processes of nature.
The cultural institutions of the Hávamál myth are, in accordance with the tradition of Óðinn
and Skaði in Háleygjatal, the hall, marriage, oaths, and power. While the myth of Skáldskaparmál of
course begins with the establishment of the cultural institution of peace and Kvasir spreading
knowledge far and wide, it quickly transitions to features of nature: the dwarves’ home (notoriously
in stones, mountains, the ground—these elements are nothing like the hall), the sea, the skerries, crops
and harvest, the mountain, the underworld.
Another striking dissimilarity is that in the Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál, a wide selection of
characters die, while there is nothing to indicate the death of any character in the Mead Myth in
Hávamál: in Skáldskaparmál we first see the death of Kvasir, then Gillingr and his wife, then,
subsequently, the deaths of the nine slaves. Aside from this there is a constant threat to Óðinn’s life.
This underlines the very dangerous threat to humans of the volcanic event.
These extensive differences between the myths are not simply explained by the fact that one is
relayed in poetry and the other in prose. Nor does it seem likely that they could be two versions of a
third proto-myth about the mead. Likewise, this does not mean that they could not both be much older
than their manuscript versions (cf. Mogk 1923; Frank 1981; Frog 2011), but their structural
dissimilarities are so great that these myths should not simply be viewed as two versions of ‘the same.’
Rather, they are two different myths that have been generated from the same motif of the chthonic
alcoholic drink of wisdom. They are two aspects of the same foundation myth in the Mythical Charter
of Tradition: the one in Hávamál takes on a purely foundational aspect as it connects with the
establishment of kingship and the etiology of the powerful cultural substance of the Mead of Poetry;
the version in Skáldskaparmál acknowledges these aspects entirely, but becomes, as a result of the
realizations of the ecosystem, a technical myth of volcanism in the Mythical Charter of Tradition.
This is realized in the following manner:
In Hávamál the Mead Myth takes place “í Suttungs sǫlom” (in Suttungr’s halls [Hvm. 104]),
where they are seated “á gullom stóli” (in golden seats [Hvm. 105]), and the jǫtnar come “Háva ráðs
at fregna, Háva hǫllo í” (to ask the High One’s council, in the High One’s hall [Hvm. 109]), because
Óðinn left Suttungr and Gunnlǫð betrayed at the sumbl (Hvm. 110). The phrasing “Háva hǫllo í” is
repeated in stanza 111, where Óðinn proclaims that it is time to speak from the þulr’s seat in the High
One’s hall. The entire setting of this myth is in the hall of a ruler: Suttungr or the High One. Only
stanza 106 seems to indicate a translocation to a setting other than the hall, as we learn that Óðinn is
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digging his way out from his host’s hall.104 We may infer with reference to Skáldskaparmál that this
is a reference to digging or drilling in the mountain. It does not, however, make much sense to do so.
In fact, when one is familiar with the Orcus-complex, it makes sense simply to associate this with the
chthonic aspect of the widely known Latin tradition. This also means that when stanza 107 proclaims
that Óðrørir has come up to the human world, it may as well be analogically referring to the unification
of Orcus (Óðinn) and Maia (Gunnlǫð) at the ritual feast, or the bringing of the alcoholic drink by
Liber (Óðinn), as much as it should refer to Óðinn retrieving the mead from the specific site of
Hnitbjǫrg. Given McKinnell’s association of these stanzas to Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, it is not a
completely unlikely thought.
Spatially, the Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál takes a completely different turn than the one in
Hávamál. There is virtually nothing that associates it with the central site of the hall. The Mead Myth
takes place in cosmos, in and below the world, and roofed buildings play only a peripheral role. This
is the mythic scenery that Eyvindr is referring to when he says that Óðinn carried the mead out of
Surtr’s sinking-dales: he is not referring to a roofed hall and a scene taking place inside it, he is
referring to the volcanic scenery of Iceland. This is entirely different than the bacchantian fertility
scene of Hávamál. It is uncertain when the aspect of volcanism is fully realized in the Mead Myth,
but Eyvindr’s kennings certainly do prove that the subject is already well known in his time. With the
association of the intoxicating drink with the pre-Christian Fire-jǫtunn (Surtr and even Volcanus) and
the underworld, it is comparably spectacular that Saxo makes that extraordinary assertion about the
Icelandic hot springs when he says some of them taste of beer: “Sunt et alii fontes, quorum scatebra
cerealis poculi proprietatem imitari perhibetur” (There are also other springs whose water apparently
taste like beer [Saxo 2005 I, Praef. 2,7]). In light of the chthonic association of the intoxicating drink,
it seems plausible that Saxo is actually referring to a known tradition of associating the Mead of
Poetry with volcanism in Iceland.
Eyvindr relocates the Mead Myth to the volcanic realm, creating a spatial difference based on
the chthonic associations of the alcoholic drink that are already in place. This is comparable to what
Barber and Barber note in relation to the Klamath myth: “If the mountain smokes like a chimney,
then it plausibly is the chimney of a supernatural creature’s home” (Barber & Barber 2004, 35).
Normally, stones and rocks stay put, and mountains most certainly do not go up in flames. If such a
It is interesting that the hostility between the gods and the jǫtnar remains constant in relation to the auger Rati in both
myths. Stanza 106 clearly indicates that Óðinn is in danger on his way out of Suttungr’s hall, and similarly in
Skáldskaparmál, Baugi jabs at Óðinn with the auger. Interestingly, in stanza 106 it seems that Óðinn is the one using the
instrument, while it has obviously been given to Baugi in Skáldskaparmál. This shift of hands should not go unnoticed, as
it may underscore the shift in focus between the two versions of the myth: in the hands of Óðinn, Rati is an instrument of
culture comparable to all the other artefacts procured and produced by or for the gods. Conversely, Rati is an instrument of
nature and destruction in the hands of Baugi, who uses it in an act of volcanism.
104
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thing happens, there must be agency behind it (p. 41–4), and this agency is comparable to that of
humans, their habits and habitations—this is essentially the story that Ovid creates about Typhoeus,
Saturnus, Proserpina, and Ceres. Rocks that fly from the mountain must have been blown out of there
by a creature that sends its winds into the caves: fire that comes from there must be the fire god, the
god of the underworld, that lives in there, and from that we have a story about the Fire god of the
underworld who dances in a frenzy of intoxication with the Earth goddess. So when the mountain
opens and a thick, yellow-red substance pours out (or is jetted out), it must be the beer or mead of
these creatures.
The first Icelanders and many of their descendants, like most pre-industrial peoples, had only
a limited set of substances to which lava could be compared. Barber and Barber suggest that molten
bronze being poured from the crucible is a good analogy for flowing lava, and when it squirts out of
the mountain, a fountain of gold could work too (p. 107). Earlier in this chapter, we have seen these
two analogies being made already: eitr that flows like cinder and the volcano being called ‘treasurestrewer.’ But if the subject of drink carries weight in relation to volcanic activity, non-ingestible fluids
like smelted iron or gold are not favorable analogies, beer and mead are.105 We have already noted
how Kvasir, the source of the mead, was literally carrying wisdom from door to door before he was
killed. His essence is still in the mead, and this is why Bǫlverkr seeks it. In order to keep the
knowledge of volcanism intact, it must be connected to the primary cultural substance of the mead.
This is a form of cultural response to the surrounding ecosystem—it is an eco-myth, and in the
following we shall briefly consider the aspect of eco-myths as response to an environment.
105
I have been informed by volcanologist Kathy Cashman of Bristol University that when teaching rheology she often draws
analogies between lava and honey because of the similarity in the viscosity of the two substances.
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CHAPTER CONCLUSION: THE CREATION MYTH AND THE MEAD MYTH AS RESPONSE TO
VOLCANISM
It is possible to read the Creation Myth and the Mead Myth as two types of response to volcanism in
Iceland. With this aspect in mind, they are also conceptualizations of the land in Iceland, because they
harbor concepts and evaluations as eco-myths in the Mythical Charter of Tradition. The above
analyses and interpretations argue that these myths are variants of eco-myths that have been
formulated in relation to sites of danger and peril in the environment and ecosystem of Iceland. With
that they are a part of the Mythical Charter of Tradition and as such Cultural Memory that is
reproduced in connection with Memory Spaces in the landscape. These eco-myths are a part of the
tradition of mythology that originates in the mainland of Europe, but they have received specific
narrative characteristics in response to the environment of Iceland. In the following, I will describe
the specific aspects of this response in relation to the two myths.
THE CREATION MYTH AS RESPONSE TO VOLCANIS M
It may at first seem out of place to involve the destructive force of Muspellzheimr and Surtr in the
process of creation. With the tradition of muspille from known sources in medieval Europe in mind,
not least the role of Surtr in ragnarøkkr, there is a far distance to any notion of creation. But, as it has
been argued above, there is an experiential background to this notion: it is the mandate of experience
that allows for a credible construction of a myth of creative fire. This myth of the creation of Ymir
with a genesis in fire is nothing short of the result of a process of observing, deducing, and narrating
that is described both in Prologus and in the end of Gylfaginning. Prologus I describes this process
in the following manner: “Miðlaði hann ok spekina svá at þeir skilðu alla jarðliga hluti ok allar greinir
þær er sjá mátti loptsins ok jarðarinnar. Þat hugsuðu þeir ok undruðusk …” (He also gave them some
perceptiveness so that they could understand all earthly matters and all the details that they could see
in the sky and the earth. They considered this and wondered … [Prol. I]). The ability to perceive the
aspects of the world, understand them, and ponder their existence is, in this medieval context,
bestowed upon humans by the one true God. Regardless of this context—and the fact that it places
this epistemological approach to the world second to one informed by spirituality—the basic idea that
is presented here is that it is a natural human process of cognition to consider the aspects of the world
and construct narratives—myths—about its characteristics. This process also occurs in the end of
Gylfaginning, where the æsir deliberate after having told Gangleri their myths, and thus assign to the
world the contents of their narrative, mythic, tradition (Gylf. LIV). Here, the myths of Troy are—
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according to the author—assigned a new context in relation to paganism in Scandinavia. This
essentially describes the process of active mythopoesis in assigning new meaning to foundation
narratives in the Mythical Charter of Tradition.
It is on the basis of reasonable similarity that the mythic images of a fiery doom relayed in
sermons and missionary elegies are assigned to the volcanic phenomena in Iceland. And it is in a
similar manner that these images are subsequently assigned to a creation process in Gylfaginning.
They are the next best thing to describing the actual event of a volcanic eruption, and since the
volcanic event is as much a creative activity as it is destructive, it can only be surmised that Surtr and
Muspell can create the proto-matter of the world. As long as this proto-matter is then manipulated by
the milder forces of the cosmos, it will become inhabitable space.
This is a form of response to volcanism that appropriates the phenomenon and incorporates it
into the worldview. It is entirely different from the type of response that is seen in Konungs Skuggsjá,
where volcanic fires are places of torment. This view assigns volcanoes a peripheral role and one that
is entirely unfamiliar. By associating the volcanic phenomenon of Iceland with the creation of the
world, this life-threating and inherently destructive force is redefined as an element of the ecosystem
that one can live with. It becomes less problematic to exist in the vicinity of volcanoes, and one is
instantly reassured that although an eruption will destroy something, it will bring new life too, when
the lava has settled, the ashes have built up in layers and the milder winds return. This is a coping
strategy that appropriates the volcanoes and cultivates them. In the following we will see how the
Mead Myth functions in quite the same manner as another example of response to volcanism with
cultivation and appropriation.
THE MEAD MYTH AS RES PONSE TO VOLCANISM
The choice of equating the Mead of Poetry with lava seems mysterious at first, but in terms of the
cultural status of the numinous drink of wisdom, paired with the function of myths as a catalogue of
technical cultural knowledge in the Mythical Charter of Tradition, the reasons for the mythic
comparison become clearer. There are two reasons for choosing beer and mead, and thus the Mead
Myth, to carry important knowledge about volcanism in Iceland:
(1) The first reason is that, assuming that the alcoholic drink (the mead and the related mythic
complex) held a prominent status in pre-Christian Scandinavia, it would be the obvious
choice to combine the culturally and socially most significant mythic complex with a natural
phenomenon that may significantly impact the existence of the culture.
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(2) The second reason is that the mead represents ingestible fluids, which, in terms of the more
practical level of human response to volcanism, can be hard to come by in times of volcanic
disaster—even in a place with so many natural water resources as Iceland. To couple the
chthonic drink of knowledge as an ingestible fluid with the highly harmful fluids of the lava
is to associate the appearance of the lava and the events of the eruption, with its noise and
other details, with the need to gather provisions in such times. It is for the same reason that
Bǫlverkr must harvest before the eruption.
For the clarification of these two points, it is useful to revisit Bergbúa þáttr and the last stanza of
Hallmundarkviða. In stanza 12, the bergbúi commands his listeners to remember the poem: “Flokk
nemið it eða ykkat, élherðar, mun verða, enn er at Aurnis brunni ónyt, mikit víti” (Take this poem [to
heart] or be harshly punished, the well of Aurnir is not yet empty [Halkv. 12]). He has just described
to them the details of the eruption, and by telling his listeners not to forget the poem or otherwise
suffer great punishment, he is signaling how important it is to know the particular details and warning
signs in relation to Icelandic volcanism. The result is otherwise, as Hallmundr describes, that men
will be boiled in scathing waters and they will suffer under the ash cloud that will cover their sky.
The effect a volcanic eruption could have on the social balance in medieval times (indeed any era) by
influencing the production and cost of crops, either by clouding the sky with dust and ash, or by
poisoning the crops or the water supplies with emissions of such gasses as hydrogen flouride, are not
to be underestimated (Gerrard & Peltey 2013, 1054–5). Indeed, the highly acidic hydrogen flouride
may even burn human tissue and damage the teeth and intestines of farm animals. This is a very real
threat to society and therefore it is useful to encode knowledge of precautionary methods in significant
narratives of the Mythica Charter of Tradition, like the Mead Myth. As John Lindow pointed it out in
his reading of Bergbúa þáttr at the 15th International Saga Conference in Aarhus 2012, skaldic poetry
is the most important social knowledge of the Viking Age and it does not cease to be a relevant source
of knowledge in medieval Iceland (Lindow 2012, 208). It carries the wisdom of the ancestors, of dead
kings, heroes, and myths—it also carries knowledge of Memory Spaces in the ecosystem such as
volcanoes. The Mead of Poetry plays an important role in the activation of this Mythical Charter of
Tradition, the Cultural and Collective Memory and knowledge of problematic spaces in the
ecosystem. It was when people met and shared the alcoholic drinks that mythic knowledge and truths
about the world and life were told in a ritualistic setting. These truths are formalized and
contextualized in connection with the alcoholic beverage. This is most evident in Óðinn’s recitation
of cosmic knowledge and morals in Grímnismál after he has received the mead from Agnarr. It is in
such settings that we receive the most important knowledge, cultural knowledge and Cultural
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Memory, which ensures the perseverance of society throughout the ages. Volcanoes represent a
colossal threat to the perseverance of a culture. One eruption may wipe out all life on an island and
in a region. A large-scale volcanic event can obscure sunlight for years to come. Cultures existing in
close proximity to volcanoes were aware of that, told different tales about it, and employed different
mnemonic techniques to remember it. In Iceland, it seems that the Mead of Poetry was used for that
purpose. The Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál is a response to volcanism, which ties the golden
substance of mead with the fiery substance of lava, and the ancient knowledge about what an eruption
can do to a society: kill it.
The Mead Myth is an eco-mythical memory narrative that uses formalized, fixed, and
comprehensible analogies for the features of an eruption, to carry the motif through time and tales:
the noisy giants represent the rumbling, the venting of gas and lava; the supernatural boat of stone
and iron represents the various ejecta of rocks and ashes; the eagle refers to the ash cloud and the
pyroclastic plumes; and the Fire People led by Surtr refer to the fire of the mountain. That is why, in
comparison with Hávamál, there is so much death in the Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál. It is why
there are so many warning signs in names and actions referring to sounds and danger, and it is why
Bǫlverkr has to harvest and go fetch the drink. The story says: when Screamer and Noisy go sailing
on the underworld sea, when Noisy’s wife howls before the stone doors of the dwarfs, and when
Evildoer and the giant are rumbling about in the mountain, gather provisions and stay safe. This is
fully consistent with other known examples of response to volcanoes and other problematic sites in
the ecosystem of other cultures, such as those inflicted by the Mazama eruption in North America
(Beaudoin & Oetelaar 2006a, 2006b), the curious case of exploding lakes in the folklore of the
surrounding areas of Lake Manoun and Lake Nyos in Cameroon (Shanklin 1989), or the genealogic
tales of volcanism of the Maori (Cashman & Cronin 2008, 415–16). A case in which it is possible to
see how Cultural and Collective Memory of the Mythical Charter of Tradition directly influence
response to volcanic disasters is the 1912 Katmai event. Oral tales of the local native population were
actively employed in the early stages of the eruption, where a series of earthquakes and the venting
of gas and pyroclastic material gave warning signs to the elders of the community. As soon as it
became evident to the elders that an eruption was in progress, they instructed the others to gather
water and dried fish in the houses, and to turn the boats over so that they would not be filled with
ashes. Others, warned by the early tremors, were already in the process of moving out of the area
north of the volcano (Vanderhoek 2009, 80–3). With this perspective in mind, the events of the Mead
Myth are much clearer:
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(1) This culturally significant myth is involved with volcanism on the same terms as similarly
culturally significant myths known from other cultures. The Kom people in Cameroon tell
their origin stories in relation to the exploding lakes (Shanklin 1989, 238–41), and the Maori
tell legends that establish a causal link between past behavior in certain families and volcanic
eruptions (Cashman & Cronin 2008, 415). Similarly, as noted earlier (see chapter II, pages
28 and 36), the Maring combine the volcanic phenomenon in the Smoke Woman and the Red
Spirits with their causes to go to war. These myths are all part of the three functions of the
Mythical Charter of Tradition: myths of origin, myths of prestigious families, and myths of
technical knowledge. The same is the case of the myth of the Mead of Poetry and its mythic
familiars sharing in the string of motifs.
(2) The myth of the Mead of Poetry has taken on this character of a myth of volcanism as a result
of early encounters with Icelandic volcanoes. With no experiential frame for describing the
many volcanic eruptions that the early settlers of Iceland encountered, they had to resort to
known mythic paradigms. By engaging analogies of various kinds, which relate directly to
the core aspects of survival—food, drinks, and social codes—the Myth of the Mead of Poetry
has been pieced together as a response to the volcanic activities of Iceland and a
conceptualization of the land there. It is a form of response that appropriates and cultivates
an otherwise problematic and terrifying aspect of the ecosystem that Icelanders have had to
endure for centuries. With this it takes its place in the worldview of early Icelanders as a
narrative that cultivates the most fearsome aspects of the land.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The landscape is culture, not nature. These myths of volcanism are human attempts to recast a harsh
ecosystem and a volatile environment of volcanoes in a cultural form. They are a cultural
appropriation of the lands most inhuman aspects. They do not establish artificial boundaries between
inhabited space and the mysterious outer world, rather they plot cultural narratives onto visible
phenomena of the landscape and assign to these phenomena an important cultural role. By stating that
creation comes from volcanism, from an eruption, a culture familiarizes itself with an aspect of the
land it inhabits that at first seems to reject said culture. Similarly, by mapping out a cosmic journey
in the volcanic landscape and aligning the creation of the mead with the eruption of a volcano, the
cultural unit cultivates the aspects of volcanism that are hardly within reach of humans. By sending a
god into the mountain to retrieve in volcanic form the lost spirit of culture, the cultural unit associated
with the Mead Myth fully appropriates volcanism as part of their culture and as an immediate part of
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their worldview. When the mead is ingested and the verse is spoken, an immediate link is established
with the beginning of time and with the convulsions of the geothermally-active underground. The
fluids that rage inside the mountain and under the feet of the consumers enter their bodies too and the
local body, the microcosm, becomes one with the world-body, the macrocosm. Óðrørir takes over the
body and ancient wisdom bursts forth: the deep mysteries of the world’s creation, of Kvasir’s creation
and of what each of these mysteries contains.
These mysteries are the knowledge of the ancestors, the knowledge of social codes and
conduct, and not least the knowledge of the cosmos as a whole: the worldview. They are retained in
the mead and in the social sharing of knowledge. This notion is poetically asserted by Einarr
skálaglamm: “Ullar gengr of alla asksǫgn þess er hvǫt magnar byrgis bǫðvar sorgar bergs geymilá
dverga” (Over all Ullr’s ash-host who follow the encourager of the battle’s defence-sorrow, there
flows the mountain’s hidden river of the dwarves [Skáld. III,28]). This is a poetic way of calling upon
the memory of the dead, and thus also the past, in direct association with the Mead of Poetry. But
aside from just that, Einarr employs the kenning for the mead “bergs geymilá dverga,” and by doing
so he refers to the mead in its specific context as a hidden mountain river of the dwarves: the mead
as lava or the mead as a chthonic substance that comes from the insides of the world-body, like human
liquids come from the insides of the human body. With the association of mead as spittle and Kvasir’s
blood, the dwarves as maggots in the flesh, and lava as the liquid substance roaring in the veins of
Earth, this stanza completes a circle of association that triggers the volcanic narratives of the Mead
Myth and its associated motifs.
We are reminded here what is contained in the Mythical Charter of Tradition, and the technical
knowledge of volcanism, whilst the image calls upon the memory of the fighting warriors and thus
the memory of the past and the association of volcanism and war. The mead activates the memory of
that which has passed, and thus also the memory of the creation and the substance from which the
world-body was created, not least that it still flows inside the bowels of the world-body.
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CONCLUSION
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
We began this study by asking the questions: what is the constitution of the Old Norse worldview
according to the literary mythological sources in terms of man’s relationship with nature? What is the
relationship between the conceptual categories of culture and nature, or civilized and wild (byggð and
óbyggð, innangarðs and útangarðs), as it is expressed in the æsir’s dealings with the surrounding
world in the Myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition, the Creation Myth and the myth of the Mead of
Poetry in Skáldskaparmál? How do the actions of the gods in these narratives express man’s mythical
notions of his relationship with the land and sea in the Scandinavian and North Atlantic ecoystems?
In our search for an answer to this question, we have devised a theory of myth that understands
the myth and its text from an evolutionary perspective, where the mythic narrative is believed to
evolve in relation to its cultural and natural surroundings or perish. This is the hypothesis of the
existence of eco-myths as a specific type of myth that inhabits a function in the Mythical Charter of
an indigenous Tradition as narratives of special technical knowledge about the surrounding
ecosystems of a certain culture.
A search for narratives of this type in Old Norse mythology did not leave us wanting, and we
have been able to identify myths that can be proven to indicate how the sea and the land, not least
volcanoes, are conceptualized in the Old Norse–Scandinavian mythic worldview. These myths are
considered indigenous narratives that have been formulated as tales of human activity in the
surrounding ecosystem, and over time they have been used and reused with added narrative material
from the evolving tradition. The following summarizes what has been uncovered, and subsequently
contextualizes the results in a broader conclusion about the Old Norse–Scandinavian mythic
worldview that relates to the scholarly discussion on the subject.
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CONFRONTING THE SEA
CHAPTER SUMMARY
The chapter on confronting the sea describes a development in the use and social significance of the
myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition from the early times of the Viking Era until the medieval period.
The Fishing Expedition is the most widespread myth in the corpus of Old Norse myths. It is featured
in images on picture-stones from Sweden, Denmark, and England; it is mentioned in kennings and
stanzas by several skalds; and it is extant in both eddic poetry and the mythic prose of Edda. This
seems only natural considering the prominence of the sea in Scandinavian culture: with the sea as
such a considerable resource and natural part of the ecosystem, it seems obvious that Scandinavians
would formulate an eco-myth of how the providing god in human form would tackle the confrontation
with the Spirit of the Sea, Jǫrmungandr.
From the core of this myth, it is argued, the narrative elements stretch their influence into a
wide range of other medieval narratives and even historical accounts. The myth has been reused in
other contexts and parts of the conceptions about Þórr, seafaring, and the procurement of food at sea
have influenced the way in which later narratives of migration, exploration, and conversion to
Christianity have been formulated. There are thus narrative elements of the myth of Þórr’s Fishing
Expedition, or elements of Þórr’s functions as a pagan god, undoubtedly derived from the Fishing
Myth, which appear in some migration tales in Landnámabók and the íslendingasögur. A few of these
have surely been remodeled as conversion narratives that display Þórr and his functions as a seafaring
god and provider of food at sea in a negative and demonic perspective, or deny him these abilities in
comparison with Christian protagonists, or outright deconstruct this mythic image of Þórr. The effort
to deconstruct Þórr’s Fishing Expedition is put to work in another frame in Saxo’s conversion
narrative of Thorkillus and Gormus, as well as in the story of Þórr’s Journey to Útgarðaloki. These
narratives display a considerably high-level structural resemblance with the Fishing Myth. This is in
no way surprising considering the prominence of the myth in pre-Christian Scandinavian society. The
myth seems to have had such widespread significance and an almost universal relevance to
Scandinavian society that it was told and retold by everyone, from the highest social spheres to the
lowest. As such it would become an important tool in any missionary and conversion effort of
emissaries of Christianity. That Saxo finds this narrative relevant in the late twelfth century and early
thirteenth century—so relevant that he uses it to construct a Nordic visionary quest—attests to the
social significance of this myth. The Fishing Myth was so important that it seems that even Dudo de
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St. Quentin knew of it or a version derived from it, which he could use in a gruesome tale of the
Viking sacrifices.
The conversion tales add new perspectives to the myth. In its earliest form, it seems to have
been the iconic Fishing Myth about negotiating the procurement of food in the primary space of the
ecosystem, the sea. In later forms it is a myth of migration and exploration, but in its latest form it is
a myth of realization—a myth of a mind-altering journey at sea, which changes society forever and
introduces Christianity. It is a myth that transforms from a preoccupation with physical hunger to one
of spiritual hunger, although the association of hunger with the sea persists. The myth thus never
ceases to be an eco-myth even though its perspective changes. The spatial significance of the sea in
Old Norse–Scandinavian society is fully recognized throughout the three levels of the myth, although
on different terms. In the following I will summarize and conclude in what ways the myth is
significant as an eco-myth, and subsequently I will suggest what this expression of the myth indicates
in terms of the status of the sea in the Old Norse–Scandinavian worldview as can be gleaned from the
corpus of medieval narratives.
LEVEL ONE: THE FISHING EXPEDITION
We must realize that the myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition need not be a myth with cosmic overtones.
The battle of Þórr and Jǫrmungandr does not have to be a cosmic struggle in the same manner as its
cognates in the Middle Eastern and Mesopotamian realm. It is possible to understand the myth simply
as localized myth of man’s confrontation with the sea. In that sense it does not need the bird’s eye
perspective of a grand cosmological scheme to have cosmic relevance. Its cosmic relevance is, in a
simple, everyday manner, the situation that it presents: the daring to venture out to sea and gather
food, with all that entails in terms of fear, getting cold, and the combers raging over the gunwale.
The primary theme of the myth is fear and survival. In this theme is also contained the subject
of a response to the sea as a primary force in the ecosystem, and the response that is ingrained in the
actions of Þórr indicates the status of the sea in the worldview: the sea is not otherness, it is not a
distant Úthaf, rather it can be appropriated and it is a cultural entity. The themes of fear and survival
address the relationship of the fisherman to his fears of the sea and of hunger. The interest of the
Fishing Myth and Þórr’s relationship with the sea is the catching of food at sea. The myth points out
the aspects that need to be taken into consideration when fishing: fear of sea itself, chill, storm,
drowning, and the economy of resources. The fisherman needs to consider how much he is willing to
risk in order to make a good catch. His tool both in terms of going too far out to sea and in terms of
making a too large a catch is to understand the proportionality in his daring. He must measure the
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need for the catch against the inherent risk of venturing further out, or of staying out longer than
anticipated. The deep sea harbors unforeseeable challenges, but the shallows may yield only the
smaller catches. This proportionality is humorously illustrated in the relationship between the
shallows where Hymir catches flatfish and the deep sea where he catches whales, and Þórr catches
the Miðgarðsormr. A similar warning in terms of proportionality is contained in the relationship
between the land mammal and the sea creature, pastoralism and fishing: do not waste already valuable
food as bait for fish. The result of going so far out with an ox-head and battling Jǫrmungandr as the
Spirit of the Deep Sea is that Þórr nearly destroys their fishing opportunity. This is an early myth of
how Scandinavians dealt with fishing as a primary source of food collection. In the same way as the
æsir are led by Þórr in their hunt for Loki, who is living in the river as a salmon, the god’s endeavor
to catch Jǫrmungandr prescribes reasonable behavior in fishing. Humor aides the dramatization of
this technical wisdom in a manner that makes it more memorable, but essentially this myth prescribes
in its own terms the technical aspects of sea fishing, just as the myth of the search for Loki prescribes
the technical aspects of fishing for salmon in a mountain river. As such, the Fishing Myth functions
fully as an eco-myth in the sense of a narrative of technical knowledge in the Mythicical Charter of
Old Norse Tradition that provides instructions on how to deal with an element in the ecosystem.
LEVEL TWO: THE JOURNEY OUT AND NEW DISCOVERIES
With the migrations of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the islands of the North Atlantic Ocean and
onwards to Vínland, the perspective of the Fishing Myth develops. It is no longer a venture out to sea
to collect food that is the primary association of the myth, but rather the adventure across the ocean
towards new lands. The confrontation of man and sea is redefined from a concern with guidance in
the proportionality of fear and daring to the catch, to the need to overcome any type of fear with
daring and to have the courage to stare into the depths of the ocean as the spindrift washes over the
deck as the keel struggles to hold its course. This is the idea that is contained in the meeting of Þórr
and Jǫrmungandr, eye to eye, in the skaldic descriptions. The subject of hunger and the weather is
still a theme, but the focus has shifted. The focus is now directed towards the fear and the risk of the
migration as a new ordeal. Where the fisherman had to conquer his fear of drowning to suppress his
fear of starving, he could return home every night to a safe harbor. This is not the case for the
explorers, colonialists, and Viking civilisateurs of the North. They were not sure if they would see a
safe harbor for days and weeks when they made their journeys. Their movements in the North Sea
were thus dependent on the favor of the gods that they believed would keep them safe and wellsupplied with food when traveling. The need for Þórr not as a fisherman, but as a guide, protector,
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and provider of food on the journey thus emerges. This is the image of the Fishing Myth that has been
projected into an eco-myth in Landnámabók and the saga literature. The Fishing Myth develops into
a myth of exploration and migration, and it becomes meaningful to state that Þórr guided some of the
settlers to Iceland.
However, with the introduction of Christianity it also becomes meaningful—even necessary—
to deconstruct Þórr’s role as a guide, protector, and provider at sea. Some of the Christianized
settlement tales of Landnámabók and the saga literature are expressions of that new perspective on
the Fishing Myth. With this altered conception of the god’s role in the migration and exploration
comes an altered perspective on the parameters of civilization. The old aspect of the difference
between land mammals and sea creatures is reused in a restructured form. Where the Viking praised
the sea and Þórr as the source of his wealth and the foundation of his social and societal order, the
Christian explorer, whose purpose it is to Christianize the world, is represented with pastoralism and
agriculturalism. It is no longer the god who brings civilization to the new land (as in the case of, for
instance, Þórólfr Mostrarskegg), it is the man with karlsefni (man’s quality). The foundation is thus
laid for the third and final level of development in this myth: the conversion narratives.
LEVEL THREE: NEW REALIZATIONS AND THE CONVERSION
In the later conversion narratives derived partially from the Fishing Myth, the perspective of
exploration is reconfigured as a perspective of recognition and the potential for exploring the true
nature of the world as a Christian world. The conversion narratives of Gylfaginning and Saxo are
essentially cut from the same cloth, but they have differing outcomes because of the status of the
protagonist. Thorkillus is an explorer with the potential to understand the true nature of things, and
as such he realizes that what he can find in the North by undertaking the sea-journey—far beyond the
civilized world––is of little use and repulsive in its essence; it is paganism, materialism, the belief in
the world’s mirabilia. The case is a bit different for Þórr in Útgarðaloki’s hall: he is unable to see the
sjónhverfingar for what they are, and thus he attempts to drink the sea, tries to lift Jǫrmungandr, its
spirit, and eventually wrestles with Old Age—as any vain man would do. Þórr’s Journey to
Útgarðaloki in Gylfaginning thus seems to paraphrase the materialist perspective of Saxo and add to
it the notion that Þórr—as a vain man who believes he is a god—will never understand that there are
powers greater than him, all the while his hunger is growing through the narrative: he is doomed to
perish in the judgment of Ragnarǫk.
But regardless of this redefinition of the perspective of the myth and certain related religious
activities (such as blót), the original aspects do not disappear. In the new version of the myth these
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aspects are redefined in an effort to criticize and deconstruct the basic tenets of the form of paganism
that the conversion narratives seek to deprecate. Þórr is comically demonized as a child-snatcher in
Gylfaginning, while Saxo simply redresses these gods who claim payment for food as monsters. This
is a comment on the pagan custom of making sacrifices. In the same manner, the Viking way of life
as it is expressed in Saxo’s narrative about Haddingus, both in his praise of the sea and in his journey
to the underworld, is portrayed in the Thorkillus Journeys as a bloodless, dreary, and entirely unhappy
existence in a gloomy and monstrous realm. In the vision of Vǫluspá and Gylfaginning it simply
vanishes in an apocalypse of atrocities such as oath-breaking, murder, and vengeance in families.
This is the only large-scale cosmological association of the myth, and it is in its essence a Christian
cosmology.
The important aspect of the end of Viking society and paganism both in Vǫluspá and in Saxo
is that the resurrection of society takes place at sea: a new world emerges from the sea. Saxo even
implements a social and societal revolution in Denmark based on the sea journey. Thorkillus sees the
world in a new way as a result of his journeys at sea, and when he comes back to Denmark, faced
with the betrayal of the king, he reveals the truth for Gormus and thus institutes a new order of
standards that even the top of Danish society must obey. In that way, Thorkillus carries the cultural
authority of the sea.
In this way, the significance of the sea to Scandinavian society is reused to create a narrative
about social change. The older aspects of the eco-myth are deconstructed and rearranged to fit the
new perspective and the message that needs to be carried through by continuous association with the
sea as a considerable space in the ecosystem. The sea never ceases to be important to the
Scandinavians in this way: it provides food, new discoveries and realizations, and it brings with it
social changes as much as it supports the existing social structures by, in the least, being a source to
the acquisition of wealth and power.
CONFRONTING THE SEA IN AN OLD NORSE WORL DVIEW
The consequences that this reading of the Fishing Myth and its literary cognates as an eco-myth have
for our understanding of the status of the sea in the worldview of Old Norse mythology are a series
of redefinitions of the idea of the Úthaf, the relationship of land to sea, and not least the idea of the
cultural sanctum as opposed to the wild expanse of the outer sphere.
The ‘Úthaf’ is in reality a centralized entity in the worldview. It functions not only as the source
of food but also as the source of wealth, the basis for society and the upkeep of social structures, as
well as the source of major social and religious change. The sea is the foundation of Viking society
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and the primary tool, the waterway, for supporting networks—this must be recognized even in early
Christianity. The significance of the sea to Viking society seems to create some ambivalence in the
conception of the sea in the highly Christianized narratives, as the narrative of the Vínland journey in
Eiríks saga rauða seems to deprive the sea and the seafaring god of Þórr of their cultural status. It
does seem, however, that in the end, with the narratives of Gylfaginning and Saxo, that even the forces
bent on converting the Scandinavians must recognize the powerful status of the sea as a central,
cultural entity that only the dethroned pagan god Þórr can master.
This does not mean that it is not recognized that the sea is a dangerous force, a deceptive and
capricious entity that one should take care to handle properly. Indeed, this is at the root of the
realization of the sea as part of the Scandinavian ecosystems. The first two levels of response in ecomyths to the sea as part of the Scandinavian worldview are the epitomic result of the knowledge that
the sea can be the source of demise and destruction. But this knowledge does not assign to the sea the
status of otherness or ‘out there-ness,’ as a worldly expanse that is distanced from human society and
culture—indeed, this realization seems to create a need to draw the sea closer, to have it take part in
the social processes, and as Haddingus does, even declare a sense of love for it.
It would seem that this conclusion would support the notion provided by Nanna Løkka (2010,
248–9) that the concept of dualism in the Old Norse worldview could then be dismantled, and in
relation to the conceptions of the sea, too, an idea of monism and dyadic functions could be instated.
However, this would be overzealous. Løkka’s argument of monism is based on the notion that fate
guides all beings of the cosmos, and humans, gods, and jǫtnar are subject to its laws. The gods and
the jǫtnar exist under the same circumstances and are linked socially, they are therefore not separated
in a dual worldview, instead they exist in a dyadic relationship guided by the same natural laws (p.
254–5). This is not the case in the Fishing Myth on its first and second levels. Þórr is a mediating
force that provides humans with help if they sacrifice to him, and he imposes his own law. This means
that, in principle, Þórr may change the fate of a traveler and thus alter a causal system that he is,
according to Løkka, supposed to be subject to himself. The subject of fate in Old Norse mythology is
highly complex. The idea that Løkka presents is not entirely new, as de Vries has pointed out
something similar in Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte:
In der Zeit, da im heldischen Leben die Odinsfigur eine überragende Stellung erlangt
hatte, war er [Odin] der schicksalsbestimmende Gott. Wir erinnern uns des gelassenen
Wortes Sigmunds (Vǫls 12): ”Odin will nicht, daß wir das Schwert schwingen, da es
nun in Stücke brach; so lang es ihm gefiel, habe ich gekämpft”. Aber wenn wir tiefer
blicken, sehen wir, daß auch Odin dem Schicksal unterworfen ist; wenn er die Helden
aus der Schlacht zu sich ruft, so geschieht das, um sich zu rüsten für das kommende
Unheil, und er muß bekennen, daß er nicht weiß, wann der graue Wolf die Göttersitze
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angreifen wird (s. § 189). Die Vǫluspá zeigt uns deutlich die Götter, die einem
unentrinnbaren Schicksal, den Ragnarǫk, entgegengehen (s. § 592).
(In the time when the Óðinn-figure had attained a superior position in heroic life, he
[Óðinn] was the god that determined fate. We remember the words of Sigmund (Vǫls.
12): “Óðinn does not want us to wield the sword, as it has broken in pieces, as long as it
pleased him I have fought.” But when we look deeper we see that also Óðinn is subject
to fate; when he calls the heroes from the slaughter to him, as it happens, to equip
themselves for the coming disaster, and he is forced to admit that he does not know when
the grey wolf will attack the God-seat (s. § 189). The Vǫluspá clearly demonstrates for
us that the gods meet their inescapable fate in Ragnarǫk (s § 592) (de Vries 1970 I, 268).
While this most certainly seems to be the case in Vǫluspá and the eschatology of Gylfaginning, it
does not seem to be considered in the respect, either by Løkka or de Vries, that this idea may originate
in a Christian worldview. This has been implied several times in this dissertation, and it is most
certainly a possibility. While it would reach too far to discuss all the aspects of the eschatology of
Old Norse mythology, it serves to mention that although myths of destruction and the demise of the
divine society are common in mythologies, it is mainly in the Christian mythology that the apocalypse
takes such prominence—and, of course, in Old Norse mythology. If we look to the Fishing Myth, it
is only in the perspective of the myth becoming a conversion narrative that eschatology becomes
relevant to it. It is Snorri and Saxo who introduce eschatology into the Fishing Myth. In the other
versions of the Fishing Myth, even in the Gylfaginning version without the frame of eschatology, it
is a different picture: it is a picture of a god that takes control over the elements and provides his
followers with protection in return for offerings, precisely in accordance with the principles of do ut
des. If this were not the case, then the description of Þórólfr Mostrarskegg’s landnám would be
meaningless. It says that Þórólfr often sacrificed to Þórr, his beloved friend, and that Þórr guided him
to Iceland. When Þórólfr came to Iceland, he threw the ǫndvegissúlur with the carved face of Þórr on
it, and said: “at hann skyldi þar byggja á Íslandi sem Þórr léti þær á land koma” (that he would settle
there in Iceland where Þórr led them to land [Eyrb. IV]). Þórr guides his subject to land in Iceland,
thus he decides his fate, and there is nothing that indicates that this notion is more or less consistent
with a pre-Christian worldview, except for the fact that we know that those narratives—such as
Vǫluspá—where Þórr is fated to fail and subsequently perish are highly influenced by a Christin
worldview.
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THE CREATION MYTH, THE MYTH OF THE MEAD OF POETRY, AND VOLCANISM
CHAPTER SUMMARY
The chapter on the Creation Myth, the myth of the Mead of Poetry, and volcanism addresses the
situation of a seemingly non-existent tradition of early mythopoesis about volcanism in Viking Age
and medieval Iceland, while at the same time describing a possible development in the Creation Myth
and the myth of the Mead of Poetry in Scandinavia as part of a wider European myth-complex. The
Creation Myth in the form that it is relayed in Gylfaginning is examined in light of an underlying
literary complex reaching back to the tradition of the Old High German Muspilli and Germanic
traditions of anthropogonies—and possibly also cosmogonies—from Earth-giants. The myth is also
examined in terms of its vocabulary and its relationship to volcanic events. We find that medieval
neoplatonic interpretations seem to interject the dichotomy of ice and fire, and that the mythic motif
of creation is fully functioning without the inference of the image of ice. Instead, the myth stands on
the shoulders of a continental tradition that has been reformulated and re-actualized as a result of the
experience of volcanism in Iceland.
The Mead Myth is examined on the same terms as a myth of response to volcanism, which
reuses mythic motifs and images from a known continental tradition. An aspect of the Mead Myth
seems to be a motif known from other myths about volcanism in Iceland. This is the motif of the
noisy jǫtnar and dwarves, a supernatural boat of iron and stone, flying birds and (gods appearing as)
eagles, alcoholic drink, and sometimes also Surtr. The Mead Myth is understood as a cosmic narrative
that combines cultural knowledge with volcanism in the figure of Kvasir and provides a narrative
description of the various aspects and warning signs associated with an eruption. It provides theories
of causes and prescribes actions of relevance to enhance resilience in times of volcanic activity. It
seems that the terms in which these methods of response to volcanism are formulated are a mythic
complex that associates the alcoholic beverage with a chthonic state of existence and the underworld.
This was originally a Germano-Roman mythic complex originating in Greco-Roman fertility cults.
Both the Creation Myth and the Mead Myth are excellent examples of how the Mythical
Charter of Tradition employs eco-myths to respond with technical knowledge to imminent disasters.
The myths are formulated in terms of well-known, central mythic themes of the culture: the myth of
a fiery apocalypse as it is contained in the term muspille and the myth of the procurement of the
primary cultural substance with which numinous knowledge is transmitted, the mead. The myths of
cosmic destruction and cultural primacy become current as myths that signify the importance of the
natural phenomenon of volcanism by engaging the fear of the end of society. They are eco-myths
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about the perseverance of culture in the face of disaster, and they conceptualize the land and its
destructive force as central cultural features.
THE CREATION MYTH
The section on the Creation Myth engages with some inconsistencies or queries in Gylfaginning,
which have been noted by other scholars. These questions that have puzzled the scholars are: why are
Muspell and Surtr a part of the Creation Myth, and what does eitr actually refer to? We find that there
is actually a deeper connection binding Surtr to Muspell and eitr. This connection is founded on the
observable aspects of the commonly occuring Icelandic low discharge effusive eruptions, where lava
gushes out from its source and flows like a river—a raging river—until it hardens and adds new layers
to the landmass. The term eitr refers to the qualities of the lava as a glowing hot yellow-red substance
that is poisonous in every way. This substance flows from the caldera as a river and becomes ‘ice.’
From the flow there are fumes, vapors it seems, which rise and crystallize like snow and ice, and fall
down again to build layers of this strange ‘ice’ in the primordial void. These processes cannot be
described without analogies to ice and water, and this is why there arises confusion concerning the
process. In its latest written form, the narrative is reinterpreted in a neoplatonic perspective and thus
is invented the dichotomy of ice and fire. Eitr is in reality the fuel of Surtr, not an ice-cold posion in
a stormy river. The creature that is produced from this flow of lava is, in the original story in
Vafþrúðnismál, Aurgelmir, the ‘Clay-roarer,’ and it is the knowledge of Vafþrúðnismál that the
primeval jǫtunn was originally created from lava, which brings with it the claim of Gylfaginning that
Ymir and Aurgelmir are the same being. It does, however, seem to be the case that Ymir is the
continental version of the world-body, since this myth is well-known in Europe and has IndoEuropean roots. Aurgelmir is then the indigenous Icelandic version, which is a reinterpretation of the
earth-borne jǫtunn in a volcanological context. The Creation Myth in Gylfaginning is the attempt to
align in writing the local myth with the teachings of continental philosophy of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries.
The Creation Myth is an adaptation of the tradition of the continent to Icelandic conditions. It
is an eco-myth in terms of its attempt to describe the volcanic phenomenon. It is a cultural narrative
that maps out the creative process of an eruption and at the same time demonstrates the dangers of
this chthonic activity. To enable this pattern of danger it makes use of aspects of the cultural narratives
of apocalypses that are available in the Mythical Charter of Tradition. The volcanoes are in this way
incorporated into the worldview as a central phenomenon of the ecosystem; they are culturally
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appropriated with recognition of their creative forces. The myth is a coping strategy that serves to
cultivate volcanism as a positive factor as much as it is destructive to society and life.
THE MEAD MYTH
The Mead Myth appropriates the volcanic phenomenon in a similar manner as the Creation Myth, but
where the Myth of the Creation describes the creation of life in context of volcanism, the Mead Myth
describes the procurement of culture in the substance of the mead in relation to volcanism. The mead
is the epitomic substance of culture in Old Norse life. It is the drink of remembrance and the numinous
substance with which powerful mystic knowledge of the past is transmitted. In that sense, it combines
with kingship and fertility because of its usefulness in the propagation of the king’s power. This is
realized in the Mythical Charter of Hákon jarl’s genealogy in Háleygjatal. The drink of the mystic
god of wisdom, whose knowledge is of the underworld, carries the numinous potency that is required
for the kings. This transgressive god of the underworld, Óðinn, copulates with the female fertility
goddess and legitimizes the sacral kingship. This tradition rests on an ancient Germanic tradition that
has its origins in Roman cults of the Bacchanalia and the Liberalia. It is a cult that unites the god of
mystic intoxicated frenzy, the wudewāsan or Óðinn, with the goddess of fertility—and the
underworld—who more often than not appears as a creature of fire.
The Icelandic tradition sees this in a very concrete sense in the active volcanoes that are such
a remarkable aspect of the ecosystem there. The traditional tale of Hávamál retains the same aspects
as the Roman tradition, with an underworld lord in Suttungr, the fertility goddess in Gunnlǫð (by
virtue of the wedding), and the frenzy-being Óðinn, Evildoer. The myth prescribes cultural norms
and boundaries in terms of social interaction—norms that Evildoer breaks. But the encounter with the
volcanoes adds a new dimension. It is no longer the social norms that are the most important aspect
to retain in order to keep society from destruction. It is instead the knowledge of how to behave and
respond when faced with an explosive volcanic eruption that is the subject. The chthonic association
of the alcoholic drink, the underworld being of Suttungr, his daughter the goddess of fertility (by
virtue of intercourse with Óðinn), and the frenzied Evildoer still combine to tell a tale of primary
cultural significance—this time, however, it is about an eruption.
This mythic motif of volcanism is based on a set of recognizable images that reoccur in other
narratives: the noisy jǫtnar and dwarves, the supernatural boat of stone and iron that brings the
Volcano Spirits with it, the flying god, the alcoholic beverage, and the demon of the underworld
(Surtr/Suttungr). The mead aids memory, and by associating it directly with the lava of an eruption,
it will forever carry the memory of how to respond when Galarr and Gillingr sail on the ocean of the
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underworld, and Baugi and Bǫlverkr drill in the Mountain of the Clashing Rocks to get inside and
mix with Gunnlǫð so that the Mountain Liquid, the Kettle Sea, can be brought up to the sons of men.
This is an eco-myth that responds directly to the volcanic phenomena of the ecosystem of Iceland,
and integrates the primary threat to society and culture directly in the most important cultural object,
the memory-drink. This is also realized in the peculiar detail that it is culturally processed rocks, such
as the quernstone and the whetstone, that cause the deaths of several characters. This suggests a close
association of the death-by-rock in a volcanic incident with cultural objects.
THE PLACE OF THE LAND AND VOLCANISM IN THE OLD NORSE WORLDVIEW
We have seen how the Mead Myth plots the landscape and its volatile ecosystems into a worldview
that does not as such distinguish between a cultural center and an outer space of nature. The myth
assigns a cultural role to every aspect of the nature that surrounds the dwellings of humans. This does
not make the dangerous aspects of the volcanic phenomena or any other threat to life and security in
the world less significant. In the Creation Myth, it is very much clear that the process that is described
is dangerous to humans, and it is therefore only when the first being, Ymir, has been killed and his
body reprocessed by other cosmic forces that humans can exist in the world. If the world was in its
early state of being as it is observed in the lava flows, humans would be unable to live here. This is
why the creation process must incorporate the aspect of destruction. In the Mead Myth there are
similarly four realizations of threats to existence:
(1) The threat against agricultural activities: can harvest be made in time, is there proper access
to tools, will there be scarcity of resources?
(2) The threat against high culture: the threat of war, the threat of the outsider to the magnate’s
hall, the threats and problems associated with procreation (embodied in Gunnlǫð and Óðinn).
(3) The threats against a traveler: the risks of engaging a stranger, the risks of visiting a foreign
place, the question of trust.
(4) The threats of the landscape: volcanic activity, the tumbling rocks, drowning, treacherous
winds (in the mountain).
The mead is the wisdom of knowing these threats in all their forms, and these threats are offered by
the same landscape that also sustains existence. This is in every aspect the reason why it makes sense
to associate mead with lava. The association is not only activated in terms of the comparable aspects
of the Mead Myth to volcanism in Skáldskaparmál, but also in terms of the association of the hverlǫgr
with the original matter from which Earth was created. This is ancient wisdom from the dawning of
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the cosmos. The mead is the tool with which the cosmos is mapped out—this is realized in the
character of Kvasir. It is thus a cosmic activity to imbibe the alcoholic drink and be mentally
transported throughout the world, and it must be kept in mind that such an activity is dangerous:
“Óminnis hegri heitir, sá er yfir ǫlðrum þrumir” (Forgetfulness is the name of the heron that hovers
over the beer feast [Hvm. 14]). This was the experience he received from being drunk at Fjalarr’s,
Óðinn reminds us (Hvm. 15). When the mind travels the cosmos in the intoxicated state, as the frenzybeing, we see that it is in grave danger. It is for the same reason that Óðinn tells us how he fears that
Mind and Memory (Huginn og Muninn) will not return from their daily flights in Grímnismál 20—
right after he has divulged that he only lives off wine (Grm. 19). The wisdom-drink and its abilities
are employed in the ritualistic act of mythopoesis to remember the knowledge of the past, for the sake
of the present, towards the making of the future. The forgetfulness that comes with the imbibing of
the wisdom-drink, or the loss of Mind and Memory, is nothing short of the loss of life, because it is
loss of culture. Life came from the earthly substance of lava as it formed in the world-body of Ymir,
and so did culture come from the earthly substance of lava, as it was made by the dwarves in the
earth’s intestines, and regurgitated by the wind-eagle that bore the kettle-liquid out of Surtr’s Sinkingdales, when he burst out of the Mountain of the Clashing Rocks. When we forget that, we stand before
death, because we never know when disaster hits. The fear of death is the reason that the myths and
the mead are important, because their primary function is to ward off death from the living. In that
way, the mystery-liquid of the chthonic sphere takes its place in a cyclical process of death and rebirth,
which is ever present and re-actualized in the conception of the land or Earth, insofar as the creation
process creates life that is destroyed in order to create new life, which will then be destroyed. And
the mead, in the same manner, is created as a man amongst men, who is then destroyed out in the
world, and comes back to the dwellings of men after his death and destruction. Earth and Nature are
cyclical in that respect, and the exchange between Civilization and Nature is reciprocal, but not
interdependent:
Civilization rests on Nature and must abide by the natural circumstances offered by the
ecosystem that at all times exerts its will and dominance over human existence. However, with the
proper wits to enable existence in the given ecosystem of Iceland, man, with the help of the gods, can
manipulate the very ground he walks on, and thereby become a powerful player in a living system
populated by many different spirits with each their own will.
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CONCLUDING REMARKS
THE THREE QUESTIONS OF THIS DISSERTATION
Based on the discoveries and realizations of this dissertation we can now answer the three questions
that have led to this study, and we can address the three prolbems of this dissertation: (1) the
constitution of the Old Norse worldview; (2) the internal relationship of the texts, and; (3) the
relationship of the texts to their surrounding environment. .
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE OLD NORSE MYTHIC WORLDVIEW
With this extensive analysis of the primary myths of the sea and land, I believe that the question of
the constitution of the Old Norse worldview, the basic premise on which the worldview functions,
can be answered very simply: the Old Norse mythic worldview operates on the premise of the
reciprocal duality between life and death contained in Cultural/Collective Memory as the Mythical
Charter of Tradition. It is the primary focal point for the narratives in question, and a theme
throughout the mythology as a whole. In fact, this theme was so prevalent that it was felt necessary
to introduce it in the beginning of Gylfaginning: “Þá spyrr Hár komandann hvárt fleira er eyrindi
hans, en heimill er matr ok drykkr honum sem ǫllum þar í Háva hǫll. Hann segir at fyrst vil hann
spyrja ef nokkvorr er fróðr maðr inni. Hár segir at hann komi eigi heill út nema hann sé fróðari …”
(Then Hár asked the newcomer if he had more errands there, but he was welcome to eat and drink
like anyone else there in the hall of High. He says that first he wants to ask if there is anyone in there,
who is wise. Hár replies that he will not come out of there with his health unless he is wiser … [Gylf.
II]). This question of whether or not the protagonist will exit the place he visits in one piece is a
universal one in Old Norse mythology. It underlies the narratives of Vafþrúðnismál, Skírnismál,
Hymiskviða, Þrymskviða, Hyndluljóð, the Þjazi Myth, Þórr’s Visit to Geirrøðr, Óðinn, Hœnir, and
Loki’s Encounter with Hreiðmar and, of course, the Mead Myth. The matter of life and death is also
present, though in other terms, in Vǫluspá, Grímnismál, Lokasenna, Alvíssmál, Baldrsdraumar,
Baldr’s Death, Þórr’s Duel with Hrungnir, and the story of Loki’s Dealings with the Dwarves Brokk
and Sindri. From that perspective it is safe to say that the dualism of life and death is an overall
concern in the Old Norse mythical worldview.
We could choose to interpret this in the sense of fatedness that Løkka suggests (2010, 261), as
the teodicé of Old Norse mythology, but as we have seen above, this would be an overzealous
presumption. That these narratives are preoccupied with the matter of life and death does not express
a general sense of fatedness in the terms that Løkka perceives it, where the gods are simply agents of
200
the cosmos and the agents of destiny. This notion would imply that the gods function in the preChristian Old Norse mythic worldview on the same terms as basic medieval demonology would have
them do: as agents of a greater force (in this respect the Devil), to ensnare, fool, and corrupt humans.
We see Óðinn take on such a role in parts of the saga literature (Lassen 2011, 135–51, 235–65) and
we see Þórr doing the same in Flóamanna saga, where he acts as a demonic counterpart to the
Christian protagonist. It is in the Christianized narratives, be they highly negative or more subtle in
their representation of the Old Norse gods, that we see the gods acting according to a higher law of
fate that controls them as its agents.
In the myths that we have examined here, we see a very different worldview emerging. The
gods are employed in the narratives of pre-Christian association as enablers of a divine will that can
assist humans, under the right circumstances, in their everyday dealings in life. At the root of the
Fishing Myth is the dual complex of life versus death, and it is with his technical mythical knowledge
and insight in the conditions of the sea that Þórr assists human beings in their dealings with the ocean.
It is also by the divine providence of both Þórr and Njǫrðr that the sea functions as an important factor
in the constitution of society—they both oversee the temples. The gods engage the ecosystem and act
as mediators between the natural phenomenon and the human experience. If they enable any type of
fate in that respect, it is the fate that is predicated on the bond of the human being to the god through,
for instance, sacrifices (blót) and devotion (ástvin [cf. Eyrb. IV]).
This is the same realization that is drawn from the experience of the Mead Myth and the
Creation Myth. The gods arrange the world and cultivate the hostile environment that came from
natural processes of volcanism in order for humans to exist there. Óðinn mediates the cultural
experience of the mead as well as the natural experience of the eruption through the mead. This points
to a cosmic disposition other than one of monism. It is a disposition that exists on the dual relationship
between life and death, with the gods as cultural enforcers and mediators between humans and nature.
It is only in the eschatology of Vǫluspá and its related narratives in Gylfaginning that nature
overcomes the gods and asserts a sense of fatedness (see also Clunies Ross 1994, 258–68) on behalf
of the true controller of the firmament, God. Baldr will show himself to be a mere human being, the
Volcano Spirit Surtr will bring the cosmic fire on God’s command, the Sea Spirit Jǫrmungandr will
then raise the waters against the gods to engulf the earth, the cosmic darkness—embodied in the
wolf—will swallow Óðinn. This contradicts every other narrative of the dealings of the gods with the
natural phenomena. It contradicts the feats of Þórr in his dealings with Geirrøðr and his daughters; it
contradicts the result of the Duel with Hrungnir; it annuls the victory over Þjazi; and it suspends the
cosmic charter of divine mediation between nature and man as it is formulated in the Creation Myth
and the Mead Myth. The eschatology of Vǫluspá simply suspends the semantic center of the
201
sigtívar106 and assigns them a new one that is consistent with the euhemerist interpretation of the
Baldr Myth: they die.
Spatially, the worldview does not make sharp divisions between any divine dwelling and the
rest of the habitat. Nature is a cultural entity and functions as a vibrant expanse of places and spaces
imbued with spiritual life. It is from natural sources that culture is derived and defined. The sea is a
formidable force in that respect, assisting in the very definition of society itself, while the destructive
powers of volcanism supply society with the primary cultural substance. As such, the sea and the
volcanoes are central phenomena in the worldview from which associative lines are drawn to cultural
objects, existential ponderings, and conceptions concerning the terms of human life. This is the
worldview of a culture that has come to terms with its ecosystem.
THE QUESTION OF THE INTERNAL RELATIONSHIP OF THE TEXTS
The internal relationship of the texts is a complex one. They cannot, on the basis of this analysis, be
separated from one another as entirely different texts. While there are considerable differences in
terms of genres, modes of representation, and focus, they belong to the same cultural sphere. They
are the sum total of the Mythical Charter of Old Norse–Scandinavian Tradition, and as such they
cannot project a complete image outside of their cultural context. When the various narratives relevant
to the Old Norse mythical worldview are employed in the same context, their different assertions
strengthen each other rather than contradict. We are poorer for leaving one or more sources out of the
analysis by assuming that it may be difficult to work with, or that it is somehow incompatible with
the other material.
We also find in that respect that there is no projection of the Old Norse mythical worldview
that is more fragmented than another. It could be argued that I come to this conclusion because of the
structuralist approach of this dissertation, but to that I may add that the structuralism of this
dissertation takes into account a wide range of factors, such as the representationality, the fictionality,
and the mediality of the sources, and this seems to limit the number of typical complications
associated with traditional structuralism as a method. We arrive, instead, at a more critical approach
to the source material—an approach that takes into account that the context of a text is both local and
global. It is local in terms of a text’s immediate time and milieu of creation, but global in terms of the
narrative universe to which it refers. As such, the text exceeds its material form and exists in a
contextualized organic form, where it is never a closed work. It almost goes without saying that this
Note that the epithet changes from sigtívar (Victory-gods) in Vǫluspá 58 to valtívar (Death-gods) in stanza 62, when the
gods have met their doom in ragnarøkkr—as if to signify this semantic shift.
106
202
view enables the use of any of the examined sources as sources to a pre-Christian worldview, and as
such a historical reality, provided that proper critical scrutiny of the representationality of the text is
conducted.
THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE TEXTS TO THEIR SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT
We thus recognize the contents of Old Norse mythology as a Mythical Charter of Tradition, which
contains a number of technical myths containing numinously-imbued knowledge about the world that
its associated cultural unit was exposed to. Regardless of any strong foreign cultural influence from
the classical scriptworld and a newly introduced religion, these texts are primarily formulated by
individuals and groups who have tactile, aural, and experiential knowledge of the Scandinavian
world. This means that the ecosystems and local conditions of Old Norse-Scandinavian life in various
ways impose themselves on the texts and they can never be simply ‘fiction.’ To understand the
contents of the texts, one must be familiar with the aspects of the ecosystems that relate to them. Some
of these aspects are experiences common to all humans, but others are in turn specific to a region, a
landmass, or the special behavior of a particular sea. This is the primary function of the eco-myth: to
convey the special place in a worldview that a particular ecological site or entity inhabits—culturally
as well as physically.
203
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Agapitos & Lars Boje Mortensen. Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen.
Wimmer, Ludvig F.A. og Finnur Jónsson. 1891: Håndskriftet Nr. 2365 4to gl. kgl. Samling på det
store kgl. bibliothek i København (Codex regius af den ældre Edda) i fototypisk og diplomatisk
gengivelse. Udgivet for Samfund for udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur. S.L. Møllers
Bogtrykkeri (Møller & Thomsen), København.
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London.
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____. 2007: “Skaldic Poetry and Performance” p. 263–81 in Learning and Understanding in the Old
Norse World. Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross. Edited by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop
& Tarrin Wills. Brepols, Turnhout.
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APPENDICES
SUMMARY IN ENGLISH
This dissertation entitled Of Fire and Water. The Old Norse Mythical Worldview in an EcoMythological Perspective is divided in three chapters followed by a conclusion: ‘Introduction’;
‘Confronting the Sea’, and; ‘The Creation Myth, the Myth of the Mead of Poetry and Volcanism.’
The first chapter establishes the methodical and theoretical background of an eco-mythological
approach to the myths of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition, the Creation Myth and the myth of the Mead of
Poetry as central mythic narratives of conceptualizations of land and sea in the Old NorseScandinavian worldview. The second chapter is an analysis of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition as a
Scandinavian cultural myth of the sea and its relationship to society. This perspective encompasses a
developmental history of the Fishing Myth as a cultural narrative from an early stage in the Viking
Age to later creative interpretations in Christian narratives of Iceland and Scandinavia. The third
chapter concerns the Creation Myth and the myth of the Mead of Poetry as two types of myths, which
conceptualize the land and cosmos in a specifically Icelandic context as reinterpreted key myths of
the Scandinavian mainland in connection with the volcanic phenomena particular to the Icelandic
underground. These eco-mythological interpretations of some of the most important myths of Old
Norse-Scandinavian mythology argue that in the mythical worldview, the natural and peripheral space
of the sea and the strange and often life-threatening phenomenon of volcanism in fact take a central
position. As such, the sea and the most destructive aspect of the land, volcanoes, function as cultural
identifiers of the ecosystems and to society. Their prominence as cultural identifiers suggest a
different conceptualization of the dualism of land and sea, center and periphery, culture and nature,
and not least life and death in the Old Norse mythical worldview: the gods act as enforcers and
mediators in the cycle of life.
PROBLEM AND PURPOSE
The purpose of this dissertation is to address the subject of worldview in Old Norse mythology by
asking:
“What is the constitution of the Old Norse worldview according to the literary mythological
sources in terms of man’s relationship with nature? What is the relationship between the
conceptual categories of culture and nature, civilized and wild (byggð and óbyggð, innangarðs
and útangarðs) as it is expressed in the æsir’s dealings with the surrounding world in the myth
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of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition, the Creation Myth and the myth of the Mead of Poetry in the
Edda version? How do the actions of the gods in these narratives express man’s mythical
notions of his relationship with the land and sea in the Scandinavian and North Atlantic
ecoystems?”
Since Gurevich’s (1969), Meletinskij’s (1973) and Hastrup’s (1981, 1985 and 1990) publications on
the Old Norse cosmology and worldview this subject has been a recurring theme in scholarly
discussions of the mythology. The discussion has focused mainly on the relationship of the æsir to
the various other supernatural beings in a cosmic scheme that is divided in a vertical and a horizontal
axis (Schjødt 1990; Clunies Ross 1994; Løkka 2010). A different approach is proposed by Stefan
Brink in his article Mytologiska rum och eskatologiska föreställningar i det vikingatida Norden
(2004). This approach suggests the involvement of the ecosystems particular to specific cultural
groups in the discussion of the Old Norse mythical worldview.
This dissertation advances from that approach and devises a method for analyzing the Old
Norse mythical worldview that is designated the eco-mythological approach. This method has as its
theoretical background the concept of the Mythical Charter of Tradition in indigenous cultures. The
Mythical Charter of Tradition is described as the sum of all oral narratives, which relay knowledge
of the mythical past, the genealogies of culturally important people and myths of technical wisdom,
which are preserved as magical knowledge, often in formulaic form. This theoretical background is
developed on the basis of Jacques Le Goff’s (1992) and Jan Assmann’s (2006) theories of Collective
and Cultural Memory, which are seen as supplementing each other. With reference to the long life of
certain narratives associated with cultural events and specific sites in the Scandinavian ecosystems
(Dejbjerg in West Jutland and the Urebø Ridge in Telemarken), Assmann’s concept of Memory
Spaces is expanded from a term pertaining to literary activities to one that can be applied to ecospaces too. This is done in concert with the realizations of Åke Hulkrantz in a series of articles on
eco-religion, which establish a theory of ecosystems as a central and highly important factor in the
way religions and cultures develop: Ecology of Religion: Its Scope and Methodology (1979); An
Ideological Dichotomy: Myths and Folk Beliefs Among the Shoshoni (1984), and; Rock Drawings as
Evidence of Religion (1986).
By treating the Old Norse myths and related historical narratives as a Mythical Charter of
Tradition that combines a cultural unit with its surrounding ecosystems, this dissertation represents a
different view on the source value of Old Norse mythology and literature as historical texts. The
discussions of genres and the critical discussion of the aspects of indigenous ingenuity and tradition
as opposed to foreign or Latin-learned medieval influence on the narratives becomes secondary to
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one that is focused on cultural exchange between southern and northern Europe. With this the schism
of ‘Christian versus pagan’ in terms of the content of the Old Norse mythology also becomes
secondary, and the focus on the sources shifts towards one that acknowledges the sources as texts
with multiple cultural influences at many levels over a long period of time, from their oral form in
the Viking Age to the Medieval Era when they were committed to written form.
THE ANALYSES
Þórr’s Fishing Expedition is analyzed as a myth of primary cultural significance. The earliest
expressions of the myth are found on picture-stones in England, Denmark and Sweden. These
pictorial expressions are interpreted as the act of fishing as an iconic event of Scandinavian culture.
In concert with Hymiskviða they seem to relate a tale of how the anthropomorphic god fished went
fishing and conquered the sea by catching its very spirit embodied in the Miðgarðsormr. The myth in
its earliest form is associated with the Viking Age as a narrative that transmits technical knowledge
about fishing. This knowledge is articulated in the dynamics of differences between Þórr and Hymir:
Þórr is young, courageous and incautious while Hymir is old and scared of going too far out at sea.
The myth favors neither extreme but emphasizes the successfulness of a middle ground. It essentially
addresses the subject of too much, too little or just enough fear in the fishing situation, and favors the
last option. Fear in this respect relates to the fear of dying at sea and the fear of dying of hunger. This
is an eco-mythological interpretation of the myth, which acknowledges the significance of the sea as
an important resource for food everywhere in Viking Age Scandinavia.
Since the sea takes such prominence with regard to food resources, it is argued that the Fishing
Myth develops with the Scandinavian expansions in the North Atlantic, and particularly with the
landnám in Iceland and Greenland. Þórr becomes the primary god of the settlement and his myth
becomes a foundation narrative of the landnám, but also in connection with finding new land in
Vínland. Þórr becomes the god that ensures safe passage, fair winds and sustenance on journeys, and
the narrative structure of his Fishing Myth is reconfigured as a myth of exploration, which leaves
traces in such narratives as Landnámabók, Eiríks saga rauða and Flóamanna saga. With this
popularity of the myth, the need arises in the early Christian period to deconstruct Þórr and his
narratives as significant pagan foundation myths. Þórr is demonized or a fallibility of his is portrayed
in some of these very same tales. The tenets of the Fishing Myth are re-appropriated in the story of
his Journey to Útgarðaloki, Saxo’s Thorkillus Journeys and Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns, and the
Gylfaginning version of the Fishing Myth seems to purposely associate the events with Ragnarǫk.
The most interesting aspect of this widespread narrative re-appropriation of the Fishing Myth is
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Saxo’s euhemerized Þórr-figure in Thorkillus’s Journeys. He represents the final stage of
reinterpretation of the Fishing Myth as an eco-myth, because, regardless of how the largely
Christianized tradition may review Þórr and paganism, the sea is still the central force of the
narratives. In Thorkillus’s Journeys it is by way of a sea journeying Icelander that Christianity finally
finds its way to Denmark. The narratives use the aspects of the old Fishing Myth in a new context.
The fear of hunger, the fear of the sea and the problems of procuring food and drink at sea are very
much represented in these tales. But as much as they are there, they are also used to indicate a shift
in concerns: the concerns of the stomach have moved to the concerns of the soul. Saxo understands
the old Viking tradition in the Fishing Myth and associates it with his primary critique of paganism:
that it is a gluttonous, materialist religion with no spiritual insight. Using the most popular Þórr-myths
of Scandinavia, he introduces this spiritual hunger by way of a euhemerized pagan god.
The eco-myth of Þórr’s Fishing Expedition thus evolves with the developing realizations of the
Scandinavians as they live and exist with the sea as a formidable force in their world. The Fishing
Myth develops from a myth that conceptualizes the sea as the primary source of food and wealth, to
one that recognizes it as a space of exploration and power, social structures and the foundation of
society itself, and finally to a perspective on it as a space that expands human and religious horizons
in late Christian narratives. The eco-mythological interpretation of the myth in this presentation
restructures the conceptual schemas, which often dominate the research tradition of Old Norse
cosmology and worldview. The sea in the Old Norse-Scandinavian worldview is not the Úthaf, it is
not the periphery: it is a cultural epicenter.
In the case of the Creation Myth attention is given to the description of the events in
Gylfaginning, where certain aspects of the conflation of fire and ice have seemed opaque to older
scholarship. It is demonstrated that the inconsistencies in the description of how the eitr flows from
its ice-cold source in Niflheimr and hardens when it has entered the mild climate of Ginnungagap
originate in a volcanic image. In the whole, in the description of the creation as one that involves ice,
rime and water there are several aspects of the processes, which do not respond to the usual behavior
of ice and water. How can rime exist in climes that are ‘mild as a windless sky?’ Why are the Élivágar
described as rivers that ‘harden like the cinder that flow from a furnace?’ The answer is that these
inconsistencies occur when an original description of a low discharge effusive volcanic eruption is
described in analogies of water, ice, snow and rime. There is plenty of comparable evidence from
cultures around the world to suggest that the early Icelanders actually did describe volcanism in such
analogies, and certain aspects of the early Norse language also indicate this. The language was
surprisingly poor in terminology for volcanism and lacked even a word for ‘volcano.’ However, the
key word that is employed in the Creation Myth—hrím—had the double meaning of ‘rime’ and ‘soot,’
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and thus indicates that the early Icelanders sought to relate tales of volcanism in the same manner as
it has been observed that many other pre-Scientific Era peoples have done: by analogies and in mythic
narratives.
Rather than an image of ice and fire, it seems more probable that the early image of the Creation
Myth was one of Surtr and the Fire People of Muspell creating fires and poisonous eitr flows (lava)
that built up land in Ginnungagap, which subsequently turned into inhabitable space for humans by
the civilizing power of the fertility gods, the æsir, who arranged the cosmos by killing the evil Ymir,
who was created from this fire. To describe these events, the analogies of water and ice were used,
and they were later re-interpreted in a learned literary discourse to fit the neoplatonic teachings that
are also a mark of Edda. This explains why Surtr and Muspell, the great forces of volcanic destruction
in ragnarøkkr, are involved in the Creation Myth: it has been observed by generation upon generation
of Icelanders that after the Volcano Spirit and his Fire People send the poisonous Stormy Waves (the
Élivágar), and these harden like the cinder from a smelter, the ground is regrown. This explains why
the tradition of Gylfaginning insists that Ymir and Aurgelmir are the same being, even though they
are not associated in the original source of Vafþrúðnismál. The description of Aurgelmir coming to
life from the eitr that is ejected by the Élivágar seems to be the oldest version of the Icelandic
volcanological interpretation of the Creation Myth. The myth of the creation of Aurgelmir and the
myth of the creation of Ymir both originate in the same tradition from the continent to account for
genealogies and the creation of life from a chthonic being. The version in Gylfaginning is an attempt
to align the Icelandic interpretation of that myth with the continental tradition, and still account for
the creative aspect of the observable phenomena of jarðeldr (earth-fire) there. In that way the Creation
Myth of Gylfaginning associates the creation of the cosmos directly with the destructive, apocalyptic
forces and incorporates the volcanic phenomena in the heart of existence.
In the myth of the Mead of Poetry in its version in Skáldskaparmál the explosive aspect of
volcanism is relayed in analogies to supernatural beings and the Mead of Poetry as bodily fluid on
the same terms that the world’s waters are the bodily fluids of Ymir. This myth compiles several
images that can be found in other narratives, and it distances itself from the myth of the Mead of
Poetry in Hávamál by focusing on landscape, cosmos and death, while the former is focused on the
primary site of the chieftain’s hall, social rules and marriage. Both are myths about the primary
aspects of culture, and it seems reasonable to consider the version in Hávamál to be the oldest. This
version retains aspects of ancient Germanic cults of fertility, which seem to have their origins in the
same complex as the Roman Liberalia and the Bacchanalia. As its primary aspect, this complex
retains the chthonic association of the intoxicating drink of life and wisdom. In the Icelandic tradition
in Skáldskaparmál the added experience of the ecosystem, volcanism, demands a reformulation and
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reconceptualization of the chthonic association of the mead. The Mead of Poetry is, by virtue of its
comparability with lava as a yellow, thick substance, associated with volcanism. However, this is not
the only reason to associate the Mead of Poetry with lava. As the mead is the memory drink and its
myth holds cultural primacy—this is why it has its place in the cultural charter of Hávamál—it is also
the ideal candidate for an object or substance with which to associate the memory of massive volcanic
eruptions that could potentially destroy society as a whole. One such event was experienced by the
early Icelanders at the end of the landnám period in 934, when the Katla-system opened up in the
Eldgjá eruption and shrouded the Northern Hemisphere in ashes for months, maybe even a whole
year. This was one of the biggest eruptions in modern human history.
The associations of the myth of the Mead of Poetry with volcanism do not seem to stop here.
The Mead Myth of Skáldskaparmál incorporates a motif of volcanism that combine gods, jǫtnar and
dwarves with supernatural boats of stone and iron, the flight of eagles, beer or mead and sometimes
Surtr. Shortly after the Eldgjá eruption, around 985, Eyvindr skáldaspillir composed Háleygjatal in
which he asserted that Óðinn flew out of Surtr’s sinking valleys with the Mead of Poetry. The Mead
of Poetry is also referred to in the circumlocution of ‘kettle liquid.’ The association of the volcanic
caldera with a kettle is a frequent one in other cultures, but, more importantly, the stanza of
Háleygjatal has structural parallels in Bergbúa þáttr, Vǫluspá and Skáldskaparmál. Certain
conceptions relating to this complex also occur in Landnámabók, Konungs Skuggsjá the annals of
Flatey and Saxo. In Landnámabók there is an eruption caused by a jǫtunn sailing in a boat. This motif
of the boat reappears in Bergbúa þáttr, where, in the course of describing the events of a volcanic
eruption, the bergbúi says that he sent Aurnir an iron-braced stone boat. In Vǫluspá the supernatural
boat Naglfar comes sailing with the Muspell People and Loki (the god who creates earthquakes).
Naglfar may mean ‘Spike-boat’ when not directly associated with the tradition of Gylfaginning that
claims it is a ship made of the fingernails of the dead—is is in fact a common Scandinavian association
of the Devil, that he makes ships of fingernails. In the myth of the Mead of Poetry in Skáldskaparmál
there is the strange scene of the two dwarves Fjalarr (Hider) and Galarr (Screamer) sailing with
Gillingr (Noisy). Notably, right after Gillingr has drowned on this trip, his wife cries loudly out of
the door of the dwarfs’ home. This sequence seems to reflect the scene of Vǫluspá where all of
Jǫtunheimar groans and the dwarves howl before their stone doors. The eagle or the birds reappear in
several of these narratives, too. In Bergbúa þáttr the bergbúi says he expects the eagles to come flying
after he has sent this boat and he tells how he flies from world to world; in Vǫluspá the ash-pale
beaked eagle rips up corpses before the Muspell People and Loki come sailing; and of course in the
myth of the Mead of Poetry, Óðinn—named Evildoer—bursts out of Hnitbjǫrg, the Mountain of
Clashing Rocks, in the guise of an eagle, who flies straight towards Ásgarðr and explodes in yellow
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liquid. Interestingly, it is mentioned in the annals of Flatey that some men once saw birds flying in
the ejecta of an eruption in Hekla. This seems to come from the same idea as is expressed in Konungs
Skuggsjá, where the Northern Wind is said to create earthquakes and eruptions by rushing through
caverns in the underground—an idea that ultimately originates in the classical myths of, among
others, Ovid. To add to this image in Skáldskaparmál Óðinn blows in the hole that he is making with
Baugi in Hnitbjǫrg, and rocks fall out. Similarly, references to the Mead of Poetry or a chthonic—
volcanic—alcoholic drink are made in several of these narratives. The bergbúi equates the eruption
with his poetry and associates it with the Well of Aurnir—that is the Mead of Poetry. Both Saxo and
Konungs Skuggsjá relate that there are (volcanic) wells in Iceland that taste of beer, and, finally, there
is the association of the Mead of Poetry with volcanism in Skáldskaparmál.
All these motifs are indiscernible in their singular form, but together they form a sequence that
associate with the descriptions of a volcanic eruption. The initial characteristic rumbling of an
earthquake swarm, venting gasses and tumbling rocks before an eruption is expressed in the jǫtnar,
Fjalarr, Galarr, Gillingr, the groaning Jǫtunheimar, the howling dwarves and drilling in the mountain.
The flight of birds and eagles; Óðinn in Skáldskaparmál and Háleygjatal, the ash-pale beaked eagle,
the bergbúi and the eagle in his poem, symbolize the ash-plume. The image of the iron/stone boat,
however, is not fully discernible. It may link up with ideas of high speed as the ejecta comes rushing
down a mountainside. Several of these images are found in other cultures—the most frequent of which
is the eagle as an ash-plume. In many cases of myths of volcanism in other cultures, there is also a
connection to important cultural artifacts or elements. As such, the Mead Myth seems to follow a
pattern of human cultural response to volcanism that is worldwide. It is a myth that plots the cultural
upon the peripheral and strange phenomena of volcanism—with their destructive capabilities, and as
such potential anti-cultural entities—and appropriates it to consign it to a human-cultural function. It
is also a myth that enhances human resilience to volcanism insofar as it prescribes certain acts of
caution and preparation in the face of these phenomena while combining it all in a myth about the
memory drink of the Mead of Poetry.
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RESUMÉ PÅ DANSK
Denne afhandling med titlen Of Fire and Water. The Old Norse Mythical Worldview in an EcoMythological Perspective er opdelt i tre kapitler, der efterfølges af en konklusion: ’Introduction’,
’Confronting the Sea’ og ‘The Creation Myth, the Myth of the Mead of Poetry and Volcanism.’
Indledningskapitlet etablerer den metodiske og teoretiske baggrund for den såkaldt ‘økomytologiske’
tilgang til analysen af myterne om Thors Fiskefærd, Skabelsesmyten og myten om Skjaldemjøden
som centrale mytiske narrativer for konceptualiseringen havet og jorden i det oldnordiske
verdensbillede. Afhandlingens andet kapitel omhandler myten om Thors Fiskefærd som en
skandinavisk kulturmyte om havet og dets relation til samfundet. Dette perspektiv på myten omfatter
Fiskefærdens udviklingshistorie fra en tidlig tilstand i vikingetiden til senere tolkninger og
redefineringer af den i kristne tekster i Island og Skandinavien. Det tredje kapitel drejer sig om
Skabelsesmyten og myten om Skjaldemjøden som to typer myter, der konceptualiserer landet og
kosmos i en specifikt islandsk kontekst, fordi de fungerer som gentolkninger af skandinaviske
nøglemyter i forbindelse med den enestående islandske vulkanske undergrund. Disse økomytologiske
tolkninger af nogle af de mest centrale oldnordiske myter argumenterer for, at den livstruende
vulkanske aktivitet og havet som det perifere rum faktisk indtager centrale roller i vigtige kulturelle
narrativer i Norden. I disse tekster fungerer havet og landets mest destruktive kraft, vulkanerne, som
kulturelle identifikationsmarkører i økosystemerne. Deres fremtrædende rolle som kulturelle
identifikationsmarkører indikerer en anden konceptualisering af det dualistiske forhold mellem land
og hav, centrum og periferi, og ikke mindst kultur og natur i det oldnordiske mytiske verdensbillede:
de nordiske guder fungerer som håndhævere og mediatorer i livscyklussen.
PROBLEM OG FORMÅL
Formålet med denne afhandling er at studere verdensbilledet i den nordiske mytologi gennem
følgende arbejdsspørgsmål:
”Hvordan udmøntes forholdet mellem menneske og natur i det oldnordiske verdensbillede i de
litterære mytologiske kilder? Hvordan udtrykkes det interne forhold mellem de konceptuelle
kategorier ’kultur vs. natur,’ ’civiliseret vs. vildt’ (byggð overfor óbyggð, innangarðs overfor
útangarðs) i asernes relationer til den omgivende verden i myten om Thors Fiskefærd,
Skabelsesmyten og i myten om Skjaldemjøden? Hvorledes udtrykker gudernes handlinger i
disse narrativer menneskets mytologiske opfattelse og forhold til landet og havet i de
skandinaviske og Nordatlantiske økosystemer?”
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Siden Gurevichs (1969), Meletinskijs (1973) og Kirsten Hastrups (1981, 1985 og 1990)
toneangivende publikationer om oldnordisk kosmologi og verdensbillede, er dette emne vokset i
interesse blandt forskere i nordisk mytologi. Diskussionen har primært været fokuseret på forholdet
mellem aserne som et guddommeligt kollektiv, og de andre overnaturlige væsner i det kosmiske
skema, opdelt i en vertikal og en horisontal akse (Schjødt 1990; Clunies Ross 1994; Løkka 2010). Et
andet fokus i debatten repræsenteres af Stefan Brink i dennes artikel Mytologiska rum och
eskatologiska föreställningar i det vikingatida Norden (2004). Brinks tilgang involverer en interesse
for det specifikke økosystem, der omgiver de forskellige nordiske folk, som en vigtig del af
diskussionen om det oldnordiske mytiske verdensbillede.
Denne afhandling bygger videre på det perspektiv, Brink introducerer, og udarbejder en metode
til at analysere det oldnordiske mytiske verdensbillede, som betegnes den økomytologiske tilgang.
Den teoretiske baggrund for denne metode er konceptet om ’the Mythical Charter of Tradition’ i
præmoderne kulturer. The Mythical Charter of Tradition beskrives som summen af alle mundtlige
narrativer, der viderefører viden om den mytiske fortid, centrale kulturskikkelsers genealogier, og
myter om teknisk visdom, der oftest bevares som magisk og formularisk viden. Dette teoretiske
grundlag er udviklet på baggrund af Jacque Le Goffs (1992) og Jan Assmanns (2006) teorier om
’Collective-’ og ’Cultural Memory.’ Disse opfattes som hinanden komplimenterende teorier.
Assmans begreb ’Memory Space’ udvides fra at være fokuseret på litterære dokumenter til også at
dække over mundtlige tekster, der forbindes til de for en kultur vigtige steder i økosystemer. Dette
gøres med reference til langlivede mundtlige traditioner i Skandinavien, der forbinder kulturelt
signifikante handlinger og begivenheder med vigtige steder i økosystemerne (Dejbjerg i Vestjylland
og Urebøuren i Telemarken).
En sådan kobling af Le Goffs og Assmanns begreber foretages med basis i Åke Hultkrantz’
artikler om økoreligion, der etablerer en teori om økosystemers påvirkning af religioners og kulturers
udvikling: Ecology of Religion: Its Scope and Methodology (1979), An Ideological Dichotomy: Myths
and Folk Beliefs Among the Shoshoni (1984) og Rock Drawings as Evidence of Religion (1986).
Ved at opfatte de oldnordiske myter og dertil relaterede historiske tekster som et ’Mythical
Charter of Tradition’, der forbinder en given kulturel gruppe eller enhed med et økosystem,
repræsenterer denne afhandling et anderledes syn på kildeværdien af den nordiske mytologi og
litteratur. Genrediskussioner og diskussioner om forholdet mellem en oprindeligt nordisk tradition
overfor fremmed middelalderlatinsk indflydelse på teksterne, bliver sekundære i forhold til en der i
hovedsagen drejer sig om en til alle tider kulturel udveksling mellem det nordlige og sydlige Europa.
Med dette perspektiv bliver skismaet mellem ’kristen’ og ’hedensk’ indhold i den nordiske mytologi
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også sekundær i forhold til en interesse for teksterne baseret på erkendelsen af, at disse har været
præget af multiple kulturelle strømninger på mange niveauer i en lang periode, der strækker sig fra et
tidligt mundtligt stadie i vikingetiden til den tid i middelalderen, hvor de blev forfattet i skrift.
ANALYSERNE
Thors Fiskefærd analyseres som en myte, der har grundlæggende kulturel signifikans. Mytens
tidligste udtryk findes på billedsten i England, Danmark og Sverige. Disse udtryk tolkes som
billedlige repræsentationer af fiskeri som en ikonisk skandinavisk kulturel aktivitet. I sammenspil
med Hymerskvadet (Hymiskviða) fremstår Fiskemyten som en fortælling om den antropomorfe
guddom, der drog ud på fiskefærd og endte med at fange Havets Ånd i form af Midgårdsormen.
Denne tidlige form af myten associeres med vikingetiden og tolkes som et narrativ, der overleverer
vigtig teknisk viden om fiskeri. Denne vigtige viden udtrykkes i dynamikken mellem Thor og Hymer:
Thor er ung, modig og uforsigtig mens Hymer er gammel og frygter at sejle for langt ud på havet.
Myten favoriserer imidlertid ingen af de to ekstremer, men foreskriver i stedet middelvejen som den
mest succesfuld. Den adresserer således spørgsmålet om for meget, for lidt eller lige akkurat nok frygt
i fiskesituationen, og udpeger sidstnævnte som det mest hensigtsmæssige. Myten tematiserer
forskellige typer af frygt forbundet med fiskeriet: frygten for at dø på havet og frygten for at dø af
sult. Som sådan er dette en økomytologisk tolkning af myten, der anerkender havets fremtrædende
rolle som en vigtig ressource overalt i vikingetidens Skandinavien.
Eftersom havet spiller så central en rolle som kilde til mad, argumenteres der for at Fiskemyten
udvikles i løbet af vikingetidens ekspansioner i Nordatlanten, og i særdeleshed i forbindelse med
landtagningen (landnám) i Island og Grønland. Thor bliver den primære guddom i koloniseringen af
Island og hans myte udvikles til en grundlæggelsesmyte for landtagningen, men også i forbindelse
med de nye opdagelser i Vinland. Thor bliver den guddom der sikrer godt vejrlig, god havfærd og
mad på rejserne over havet, og Fiskefærdens narrative strukturer genbruges i opdagelsesmyter, der
efterlader sig spor i blandt andre Landtagningsbogen (Landnámabók), Erik den rødes saga (Eiríks
saga rauða) og Sagaen om Mændene fra Flói (Flóamanna saga). Med denne popularitet opstår der
imidlertid et behov for at dekonstruere myten og Thors signifikans som guddom efter kristningen.
Thor dæmoniseres og udstilles som fejlbarlig i flere af de ovennævnte historier. Fiskefærdens
grundstrukturer og tematikker genbruges i historien om Thors Færd til Udgårdsloke, Saxos
Thorkillusrejser, Torstein stor-som-et-hus’ saga (Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns) og versionen af
Fiskefærden i Edda’ens andet kapitel Gylfis Forblændelse (Gylfaginning) ser ud til intentionelt at
være narrativt associeret med myten om Ragnarok. Det mest interessante aspekt af denne udbredte
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brug af Fiskefærden er fremstillingen af den euhemeriserede Thor-figur Thorkillus’ rejser i
Nordatlanten hos Saxo. Denne fremstilling repræsenterer det sidste niveau i udviklingen af
Fiskefærden som en økomyte, fordi uanset hvordan den overvejende kristne tradition nu engang
opfatter Thor og hedenskaben fremstilles havet som en central kraft i disse narrativer. I Thorkillus’
rejser finder kristendommen sin vej til Danmark gennem en søfarende islænding. Fortællingerne
anvender den gamle Fiskemyte i en ny kontekst. Frygten for sult, frygten for havet og
problematikkerne vedrørende fremskaffelse af mad og drikke under sejlads er stadig repræsenteret i
Saxos fortællinger, men i denne sammenhæng anvendes de selvsamme tematikker til at understrege
et mentalt skifte: fra at dreje sig om den fysiske hunger, fokuserer myten nu på den åndelige hungren.
Saxo har nemlig en grundlæggende forståelse for indholdet af den ældre tradition i Fiskefærden, og
han associerer dens tematikker med sin vidtrækkende kritik af hedenskaben: hedenskaben er en
materialistisk, verdslig religion uden åndelig indsigt. Ved hjælp af den tilsyneladende mest populære
nordiske myte, introducerer han denne åndelige sult gennem en euhemeriseret hedensk guddom.
Økomyten Thors Fiskefærd udvikler sig således i tandem med, at skandinavernes horisont
udvides gennem deres liv med havet som en dominerende kraft i deres verden. Fiskefærden udvikles
fra at handle om havet som en primær kilde til mad og rigdom, til at handle om havet som et rum for
opdagelse og magt, hvori sociale strukturer konceptualiseres og selve samfundets fundament
grundlægges. Dens sidste udviklingsstadie i de sene kristne tolkninger er et, hvor havet opfattes som
et rum, der kan udvide menneskets erkendelsesmæssige og religiøse horisont. Denne afhandlings
tolkning af myten omstrukturerer dermed parametrene for de konceptuelle skemaer, der ofte
dominerer forskningen i oldnordisk kosmologi og verdensbillede. Havet er i det oldnordiske
verdensbillede ikke Udhavet (Úthaf), et perifert rum, men derimod et kulturelt epicenter.
I forbindelse med Skabelsesmyten rettes opmærksomheden mod mytens version i
Gylfaginning, hvori visse aspekter af sammenblandingen af is og ild er blevet udpeget som
inkonsistente af visse forskere. Inkonsistensen beror blandt andet på beskrivelsen af, hvordan den
iskolde eitr flyder fra sin kilde i Niflheimr og størkner når den kommer ud i det mildere klima i
Ginnungagap. Det vises her, at denne uoverensstemmelse i, at en tilsyneladende iskold flodstrøm kan
fryse til, når den flyder ind i et varmere klima, i grunden forekommer fordi myten oprindeligt
beskriver et vulkanudbrud. Der er flere forhold i beskrivelsen af skabelsen som en proces af is, rim
og vand, der ikke korresponderer med de observerbare fysiske processer desangående. Hvordan kan
rim forekomme i et klima, der er ’mildt som en vindløs himmel’? Hvorfor er tilfrysningen af floderne
Élivágar beskrevet som en proces, hvor de ’størkner som de brændte slagger fra en smelter’?
Svaret på disse spørgsmål skal findes i det forhold, at sådanne inkonsistente beskrivelser
optræder, når den oprindelige fortælling om et lav-effusivt vulkansk udbrud beskrives med analogier
232
til vand, is, sne og rim. Der er flere sammenlignelige eksempler fra andre kulturer verden over, der
indikerer at dette kunne være en narrativ modus islændingene har benyttet sig af, til at beskrive det
grundlæggende fremmedartede fænomen, som vulkanismen er. Det oldnordiske sprog er
overraskende fattigt når det kommer til ord, der beskriver vulkanisme. Der fandtes for eksempel ikke
engang et ord for ’vulkan’. I Skabelsesmyten findes imidlertid et nøgleord, som går igen: rim (hrím).
Ordet ’rim’ havde en dobbeltbetydning på oldnordisk og kunne også anvendes om sod, og dette
indikerer at de tidlige islændinge muligvis har benyttet sig af samme metode til at udtrykke vulkanske
processer, som så mange andre før-videnskabelige kulturer på Jorden, nemlig ved hjælp af analogier
og myter.
I stedet for at være et billede af en proces af ild og is, ser Skabelsesmyten ud til at fremstille
skabelsen som en proces, hvor Surtr og Muspell-folket skaber ild og giftige edderstrømme (eitr: lava),
der bygger land op i Ginnungagap, som efterfølgende gøres beboelig for mennesker af de
civiliserende frugtbarhedskræfter, aserne, som etablerer kosmos ved at dræbe Ymir og bruge hans
kropsdele til at bygge verdensrummet og skabe liv.
For at beskrive disse hændelser måtte analogier til vand og is tages i brug, og disse blev senere
omfortolket i en lærd, litterær diskurs, der kunne passe det ind i den neoplatoniske filosofi, som
præger Snorri Sturlusons Edda. Dette forklarer hvorfor Surtr og Muspell, de kraftfulde vulkanske
Ragnarok-magter, involveres i Skabelsesmyten: processen er blevet observeret i Island igen og igen,
fra generation til generation; efter Vulkan-ånden og hans Ild-folk har sendt de giftige Stormbølger
(Élivágar), og disse er størknet som vi kender det fra slaggerne fra jernsmeltning, da vil der igen gro
planter henover jorden. Dette forklarer også hvorfor Gylfaginning insisterer på, at Ymir og Aurgelmir
er det samme væsen, selvom de ikke er forbundet med hinanden i den oprindelige fremstilling i
Gylfaginnings kilde Vaftrudners Digt (Vafþrúðnismál). Beskrivelsen af Aurgelmir der bygges op af
det eitr, som springer fra Élivágar forekommer at være den ældste islandske vulkanologiske variant
af Skabelsesmyten. Myten om skabelsen af Aurgelmir og myten om skabelsen af Ymir har begge
oprindelse i den kontinentale tradition for at henføre genealogier og livets opståen til en chthonisk urjætte. Den version, der forefindes i Gylfaginning er et forsøg på, at sammenholde den islandske
tolkning af myten med den kontinentale tradition, og samtidig vedholde det skabende aspekt i de i
Island observerbare fænomener, der kaldes jarðeldr (jord-ild). På denne måde associeres skabelsen
af kosmos direkte med dets mest destruktive kræfter i Skabelsesmyten i Gylfaginning, og det
vulkanske fænomen inkorporeres i hjertet af eksistensen.
I myten om Skjaldemjøden i Edda’ens tredje kapitel Skjaldskabernes Sprog (Skáldskaparmál)
fremstilles vulkanismens eksplosive aspekter i analogier til overnaturlige væsner og en forestilling
om Skjaldemjøden som kropslig væske i overensstemmelse med, at verdens vand opfattes som Ymirs
233
kropsvæsker. Denne myte inkorporerer flere motiver, der findes i andre narrativer, og den distancerer
sig fra myten om Skjaldemjøden i Den Højes Digt (Hávamál) ved at fokusere på landskabet, kosmos
og død, frem for magnatfarmen, sociale spilleregler og ægteskab. Begge myter handler om kulturens
primære aspekter, og myten i dens version i Hávamál lader til at være ældst. Denne version relateres
til aspekter af gammel germansk fertilitetskult, der tilsyneladende har sit ophav i det mytiske
kompleks, der vedrører de romerske Liberalia og Bacchanalia. Det mest fremtrædende fælles aspekt
i dette kompleks er associeringen af den chthoniske, berusende drik med liv og visdom.
I den islandske tradition i Skáldskaparmál gennemtvinger den nyligt tilføjede erfaring fra
økosystemet, vulkanismen, en reformulering og rekonceptualisering af mjødens chthoniske
associeringer. Den tykflydende gullige substans, der udgør Skjaldemjøden bliver, som resultat af dens
sammenlignelighed med lavaen, forbundet med vulkanismen. Men dette er ikke den eneste årsag til
at forbinde mjøden med vulkanismen: siden mjøden fungerer som hukommelses- og visdomsdrik, og
dens myte indtager en kulturel hovedrolle – det er derfor den findes i det grundlæggende kulturelle
regelsæt i Hávamál – er den også den ideelle kandidat til at være et objekt eller en substans med
hvilken mindet om overvældende eksplosive vulkanudbrud, der truer samfundets eksistens, kan
associeres. En sådan hændelse oplevede islændingene allerede tidligt i landets historie, ved slutningen
af landtagningen, da Katla-systemet brød ud i det massive Eldgjá udbrud i 934, og lagde et askeslør
over hele den nordlige halvkugle i månedsvis, måske i et helt år. Det var et af de største udbrud i
menneskehedens historie.
Skjaldemjødens forbindelse til vulkanisme stopper imidlertid ikke ved dette. Mjødmyten i
Skáldskaparmál inkludere vulkanmotiver, der kombinerer guder, jætter, dværge, overnaturlige både
af sten og jern, flyvende ørne, øl eller mjød og i flere tilfælde Vulkan-ånden Surtr. Kort efter Eldgjáudbruddet, i årene omkring 985, komponerede skjalden Eyvindr skáldaspillir digtet Håleygernes
Række (Háleygjatal). Her siger skjalden, at Odin fløj ud af Surts synkende dale med Skjaldemjøden.
Der refereres også til skjaldemjøden med kenningen ’kedel-væske’. Betegnelsen af det aktive
vulkanske krater som en kedel ses i flere tilfælde i andre kulturer, men hvad vigtigere er: strofen fra
Háleygjatal har strukturelle paralleller i Bjergboens Fortælling (Bergbúa þáttr), Vølvens Spådom
(Vǫluspá) og Skáldskaparmál, og der optræder associerede ideer i andre tekster i Landnámabók,
Kongespejlet (Konungs Skuggsjá), Flatey-annalerne og hos Saxo. I Landnámabók beskrives det i
forbindelse med et udbrud, at en jætte forårsagede det, da han kom sejlende i en jernbåd og gravede
i jorden. Motivet med båden dukker også op i Bergbúa þáttr, hvor bjergboen fortæller om, hvordan
han er årsagen til et udbrud, og at han sendte Aurnir en jernbeslået stenbåd. I Vǫluspá optræder den
overnaturlige båd i formen Naglfar, der kommer sejlende med Muspell-folket og Loki, guden der
skaber jordskælv. Naglfar betyder måske ’spike-båden’, hvis dens navn ikke umiddelbart forbindes
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til traditionen i Gylfaginning der fortæller, at forleddet betyder ’negle’, og at navnet hentyder til, at
Surtr og Muspell laver et dødeskib af afdøde menneskers negle. Denne ide findes flere steder i
Skandinavien forbundet med djævlen, der også laver både af fingernegle. I myten om Skjaldemjøden
i Skáldskaparmál findes den besynderlige scene med dværgene Fjalarr (Gemmer) og Galarr (Skriger),
der tager en sejltur med Gillingr (Larmer). Kort efter at Gillingr drukner på denne sejltur, stiller hans
kone sig i døråbningen til dværgenes hjem og græder højt. Denne sekvens ser ud til at afspejles i
Vǫluspá, hvor alle Jættehjemmene (Jǫtunheimar) rumler og dværgene hyler foran deres stendøre.
Ørne eller andre fugle dukker også op i flere af disse narrativer. I Bergbúa þáttr fortæller bjergboen,
at han forventer at ørnene vil komme flyvende. Dette sker lige efter han har sendt Aurnir sin stenbåd,
og efterfølgende fortæller bjergboen at han selv flyver i askeskyen fra verden til verden og fra bjergtop
til bjergtop. I Vǫluspá forekommer billedet af den askegrå-næbbede ørn, der slider i menneskers døde
kroppe kort før Muspell-folket kommer sejlende med Loki. Og så er der tilfældet i
Skjaldemjødsmyten i Skáldskaparmál, der fortæller om Odin som, i forklædning som Ondskabsmageren (Bǫlverkr), bryder ud af De Ramlende Klippers Bjerg (Hnitbjǫrg) i ørneham og flyver mod
Asgård (Ásgarðr), hvor han eksploderer i mjød. Der findes ligeledes en beskrivelse af et udbrud i
Hekla i Flatey-annalerne, hvor det siges at man kunne se fugle flyve ud sammen med klipper og lava.
En lignende ide udtrykkes tilsyneladende i Konungs Skuggsjá, hvor det fortælles at Nordenvinden
skaber jordskælv og vulkanudbrud ved at klemme sig ned i jordens huler og tunneller. Dette er en
forestilling, der har sin oprindelse i den klassiske mytologi, hos blandt andre Ovid. En tilføjelse til
dette billede er situationen i Mjødmyten, hvor Odin blæser ind i det hul, han borer sammen med jætten
Baugi i Hnitbjǫrg, og ved denne handling får sten til at flyve ud.
På lignende måder findes spredte referencer til mjøden eller en anden chthonisk – vulkansk –
alkoholisk drik i myterne. Bjergboen sidestiller udbruddet han omtaler med sin poesi og forbinder
den til Aurnirs Brønd, med andre ord: Skjaldemjøden. Både Saxo og Konungs Skuggsjá gengiver en
forestilling om, at der i Island findes vulkanske kilder, hvor vandet smager som øl, og til sidst er der
selvfølgelig mjødens forbindelse til vulkanisme i selve Skjaldemjødsmyten.
Alle disse motiver er svære at forstå når de står alene, men når de sammenstilles danner de en
sekvens der forbinder sig til beskrivelser af udbrud. Den karakteristiske tidlige rumlen fra en
jordskælvsværm, gas der strømmer ud og klipper der falder ned før et udbrud udtrykkes i jætterne, i
Fjalarr, Galarr, Gillingr, de stønnende Jǫtunheimar, de hylende dværge og Bǫlverkrs boringer i
bjerget. De flyvende fugle og ørnene, Odin, den askegrå-næbbede ørn, bjergboen og ørnen i hans digt,
symboliserer askeskyen. Motivet med jern/stenbåden er, imidlertid, ikke helt gennemskueligt. Det er
muligt at det forbinder sig til den hastighed hvormed vulkanens ejecta udsendes, idet den accelerer
det ned ad bjergsiden. Flere af disse motiver findes tilmed i andre kulturer – det mest fremtrædende
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af dem er ørnen som en askesky. I mange tilfælde af vulkanmyter i andre kulturer forbindes myten
gerne med centrale, vigtige kulturelle artefakter og koncepter. Som sådan følger Skjaldemjøden et
kendt kulturelt mønster for menneskers respons til vulkanisme, som dukker op mange steder i verden.
Myten lokaliserer på denne måde det kulturelle, samfundets vigtigste elementer, i den
fremmedartede og fjendtlige periferi, blandt vulkaner, der, med deres destruktive kapaciteter på
mange måder må siges at være kulturens modsætning. Kulturen approprierer vulkanismen som det
perifere og tilskriver den en human-kulturel funktion. Skjaldemjødsmyten eksisterer i den forbindelse
også for at fremme den menneskelige modstandsdygtighed mod vulkanismens destruktive kraft, idet
den foreskriver forsigtighed og bevågenhed i mødet med disse fænomener, mens den kombinerer det
hele i myten om mjøden som huskedrikken.

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英語コミュニケーションI (初級A)

英語コミュニケーションI (初級B)

1. Record all details you can about the setting of this story. 2. What