Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes & Interactions

By Nordic Academic Press

Consisting of more than 70 papers written by scholars concerned with pre-Christian Norse religion, the articles discuss subjects such as archaeology, art history, historical archaeology, history, history of ideas, theological history, literature, onomastics, Scandinavian languages, and Scandinavian studies. The interdisciplinary aim of the book brings together text-based and material-based researchers to improve scholarly exchange and dialogue and provide a variety of contributions that elucidate topics such as worldview and cosmology, ritual and religious practice, myth and memory, as well as reception and present-day use of old Norse religion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 12, 2006
• ISBN: 9789187121159

Book preview

WORLDVIEW AND COSMOLOGY

Can archaeologists study prehistoric cosmology?

Richard Bradley

An unusual collaboration

As a prehistorian based in the British Isles, I have several reasons to envy my Scandinavian colleagues. Because Northern Europe was beyond the limits of the Roman world, they can study a continuous sequence which extends deep into the first millennium AD. My Late Iron Age ends a thousand years before, and that is where prehistorians must hand over to other groups of scholars. First, there is the branch of Classical Archaeology which is concerned with Roman Britain, and then a historical archaeology that begins with the Migration Period. That division of labour prevents much communication between people who study similar material and makes it difficult to investigate the past. Some of the groups who settled in England during the post-Roman era were prehistoric when they left their homelands and Early Medieval when they reached the other side of the North Sea.

A second feature of Scandinavian archaeology is that the visual culture of later prehistory was at least partly figurative. That is to say, it includes a number of elements that can be identified with features of the real world. Whatever their original significance, it is possible to recognise human figures, artefacts and animals among the depictions on rock surfaces and metalwork. That is not the case everywhere. The British Bronze Age, for instance, is characterised by a series of abstract images.

Both these features of Northern prehistory are the envy of other researchers, but they also have their dangers. The unbroken prehistoric sequence has its perils, for it is only too tempting to use the earliest written sources to illuminate much more ancient material. How far is it legitimate to move back and forth between the first literary evidence and the material remains of an earlier phase? Is there a danger that this will distort our perceptions of the purely archaeological evidence? Are visual images especially likely to be misunderstood? In the words of my title, we must ask whether archaeologists can study prehistoric cosmology.

I make these points because my starting point is an account of Bronze Age cosmology in Scandinavia, written by a British prehistorian. Properly speaking, he was just one of the authors, for the book in question is The Chariot of the Sun by Peter Gelling, an expert on the Bronze Age, and Hilda Ellis Davidson, a scholar with a research interest in Old Norse religion (Gelling and Davidson 1969). Of course it was not the first study to combine these elements. There had been others before, and more have appeared since their book came out thirty-five years ago. But its format is quite unusual and to my mind it epitomises the difficulty of attempting this exercise.

Its full title is revealing. It considers The Chariot of the Sun and other rites and symbols of the Northern Bronze Age. The first section is Gelling’s study of the images that were engraved on metal artefacts or carved on natural outcrops. Following earlier scholars, he pays most attention to the way in which the sun is carried through the sky. That forms the basis for his own recreation of a prehistoric cosmology. But other sections of his study are concerned with different designs. Thus the book considers the sacred marriage, ships, farming, weapons, footprints, snakes, horses, discs and stags. He discusses their roles in ancient rock art and draws on comparisons with more distant cultures, but, perhaps revealingly, these tend to be found in Central Europe and the Mediterranean. He makes little use of what is known about Old Norse religion, and where he compares the Bronze Age images with those created during other periods, he rarely extends his analysis beyond the Classical world.

The second part of the book is by Davidson. It follows almost the same format as Gelling’s contribution. Individual chapters consider the roles of different images in the Late Iron Age and beyond: sun-discs, weapons, footprints, the sacred marriage, ships, snakes, horses and stags. There are also chapters on several elements that were not treated by Gelling: hands, trees, birds and twins. Davidson refers very sparingly to the prehistoric images, so that the two sections of the book seem to occupy separate worlds. It is clear that Gelling finds Central and Southern Europe a more fruitful source of comparison for the prehistoric images, whilst Davidson can see little overlap between them and the themes that she identifies through later literary and artistic sources.

It is as if two unrelated texts have been printed end to end, and this impression is only strengthened by the foreword by Christopher Hawkes which praises Gelling’s analysis and never mentions his co-author. It is a curious situation, but perhaps it can serve as a parable describing one kind of archaeology. Another approach is illustrated by the work of Flemming Kaul (1998), who has studied many of the Bronze Age images without making use of later sources. That is not the only difference, for his research is concerned with the metalwork found in graves and votive deposits. He calls his book Ships on Bronzes and describes it as a study in Bronze Age religion and iconography. It is concerned with the figurative drawings found on Danish artefacts. As the book title makes clear, the dominant image is the boat.

Kaul chooses a similar point of departure to Gelling: the remarkable object from Trundholm which has become known as ‘the chariot of the sun’. But he makes less use of long-distance parallels, nor does he take much account of examples drawn from other periods. His main sources of comparison are contemporary with the objects themselves: either the iconography of the Late Bronze Age in Central and North-eastern Europe, or the prehistoric rock art of South Scandinavia, most of which is in Sweden and Norway. That is not to say that more distant analogies are irrelevant. He makes only limited use of them in the closing chapter of his monograph, but references to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Greece and Crete have assumed a greater prominence in the writings of Klavs Randsborg (1993), Thomas Larsson (1997) and Kristian Kristiansen (2004). In the same way, Dumézil’s studies of Indo-European mythology have influenced Åsa Fredell’s recent analysis of the contents of the Bronze Age rock carvings (Fredell 2003).

As Kaul acknowledges, his interpretation is quite similar to Gelling’s. There is a long history of attempts to relate the movements of the sun to the characteristic iconography of the Bronze Age. Where Kaul breaks new ground is in his close attention to chronology and to the fine detail of the scenes portrayed on Danish artefacts. Several elements are important in his analysis. First, the images seem to show the sun being carried by a horse across the sky. Secondly, he suggests that after the sun has set it travels through the sea until the following dawn. During this period it is taken on a ship, accompanied by a snake or a fish. The third element in his analysis is entirely new, for Kaul considers the directions in which these vessels are sailing. During the hours of daylight the sun travels towards the right. That is the impression that one receives in tracing its course across the sky of the Northern Hemisphere. But the sun must also return to its point of departure, and so Kaul suggests that whilst it was hidden from view it must have travelled to the left (figure 1). Some of the images associated with snakes and fish support this interpretation.

Kaul suggests that the images created on artefacts such as razors expressed a powerful mythology, the meanings of which might have been revealed to young men on their initiation. The first time that they shaved could have been an important rite of passage. He thinks that similar designs on rock outcrops were connected with the performance of rituals, but this distinction may be too ingenious. It is certainly true that individual rock carvings in Sweden and Norway are associated with deposits of artefacts, with evidence of fires and the remains of feasts (Bengtsson 2004), but surely the funerals at which such decorated bronzes were displayed were occasions for ritual too. Most authorities would agree that the images shown on razors and other artefacts referred to a cosmology whose central feature was the passage of the sun across the sky, but the repertoire of prehistoric rock art was more varied, and for that reason scholars have linked these drawings to other themes as well. Some of the scenes of humans, animals and ploughing have suggested a concern with fertility (Almgren 1927). Others were probably associated with the dead. This idea depends on several observations, but perhaps the most revealing is the fact that similar designs occur inside burial cists (Mandt 1983; Randsborg 1993). This raises the important question whether it is appropriate to transfer the interpretation of Bronze Age iconography from Denmark to Sweden and Norway.

Figure 1. Summary of the cosmological scheme proposed by Kaul (1998), illustrated by an outline drawing of a Late Bronze Age razor.

I find Kaul’s reconstruction of Late Bronze Age cosmology attractive and internally consistent, but it is a scheme which is essentially self-contained. He is admirably rigorous in studying the metalwork on its own terms and in resisting any temptation to draw on later sources, but is there any way of assessing the wider significance of his work? Here a more detailed comparison with rock art could be revealing.

The three dimensions of rock carvings

The images created on the metalwork are difficult to interpret in a wider context. They are associated with burials, but with little else. Rock carvings, on the other hand, extend over large parts of the Scandinavian landscape, so that in principle they might express the same cosmology at a larger scale. It is here that problems arise. Kaul does make some comparisons between the images found on the metalwork and those carved on natural outcrops, but he has to acknowledge that these two phenomena have different distributions from one another. Most of the metalwork with drawings of ships is found in Denmark or North Germany, whilst the rock art of the same period is mainly in Sweden and Norway. It had a longer history and is comparatively uncommon within the distribution of decorated artefacts. That need not present a problem. Kaul considers that a specifically Scandinavian symbolic scheme was modified during the Late Bronze Age as a result of contacts with regions further to the south. It may be that Bronze Age rock art illustrates a similar process in an area located further to the north. In this case it is not clear where certain ideas first developed. The contents of these carvings need not conform to the precise model presented in Kaul’s book, but the two traditions should have enough in common to shed some light on these questions.

There are important differences between the design elements in these two styles. The decorated metalwork features drawings of the sun, horses, snakes and fish, but these are uncommon in Scandinavia rock art (Malmer 1981). At the same time, some of the petroglyphs include features which are not found in the other medium, especially footprints, carts and cupmarks. The common element is the ship, but again the drawings of boats that appear on rock outcrops are very different from their representation in bronze. Although more than one ship can be portrayed on a single object, some of the open air carvings show entire fleets.

Figure 2. Rock carving at Askum, Bohuslän, illustrating the relationship between drawings of boats and those of feet or footsoles. The other images in the same panel have been omitted. Information from Bengtsson (2002).

This suggests that there are important contrasts between the scheme postulated by Kaul and the organisation of Bronze Age rock art, but in no sense does this does ‘test’ his model, nor does it shed much light on the prospects of studying prehistoric cosmology. In order to do that, I must turn my attention to the topography of the Scandinavian rock carvings. In doing so, I shall draw mainly on sites in Bohuslän and Uppland.

My starting point is provided by two observations which seem to be uncontentious. There is a striking relationship between the siting of Bronze Age rock art and the presence of water. This has been obscured by the gradual retreat of the coast, but it is widely accepted that many of the drawings – in particular, those of ships – were created near to the water’s edge, or at least looked out to sea (Bengtsson 2004; Ling 2004). The second point is closely related. The separate images were normally placed so that they could be viewed from the direction of the shoreline, and some of them may even have been visible from boats. One reason for stressing this observation is that the drawings of ships generally follow a horizontal course along the contours of the rock. This would have added to the impression that they were travelling across a single expanse of water.

These boats do not conform to the simple scheme that characterises the metalwork. Not all the vessels are following the same course, even within a single panel. Different ships, or groups of ships, may travel towards one another, their courses can diverge, or they may simply pass, sailing in opposite directions. Some of them have crews but others do not. That contrast may be particularly significant, for Klavs Randsborg (1993) interprets the empty boats in Scandinavian rock art as the ships of the dead. He draws attention to a number of contexts, including the decorated cist at Kivik, where drawings of boats with a full crew are contrasted with vessels with no one on board. A similar connection is found in the Late Bronze Age when human burials were associated with cairns arranged in the form of a ship (Artelius 1996).

Figure 3. Rock carving at Askum, Bohuslän, illustrating the relationship between drawings of boats and those of carts and footsoles. The other images in the same panel have been omitted. Information from Bengtsson (2002).

The second element consists of the drawings of footprints in South Scandinavian rock art (figure 2). Two features seem to be especially significant here. Where entire trails of footprints can be recognised, they appear to follow a path leading towards – or even beyond – the limits of the decorated surface. At the same time, there are no connections between these images and any human figures that are depicted on the same outcrop. In effect, the people who left these trails cannot be seen. The local topography is important too. In most cases where suitable records exist the footprints pursue a course leading up and down the rock. That is to say, they often follow an axis which is quite different from that created by the drawings of ships.

There are even cases in which the groups of footprints overlap with the carvings of boats. If this was intended, it would suggest that the paths extended into the water. In the opposite direction, these tracks seem to carry on towards the summit of the outcrop. Such trails are not depicted on Bronze Age metalwork, but among the rock carvings they form an obvious link between the sea and the sky.

The same idea may be expressed by the drawings of carts in Bohuslän (figure 3). There is nothing to suggest that all of them were carrying the sun, although the case can certainly be made in individual instances. There are a surprisingly large number of examples in which they run at right angles to the pictures of ships. Again they overlap with those images, as if to suggest that some of the vehicles entered the sea. Like the footprints, they may also have travelled up the sloping surface of the stone towards a destination that lay somewhere beyond the limit of the carvings. Again the vertical and horizontal planes have been used to emphasise the difference between land and water. That is why this section is called "the three dimensions of rock carvings".

What happened on the high ground which was both the source and destination of the trails? The upper levels of certain rocks were embellished with abstract designs. The most striking evidence comes from Uppland where dense arrays of cup marks were often located above the other images. Some were on level surfaces that faced the sky. It would be too simple to suggest that such patterns were intended as representations of the stars, yet the zoning of the carvings in the prehistoric landscape is very striking indeed (Coles 2000).

So far I have tried to identify two zones in the petroglyphs of South Scandinavia. These are the counterparts of the sea and the sky that feature in Kaul’s model. I have also suggested that they were connected along an axis marked by drawings of footprints and vehicles. What of the land itself?

Much of South Scandinavian rock art is formed out of self-contained scenes which are juxtaposed or cut across one another. Unless the images were painted, only a few freshlycarved designs would have stood out at any one time. Some of the individual panels were located above the scenes of ships, but in most instances the designs overlap to such an extent that any attempt to follow a clear distinction between land and water is bound to fail. This may have happened because these images were not contemporary with one another, but another way of accounting for this mixture of different features is to suggest that it referred to the importance of the shoreline, for this was the only place in which all those elements would have come into contact.

Images without texts

This analysis avoids any comparisons with literary evidence from Northern or Southern Europe. Nor does it make use of Indo-European mythology. It depends on only three elements: the images found on Bronze Age metalwork and in the rock carvings of the same period; the topography of the surfaces on which some of those designs were made; and the siting of the petroglyphs in the landscape. It is based on the prehistoric evidence alone and this procedure offers independent support for some of Kaul’s conclusions. There is less evidence for the importance of the sun, but the rock carvings still provide indications of a three-tier cosmology within which individual scenes were organised. The main difference is that the rock carvings place more emphasis on the land (figure 4).

Both interpretations might be taken further. Kaul’s scheme emphasises the contrasts between day and night. He discusses the way in which the sun disappears at dusk and returns to the world at dawn. In a sense, the sunset provides an image of human extinction, just as the sunrise offers a symbol of regeneration. Perhaps that is why the ships that bear the sun safely through the night may have carried the dead in the way that Randsborg (1993) suggests. This idea is present in many different guises, from the burials found with ship settings to the decoration inside Bronze Age cists. It may even account for the drawings of ships on the artefacts associated with cremations.

Figure 4. Summary of the cosmological scheme proposed for Danish metalwork by Kaul (1998), compared with the scheme suggested for South Scandinavian rock art.

Kaul’s scheme also emphasises the cycle according to which the sun vanishes and reappears. Unless this happened, plants and animals would be at risk and the human race would eventually die out. The sun also changes its position during the course of the year and this process is reflected by the passage of the seasons on which the lives of farmers depend. Is it entirely surprising that the version of this system represented in Scandinavian rock art should place so much emphasis on fertility? Again it is present in many guises, from scenes of the sacred marriage to depictions of phallic men and ploughing.

There is one other way in which South Scandinavian rock art shares the same concerns as decorated metalwork. The cosmology identified by Kaul is concerned with the movement of the sun during the day, when it can be seen, and at night, when it is hidden from view. During its absence it travels though the sea. It follows that the crucial transition takes place where the sky meets the water, for that is where the sun disappears and where it rises at dawn. That process was best viewed from the water’s edge, and this is the only place where all three elements meet. It may explain why it is here that so many of the carved rocks are found

Conclusion

The title of this paper asks whether it is possible to study prehistoric cosmology. It was the question raised by the authors of The Chariot of the Sun, and it seems to me that each of them answered it in a different way. This paper is more sympathetic to Gelling’s approach, for all is not lost if we are deprived of literary sources. Instead there are certain advantages in working on a large scale, comparing and seeking to harmonise different sources of archaeological information. This is what I have attempted to do here, although I cannot deny that accounts of the Late Iron Age will always be richer than those of Bronze Age beliefs. The two fields of study are not different in kind, but they are based on different methods. The Lund conference provided an opportunity to bring those methods together.

Richard Bradley

Department of Archaeology, University of Reading

[e-mail]

Acknowledgements

I must thank the organisers for inviting to me to take part in such an interesting conference and Flemming Kaul and Joakim Goldhahn for discussing the ideas expressed in this paper. The illustrations are by Margaret Mathews.

References

Almgren, O. 1927. Hällristninger och kultbruk. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar 35.

Artelius, T. 1996. Långfärd och återkomst – skeppet i bronsålderns gravar. Kungsbacka: Riksantikvarieämbetet.

Bengtsson, L. (ed.). 2002. Askum. Arkeologisk rapport 6 från Vitlyckemuseet. Vitlycke: Vitlyckemuseet.

– 2004. Bilder vid vatten. Gothenburg: Göteborgs Universitet, Arkeologiska institutionen.

Coles, J. 2000. Patterns in a rocky land. Rock carvings in southwest Uppland. Uppsala: Aun 27.

Fredell, Å. 2003. Bildbroar. Figurativ bildkommunikation av ideologi och kosmologi under sydskandanavisk bronsålder och förromersk järnålder. Göteborg: Gotarc.

Gelling, P. and Davidson, H. Ellis. 1969. The chariot of the sun. London: Dent.

Kaul, F. 1998. Ships on bronzes. A study in Bronze Age religion and iconography. Copenhagen: National Museum.

Kristiansen, K. 2004. Institutioner og material kultur. Tvillingherskerne som religion og politisk institution under bronsealderen. In A. Andrén, K. Jennbert and C. Raudvere (eds) Ordning mot kaos – studier av nordisk förkristen kosmologi. Vägar till Midgård 4. 99–122. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.

Larsson, T. 1997. Materiell kultur och religiösa symboler. Umeå: Institutionen för arkeologi, Umeå universitet.

Ling, J. 2004. Beyond transgressive lands and forgotten seas. Towards a maritime understanding of rock art in Bohuslän, Current Swedish Archaeology 12:121–40.

Malmer, M. 1981. A chorological study of north European rock art. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Mandt, G. 1983. Tradition and diffusion in west Norwegian rock art. Mjeltehaugen revisited, Norwegian Archaeological Review 16.1:14–32.

Randsborg, K. 1993. Kivik. Archaeology and iconography, Acta Archaeologica 64.1:1–147.

Narrative worlds, human environments, and poets

The case of Bragi

John Lindow

Anyone who approaches the mythology so spectacularly maintained in the context of medieval Icelandic writing must account for the existence of the presumably historical poet Bragi and the apparent god of poetry with the same name. The one was active in mid- or late ninth-century Norway and left what are said to be the oldest fragments of skaldic poetry; the other acts in the world of the gods.

The historical poet and the apparent god meet in two famous poems from the tenth century. The anonymous Eiríksmál (stanza 3) and Hákonarmál, attributed to Eyvindr Finnsson (stanza 14), both place Bragi in Valhöll, awaiting with Óðinn the arrival of the human kings Eiríkr blóðøx and Hákon inn góði Aðalsteinsfóstri and their retinues. This circumstance – immediate entry of heroes after death into Valhöll – makes it seem likely that the poets thought of Bragi as having entered Valhöll under the same circumstance, and the presence of the legendary heroes Sigmundr and Sinfjötli in Eiríksmál only increases the likelihood of this scenario. Mention of Hermóðr in Hákonarmál need not decrease the likelihood of the possibility; even putting aside the fact that the main redaction of Snorra Edda calls Hermóðr sveinn Óðins, rather than sonr Óðins, a reading I have explored elsewhere (Lindow 1997:103–06), we would expect gods as well as einherjar in Valhöll anyway. The Bragi who chats with Óðinn and awaits the arrival of new einherjar to Valhöll is surely first the historical poet, himself elevated to Valhöll, a notion about which I think there has been a fair amount of unanimity since Sigurður Nordal’s brief treatment (1942:236–37; cf. also bei der Wieden 1961). Reading through the debate about Bragi between Eugen Mogk (1887, 1889) and Sophus Bugge (1888) carried out well more than a century ago one sees that for them the contested texts were not Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál but Lokasenna and the issue was in the end einheri versus áss.

Today we would probably regard that distinction as unimportant, if not unrecoverable. What we can say is that Bragi, like the einherjar Sigmundr and Sinfjötli but unlike Óðinn and Þórr, was never the object of cult. Ásgarðr and Valhöll were in fact full of residents who exercised only a mythological function, alongside residents who figured in cult as well, and one way to capture that distinction might be to call the former einherjar. What we would call the latter, that is, deities for whom we can with some kind of confidence postulate a cult, is more problematic, since the category of æsir in Old Icelandic demonstrably contains figures for whom no cult can be postulated. Perhaps that is why we have Bragi the historical poet and Bragi the áss. Perhaps the class of æsir was larger than the class of goð?

Here the famous words of Jordanes about the anses in his Getica (De origine actibusque Getarum) are of interest. In Book XIII he wrote that the Goths called the leaders who had preceded them not mere men, but demi-gods, that is, Ancis. If Jordanes was not excusing his ancestors’ paganism, or attributing Roman customs of apotheosis to his ancestors, the passage suggests that Bragi’s elevation to Valhöll was in keeping with a belief that had left traces within another Germanic people in the mid-sixth century. It may even suggest, purely within the semantic realm, that anses/æsir were not strictly gods but also included demi-gods; that is, former nobles elevated to equality with the gods.

To draw together these threads: the evidence of, especially, Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál suggests elevation of humans to equality with deities, perhaps under the term æsir (recall that according to Snorri in Gylfaginning Loki was also numbered among the æsir). In the second half of the tenth century, at least, arguments were mounted to the effect that such elevation occurred immediately upon death, and that Valhöll was peopled by Migration Period heroes, an early Viking Age poet, and contemporary kings and their men. The remark of Jordanes, as well as a similar but obviously much later remark by Adam of Bremen, allow us to take the evidence of these two poems as more than a literary conceit. So too, I think, may be the curiosity about the afterlife of heroes like Starkaðr and Sigurðr as evidenced in texts like Þorsteins Þáttr skelks. The great heroes lived on somehow.

In his recent dissertation, Andreas Nordberg (2003) draws attention to the parallel between the human environment of the chieftain’s hall and the narrative world of the mythology, in which Óðinn and his einherjar live an imagined life similar to that of the chieftain and his retainers in the earthly hall. The social context of the myths concerning Valhöll is the comitatus, an institution which can, I have argued, be traced through historical semantics back to what Tacitus tells us about it and forward to the Middle Ages (Lindow 1976). Three years before Nordberg’s dissertation was published, Kris Kershaw (2000) had set the einherjar in the context of ecstatic Germanic and Indo-European warrior cults, in which human warriors dedicate themselves ritually to a warrior god who in the Germanic context is Óðinn. Both Nordberg and Kershaw operate with a fairly undifferentiated group of retainers; that is, the primary notion is one like that described by Tacitus for the comitatus: one leader, many followers, without too much formal distinction among the followers.

In Eiríksmál, Óðinn directly addresses first Bragi (stanza 3) and then Sigmundr and Sinfjötli (stanza 5). This conflation would appear to put Bragi in the same category as Sigmundr and Sinfjötli; that is, presumably, the category of einherjar. However, there may be indications of a difference in status. Sigmundr and Sinfjötli do not reply to Óðinn; indeed, they never address him in the poem. Their only dialogue is with Eiríkr (stanzas 8–9). Bragi, on the other hand, talks directly with Óðinn, and much of the poem appears to be a dialogue between Óðinn and Bragi. To put it another way: Sigmundr and Sinfjötli play the role of servants dispatched to see who is at the door, whereas Bragi is a kind of counsellor and familiar – the hirðskáld.

Scholars have accounted for the elevation of Bragi – I would call it apotheosis but for his apparent status as a demi-god – by virtue of his being the first skald; indeed, some have argued that Bragi invented the dróttkvætt form, and presumably also the drápa, and that this contributed to his elevation. Other than to note that, without other evidence, this argument is circular, I cannot treat this issue here. I would, however, like to discuss other evidence about Bragi, some of which has links to recent folklore.

My starting point is the idea that only chieftains or, in the Scandinavian context, great warriors, get promoted to Valhöll. What did Bragi ever do that was heroic?

To be sure, there is a little story in Landnámabók, Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka and Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns in which he predicts, in verse, the future success of the Hel-skins Hámundr and Geirmundr. They later joined the early settlers to Iceland, which connected Bragi to Icelandic history, as did the fact that there were settlers and their descendants who could reckon their kin from Bragi. But there is more.

About three quarters of the way through Skáldskaparmál, Snorri ended his discussion of kennings by treating the kennings for lords and their retainers. Thereafter he turned to the un-kenned vocabulary, that is, to poetic nouns that stand alone. The section begins with a pair of questions and answers, and the first quotations follow. These are embedded in a very brief narrative, which I will argue is relevant to Bragi’s status in the narrative world of the mythology.

The section begins by asking how one makes poetry without kennings. The answer is by calling each thing by its own name. The next question asks What are the un-kenned names of poetry? The answer includes five nouns: bragr and hróðr, óðr, mærð, lof.

A very brief narrative follows. It states that Bragi gamli was going through a certain forest during the evening. A troll challenged him in verse (stefjaði á hann). Two of the manuscripts that contain the story present the troll’s verse and specify that she is a troll-woman. The other two versions leave her sex and her verse unstated. In the interest of time I will discuss the more complete versions, with both verses. The troll’s stanza looked something like this.

Troll kalla mik

tungl sj trungnis,

auðsug j tuns,

élsólar b l,

vilsinn v lu,

v rð nafjarðar,

hvélsvelg himins –

hvat’s troll nema þat? [Finnur Jónsson 1912–15, B1:172; cf. A1:182]

They call me a troll,

moon of the earth-Hrungnir [?],

wealth-sucker [?] of the giant,

destroyer of the storm-sun [?]

beloved follower of the seeress,

guardian of the nafjord [?]

swallower of the wheel of heaven [the sun].

What’s a troll if not that?

Hann svarar.

Sk ld kalla mik:

skipsmið Viðurs,

Gauts gjafr tuð,

grepp óhneppan,

Yggs lbera,

óðs skap-Móða,

hagsmið bragar.

Hvat er skald nema þat? [Finnur Jónsson 1912–15, B1:5; cf. A1:5]

Skalds call me:

the ship-smith [?] of Viður,

recipient of Gautr’s gift

profligate poet,

bearer of Yggr’s ale,

the mind-Móði of poetry,

skilled smith of verse.

There are generic variations, of course, but in Old Scandinavian literature in general the trolls (I will use the term for all the supernatural beings) live away from human habitation and hence are not usually seen. They have grotesque form – some of the descriptions in the fornaldarsögur especially are quite remarkable – and their interactions with humans are always tinged with danger. I am wholly convinced that more recent folk beliefs, as they can be extrapolated from recordings from the seventeenth century onwards in Scandinavia, describe the situation as it must have been in medieval Iceland, the homeland of our textual tradition.

In GkS 2367 4to, which is taken for the main manuscript, the troll is explicitly female (she may also have been female in DG 11 4to, but there her sex is not indicated). Her being female definitely makes a difference. Within the mythology, and probably also within medieval Icelandic literature as a whole, females were coded as disruptive and asocial if in the public arena. Þórr spent as much time killing female as male giants, and many of the most interesting trolls of the fornaldarsögur (set at roughly the same time as this event would be imagined to have taken place, and outside of Iceland, as here), were female.

In the world of the mythology, which occupies so much of Snorri’s attention in his Edda, the relationship between æsir and jötnar, conventionally translated as gods and giants, is similar. The gods stand for humans, and the giants for the trolls. The gods live near the center, and the giants are confined to the periphery: Gylfaginning states specifically that the giants were given places to live near the sea, that is, toward the outside of the orb of the earth, and Þórr is frequently off fighting giants in the distant the east. Always a journey is required to the realm of the giants. Like trolls, some giants in the mythology have fabulous strength, and some control what we might term magic. The so-called giants are not larger than the gods, for the two duel and intermarry.

What is at stake?

I begin with the elusive details of the encounter. It was late at night, and presumably therefore dark: although the verb aka can be used either of a wagon or a sledge, summer was the least favorable season for travel because of the mud. We can surmise that this forest was somewhere in Norway, given what we know of Bragi’s life.

As the by now classic work on memorates by Honko (1964) and others has taught us, dark woods are likely places to meet trolls, and people continued to encounter trolls in the Norwegian forests for centuries after Bragi met his. The troll challenges him, asking ultimately for his identity. This troll’s challenge, however, contains a pun. The expression used before the demand that Bragi identify himself is stefjaði á hann. The verb stefja has two meanings. One is prevent, get in the way of, and that would certainly fit the context, although if that is what Snorri had in mind we might expect the preposition (á) to be omitted. The second meaning is to compose verse. It is drawn on the word stef, which is the refrain in the drápa, the most complex form of skaldic poem. This troll, then, in his woodsy domain, appears to have challenged Bragi, the very first skald, in verse. Although the verse itself is omitted in U, it is present in R, and we will consider it shortly in some detail.

In more recent folklore, a human challenged like this by a troll might be taken into the mountain, or beaten senseless, or driven mad. In other words, there is a real danger here. But in many of the narratives of more recent folklore, the hero is able to extricate himself, sometimes by treating the troll politely, more often by outwitting him. Sometimes this outwitting is verbal, and that accords with Bragi’s response. We must assume that a poetic danger accompanies the physical danger.

The troll-woman’s verse

As the numerous question marks I have used in my translation indicate, this verse is difficult to understand. However, certain things are clear from the start. Unlike nearly every other poetic troll in medieval Scandinavian tradition, this one uses a skaldic meter. She has carefully counted four syllables into each line (in the last line, nema resolves into a single syllable). Her alliterations are consistently at the beginnings of lines, and she has added a second alliterating syllable to lines 3, 5 and 7. She has managed a full rhyme in line 2 and half-rhymes in lines 1, 4, 5, and 6. Semantically the verse is well balanced: I’m a troll, she begins, and what’s that if not a troll, she ends.

The first line of the troll-woman’s response is ambiguous: trolls call me or they call me a troll, or even a peremptory call me a troll. Any of these will do, and ambiguities are common in skaldic poetry and were clearly cherished. If we take the reading trolls call me, along with skalds call me for Bragi’s verse, we can invoke the notion of different poetic languages among the various mythological races, which is precisely the conceit of the Eddic poem Alvíssmál. Ernst

Albin Kock (1923–44:§1095) objected to this reading on the basis that kennings belong to skalds and not trolls, but in my view this verse exchange is about precisely that issue. More problematic for the notion of different languages is that it is difficult to discern differences in the kennings in the two verses of the sort that would suggest alternative dictions. I will take up reading the opening line again in connection with Bragi’s verse.

Lines 2–7 constitute a string of kennings, all of which must mean troll. All are difficult.

Line 2. The manuscript has tungl sjötrungnis. Finnur Jónsson suggested emendation to tungl sjöthungnis, moon of the earth-Hrungnir" but admitted that the sense escaped him. Kock proposed adding two additional emendations, to tungls sjöthnungni (acc. of sjöthrnungir) "earth-Hrungnir [troll, destroyer] of the moon.

Line 3. The manuscript has auðsug jötuns rich something of the giant. Finnur Jónsson suggested reading the kenning as auðsúgr wealth-sucker, but he could not explain what a wealth-sucker of the giant might be. Clunies Ross (forthcoming) suggests possible allusion to the kenning type mouthul of giants for gold. Kock emended to auðsúð wealth-ship and offered a few parallel woman kennings with this form.

Line 4. The compound storm-sun is unclear. Kock suggested emendation to élsalar to create the kenning bale of the storm-hall [heaven], a reference to the role of the trolls in destroying the universe at Ragnarök.

Line 5. Based on a line from another skald (Gísli Súrsson), Finnur Jónsson glossed the first word as hard work (1931:625 s.v. vílsiðr). He admitted the difficulty of understanding a kenning hard work of the seeress as giantess and tossed off the idea beloved companion of the seeress. Kock accepted that idea.

Line 6. Finnur Jónsson (1931:s.v. nafj rð) suggested reading ná-fjarðar, yielding a possible troll-kenning guard of the corpse-fjord [grave].

Line 7. The manuscript reading hvélsvelg himins (wheelswallower of heaven, that is, swallower of the wheel of heaven) produces a reasonable troll kenning, for at Ragnarök a wolf swallows the sun.

Thus the only clear kenning refers to the cosmic destruction of the trolls, and the various surmises adduced above suggest that in her other kennings the troll identified herself in similar ways and may also have associated herself with death. Thus this troll, who I am quite sure is meant to be imagined in the mountains in Norway, has challenged the human Bragi with a reference to the cosmic destruction that her mythic siblings will enact. Here the trolls of life have crossed over into the realm of the giants of mythology.

Bragi’s verse

Bragi’s response is the performance of a single verse, responding directly in its semantics, changing only troll to skald, directly in lines 1 and 8 and as the referents to the kennings in the other lines. He uses the same four-syllable line, placing his alliterations more or less as the troll placed hers: consistently at the beginnings of lines, optionally on the second lift in lines 3 and 5 but not 7. He has, however, used more rhymes, specifically full rhymes in lines 2, 4, 6, and 7.

When challenged by a supernatural being who specifically identifies herself as a troll, with references to cosmic destruction, Bragi performs a verse identifying himself not as a human – the ordinary opposite to trolls – but as a poet. His first line echoes her, with the same ambiguity, but with an added twist. If Bragi was the very first skald, there were no others to call him the kennings that follow. The readings they call me a skald or call me a skald thus seem preferable to Finnur Jónsson’s skalds call me, which requires an emendation to the plural form sk ld.

In this verse, he asks to be addressed as a skald or says that people call him a skald, and he then proceeds to list a number of kennings for a poet. This verse is not as difficult as the troll’s, and it also appears in DG 11 4to, so there are useful alternate readings. I will quickly unpack the kennings.

Line 2. Viðurr is Óðinn, who acquired the mead of poetry. The kenning ship-smith is unclear; Finnur Jónsson (1931:507 s.v. skipsmiðr) later suggested emendation to skapsmið[r] creating smith.

Line 3. Gautr too is an Óðinn name, and poetry was his gift to gods and men. He stole it from the giants.

Line 4. Bragi is an unrestrained skald. Poetry is power. It is dangerous, especially if unchecked. We can read this line as a threat to the troll woman.

Line 5. Yggr is an Óðinn name, ale the poetry which he took from the giants when it was in the form of mead.

Line 6. Móði was a son of Þórr, but here the name is a kenning base word. A skap-Móði of poetry would be a poet who shaped or formed things.

Line 7. Bragi is a skilled smith of verse.

To counter the troll-woman’s references to the destruction that her mythic peers will cause and her likely connection with death, Bragi stresses his connection with Óðinn, who was able to steal the mead of the poetry, and hence the means of encoding information and access to the past – from the very giants about whom the troll woman has boasted. Where she mentions death, he counters with his craftsmanship, the ability to fashion artifacts in the language that belongs ultimately to him and to men, not to trolls.

Bo Almqvist subjected this story to some keen analysis in the first volume of his study of níð (Almqvist 1962) and made two important points. The first was that the story shows similarities to stories of kraftaskáld, powerful skalds whose semi-ecstatic performances lived on in Icelandic oral tradition down into recent times. Bragi thus encapsulates in this story the power of agonistic poetry, a power that lived on in the world view of the Icelanders. Given the parallels in Kalevala poetry, we may well be looking here at a regional constant, as Thomas DuBois suggested in his 1999 study.

Almqvist’s second point was to draw the little story into the realm of later Nordic legend, as I have done above. Under the terms of the field of folklore, the story certainly does qualify as a legend. It thus evinces a continuity in world view from the thirteenth century down to the nineteenth century and later: the woods were dangerous, trolls might attack, and quick-witted heroes would overcome trolls.

However, what we have here is more than just the story of an encounter between a man and a troll in the Norwegian woods long ago, one in which we can surmise that the quick-witted hero saved himself from a troll by getting in the last word, as human heroes continued to do in folktales from throughout Europe. This is so because Bragi was the first skald. There was therefore something cosmic about this encounter, as, especially, the troll’s kennings indicate. I would propose to read it as a true and important challenge to Bragi’s supremacy as poet, as a duel between an alternative poetry, a poetry of the supernatural beings, and a poetry of gods and men, and specifically, too, as a struggle for ownership of one poetic genre, the so-called lausavísur or occasional stanzas. Like the troll woman’s verse, these are not part of some longer poem, and they relate to a specific situation. This is Bragi’s heroic act.

What I am suggesting is this. Bragi’s fame, and his elevation to deity, must rest on his primacy in the form of dróttkvætt and the drápa (the skaldic court form and the elaborate praise poem). These are social – and socialized – forms. Men compose and perform them in the context of chieftain’s retinues.

They were the office work of the verbally gifted. But away from the chieftain, away from the chieftain’s retinue, away from the burning torches within the hall (golden swords that illuminated everything in Snorri’s presentation of Ásgarðr at the beginning of Skáldskaparmál), away from the ritual (if beery) exchanges of gifts, of shields and poems, there was another world. It was the world of the forest, the world of darkness, the world where one’s connections didn’t count for much. This was the world of the trolls, and it was here that the female troll and Bragi fought it out for the realm of the occasional verse. First the troll: she is out at night in what we might call her garden, and an interloper happens by. She doesn’t just ask who goes there, she offers eight lines of syllable-counted, alliterating verse, saying just who she is and asking who goes there. Bragi’s answer can be seen as so much more than a mere exchange in the woods, one that saves his own skin as he one-ups the troll at her own game. For all we know, she had prepared her verse and was just waiting for some human to happen by. Bragi, on the other hand, must really come up with an occasional verse. This he does, in the metre the troll-woman herself used. He rescues occasional verse for humans and changes the course of literary history. He even manages full rhymes, where the troll only used half rhymes.

And so trolls do not have much to say in skaldic verse. In the fornaldarsögur, where they are principal characters, they are hardly invisible or inaudible as poets, but their form is eddic fornyrðislag – that is to say, they do not count their syllables, and they care nothing for rhymes. This they share with their human counterparts in the fornaldarsögur. When it comes to dróttkvætt, however, the highest form of skaldic poetry and the one that came to be used for occasional stanzas as well as for elaborate poems (perhaps to avoid the troll form of the four-syllable line?), the trolls are all but silent.

Bragi Boddason the Old was a charged figure everywhere he appears in Old Icelandic literature, because he had been placed in Valhöll as early as by Viking Age poets and had clearly been understood as an áss, and therefore a god within the old mythological system, by medieval Icelanders. When he encounters a troll it is therefore no trifling matter. If he is the historical Bragi, his life is at risk. If he is Bragi the áss, he is performing the mythological function of all the gods, namely to do battle with the forces of chaos, with trolls and giants. Bragi’s weapon, in either case, is verse. In the simple human reading of the story, he rescues himself with verse. In the full-blown mythological version, he rescues occasional verse for men and gods from the trolls, from chaos, from the disruptive female function. He gives it to humans, creates it for them, and it is a dead end for the trolls. He is a hero, but one who fought with words, not weapons. This little story could have been used to justify Bragi’s promotion from earth in life to Valhöll in the afterlife. If not, it must still be read as his contribution to the mythic struggle between gods and giants. Either way, it provides a link that unites world view and cosmology running over almost two millennia.

John Lindow

Department of Scandinavian,

University of California, Berkeley

[e-mail]

References

Almqvist, B. 1962. Norrön niddiktning. Traditionshistoriska studier i versmagi. Vol. I: Nid mot furstar. Nordiska texter och undersökningar 21. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Bugge, S. 1888. Der gott Bragi in den norrönen Gedichten, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 13:187–201.

Clunies Ross, M. Forthcoming. An Exchange of verses between Bragi and a troll woman. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: An international project to edit the corpus of medieval skaldic poetry. See http://skaldic.arts.usyd.edu.au.

DuBois, T. A. 1999. Nordic religions in the Viking Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Finnur Jónsson. 1912–15. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. 4 vols. København/Kristiania: Gyldendal/Nordisk forlag. – 1931. Lexicon Poeticum Antiquæ Linguæ Septentrionalis. Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog. 2nd ed. København: S. L. Møller.

Honko, L. 1964. Memorates and the study of folk belief, Journal of the Folklore Institute 1:5–19.

Kershaw, K. 2000. The one-eyed god. Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Männerbünde, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Monograph 36. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, Inc.

Kock, E. A. 1923–44. Notationes Norroenæ. Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift, N.F., avd. 1, various numbers.

Lindow, J. 1976. Comitatus, individual and honor. Studies in North Germanic institutional vocabulary. University of California Publications in Linguistics 83. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

– 1997. Death and vengeance among the gods. Baldr in Scandinavian mythology. FF Communications 262. Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia.

Mogk, E. 1887. Bragi als Gott und Dichter, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 12:383–92.

– 1889. Bragi. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 14:81–90.

Nordberg, A. 2003. Krigarna i Odins sal. Dödsföreställingar och krigarkult i fornnordisk religion. Diss. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet.

Sigurður Nordal. 1942. Íslenzk menning. Reykjavík: Mál og menning.

Wieden, H. bei der. 1961. Bragi, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 80:83–86.

Centrality in Old Norse mental landscapes

A dialogue between arranged and natural places?

Charlotte Fabech

The millennium from the birth of Christ to the conversion of Scandinavia is a long period of transition, when the prehistoric social forms disappeared and many elements that we traditionally look upon as medieval have their roots. The economic and political changes are paralleled by centralisation and differentiation in the settlement pattern. From large farms to central places with elite residences, development proceeds to the formation of early towns and demesnes.

In South Scandinavia this development is also reflected in religious practice. Sacred sites at bogs and lakes with thousand-year continuity are deserted in the middle of the millennium, more or less in the same period as elite residences with assembly halls and cult buildings appear as part of the central place complexes. To put it very simply, the development could be described as a shift of sacred sites from natural places to arranged places. I have suggested that the changing offering practice during the fifth and sixth centuries reflects how the cult leaders, local magnates or kings, were able to move religious ceremonies into their residence (Fabech 1991, 1999a).

My interpretation of a shift in the localisation of ritual in the landscape has caused a lively discussion, focusing on the question whether offerings in wet ground ceased around 600 AD (cf. Vikstrand 2001:21ff; Andrén 2002:303ff). Such debates are troublesome but also necessary, if we wish to proceed in understanding past Nordic religious practice. One is forced to reconsider one’s position. In my contribution I will present thoughts and ideas about some sites and artefacts that we know were significant symbols of power, law and religion. Limited space does not allow me to develop and support my ideas, thus the paper is an introductory presentation. A broader discussion will take place as part of the project Mellan svear och daner. Om samhällens förändring i perioden 200 till 700 e.Kr. (Between Svear and Danes. On societal change between 200 and 700 AD), funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Offerings and cult – a simplification

Normally, only two categories of religious practice are used in archaeology – sacrifices to classify objects found in circumstances that seem to exclude a profane explanation, typically in wet ground, and religious cult when unexplainable activities took place on dry ground. When characterising the sites involved, the focus has been on wet or liminal areas on the one hand and dry ground or central settlements on the other.

In pre-Christian Scandinavian societies religion and profane life were interlaced and virtually impossible to separate from one another. Political and religious power were inseparable (cf. Bradley 2005). Consequently, it is often very difficult to distinguish between finds with a profane or a sacred background. Most of us know this. It is nevertheless surprising that we archaeologists are so imprecise when classifying finds of religious significance; most of them are simply labelled sacrifice. To put the label sacrifice on various religious depositions is to simplify the often very complex religious acts, a chain of events (Näsström 2004). The sacrifice of an animal, for example, started long before the slaughter, when the animal was chosen and captured. Then the selected animal was perhaps adorned and dedicated to the gods. Slaughter followed – the proper sacrifice – and the body was quartered, the meat prepared for a ritual meal, the hide and cut-off parts like the skull could have been put on stakes, and eventually the bones remaining after the meal were deposited in a proper place. We have to consider this whole process and thus the biography of our find (Kopytoff 1986). We must not base our interpretation only on the final result, that is, the archaeological record. We must, for example, see the animal bones not primarily as an offering but perhaps as a deposition of matter too loaded to be thrown among the daily household refuse.

We must also be more careful and not apply the concept of cult site to all places where religion was practised. In reality we have to expect a broad spectrum of sites associated with religious beliefs, for example sites that were important in the mythical history of society; sites used for sacrifices to the gods; sites considered as gateways to the spiritual world; sites where people could communicate with ancestors; sites of initiation rituals, etc. etc. Some sites were public; other sites were reserved for the few. The sites varied considerably in size and location. Some places were natural places (cf. Bradley 2000) and are often found at conspicuous cliffs, or at boulders, lakes and bogs, watercourses, springs and wells, in caves, at trees and groves, on hills etc. Other sites are connected to the settled areas with halls, cult houses, altars as well as graves, enclosures, pathways, springs and wells, landing sites, fields and meadows, etc.

When finds made at such different sites all are considered to be the result of sacrifices and the same ritual practice, we cannot see nor understand important differences. If we wish to understand differences and similarities of religious practice in time and space, we have to observe the characteristics of religious sites and finds closely. In my opinion, it is important to differentiate between constructed and natural holy sites.

Central places with hall buildings and cult houses

The archaeological concept of central place stands here for settlements with rich and varied find material. It covers sites that fulfilled various functions – they are complex, multifunctional and not punctual (Näsman 1991; Brink 1996). A central place seems to include both a proper centre and several constituent satellite settlements. Besides the magnate’s residence with hall and production areas, we find agrarian hamlets with ordinary farmhouses, cult-building/shrine, sacrificial sites, sacred trees, a thing site, cemeteries, and trading-places. It is characteristic that the settlements are found scattered in a landscape that was divided up naturally by wet areas, forests, hills and ridges. This means that the central place organises and constructs a surrounding ideal landscape, perhaps as it has been suggested as an image of the Nordic cosmological world (Hedeager 2002; Sundqvist 2004).

Our knowledge of central places is the result of the last 20 years of archaeology, which have radically changed our view of the first millennium. The central places gave us an understanding of the significance of the hall as the centre of the ideal life, with ceremonies, ritual meals, gift giving, etc. (Herschend 1993, 1998). But the hov or harg as described in the sagas have until recently been ruled out as fiction, described by authors under Christian influence (Olsen 1995).

Harg (Old Norse h rgr) means heap of stones or sanctuary and hov (Old Norse hof) means an elevation or a farmstead or building with gods (Vikstrand 2001:207ff, 253ff). The classic site is Hófstaðir where Þorólfr, according to Eyrbyggja saga, built a hov, a large building with a door near one end. Inside stood the high seat posts. At the far end of the hall, an annexe was found, similar to the chancel of a church, and in the middle of the floor, a socle was placed, resembling an altar. On the socle lay a penannular ring on which oaths were sworn, and in all assemblies the goði of the hov had to wear it on his arm. On the socle was also a blót bowl and in it a whisk to splash blood, the blood of the living creatures sacrificed as a gift to the gods. Behind the altar stood idols. The goði was himself responsible for the blót sacrifices and the maintenance of the hov building.

Recent excavations have however demonstrated that the information in the sagas relates to reality. An example of a hov has been excavated at Tissø in Zealand, the site where the largest gold neck-ring of Viking Denmark was found. A settlement has been excavated including a magnate’s residence with hall, cult house, stables, stores, and workshops. The finds cover the period 600–900 AD. Many metal objects, a rich assemblage of animal bone, silver hoards etc. were found (Jørgensen 2002). Similar contexts have been uncovered at Järrestad and Uppåkra in Scania (Söderberg 2005; Larsson and Lenntorp 2005). At Borg in Östergötland, a site that existed from c. 600 AD till the Middle Ages has been excavated. The sensation of the site was a cult house in a paved courtyard, and here 98 amulet rings and 75 kg of unburnt animal bone were found. In the house itself another two amulet rings were found and at its east wall the remains of a socle of flat stones – identified as a harg. In the eleventh century the cult house