Influences of Pre-Christian Mythology and Christianity on Old Norse Poetry

A Narrative Study of Vafþrúðnismál

Andrew McGillivray

• Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110625387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire européenne

The Eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál serves as a representation of early pagan beliefs or myths and as a myth itself; the poem performs both of these functions, acting as a poetic framework and functioning as sacred myth. In this study, the author looks closely at the journey of the Norse god Óðinn to the hall of the ancient and wise giant Vafþrúðnir, where Óðinn craftily engages his adversary in a life-or-death contest in knowledge.

Chapter One

Vafþrúðnir Who?

VAFÞRÚÐNIR IS A GIANT, or more precisely a jötunn (plural: jötnar). He is a mythological character who is an opponent of Óðinn, an Old Norse god or áss (plural: æsir), in the poem called, in English, “Vafþrúðnir’s Sayings.” This book is an analysis which focuses on the poem’s pre-Christian and Christian influences, especially looking at layers of time or temporality in the poem itself and in context with comparative literary sources from the medieval period. The comparative sources are most often mythological texts and other eddic poems.

The oldest version of the poem Vafþrúðnismál (Vm) survives in a vellum manuscript from ca. 1270, but the poem has older roots in the oral culture of medieval Iceland. The poem has a long and rich transmission history, extending both back in time to the pre-literate age before its appearance in vellum and forward to its representation in modern editions and translations of eddic poetry in the twenty-first century. Besides its place in the Codex Regius manuscript of eddic poetry (GKS 2365 4°; R) and the fragmentary version found in AM 748 I a 4° (A), the poem was also incorporated into manuscripts of Snorra Edda during the medieval period and is furthermore found in many paper manuscripts composed in late medieval and post-Reformation Iceland. Snorra Edda is an important work that draws from eddic poetry, and largely from Vm, for its content and for that matter many quotations from eddic poems are found in it. It comprises four sections, the Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál, and, at the end, the Háttatal, and it is attributed to Snorri Sturluson in the version found in the Codex Upsaliensis (DG 11 4°; U), a manuscript from ca. 1300.1 The two other principal vellum manuscripts containing Snorra Edda are the Codex Wormianus (AM 242 fol.; W) and the Codex Regius manuscript of Snorra Edda (GKS 2367 4°; R2).2 In order to interpret skaldic poetry, a thorough background in mythological knowledge was required, and as such Snorra Edda is a comprehensive work of Old Norse mythography.3 Along with eddic poems, Snorra Edda is an important work to consider when conducting an analysis of influences of pre-Christian mythology and Christianity on Old Norse poetry.

A study of Vm is thus interesting not only for an interpretation of the poem’s narrative frame and its contents, although that is the primary focus of this book, but also for keen observation on how the text has been treated by successive generations of receivers and interpreters during seven full centuries, beginning with manuscript composition and transmission in medieval Iceland, and then, after the emergence of print, the creation of print editions of eddic poetry in Scandinavia and on mainland Europe.4 As can be expected, there has been a great deal of reception and criticism of eddic poetry generally since the emergence of print editions, and Vm specifically. This study intends to place the poem in a narrative context that focuses on the poem and the mythological texts to which it is most closely related.

Introduction

Vm is always found among other narratives, alongside whole poems or as sayings or individual quotations within larger narratives. The placement of fragments of the poem within the text of Gylfaginning illustrates how the works of Old Norse mythology have been configured together into a narrative cycle from a very early stage, for in Gylfaginning there are a number of poetic fragments from individual eddic poems brought together for the purpose of presenting a seemingly coherent pre-Christian belief system, although the presentation of the text is not pre-Christian at all, nor is its ethos. This can be seen by looking at how Gylfaginning is framed within Snorra Edda, coming after the overtly Christian Prologue. Our modern understanding of Old Norse mythology relies on a very small number of texts, which, although providing a great deal of information, do not completely or accurately represent what the people may have believed in the pre-Christian era in Iceland and other parts of the Nordic area. The eddic poems are representations and reinterpretations of what may have been rehearsed, performed, and possibly believed by pagan people as the poems were transmitted orally. There are, however, reflections of some of these myths that can be found in Viking-Age sculpture such as rune stones where the myths are often depicted in their pre-Christian forms.5 The major focus here is on the potential factors that motivated the recording of these narratives into manuscripts in the thirteenth century in Iceland.

The literary study of a poem such as Vm can give rise to meaning on three levels: the literary level, wherein a formal literary interpretation explores the poem’s meaning; the historical level, wherein the poem’s contents and its meaning, which we learn from the first level, tell us something about the society or culture that preserved and transmitted the work; and the critical level, in the form of the ongoing debate about the meaning of the poem on both its literary and historical levels. The primary focus at present is on the literary level, as it is principally through the study of Vm and other medieval Icelandic sources that interpretations are made. The secondary aim is toward the historical level, in that through a comparative and contextual reading, some understanding of why Vm was composed and what the cosmic story recounted in the poem means in comparison to accounts in related source materials is explored. And finally, on the critical level, it is the aim of the work to incorporate significant critiques of Vm into the debate, and in the end to comment on important contributions by each to a study of the poem and how the present work adds to the critical chorus. As is developed below, this book analyzes the poem using a certain theoretical lens and argues for the applicability of the lens for the analysis of other eddic poems.

The study of literature is largely a subjective practice dependent on individual critiques that most often fit into larger interpretive frameworks or trends. With scrutiny, each reader of a text can achieve a measure of critical insight if they are both careful and thoughtful with interpretations, even if the interpretive method is incomplete.6 The freshness that is sought after results from the new perspective that a contemporary thinker can bring to a work. In order to accomplish this task, a number of terms require definition, and two such terms—myth and narrative—are primary to the present work and are addressed at the outset.

On the one hand, a myth is a story that is thought to have originally been religious in nature. The mythic story, moreover, is or was told by a cultural group for the purpose of explaining a natural or cosmic phenomenon, or to inculcate a social norm. Individual myths are often part of interconnected collections of similar stories, and these stories together are known as a culture’s mythology.7 Based on this definition Vm is considered a representation of a myth, for as a thirteenth-century text it may represent an archaic myth. The information that is revealed in the poem is thought to have religious origins in the pre-Christian belief system or systems of the Norse-language area, although the value of the poem as a window into past religious practice or belief is problematic. There are numerous explanations for natural and cosmic phenomena in the poem that are highly metaphoric in their quality, and the poem was indeed told by a cultural group, as can be demonstrated by its survival in a medieval Icelandic manuscript from the thirteenth century. Vm, finally, is one of a number of mythological eddic poems that have survived in what is known in English as The Poetic Edda, which, together with Snorra Edda, are the two most important sources for Old Norse mythology, although the exact contents of The Poetic Edda vary between editions, unless only considering the poems from R. As a representation of a myth the poem is thus also a part of a represented mythological system, or mythology. John Lindow argues that “a mythology is not just a corpus of narratives, but a system of related narratives with implicit cross-referencing. This system is therefore intertextual: all or most of it is latent in each part of it.”8 Some modern interpreters consider mythology to mean a collection of religious stories whose truth, while still believed in, is symbolic rather than literal.

A narrative, on the other hand, is a story, the telling of a story, or an account of a situation or an event.9 Therefore, Vm is also a narrative, in that it is a story of Óðinn going to visit Vafþrúðnir; it is also the telling of a story in eddic verse and an account of a situation or event, in this case Óðinn’s travels. The poem is thus both a representation of a myth and a narrative: a mythological narrative.10 Vm is by default a narrative, and as a narrative it is of the mythic variety.

Vm is not a suspenseful narrative. For the audience, there is little question of whether Óðinn will be the victor, as Óðinn is always the victor in wisdom contests. Heiðreks gátur (Hgát) and Hárbarðsljóð (Hrbl) come to mind, for example, as poems where Óðinn is victorious in wisdom contests over King Heiðrekr and Þórr, respectively. In their dialogue in Vm, Óðinn and Vafþrúðnir provide an extensive cosmological history and geography of the cosmos, beginning with its origins, leading to its downfall, and ending with its regeneration. At the forefront of the wisdom contest is the underlying theme of the division and struggle between the æsir and the jötnar that is in this instance played out head-to-head in the contest. Vafþrúðnir’s death takes place after the poem is finished, and although it does not occur within the action of the narrative the reader can assume that it does indeed take place, or else the grave tone of Vafþrúðnir’s defeat would not resound as deeply as it does. The excitement that does permeate the poem is in the irony of Vafþrúðnir’s defeat, as he thought himself to be in co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Vafþrúðnir Who?
• 2. Critical Contexts
• 3. At Home in Ásgarðr
• 4. The Guest Waits on the Floor
• 5. Sitting on the Giant’s Bench
• 6. The Odinic Attack
• 7. Looking to Alvíssmál
• 8. Closing Time
• Bibliography
• Index