Kaman / Pápes Viking Goddesses

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-9990366-3-8
Verlag: Lokay
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 285 Seiten

Reihe: Forbidden Knowledge

Viking Goddesses, the second edition of the first volume of the 'Forbidden Knowledge' series, offers a captivating exploration of Norse mythology, with a focus on powerful women. Part I introduces the enigmatic Völur, and through the tales of Freyja, Gullveig, and Menglöð, readers are transported to a world where goddesses wield immense influence.
Then the book delves into the age of the Nornir, weavers of fate, and introduces readers to Valkyries, mistresses of death, and swan maidens. Finally, we meet the revered Dísir. Part II examines the transition of divine women into earthly affairs, revealing intriguing changes within Norse society. Lastly, the book provides valuable appendices for those eager to discover more about Norse language and literature. With over 60 illustrations enriching the narrative, 'Viking Goddesses' offers an engaging journey into the captivating realm of Norse mythology and the enduring legacy of its female figures.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaman, E.

Pápes, Éva

Weitere Mitwirkende

Lokay, Eva

Maltese, Rachel

Leseproben

The Eddas

Two of literary works are collectively known as Edda, the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda. Given that both titles feature the word edda, one might assume the two volumes to offer the same general content, one in verse and the other in prose form, though as we will see later, nothing could be farther from the truth.

2. Detail of folio 1v of manuscript DG 11 4to

Before looking at their content, however, it is worth recounting the long and complicated story of how the Eddas came to have the names they bear today and analyzing the similarities and differences between them. The author of the Prose Edda is known: Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), an Icelandic poet and historian, who penned the volume he called Edda sometime around the year 1220.

The source for this information is the first page of the Codex Uppsaliensis, (Illustration 2) which offers the following identification:

Bók þessi heitir Edda. Hana hefir saman setta Snorri Sturluson eptir þeim hætti sem hér er skipat. Er fyrst frá ásum ok Ymi, þar næst skáldskapar mál ok heiti margra hluta. Síðast Háttatal er Snorri hefir ort um Hákon konung ok Skúla hertuga.3

This book is called Edda. It was compiled by Snorri Sturluson, as follows: first [it tells] about the Æsir4 and Ymir, followed by a section on poetry and the names of many things. Finally [comes] the Háttatal, written by Snorri himself regarding King Hákon and Duke Skúli.

Snorri planned his Edda as a textbook, one that would familiarize readers with the various elements of Icelandic poetry to support them in their reading and interpretation of skaldic literature. To accomplish this, Snorri quoted vast swaths of verse, many of them taken from previously circulated skaldic works, but also including passages, origins of which were unknown even to Snorri’s contemporaries.

It came to be presumed, therefore, that Snorri had had one or more sources available to him that had since been lost. In particular, it was assumed that Snorri’s Edda, which was well-known in Iceland, must have had an antecedent, from which certain verses had been taken, hence the alternate titles for two Eddas: the Younger Edda for Snorri’s textbook, and the Elder Edda for the work presumed lost.

All this changed following the discovery of a volume scholars now refer to as the Konungsbók (better known by its Latin name, Codex Regius), a tome of poetry written or collected sometime between 1260 and 1280 by a person (or persons) whose identity has never come to light. The manuscript – which has no distinguishing title page and thus offers no name for itself – emerged from obscurity only in 1643, when it came into the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson, Bishop of Skálholt.

The Bishop presented the manuscript to the Danish king, whose ownership earned it its present title: the Konungsbók, or King’s Book. In this way, the volume came to reside in the Copenhagen royal library, where it remained until 1971, when it was ceremoniously returned to Iceland.

Though the Codex Regius was put to paper – or more properly, to vellum5 – later than Snorri’s Edda, the undated poems it preserves are presumed, based on their content, to be much older than the book itself. At the time it was written, Iceland had been a Christian land for over two centuries, a circumstance reflected in the prosaic commentary injected into the work in numerous places and the Christian influence felt behind many of its passages. The original poetry it contains, however, is easily recognizable for its style, content, and word usage.

The Konungsbók is the best-known and oldest manuscript to contain a portion of what is now known as the Poetic Edda, a volume that constitutes not a clearly defined, independent work, but a collection of individual poems.

Though there is no agreement as to which items the Poetic Edda should rightly include, most scholars, deferring to the material of the Konungsbók, have ascribed to it a total of ten songs pertaining to the gods and twenty poems recounting the deeds of mythical heroes. At the same time, other, later manuscripts include poems that, though not found in the Konungsbók, are nonetheless a natural fit for the Poetic Edda’s style and content. What is beyond question, however, is that all texts included in the work must take the form of poetry, rather than prose, in keeping with the volume’s title.

Originally, Bishop Sveinsson believed the Konungsbók to have been compiled by Icelandic priest and scholar Sæmundur Sigfússon and so referred to it as Sæmundar (Sæmund’s) Edda, a title that both distinguished it from Snorri’s work, and suggested a connection. By the time his error was discovered, the name had stuck. Later, the word Prose was appended to Snorri’s Edda, and the two works were set apart once and for all.

To summarize: the Elder Edda or Poetic Edda is a collection poems of unspecified number and unknown authorship, originally known as Sæmundar Edda; the Younger or ProseEdda is a later textbook authored by Snorri Sturluson i.e. SnorraEdda. Apart from their similar names, confusion between the two arises in that Snorri uses excerpts from the Poetic Edda in numerous parts of the Prose Edda as linguistic illustrations.

And so, with this tangential line of inquiry exhausted, we return to the question of content.

The 30 sagas and 7 þættir (short story) relating stories of ancient times ([Fornaldarsögur) cover episodes from the era prior to Iceland’s settlement. As this process commenced only around 870, these sagas probably refer to prior events in Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway) for purposes that by modern standards would be regarded as entertainment, rather than historical record.

Another 41 sagas and 49 þættir consist in Icelandic family histories (Íslendingasögur) and based on historical events occurring in Iceland in the 9th and 10th centuries. The authors of these sagas are unknown.

The word skáld or skald means poet. Individuals who earned this title lived and composed poetry in the royal courts of the territories of Scandinavia during the Viking Age. Skaldic literature deals with topics ranging from the pagan gods to the deeds of great men, the laudation of kings, and the exposition of historical events.

Such remnants of Old Norse literature as did come to be written down by Christian chroniclers a couple of hundreds of years later , it is clear, are not wholly identical to the body of tales passed down from one teller to the next prior to the region’s conversion to Christianity. Indeed, in conducting the research for this book, we experienced that the clerics and laymen who collected and recorded the sagas had frequently modified or adjusted the texts to suit their worldviews and religious beliefs, in some cases deliberately omitting events and facts deemed offensive to the Church or early medieval Christian perceptions.

Excluded from the telling were topics that would certainly have elicited more from the Church than a mere head shaking – that would likely have resulted in the manuscripts’ being banned or burned, and thus lost to future generations. Given the detail in which these stories had been preserved, such omissions left glaring gaps in the text that an astute reader or researcher would immediately mark as inconsistencies. Where other sources, records or references were available, the points at which the friars and copyists seem to have suffered sudden, universal “memory lapses” became all the more apparent.

Interestingly, more often than not, these sensitive topics related to woman, and in the vast majority of cases, the events that were omitted or rewritten were precisely those in which women appeared as either creators, or persons of power. Other blacked-out details included those that spoke of women as leaders, gurus, or community dignitaries, that offered original accounts of pagan sacrifice and initiation, or that described the techniques associated with pagan magical practices.

It is likely, moreover, that neither the descriptions of female characters one does find in the sagas, nor those of the events related to them represent factual documentation of the lives and times they purport to recount, but instead reflect the manner in which Christian male chroniclers viewed women at the...