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in his famous book from 2011, Religion in Human Evolution, Robert N. Bellah writes: ‘in archaic societies, complex chiefdoms, and the tribal societies […]
gods, powerful beings, ancestors, and humans exist on a continuum — there are no absolute breaks between these categories’ (202).1 This is not to say, of course, that an awareness of the opposition between sacred and profane did not exist: certain places, times, persons, and other beings were definitely seen as more ‘sacred’ than others (è25). it simply means that between this and the other World there was room for entities occupying intermediate stages: some were more, others less sacred, but there were ‘no absolute breaks’. since the pagan germanic societies in the first millennium ce, including those of scandinavia, must be considered complex chiefdoms, we should expect Bellah’s 1 The three categories of religions mentioned here can all be equated with the ‘primary religions’ of Jan asmann (2006). Concerning the relation between ‘powerful beings’ and ‘gods’, Bellah is never quite clear, but his main criterion for making the distinction (cf. Bellah 2011: 95–96) seems to be whether these other World beings are venerated or not. since the powerful beings are not as powerful as gods (at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition), they are not gods.
But gods in polytheistic systems are never as powerful as those in monotheistic religions. To us, the distinction here is a matter of a continuum with very powerful beings at the one end and much less powerful beings at the other.
John Lindow, Professor Emeritus of scandinavian, University of California, Berkeley Jens Peter Schjødt, Professor of the study of Religion, aarhus University The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures, Volume ii, ed. by Jens Peter schjødt, John lindow, and anders andrén, PCRN-HS 2 (Turn hout: Brepols, 2020) pp. 951–987
BREPols
PUBlisHERs
10.1484/M.PCRN-EB.5.116963
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characteristic to fit these — and they do.2 Because of the source situation, it is not always easy to see this because the Christian authors of many of the sources had an implicit and Christian notion about religion that involved exactly such an absolute break, as was known within Christianity; so when intermediate categories of beings were found, they were seen as proof of the inferiority of paganism, notwithstanding a whole hierarchy of saints within the Church itself. Thus snorri, in the prologue to his Edda, identifies the scandinavian gods as human heroes of Trojan origin, which fits well with his euhemeristic framework. likewise, adam of Bremen states in his Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (4.26), with strong condemnation, that the swedes made humans into gods, as was the case with King Eiríkr. This lack of an absolute break was regarded as typical of paganism, and many scholars have seen this blurring of categories as stemming exclusively from the euhemeristic model.
However, sources of all kinds, including those which do not have an anti-pagan agenda, support Bellah’s view: that there was indeed no absolute break between gods and humans,3 or rather that there was a number of categories of beings who can be seen as intermediate in the sense that they embody some degree of
‘supernaturalness’, but without being on par with gods such as Óðinn or Þórr.
But even the relation between the ‘real’ gods and ordinary humans was clearly not regarded in the same way in germanic paganism as it was in Christianity.
Whereas in the latter, god is eternal and almighty while humans were subject to his will, in the pagan religion, humans were seen as sons of the gods (cf. below on Tacitus and Rígsþula). Moreover, the gods were in turn born from earlier generations of supernatural beings and were subject to death in Ragnarǫk (or earlier should they lose the apples of iðunn), and they certainly do not have the power to change the fate of the world. Thus, they are neither eternal nor almighty. furthermore, their interest in humans is much more selective than is the case within Christianity: here, god is interested in and knows about every single person, whereas the pagan gods interfere in the life of humans only insofar as they are venerated and asked to, or if they are for some reason hostile to certain individuals.
But even so, most of the scandinavian gods that we know by name will naturally fall into the category of ‘gods’ when viewed from a comparative per-2 see also simon Nygaard’s critical treatment of Bellah’s evolutionary typology and evaluation of the typology’s ultimately positive value for the study of PCRN (Nygaard 2014, 2015, 2016, forthcoming).
3 schorn (2013) shows that the semantic distinctions in poetry between the divine and the human are insignificant compared with the distinction between the living and the dead.
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spective, although they sometimes seem much less transcendent; and similarly most of the human figures we hear about in various sources are clearly ‘human’, although from a modern etic perspective they may possess certain numinous powers. as we saw from Bellah, however, there are at least two categories between ‘gods’ and ‘humans’: namely, so-called ‘powerful beings’ and ‘ancestors’. if we say that ‘powerful beings’ are ‘gods of a lesser degree’ (in relation to power) and ‘ancestors’ are ‘humans of a higher degree’ (in relation to power), then the distinction between these two categories becomes even more blurred.
and obviously some among ancestors would have greater power than others, such as, for instance, ancestors who earlier on were powerful kings (cf. fróði/
frotho; è23) or in other ways were more powerful than ordinary people. it seems, therefore, that we find no clear breaks at all on this whole continuum, so even if we must have categories in order to speak meaningfully about this long line of gradual shifts, we should not confuse models with reality: in the real world, humans may end up as ancestors4 and some ancestors may end up rather powerful, perhaps even gods.5 in this way, it is not only at the level of classification that we cannot distinguish clearly between the categories, but the individual ‘being’ may change status over time: gods could become humans through the process of euhemerization,6 as seems to be the case with the medieval magician Óðinn; ancestors could become gods, as seems to be the case with the peace-king fróði and perhaps many other kings; and even more ordinary humans could become gods, as seems to be the case with the poet Bragi (see below). as mentioned, the distinction between gods and ‘powerful beings’, therefore, appears to have been quite blurred, and the question is whether it is meaningful at all, at least to our understanding of the pagan reality. Perhaps it would make more sense to operate with more or less local gods: some gods were known all across the scandinavian or even the germanic area, whereas others were tied to particular areas or perhaps to a single person or a single family as a sort of guardian spirit, as seems to be the case with Þorgerðr Hǫlgabrúðr and the jarls of lade.
4 Even if most people will end up being ancestors to some, their religious and social roles as ‘ancestors’ depend strongly on the status they had when they were alive. it was not necessary to belong to the nobility, but most likely slaves and other low status people would never become ‘ancestors’ to anybody in a religious sense.
5 see Nordberg (2013) for a survey of the development of theoretical scholarship in this area.
6 Euhemerism is the theory that the beings people believed to be divine were actually humans, and thus ‘gods’ came to be seen as historical humans through the lenses of euhemerism.
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among the four categories mentioned by Bellah, there are certainly differences within the individual category, both in terms of power and no doubt also when it comes to the degree of sacredness: some humans have more numinous power than others, perhaps because they have descended from the gods; some ancestors are more powerful than others; and some ‘gods’ and ‘powerful beings’
are more powerful than other such beings.
some of these categories have been dealt with earlier7 and will therefore only play a minor role in this chapter. in the following, we shall thus deal briefly with the very notion of ‘humans’ — what constitutes a human being? — and with some of the designations for ‘gods’. But the main part of the chapter will focus on the figures that are somewhere ‘in between’, and not least those normally classified as ‘heroes’. They, or rather some of them, should probably be seen as ‘semi-gods’ or heroi in the greek sense of that notion, that is, they are neither fully divine nor fully human, which invokes all the classificatory problems just described.
The Conceptual Framework
Human Beings
The notion of ‘humans’ conjures up varying semantics in various cultures, but in all religious cultures there is a distinction between the physical part of the individual on the one hand and some more ‘soul-like’ or ‘spirit-like’ substance on the other hand. in a comparative perspective, we may distinguish between a variety of ‘souls’,8 such as: ‘life-soul’, the vital principle which leaves the body when a person dies; a ‘free soul’ which is able to leave the body on certain occasions in order to travel outside of the physical body, which in the meantime is either unconscious or asleep; often, we also find an ‘external soul’, which is a being connected to the person, but not always occupying his or her body, maybe taking the form of an animal; and an ‘ego-soul’, constituted by the cognitive abilities of the person. finally, a sort of ‘prestige-soul’ can sometimes be 7 Kings (è23), warriors (è24), the dead (è33 and è34), and also some of the mythological beings that are treated in (è58–63).
8 ‘soul’ is here obviously an etic term and it should not necessarily be taken to indicate what is understood as a ‘soul’ in Christianity. Probably, when some scholars (e.g., Neckel 1913: 111; ljungberg 1955: 89) have maintained that there is no such thing as a ‘soul’ in PCRN, it is due to the fact that there is nothing similar to the Christian notion of the soul. Even so, there can be no doubt that within the pre-Christian understanding, humans consisted of more than the physical body.
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seen by certain persons in a society, which is what makes this person particularly powerful (Hasenfratz 2005: 36–38). it must, however, be emphasized that these various ‘souls’ should be regarded as aspects of the non-physical life of humans. as a rule, these aspects are not systematically distinguished from one another, although this may be the case in some cultures. in most societies, there are usually several words for these various aspects of the ‘soul’, but most often the borders between them are rather blurred and so are the designations.
This also is the case in PCRN. We do have a whole vocabulary for the designations of the non-physical part of human beings, but although it is possible to discern some distinctions in the use of these designations, it is difficult to draw clear lines between them. This may partly be due to the fact that we have the terminology scattered all across the sources, in eddic poems as well as in various genres of sagas written by Christians who may not have been aware of the precise contents of the words used; but probably even more so because there never was a clear-cut understanding of the various notions and their contents.
if we begin with the anthropogony as it is related in Vǫluspá st. 17–18
and Gylfaginning p. 13, we hear that the gods9 found two logs of wood10 that were without fate ( ørlǫg) (è35). We may speculate that these pieces of wood were imagined to have been carved in the forms of humans, so that the physical appearance was already apparent. Then the three gods give them, according to Vǫluspá, ǫnd (breath, spirit), óðr (here probably ‘intelligence’ or ‘inspired mental activity’), lá (probably ‘blood’ or ‘vital warmth’),11 læti (‘voice’ or perhaps ‘gestures’), and litr (‘appearance’ or ‘colour’), whereas snorri has ǫnd, líf (life), vit (‘consciousness’ or perhaps ‘intelligence’), hrœring (motion), ásjóna (appearance), mál (ability to speak), heyrn (ability to hear), and sjón (ability to see).12 Through the conferring of these gifts on the ‘fate-less’ and ‘capable of little’ ( lítt megandi) logs of wood, humans are created, and we may therefore presume that these are the qualities needed in order for a being to be considered 9 according to Vǫluspá, Óðinn, Hœnir, and lóðurr, whereas Gylfaginning has Óðinn, Vili, and Vé.
10 That is according to Gylfaginning, whereas this is not stated directly in Vǫluspá. Here, we are simply told that they are called askr and Embla, the first name clearly denoting the ash-tree, whereas the etymology of the second is unclear, but may refer to an elm tree (for discussions, see sperber 1910; schröder 1931: 92–99; simek 1984: 84–85; Kure 2010: 175–84, 287–96; see also more generally on the anthropogony steinsland 1983). further, in Vǫluspá it is not clearly said that they are found on the beach, whereas this is said directly by snorri.
11 The word is a hapax legomenon.
12 for a thorough analysis of these ‘gifts’, mainly those given in Vǫluspá, see Polomé (1969).
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human. some of these qualities are strongly connected to the physical abilities that characterize living human beings. Thus, the ability to see, hear, speak, and move are all very physical. The same goes for ‘appearance’ and ‘gestures’ — and of course ǫnd if we translate it as ‘breath’ (but not ‘spirit’). ‘life’, however, can be physical as well as mental or spiritual, and the same goes for lá, since blood clearly has certain mental connotations in the sense that blood together with the heart are the physical substance representing mental values. Therefore, when a person drinks the blood of a strong being, he will become strong (for example, Bǫðvarr in Hrólfs saga kraka ch. 31; è24), while the blood of a wise person makes the one who drinks the blood wise himself, as we see it in the myth of Kvasir ( Skáldskaparmál pp. 3–4; è42). But óðr, and perhaps ǫnd — if we translate this as ‘spirit’ — however, should clearly be seen as mental capacities and thus as an immaterial part of humans. However, it is not possible from the available evidence to be precise about the semantics of any of these words, even more so because ǫnd, in particular, changed its semantic content during the Christianization process, and we therefore have to look to other terms used to describe and characterize the mental faculty of the human beings.
although the distinctions between the various facets of the psyche were probably never particularly clear, it is possible to discern some aspects of this
‘mental’ entity that no doubt played a role in the ‘anthropology’ of the pre-Christian scandinavians. We notice, for instance, the significance of the name as conveyer of personality aspects and personal qualities.13 Children were frequently given the name of some deceased relative, often a grandparent, probably indicating a degree of ‘essence’ that the two share, which in turn suggests a sort of psychic entity. This may also be linked to ideas about reincarnation, which we meet a few times in the sources,14 indicating that some part of the soul was not imagined as purely individual, but as part of more than one person (de Vries 1956–57a: i, 181–83, 218 with references).
a word that may designate a kind of ‘free-soul’ is vǫrðr. literally, it means
‘guard’ and the meaning ‘free-soul’ is based on the passage concerning Þorbjǫrg lítilvǫlva in Eiríks saga rauða (ch. 4) in which the vǫlva asks for someone to sing a song called varðlokkur or varðlokur in order for her to call upon certain spirits to help her perform the divination.15 This is clearly how it is understood by the saga author, but Dag strömbäck (1935: 191–205) attempts to argue that 13 for the scattered evidence concerning rituals connected to name-giving, see (è32).
14 see also (è34). The most thorough work, although outdated in many ways, is still Eckhardt (1937).
15 see (è30) for a summary and discussion of this ritual.
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it was the vǫlva’s own soul that was to be called back to her body by the song.
Regardless of how we interpret the scene, however, we cannot be certain of the semantic contents of the word when it is used to designate a spiritual being.
a designation we find much more often is hugr, but also here the semantics are unclear. one meaning is ‘mind’, another ‘desire’ or ‘wish’, and there are many more.16 The plural hugir may be almost personified and thus recall the fylgjur or hamingjur, all terms designating some sort of spiritual being (mostly believed to be women, but sometimes also in animal shape) that exist independently of the body. again, the distinctions between these groups are very unclear, but they all appear to be a kind of guardian spirits.17 Whereas fylgja, in both singular and plural forms, denotes such a guardian spirit that may be attached to the individual as well as to a family, hugr has different meanings according to number. Thus, in the singular it denotes an inner quality of the individual, whereas in the plural it may still belong to the individual, but it is outside his or her body; and hamingja, both in the singular and the plural, may designate an inner quality of the individual as well as an animal figure, outside the body. We should also mention hamr (shape) in this connection, although this refers only to the bodily shape, because it is probably etymologically related to hamingja which,18 as just mentioned, denotes some inner quality. Hamingja refers primarily to luck that can pass from one person to another and may also be a quality of not only individuals but whole families.19 This seems to indicate that the notions involved in the etic term ‘soul’ are hugely complicated, and it may well be that the vocabulary we have in the extant sources is a mixture of ideas from various time periods.20
from this brief exposition it should be obvious that we have no competent way of accurately describing an ‘anthropology of the inner life’ in PCRN.21
16 The etymology is not known, but the word has a wide range of semantic content (cf. Cleasby and Vigfusson 1957: 290–91).
17 it is noteworthy that a person’s fylgja is protecting him, but it cannot be seen. When it is seen, this is an omen of his death.
18 This would then go back to * ham-gengja, ‘to let one’s hamr leave (the body)’; cf. falk (1926).
19 other terms which we shall not treat here, but which are more or less synonymous to hamingja, are auðna, gæfa, gipta, and heill, all of which have more than one meaning, one of which is ‘luck’ or ‘fortune’.
20 it is obvious that only textual sources can be of help in reconstructing the anthropo-logical ideas concerning the ‘souls’ in PCRN. These ideas probably cannot be grasped through archaeology, and thus there are clear limits for how far back we can go.
21 The terms discussed here and some others are treated in much more detail in Tolley
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What we can say is that, without a doubt, the idea of the human as extending beyond the material body did exist, as it does in all religions. The different designations probably mirror different aspects of this idea, sometimes referring to a personal guardian spirit, sometimes to a kind of double that exists outside the body and sometimes to various psychic or mental qualities, such as intellect, power, fate, or ‘luck’. as is the case in many societies in which the family constitutes the main social unit, aspects of the individual’s soul are also regarded as just part of the family’s collective soul and of the ancestors. as is typical of most societies with ‘primary religions’ (è1), these ideas about the inner life of humans were hardly systematized in any detailed way.
Gods
We shall not deal with the gods in detail in this chapter, since the more important ones will be individually treated in (è40–54) below. However, a few remarks on some general characteristics of the gods in their relation to humans and heroes are required.
according to the definition of religion given in (è1), gods are beings of the other World, but it is very important that we do not use the concept of god in the monotheistic religions such as Christianity and islam as our point of reference.22 The gods in PCRN are certainly very different from the Christian god and not nearly as powerful, but they are there to assist people, just like the gods and their helpers in the so-called monotheistic religions.23
as is the case with the different notions of the ‘soul’ within human beings, it is difficult to relate the various designations of the gods to each other and 2009a: 176–98 (and notions of ‘spirits’, some of which are relevant in this connection, on pp. 200–71), which in general are highly recommendable.
22 ‘gods’ may, of course, be defined in several ways according to the purpose of one’s investigations. Bellah, for instance, insists that there are no real gods in tribal religions because they are not worshipped ‘but identified with in ritual enactment’ (Bellah 2011: 153), and he speaks instead of ‘powerful beings’ or ‘ancestors’. in our view, this distinction is not particularly relevant for our purpose, the point being that there is a belief in supernatural beings whom it is possible to manipulate by means of religious rituals and thus sway them to look kindly upon those performing the ritual. This is certainly part of both ‘the tribal’ and the ‘axial’ religions, as defined by Bellah.
23 ‘so-called’ because we usually find within these religions, too, a whole hierarchy of supernatural beings, such as saints, angels, and other spirits, which are only inferior to ‘god’ in relation to power: ‘god’ is in charge, so to speak, as a king is among the nobles or as Óðinn is among the æsir.
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in this way form a coherent view of the concept of a ‘god’, because, also in this respect, there probably never was a systematic concept of ‘god’. it must be kept in mind that we are dealing with a primary religion with no dogmas, and so we should expect a significant degree of variations between individual interpretations of various concepts and even from one situation to the next (è1).
Nevertheless, the various terms (often in the neuter plural) for collectives of gods undoubtedly reveal important aspects of the gods in PCRN.24 Most common is probably goð or guð, perhaps meaning ‘that which is called upon’ (de Vries 1962a: 181), emphasizing the aspect of supernatural helpers for humans, and this term, interestingly, seems to have changed from the original neuter to masculine, probably because of Judeo-Christian influence ( Jackson 2012: 54). another term is regin (plural), attested as an element in many personal names and probably originally meaning ‘those who give advice’, again emphasizing the relation to human beings. Words such as bǫnd and hǫpt are both connected to bonds and fetters (è5), which could indicate either the bonds between gods and humans or the way the gods ‘bind’ the world according to their decisions (de Vries 1956–57a: ii, 3). still, the relation between this world and the other World remains in focus for these terms. The designation tívar (pl.; sing. týr), however, does not encompass this communicative aspect. it is an old indo-European word that ultimately goes back to a designation for the sky (de Vries 1962a: 603). further, we have the masculine véar, only mentioned once in the eddic poem Hymiskviða and no doubt emphasizing the relation to sacred spaces, and díar which, with the meaning ‘gods’, is likewise attested only once, in Kormákr’s Sigurðardrápa st. 3, whereas snorri in Ynglinga saga ch. 10
apparently uses the word to refer to ‘priests’.25
The source situation does not permit drawing any conclusions on how far back these designations go, but many of them are probably very old in scandinavia, and, as we can see, they often emphasize the relation between human beings and the supernatural. This is not to say that the pagans using these words were aware of the different meanings; most likely they were not, and the choices made by poets were doubtless often dependent on the need for alliterative words so that they were selected without regard to their precise semantic contents (see also frog and Roper 2011). Nevertheless, it is presumably significant that most of these words can be attributed to the ‘communicative sphere’, apparently emphasizing the importance of the ritual level vis-à-vis 24 see also de Vries (1956–57a: ii, 1–10) who gives a complete overview of the collective terms, designating various aspects of the ‘gods’.
25 for other designations, such as æsir and vanir, see (è40) below.
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the conceptual level. Having said that, however, we should also emphasize that not all the gods known from PCRN seem to have played a role in terms of cults; that is, they were probably not worshipped. as is so often the case within the study of PCRN, it is hard to determine whether this impression is due to the source situation or whether these gods were just mythological beings who fulfilled various narrative roles and in that sense contributed to the construction of the other World. if this is so, which seems to be the case for at least some of the gods, it makes it difficult to draw a clear distinction between ‘gods’
and certain ‘humans’ portrayed in poetry and sagas — depending, of course, on our definitions. We shall return to this below.
in conclusion, there is nothing to indicate that there were clear-cut semantic borders between the different designations for the beings that we usually call
‘gods’, that is, beings who exist in the other World.
Figures in Between
as outlined in the opening pages of (è21), it is possible to trace in the North the notion underlying an indo-European poetic formula meaning ‘imperishable, unfailing fame’. M. l. West adds that such fame could be understood as lofty or high and could reach up into the heavens (West 2007: 407–08).
Realized in that form, this notion would effectively cancel out the opposition between heaven and earth that is expressed in the formula jǫrð […] upphiminn and also, realized in the etymology at least, between the celestial divine and the earthly human (è10). in short, this sort of nullification implies that humans can become like gods. and to reverse the procedure, if imperishable fame confers a kind of immortality (West 2007: 409), we can look to the mythology for another point where humans and gods cross: the gods grow old like human beings when iðunn and her apples of immortality are removed from them ( Skáldskaparmál p. 7); Baldr dies; and all the gods die at Ragnarǫk. again, we see that it is difficult to enforce an absolutely firm distinction between gods and humans. These beings may change their status in two ways: on the one hand, historical circumstances may transform humans to gods or vice-versa, as just mentioned, and not least the fact that so many sources were composed by Christians has clearly contributed to this process. While snorri argues that the gods were humans who later on became worshipped as gods, saxo and the authors or redactors of the fornaldarsögur often transform the myths (narratives about gods) into historical accounts (narratives about humans), a process known as ‘displacement’. on the other hand, within the religious world-view itself we also see that some persons — that is, kings and other outstanding
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individuals — become perhaps not gods in a narrow sense, but very godlike, as part of Óðinn’s retinue in the other World, and apparently some of them were actually worshipped as gods (for example, in the fourth book of adam’s Gesta Hammaburgensis concerning a certain King Eiríkr). Therefore, we must in every way be careful in deciding whether certain figures should be regarded as humans or gods. These figures are the heroes, whether they are understood as just extraordinary persons or minor gods living with the great gods, as in the case of Þjálfi, or being worshipped as in the case of King Eiríkr and apparently also of King fróði (è23). according to most of the textual sources, these figures were definitely human; some of them are portrayed as historical persons, whereas others apparently are part of genuine myths and act in environments where they are surrounded by gods. it has been suggested that some of these human figures are ‘sunken’ gods, which may be the case with the Danish king fróði who by many scholars has been seen as a ‘human’ freyr (schier 1968), whereas sigurðr, for instance, has conversely been seen as a mythologized human being (arminius; see Höfler 1961).26 The main point here, however, is that most of these ‘heroes’ are in all likelihood of different provenience, so that in order to obtain a realistic view on them we must treat them individually.
The textual evidence placing humans and gods in the same contextual sphere is ample. outside of the North, the common germanic verse form was used primarily for heroic poetry — that is, poetry about humans — but both old English and old High german attest charms in which the god Woden (Óðinn) appears.27 The ease with which the form was used for Christian topics (e.g., the old English poetic lives of saints, such as Judith, or the old saxon Heliand, a life of Christ) may also suggest that what appears to be primarily a heroic form, based on the extant texts, was equally suitable for more sacral topics. and in the North, of course, we see mythological poems in the common germanic verse form: namely, the eddic mythological poems. Christian redactors must have seen a relationship between the actions of the pagan gods and of the ancient heroes, since they combined them. The most famous example is, of course, Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, but it is also noteworthy that Haukr Erlendsson chose to include Vǫluspá in his book (Hauksbók), a compendium of learning, and that he placed it just before Trójumanna saga. Breta sögur, 26 see also below on ‘displacement’.
27 according to Calvert Watkins, the Nine Herbs Charm may, in fact, reflect an indo-European pattern relating to dragon-slaying (Watkins 1995: 424–28). if so, we could state explicitly that, like old Norse, old English also exemplifies narrative poetry in the common germanic alliterative metre about both gods and heroes.
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Hemings þáttr Áslákssonar, Fóstbrœðra saga, and Eiríks saga rauða are among the texts that follow. Vǫlundarkviða is an eddic poem about a protagonist who displays features of the human as well as of the divine.
The earliest skalds composed on both heroic and divine subjects. for example, Bragi Boddason inn gamli crafted sequences about the attack of Hamðir and sǫrli on Jǫrmunrekkr, the Hjaðningavíg (both assigned by snorri to Ragnarsdrápa), and Þórr’s battle with the Miðgarðsormr as well as a stanza about gefjun acquiring land from gylfi. if the ekphrasis in Ragnarsdrápa was limited to heroic subjects, that in Þjóðólfr’s Haustlǫng was limited to mythic topics: Þjazi’s abduction of iðunn and Þórr’s duel with Hrungnir. Húsdrápa, Úlfr Uggason’s ekphrasis of the hall at Hjarðarholt, is, as we know it, also mythic in its focus: Þórr and the Miðgarðsormr, loki and Heimdallr, and Baldr’s funeral. This evidence suggests that both mythic and heroic scenes were portrayed in carved images that belonged in the same context and that skalds felt free to compose about both.
Þórsdrápa is a special case, since we have no evidence that it was an ekphrasis. The leading interpreter of the poem, Edith Marold, understands it as a narrative about Þórr’s journey to geirrøðr, functioning as a praise poem for Hákon jarl. This convincing interpretation maps the divine onto the human: Þórr overcomes giants, just as Hákon subdues his enemies. Through its giant-kennings relying on ethnonyms as base words, too, the poem seems to embed humans into the mythology.
The skaldic situation is summed up in a curious stanza in Skáldskaparmál that snorri attributes to Þórðr særeksson and cites for its use of the term vanr as a heiti for Njǫrðr ( Skáldskaparmál p. 18). Edited as stanza 3 of his ‘fragments’, it runs as follows:
Varð sjǫlf suna,
nama snotr una,
Kjalarr of tamði,
kvǫ́ðut Hamði,
guðrún bani;
goðbrúðr Vani;
heldr vel mara;
hjǫrleik spara.
(guðrún herself became the killer of her sons; the wise god-bride [skaði] did not begin to love the Vanr [Njǫrðr]; Kjalarr < = Óðinn> tamed horses very well; they did not say that Hamðir was stingy with sword-play [BaTTlE].) (p. 478–79)
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We draw attention to this verse not for its end-rhyme or structure (lines 5–8
comple ment, respectively, lines 1–4) but for its juxtaposition of the heroic and the mythic.
While the pagan gods only appear in demonized form in kings’ sagas and related þættir and hardly appear at all in Íslendingasögur, some fornaldarsögur do present interaction between humans and gods, primarily Óðinn. sagas in question include Vǫlsunga saga, Hervarar saga, Gautreks saga, Ǫrvar-Odds saga (see Røthe 2010: 13–102), and also snorri in his paraphrase of the Vǫlsung material. saxo has gods and demi-gods acting alongside humans and interacting with them. in his version of the poem Bjarkamál, the dying Biarco craves a glimpse of Óðinn and threatens to kill him (2.7.25–27). an adversary of King frotho is the evil King frogerus, said to be a son of othinus (4.8.1). saxo moreover speaks at length about the interactions between othinus and starcatherus (Book 6, and see below) and othinus and Haraldus Hyldetan (Books 7–8). in the fornaldarsögur as well as in saxo, the encounters usually take place in this world.
like the textual evidence, the iconographic evidence is ample and compelling in its placement of the heroic and the divine in the same conceptual spheres.28
for example, two of the gotland picture stones, alskog Tjängvide and ardre Viii, display in their upper registers explicit images of a rider on sleipnir and thus of the world of the dead; most images on these and the other gotland picture stones appear to relate to the actions of heroes. scholars believe that they can identify motifs such as the Hjaðningavíg, the death of sigurðr fáfnisbani, Wayland the smith, and gunnarr in the snake pit on other picture stones from gotland (lindqvist 1941–42: i, 101–07; Buisson 1976; andrén 1993; aðalheiður guðmundsdóttir 2012). Here, we should point out that the warriors of the Hjaðningavíg who fight, die, and are revived show special ‘godlike’
features and are in this respect similar to the einherjar, themselves of uncertain status in this regard. furthermore, Vǫlundr appears to be an álfr, which likewise allots him a status somewhere between human and divine (è63). indeed, aspects of the story of Vǫlundr are depicted on the franks (auzon) casket and on Viking age carved crosses from yorkshire. in 2011, a cast copper mount was 28 strictly speaking, the specific quality of being ‘in-between’ the human and divine can only be grasped in the textual sources, since depictions of figures can only be identified on the basis of the texts. seen as isolated entities, pictures, whether on stones, bracteates, or on some other pictorial representation, cannot be identified as either gods or human heroes or those in-between; this is only made possible by the myths and legends related in texts (è7). it could be argued that, for instance, the Uppåkra birdman (see below and Zachrisson 2017a) is a being in between human and animal, but we cannot judge the divine status without referring to the texts.
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excavated near the foundation of the cult house at Uppåkra, depicting a human figure apparently wearing armour and a flying device. There are good reasons to accept that it depicts Vǫlundr (Helmbrecht 2012) and it can be used to unpack the implications of the myth (Zachrisson 2017a).
Descent from the Gods
in Germania ch. 2, Tacitus implies that three germanic tribes — the ingaevones, Herminones, and istaevones — derive from Mannus, son of the god Tuisto who issued from the earth: that is, that humans are descended from a god (in this case a chthonic figure; è37). similarly, the eddic poem Rígsþula presents the origin of the social classes, and therefore of the humans who comprise them, as the result of a series of anthropogonic sexual acts. in the poem, these are undertaken long ago by Rígr, whom the first stanza identifies as a powerful, aged, wise, and bold áss, that is, as a god.
Ár qváðo ganga
grœnar brautir
ǫflgan ok aldinn,
ás kunnigan,
ramman ok rǫsqvan,
Ríg stíganda.
(long ago they say that along the green paths a powerful, mature, and knowledgeable god went walking, mighty and vigorous, Rig stepping along.) (p. 238) The prose header indicates that Rígr is a name assumed by Heimdallr, ‘a certain one of the æsir’.29
Many royal genealogies derive rulers from gods euhemerized as people from asia. This conceit is found as early as in ari fróði Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók and is widespread in icelandic historical writing (Heusler 1908); it is also found in anglo-saxon royal genealogies (faulkes 1978–79).
We turn now to individual figures who fall ‘in between’. Not all of these are conventional heroes. We begin with Bragi, who in Lokasenna (st. 12–15) is the subject of an insult from loki concerning his lack of bravery in battle but whose career spans the human and the divine.
29 for the purposes of this narrative, see (è50); for further discussion, see schjødt (2017b).
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Humans with Mythic Status
Bragi
Most scholars separate out Bragi Boddason inn gamli, by tradition reckoned the first skald, from the Bragi whom the Eiríksmál poet places in Valhǫll along with the heroes sigmundr and sinfjǫtli shortly after the death of Eiríkr blóðøx at stainmore in 954.30 Centuries later, snorri quotes repeatedly from Bragi skáld (the poet) in Skáldskaparmál. in the opening of Gylfaginning in the RTW manuscripts of Snorra-Edda, a verse attributed to Bragi skáld gamli (the poet Bragi the old) forms part of the frame that is established.31 But later in Gylfaginning p. 25, snorri reports that one of the æsir is named Bragi: ‘Hann er ágætr at speki ok mest at málsnild ok orðfimi’ (He is renowned for wisdom and especially for eloquence and command of language) (p. 25). snorri believes that the noun bragr (poetry; chieftain) derives from Bragi’s name, and he adds that iðunn is Bragi’s wife. a few pages later, he has Hár recite a þula naming Bragi as the best of poets, while most of the other characters who are the best at something are mythological in nature. in the frame of Skáldskaparmál, Bragi also appears among the æsir, and it is he who informs Ægir about their deeds.
Thus snorri, at least, seems to have had a conception of the historical Bragi the poet and the áss Bragi who was associated with poetry. since Bragi the poet was so clearly skilled in the old Norse language, it would have been difficult for snorri to make him an áss from asia, and perhaps that is why he kept the two figures separate. We see no reason to do so, and we therefore take Bragi as one of the clearest examples of euhemerism (Mogk 1887; cf. Bugge 1888; Mogk 1889a; Clunies Ross 2006; lindow 2006), not as a medieval theory but as a consequence of the relatively thin line between gods and humans that characterizes so many religious world-views.
Þiálfi
Eilífr goðrúnararson’s skaldic masterpiece Þórsdrápa uses plural verbs for most of the stanzas that deal with Þórr’s crossing of the river Vimur on the way to 30 in his Hákonarmál, Eyvindr finnsson had Óðinn tell Hermóðr and Bragi to greet Hákon inn góði upon his arrival in Valhǫll, but Eyvindr earned his byname skáldaspillir (destroyer of poets, perhaps plagiarist?) in part through his close imitation of Eiríksmál.
31 The absence of the verse in U and the absence of other dróttkvætt stanzas in Gylfaginning makes the presence of this verse problematic, although reasonable explanations for its occurrence here have been suggested (lindow 1977b; Clunies Ross 1978).
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geirrøðr and the subsequent giant-slayings. His companion appears to be Þjálfi, who is named explicitly in stanza 10:
unz með ýta sinni
— aflraun vas þat — skaunar
á seilhimin sjóla
sjalflopta kom Þjalfi.
Œd du stáli stríðan
straum Hrekkmímis ekkjur;
stophnísu fór steypir
stríðlundr með vǫl gríðar.
(until Þjálfi came hovering through the air on the strap-sky [shield] of the ruler with the helper of the launchers of the shield [warriors > leader = Þórr]; it was a test of strength. The widows of Hrekkmímir
[giantess > = Þórr] went stubbornly with the staff of gríðr
according to snorri in Gylfaginning, Þjálfi and his sister Rǫskva became Þórr’s servants in a settlement between Þórr and a farmer with whom Þórr and loki had stayed for the night. Þórr slaughters his goats and serves them to the family, but when he revives them the next day, one is lame because Þjálfi cut a bone to get to the marrow. Þórr’s rage ebbs away when he sees the terror of the human family, and he accepts the children as his servants. Rǫskva plays no real role in the mythology; snorri says that she went along on the journey to Útgarðaloki’s court, but she does not participate in the contests there. Eilífr does, however, certify her existence in this version of stanza 22:32
Vreiðr stóð Vrǫsku bróðir;
vá gagn faðir Magna;
skelfra Þórs né Þjalfa
þróttar steinn við ótta.
(The brother of Rǫskva [= Þjálfi] stood furious; the father of Magni
[= Þórr] won victory; the stone of valour [heart] of neither Þórr nor Þjálfi trembles with terror.) (p. 123)
Thus the poet kenned both Þjálfi and Þórr by means of family relationships.
32 although the stanza is found in Skáldskaparmál separately from the nineteen-stanza sequence specifically labelled as Eilífr’s Þórsddrápa in RTW, the lines ‘skalfa Þórs né Þjalfa |
þróttar steinn við ótta’ are found there, in stanza 11.
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as the story goes on in Gylfaginning, Þjálfi participates in three foot races against Hugi, a sveinstauli (little boy) in Útgarðaloki’s household. Just as loki had lost the eating contest with logi and as Þórr was to lose his contests with the drinking horn, the cat, and the old woman, Þjálfi loses all three foot races to Hugi, who is later revealed to be Útgarðaloki’s thought.
Þjálfi also appears in Skáldskaparmál, in snorri’s paraphrase of Þórr’s duel with Hrungnir, and it is he who warns the giant that Þórr will attack from under the ground, thus tricking the giant into standing on his shield and rendering it useless. according to Hárbarðsljóð st. 37–39, Þjálfi had accompanied Þórr to læsø on a mission to attack giantesses but had been chased off by them.
as noted above, Þjálfi and, according to Gylfaginning, also his sister Rǫskva are closely associated with Þórr. They are the only humans within the mythology to have such a relationship to Þórr. lindow (2000) has argued that Þórr’s ability to control his rage when the ritual revival of his goats is botched can indicate the positive attitude that the deities have toward humans.
Two of the towering figures of twentieth-century scholarship expressed views about Þjálfi, in both cases working comparatively. axel olrik (1905b, 1906) argued for a sámi parallel to the companion of the thunder-god and believed that it had to do with the characteristic rumble that accompanies thunder; more interesting is his suggestion of an Estonian parallel to loki as Þórr’s companion, thus yielding theoretical parallels to both of Þórr’s companions. franz Rolf schröder (1938b) departed from the apparent similarity of the name Þjálfi to Þieluar in the opening lines of Guta saga. Because Þieluar brought fire to gotland and thus kept it from sinking into the sea each night, and because his descendants settled the island, schröder saw him as associated with fire and fertility. This is meant to relate to Þórr through an indian parallel; in the end, schröder believed that Þjálfi represented Þórr’s procreative power. obviously, this reading of Þjálfi finds little support in the Norse materials. indeed, the etymology of Þjálfi’s name is unknown and its relation to Þieluar uncertain, even if it is possible to link the gotlanders to Þórr and argue that they were all to some degree servants of Þórr (andrén 2012b). another comparative analysis was carried out by Toporov, who argues that Þjálfi and the lithuanian Teljavelj represent the thunder-god’s assistant in the two traditions, under conditions of mutual cultural influence (Toporov 1970).
Haustlǫng tells of Þórr’s duel with Hrungnir but makes no reference to Þjálfi. Þórr apparently travels alone (the verbs are singular), and Hrungnir’s fatal stepping on his shield is differently motivated (è41). The relevant helmingr (17a) runs as follows.
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Brátt fló bjarga gæti
— bǫnd ǫllu því — randa
ímunfǫlr und iljar
íss; vildu svá dísir.
(The battle-pale ice of shield-rims [sHiElD] flew swiftly beneath the footsoles of the guardian of the rocks [giaNT = Hrungnir]; the gods caused that; the dísir
The keys here are the apparent agency of the shield itself, which quickly flew ( brátt fló) under the feet of Hrungnir, and the fact that the collective of divine powers caused and wished it: the bǫnd and the dísir.33 The sudden move of the shield may remind us of the flying Þjálfi of Húsdrápa, but to picture him in this scene of Hrungnir’s demise would be mere guesswork.
Even if we believe that snorri deliberately inserted Þjálfi into the Hrungnir story, rather than reporting a parallel tradition about how the shield came to be under the giant’s feet, Þjálfi’s companionship of Þórr must have been a widespread mythological tradition in the old Norse area (cf. Bertell 2013). if we leave snorri completely out of the picture, it would seem that Þjálfi was especially valued for his participation in Þórr’s exploits against giantesses (gjálp and greip; the vargynior of Hárbarðsljóð). Neither of these sources indicates that Þjálfi was human, but his absence from the kenning system, þulur, and of course snorri’s lists of the æsir makes it likely that snorri’s information about Þjálfi is trustworthy. However, a kenning in the first helming of Þórsdrápa st. 9, immediately preceding the direct mention of Þjálfi in stanza 10, does complicate matters somewhat:
Óðu fast, en fríðar
flaut, eiðsvara gauta
setrs víkingar snotrir
sverðrunnit fen, gunnar.
(The oath-bound vikings of the seat of gauti < = Óðinn> [= Ásgarðr > = Þórr and Þjálfi], wise in war, waded firmly, and the sword-filled fen of fríðr
33 as Clunies Ross points out (Clunies Ross 2017b: 458), finnur Jónsson’s reading ímundísir, which would conjoin disparate elements using the rhetorical device called tmesis to make a kenning for valkyries (battle- dísir), is unsupportable. The poet clearly intended bǫnd ollu því and vildu svá dísir to be parallel clauses.
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figure 36.1. Detail of the picture stone at ardre on gotland (sHM 11118:108199), dated to the ninth century, with central elements of the Vǫlundr myth: the smithy, the beheaded princes, and Vǫlundr’s flight in the form of a bird. Photo: statens Historiska Museum, stockholm.
The translation above uses the following reasoning. The base word is clearly víkingar, and the determinant is ‘gauta setrs’ (of the seat of gauti). This leads to the kenning ‘vikings of Ásgarðr’, which would be the gods or some other residents of Ásgarðr. Thus the poet included Þjálfi among the æsir, or at least among the residents of Ásgarðr (or Valhǫll). This reading would, therefore, be wholly consistent with the presence in Valhǫll of Bragi, sigmundr, and sinfjǫtli according to Eiríksmál and, indeed, of all the einherjar. Þjálfi was clearly one of those humans who had a special relationship to the gods.
Vǫlundr
Whoever arranged the poems in the Poetic Edda placed Vǫlundarkviða in the
‘mythological’ section, between Þrymskviða and Alvíssmál. a convenient explanation is that Vǫlundr is twice called vísi álfa (prince of the álfar) and that this poem and Alvíssmál, with its dwarf, were placed at the end of the mythological section because álfar and dwarves were taken to be mythological beings.34
34 in stanza 10, Vǫlundr is called álfa lióði. The hapax legomenon ljóði appears to be related to lýðr (people) and should thus perhaps mean ‘member of the álfar- people’, but there are rea-
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figure 36.2. Weland the smith on the front panel of the franks casket, an anglo-saxon casket from the early eighth century (British Museum no. 1867.0120.1). Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.
However, Vǫlundr’s elfish status does not appear to manifest itself particularly strongly in the plot of the poem. Vǫlundr is a highly skilled smith who lives a solitary life after his wife leaves him. He is captured by King Niðuðr, maimed by having the tendons of his knees severed, and forced to craft precious objects for the king. Ultimately, he avenges himself by murdering the king’s sons, dismembering them, and forging objects from their skulls, eyes, and teeth, and further by seducing and impregnating the king’s daughter, Bǫðvildr.
The story of Vǫlundr is also recounted in a longer and somewhat different version in the section of Þiðreks saga called ‘Velents þáttr’; the name form clearly indicates a setting or origin outside scandinavia. Wayland (the usual English form) was, indeed, well known in the West germanic area. The old English poem Deor contains two stanzas outlining Weland’s capture by Nithad, the murder of Nithad’s sons, and the pregnancy of Beaduhilde, and these thus confirm the parallel details in Vǫlundarkviða. in addition, Weland’s skills as a smith are reflected in several weapons attributed to him in old English heroic literature.
Vǫlundr is a smith. and the special status of smiths is widely known and exemplified in a variety of sources (see, for example, Marold 1973; Hauck 1977; Müller-Wille 1977; Beck 1980). as a ‘supernatural smith’, Vǫlundr thus sons to regard it as a parallel to vísi in a third, variant attestation of the formula ‘prince of the álfar’ (von see and others 2000: 171–73). such a reading departs from a position opposite to the existing minority view: namely, that vísi álfa means ‘wise one of the álfar’ (è63).
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figure 36.3. a ‘birdman’
from Uppåkra, inter-
preted as Vǫlundr
(lUHM 32146:13360).
Photo: Bengt almgren,
Historiska museet vid
lunds universitet, lund.
takes up a position midway between humans and gods. indeed, sigmund oehrl (2012) evaluates the gotland picture stones and other iconographic evidence and argues that a smith, probably Vǫlundr, is portrayed in the world of the dead, Valhǫll, on a picture stone from Barhaldershed in grötlingbo. Thus, oehrl proposes adding Vǫlundr to Bragi, sigmundr, sinfjǫtli, and the other humans whose earthly lives continue after death among the gods.
according to the prose header of Vǫlundarkviða, Vǫlundr and his brothers are sons of a sámi king ( synir Finnakonungs), and, like the sámi, they travel on skis and hunt. He is in this way a member of an ethnic other group, with the implications of the supernatural that such a relation implies (Hall 2007: 50–52). Moreover, unlike ordinary humans, he takes a wife from the supernatural realm. like ordinary humans, however, he mourns the loss of his wife.
like both gods and humans in this narrative tradition, he plots and carries out vengeance. He rejoices in his vengeance and, like the gods in their feather suits, flies away. This being is neither a human nor a god.
Torun Zachrisson (2017a) stresses Vǫlundr’s paternal sámi background and links it to the social and geographical setting of Vǫlundarkviða, which, she argues, would accord with the halls of the ynglingar in gamla Uppsala from the seventh through the ninth centuries, with sámi smiths living in the forested areas just north of lake Mälar. Vǫlundr’s numinosity would be consistent with his sámi otherness, and the birdman of Uppåkra would make sense in a cultic context.
alaric Hall takes seriously Vǫlundr’s status as a member of the álfar (a. Hall 2007: 39–47), that is, as a supernatural being with positive qualities, aligned
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closely with the æsir in a binary opposition to the giants and dwarfs (a. Hall 2007: 21–39). Humans align with æsir and álfar in this binary opposition, but in Hall’s scheme another binary opposition separates them from the supernatural. in our understanding of the religious world-view, however, Vǫlundr would align with the here-and-now in his human aspects and with the other primarily through his having lived long ago.
into this context comes the old suggestion that the narrative of Vǫlundarkviða may have been influenced by or inspired by a scene in the Vita Severini by Eugippius (early sixth century) in which smiths forced to ply their craft as slaves to a king gain their freedom by threatening to kill the king’s son, who, like the young sons of Niðuðr, has come to visit the smithy (von see and others 2000: 84–85). if this is, indeed, the origin of the narrative, Vǫlundr’s status as álfr could represent a kind of euhemerization, the human smiths of Eugippius’s tale being elevated to the status of prince of elves in the germanic tale.
Heroes
Whereas the figures mentioned so far are most likely firmly rooted in the mythical world in the sense that, although they are portrayed as humans, they were far removed from the everyday world, we shall now turn to a different category who could more appropriately be characterized as ‘heroes’. What distinguishes this category from the figures dealt with above is that they are just as firmly placed in this world. some of them may actually have their roots in historical figures, but the main point is that they are not thought of, by those who composed the sources, as gods or any other kind of supernatural beings. some of them, as we shall see, may have evolved from divine figures, but they are, nevertheless, portrayed as humans, although not ordinary humans. Most, if not all, of these figures were outstanding kings or warriors, and, since we have already dealt with these (è23–24, along with è42–43), this chapter will only treat a few of them as well as add some details that are of importance to their intermediate position between gods and humans.
The Vǫlsungar
in the eddic poem Reginsmál, especially as expounded by the prose sections, Óðinn, loki, and Hœnir interact with Hreiðmarr and his sons. although two of the sons are able to change shape — otr sports as an otter, and fáfnir changes himself into a dragon — this family clearly does not belong to the
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divine sphere. The same story is told midway through Vǫlsunga saga. The opening of the saga presents siggi, king of Húnaland, as a son of Óðinn. siggi’s son Rerik and his wife are childless until they conceive a son after calling on Óðinn, and this son, Vǫlsungr, gives his name to the family line that will include the heroes sigmundr, sinfjǫtli, and sigurðr. Throughout the saga, Óðinn appears, implicitly or explicitly, to help the Vǫlsungar.
as regards sigmundr and sinfjǫtli, the main source for these two heroes is Vǫlsunga saga. apart from the saga, the two protagonists are known from a few eddic poems and from Skáldskaparmál, but almost only by name so that these sources do not contribute any significant information that we do not get from the saga. from Eiríksmál, on the contrary, we get a very interesting piece of information, as we saw above, concerning their presence in Valhǫll, to which we shall return in a moment. We have already dealt with the two heroes in (è24) (with a short summary) and the following discussion will therefore be quite brief. in (è24), it was stated that they are special favourites of Óðinn.
for this reason alone, they are not ‘ordinary’ human beings. During their initiations (see also schjødt 2008: 299–312), they become Óðinn’s men, in life as well as in death, and this is very likely the reason why Eiríksmál st. 5 presents both sigmundr and sinfjǫtli as inhabitants of Valhǫll. The question, here, is how to evaluate this presence. are they ordinary einherjar, or do they perhaps have a more god-like status?35
We can state at once that it is not possible to produce any definite answers.
What we know is that sigmundr was a king (like Eiríkr), and that he is apparently thought to hold a position in Valhǫll that is somewhat different from that of the other einherjar. However, the reason for that could also simply be that as a legendary hero he must be supposed to have been known to the audience of the poem when it was presented for the first time, which would then be why it is in particular he and his son who are mentioned. However, franz Rolf schröder (1935, 1960b), Jan de Vries (1953), as well as others have attempted to relate the two heroes to genuine myths, viewing them as reflections of gods.
This may be so, but the evidence is rather weak, and there is nothing to indicate that they were ever worshipped in any way, even if this is not a decisive criterion for defining a god. of course it cannot be ruled out that one or both of them may have had some part to play in rituals, but we have no evidence that might confirm it. Their main function seems to be exclusively mythic-legendary, and most likely it is exactly the connection between the odinic heroes of 35 The etymology of sigmundr suggests ‘he who is in charge of victory’, whereas that of sinfjǫtli is more problematic (de Vries 1962a: 476).
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B
A
C
figure 36.4. Three depictions of important events in the life of sigurðr fáfnisbani. The images are from different parts of scandinavia and are dated between the ninth century and about 1300. They illustrate the popularity of the narratives about the Vǫlsungar.
a) sigurðr kills fáfnir, according to the runic carving at Ramsund in Jäder in södermanland, dated to about 1000 (sö 101, samnordisk runtextdatabas). B) sigurðr eats the heart of fáfnir and learns the speech of birds, according to wood carvings on the porch from Hylestad church in agder, dated to about 1300. C) sigurðr is killed and lies beneath his horse grani with the gold treasure on the back, according to the picture stone at stora Hammars in lärbro on gotland, dated to the ninth century. Photos: anders andrén.
this world and the dead warriors of the other World that is central. if this is so, sigmundr and sinfjǫtli should probably not be seen as god-like in the same sense as Þjálfi, Vǫlundr, or Bragi who all, in the extant sources, seem to be far removed from this world, except that Þjálfi is so clearly portrayed as a human being. sigmundr and sinfjǫtli, however, could just as well have been historical persons because the focus is on the relation, just mentioned, between living extraordinary humans and dead extraordinary humans. Therefore, it seems to
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make most sense to interpret their role in Eiríksmál simply as representatives of the einherjar, who are in some way extraordinary. another question, therefore, is whether the einherjar in general should be seen as some kind of gods. We know, as dealt with in (è23), that dead rulers could be seen as a kind of gods with all the characteristics we normally attribute to gods in the form of cults and expectations of gifts to benefit land and people. This being so, it cannot be ruled out that ‘the dead’, at least as a collective, were regarded as a kind of demi-gods. This was also what otto Höfler had in mind when he argued that some élite warriors ( harii) should be seen as representatives of the einherjar (Höfler 1934), indicating an aspect of ‘supernatural’ power.
Whether or not this was the case, we must accept that we are not in a position to establish with any certainty whether sigmundr and sinfjǫtli should be considered gods or humans. in all likelihood, we are better off focusing on their role as mediators between the living odinic warriors and the dead.
another son of sigmundr is sigurðr fáfnisbani, no doubt the most famous of all the germanic heroes, and, as opposed to his father and brother, he is well known all across the germanic area; but the main sources are still the eddic poems and Vǫlsunga saga, and in this case also a rich iconographic tradition (for example, see andrén 1993 on the gotland picture stones).36 sigurðr, in the first part of the saga (ch. 13–22), goes through a rather clear initiatory sequence, which is closely associated with Óðinn (schjødt 1994; 2008: 282–
99), and there is thus no doubt that he should be regarded as an odinic hero.
The question is whether he is more than that: can he be seen as a god? gabriel Turville-Petre believes so: ‘in short, the evidence at our disposal suggests that sigurðr was originally a god, or at least a demi-god’ (Turville-Petre 1964: 205).
The next question, then, is how convincing the arguments for this suggestion are. Turville-Petre accepts that the sigurðr figure is composed of traits from various influences, both from irish myth and legend and from historical figures, such as arminius and the frankish king sigeberht (sixth century),37 but sees him basically as a god or a ‘demi-god’ because he fights a dragon (like Þórr), he suffers death at the hands of a relative (like Baldr), and he descends from Óðinn. However, as we saw in (è23), kings could be considered descendants of the gods (Óðinn or freyr) without being seen as gods in the same way as 36 for the Continental and English traditions and their relation to the Nordic material, see schneider (1962: 125–70) and, for a brief overview, Turville-Petre (1964: 198–99).
37 There are even similarities between sigurðr and Vǫlundr (in Þiðreks saga), in that they both test a sword by letting some wool or cloth flow down a stream (a motif also known from Celtic material; cf. Turville-Petre 1964: 204) and perhaps a commonplace of heroic literature.
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their ancestor, at least not until they died. still, there can be no doubt that some
‘godly’ or ‘other Worldly’ qualities were to differing degrees associated with many humans and with that in mind we may call them ‘gods’, again depending on our definitions. But to argue, as Turville-Petre does from this, that a hero such as sigurðr was originally a god (with all the definitional problems), perhaps even the divine ancestor of the Cherusci, seems far from convincing.38
The similarities to some individual mythemes with gods as the protagonists are perhaps better seen as an example of displacement. all in all, the evidence that sigurðr was ‘originally’ a god is weak, and, although it cannot be rejected outright,39 it does not seem to fit with his role as a typical odinic warrior/king.
sigmundr is also said to have a third son, the enigmatic Helgi. The name means ‘the hallowed one’, which might indicate that we are dealing with a divine or semi-divine figure. The main sources are the three Helgi-poems in Codex Regius ( Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, and Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar).40 But Helgi is also mentioned in Vǫlsunga saga and a few other fornaldarsögur as well as by saxo, who knows several ‘Helgos’.
Most of these figures seem to go back to some sacred figure, be it a genuine god or — more likely — a sacral king. in Codex Regius, the compiler undoubtedly saw the poems about Helgi Hundingsbani as complementary, whereas Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson was seen as a hero living earlier who was reborn as Helgi Hundingsbani;41 so there is no doubt that at least the Helgis in the eddic poems and the figure in Vǫlsunga saga are strongly related and ultimately identical.
The question of whether we are dealing with a god or a human once again comes down to definitions. it has been proposed that the Helgi-poems ultimately go back to initiation rituals (Höfler 1952a), although the evidence for that seems somewhat weak. However, the name Helgi could well indicate that he was a legendary sacral king, and as such he would have been close to the 38 Turville-Petre (1964: 204–05) further argues that sigurðr, as well as some of his irish parallels, are connected to, if not identical with, a hart, and in this way sigurðr almost takes the form of a totemic forefather of the Cherusci (perhaps related to * herut ‘hart’).
39 after all, sigurðr was a king, and, without discussing possible historical roots, it cannot be ruled out that the idea once existed that he could bestow various gifts on his people, and, if it did, then this brings him very close to the constituent elements of a god.
40 for summaries and discussion about the relationship between the poems, see de Vries (1964–67: i, 303–17), and for valuable discussions, Harris (1983).
41 The question of reincarnation has been treated by many scholars, mainly focusing on whether this idea was ‘originally’ pagan or was inferred by Christian scribes. for an overview, see Kragerud (1989) and (è34).
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gods, residing in Ásgarðr, just as we have just seen with sigmundr and sinfjǫtli.
if that is so, we are once again reminded of the close connections between kings and gods and of the intermediate position of kings in PCRN.
Starkaðr
Both Óðinn and Þórr interact with the human hero starkaðr in Gautreks saga ch. 7, another of the fornaldarsögur. The incident is embedded in the greater story of starkaðr’s sacrifice of King Víkarr to Óðinn (è42). Óðinn appears both in disguise, as Hrosshárs-grani, starkaðr’s foster-father, and as himself at an assembly of twelve notables, presumably gods, of whom Þórr is one. Óðinn and Þórr determine the fate ( dœma ørlǫg) of starkaðr. They alternate bestowing negative gifts and positive gifts: starkaðr will have no offspring (Þórr); he shall live three human lifetimes (Óðinn); starkaðr will commit an unspeakable act ( níðingsverk) in each of these lifetimes (Þórr); he shall possess the best weapons and clothing (Óðinn); he will possess no land (Þórr); he shall have money (Óðinn), but the money will never seem enough to him (Þórr); starkaðr shall have victory and prowess in every battle (Óðinn), but he will be grievously wounded in every battle he partakes in (Þórr); starkaðr shall master poetry (Óðinn), but he will not remember what he composes (Þórr); starkaðr will seem loftiest to the greatest men (Óðinn), but the common people will despise him (Þórr).42 The positive aspects granted to starkaðr by Óðinn agree with Óðinn’s connection to the aristocracy and especially the ability to compose verse as rapidly as he can recite it suggests Óðinn’s ability to speak in verse.43
after the assembly, Hrosshárs-grani/Óðinn requests of starkaðr the sacrifice of King Víkarr, and the sacrifice is soon completed (è25, è30, è35, and è42).
in Gesta Danorum, there is a whole saga of starkaðr (starcatherus), stretching from Book 6 to Book 8. starcatherus is a hero much beloved by saxo, because he despises luxury and effeminate conduct and because he is tough and brave. However, except for his superhuman powers and skills which, as we just saw, were given to him by Óðinn, starcatherus is not particularly god-like; all through his life he behaves exclusively as a great hero, but he does not in any way 42 The last exchange clearly echoes Óðinn’s boast in Hárbarðsljóð st. 24: ‘Óðinn á iarla | þá er falla í val, | enn Þórr á þræla kyn’ (odin owns the nobles [jarls] who fall in battle, and Thor owns the race of thralls).
43 Gautreks saga ch. 7: ‘Óðinn mælti: “Ek gef honum skáldskap, svá at hann skal eigi seinna yrkja en mæla”’ (odin said: i give him poetry in such a way that he shall no more slowly compose than speak).
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mingle with the gods. saxo also knew the birth and early life of starcatherus, although it is told in a slightly different way than in Gautreks saga, the most important difference being that whereas in Gautreks saga it is Þórr who decides that he shall commit a níðingsverk in each of his three lives, according to saxo this is decided by Óðinn (6.5.6). However, there is no doubt that he is an odinic hero, even if the god apparently disappears out of his life after the killing of Víkarr; and the same goes for Þórr and the hostility between the hero and this god: it is apparently not portrayed in the rest of the ‘saga’. Nevertheless, it has been argued by georges Dumézil (1983) that much of starcatherus’s career is closely connected to his relation to the two gods, the main link being the three ‘sins’ ( níðingsverk) that are predicted by Þórr ( Gautreks saga) or Óðinn ( Gesta Danorum) to be committed by the hero. scholars have been discussing these nídingsverk because saxo, who is the only source for the latter part of starcatherus’s life, does not explicitly say that the second and the third are consequences of the prediction. However, it seems quite clear that the third would be the killing of the Danish king olo (8.6.3), which starcatherus agrees to carry out for a salary of 120 marks of gold. actually, he becomes so depressed afterwards that he wants to die. The second ‘sin’, on the contrary, is far from clear. it could be fleeing from a battle, or it could be the instigation of a mass killing in the hall of King ingellus (6.9.17).44 it is obvious that, despite the lack of direct evidence for divine interaction in the latter part of starkaðr’s life, he is a hero placed between two gods who are often seen as opponents (cf. Hárbarðsljóð), and this position ends up structuring his whole life.
Having said this, however, we must once again state that there is no evidence for the view that starkaðr was ever considered a god, even if he is unquestionably closely linked to Óðinn like some of the other heroes we have dealt with and will deal with in this chapter.45
Hadingus
Hadingus, whom we meet in the first book of Gesta Danorum, is clearly another odinic hero, as we shall return to in (è42). There, we will see that Hadingus is protected by Óðinn and that he ends his life sacrificing himself to the god by hanging. Hadingus, like sigurðr, has been seen as a legendary hero whose story 44 for a discussion of these issues, see Turville-Petre (1964: 205–11).
45 We should also mention here the analysis of Meulengracht sørensen (2001a), which deals primarily with the significance of starkaðr’s descent from a giant father as decisive for his whole life.
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is based on genuine myth, this time as a replica of the god Njǫrðr. This was first proposed by georges Dumézil (1970a, in English as 1973b; see also è47) who saw the career of Hadingus as a reflection of that of Njǫrðr: starting out as a vanir god, including incestuous sexual relations with his foster-mother, and then joining the æsir, expressed in his relation to Óðinn.46 Dumézil’s analysis of Hadingus’s career appears to be one of the most brilliant of his many brilliant analyses, and, although many details should be discussed and perhaps rejected, the clear parallel between Hadingus and Njǫrðr is hard to deny. Hadingus, therefore, seems to be an example of the ‘displacement’ (see below) which is often seen in saxo: in narratives disguised as ‘history’, heroes take on roles that originally (or at least previously) belonged to gods. The structures, however, as analysed by, among others, Dumézil — and not only in connection with Hadingus — do not necessarily change in any substantial way, which is why saxo is often relevant to our reconstructions of the mythology of PCRN. at any rate, it is clear that Hadingus is an outstanding person because, although he is human, he is seen as rather close to the gods. This fact, however, may be due to his position as king, as was proposed in (è23), rather than to the ‘displacement’. Therefore, we are in the same situation with Hadingus as with some of the above-mentioned ‘heroes’: as a legendary king, he might have been worshipped as a god, however there are no indications of this in the extant sources.
Thus, Hadingus illustrates well the problems we have in dealing with such
‘intermediate’ figures: in the extant sources, he is presented as a ‘historic’ king, although many supernatural traits are ascribed to him. This means that he may reflect pagan notions of kingship, but it can also mean that we are simply facing a ‘displacement’, which would mean that he is basically to be regarded as a
‘sunken’ god, in this case Njǫrðr, rather than a ‘raised’ human. Maybe the situation is not one of either-or, but more likely both-and. for Hadingus, this both-and may be supported by the fact that his name is closely related to the plural Haddingjar,47 a name often used to describe brothers but which could equally well be a dynastic name, as seems to be the case in Hversu Noregr byggðist ch. 2.
further, Helgi hundingsbani is called Haddingjaskati (warrior or chieftain of the Haddingjar) (end prose of Helgakvida hundingsbana II and Hversu Noregr byggðist ch. 2). since haddr may mean ‘a woman’s coiffure’ (de Vries 1962a: 200; cf. Turville-Petre 1964: 219), the name Hadingus may indicate that he was connected to some cult with female orientation, recalling Germania ch.
46 for a detailed summary of the Hadingus story, see Turville-Petre (1964: 213–16).
47 They are sometimes presented as more than two (for instance, in Ǫrvar-odds saga ch. 14
and Hversu Noregr byggðist ch. 2), but then they succeed each other.
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43 where it is said that among the Nahanarvali a priest in women’s dress presided over the cult of the alcis, two divine brothers, whom Tacitus compares to Castor and Pollux. This leads Turville-Petre (1964: 219–20) to suggest that the cult was linked to the vanir gods. We know from saxo that starkaðr ( Gesta Danorum 6.5.10) despised the feminine character of the cult in Uppsala, which was certainly connected to freyr and thus to the vanir; furthermore, it is said that Hadingus instigated a cult of frø in sweden and that it was celebrated by the swedes for generations to come ( Gesta Danorum 1.8.12). all in all, it seems certain that Hadingus was closely associated with the cult of the vanir and, according to Turville-Petre, that the cult of the divine twins was connected to the vanir.48 Therefore, he suggests that the Haddingjar could well have been priests related in particular to this effeminate cult and ‘as such they would be divine, even incarnate gods’ (1964: 219). Turville-Petre, however, is also aware that it is problematic for this theory that saxo portrays only one Hadingus, so it is as if saxo or his source ‘had dropped one of the Haddingjar brothers because the concept of dual chieftainship was a thing of the past’ (1964: 219). This historical explanation of the relation between the two Haddingjar, connected to dual kingship, and the one Hadingus found in saxo, however, is not the only possible one.49 if the twin kings (e.g., Hengest and Horsa) were not thought of as exclusively belonging to the third function of Dumézil, but rather as a way of expressing the interdependence of vanir and æsir, peace kings and war kings, and so forth (è23 and Nygaard 2016: 24–26), then it is clear why ‘one Hadingus’ is enough: he is both a representative of the vanir cult and of the Óðinn cult because of his transition from the vanir sphere to the Óðinn sphere.
although, of course, we can never know for sure, it seems quite likely that saxo’s account of Hadingus could well derive from this idea about dual kingship.
all this shows how difficult it is to determine whether the ‘intermediates’
are gods or humans. as mentioned above, there are two main reasons for this: namely, that some sources seem on one hand to place the gods in heroic pseudo-historical accounts, thus rendering them ‘humans’; and, on the other hand, that certain human figures were probably seen (also by the pagans) as possessing such a high degree of numinosity that they were very close to what we normally 48 according to Dumézil (1973c: 17–18), the gods of the third function are most often twins, although in the North they are depicted as father and son (Njǫrðr and freyr). for a more general treatment of divine twins, see (è55).
49 for further discussion and arguments for a cult of the dioskuri, see de Vries (1956–57a: i, 244–55).
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consider gods. Thus, they may well be, and most likely were, seen as mediators between the divine and the human.
Additional Odinic Interactions
Óðinn interacts with humans in a number of other fornaldarsögur as well. in Hrólfs saga kraka ch. 39, a certain Hrani hosts Hrólfr and his army and through various physical tests winnows down Hrólfr’s army for the upcoming battle with aðils in which Hrólfr prevails; thus Hrani bestows victory on Hrólfr and his twelve kappar (champions, heroes). later, they return, and Hrani offers them weapons, which they refuse. They leave their angry host, yet soon realize that the man was Óðinn, but when they return, his farm has vanished. Hrólfr points out to his men that their host was an evil spirit. in Ǫrvar-Odds saga, the eponymous hero swears blood-brotherhood with one Rauðgrani, later identified by the author as Óðinn, in order to obtain help in avenging his foster-brother Þórðr, who was killed by a malevolent berserkr. Numerous similar figures appear in the fornaldarsögur, in dark clothing and with hoods pulled down over their eyes, and although we infer that these are Óðinn-like figures, the identification is not actually made very often.50
Óðinn has a similar relationship to kings and heroes in saxo’s Gesta Danorum. King frogerus is his son (4.8.1), and Haraldus Hyldetan is his special favourite. Ódinn advises him about clever military formations (Book 8) but then later passes on the same information to his enemy and, disguised as Haraldus’s charioteer, clubs him to death as the battle turns against him (Book 8 and è42).
Cult
as we have indicated above, what qualifies figures for inclusion in this particular chapter is the presence of some sort of numinosity about them combined with scant or no evidence of any cult activity. The later written records do, however, give us Óláfr geirstaðaálfr, an early yngling king in Vestfold. foreseeing his death in a plague, Óláfr geirrøðarson instructs his people to inter him in a mound but forbids them to worship him after his death. However, they proceed to worship him anyway, calling him Óláfr geirstaðaálfr ( álfr of geirstaðir). The episode is found in some versions of the saga of st Óláfr wherein the future saint acquires some of his namesake’s grave goods and is even regarded by some 50 for a thorough survey, see Røthe (2010: 13–102).
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as his reincarnation (fundamental study in Heinrichs 1989). While the idea that in pagan tradition an ancestor might become an álfr is not implausible, the presentation is consistent with medieval Christian thinking (Wellendorf 2003). and in the earliest recording of the story, the Legendary Saga of St Óláfr, a Norwegian version from the thirteenth century, ancestor worship plays no part at all.
Ritual is, of course, the site of meetings or potential meetings between humans and the divine, and thus ritual space represents the kind of ‘in-between’
that is the subject of this chapter. However, as we have seen, ‘in-betweenness’
is not exclusively associated with ritual space and, just as some of the gods we know from the myths apparently have no cultic functions, the same may well be the case with some of the heroes: we can rarely rule out the possibility that in some distant past, outside the reach of our sources, some of them were worshipped — in fact, for dead kings this clearly seems to have been the case.
others, however, seem instead to be purely narrative figures whose main function is to create and support the world-view of the pre-Christians.
Scholarship and Interpretation
Euhemerism
as we have seen in the preceding paragraphs, the distinctions between gods and humans are not always easy to draw. There are several reasons for this, such as definitional problems and the fact that these categories clearly were not distinguished as an either-or but as a spectrum with several intermediate categories in between. another important reason is also the way paganism was conceived of by many of the authors of our sources. as has been stated several times, most of these sources were composed by Christians, and their view of the pagan religion was influenced by general medieval models used to explain paganism, the two most influential being that of demonology and that of euhemerism — and often a combination of the two.51 Thus, the gods were most often seen as demons or historical persons, or both, who had led the poor, naïve pagans astray.
51 for a splendid overview of euhemerism as used both within Christian Europe in general and the North in particular, see Weber (1994, with many valuable references). Weber also treats the combinations of the views, in which the pagan gods were seen as demons and as historical figures, respectively. see also Malm (2018), simek (2013), and Clunies Ross (2018a).
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The theory that gods were originally human beings who eventually came to be regarded as gods is called euhemerism, from the greek Euhemeros, who lived in the fourth and third centuries bc and who argues that the greek gods should be understood as kings and heroes of the past. This model was adopted by the Christian writers of the Middle ages and became a favoured way for the early Christian icelanders to describe their pagan past, most notably snorri sturluson who, in the Prologue and in Gylfaginning of his Edda as well as in Ynglinga saga, relates how the æsir originally came from asia Minor, called Tyrkland, and much later became viewed as gods by the scandinavians. it has, however, been acknowledged for a long time that gods in polytheistic systems in general should not be seen, at least not exclusively, as originating from historical persons, and therefore the view of the medieval writers must not be taken at face value. or in other words: in order to obtain the right perspective on the pagan religion, it is necessary to extract the euhemerism from the sources. No modern scholar is likely to reject the basic assumptions in this view: the Norse gods did not arrive from asia Minor, and they are not to be seen as historical persons.
However, we cannot simply maintain that the gods were not conceived as historical figures. Most of them were certainly not historical in a scholarly sense: in the world of factual history, Óðinn was not a king from asia, and he was not the founder of the pre-Christian religion, but there is nothing to suggest that he was not, by the pagans, regarded as a figure who founded various royal houses and maybe a number of tribes. in this way, we could perhaps speak of a kind of ‘inverted euhemerism’: the pagans generally did not make gods out of historical persons, although some kings and warriors, as we have seen, probably did come to be viewed as gods after their deaths, but the pagans, conversely, did make historical persons out of (some of ) their gods. in our opinion, there is no doubt that this fluctuation between gods and humans is one of the main characteristics of PCRN and that many of the ‘in-between’ figures we have treated in this chapter have, as their raison d’être, this fundamental knowledge: the difference between gods and humans is not insurmountable. Even if it were only the dead, especially dead rulers, who were really worshipped, many of the figures treated here should probably not be seen as qualitatively different from the
‘mythological gods’, that is, as gods that apparently had no cult but were there to establish the characters of the more important ‘cultic’ gods.
Displacement
By the term displacement, we mean the transposition of a narrative structure found in myth into the narrative world in which the actors are human, as set
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forth in the discussion of Hadingus above.52 Working within an older diffu-sionist folklore paradigm, some scholars argued that, for example, the myth of Þórr’s visit to Útgarðaloki had been ‘borrowed’ into adjacent oral tradition areas such as ireland (von der leyen 1908) or Russia (Chadwick 1964),53 but they did not term such borrowing ‘displacement’, and neither would we. We prefer to limit the term to displacement within the same narrative tradition, in most cases old Norse (taken broadly and including saxo). We are aware and accept that the term presupposes a chronological progression, and we are also aware and accept that ‘human’ narrative structures could just as well be displaced into mythic narratives. However, in the case of the old Norse textual tradition, most scholars would agree that mythic narratives did antedate the displaced versions that we find; and, indeed, some of the texts containing displaced myths can be dated fairly late in medieval icelandic literary history, such as Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns. as far back as 1924, Eugen Mogk notes that this fornaldarsaga comprises a displaced version of Þórr’s journey to and battle with geirrøðr (Mogk 1924a). The hero, Þorsteinn, obtains a magic stone that, like Þórr’s hammer, returns to him when thrown; like the hammer, too, it comes from a dwarf. like Þórr on his way to geirrøðr, Þorsteinn crosses a dangerous river, and also like Þórr he kills a giant named geirrøðr by means of a projectile, in this case the stone. although the parallels are far from perfect, there is no doubt that a human plays the role of Þórr in this comic tale;54
moreover, the Útgarðaloki myth is also displaced into it.55 in Book 8 of saxo’s Gesta Danorum, the geirrøðr story is also displaced. Thorkillus leads an expedition to the dark underworld abode of geruthus, and during the course of this journey he and his companions must cross a dangerous river. Rather than kill geruthus, however, Thorkillus merely recounts the myth: Þórr maimed the old man as well as three (not two) giantesses.
52 Displacement, as we use it, is a transposition by the Christian authors, whereas ‘inverted euhemerism’ should be seen as the perspective of the ‘insiders’; e.g., Óðinn, the god, was made into a forefather.
53 C. W. von sydow argues for an opposite trajectory, the borrowing into old Norse myth, in this case Þórr’s journey to Útgarðaloki, from irish tradition (von sydow 1910; cf. von sydow 1920a).
54 see further frog 2014 and lindow 2014c.
55 Thus, a joke that runs throughout the text is that, although Þorsteinn is as mighty as a house and has by this quality earned his cognomen bœjarmagn, among the giants who befriend him, he is tiny; they think barnamagn (children’s might) would be a more suitable name for him.
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What such displacements show is that human and divine actors could be put into similar plots (other examples have been adduced by Haraldur Bessason 1977 and lindow 1977a).56 The most significant example of such a phenomenon involves the overlap between mythic eschatology and the demise of the progeny of guðrún (è39). The redactor of the Poetic Edda clearly saw this parallel: the death of Hamðir and sǫrli in Hamðismál, who have killed their brother or half-brother Erpr just as Hǫðr did Baldr, is the ‘Ragnarǫk’ of a kin-group. The redactor organized all his material with multiforms of the Endzeit in mind (Klingenberg 1974), and the materials easily fit such a mould.
although scholars have primarily located displacement in the fornaldarsögur and in saxo’s Gesta Danorum, Preben Meulengracht sørensen (2001b) makes a brilliant analysis of freyr in the Íslendinga sögur, although the displacement here is much more difficult to see.
Dumézil’s analysis of the Hadingus saga is noteworthy, too, in that he argues for the displacement of both extant and lost myths about Njǫrðr. in other cases, however, the situation is much more complicated, which makes it difficult to decide which is the ‘original’ version, the ‘myth’ or the ‘displacement’, as is the case with the figures freyr and fróði: is the latter a displacement of the myth about freyr’s funeral, or is the archetypical king the model for the myth about freyr, as related by snorri ( Ynglinga saga ch. 10)?
These issues cannot be resolved here; suffice it to say that all through the present work, we will occasionally encounter the problem of euhemerism/displacement.
Concluding Remarks
We began this chapter by quoting Robert Bellah, maintaining that the boundaries between various beings in this world and the other World were often, if not always, fluid in the kind of societies to which the pre-Christian scandinavians belonged, and we have seen that this was definitely also the case within PCRN.
The figures we have treated here are all placed in the distant past when the world was different from what it is here and now, and it seems to be a general feature in most religions that back in those days the borders between gods and humans were different from what they are now — usually different in the sense of less solid. although we have seen that some human beings, even in the his-56 Kaaren grimstad’s association of the story pattern of Vǫlundarkviða with myth, specifically Grímnimsmál, also constitutes a displacement, unless one assigns the Vǫlundar story to the divine (grimstad 1983); see above on Vǫlundr.
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torical present, are not purely of this world, since there exist, inside as well as outside their physical bodies, entities which are of the other World, it seems clear that the heroes of the past were closer to the gods, perhaps even more ‘godlike’, than is the case in the present world. We have noted two different kinds of humans: on the one hand, those who seem to be firmly situated within the mythic world, such as Þjálfi and Bragi (at least in the way Bragi is described by snorri and in poetry); and, on the other hand, those who are just as firmly situated in this world, such as the Vǫlsungar, starkaðr, and Hadingus. No doubt many more heroes could have been mentioned here, such as other heroes from the fornaldarsögur who have special relations to the other World. Vǫlundr is problematical to place within this distinction since he is on the one hand surely a ‘hero’, but on the other hand he is definitely much more ‘god-like’ than is the case with the heroes just mentioned. The differences between these two groups of ‘in-between’ beings are not clear, but from an analytical point of view it is interesting that Þjálfi, who is the only human to live among the gods without being dead, is also the only human of the lower classes who has become kind of
‘god-like’. all other humans who mingle with the gods are of noble origin.
Compared to many other mythologies, it is a bit surprising how few humans we meet in the ‘classical’ mythological sources (snorri and the eddic mythological poems), which give the impression that there was virtually no exchange between gods and humans. This, however, changes dramatically when we turn to saxo and the fornaldarsögur, in which the heroes often meet the gods, although it is usually the gods, and nearly always Óðinn, who come to this world, but only occasionally humans who go to the other World (for instance, Þorsteinn and Thorkillus, see above). from these sources it could well be argued that in the oral, pagan society there is a type of myth, which we only see seldom in the ‘classical’ sources: namely, narratives revealing a much closer relation between gods and humans in the mythic past than is the case in the present world (cf. schjødt 2009b). But this condition could for some reason not persist, and gradually the world turned into what it is now. What has happened since the mythic past is a process of differentiation at all levels, including the relation between gods and humans. it is important to note that we are dealing with a process: the differences characterizing the world we are living in are not as absolute as one might be led to believe: they have changed over time and can perhaps change again. This is certainly one of the reasons why people of the past, often kings and other heroes, were closer to the gods than we usually see in the present, and it may be one of the reasons for the close relationship between the categories of myth and heroic legend. They are narratives from different times (albeit not that different!), existing on a continuum.
36 – The Divine, the Human, and In Between
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as we have seen, however, this does not mean that special humans in the present are not closer to the gods than ordinary people. in this way, we can conclude this chapter by stating that the fluid borders between various kinds of beings, as mentioned by Bellah, can be seen from a diachronic as well as a synchronic perspective: the relation between gods and humans is mediated by beings who are not ordinary gods, nor ordinary humans. This relation, however, changed over mythical time, and in general the distance between the two worlds was perceived as much greater in the present than in the past.