Making the Profane Sacred
in the Viking Age
MEDIEVAL TEXTS AND CULTURES OF NORTHERN EUROPE
General Editor
Rory Naismith, University of Cambridge
Editorial Board
Elizabeth Boyle, Maynooth University
Aisling Byrne, University of Reading
Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz
Carolyne Larrington, University of Oxford
Erik Niblaeus, University of Cambridge
Emily V. Thornbury, Yale University
Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.
Volume 32
Making the Profane Sacred
in the Viking Age
Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink
Edited by
Irene García Losquiño,
Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
© 2020, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2020/0095/101
ISBN: 978-2-503-58604-5
e-ISBN: 978-2-503-58605-2
DOI: 10.1484/M.TECNE-EB.5.118268
ISSN: 1784-2859
e-ISSN: 2294-8414
Printed in the EU on acid-free paper
Contents
List of Illustrations
ix
Abbreviations
xi
Introduction
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart,
and Irene García Losquiño
1
I. Understanding Sacredness
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
Margaret Clunies Ross
Landscape: Sacred and Profane
Jens Peter Schjødt
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in:
A Note on some Creative Tensions in the Landscape
Mats Widgren
25
43
53
II. Sacredness and Space
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands: Some Spatial
and Archaeo­logical Contexts from the Baltic Island of Öland
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia
Torun Zachrisson
63
85
Contents
vi
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland
Per Vikstrand
Stafgarþar Revisited
99
109
Anders Andrén
Sacredness Lost: On the Variable Status of Churches in the Middle Ages
Bertil Nilsson
121
III. The Sacred and the Text
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
John McKinnell
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
Carolyne Larrington
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða
Judy Quinn
141
157
171
IV. Sacredness across Contexts
From Legend to Myth?
John Lindow
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden
Tarrin Wills
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods
Bo Gräslund
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
Terry Gunnell
185
197
211
229
243
Contents
vii
V. Afterlives of Sacredness
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead
Andreas Nordberg
Place-Names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition:
Odinic Toponyms on Samsø
Stephen A. Mitchell
Sacred Sites and Central Places:
Experiences of Multidisciplinary Research Projects
269
283
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
297
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
315
Tabula Gratulatoria
331
List of Illustrations
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
Figure 5.1. Reconstruction of all the wetlands on Öland before
the massive drainage took place during the nineteenth century. . . . . . . . . . 64
Figure 5.2. Neck-ring in bronze; Mouthpiece for a scabbard in gold;
Deposition of thirty-seven Viking Age arm-rings and necklaces . . . . . . . . . 65
Figure 5.3. Långlöt and Folkeslunda with neighbouring villages. . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Figure 5.4. ‘The Dumpling’ in Folkeslunda, Öland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Figure 5.5. ‘Bronze statuette’ from Himmelsberga, Öland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Figure 5.6. Seven snake-headed gold-rings from Skedemosse, Öland. . . . . . . . 73
Figure 5.7. Wetlands, ancient monuments, historical villages, and
sacral and theophoric place-names in the Skedemosse area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Torun Zachrisson
Figure 6.1. Archaeo­logically identified pre-Christian ritual sites situated
in the border areas of hundreds known from medi­eval times. . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Anders Andrén
Figure 8.1. Map of Gotland with the location of all the Stavgard names. . . . 112
Figure 8.2. Plan of Stavgard at Kärne in the parish of Burs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Figure 8.3. Plan of Stavgard at Botvalde in the parish of Stånga. . . . . . . . . . . 118
x
list of iLLUSTRATIONS
Tarrin Wills
Table 14.1. Incidence of Thor- and bridge inscriptions by Swedish region. . . 201
Figure 14.1. Relationship of Thor- names and bridges
in inscriptions by region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Figure 14.2. Northern Småland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Figure 14.3. Uppland (detail). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Figure 14.4. Östergötland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
Figure 15.1. Karen Louise Jolly’s Model for Medi­eval Popular Religion. . . . 216
Bo Gräslund
Figure 16.1. The boar king on the helmet from Vendel grave 14. . . . . . . . . . . 234
Stephen A. Mitchell
Figure 19.1. Detail of Ons=bierg=dyr and Ons=bierg parish
from Resenii descriptio et illustratio Samsoæ (1675). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Figure 19.2. Detail of Øns=höÿ from Resenii descriptio
et illustratio Samsoæ (1675). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Figure 19.3. Detail from the map by I. Haas, Nye og tilforladelig
accurat Geo­graphisk Charte over Öen Samsoe af Aar 1755. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Figure 19.4. A local website presents ‘Dyret’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
Figure 20.1. Stefan Brink on an excursion to Hunneberg, Västergötland,
during a conference on the gold finds made at nearby Vittene. . . . . . . . . . 298
Figure 20.2. A find made by Stefan Brink during metal detecting of
an area at Ravlunda, Scania, is discussed with Mats Riddersporre. . . . . . . 309
Abbreviations
Eng
Fr
ODa
OE
ON
OSw
SHM
Sw
English
French
Old Danish
Old English
Old Norse
Old Swedish
Statens historiska museer
(Sweden’s National Historical Museums)
Swedish
Introduction
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
T
Sometimes research can be such fun. You happen upon an illuminating
source, a clever word from a fellow-scholar or a passage in a book or an article. You are faced with a problem that you have to solve. It’s like a thriller, or
as we say in Swedish, a ‘pusseldeckare’; you have the corpus delictum or better
delicti, you have some idea of the modus and the plot; now you have to find
evidence in order to solve the problem and wrap up the case. (Stefan Brink)1
he sacred is a key concept in the history of religions like those that were
present in Iron Age and medi­eval Scandinavia.2 Thus the title of the
present book, Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age, seems quite
1
Brink, Lord and Lady – ‘Bryti’ and ‘Deig ja’, p. 3.
The sacred and holiness have been key concepts in the history of religions, albeit
much debated. Some scholars have contended that holiness should be seen as an impersonal
power, which has some similarities with the idea of Polynesian mana. Others, such as Baetke, have argued against this view and stated that the holy is always related to the divinity.
As an analytic concept, the sacred is often used relationally in contrast to the profane. See
Söderblom, ‘Holiness’, pp. 731–41; Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life;
2
Olof Sundqvist (olof.sundqvist@rel.su.se) is Professor in the History of Religions at the
Department of Ethno­logy, History of Religions, and Gender Studies of Stockholm Uni­ver­sity.
He has written the books Freyr’s Offspring: Rulers and Religion in Ancient Svea Society (2002)
and An Arena for Higher Powers: Ceremonial Buildings and Religious Strategies for Rulership in
Late Iron Age Scandinavia (2016).
Declan Taggart (d.c.taggart@dunelm.org.uk) is a researcher of Old Norse religion and
literature, especially of the cognitive underpinnings of representations of pre-Christian gods
and morality.
Irene García Losquiño (i.garcialosquino@gmail.com) is a researcher of the Viking diaspora,
currently focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to Viking contact with the Iberian
Peninsula. She has previously worked on the early runic inscriptions.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 1–22
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119335
2
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
suitable for a Festschrift intended to honour and pay tribute to as distinguished
a professor as Stefan Brink is among historians of religions. Stefan, the honorand of this collection, is a linguist. However, as a professor in Scandinavian
languages, he has contributed to our understanding of the history of Viking
Age religion and early Christianity in Scandinavia over a long series of highquality studies, stretching from his doctoral thesis Sockenbildning och sockennamn (1990) to his most recently published book Theorizing Old Norse Myth
(2017) (in that case as co-editor of the publication and author of one of its
chapters). Across several of these studies, Stefan explores the sacred dimension
of the landscape and the society of the Vikings, and it was those explorations
that prompted this volume’s theme of the sacred in the Viking Age and the early
Middle Ages.
It must be admitted, nevertheless, that Stefan’s contribution to academic
study is much wider than that. He is an outstanding figure in the study of early
Scandinavian language, place-names, landscape history, society and culture,
early law, and Viking slavery, and the essays presented in the present volume
reflect the diversity, interdisciplinarity, and vitality of that research. The notable scholars contributing to this volume use tools drawn from philo­logy, history, geo­graphy, history of religions, legal studies, onomastics, and archaeo­logy,
and their collected efforts constitute a major new contribution to the field of
Old Norse studies. However, before surveying the contents of those essays and
more thoroughly setting out the overall theme of this book, a presentation of
the honorand himself, Stefan Brink, is needed.
Born and Raised in Hälsingland
Stefan Brink was born on 26 July 1952, at the hospital of Ljusdal, in the province of Hälsingland, northern Sweden. At this time the family lived in a place
called Huskölen close to Ytterhogdal, in the province of Härjedalen. Their
home was located on the northern side of the river Ljusnan, and the only way
for the Brink family to get to and from the nearby village was to row over the
river. Nonetheless, the family spent a lot of time at their family farm called
Brinks in Ytteryg, Färila socken (parish), in Hälsingland, where Stefan’s uncles,
Otto, Das Heilige; Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, and The Sacred and the Profane; Baetke, Das Heilige im Germanischen, pp. 1‒46; Widengren, Religionsphänomeno­logie, pp. 30–45;
Oxtoby, ‘Holy, Idea of the’, pp. 431‒38; Colpe, ‘The Sacred and the Profane’, pp. 511–26 and
‘Das Heilige’, pp. 80–89; McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion; and most recently Lincoln,
Apples and Oranges, pp. 14–24. See also Clunies Ross’s and Schjødt’s articles below.
Introduction
3
Ragnar and Lennart, lived. Stefan himself took the time to describe rural life
in the 1950s at the farm Brinks in a short text, noting that there were only two
books on the bookshelf of the house: the Bible and one about heavyweight
boxing champions.3 His uncle Lennart was a boxer who had even fought for the
welterweight title in northern Sweden, and when, in 1959, the Swede Ingmar
Johansson won the heavyweight title by defeating Floyd Patterson, it was a
momentous event for the inhabitants of the farm. As Stefan enjoyed the company of his uncles, he and his brother Anders spent a lot of time at their farm.
The agricultural life there, with its mowing and hay harvesting, strongly affected
Stefan, and still today you can hear him say in the dialect Hälsingemål: ‘Jag är
bara en bondpojk från Hälsingland’ (I am just a farm-boy from Hälsingland).
In 1957, Stefan’s father Sigfrid and his mother Elvie moved from Huskölen
to Skinnskatteberg (in the province of Västmanland), where Stefan started
school, but the family soon returned to the summer house in Ytteryg, and
later moved to the more urban Ljusdal (c. six thousand inhabitants), where
Sigfrid worked as a teacher. In the early 1960s, Stefan himself went to school
in Ljusdal, together with his older brother Anders and his younger sisters
Ann-Christine and Birgitta. He showed a marked curiosity towards books and
knowledge early on, and he was very talented in his schoolwork. Hälsingland is
the only province in Sweden where bandy is more popular and important than
ice hockey, and like all the boys and young men in Ljusdal, Stefan played bandy
in wintertime, going on to join the renowned bandy club IF Vesta in Uppsala,
where he was also the team’s coach. Stefan developed a deep interest in orienteering as well, in which he was likewise very talented. He even drew orienteering maps for competitions, expediting his education in landscape, topo­graphy,
and toponymy.
After graduating from high school, Stefan started the teacher programme
in Härnösand and completed his degree in 1974. However, during his military
service in Uppsala, he came into contact with the life of the city’s old university (founded in 1477). He observed students bustling in and out of the Uni­
ver­sity’s Carolina Library with books under their arms and noticed that those
same books were being read on the city’s park benches during the daytime.
This sowed a new seed in Stefan: he realized that he too wanted to be one of
those grown adults who could sit outside and read their books in the broad
daylight.
3
See Brink, ‘Knockouten i Ytteryg’, p. 43.
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
4
The Early Years in Uppsala:
Scandinavian Languages and Place-Name Research
For a period in his young adulthood, Stefan worked as a teacher in Sveg,
Härjedalen. Yet curiosity and a passion for education brought him to Uppsala
and its university, where he began studying Scandinavian languages and other
subjects in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. During these years, Stefan was
introduced to one of the world’s leading and most prominent environments for
place-name research, composed of Uppsala Uni­ver­sity’s Seminariet för nordisk ortnamnsforskning (the Seminar for Scandinavian Place-name Research)
and Ortnamnsarkivet i Uppsala (the Institute of Place-Name Research), in
which he encountered a group of distinguished professors and researchers on
place-names and linguistics, including such luminaries as Thorsten Andersson,
Lennart Elmevik, Lars Hellberg, Lennart Moberg, Folke Hedblom, Ingemar
Olsson, Bertil Flemström, Evert Melefors, and Gun Widmark. Also partaking
in this milieu were Jan Paul Strid and Staffan Nyström, the geo­graphers Mats
Widgren and Ulf Sporrong, the archaeo­logists Bo and Anne-Sofie Gräslund,
and the historians Thomas Lindkvist and Sigurd Rahmqvist.
In the early 1980s, Stefan worked as a research assistant on a project funded
by the Swedish Research Council,4 and, at the same time, he started writing
his PhD thesis, which focused on parish formation, parish names, and early
territorial division in Scandinavia. In the years that followed, Stefan published
more than a dozen articles on place-names and the cultural landscape, in both
Swedish and international antho­logies and periodicals. However, his first article ‘Bodlanden i Järvsö socken’ was published as early as 1979 in an antho­logy
dedicated to his supervisor, Professor Thorsten Andersson. He also published
a book titled Ortnamn i Hälsingland (1984), which is a more popular, but still
learned, presentation of the place-names of Hälsingland.
During the 1980s Stefan often participated in the so-called NORNAsymposia, such as the one in Gilleleje (30 November–2 December 1990) which
took ‘cultic names’ as its theme. In NORNA-rapporter 48, a collection of
papers from that symposium entitled Sakrale navne, Stefan himself published
a significant article called ‘Har vi haft ett kultiskt *al i Norden?’ Also taking
part in the symposium in Gilleleje (and in Sakrale navne) was the archaeo­
logist Charlotte Fabech, who, along with her husband Ulf Näsman, had already
4
This council was in Swedish called Humanistisk-Samhällsvetenskapliga forskningsrådet
until 2000 and Vetenskapsrådet from 2001. Most of the projects Stefan has undertaken in Sweden have been funded by this research council.
Introduction
5
contributed substantially to Stefan’s increasing interest in archaeo­logy by that
point, beginning with their very first meeting in Degerhamn, on Öland, in
October 1985. For many years these three scholars collaborated in very constructive ways. In 1995, for instance, Stefan was invited by Charlotte and Ulf
to be a guest professor at Afdeling for forhistorisk arkæo­logi at Aarhus Uni­ver­
sity, where they discussed and developed the concept of the ‘central place’ (see
Fabech and Näsman’s contribution and below).
Defending his Thesis, Meeting Helena Rosborg, and Raising a Family
In 1990, Stefan defended his thesis ‘Sockenbildning och sockennamn. Studier
i äldre territoriell indelning i Norden’ (‘Parish Formation and Parish Names:
Studies in Early Territorial Division in Scandinavia’) at Uppsala Uni­ver­sity. As
mentioned above, the main subject of this study was the formation of parishes
in Scandinavia, which led Stefan to examine issues related to the conversion to
Christianity in the North, early ecclesiastical organization, and the formation of
states. In the second part of the thesis, he made a case study of the territorial division of early medi­eval Hälsingland. By examining a considerable number of parish names, Stefan brought new light to the processes of parish formation, revealing that the Church sometimes used social structures that ostensibly date from
the Viking Age but in other cases restructured older settlement districts and created ‘artificial’ parishes, with boundaries that divided the older districts. Stefan’s
dissertation enjoyed a very good reception and he was appointed Associate
Professor (Swedish docent) in Scandinavian languages at the Philo­logical Faculty
of Uppsala Uni­ver­sity in 1991. He also held a position as Assistant Professor at
the Department of Scandinavian Languages between 1991 and 1995.
After defending his thesis, Stefan took part in the project The Christianization
of Sweden as a researcher and editor, collaborating with some of the most eminent scholars of medi­e val Sweden and Norway. Five very consequential volumes on the conversion of Sweden were published within this project, and
Stefan edited the fourth of these, Jämtlands kristnande, to which he also contributed with an article entitled ‘Christianization and Church Organization in
Jämtland’. In the final and fifth volume, it was concluded: ‘The Christianization
of Sweden must be regarded as a lengthy process. No forced conversions are
known to have occurred, nor is there any unequivocal documentation of collective conversions’.5 This statement must still be regarded as Stand der Forschung
in this specific research field.
5
Nilsson, ‘The Christianization of Sweden’, p. 431.
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
6
In 1988, Stefan met his life’s great love, Helena Rosborg (now Brink), and
they settled down in a house in Luthagen, Uppsala, the place where they still
live today. Together they have three wonderful kids, Hampus (born 1991),
Emma (born 1993), and Anna (born 1998). Stefan and Helena married in the
charming medi­e val church of Uppsala Näs in 2004. The officiant and priest
was the professor of medi­e val church history, and Stefan’s close friend, Bertil
Nilsson.
Stefan really is a family man, and he loves to spend his holidays with his
family, these days in their apartment in Menton. Menton is situated on the
French Riviera, along the Franco-Italian border, and is often called perle de la
France. Stefan enjoys going there by car ‒ in one of his series of old Saabs ‒ across
Europe from Uppsala. Sometimes he also uses his place in Menton for researching and writing.
Becoming the Scholar Stefan Brink
Just after Hampus was born, Stefan was granted a post-doctoral scholarship by
the Swedish Research Council (1992–93), which enabled Stefan and Helena to
move their young family to Australia and New Zealand. Stefan was appointed
visiting researcher at the ANU Canberra, Institute for Pacific Studies at the
Uni­ver­sity of Canterbury, and the Department of Archaeo­logy and Anthropo­
logy at the Uni­ver­sity of Auckland. Over these years Stefan developed further
his interest in the anthropo­logical aspects of historical research and onomastic
studies, such as oral culture (see below).
Returning to Uppsala Uni­ver­sity, Stefan held a research position in a project called Central Place, Land and Kingdom. Studies in Early Scandinavian
History between 1995 and 1998 and published a series of influential articles on
political and social structures in early Scandinavia. In this work, he applied a
settlement-historical approach and delved into the concept of ‘central places’,6
exploring ‘central places’ in the late Iron Age and early Middle Ages by surveying halls, special artefacts, ancient monuments, and place-names. He also investigated the type of settlement denoted by bygd in Swedish, and emphasized its
import in early Scandinavia. A bygd was sometimes loosely linked to a larger,
regional formation called land (OSw land) and perhaps to an inter-regional
area called rike (OSw rike). Through these innovative articles, and his linguistic
6
See e.g. Brink, ‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia’, ‘Political and Social
Structures in Early Scandinavia II’, and ‘Social Order in the Early Scandinavian Landscape’.
Introduction
7
competence, Stefan went a long way in illuminating research on social order in
early Scandinavian landscapes.
During these years, he also published a very significant article on a rune ring
from Forsa church in Hälsingland,7 arguing that the runic inscription on the
ring dates back to the ninth century. According to Stefan, the inscription concerns a pre-Christian legal enactment related to attendance at a cultic site called
a vi in Old Swedish (ON vé).8 Alongside this, he published several essential
articles on the phenomenon of the husabyar (pl.).9 The eastern Scandinavian
husaby probably denoted a royal estate or farm at Uppsala Öd, a type of settlement that seems to have had an important function in maritime martial organization (levy) and medi­eval royal tax collection in the settlement districts. Their
connection with great mounds and other ancient monuments indicates that at
an earlier stage these sites may have functioned as the seats of minor rulers.
At the Department of Archaeo­logy and Ancient History,
Uppsala Uni­ver­sity, and SESSoC
From 1999 to 2004 Stefan was the holder of a Swedish Research Council
Chair in Landscape History, attached to the Department of Archaeo­logy and
Ancient History at Uppsala Uni­ver­sity, where he was the director of a division and held a weekly seminar called ‘The Seminar for the Study of Early
Scandinavian Society and Culture’ (SESSoC). Every Wednesday professors,
researchers, university teachers, and PhD and master’s students would gather in
the old, tradition-bound seminar room of Konsistoriehuset, a house close to the
cathedral of Uppsala. The atmosphere was constructive and worthwhile discussions never failed to ensue, not least in the frequent post-seminar gatherings.
Younger students were included in these debates and given the opportunity
to meet the internationally established researchers who belonged to Stefan’s
network. Indeed, SESSoC became extremely important for a whole generation
of doctoral and master’s students and served as a positive catalyst for interdisciplinary cooperation in Uppsala thanks to Stefan’s efforts.
As the director of a division, Stefan also supervised several PhD students
during these years, managed some post-doctoral fellows, and ran an international master’s programme in Viking and Early Medi­e val Studies. He was
7
8
9
Brink, ‘Forsaringen – Nordens äldsta lagbud’.
See also Brink, ‘Law and Society’, pp. 28–29, and ‘Är Forsaringen medeltida?’.
Brink, ‘Husby’ and ‘Nordens husabyar — unga eller gamla?’.
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
8
extremely popular and widely appreciated as a PhD supervisor and as a supporter of younger researchers. Some of his former PhD students are now themselves prominent researchers, for instance, Alexandra Sanmark, Per Vikstrand,
John Ljungkvist, Kristina Jonsson, and Daniel Löwenborg.
Around the turn of the millennium, Stefan’s research took new directions. He became more interested in early law and legal customs (see below)
and wrote about old roads and assembly places in the Viking Age, as well as
social structure, family, and kin. Much of his research concerned slaves in early
Scandinavia, resulting in several esteemed publications (again, see below),
though he also discussed oral culture and cultural memory in Scandinavia in a
couple of articles, taking inspiration from his Pacific studies in the early 1990s.
As mentioned above, Stefan composed several noteworthy articles concerning the sacred dimension of the landscape and pre-Christian religion, including
a much-referenced contribution to Anders Hultgård’s Festschrift Kontinuitäten
und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte called ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape: Place
and Space of Cult and Myth’ (2001). 10 In that article his intention was to
‘analyse animated landscapes and natural objects that have been transmitted
to us especially via place names and myths’,11 yet ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’
does not mark the beginnings of Stefan’s interest in pre-Christian religion. His
interest first surfaced in connection with his thesis and early onomastic studies, and in the first years of the 1990s he wrote several articles about sacred
place-names and cultic sites in pre-Christian Scandinavia. 12 However, after
the turn of the millennium, he did turn to more general issues in this field.
In one key essay, in honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, for instance, he posed
the question: ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’ (2007). Later, in
2016, he edited, together with Lisa Collinson, Theorizing Old Norse Myth.
Stefan’s own contribution to that volume, ‘Uppsala – in Myth and Reality’,
proposes that the hundreds of Uppsala/Opsal names in Northern Europe constitute a meaningful argument for Uppsala having been an exceptionally wellknown and important place, politically as well as mythically, in pre-historical
time. Together with the Norwegian archaeo­logist Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide,
Stefan also published a collection of essays called Sacred Sites and Holy Places:
10
Among those referring to Stefan’s article are several contributions from this volume,
most conspicuously that of Jens Peter Schjødt which is formulated as a response to one aspect
of Stefan’s argument.
11
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 77.
12
E.g. Brink, ‘Har vi haft ett kultiskt *al i Norden?’.
Introduction
9
Exploring the Sacralisation of Landscape through Time and Space in 2013, in
which he returned to the trope of myth and ritual in the ancient Scandinavian
landscape.13 The use of place-names as a source for understanding ancient history, culture, and religion acts as a connecting thread in all these publications.
It should be added that he has continued to publish essential articles about the
Christianization of Scandinavia and the organization of the early church.
Professorship in Aberdeen
In 2005 Stefan was appointed as the Sixth Century Chair of Scandinavian
Studies and Director of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies at the Uni­ver­sity
of Aberdeen. During his years in Scotland, he built up a creative and stimulating environment for hundreds of bachelor’s and master’s students alongside
an international research milieu that accommodated a band of talented PhD
students interested in ancient Scandinavian culture and history. The Centre for
Scandinavian Studies itself was launched in 2007 in a quaint two-floor house
at 24 High Street, within the Uni­ver­sity of Aberdeen campus. From the outset, Stefan’s energy and enthusiasm brought together scholars from an array of
disciplines, including, within its first year, a new faculty member who would
become fundamental as co-director of the Centre, Tarrin Wills, as well as a
couple of PhD candidates and several master’s students. Thereafter, in a short
span of time, the faculty and affiliated scholars grew to include scholars including Hannah Burrows, Lisa Collinson, Karen Bek-Pedersen, Michael Gelting,
Anna Bokedal, Sarah Thomas, Jan-Henrik Fallgren, Ralph O’Connor, Sally
Garden, and Irene García. Such exponential growth meant that, a few years
after its launch, the Centre had to be moved to roomier premises at 50/52
College Bounds.
The positive atmosphere and Stefan’s reputation attracted a stream of doctoral candidates to work on a variety of aspects of pre-Viking, Viking Age,
and medi­e val Scandinavia. They found a true academic family at the Centre.
Stefan supervised many of these students himself, but his interdisciplinarity is reflected in the research even of those who were not his supervisees, his
ideas and energy becoming pivotal in the lives of all the students at the Centre.
Moreover, Stefan set up a Scandinavian Studies Seminar that, much like his
SESSoC at Uppsala, brought international scholars to Aberdeen and allowed
13
Brink, ‘Myth and Ritual in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Landscape’.
10
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
doctoral students to interact with cutting-edge research and engage in exciting
discussion across disciplines.
In 2008 Stefan published The Viking World, in collaboration with the wellknown archaeo­logist Neil Price, an impressive and weighty reference work
intended for scholars and serious students as well as for a more general audience interested in early Scandinavia. It consists of a wide range of articles written by specialists on various topics related to the Viking Age, such as its people,
society, and social institutions; techno­logy and trade; warfare and weaponry;
pre-Christian religion and belief; and language, literature, and art. Stefan wrote
several of these articles himself, covering subjects like slavery, the toponymic
study of Scandinavia, and Christianization.14
Stefan’s research developed in several notable ways during the more than
two decades he spent at Aberdeen but above all in two specific fields: Viking
slavery and Early Law in Scandinavia.15 On the former theme he published several articles and two important books, Lord and Lady – ‘Bryti’ and ‘Deig ja’:
Some Historical and Etymo­logical Aspects of Family, Patronage and Slavery in
Early Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England (2008) and Vikingarnas slavar:
Den nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid (2012). In
the Swedish book Stefan diminishes the significance of slavery in Scandinavia,
stating that slaves were ‘tämligen ovanliga’ (quite unusual) there compared
with, for instance, in nineteenth-century North America.16 Lords and chieftains in Viking and medi­e val Scandinavia could have had a couple of dozen
slaves, while farmers only had a few or none, since farms and areas with cultivable soils were quite small. The slaves were held primarily as service clerks for
the roughest jobs in agriculture and as servants in the households of chieftains,
lords, and rulers. Through etymo­logical-linguistic and historical methods,
14
Brink, ‘Slavery in the Viking Age’, ‘Naming the Land’, and ‘Christianisation and the
Emergence of the Early Church in Scandinavia’.
15
Stefan earned several major research grants while at the Uni­ver­sity of Aberdeen, such as
the Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2008–11) for a project entitled Medi­eval
Nordic Laws. For another, Early Law in Scandinavia, he was financed by the Royal Swedish
Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities in Stockholm and the Royal Gustavus Academy
for Swedish Folk Culture, Uppsala. A Prosopo­g raphical Study of Bishops’ Careers in Northern
Europe was supported by an AHRC Research Grant, and undertaken alongside Dr Sarah E.
Thomas, Uni­ver­sity of Hull, while with Professor Inger Larsson, Stockholm Uni­ver­sity, he
received grants from the Swedish Research Council for the project Medi­eval Nordic Legal Dictionary.
16
Brink, Vikingarnas slavar, p. 260.
Introduction
11
Stefan was able to contribute with new, insightful views on Viking slavery in
these books and articles.
The theme Early Law in Scandinavia has generated several publications and
a large international project called Medi­eval Nordic Law, led by Stefan himself. The aim of this project is to analyse, edit, translate, and comment upon
all the provincial laws of the Scandinavian Middle Ages. A series of fifteen volumes will be published, with a translation of and commentary upon each law
in English. In addition, an online database will be established, consisting of
facsimiles of the previously published laws in Old Danish, Old Norwegian, and
Old Swedish. Stefan is responsible for the Hälsinge Law (Hälsingelagen), and,
together with Lisa Collinson, he edited the antho­logy New Approaches to Early
Law in Scandinavia, in which an array of features of Nordic law are highlighted
and discussed by distinguished specialists. He contributed himself to the book
with an article on the Hälsinge Law.17
Stefan Brink as a Key International Researcher
and a Distinguished Professor
Stefan is currently working on another exciting new research venture Åter
till Tuna at the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge, the Uni­ver­sity of Uppsala, and the
Uni­ver­sity of Highlands and Islands, where he is now Professor. This is the
latest stop in a career that has seen him collect an assortment of prestigious
academic honours and awards, like Umeå Uni­ver­sity’s Language and Culture
Prize, which was awarded in 2015 at a ceremony celebrating fifty years of the
university. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy
in Uppsala since 1997; in 2009, he became a Fellow of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities in Stockholm; and in 2017 he
was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.18 He has been
a visiting Fellow, Scholar, Professor, or Lecturer in numerous universities all
around the world, including Corpus Christi College in the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­
bridge; the Department of Archaeo­logy and the Department of Anglo-Saxon,
Norse, and Celtic, again at the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge; Scandinavian Philo­
logy at the Uni­ver­sity of Aarhus; the Uni­ver­sity of Bergen’s Centre for Medi­
17
See Brink, ‘The Hälsinge Law between South and West, King and Church, and Local
Customs’.
18
Stefan is also a member of the Hälsinge Akademi.
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
12
eval Studies; Medi­eval and Renaissance Studies at the Uni­ver­sity of California,
Los Angeles; and the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton Uni­ver­sity.
Stefan is one of the General Editors of the journal Viking and Medi­eval
Scandinavia and the General Editor of the new series Acta Scandinavica, both
published with Brepols. He is likewise one of the General Editors of the Medi­
eval Nordic Laws, a subseries of Routledge Medi­eval Translations, and a member
of the Editorial Board of Northern Scotland, a series published by Edinburgh
Uni­ver­sity Press.
Stefan has an exceptionally broad worldwide scientific network, comprising
scholars with interests that span the entirety of Scandinavian studies. He is a
gifted and well-liked lecturer, and a skilled organizer of conferences and manager of research groups. Outside academia, Stefan is an engaged citizen, reading
newspapers from across the globe, and a social talent, always welcome at his
friends’ dinner tables. During such gatherings, he shows great commitment and
conversational skills, regardless of whether the discussion concerns world politics, modern art, or music, or seemingly more minor aspects of life, like how
his neighbours’ children are doing. Most of all, he is a friendly and generous
man, who has helped many students and younger scholars, amongst them the
authors of this introduction. With this book we would like to praise and thank
Stefan for all his efforts and his contributions to the study of early Scandinavia.
The Theme of Present Book: Questions, Content, and Outline
As noted above, the title of the present book is Making the Profane Sacred in the
Viking Age. The sacred and the holy for the Vikings have been much discussed
in previous research.19 But what made something sacred in Viking and medi­
eval Scandinavia? How was one person, one act, a place, or a text — even an
oral text — made sacred while others remained more plainly profane in this
cultural context? And what part did that sacred quality play in wider society,
culture, politics, and economics, in artefacts’ immediate environments, and in
those of future generations? This volume tries to answer some of these questions. It collects essays from many of the pre-eminent scholars of Old Norse
to reinterpret the concept of the sacred in the Viking Age and medi­eval North
and to challenge pre-existing frameworks for understanding the sacred in this
space and time. It is a treasury of commentary and information that ranges
19
The key study is still Baetke, Das Heilige im Germanischen, passim, however.
Introduction
13
widely across theories and sources of evidence to present significant primary
research and reconsiderations of existing scholarship.
A far larger number of scholars would have contributed to a Festschrift for
Stefan than could be accommodated here. As such, we had to limit contributions to scholars whose work would cohere into a suitably thematic volume,
reflecting as many facets of Stefan’s work as possible, and settled on those who
could contribute on the five following areas:
I. Understanding sacredness
II. Sacredness and space
III. The sacred and the text
IV. Sacredness across contexts
V. Afterlives of sacredness
Unsurprisingly, given its theme, theoretical attention is given to sacredness and
holiness throughout this volume, but few essays address this as directly as those
of Margaret Clunies Ross and Jens Peter Schjødt, which begin the first section.
Clunies Ross’s contribution, ‘What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?’, engages
with the question posed by its title by reconsidering older attempts to define
heilagr with reference to the small corpus of pre-Christian texts that use the word
— a corpus that only gets smaller in the course of Clunies Ross’s analyses. In doing
so, Clunies Ross is able to delineate key differences between Old Norse pre-Christian heilagr and modern English Christian holy. Her findings should prove valuable in many spheres of discussion concerning Old Norse religion but nowhere
more than in historical-religious investigations of the nature of the divine.
Schjødt confronts a similar issue of semantics, and one that Stefan has himself attended to in a previous article: the sacral geo­graphy of early Scandinavia’s
pre-Christian landscape. While agreeing with much of Stefan’s article, Schjødt
proposes a modification to the conceptualization there of the sacred and the
profane, with reference, firstly, to the long history of studies on the topic among
theorists like Émile Durkheim and Rudolf Otto, and, secondly, to early Nordic
treatment of the landscape. Schjødt’s chief query is whether the sacred can exist
without a component of the profane to define it against, noting the varying
degrees of sacredness that were accorded to pre-Christian activities, objects,
and places and that could change with circumstances. His final remarks, pointing toward a definition of the sacred which relies on some notion of an otherworld, provide a correlative to Clunies Ross’s conclusions regarding the Old
Norse conception of heilagr.
14
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
Mats Widgren follows Schjødt’s inquiries by turning them on their head
and focusing on the landscape aspect of sacral geo­graphy. As Stefan has shown
in the past — as likewise have other contributors to this volume like Anders
Andrén — the sacred landscape of Old Norse mytho­logy is in a continual
dialogue with the spaces inhabited by myth’s creators and audiences. It makes
sense, therefore, to attempt to understand contemporary conceptualizations
of those inhabited spaces, and this is the main purpose of Widgren’s investigations. As Widgren notes, however, achieving this understanding means first
overcoming problems of definition and translation: what do we mean by landscape and does a similar concept exist in the Old Norse mentality? Widgren’s
approach to these difficult questions, questions that are still relevant to modern
debates on landscape in a European context, builds on Icelandic geo­g rapher
Edda Waage’s empirical study of words relating to land in Old Norse saga literature. He concludes that a visual landscape concept landsleg was in use in the
sagas and could incorporate aesthetic judgements, although it did not have to.
Section II builds on both strands of theoretical consideration encountered in
Section I by looking to archaeo­logy, place-name studies, and legal documents for
a better understanding of how the environment could be made sacred in different areas of the North. Among the most exciting aspects of Jan-Henrik Fallgren’s
chapter, which opens the section, is his interpretation of new material regarding
three wetland ritual places on the island of Öland, two small sites in and near the
villages of Alvara and Långlöt, respectively, and the famous site of Skedemosse.
By comparing toponymic and material sources of evidence for these sites, and
in light of comparative evidence from elsewhere in Europe, especially Ireland,
Fallgren is able to argue for the performance of drama and horse-racing as sacred
acts on Öland. The discussion is one of several in this collection that should
enhance modern scholars’ understanding of how sensations of the sacred can
arise from or motivate human interaction with bodies of water in Scandinavia.
At Alken Enge, the remains of as many as 380 young males were deposited
after having lain dead on a battlefield for up to a year. That is only one spectacular example of the early Scandinavian cult sites that were located at border zones, which are the focus of Torun Zachrisson’s paper ‘Ritual Space and
Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia’. Delving into the thorny issue of whether
these landscapes were sacred because they were perceived as inherently connected to otherworldly powers or because they were in a zone that had already
been demarcated as a border, Zachrisson finds a variety of factors at play. Chief
among these is the function of the ritual spaces in neutralizing border areas, a
pragmatic finding that should make for a useful addition to ongoing debates
over the constitution, maintenance, and use of such sites in Scandinavia.
Introduction
15
The economic and martial concerns revealed in Zachrisson’s survey of ritual
spaces are further highlighted by Per Vikstrand’s case study of one such probable site at Karlevi on Öland. Vikstrand begins by examining the composition of Karlevi (OSw Karlavi), which, from karl ‘common, public’, ‘free man’
and vi ‘sanctuary’, seems to mean ‘the sanctuary of all free men’. This finding
prompts the analysis of the site of Karlevi and its adjoining harbour in light of
the holy spaces of ancient Greece, which were safe havens for foreign traders to
do business and store their assets. Vikstrand is able to find enough in common
between Greek and Scandinavian sanctuaries that it seems likely that Karlevi
could originally have referred to a protected, sanctified area that was established as much for economic and administrative reasons as for the perceived
holiness of its environment.
The fourth contribution to Section II, Anders Andrén’s ‘Stafgarþar
Revisited’, surveys the ongoing debate over the controversial and obscure
Gotlandic word stafgarþr, which is used in Guta lag and Guta saga alongside
names for types of pre-Christian sacred spaces. With particular reference to
Ingemar Olsson’s study of the Stavgard place-names on Gotland, Andrén looks
for possible hints to the meaning of stafgarþr in the island’s archaeo­logy, toponymy, and earliest religious traditions and discovers that room still exists for new
input to the discussion. His article should prompt further research on the subject, particularly considering wider steps forward being taken by archaeo­logists
and historians and scientists of religion, in Old Norse studies and outside of
this discipline, regarding the boundaries between sacred and profane, public
and private.
Bertil Nilsson’s essay ‘Sacredness Lost: On the Variable Status of Churches
in the Middle Ages’ develops the theoretical groundwork of the first essays of
this collection by examining change in the codification of sacredness in the
early Swedish law codes in response to alterations in international legal positions. A key finding — and one that substantiates Schjødt’s arguments earlier
in the volume — is that the sacredness of a church was not a binary state, especially in later conceptions of sacredness; the church could be physically or morally polluted without becoming fully deconsecrated and, in several laws, the
environs of the church could be attributed differing degrees of sacredness.
The third section of the book, which seeks to find new ways of comprehending sacredness in an Old Norse context by looking at the construction of texts
that may once have had a religious role, begins with two contributors who are
galvanized by the workings of collocations of alliterating words in Old Norse
poetry. The first of these is John McKinnell who, propelled by a review of the
criteria for distinguishing between eddic and skaldic poetry, investigates the
16
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
role of such collocations in preserving pre-Christian sacred ideas, principles,
and images in poetry even in Christian times. McKinnell makes stanza 138
of Hávamál a case study in how these formal units were not only a creative
tool and aid to memorization and tradition but also a powerful means through
which poetry that seems to defy Christian ethics could be treated by later audiences with sympathy and even admiration.
Carolyne Larrington’s examination of the collocations of alliterating words
in the Poetic Edda’s Helgi poems concentrates more on their power as an aid
to inspiration and representation than memorization. In her view, the collocations, in tandem with the place-names used throughout the poems, characterize and structure the poetic landscapes in ways that elaborate and draw out
heroic themes, sacred and profane alike; through alliterating nouns and verbs,
matrices of concepts are established that weave ‘distinctively-shaded threads
through the tapestry of the poems’ texture’, to borrow Larrington’s own expressive image of composition (itself adapted from Guðrúnarkviða II, a later poem
in the same collection).
Judy Quinn analyses the poem Hymiskviða to explore the idea of fifthcolumn characters, i.e. characters who work against their own kind in favour
of enemies. Her focus is Týr’s mother, a goddess married to a giant against
whom she works to help the gods, and Loki, raised amongst æsir but still working against the gods. Through these two characters, Quinn is able to touch on
issues of intertextuality and mytho­logical variation while explicating some of
Hymiskviða’s thorniest problems of narrative and divine genealogy.
Some of the debates over cultural exchange and memory began in Section
III are continued in the section that follows, though with an even more specific attention to interfaces between religious and secular, non-Christian
and Christian. In ‘From Myth to Legend?’, John Lindow shares, for example,
McKinnell’s interest in the entanglement of re-composition and continuity.
He compares two legendary-mytho­logical literary traditions to investigate the
proposition that a profane narrative can become sacred in a different physical and religious milieu. Lindow starts with the well-known correspondences
between the masterbuilder legend of the building of a church and the myth
of the building of Ásgarðr from Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, and uses that as a
template for examining the hitherto-unrecognized parallels between another
story from Snorri’s Edda and the legend of ‘Drinking cup stolen from the fairies’. As careful as Lindow is to note the arbitrariness of generic distinctions
and the problem with proving influence between one text and another, his
consideration of the differing spheres of communication in which a myth
and legend might operate should inform our interpretations of (as well as the
Introduction
17
means by which we enjoy) these stories, their characters, and their impact on
their audiences.
‘The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden’, Tarrin Wills’ follow-up to a
recent article linking Þórr’s associations with water to bridge-building, takes
a rigorous, data-led approach to one of the major dilemmas of that study —
the gap of several centuries that probably separates the production of his two
sources of evidence. By adding personal naming practices related to Þórr to his
corpus of materials, Wills is able to test the relationship between prehistorical
Þórr cult and later bridge building in the same area, eventually reaching the
proposition that occurrences of Þórr- personal names and bridge building may
be parallel responses to the same challenge in different religious contexts.
The contribution of Anne-Sofie Gräslund, ‘Conversion, Popular Religion,
and Syncretism — Some Reflections’, examines the distinction that is sometimes made between popular and formal categories of religion. Taking her lead
from Karen Louise Jolly’s Popular Religion in Late Saxon England, Gräslund
looks at these categories not as conflicting systems of ideas but rather as distinct aspects of one whole, which could be held side-by-side by adherents of
religion and which are in a dynamic dialogue with one another. In this way,
Gräslund breaks down related theoretical dichotomies that potentially limit
academic inquiry, most conspicuously those of pagan versus Christian and
clergy versus laity.
Bo Gräslund traverses multiple cultural, historical, mytho­logical, social,
and historical boundaries in his examination of how the swine became a sacred
animal in worship related to the Vanir gods. While he begins with the notion
of fertility, Gräslund notes links with, for example, war, pre-Christian conceptions of the afterlife, the mythic descent of early Scandinavian rules, and the
folk name Svear, itself part of the name Sverige ‘Sweden’. Gräslund, in short,
demonstrates the foundational cultural importance of the sacred pig in the
North and, by delving into (sometimes much earlier) pre-Viking Age material,
the deep roots of its symbolism.
‘The Goddesses in the Dark Waters’, Terry Gunnell’s evocatively titled contribution, draws together several strands from the discussions spread across this
book, dealing with continuity and change, wetland places marked out by sacrifices and depositions, the problems introduced by a comparison of textual,
toponymic, and material sources, and the processes by which one aspect of the
landscape becomes more sacred than another. To that mix, he adds the worship of female supernatural creatures (and the reasons for a decline in its popularity). Gunnell sums up, in fact, not only many of recurring themes of this
book but also recent scholarship on these matters and provides an economic,
18
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
cultural, and social basis for understanding sacredness, change, and variation
between sources of Old Norse religion.
The fifth and final section of this volume looks at some of the echoes of Old
Norse concepts of sacredness and its earlier study in modern culture and scholarship. In ‘Valhǫll and the Swedish “Valhall” mountains of the dead’, Andreas
Nordberg investigates the lore surrounding mountains in Sweden with names
related to Valhall, which have in the past been looked upon as the origin of the
mythos of Óðinn’s hall Valhǫll. Taking a meticulous philo­logical approach to
the names and their histories, Nordberg traces out a story not of pre-Christian
worship but of the popular reimagining of a sacred motif through folk etymo­
logies and learned speculation.
Stephen Mitchell’s contribution follows a similar path to that taken by
Nordberg. Noting the power of toponyms for preserving past values and mentalities, Mitchell turns to Onsbjerg ‘the hill dedicated to Óðinn’, the name of
a village on Samsø and also, according to popular belief, of a squat nearby hill
in former times. He discovers a rich and evolving folk tradition that testifies
to the landscape’s proficiency both as a storehouse for cultural memory and as
a canvas for further elaboration on and reimagining of the past. The research
conducted by both Nordberg and Mitchell serves two obvious functions, neither more vital than the other. On one level, they reframe modern conceptions
of particular landscape features as the relics of pre-Christian belief; on another,
they are fascinating dissections of creative, modern folklore phenomena related
to but distinct from that pre-Christian belief.
‘Sacred Sites and Central Places — Experiences of Multidisciplinary
Research Projects’, Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman’s essay, is a very personal
history that intertwines the narrative of the origins and growth of interest in
the study of sacred spaces in the North with that of Stefan’s own blossoming
career. As such, it is a fitting note on which to conclude this Festschrift. Fabech
and Näsman describe how place-name research came to be a fundamental tool
in the archaeo­logical study of sacred landscapes, in illuminating the whereabouts, function, and character of sacred places and even in defining what a central space is at all. They bring us up to the current state of the question, via a
catalogue of influential articles and academic conferences, international projects, and dedicated and inspired research, and present a number of attractive
research directions in which further progress can be made.
Fabech and Näsman portray Stefan as a main protagonist in the meeting
of place-name research and archaeo­logy, reflecting the significance of Stefan’s
work to those fields as well as to many of the disciplines that concern themselves with early Scandinavia. By reproducing Stefan’s critical engagement with
Introduction
19
these disciplines, it is hoped that this tribute will build on his work to enhance
our understanding of Old Norse religion, history, and culture.
This chapter could not have been written without great help and support
from Stefan’s wife, Helena Brink, and his brother, Anders Brink.
20
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
Works Cited
Secondary Studies
Baetke, Walter, Das Heilige im Germanischen (Tübingen: Mohr, 1942)
Brink, Stefan, Ortnamn i Hälsingland (Stockholm: AWE/Geber, 1984)
—— , Sockenbildning och sockennamn: Studier i äldre territoriell indelning i Norden, Acta
Academiae regiae Gustavi Adolphi, 57, Studier till en svensk ortnamnsatlas utgivna av
Thorsten Andersson, 14 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1990)
—— , ‘Har vi haft ett kultiskt *al i Norden?’, in Sakrale navne, ed. by Gillian FellowsJensen and Bente Holberg, NORNA-rapporter, 48 (Uppsala: NORNA-förlag, 1992),
pp. 107–21
—— , ‘Kristnande och kyrklig organisation i Jämtland’, in Jämtlands kristnande, ed. by
Stefan Brink, Projektet Sveriges Kristnande. Publikationer, 4 (Uppsala: Lunne Böcker,
1996), pp. 155–88
—— , ‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia I. A Settlement-Historical Prestudy of the Central Place’, Tor, 28 (1996), 235–81
—— , ‘Forsaringen – Nordens äldsta lagbud’, in Beretning fra femtende tværfaglige vikingsymposium, ed. by Else Roesdahl and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen (Højbjerg:
Hikuin, 1996), pp. 27–55
—— , ‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia II. Aspects of Space and
Territoriality—The Settlement District’, Tor, 29 (1997), 389–437
—— , ‘Social Order in the Early Scandinavian Landscape’, in Settlement and Landscape:
Proceedings of a Conference in Århus, Denmark, May 4–7 1998, ed. by Charlotte
Fabech and Jytte Ringtved, Jutland Archaeo­logical Society (Århus: Jutland Archaeo­
logical Society, 1999), pp. 423–38
—— , ‘Husby’, in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, xv, ed. by Heinrich Beck,
Dieter Geuenich, and Heiko Steuer (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), pp. 274–78
—— , ‘Nordens husabyar – unga eller gamla?’, in En bok om Husbyar, ed. by Michael
Olausson, Riksantikvarieämbetet. Avdelningen för arkeo­
logiska undersökningar.
Skrifter, 33 (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2000), pp. 65–73
—— , ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape: Place and Space of Cult and Myth’, in Kontinuitäten
und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte: Festschrift für Anders Hultgård zu seinem 65.
Geburtstag am 23.12.2001, ed. by Michael Stausberg with Olof Sundqvist and Astrid
van Nahl, Ergenzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 31
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), pp. 76–112
—— , ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, in Learning and Understanding in
the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn,
Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills, Medi­eval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 18
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 105–36
—— , ‘Law and Society – Polities and Legal Customs in Viking Scandinavia’, in The Viking
World, ed. by Stefan Brink in collaboration with Neil Price (London: Routledge,
2008), pp. 23–31
Introduction
21
—— , ‘Slavery in the Viking Age’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink in collaboration
with Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 49–56
—— , ‘Naming the Land’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink in collaboration with
Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 57–66
—— , ‘Christianisation and the Emergence of the Early Church in Scandinavia’, in The
Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink in collaboration with Neil Price (London: Rout­
ledge, 2008), pp. 621–28
—— , Lord and Lady – ‘Bryti’ and ‘Deig ja’: Some Historical and Etymo­logical Aspects of
Family, Patronage and Slavery in Early Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England (Lon­
don: Uni­ver­sity College London by the Viking Society for Northern Research, 2008)
—— , ‘Är Forsaringen medeltida?’, Hälsingerunor (2010), 109–17
—— , Vikingarnas slavar: Den nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid
(Stockholm: Atlantis, 2012; repr. 2018)
—— , ‘Myth and Ritual in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Landscape’, in Sacred Sites and
Holy Places: Exploring the Sacralisation of Landscape through Time and Space, ed. by
Stefan Brink and Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 11
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 33–51
—— , ‘Knockouten i Ytteryg. En minnesvärd sommarnatt 27 juni 1959’, in Hälsingeliv:
Nya hemligheter, hemskheter och härligheter, ed. by Jonas Sima and Claes Sundelin
(Hudiksvall: Hälsinge Akademi Förlag, 2014), pp. 43–52
—— , ‘The Hälsinge Law between South and West, King and Church, and Local Customs’,
in New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, ed. by Stefan Brink and Lisa Collin­
son, Acta Scandinavica, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 37–56
—— , ‘Uppsala – in Myth and Reality’, in Theorizing Old Norse Myth, ed. by Stefan Brink
and Lisa Collinson, Acta Scandinavica, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 175–94
Colpe, Carsten, ‘The Sacred and the Profane’, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. by
Mircea Eliade, xii (London: MacMillan, 1987), pp. 511–26
—— , ‘Das Heilige’, in Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, ed. by Hubert
Cancik and others, iii (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993), pp. 80–99
Durkheim, Émile, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity
Press, 2008)
Eliade, Mircea, Patterns in Comparative Religion (London: Sheed & Ward, 1974)
—— , The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion; The Significance of Religious
Myth, Symbolism, and Ritual within Life and Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1987)
Lincoln, Bruce, Apples and Oranges: Explorations in, on, and with Comparison (Chicago:
Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press, 2018)
McCutcheon, Russel T., Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on sui generis Religion and
the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1997)
Nilsson, Bertil, ‘The Christianization of Sweden: Concluding Reflection’, in Kristnandet
i Sverige: Gamla källor och nya perspektiv, ed. by Bertil Nilsson, Projektet Sveriges
Kristnande. Publikationer, 5 (Uppsala: Lunne Böcker, 1996), pp. 431–41
22
Olof Sundqvist, Declan Taggart, and Irene García Losquiño
Otto, Rudolf, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhält­
nis zum Rationalen (Breslau: Trewendt und Granier, 2017)
Oxtoby, W. G., ‘Holy, Idea of the’, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. by Mircea Eliade, vi
(London: MacMillan, 1987), pp. 431‒38
Söderblom, Nathan, ‘Holiness’, in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ed. by James Hastings,
vi (Edinburgh: Clark, 1913), pp. 731–41
Widengren, Geo, Religionsphänomeno­logie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969)
I.
Understanding Sacredness
What Does heilagr Mean
in Old Norse?
Margaret Clunies Ross
T
hree things have stood in the way of a balanced evaluation of existing
evidence for the meaning of the adjective heilagr in Old Norse sources:
the weight of modern opinion about what constitutes the meaning
of the religious term, translated as ‘holy’ or ‘the holy’; diverse views about the
word’s etymo­logy (which are linked to the first issue); and the huge imbalance
between citations of the word in older, probably pre-Christian sources, and
later, Christian texts in which the word (or its cognates) translated Latin sanctus and sacer in all the Germanic languages. This article is dedicated to Stefan
Brink, a scholar who has a reputation for probing the meanings of Old Norse
terms relating to the old religion. It uses a source-critical method to weigh up
the evidence of the most reliable and earliest witnesses for the use of heilagr
in Old Norse texts and to probe the validity of religious-historical arguments
about ‘the holy in Germanic’, to adopt an English translation of Walter Baetke’s
book title Das Heilige im Germanischen (1942). Unlike Baetke’s investigation,
discussed below, the primary evidence for this study comes from Old Norse
sources alone rather than from a comparison of the lexical evidence for the use
of heilagr, its cognates and other words, like vé, expressing ideas of holiness or
sanctity across all the early Germanic languages.
In this investigation I shall place greatest weight on the evidence of texts
considered by most scholars to have been composed in the pre-Christian or
conversion periods, though recorded in writing, and therefore possibly modiMargaret Clunies Ross (margaret.cluniesross@sydney.edu.au) is an Emeritus Professor of
English at the Uni­ver­sity of Sydney and Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities at the
Uni­ver­sity of Adelaide.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 25–41
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119336
Margaret Clunies Ross
26
fied somewhat, after the conversion to Christianity. I shall also refer to Christian
writings of the earliest period of literacy, which in practice is the twelfth century. And, given the inevitable Icelandic bias of the source material, these early
texts are mostly written in the Old Icelandic language and may therefore not
represent accurately the usage of other parts of the Scandinavian cultural area.
Given the search criteria outlined above, most of the available evidence
comes in poetic form. The corpus for study includes all the poetry of the Poetic
Edda compilation, plus some other poetry in eddic metres, as well as skaldic
poetry from the earliest period up to the late eleventh century, when skalds
were Christian but may sometimes have still been influenced by a pre-Christian mindset. The evidence from these early texts will then be compared with
Christian uses of heilagr in prose and poetry.
What is immediately striking about the nature of the evidence from the preChristian centuries is how sparse it is, certainly in comparison with the evidence from the Christian period in both poetry and prose. Heilagr is a very
commonly employed word in Christian Old Norse texts of all kinds, and in
a number of different semantic uses: as an adjective with a variety of referents
(e.g. helgir menn ‘holy men, saints’, helgar bækr ‘holy books’), as a substantive
derived from the adjective (þá helgir ‘the holy ones, saints’), and in a variety of
compounds. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose records 610 individual entries
under heilagr, not counting a number of compounds with heilag- as their first
element, and that count from the prose corpus excludes the large number of
uses in Christian skaldic poetry from the twelfth century onwards.
The contrast between the actual number of early poetic uses and later,
Christian ones is important. Of course, one could argue, the number of texts
involved is disproportionate, so one might expect such a disparity, but it is also
the case that, within the vocabulary of the skaldic and eddic corpora, heilagr is
not a commonly used word. La Farge and Tucker1 record six possible examples
in the Poetic Edda corpus and Finnur Jónsson2 adds five more examples from
the skaldic corpus that appear to lack a Christian frame of reference. There are
also several compound adjectives in the poetic corpus formed with heilagr as
their second element, including allheilagr ‘very holy’, ginnheilagr ‘most holy’,
gunnheilagr ‘inviolate in battle’ (?), sannheilagr ‘truly holy’, and stallheilagr
‘altar-holy, hallowed by an altar’.3
1
La Farge and Tucker, Glossary to the Poetic Edda, p. 106.
Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Lexicon poeticum, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, pp. 236–37.
3
All these compounds, except for ginnheilagr and possibly gunnheilagr, are attested only
from poetry from the twelfth century or later.
2
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
27
Notwithstanding the paucity of the early evidence, most lexico­g raphers
have felt capable of formulating a definition of heilagr. La Farge and Tucker
define the adjective as ‘“holy” [in inverted commas],4 inviolate; sacred, belonging to or intended for the gods and therefore to be treated with reverence’.5
Finnur Jónsson offers ‘hellig, vedrørende gud(erne) og gudedyrkelsen, hvad
enten hedensk eller Kristen’ (holy, relating to the god(s) and the cult of gods,
whether heathen or Christian),6 while Jan de Vries7 glosses the adjective with
the Old High German adjective heilag ‘holy’, but in the course of his entry
dismisses interpretations that would see the word too closely connected with
the noun heill ‘well-being, good fortune’ and asserts its indigenous character,
against sceptics who are suspicious of its authenticity, being formed with the
uncommon suffix -agr rather than -igr.8 De Vries’s definition supports a close
connection of heilagr with the adjective heill ‘unharmed, uninjured, complete’,
as well as the personal name Helgi, and the verb helga ‘make holy, consecrate’.9
Behind these and other dictionary definitions of heilagr lies a well-traversed
avenue of debate among philo­logists and historians of religion as to what constitutes the essence of ‘the holy’ or ‘holiness’ in religion generally, with the rider
of whether one can also find ‘the holy’ as a central concept of pre-Christian
Germanic religion. As the only substantial evidence for such a pre-Christian
religious concept is available in Old Norse sources, the question effectively
comes down to whether or not one can extract a clear sense of the term heilagr’s
semantic range that is likely to reflect the ideo­logy of the pre-Christian period
from extant Old Norse sources.10
The seminal twentieth-century analysis of the concept of ‘the holy’ was
Rudolf Otto’s Das Heilige (1917),11 in which he outlined his ideas of how this
4
Presumably by placing the inverted commas round ‘holy’ they imply a certain scepticism
about whether this Modern English word expresses the core idea of Old Norse heilagr.
5
La Farge and Tucker, Glossary to the Poetic Edda, p. 106.
6
Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Lexicon poeticum, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, p. 236.
7
De Vries, Altnordisches etymo­logisches Wörterbuch, p. 218.
8
Cf. Noreen, Altnordische Grammatik, p. 151 (§ 173.4).
9
The verb helga occurs rarely in poetry, and not at all in early verse.
10
It is of course perfectly appropriate and in fact desirable to analyse a larger semantic
range of Old Norse terms for sacrality like vé ‘sanctuary’, víg ja ‘consecrate’, blót ‘sacrifice’, and
others, and a larger study than this would do so. It would also be important to include a consideration of the evidence of theophoric place-names (cf. Vikstrand, ‘Sacral Place-Names’; Brink,
‘How Uniform?’). Comparisons with uses of vé in early texts are made here to a limited extent.
11
English translation by John W. Harvey in The Idea of the Holy (1923 and later reprints).
Margaret Clunies Ross
28
concept was a combination of the moral dimensions of religion with those elements that lie outside and beyond the scope of reason. He gave the name ‘numinous’ to the quality of that apprehension of a spiritual force outside the rational
which he regarded as essential to religious experience. Subsequently historians
of religion investigated the extent to which the idea of holiness as an impersonal power, which has some similarities with certain late nineteenth-century
anthropo­logists’ ideas of mana, could be found in the world’s religions.12 One
of the most vocal opponents of the idea of holiness as an impersonal power
was Walter Baetke, who investigated the comparative linguistic evidence for
the concept in Germanic religions in his Das Heilige im Germanischen (1942).
Baetke opposed the conception of holiness as a general power,13 independent
of any idea of a personal god, but accepted the premise that the concept of
the holy in the sense Otto defined it was basic to religious thought.14 He used
a comparative study of the etymo­logy and early usage of the two basic lexical
forms *hailaz and *wīhaz to investigate the concepts of sacrality and holiness in
Gothic, Old Norse, Old English, and Old High German.
Baetke came to the conclusion that it was not heilagr and related terms that
denoted the concept of the numinous in the Germanic languages, but rather
the Indo-Germanic forms derived from *wīhaz. However, one of the methodo­
logical difficulties raised by his study is the fact that the two roots are not equally
represented in the Germanic languages themselves, so it is difficult to generalize about terms that do not appear in all of them. Further, the target ideas are
expressed through different grammatical terms in the various languages. In the
Gothic Bible, the adjective weihs expresses a number of concepts related to ‘the
holy’ in both Greek and Latin,15 but there is no corresponding adjective formed
from this root in Old Norse and Old English. On the other hand, *wīhaz is well
represented as a noun in all the Germanic languages with the basic sense (as in
Old Norse vé) of ‘holy place, sanctuary’ and related verbs (like Old Norse víg ja)
are also attested.16 Thus, while it is possible to infer the sanctity of a vé from written records and from place-names, we do not find a related epithet expressing a
vé ’s possession of the quality of sanctity — except for heilagr.
12
Cf. Widengren, ‘Evolution’. The most recent study of the concept of mana is Nicolas
Meylan, Mana. This book gives some consideration to possible Scandinavian examples.
13
Baetke, Das Heilige, pp. 14–16.
14
Baetke, Das Heilige, pp. 44–46.
15
Baetke, Das Heilige, pp. 80–87.
16
Cf. de Vries, Altnordisches etymo­logisches Wörterbuch, pp. 648–49.
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
29
The distribution pattern of *hailaz is different again and, as already mentioned, the relationship between the adjective heilagr and related nouns has
been debated. It is probably partly for this reason, based on postulated etymo­
logy, that Baetke considered *hailaz a secondary formation from a basic sense
of ‘Heil, Segen, Glück (im magisch-numinosen Sinne)’ (well-being, abundance,
good fortune (in a magical-numinous sense))17 by contrast with *wīhaz and its
relatives. Thus, he considered heilagr and its cognates to express the concept of
well-being or prosperity that is associated with the numen, but not the numen
itself. This is a contentious point to argue, given the absence of an adjective
formed from *wīhaz in Old Norse and Old English, though present in Gothic,
Old Saxon, and Old High German. On the other hand, the adjective heilagr is
well attested in all these languages.18
Historians of religion and lexico­graphers are still debating the meaning or
meanings of the adjective heilagr in Old Norse. Most accept that there is some
component of the sacred in the term, but exactly what it is has not been fully
determined, and perhaps cannot ever be.19 Some prefer to stress the idea that
the quality of being heilagr refers to something that belongs to or is intended
for the gods and is therefore to be treated with reverence, as in La Farge and
Tucker’s definition. This notion could have the further implication that something that is heilagr is not so essentially and of itself but rather by association
with beings who do possess this essential quality, namely the gods. Others
focus on the notion that what is heilagr is holy in the sense of being ‘inviolable, unharmed, complete’, as in de Vries’s definition. This idea lays emphasis on
the inherent wholeness of the holy object or being with the implicit subsidiary
notion that its wholeness is dependent on it being kept holy through some form
of physical or spiritual protection or taboo.20 The Christian senses of heilagr, on
the other hand, are unambiguous in one sense in that they directly translate the
Latin adjectives sanctus and sacer and substantival forms derived from them.
This can be clearly seen because many Old Norse texts containing the word
heilagr are direct translations from Latin or are Old Norse calques on common
17
Baetke, Das Heilige, p. 63.
Gothic is an exception here, though scholars have pointed to a Runic Gothic inscription
on the fourth-century Pietroassa ring, which includes the word hailag, but its grammatical status is debated (cf. Baetke, Das Heilige, pp. 155–57).
19
See the discussion in Sundqvist, Arena for Higher Powers, p. 290.
20
There is an adjective óheilagr, literally ‘unholy’, recorded in prose texts usually in the legal
sense of being outside the law’s protection, but it does not occur in poetry.
18
Margaret Clunies Ross
30
Latin liturgical phrases, like heilagr andi ‘the Holy Spirit’. The question here
then is: can we get behind these Christian senses to the meaning or meanings
heilagr had in pre-Christian times? To see whether this is possible, we must
determine the heilagr corpus.21
The heilagr Corpus
The Poetic Edda and related texts22
Vǫluspá
1. 1/1–4:
Hlióðs bið ec allar
meiri oc minni,
helgar kindar,
mǫgo Heimdalar
(Hearing I ask from all holy offspring, the greater and lesser, the kin of Heimdallr.)
2. 6/3 (also 9/3, 23/3, 25/3) ginnheilog goð (the most holy gods.)
3. 27/1–4:
Veit hon Heimdalar
undir heiðvǫnom
hlióð um fólgit
helgom baðmi;
(She knows Heimdallr’s hearing to be hidden beneath the brightness-accustomed
holy tree.)
Lokasenna
4. 11/1–3:
‘Heilir æsir,
heilar ásynior,
oc ǫll ginnheilog goð!’
(Hail to the gods, hail to the goddesses and all the most holy gods!)
21
Baetke, Das Heilige, also examined the Old Norse corpus for both heilagr and vé but,
although he distinguished to some extent between chrono­logically early and later texts, he did
not do so consistently.
22
All quotations from the Poetic Edda are from the edition of Neckel and Kuhn, Edda:
Die Lieder des Codex Regius; all translations are my own.
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
Grímnismál
5. 4/1–3:
‘Land er heilact,
er ec liggia sé
ásom oc álfom nær;’
(The land is holy which I see lying near the gods and elves.)
6. 22/1–6:
Valgrind heitir,
er stendr velli á,
heilog, fyr helgom durom;
forn er sú grind,
enn þat fáir vito,
hvé hon er í lás lokin.
(It is called Valgrind, which stands on the plain, holy before holy doors; that gate
is old, but still few men know how it is closed with a lock.)
7. 29/1–9:
Kǫrmt oc Ǫrmt
oc Kerlaugar tvær,
þær scal Þórr vaða,
hverian dag,
er hann dœma ferr
at asci Yggdrasils,
þvíat ásbrú
brenn ǫll loga,
heilog vǫtn hlóa.
(Kǫrmt and Ǫrmt and the two Kerlaugs, those Þórr must wade every day when he
goes to pass judgement at the ash-tree Yggdrasill, because the god-bridge all burns
with flame, the holy waters boil (?).)
Sigrdrífumál
8. 18/1–4:
Allar vóro af scafnar, þær er vóro á ristnar,
oc hverfðar við inn helga mioð,
oc sendar á víða vega.
(All were shaved off, those that were carved on, and mixed with the holy mead,
and sent on far-flung paths.)
31
Margaret Clunies Ross
32
Hyndluljóð
9. 1/5–8:
nú er rǫcr rǫcra,
til Valhallar
ríða við scolom
oc til vés [ms. vess] heilags.
(now it is the twilight of twilights, we two must ride to Valhǫll and to the holy
sanctuary.)
Hlǫðskviða
10. Lv 2/15–16 (Heiðr 94):
gröf þá ina helgu,
er stendr á Gotþjóðu
[var. gröf þá inu góðu] (that holy [var. good] grave which stands in the land of the Goths.)
[Discounted as dubious are Fáfnismál 26/3 ‘heilog fioll hinig’ (over holy mountains) as possibly a variant of ‘hélug fioll’ (rimy mountains), Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 1/3–4 as probably derivative from Vǫluspá 59 and/or from Grímnismál 29:
‘hnigo heilog vǫtn | af Himinfiollom’ (holy waters poured down from Heaven
mountains),23 and Guðrúnarkviða III 3/3–4 ‘at inom hvíta | helga steini’ (to the
white holy stone), something upon which oaths can be sworn. This poem is likely
to be of very late date and its narrative is not attested elsewhere.]
Skaldic poetry from the tenth and eleventh centuries
(in rough chrono­logical order)24
11. Þjóðólfr of Hvinir, Haustlǫng, c. 900, 4/1–4III:
Fjallgylðir bað fyllar
fet-Meila sér deila
(hlaut) af helgum skutli
(hrafnásar vin blása).
(The mountain-wolf [GIANT = Þjazi] bade step-Meili <god> [= Hœnir] share
out to him his fill from the holy trencher; the friend of the raven-god [= Óðinn> =
Loki] had to blow [the fire].)
23
Cf. von See and others, Kommentar, iv, 166–67.
All citations from skaldic poetry are taken from volumes of Clunies Ross and others, eds,
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages; superscript roman numbers indicate the volumes in which the texts can be found. The texts and translations cited here are from this edition.
24
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
12. Úlfr Uggason, Húsdrápa, 10/1–3III:
Þar hykk sigrunni svinnum
sylgs valkyrjur fylgja
heilags tafns ok hrafna.
(There I believe valkyries and ravens follow the wise victory-tree [WARRIOR =
Óðinn] to the drink of the holy sacrifice.)
13. Hofgarða-Refr Gestsson, Poem about Gizurr gullbrárskáld,
?after 1030, 2/1–4III:
Opt kom (jarðar leiptra
es Baldr hniginn skaldi
hollr) at helgu fulli
hrafnásar mér (stafna).
(He often brought me to the holy cup of the raven-god [= Óðinn> POETRY];
the Baldr <god> of the lightnings of the land of prows [SEA> GOLD> MAN],
loyal to the skald, has fallen.)
14. Þórarinn loftunga, Glælognskviða, c. 1032, 8/1–4I:
Þar kømr herr,
es heilagr es
konungr sjalfr,
krýpr at gangi.
(A host comes there, where the holy king himself is, [and] bows down for access.)
15. Sigvatr Þórðarson, Austrfararvísur, c. 1019 or possibly later, 4/1–8I:
Réðk til Hofs at hœfa;
hurð vas aptr, en spurðumk
— inn settak nef nenninn
niðrlútt — fyrir útan.
Orð gatk fæst af fyrðum,
(flǫgð baðk) en þau sǫgðu
— hnekkðumk heiðnir rekkar —
heilagt (við þau deila).
(I resolved to aim for Hof; the door was barred, but I made enquiries from outside;
resolute, I stuck my down-bent nose in. I got very little response from the people,
but they said [it was] holy; the heathen men drove me off; I bade the ogresses
bandy words with them.)
33
Margaret Clunies Ross
34
16. Sigvatr Þórðarson, Erfidrápa Óláfs Helga, after c. 1035, 28/1–4I:
Endr réð engla senda
Jórðánar gramr fjóra
— fors þó hans á hersi
heilagt skopt — ór lopti.
(The prince of the Jordan [CHRIST] once sent four angels from the sky; a waterfall washed the holy hair of his hersir.)
17. Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Runhent poem about Haraldr, c. 1035–66, 3/1–4II:
Jarizleifr of sá,
hvert jǫfri brá;
hófsk hlýri frams
ins helga grams.
( Jaroslav saw in what direction the prince developed; the brother of the holy, outstanding king [= Óláfr> = Haraldr harðráði] distinguished himself.)
[For purposes of comparison, especially with example 15, see Anon, Lausavísur
from Vǫlsa þáttr 13/4 and 8I, ‘heilagt blæti | blætinu helga’ (the holy offering), spoken by an offended pagan housewife with reference to the embalmed horse’s penis
that King Óláfr Haraldsson had just thrown to a dog.]
Analysis
There are seventeen examples upon which to base this analysis, with four others that are dubious in some way, Fáfnismál 26/3 because heilagr may be a
scribal error there, Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 1/3 because the text is probably late and imitative of Vǫluspá, Guðrúnarkviða III again because of its very
late date, and the Vǫlsa þáttr citation because heilagr is arguably used there in
a sense reflective of Christian usage (see below). Seventeen examples are not
many upon which to base an analysis of an elusive concept like that (or those)
which lie behind the adjective heilagr, but outside cognates in other Germanic
languages, which do not necessarily reflect Nordic ideo­logy, we have no other
direct textual evidence to call on.
By paying close attention to the textual context of the seventeen citations I
think it is possible to see some basic patterns in the pre-twelfth-century usage of
heilagr. It comes as no surprise that much of the evidence from the Poetic Edda
is from poems that deal with or allude to cosmo­logy, Vǫluspá, Grímnismál, and
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
35
Lokasenna. Seven of the ten examples from this corpus are from those three
poems. From this group we can infer that the Old Norse gods were heilagr, in
fact heilagr to a superlative degree, or ginnheilagr. This superlative quality is
assured through the formulaic repetition of the refrain-like phrase ginnheilog
goð four times in Vǫluspá and once in Lokasenna. If the helgar kindar of Vǫluspá
1/2 are to be equated with the ‘kin of Heimdallr’ in line 4 (understood as the
gods rather than the alternative interpretation as a reference to human beings,
reached with reference to Rígsþula), then we have six examples of the gods
characterized as heilagr. Given the size of our sample, this evidence is strong,
but it does not of itself tell us precisely what the quality of being heilagr is, aside
from it being something the gods possess.
The Poetic Edda also provides several examples of entities that are either
features of the natural word (a tree, a stone, some land, and waters or rivers) or
manufactured objects (the gate Valgrind) that are described as heilagr. In one
case (example 5, from Grímnismál) it is stated that a piece of land which stands
near the gods and elves is heilagr. It seems reasonable to infer that the quality
of being heilagr is conferred upon this land because of its proximity to the gods
and elves, though this is not stated explicitly. In example 9, a sanctuary (vé) is
heilagr; depending on one’s reading of the line this may be another way of referring to Valhǫll. In another example (number 3) it can reasonably be inferred
that the tree under which Heimdallr’s hearing is hidden is heilagr because it
is part of a complex of mytho­logical entities closely associated with several of
the gods (Óðinn, Heimdallr, Mímir). Modern historians of religion would add
here that the World Tree, Yggdrasill, to which this example probably refers,
is not only an axis mundi, but the locus of Óðinn’s acquisition of numinous
knowledge.25 Similarly, the waters or rivers that Þórr wades through (example
7) on his way to hold court at Yggdrasill are presumably heilagr by association
with the god and possibly also because of his judicial function there, about
which we know nothing.
Two other examples, though this time from the skaldic corpus, of objects
being heilagr by association with the gods and their activities are examples 11
and 12, from Haustlǫng and Húsdrápa respectively, both belonging to the genre
of ekphrasis or poetry descriptive of objects. Example 11 refers to the heilagr
skutill, a dish or trencher on which a group of gods placed their cooked meal of
an ox, which they initially refused to share with the giant Þjazi.26 The interpre25
26
Cf. Schjødt, Initiation between Two Worlds, pp. 173–224.
It is possible to offer various interpretations of why the gods’ trencher was called heilagr
36
Margaret Clunies Ross
tation of example 12 has been much debated, depending on whether the tafn
‘sacrifice’ of line 3 is understood to refer to the body of the dead Baldr, whose
funeral the stanza describes, or to some other sacrificial object, and how one
understands the sylgr ‘gulp, drink’ of line 2. The most recent interpretation27
understands the phrase sylgr heilags tafns to refer to animal sacrifice at Baldr’s
funeral feast. Whatever the precise sense, heilagr here is likely to be associated
with a mortuary ritual that was paradigmatic for all subsequent funerals, given
that Baldr’s funeral was held for the first of the Æsir to experience death.
Þjóðólfr’s Haustlǫng, dated to c. 900, and Úlfr’s Húsdrápa, of about a century
later, though both are extant only in manu­scripts of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda,
are the only skaldic poems of the indubitably pre-Christian period to use the
adjective heilagr. Although other poems of the late tenth century, like Einarr
skálaglamm Helgason’s Vellekla, refer to the pagan gods and the activities of rulers, such as Hákon jarl Sigurðarson, in promoting the gods’ cults, there are no
examples in them of the gods or their sanctuaries (vé) being described as heilagr.
I would argue that all (or almost all) the examples of heilagr I have assembled from skaldic poetry of the period up to the end of the eleventh century,
apart from those of Haustlǫng and Húsdrápa, are influenced by the Christian
meanings of the word heilagr, even though in some cases they appear to
describe pre-Christian customs. A possible exception to this generalization is
example 13, from Hofgarða-Refr Gestsson’s poem in honour of his poetic mentor, probably Gizurr gullbrárskáld, who is reputed to have died at the Battle of
Stiklastaðir in 1030. Refr uses the adjective heilagr in a kenning for poetry, with
an allusion to the myth of the mead of poetry and Óðinn’s theft of this precious
substance from the giantess Gunnlǫð. It is hard to tell here whether the context
is ‘authentically’ pre-Christian or whether the kenning is purely conventional
and not necessarily indicative of a pagan mindset. Another example of the linking of the concept heilagr with the poetic mead (example 8) may tip the balance
in favour of considering this group of two examples of poetry being heilagr
as a genuinely pre-Christian view, and one that was easily accommodated to
Christian views of divine inspiration by later skalds.28
in this context (see note to this line in volume iii of Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, p. 438), but these are modern constructs, and the present analysis tries to avoid them
unless they are overwhelmingly obvious.
27
Marold and others, ‘Úlfr Uggason’, pp. 421–22.
28
Further possible support for the idea of the mead as holy, even though the adjective is
not used and the text is obscure, is Hávamál 107/4–6 ‘þvíat Óðrerir | er nú upp kominn | á
alda vés iaðar’ ((possibly) for Óðrerir has now come up to the border of the sanctuary of men).
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
37
Examples 14, 16, and 17 are all early instances of the Christian usage of the
adjective heilagr to refer to a ruler who came to be regarded as a saint, and thus
sanctus in the Latin sense of made holy through his deeds and by association
with the Christian God. Example 14, from Þórarinn loftunga’s Glælognskviða,
dated to c. 1032, is the earliest extant text celebrating the sanctity of King Óláfr
Haraldsson of Norway, and must have been composed only a year or two after
his death. Here already the adjective heilagr is applied to the noun konungr.
Example 17 does the same thing. Example 16, which is probably about the baptism of Óláfr Haraldsson, rather than that of Christ, applies the epithet heilagr
to the king’s hair rather than to the water in which he was baptized. Here we
probably find an allusion to the magical power of a ruler’s hair as a source of
his strength and a symbol of his authority. This motif is found in pre-Christian Germanic and Scandinavian contexts and it can also be transformed in a
Christian milieu to provide an indication of the sanctity of a saint, whose hair
continues to grow after death.29
It remains to consider example 15 and I propose to do so in the context of
the unnumbered example from Vǫlsa þáttr, another instance of a narrative generated to exemplify the evangelical powers of King Óláfr Haraldsson. In example 15, from Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Austrfararvísur, the tone is light and flippant;
the Christian and civilized poet is recounting, for the amusement of the court
back in Norway, his tribulations on a journey into Sweden and his encounters
with some pagan peasants in the countryside, just as, in Vǫlsa þáttr, King Óláfr
and his companions encounter a group of outlandish pagans who actually venerate an embalmed horse’s penis called Vǫlsi. In each case, I suggest, the adjective heilagr is applied to pagan practices in these narratives in the manner in
which a Christian would imagine it being used by pagans: Sigvatr is told that
he cannot enter a house (the place is called Hof, which may indicate some kind
of sanctuary) because it is heilagt, the housewife who has just seen her precious
Vǫlsi thrown to the family dog calls it heilagt blæti ‘a holy offering’. In both cases
there is an underlying implication that the presence or action of a Christian in
a heathen environment has caused pagan sanctity to be defiled — in the eyes of
the pagans — a laughable idea from the perspective of a Christian, for whom
Óðrerir is probably a name for the mead of poetry, but the meaning of the lines is too obscure
to provide reliable evidence. Iaðarr ‘border, rim’ is an emendation.
29
There are numerous studies of the significance of (long) hair in the early Germanic and
Scandinavian worlds, including evidence for the actual preservation of hair in mortuary rites
(cf. Lund and Arwill-Nordbladh, ‘Divergent Ways’, pp. 427–29; Wallace-Hadrill, Long-Haired
Kings; Gansum, ‘Hår og stil’).
Margaret Clunies Ross
38
pagan rituals would have been seen as idolatry. The narrative frames of these
two examples seem to me to exclude them from our consideration of the likely
usage of heilagr in pre-Christian Old Norse.
Conclusion
From the evidence reviewed here, there seems to be no support for the idea of
an impersonal power of holiness in pre-Christian Nordic thought, and indeed
this would appear to be a priori unlikely as there is no attested Old Norse noun,
except for the rare and late heilagdómr, derived from the adjective heilagr. On
the other hand, the gods are heilagr and so are certain places, objects, and rituals
closely associated with them. In particular what one might call the Yggdrasill
complex, with its cosmic tree, water sources, and other phenomena that mytho­
logical texts document as being sites of divine activity, is heilagr. So is the mead
of poetry, which the mythic sources also document as being one of Óðinn’s
most important acquisitions, though one that came with a complex history of
transformation, negotiation, and deception.
Modern analyses of the myths connected with most of those things designated heilagr in early texts reveal that a great many of them can be understood
as myths of initiation and sacrifice, especially as involved in Óðinn’s quest for
knowledge and power.30 This raises a tantalizing question: if the gods are essentially heilagr, and if the term heilagr connotes some form of divine or numinous
power, as I think most likely, why then should Óðinn in many myths continually seek to acquire greater knowledge and power, as he does in Vǫluspá and
elsewhere? The answer must surely be that the quality of being heilagr in Old
Norse was not comprehensive and all-embracing, as is implicit in Christian
concepts of ‘the holy’ as something morally and spiritually perfect. Nor is there
any evidence that the concept included the notion of the heilagr being, object,
or place as ‘inviolable, unharmed, complete’, which is also part of the Christian
or modern Western idea of the holy.31 There is good textual and archaeo­logical
evidence that the sanctuaries (hof, hǫrgr, vé) created by humans for the pre30
See Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, i, 187–228; Schjødt, Initiation between Two Worlds,
pp. 108–224.
31
Cf. OED online, holy, adj. and n., 2.a ‘As applied to deities, the development of meaning
has probably been: held in religious regard or veneration, kept reverently sacred from human
profanation or defilement; (hence) of a character that evokes veneration and reverence; (and
thus, in Christian use) free from all contamination of sin and evil, morally and spiritually perfect and unsullied’.
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
39
Christian Norse gods to live in32 were regarded as protected places and often
defended with actual or symbolic walls, fences, and boundaries,33 but little to
indicate that the concept of divine holiness included inviolability.
Baetke’s attempt to demonstrate that *hailaz plays second fiddle to *wīhaz
as an expression of the religious quality of the numinous seems to fall somewhat short of the evidence, at least when examined in the light of the earliest
available Old Norse texts. This is not to disparage the importance or numinosity of the idea-complex associated with vé in Old Norse, but rather to suggest
that this word denoted primarily a holy place devoted to or associated with
the gods, whether imagined as living in Ásgarðr or in sanctuaries maintained
by humans in which their images could be installed and their cults performed.
The quality of holiness, on the other hand, seems to have been most commonly
expressed by the adjective heilagr, and this usage was continued and greatly
enlarged in the earliest Christian writings in Old Norse and most of the other
Germanic languages.
32
Presumably on the model of the mytho­logical world itself, and the gods’ garðar ‘fences,
enclosures’ within it (cf. Vikstrand, ‘Ásgarðr’). Sometimes vé is used in poetry as a term for a
god’s residence, located somewhere in Ásgarðr (cf. La Farge and Tucker, Glossary to the Poetic
Edda, p. 281).
33
See Sundqvist, Arena for Higher Powers, pp. 290–315.
40
Margaret Clunies Ross
Works Cited
Works of Reference
A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose (ONP) (København: Nordisk forkningsinstitut, Uni­ver­
sity of Copen­hagen, 1989–) <onp.ku.dk> [accessed 22 February 2018]
La Farge, Beatrice, and John Tucker, Glossary to the Poetic Edda Based on Hans Kuhn’s
Kurzes Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Winter, 1992)
Noreen, Adolf, Altnordische Grammatik, i: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik,
2nd edn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1923)
OED online = The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd online edn <www.oed.com> [accessed
12 February 2018]
Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ Septentrionalis: Ordbog over det
norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. by Finnur
Jónsson, 2nd edn (København: Møller, 1931; repr. København: Atlas Bogtryk, 1966)
Vries, Jan de, Altnordisches etymo­logisches Wörterbuch, 3rd edn (Leiden: Brill, 1977)
Primary Sources
Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, i: Text, ed. by Gustav
Neckel, rev. by Hans Kuhn, 5th edn (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983)
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross and others,
9 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007–)
Úlfr Uggason, Húsdrápa, ed. by Edith Marold and others, in Skaldic Poetry of the
Scandinavian Middle Ages, iii: Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, ed. by Kari Ellen Gade
and Edith Marold, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), i, 402–24
Secondary Studies
Baetke, Walter, Das Heilige im Germanischen (Tübingen: Mohr, 1942)
Brink, Stefan, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, in Learning and Under­
standing in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by
Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills, Medi­eval Texts and Cultures of Northern
Europe, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 105–36
Clunies Ross, Margaret, Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medi­eval Northern Society,
i: The Myths, The Viking Collection, 7 (Odense: Odense Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994)
Gansum, Terje, ‘Hår og stil og stilig hår: Om langhåret som maktsymbolikk’, in Snar­
temofunnene i nytt lys, ed. by Perry Rolfsen and Frans-Arne Stylegar (Oslo: Uni­versi­
tetet i Olso, 2003), pp. 191–221
Lund, Julie, and Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, ‘Divergent Ways of Relating to the Past in
the Viking Age’, European Journal of Archaeo­logy, 19 (2016), 415–38
Meylan, Nicolas, Mana: A History of a Western Category (Leiden: Brill, 2017)
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse?
41
Otto, Rudolf, Das Heilige: Über das irrationale in der idée des Göttlichen und sein Ver­
hältnis zum Rationalen (Breslau: Trewendt und Granier, 1917)
—— , The Idea of the Holy, trans. by John W. Harvey (London: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press
and Humphrey Milford, 1923)
Schjødt, Jens Peter, Initiation between Two Worlds: Structure and Symbolism in PreChristian Scandinavian Religion, trans. by Victor Hansen, The Viking Collection, 17
(Odense: Uni­ver­sity Press of Southern Denmark, 2008)
See, Klaus von, and others, Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, 8 vols (Heidelberg:
Winter, 1997–), iv: Heldenlieder (2004)
Sundqvist, Olof, An Arena for Higher Powers: Ceremonial Buildings and Religious
Strategies for Rulership in Late Iron Age Scandinavia, Numen Book Series in the
History of Religions, 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2016)
Vikstrand, Per, ‘Sacral Place-Names in Scandinavia’, ONOMA, 37 (2002), 121–43
—— , ‘Ásgarðr, Miðgarðr, and Úgarðr. A Linguistic Approach to a Classical Problem’,
in Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions,
ed. by Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere, Vägar till Midgärd,
8 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006), pp. 354–57
Wallace-Hadrill, John Michael, The Long-Haired Kings and Other Studies in Frankish
History (London: Methuen, 1962)
Widengren, Geo, ‘Evolutionism and the Problem of the Origin of Religion’, Ethnos, 10
(1945), 57–96
Landscape: Sacred and Profane
Jens Peter Schjødt
Introduction
As is known by all scholars in the field of Old Norse Studies, Stefan Brink is a
very wide-ranging researcher. He has dealt with subjects within archaeo­logy,
philo­logy, history, legal history, and many other areas. His main field, however,
has been place-names, in particular concerning issues related to the history of
religion and church history. Being myself a historian of religion, I shall, in this
small article. focus on what is in my opinion one of the most interesting articles by Stefan, or more correctly one aspect of that article, namely the relation
between the sacred and the profane. The article is not recent but appeared in
a Festschrift for Anders Hultgård back in 2001, and its title is ‘Mytho­logizing
Landscape. Place and Space of Cult and Myth’.
The theme of the article is, in Stefan’s words, ‘what might be called its [the
pre-Christian landscape of early Scandinavia] mythical and sacral geo­graphy’.1
After having given examples of how, in various cultures, features in the landscape are connected to religious, and especially mytho­logical, ideas, often during the naming of these features, but also because sacred sites were raised at such
places, it is stated that the religion of the first millennium ad in Scandinavia
was of the ‘local’ type as opposed to the ‘universal’ type of religions.2 The rest of
1
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 77.
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 87. This distinction between ‘universal’ and ‘local’
religions has played a big role in the research history, both within the general history of reli2
Jens Peter Schjødt (jps@cas.au.dk) is Professor in the Study of Religion at Aarhus Uni­ver­sity,
Denmark. He has written extensively on subjects within pre-Christian Scandinavian religion
and within the general study of religion.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 43–52
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119337
44
Jens Peter Schjødt
the article is mostly about examples of the connection between religious rituals and ideas on the one hand, and certain places (e.g. islands, water, trees or
groves, and mountains) on the other hand. The discussions are often very illuminating, taking into consideration important phenomena such as ‘memory’,
‘mythical history’, ‘hierophanies’, and many others. There is, therefore, no doubt
that the article has a high value as a reminder of how important places are when
it comes to understanding the religious world views of ‘local’ religions (and
maybe ‘universal’ religions, too).3 One of the main conclusions is that we have
examples of cult continuity at certain places over several millennia.
It is hard to disagree with the main ideas of the article, which are all argued
very convincingly, as is usually the case in Stefan’s articles. There is, however,
one point — the aspect mentioned above — with which I cannot agree, namely
the remarks about the relation between sacred and profane in the early part of
the article. So, what I shall do in the following is to problematize the way the
notions of sacred and profane are used in Stefan’s article, taking into consideration some classic viewpoints from the history of religions, and after that suggest
a way these two notions could (and in my opinion have to) be part of a general
definition of religion.
Sacred and Profane
The notions of sacred and profane have played a very important role in many
humanistic disciplines for a very long period, a history which is also taken into
consideration by Stefan, who mentions names such as Émile Durkheim, Rudolf
gion and the history of religion of pre-Christian Scandinavia. The designations for the two
types of religions vary from one researcher to the next, and without postulating a total overlap, it seems reasonable to compare the ‘universal’–‘local’ distinction with for example Jan Assmann’s distinction between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ religions (Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory), which already indicates some sort of diachronic relation between them, so that
‘local’ religions tend to develop into or be substituted by ‘universal’ religions. This is part of the
framework of Robert Bellah when he speaks about the development from ‘tribal’/‘archaic’ religions to ‘axial’ religions (Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution). Nevertheless, even if it appears
correct that there is this developmental relation between the two notions, it is certainly also
possible to see them as co-existing in societies where there is a social division, with the religious
elite tending to favour ‘universal’ variants of the religion, whereas the common people would
tend to favour the ‘local’ variants.
3
It would go far beyond the scope of this article to discuss the similarities and differences
between the two ‘types of religion’ in regard to ‘space’ and ‘place’ — but it would certainly be
of high interest.
Landscape: Sacred and Profane
45
Otto, Mircea Eliade, and others, who have all contributed to our understanding of sacred and profane.4 This is not the place to go through the whole debate
over these things, any more than Stefan’s article was,5 but a few remarks will be
necessary for the points to be raised in the following.
In speaking about sacred landscapes, Stefan correctly writes about the
notions of sacred and profane that they have been part of a very complex discussion, and then states the following:
I will […] question the stance now and then expressed that religion and a religious
system demand a division between sacred and profane. I doubt this, as regards
the pagan Scandinavian siðr. The religious system among aborigines in Australia
obviously contradicts this stance, and even in ancient Greek religion a distinction
between sacred and secular is very difficult to apply.6
It is this statement that I want to challenge because I believe that it catches
neither the characteristics of the sacred from a theoretical perspective, nor the
fundamental characteristics of any religion.
First and foremost it is important to be aware that the sacred can be viewed
from two perspectives, namely on the one hand from an insider perspective,
which is mostly what we have seen within the phenomeno­logy of religion, as
can be exemplified in the whole work of Mircea Eliade,7 and, on the other hand,
from an outsider perspective.8 From the insider perspective the sacred will have
a certain content, often involving some otherworld beings, which is established
through some sort of mytho­logical rendering. For instance: this place is sacred
because a god (or a saint) or some sort of otherworld being stayed here at a certain time, or perhaps he/she was born here, or died here, usually in the beginning of times, before humans lived here. However, to use a term from Eliade,
it is also possible to envisage hierophanies much closer to the present time; a
strike of lightning, some animals behaving strangely at a certain place, or many
4
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 82.
I have dealt with this and other parallel conceptual pairs in Schjødt, ‘Wilderness, Liminality, and the Other’.
6
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 82.
7
For instance in Das Heilige und das Profane and in Patterns in Comparative Religion, especially ch. 1.
8
In a brief article by José A. Prades and Denis Benoit, ‘Otto et Durkheim’, the two
authors discuss in a very useful way the difference between the views of Rudolf Otto and Émile
Durkheim on the ‘sacred’ and, although formulated in a different termino­logy, establish that
whereas Otto has an ‘insider’ view, Durkheim takes that of an ‘outsider’.
5
Jens Peter Schjødt
46
other unusual happenings may generate ideas about sacrality. It is also possible
that within a mythic or dogmatic discourse, everything is seen as sacred, i.e. the
whole creation is sacred, but even when this is the case, the religious practice
will necessarily be different as will be argued below.
From the outsider, or the scholarly, perspective the situation is different. As
has been stated by Veikko Anttonen in a survey article from 2000: ‘The scholar
of religion cannot take a theo­logical stand and address the sacred as an aspect
or an agent of a presumed other-worldly reality, but must view religious categories as symbolic constructions and representations of human cognition’.9
Although I agree with Anttonen, the two levels are perhaps not that easy to
distinguish, since the human constructions cannot be analysed without recurring to the content we find in religions all over the world.10 We shall return
briefly to this problem below; but the main point made by Anttonen that the
sacred must be seen as a human cognitive construction can hardly be questioned. We must therefore ask how we can view this construction.
As I have argued in an earlier article,11 the pair ‘sacred–profane’ can be seen
as more or less analogous to many other termino­logical dichotomies that have
been used by scholars in their work on religion. Although I shall not postulate
any complete overlap — quite on the contrary there are important differences
— I will argue that dichotomies, such as the ‘Other’ as opposed to that which
is not ‘Other’ by Rudolf Otto,12 or the ‘liminal’ as opposed to that which is
not ‘liminal’ by Victor Turner,13 are in some sense family-related to the sacred–
profane dichotomy as it is used by scholars such as Eliade and Durkheim and
many others. So, the ‘sacred’ must be defined in structural terms, as the opposite to that which is not sacred, i.e. the ‘profane’. The sacred, therefore, cannot
be understood as something which is completely independent of the society in
which it is viewed as sacred. Even Eliade, who is probably the religious scholar
who is most often connected to the notion of the ‘sacred’ as a transcendent
notion, was well aware that ‘Every hierophany we look at is also an historical
fact’,14 meaning that even the most sacred entities must be expressed in and use
symbols from the sphere of everyday life. Eliade also very importantly states
9
Anttonen, ‘Sacred’, p. 277.
Cf. Burkert, Creation of the Sacred, pp. 4–8.
11
Schjødt, ‘Wilderness, Liminality, and the Other’, p. 183.
12
Otto, Das Heilige, for instance p. 33.
13
Turner, The Ritual Process.
14
Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, p. 2.
10
Landscape: Sacred and Profane
47
— and here I agree fully15 — that ‘anything whatever can become at any given
moment a hierophany’, and continues:
If anything whatever may embody separate values, can the sacred-profane dichotomy have any meaning? The contradiction is, in fact, only a surface one, for while
it is true that anything at all can become a hierophany, and that in all probability
there is nothing that has not, somewhere, some time, been invested with a sacred
value, it still remains that no one religion or race has ever been found to contain all
these hierophanies in its history. In other words, in every religious framework there
have been profane beings and things beside the sacred […]. Further: while a certain
class of things may be found fitting vehicles of the sacred, there always remain some
things in the class which are not given this honour.16
Durkheim, all differences to Eliade’s framework notwithstanding, argues
along the same lines when he says that all religions presuppose a classification
of things into two classes which can be translated into the words sacred and
profane,17 culminating in his famous definition of religion as a:
unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things
set apart and surrounded by prohibitions — beliefs and practices that unite its
adherents in a single moral community called a church.18
If this is true, which I believe it to be, that there have always been profane things
beside the sacred, things from which the sacred can be set apart, and within all
classes of things, then this must also be the case with places.
There is no reason to make a catalogue of things viewed as sacred in various religions. Eliade is no doubt right that potentially everything may be seen
as sacred in a certain culture: otherworld beings of different kinds, of course;
certain things, such as stones, trees, wells, as is mentioned by Stefan Brink as
well as by Eliade, and numerous other scholars; but also things of a cultural
kind, such as buildings, pictures, jewellery, and even certain human beings, are
acknowledged as more sacred than others.
All these things (in the Durkhemian sense) belong to certain classes, to use
Eliade’s expression, which also comprise elements that are not seen as sacred
and therefore profane; a tree may be sacred, but not all trees, a mountain may
15
Although I disagree with Eliade on most other points, be they methodo­logical or theoretical.
16
Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 12–13.
17
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, p. 36.
18
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, p. 46.
Jens Peter Schjødt
48
be sacred, but not all mountains, etc. So is it really likely that the Old Norse
siðr should be unique in the sense that the landscape was sacred in its totality
and left no room for profane spaces, as is indicated in the material quoted from
Stefan’s article above? I do not think so, and I believe that Stefan’s own text
partly contradicts that quote.
Taking a closer look at some of the examples given by Stefan in his article on the sacred landscape actually reveals the presence of the sacred–profane
dichotomy. Stefan himself writes:
During the pre-Christian times, all nature and landscape were metaphysically
‘charged’ in different ways, with different degrees of energy, as regarded holiness
or sacrality; the landscape was metaphysically impregnated as a totality, and people
lived in a numinous environment.19
This may seem in accordance with the earlier quotation, but it also indicates
that when there are different degrees of sacrality, the lowest degrees must be more
profane than other parts of the landscape (less sacred = more profane), so it is
very hard to escape the dichotomy, seen as a cognitive figure, completely. And if
we jump forward a few pages in Stefan’s article (p. 93) we notice that people in
Scandinavia gave ‘some islands an elevated sacral position’ (but apparently not
all islands). On p. 99 it is said that a tree planted in the courtyard of a farm was
a microcosmic replica of the world tree and thus sacred; accordingly other trees
were not sacred. This, therefore, clearly indicates that for a thing to be sacred,
other things within the same class must be profane. On the other hand, it is of
course true, as it is mentioned,20 that, rituals concerning land-taking involved
some sort of sacralization of the land as a whole. Thus, it is stated in for instance
Eyrbygg ja saga chapter 4 that Þórólfr carried fire ‘um landnám sitt’ (around
the land that was taken) — but of course not the land outside the landnám, so
there is no doubt that also larger units can be seen as sacred (e.g. the Holy Land
or some holy city) compared to other units of the same class, i.e. other lands or
cities, which are not, then, seen as sacred. We can also be pretty sure that within
such a spatial unit certain places are more sacred than others, that there are
exactly different degrees of sacrality, as is also fully acknowledged by Stefan as
we have just seen.21 But, even if there are varying degrees of sacrality, the idea
19
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, pp. 81–82.
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 101.
21
An example can be taken from the same chapter in Eyrbygg ja saga when it speaks about
Helgafell, a mountain which is much more sacred than anything else on Þórólfr’s land.
20
Landscape: Sacred and Profane
49
that large units — the whole land or landscape — were seen as sacred or holy,
to some degree at least, could perhaps seem to contradict the ideas expressed by
Eliade and Durkheim and most others, that in order for a thing within a certain
class to be viewed as sacred, it is necessary that other things within that class are
seen as profane. So how can we understand this apparent contradiction?
First and foremost I believe it is important, as we have seen, that the sacred
is something which logically must be different from something else, meaning
that nothing can be sacred unless there is something which is not. The very
idea that ‘a particular piece of land [can be made] even more holy’22 involves
by necessity that there must be something which is not holy within the same
class or category (in this case space). Therefore, we should view the dichotomy
between sacred and profane as some sort of continuum with the two terms at
each end of the spectrum. When something is more holy than something else,
it involves that it is closer to the absolute sacred than things that are less holy.
What is sacred and what is profane may vary from one situation to the next:
a sacred place may be more sacred on some occasions than others,23 and some
places were no doubt sacred only on certain ritual occasions. To use the definition of Durkheim again, if everything is sacred, the sacred cannot be set apart
from anything else. But this setting apart is what we see all the time, also in
Scandinavia: everyday actions are not allowed at certain places (and at certain
times) because they are ‘set apart and surrounded by prohibitions’.24 Therefore,
it does not make sense, from a scholarly perspective, to maintain that everything within a category is sacred. It may be that the land belonging to some
farm could be seen as sacred in its entirety, but only on certain occasions (probably mostly ritual), for at other occasions it would be necessary to plough, sow,
and harvest in a very profane way belonging to the everyday at the farm and
without any prohibitions.
So although the landscape on the whole may, for instance within a mythical discourse, be seen as sacred, the way it is treated most the time will be quite
profane, except at certain specific places (mountains, wells, trees, etc. — and
human-made sacred structures, of course) which are treated as outstanding
because of some strong connection to the sacred sphere. In order to view this
22
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 101.
For instance, a church is always more holy than the surrounding space, but it is even
more holy when a ritual is taking place.
24
Again we can use Eyrbygg ja saga chapter 4 as an example: to go to Helgafell one had to
be cleansed and no man or animal should be killed there.
23
Jens Peter Schjødt
50
situation in relation to religion in general, I have argued earlier that a hallmark
in any definition of religion is that the religious world view will always involve
the notion of some otherworld, i.e. ‘other’ in relation to the world in which
we live here and now, or maybe even several otherworlds. These otherworlds
are usually seen as sacred by the religious adherents because they differ in most
respects from our world. The relation between our world and the otherworld
no doubt has some affinity to the relation between the profane and the sacred.
When we live our daily lives with all the ‘profane’ obligations that are necessary for our physical survival we are certainly living a profane life, whereas,
when we perform rituals during which we communicate with the otherworld,
the places, the times, and even the persons involved become liminal and thus
approach the sacred sphere. However, even quite ordinary activities may be
performed in accordance with some rules which have their ultimate origin in
the otherworld. In Scandinavia we may think of warfare (hurling a spear over
the enemy army),25 land taking (carrying fire (see above)), and no doubt many
more activities connected to farming and other daily activities, if judged from
comparative material.26 These activities are thus related to the otherworld, and
therefore they are also in a sense sacred. But we notice that it is only part of the
activity that has this ritual connection, and to be sure most often the beginning of an activity. We should not expect that two armies fighting each other
or a farmer doing his daily work would do everything according to sacred rules.
Here the distinction between the ‘smart’ and the ‘proper’ is useful.27 When a
battle is about to begin, we call upon the help of the gods, and when it is time
for the harvest, ritual actions must be taken into account to secure the optimal
yield, etc. (the proper way). But when this is done we have to work in the most
efficient (the smart) way without performing all kinds of rites. This is not to
say that in a mythic discourse war, agricultural work, forging, and many other
activities were not seen as sacred, but this is exactly from an insider perspective.
It is obvious in the ‘real’ world most of these activities were performed in a very
smart, rational, and this-worldly way. So again: from this insider perspective
it may be that everything can be viewed as sacred, but there is no doubt that
certain parts of any activity are more sacred than others and thus set apart from
what is profane.
25
26
27
Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa and Eyrbygg ja saga ch. 44.
Cf. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 331–66.
Doty, Mytho­graphy, p. 67.
Landscape: Sacred and Profane
51
Conclusion
What I have attempted to do here is to show that the distinction between
sacred and profane is impossible to avoid when speaking about religions and
religious world views. Theoretically, the notion of the ‘sacred’ makes no sense
if it is not contrasted with something which is not sacred, i.e. ‘profane’. The
sacred is by definition that which is not profane, that which is set apart within
a certain category (times, places, humans, tools, etc.). And this is also supported
empirically when we look at the Scandinavian material. Every time we meet
something sacred in the sources, whether it is a place or something else, we
always notice that it is set apart from something else.
So, in opposition to the view put forward by Stefan in the quote above,
I argue that it is not possible to speak about religion without referring to this
basic dichotomy.
52
Jens Peter Schjødt
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Eyrbygg ja saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, Íslenzk fornrit, 4
(Rey­kja­vík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1935)
Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa, in Flateyjarbók: En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler, ed. by
Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Carl R. Unger, 3 vols (Christiania: Malling, 1860–68)
Secondary Studies
Anttonen, Veikko, ‘Sacred’, in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. by Willi Braun and
Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 2000), pp. 271–82
Assmann, Jan, Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, trans. by Rodney Livingstone
(Stanford: Stanford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006)
Bellah, Robert N., Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
(Cam­bridge, MA: Belknap, 2011)
Brink, Stefan, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape. Place and Space of Cult and Myth’, in Kon­ti­
nuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte: Festschrift für Anders Hultgård zu seinem 65. Geburtstag am 23. 12. 2001, ed. by Michael Steusberg (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2001), pp. 76–112
Burkert, Walter, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Bio­logy in Early Religions (Cam­bridge,
MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996)
Doty, William G., Mytho­graphy: The Study of Myths and Rituals (Tuscaloosa: Uni­ver­sity
of Alabama Press, 1986)
Durkheim, Émile, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. by Carol Cosman
(Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001)
Eliade, Mircea, Das Heilige und das Profane: Vom Wesen des Religiösen (Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 1957)
—— , Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. by Rosemary Sheed (New York: New
American Library, 1974)
Otto, Rudolf, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Ver­
hältnis zum Rationalen (Munich: Beck, 1963)
Prades, José A., and Dénis Benoit, ‘Otto et Durkheim: intèrêt heureistique de la substantivité du sacré’, Studies in Religion, 19 (1990), 339–50
Schjødt, Jens Peter, ‘Wilderness, Liminality, and the Other in Old Norse Myth and
Cosmo­logy’, in Wilderness in Mytho­logy and Religion: Approaching Religious Spatia­
lities, Cosmo­logies, and Ideas of Wild Nature, ed. by Laura Feldt (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2012), pp. 183–204
Turner, Victor W., The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­
ver­sity Press, 1969)
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in:
A Note on some Creative Tensions
in the Landscape
Mats Widgren
S
acred and profane, tangible and intangible, physical and mental, matter
and ideas, visual and lived-in: these are aspects that coexist in the landscape. They are intertwined and mutually constitutive. The Old Norse
mytho­logical landscapes, for example, borrowed forms and spatial relations
from the material features and from the landscapes of the physical world.1 The
ordering of mytho­logical spaces in Old Norse cosmo­logy was related to how
types of land were organized in the material space from the centre of the farm
to the outlying lands, but as Stefan Brink has shown, this dialectic between
real types of land and the spatial spheres in the mytho­logical landscape was
much more complex than how many previous authors have understood it.2
Conversely, mytho­logical places and spaces were recreated in the material landscape through monuments and sacral places and through the naming of farms,
natural features, and whole districts.3
Some of the conceptual pairs mentioned above have formed the basis for
debates on the landscape concept over the last twenty to thirty years in archaeo­
logy, geo­g raphy, and related disciplines. These debates have been influenced,
1
2
3
See e.g. Andrén, Tracing Old Norse Cosmo­logy, ch. 2.
Brink, ‘Myto­logiska rum och eskato­logiska föreställningar i det vikingatida Norden’.
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’.
Mats Widgren (mats.widgren@humangeo.su.se) is Emeritus Professor of Geo­graphy (specializing in Human Geo­graphy) at Stockholm Uni­ver­sity. He has researched the long-term history
of farming systems and agrarian landscapes in Sweden, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 53–60
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119338
Mats Widgren
54
on the one hand, by general theoretical trends in the humanities, but also by
the fact that landscape in Europe has become an arena for policies and politics. Different perspectives and different interests in this policy debate have led
different authors to emphasize certain aspects of the landscape concept. These
sometimes-heated theoretical debates have sharpened our understanding and
have also incited empirical studies. Stefan Brink has argued for bridging the
divide between mental and physical landscapes by searching for the mental,
mytho­logical, and symbolic aspects in the reconstruction of the landscape.4 In
my opinion, such a dialectical approach to the relation between these and other
conceptual pairs forms something of the raison d’être for landscape studies and
for empirical explorations of the rich content of landscapes.5
Visual vs. Social
The recent debates have focused on the dichotomy between, on the one hand,
the visual, scenic, and perceived aspects of landscapes and, on the other hand,
the view that landscapes were lived-in social entities. While Cosgrove and
Daniels emphasized landscape as ‘a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing, structuring and symbolising surroundings’,6 Olwig on the other hand
showed that landskap in the Nordic languages was originally more connected
with territories as polities, their customary laws, and their social order and only
secondarily with scenery.7 Olwig thus showed that the English concept of landscape as scenery was only secondarily derived from the German Landschaft via
the Dutch landscape painting. In Olwig’s own words, this Nordic approach
to landscapes ‘is characterised by a concern with history, custom/law, and language and culture as they work together in forming a landscape polity and its
geo­graphic place’.8 Olwig’s search for the roots of the Nordic landscape concept
and his reorientation away from an English scenic landscape concept had much
influence and was an important basis for the development of characteristic
Nordic landscape geo­graphy from the late 1990s.9 But this turn-away from the
4
Brink, ‘Landskap och plats som mentala konstruktioner’, p. 109.
Widgren, ‘Can Landscapes Be Read?’.
6
Cosgrove and Daniels, The Icono­graphy of Landscape, p. 2.
7
Olwig, ‘Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape’.
8
Olwig, ‘In Search of the Nordic Landscape’, p. 226.
9
Mels and Setten, ‘Romance, Practice and Substantiveness’; Widgren, ‘Linking Nordic
Landscape Geo­graphy and Political Eco­logy’.
5
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in
55
scenic to the lived-in landscapes has not been without its critics. Benediktsson
in 2007 argued from the perspective on ongoing environmental struggles on
Iceland that ‘critical geo­g raphers cannot afford to dismiss the importance of
the “scenic”’. Within the context of Icelandic landscape politics, he saw the
political strength of a visual approach to the aesthetics of landscape for the
mobilization in defence of nature conservation.10
Emic — Etic
The European discussion about the landscape concept has, to a large degree,
been held within the context of a growing concern for the future of European
landscapes in the wake of the Common Agricultural Policy. The efforts in finding a common language for landscape policy in Europe with the European
Landscape Convention also highlight the problems with the landscape concept. This convention rests basically on an Anglo-French compromise in its
definition of landscape (Fr. paysage, Eng. landscape, as scenery). This landscape concept is, however, not a cross-cultural concept and in many translations of the convention the word used for ‘landscape’ is a recent addition to
the respective language, such as the Estonian maastik11 and Finnish maaisema12
which are both nineteenth-century constructions, or as in Russian, a loanword: ландшафт (Landschaft). This is different from the concepts of land and
from the concept of landskap ‘territory, province’ in the Nordic languages. The
landscape concept in the landscape convention is tied to a specific social and
cultural context and can only with difficulty be an opening to a broad crosscultural approach to landscapes. On the other hand, most languages have one
or many emic concepts that address the subject matter that the European landscape convention addresses.
This observation adds another dimension to the dichotomies of the landscape concept as discussed above: emic versus etic. How do people in different
cultural contexts actually talk about their physical surroundings and about the
mental and material aspects that are involved? From a historical perspective,
how did people in the past (e.g. in the Nordic languages) talk about the differ10
Benediktsson, ‘“Scenophobia”, Geo­graphy and the Aesthetic Politics of Landscape’. See
also the discussion that followed: Olwig, ‘The Cause Célèbre and Scholarly Discourse’ and
Benediktsson, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Scenic’.
11
Peil, Islescapes, p. 4.
12
Keisteri, ‘The Study of Changes in Cultural Landscapes’.
Mats Widgren
56
ent aspects of landscapes that have been discussed above? Mostly, the landscape
debate has lacked such a global cross-cultural approach. The discussion has also
lacked a strong empirical basis in linguistics. Instead, the concepts have been
discussed from secondary literature and from dictionaries rather than using
linguistic corpora. Are we talking about an emic concept, based on how local
people perceive and categorize their surroundings, or are we striving towards an
etic concept that can be used in cross-cultural comparisons?
How Did the Old Icelanders Talk about their Landscape?
From that perspective, the investigation of Icelandic geo­grapher Edda Waage
is a breakthrough.13 In contrast to many other conceptual arguments on landscapes, she has taken an empirical approach by investigating in the Icelandic
sagas how words related to land and landscapes were used in the medi­e val
period. She classified all occurrences of the word land and its related compounds (landnám, landsleg, etc.). The list of sixty-one compounds having land
as their first component makes it possible to derive conclusions on how the
Icelanders talked about different land-related activities and perceptions.
A first conclusion by Waage is that the word landskapr is absent from these
texts. According to Waage, this word appears in ecclesiastical texts from the
fourteenth century and onwards. This is in line with Stefan Brink’s conclusion
that the term may be a borrowing to the Nordic languages from Low German
in the mid-Middle Ages.14 The word land is used in the Icelandic sagas with different meanings. First of all, it refers to dry land, land that is sighted after days
at sea, or for characterizing natural landforms. Secondly, it is used as in landnám for property and for the social act of taking and owning land. Thirdly, it is
used in the sense of a polity, as was common in the rest of the Nordic countries
before and during the Viking Age.15 A notable exception here is, however, that
in the Icelandic, this connotation mainly refers to countries overseas.
Waage’s emphasis is on the word landsleg, which appears eight times in six
distinct sagas. Based on how it is used in these sagas, Waage concludes that it
is most often related to morpho­logy, mountains, hills, valleys, and other landforms. Secondly, Waage proves without doubt that this concept is clearly visual,
something one looks at, ‘how the land is shaped, and its position and location
13
14
15
Waage, ‘Landscape in the Sagas of Icelanders’.
Brink, ‘Landskap och plats som mentala konstruktioner’, pp. 112–13.
Brink, ‘People and land in Early Scandinavia’, pp. 96–101.
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in
57
in space’.16 Waage’s conclusion is that the concept is best translated to English as
‘the lie of the land’. In the colonial context of the sagas, exploring new land, this
is of course nothing unexpected. Travellers looked at the land and described it.
More controversial is perhaps to what degree purely aesthetic appreciation or
economic considerations were involved in this visual appreciation. According
to Waage, an aesthetic appreciation of landsleg is specially referred to in two
sagas and in other places indirectly.17 Waage argues that although grass is sometimes mentioned, a clear economic asset, other landforms with little economic
use are also mentioned with the same appreciation. Waage concludes that there
is a strong element of aesthetic appreciation in the way the lie of the land (landsleg) is described in the sagas and that this makes the word landsleg close in
its connotation to the recent English concept, although it emerged much earlier. Waage also reminds us that the relation between the words landskapr and
landsleg in Icelandic is worthy of further examination in a broader geo­graphical
context.
Waage’s investigation has been met with strong critique from Kenneth
Olwig. He does not go so much specifically into her empirical material as question the nationalist undertones he claims permeate Waage’s argument for a specific Icelandic landscape concept. He argues, without going into the details of
how landsleg is used in the sagas, that ‘modern meanings are attributed to early
medi­eval sources’ and that these ideas have contributed to ‘shape an imagined
nationalist heritage’.18
Of course, using the sagas, which were mainly written down much later,
as a source for early medi­eval Iceland is a well-known source critical problem.
However, even after Olwig’s critical review of Waage’s result I find no strong
arguments against the following conclusions. First, there can be no doubt that
the sagas use a visual landscape concept landsleg best translated as ‘lie of the
land’. Secondly, the visual appreciation of the land involved describing natural landforms, sometimes in a straightforward description of landforms and
sometimes including characteristics that we now would classify as aesthetic
judgments, among them fagrt ‘beautiful’. Thirdly, the word landskapr is absent
16
Waage, ‘Landscape in the Sagas of Icelanders’, p. 185.
Laxdæla saga: ‘þar var fagrt landsleg ok grasloðit’; Eiríks saga rauða: ‘Þar var fagrt landsleg’; Króka-Refs saga: ‘ok þar sá hann dal ganga upp at fjöllum, fagran ok mikinn’. See Waage,
‘Landscape in the Sagas of Icelanders’, notes on p. 190.
18
Olwig, ‘Nationalist Heritage, Sublime Affect and the Anomalous Icelandic Landscape
Concept’, p. 277.
17
Mats Widgren
58
from the early texts. Polities including the inhabitants and their land (mainly
overseas) are referred to as land, much with the same connotation as previously
described by Stefan Brink for the Nordic languages.19 Waage also argues that
landskapr may be a later addition possibly due to influences from Norway via
the church. This is also in line with Brink’s assumptions of a later borrowing
from Low German. Though Olwig rightly claims landskapr to be part of the
Old Icelandic language, he does not provide a dating.
The present word for ‘landscape’ in Icelandic is landslag. Waage does not
delve into the inclusion of landslag (based on landsleg) rather than landskapr
in the modern Icelandic language, but seems to assume a continuity both in the
word and in the Icelanders’ visual and aesthetic appreciation of their environment. On this point, Olwig might be quite right that this was the effect of a
deliberate language planning favouring a word found in the sagas rather than
the word common to the other Nordic countries.
Waage’s empirical investigation of how Icelanders talked about the land has
opened up a less fundamentalist approach to understanding Nordic landscape
concepts. People obviously (and not really surprisingly) had many words to use
when they talked about their land, the view of the land, polities, etc. Hopefully,
it is possible to further this understanding by looking at more linguistic material from Old Norse.
19
Brink, ‘People and land in Early Scandinavia’, pp. 96–101.
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in
59
Works Cited
Secondary Studies
Andrén, Anders, Tracing Old Norse Cosmo­logy: The World Tree, Middle Earth, and the
Sun from Archaeo­logical Perspectives (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014)
Benediktsson, Karl, ‘“Scenophobia”, Geo­graphy and the Aesthetic Politics of Land­scape’,
Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geo­graphy, 89 (2007), 203–17
—— , ‘The Good, the Bad and the Scenic’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geo­
graphy, 90 (2008), 83–84
Brink, Stefan, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape: Place and Space of Cult and Myth’, in Kon­
tinuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte: Festschrift für Anders Hultgård zu
seinem 65. Geburtstag am 23.12.2001, ed. by Michael Stausberg (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2001), pp. 76–112
—— , ‘Myto­logiska rum och eskato­logiska föreställningar i det vikingatida Norden’, in
Ord­ning mot kaos: Studier av nordisk förkristen kosmo­logi, ed. by Anders Andrén,
Kris­tina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2004),
pp. 291–316
—— , ‘Landskap och plats som mentala konstruktioner’, in Facets of Archeo­logy: Essays in
Honour of Lotte Hedeager on her 60th Birthday, ed. by Konstatinos Chilidis (Oslo:
Unipub, 2008), pp. 109–20
—— , ‘People and land in Early Scandinavia’, in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs, ed. by
Ildar H. Garipzanov, Patrick J. Geary, and Przemysław Urbańczyk, Cursor Mundi, 5
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 87–112
Cosgrove, Denis E., and Stephen Daniels, The Icono­graphy of Landscape: Essays on the
Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, Cam­bridge Studies in
Historical Geo­graphy (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1988)
Keisteri, Tarja, ‘The Study of Changes in Cultural Landscapes’, Fennia, 168.1 (1990),
31–115
Mels, Tom, and Gunhild Setten, ‘Romance, Practice and Substantiveness: What Do Land­
scapes Do?’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geo­graphy, 89 (2007), 197–202
Olwig, Kenneth R., ‘Recovering the Substantive Nature of Landscape’, Annals of the
Association of American Geo­graphers, 86 (1996), 630–53
—— , ‘In Search of the Nordic Landscape: A Personal View’, in Voices from the North:
New Trends in Nordic Human Geo­graphy, ed. by Jan Öhman and Kirsten Simonsen
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 211–32
—— , ‘The Cause Célèbre and Scholarly Discourse: A Reply to Karl Benediktsson’, Geo­
grafiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geo­graphy, 90 (2008), 85–87
—— , ‘Nationalist Heritage, Sublime Affect and the Anomalous Icelandic Landscape Con­
cept’, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift: Norwegian Journal of Geo­graphy, 69 (2015), 277–87
Peil, Tiina, Islescapes: Estonian Small Islands and Islanders through Three Centuries,
Stockholm Studies in Human Geo­graphy (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1999)
60
Mats Widgren
Waage, Edda R. H., ‘Landscape in the Sagas of Icelanders: The Concepts of land and landsleg’, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift: Norwegian Journal of Geo­graphy, 66 (2012), 177–92
Widgren, Mats, ‘Can Landscapes Be Read?’, in European Rural landscapes: Persistence and
Change in a Globalising Environment, ed. by Hannes Palang, Helen Sooväli, and Marc
Antrop (Boston: Kluwer, 2004), pp. 455–65
—— , ‘Linking Nordic Landscape Geo­graphy and Political Eco­logy’, Norsk Geografisk
Tidsskrift: Norwegian Journal of Geo­graphy, 69.4 (2015), 197–206
II.
Sacredness and Space
Ritual Places, Sacral
Place-Names, and Wetlands:
Some Spatial and Archaeo­
logical Contexts from the
Baltic Island of Öland
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
This paper will discuss and describe some clear connections between sacral
place-names, wetlands, and archaeo­logical evidence of ritual depositions on the
island of Öland. I am not a philo­logist, as you will notice, but an archaeo­logist
with an interest in onomastic matters. I will start by examining two ritual places
about which nothing has previously been published, Alvara and Folkeslunda/
Långlöt, and I will then present material concerning the more famous ritual
place Skedemosse, where several new discoveries have been made in recent
years around the former lake. In fact, besides the well-known sacrificial lake of
Skedemosse, which was excavated between 1959–64,1 there are at least twenty
other wetlands on the island, that can be shown to have been used for ritual
purposes and depositions in one way or another (Fig. 5.1).
Wetlands — lakes, bogs, rivers, wells, and springs — were seen in all parts
of pre-Christian Europe, much like mountains and hills, promontories, capes,
caves, door-like formations in rocks and particular islands, as liminal places and
entrances to the Otherworld. They were perceived as places in which people
1
Hagberg, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse, i and ii.
Jan-Henrik Fallgren (henke.fallgren@hotmail.com) is a researcher in the Department of
Archaeo­logy and Ancient History at Uppsala Uni­ver­sity.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 63–83
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119339
64
Figure 5.1.
Reconstruction of all the
wetlands on Öland before
the massive drainage took
place during the nineteenth
century. Wetlands with
proof of ritual depositions
are displayed in grey.
Map by Ylva Bäckström.
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
could get closer to and in contact
with the gods.2
Ever since the Stone Age,
according to archaeo­log y, and
according to German, Old Norse,
and Celtic mytho­log y, wetlands
were looked upon as a kind of liminal place between the real world
and the metaphysical one, and
were obviously very important in
the pre-Christian cognitive landscape.3 In Old Norse texts numerous lakes and bogs are related to
female gods, often described as their
residence: for instance, Óðinn’s wife
Frigg resides at Fensalir ‘bog halls’.4
Several male gods were also connected to water in different ways.5
Going across water, horizontally or
vertically, was a common passage for
the Scandinavian gods. Many Old
Norse texts, for example, mention
that Óðinn takes his favourite war2
Green, The Gods and the Supernatural; Bradley, An Archaeo­l og y of Natural
Places; Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’;
Heide, ‘Holy Islands and the Otherworld’.
3
For example, Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing
Landscape’, p. 96; Lund, ‘At the Water’s
Edge’, p. 51, and therein cited literature;
see also Terry Gunnell, ‘The Goddesses in
the Dark Waters’, in this book.
4
For instance, Gylfaginning, 35 and
49; Skáldskaparmál 27; Lund, ‘At the
Water’s Edge’, p. 56; Heide, ‘Holy Islands
and the Otherworld’, pp. 63, 65.
5
Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser; Brink,
‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’.
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
65
Figure 5.2. a. Neck-ring in bronze (of the same type as the neck-ring mentioned in the text);
b. mouthpiece for a scabbard in gold (SHM 8629). Photo: Ulf Bruxe SHM 1993-08-12;
c. deposition of thirty-seven Viking Age arm-rings and necklaces (SHM 15890) in silver.
Photo: SHM 1995-09-28.
riors home to Valhǫll through water.6 Furthermore, a large number of European
lakes, rivers, and other wetlands have been named after different goddesses or
gods.7 Wetlands of different kinds were thus extremely important ritual places
throughout the whole of North-Western Europe during the pre-Christian
period.
In a great number of cases it is evident that pre-Christian ritual places were
used over several centuries, and even longer, and thus had a very long continuity as important nodes in the cognitive landscape.8 This seems also to apply to
6
Heide, ‘Holy Islands and the Otherworld’, pp. 57, 67.
See Green, Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend; Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser; Lund,
‘Våben i vand’; Brink, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’; Yeates, The Tribe of Witches.
8
See Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’.
7
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
66
many of Öland’s wetlands, and is very obvious in the case of Skedemosse, which
was used for several different ritual depositions over a period of at least 1500
years (more about this below). Only two out of twenty wetlands on Öland have
been the subject of archaeo­logical excavations, one of which is Skedemosse.
Finds from the other wetlands have only randomly or accidentally been discovered, alongside objects/artefacts collected by farmers when these small lakes,
bogs, and marshes were drained in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The first example I will present is a very small bog that was drained in the
early twentieth century in the village of Alvara in the northern part of Öland.
The bog was just 110 × 70 metres large before it was drained. In this little bog a
number of relevant objects have been found: a deposition of four bronze neckrings from the late Bronze Age (SHM 2453) of the same type as in Figure 5.2a,
a Migration period mouthpiece for a scabbard (SHM 8629) in gold (Fig. 5.2b),
and a deposition of thirty-seven Viking Age arm-rings and necklaces (SHM
15890) in silver from the tenth century (Fig. 5.2c). These accidentally found
objects indicate that this small wetland was perceived as a holy place for a very
long period of time by the people who lived in this village/area. In this particular area, there are unfortunately no known or preserved sacred names.
The second example however provides plenty of sacral and theophoric names
(Fig. 5.3). In another small fen located in the fields of the village of Långlöt,
two Bronze Age bronze horns (SHM 10099) were found in the year of 1891.
The fen was 116 × 156 metres large, and the bronze horns were found beside
a large boulder in the middle of the fen together with unburnt horse and pig
bones, and also some rusty iron objects. The latter objects were unfortunately
never collected. Near this small fen, and in several other locations in this village
and in the neighbouring villages of Folkeslunda, Övra Bägby, Nedra Bägby,
and Runsberga, several interesting names appear on old cadastral maps, which
can be related to rituals, social and judicial gatherings, and pre-Christian gods
(see Fig. 5.3). About two hundred metres north-west of the bog in which the
bronze horns were found, there was a smaller infield/enclosure called Vigärde,
spelled Wÿ gierde on a map from 1683, and Östra Wÿ in the year of 1733. Wÿ,
Wij, and Vi as a prefix or suffix in a place-name, or just Vi itself as a place-name,
is usually interpreted as identifying a pagan cultic place and as meaning ‘holy
place, sanctuary’.9 Thus, Wÿ gierde could mean and be translated as ‘the holy
enclosure’ or ‘the enclosure/infield near the holy place or sanctuary’, which
9
Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, p. 362; Wahlberg, ed., Svenskt ortnamnslexikon, p. 347;
Brink, ‘Naming the Land’, p. 63.
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
Figure 5.3. Långlöt and Folkeslunda with neighbouring villages.
Map by Ylva Bäckström.
67
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
68
would actually fit well with the known depositions made in the small fen just
beside the enclosure. The name Östra Wÿ indicates that another vi also existed
nearby, or at least in the same settlement district as this one.
Sölve Göransson has suggested that Vi or Viby (‘the holy village’ or ‘the village at the holy place’) could be the original name of the village of Långlöt. The
place-name Långlöt is actually quite a young name, meaning ‘the long pasture’
or ‘the long pasture-land’, and should most probably be related to an ancient
beach ridge, the Ancylus-ridge, where the village is located today. The village
plot was regularly measured and placed in the high Middle Ages.10 However, if
we look at the map again (Fig. 5.3), one can see that just south from the small
bog with the bronze horns is the exciting name Blotåkers Slätt (‘the Blót field
plain’ or ‘the sacrificial holy field plain’), which refers to some meadows that
were registered on a map from 1805. Further south in the infields of Långlöt,
we can find the name Ullsåker registered on old cadastral maps, and just north
of Folkeslunda’s village-plots, beside a very large grave-field (with continuity
from the Bronze Age to the end of the Viking Age/early Christian times),
marked as a larger black oval shape on the map, is the name Torsåker, which
was also printed on cadastral maps. In addition, there is another -åker, namely
Lundåker, south-east of Ullsåker in Långlöt’s infields. Ullsåker means ‘the god
Ullr’s holy field’ and Torsåker ‘the god Þórr’s holy field’ (-åker itself means ‘arable
land’, indicating in these contexts a fertility cult).11 The name Lundåker might
have signified ‘the (holy) grove’s holy field’ or ‘the holy field at the grove’.12
North of Vigärde (Fig. 5.3), there was an old assembly place known as
Tingsplatsen, and a small marsh besides it to the west, which was named
Tingsmossen ‘the assembly bog’ on older maps. The assembly place Tingsplatsen
was noted and described by the Swedish antiquarian and historian Johannes
Haquini Rhezelius in 1634, when he recorded ancient monuments and folklore on Öland.13 The site is also the place of an Iron Age grave-field. Moreover,
it is interesting to note that this site was the härads (the district’s/hundred’s)
place of execution; the last execution took place here in 1845.14 Just like in this
case, assembly places were as a rule in prehistoric Scandinavia, placed at, beside,
or in close vicinity to other ritual places, with a varying number of sacral and
10
11
12
13
14
Göransson, ‘Bebyggelseförflyttningar och namnkrono­logi på Öland’, p. 286.
See further Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, p. 366.
Compare the example in Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, p. 367.
Rhezelius, Propugnacula Öland.
Magnusson, ‘Continuity, Change and Identity in an Old Öland Village’.
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
69
theophoric site- and place-names on each site.15 On the map in Figure 5.3, there
are also three names alluding to female beings, which are possibly euphemistic
names for goddesses. These are Kärringlåret ‘the Hag thigh’, Jungfrumossen ‘the
Maiden fen’, and Brudkullkärret ‘the Bride-hill marsh’. In the place within the
marsh marked by that last name, there is a stone with plenty of cup-marks.16
Beside all these interesting names and the sacrificial fen, there is also plenty
of interesting archaeo­logy in this bygd, i.e. ‘settlement district’, which is relevant in this context. The large grave-field mentioned above is the only gravefield on Öland that could be considered as completely excavated. In total, 160
graves have been examined there. As mentioned earlier, the grave-field was in
use from the late Bronze Age up to the late Viking Age, with Christian graves
as the youngest. The most spectacular grave is the one topped by the so-called
Wälters sten ‘Wälter’s stone’ or Kroppkakan ‘the Dumpling’, a very large grave
orb, and in fact the largest in Scandinavia (Fig. 5.4). The grave orb weighs nine
tons and has three cup-marks on the top. The stone was placed within a very
large stone-setting, forty metres in diameter, and the whole setting was built
above an extremely rich female grave dating to the end of Roman Iron Age/
early Migration period. Additionally, in the stone packing of the large stonesetting, fourteen children’s graves (infants) were found and radiocarbon dated
them to the Migration and early Merovingian periods. Most of the Viking
Age Christian graves were situated around this spectacular grave.17 The large
grave orb was thus for a very long period of time the main focus for funerals,
and perhaps also ancestral cult. In 1634, Rhezelius described this large stone
and the folklore connected to it. According to his account, it was said that a
giant, named Wälter, and a giantess stood at each end of the island in order
to decide the centre of Öland. First, they threw stones that for them were the
size of pebbles so that the stone-setting was formed, and then they threw the
big stone so that it ended up on the vast grave. The cup-marks were explained
as the imprint of the giant’s fingers. Carl von Linné also writes, in 1796, about
the grave orb, and mentions a story told by the peasantry of Öland about a
giantess who hurled the large stone in her hair band to measure up the middle
point of the island. He writes that the tradition says that if one were to measure
Öland, the stone is as far from the island’s southern tip as it is from the north-
15
16
17
Brink, ‘Legal Assembly Sites in Early Scandinavia’; Sanmark, Viking Law and Order.
Cf. Magnusson, ‘Continuity, Change and Identity in an Old Öland Village’, p. 115.
Lundh and Rasch, ‘Långlöt socken’.
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
70
Figure 5.4. ‘The Dumpling’ in Folkeslunda, Öland. Photo: Kalmar County Museum, 1950s.
ern tip.18 This tradition seems to indicate that the grave orb Wälters sten was
perceived as the navel of Öland, like, for instance, the so-called ‘Cat Stone’ at
Uisneach on Ireland,19 or other similar phenomena at sacred centres on other
European sites.20 East of the large grave-field and the name Torsåker, there was
a fen belonging to the village of Himmelsberga, seen on the map in Figure 5.3.
In this fen, a bronze statuette depicting a male figure (SHM 8428), probably
dating to the Roman Iron Age or Migration period, was found (see Fig. 5.5).
This strongly indicates that this smaller fen was also a sacrificial lake/fen during
pre-Christian periods.
In the fields of Långlöt and Folkeslunda, there are today nineteen visible
Iron Age houses of a type that was built on the island over a period of five hundred years, between 200–700 ad. Undoubtedly, the original number was much
18
19
20
Linné, Öländska och gotländska resan 1741.
See Schot, ‘From Cult Centre to Royal Centre’.
See further Mac Cana, The Cult of the Sacred Centre, p. 65.
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
71
greater, because the visible Iron Age
houses are mainly situated within
or just beside what today are the
arable lands of the villages. Others
of them were certainly destroyed
by cultivation activities. 21 These
Iron Age houses can be seen on the
map as small red rectangular figures
(Fig. 5.3). The remains of a larger
Iron Age farm are visible just north
of the church. Blue lines on the map
show older stone walls built and
used during the Iron Age until the
thirteenth century. The Iron Age
houses and the stone walls west of
Långlöt’s village plot belong to the
village of Åstad (outside this map).
In addition to the aforementioned large grave-field at
Folkeslunda, and the smaller one
at the assembly place Tingsplatsen,
a large grave-field is also visible on
the map at Runsberga. Like the
majority of the churches in central Figure 5.5. ‘Bronze statuette’ (SHM 8428) from
and southern Öland, the Långlöt Himmelsberga, Öland. Photo: SHM 2001-05-21.
church is also placed on top of a
prehistoric grave-field. This gravefield was undoubtedly considerably larger before the churchyard and the cemetery were established, and before the rebuilding and extensions of the present
church began, though it does seem to be the oldest church on the east coast of
Öland. It has been possible to date a piece of a second-hand timber roof truss,
which comes from an even older wooden church, to about 1080. At the restoration of the present church, a coin was also found dating back to 1084–88. Two
fragments of a rune-stone belonging to an early Christian grave monument were
found in 1970 and have been dated to the second half of the eleventh century.22
21
22
Fallgren, Kontinuitet och förändring.
Boström, Öland, ii.1; Ljung, Under runristad häll, p. 142.
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
72
The map also shows that there are a large number of single graves (mostly
cairns), closer to the coast. Another, equally interesting phenomenon at the
coast is the name Kopparwik, indicating an early harbour, probably dating to
the Viking Age or early Scandinavian medi­e val period. Kopparwik ‘a trading
place’ is most probably the same name as the more well-known Köpingsvik on
the west coast of Öland and other Köpinge names in Sweden. In a parish register from 1653, the church claims the ownership of Kopparwik.23
To sum up, in the rather small settlement district featured in the map in
Figure 5.3, we found several sacral place-names and many interesting archaeo­
logical features and monuments: four åker- names, two theophoric names Ullrand Þórr-, one assembly place named Tingsplatsen, two sacrificial fens, spectacular grave monuments, early Christian graves, an early church, and probably an
important early harbour. Such environments, featuring several sacral names and
extraordinary prehistoric monuments, are usually described as ‘central places’
by researchers of early medi­eval Scandinavia.24 Irish researchers have revealed in
recent years that the same combination of sacral place-names and special monuments (discussed above) always appears in the centre of Ireland’s tuatha ‘petty
kingdoms’, and thus marks the oldest and central settlements within those small
kingdoms. At the gathering places of the larger regional kingdoms, where people from several lesser kingdoms met, these kinds of sacral names and monuments were greater in number and scope than in the lesser local kingdoms.25
The Example of Skedemosse
I will shortly introduce some new information about and new discoveries in the
area around the famous sacrificial lake of Skedemosse. First, however, I will give
a very compressed summary of the results of the 1960s excavations. The sacrificial site was excavated between 1959–62 by Ulf Erik Hagberg. The results
of those studies showed that the lake was used for ritual deposits for a very
long period of time, between 400 bc to around 1100 ad. Animal and human
23
See further Magnusson, ‘Continuity, Change and Identity in an Old Öland Village’, p. 110.
See, for example and above all, Brink, ‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia 1’, ‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia 2’, ‘Land, bygd, distrikt och centralort i Sydsverige’.
25
See e.g. Lacey, Cenél Conaill and the Donegal Kingdoms, ‘Three “Royal Sites” in Co. Donegal’, ‘Lug’s Forgotten Donegal Kingdom’; Muhr, ‘Place-Names and the Understanding of
Monuments’; Newman, ‘The Sacral Landscape of Tara’; Schot, ‘From Cult Centre to Royal
Centre’; Gleeson, ‘Gathering the Nations’.
24
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
73
Figure 5.6. Seven snake-headed gold-rings from Skedemosse, Öland.
Photo: Ulf Bruxe SHM 1994-03-02.
sacrifices appear to have occurred throughout this period of time. Among
these sacrificed animals, the horse was most common, numbering at least one
hundred. The total weight of the bones collected from the excavated trenches
was as much as one thousand kilograms. This is particularly remarkable since
only 0.35 hectares were examined intensively and, it is important to note, large
numbers of bones had disappeared from the site before the excavations began.
The farmers in the area had for a long time collected large amounts of the bones
from the site and burnt them. Thus, the original quantity of bones must have
been considerably larger. Besides the one hundred sacrificed horses, at least
eighty cattle, sixty sheep, five goats, fifteen pigs, one wild boar, four red deer,
seven dogs, two cats, three capercaillie, three white-tailed eagles, and one hen
harrier were also sacrificed at this site. Of course, the humans found in the former lake should also be added to this list. At least thirty-eight individuals were
sacrificed at the excavated site. The radiocarbon dates of the skeletons cover a
long time period, from 100 bc to the end of the Viking Age/beginning or middle of the twelfth century.
In addition to these offerings it has been possible to identify six larger weapon
depositions — war-booty offerings, dated from the first century ad to the begin-
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
74
ning of the sixth century. Together they contain, among other things, one thousand spearheads, fifty swords, fifty shields, and lots of horse-trappings and bridalchains. Additionally, ten Roman denarii, amber, and glass beads, and combs were
found. However, the most famous finds from the site are probably the seven
snake-headed gold-rings (Fig. 5.6) and two gold finger rings. Together they weigh
1.3 kg.26 I will return to the snake-headed gold-rings below.
Anne Monikander found that the eastern shore of the former lake, Ancylus
ridge (an ancient beach ridge), was used for different rituals; probably the
majority of the objects sacrificed were hurled from that shore, except for those
weapons that were in bundles, which must instead have been lowered from
boats.27 In addition to these sacrificed objects, animals, and humans, there
appear to have been other rituals nearby on the site and in the immediate vicinity of the lake, such as horseraces (see below). Probably these different rituals took place at various annual religious festivals, including during communal feasting connected and adapted to livestock management and the various
activities of the agricultural year.28
In this context it is interesting to address another aspect of rituals, namely
ritual dramas. The last decades have seen an increasing interest in the notion
of dramas and performance as integral to ritual practices during pre-Christian
periods among both folklorists and archaeo­logists in Scandinavia, with the suggestion being that sacred narratives were performed by actors at different kinds
of ritual places.29 I will now come back to the aforementioned snake-headed
gold-rings from the end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth century. These seven rings were found gathered in a smaller area at the bottom of
the former lake. They were all twisted and rolled up. Some of them were slightly
melted, and some had cut marks. None of them seem to have been used prior to
the sacrifice; instead they seem to have been manufactured to be destroyed and
sacrificed.30 They may therefore have been props used in a ritual drama, and,
26
Hagberg, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse, i and ii; Boessneck and others, The Archaeo­
logy of Skedemosse, iii; Beskow-Sjöberg, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse, iv; Rau, ‘Skedemosse
Kriegs-beuteopfer’; Monikander, Våld och vatten.
27
Monikander, Våld och vatten, p. 39.
28
Cf. e.g. Oosthuizen, ‘Archaeo­logy, Common Rights and the Origins of Anglo-Saxon
Identity’.
29
For example, Gunnell, The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia, ‘The Performance of the
Poetic Edda’; Price, ‘Nine Paces from Hel’.
30
Hagberg, ‘Skedemosse – en första presentation’, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse, i and ii;
Andersson, Romartida guldsmide i Norden.
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
75
in particular, the fact that some of them show traces of melting argues for this
interpretation. In that case, it is extremely interesting that, in 2011, two more
snake-headed rings were found by metal-detector right next to where the others
had previously been discovered. They were placed in a bronze vessel, one complete but cut to pieces and the other fragmentary and partially melted. In the
vessel, there was also a Roman gold coin, coined between 161–75 ad.31 In total,
therefore, we have nine snake-headed gold-rings! This number makes the situation even more interesting, particularly in the context of the degree to which
one of the rings has been melted. It immediately makes me think of Óðinn’s
magical ring, Draupnir, mentioned in Skáldskaparmál,32 Gylfaginning,33 and
Skírnismál34 and made by the two dwarfs Brokkr and Eitri. This was the ring
that each ninth night dropped eight new rings as heavy as Draupnir. Óðinn
placed Draupnir on his son Baldr’s funeral pyre, to be burned with him, and
then he sent another god called Hermóðr to bring it back from the realm of the
dead, Hel.35 In Skírnismál, the same ring was offered as a gift by Freyr’s servant
Skírnir, in the wooing of Gerðr. This poem has been interpreted as a description of a hieros gamos — a sexual ritual and a holy wedding between a god and a
giantess, two concepts which are connected in Old North kingship ideo­logy.36
In Baldr’s death and funeral, Draupnir seems to have a role with similar connotations to those of Skírnismál, given its movement from life to death, from
death to sexual union, and from one god to another, between the home of the
gods and the realm of the underworld.37
Could these possible allusions to the ring Draupnir indicate that someone,
at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century, was enacting
at Skedemosse, to an audience standing on the Ancylus ridge, a cultic drama
related to fertility and the making of a righteous kingship? Or was it a performance that referred to journeys, back and forth, between life and death, the
realm of the gods and Hel? I do not know, but they are intriguing thoughts.
31
Cf. Papmehl-Dufay, ‘En offerplats under järnåldern’.
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 17, 40, 42.
33
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 46–47.
34
Skírnismál, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, sts 21–22.
35
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 46–47.
36
Steinsland, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideo­logi. This theory has been critically
examined in e.g. Clunies Ross, ‘Royal Ideo­logy in Early Scandinavia’.
37
Steinsland, ‘Herskermaktens ritualer’, p. 93.
32
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
76
There are more definite indications that annual horse separations, stallion fights, and horseraces took place here on the shore of the lake. Ulf Erik
Hagberg argued for this on the basis of the many sacrificed horses, the name
Skedemosse, and the places nearby called Skedstad and Skedås.38 Such traditions
are also known from other parts of Scandinavia in historical times and are mentioned in the Icelandic sagas. The exiled Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus, for
example, wrote about such horseraces in his book Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus in 1555, telling of how the people in heathen days used to organize
horseraces in the middle of winter and that the victorious horse was sacrificed
to the gods.39 A common denominator in the horseracing sites mentioned in
the Icelandic sagas and in the spaces used for horseraces and stallion fights in
historical times are that they are called Skei, Skeie, or Skee or include Skee- or
Skede- as a prefix in their names. The name itself has often been translated as
‘the horse-fighting place’, ‘path for the race’, or just ‘horserace’,40 though other
interpretations do exist, such as ‘border’ and ‘delineation in the landscape’.41
During historical times, such horse races and stallion fights took place where
assemblies were held and where markets and other municipal activities, such
as other sporting competitions and games, could take place.42 There are many
indications that horserace-focused gatherings took place in ritual forms during
pre-Christian times, an assumption supported by Hagberg’s investigations in
Skedemosse (see further below), but also because several of the Skede- names
are combined with suffixes that clearly have a ritual and sacred meaning, such
as in the cases of Skedevi, Skedvi, and Skövde, where Skede- is combined with -vi
‘holy place, sanctuary’.43
Ulf Erik Hagberg thought that the horseraces at Skedemosse probably took
place at the ancient beach-ridge, Ancylus ridge, which constitutes the limitation
of the former lake to the east. This seems to be a very reasonable assumption, but
I think that the racecourse was probably much larger and also included the other
38
Hagberg, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse, ii, 79.
Magnus, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, p. 40.
40
Rygh, Norske gaardnavne; Wessén, ‘Hästskede och Lekslätt’; Solheim, Horse-Fight and
Horse-Race in Norse Tradition, ‘Hestekamp’; Sandnes, ‘Skei’; Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser,
p. 351; Stylegar, ‘Skeidfoler og blothester’.
41
For a proper investigation of the name, see Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, p. 346.
42
Solheim, Horse-Fight and Horse-Race in Norse Tradition, p. 70; Stylegar, ‘Skeidfoler og
blothester’, p. 216; Sanmark, Viking Law and Order, p. 137.
43
See Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, p. 356.
39
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
77
Figure 5.7. Wetlands, ancient monuments, historical villages, and sacral and theophoric placenames in the Skedemosse area. Map by Ylva Bäckström, Background map: LIDAR, Lantmäteriet.
ancient beach-ridge, the so-called Litorina ridge, to the east of the former. These
two ancient beach-ridges, which were formed at two different stages in the history of the Baltic Sea, run parallel from the island’s southern tip up to eleven kilometres north of Skedemosse. Just south-east and north-east of Skedemosse,
both of the former beach basins join together to form a very clear large oval
topo­graphic formation, a naturally made and formed ‘hippodrome’. This formation has a circumference of 8.5 kilometres and appears to have been very suitable
for horseraces. In fact, no other place on the island seems to be more suitable
for horseraces than this formation (see Fig. 5.7). On both sides, east and west
of this formation, there are Skede-names, emphasizing the likelihood that the
formation was in some way related to horses. If one studies all the cadastral maps
from the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the nineteenth centuries that cover
this area, one discovers several further interesting names that strongly support
the theories that ritual horseraces occurred here. These names include Vi gärde
‘the holy field’, Visgärdeshorvan ‘the holy field’s small field’, Häljetomten ‘the
holy plot’, Lunden ‘the holy grove’, Torsåker ‘Þórr’s field’, Horslunda ‘the horse
grove’, and Torslindorna ‘Þórr’s meadows’ on the east and north-east sides of the
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
78
supposed racecourse. To the west and further west of the former lake, there are
names such as Skedås ‘the horse race or stallion fight ridge’ or just ‘the border
ridge’, Store Vi ‘the large sanctuary’, Lilla Vi ‘the small sanctuary’, and Fröjdkullen
(Frökullen — ‘Freyr’s hill’?). Interesting to know is that the most precious metal
finds from the Roman Iron Age, the Migration period, and the Viking Age are
actually from these fields with clear or potential sacred and ritual names.
The name of the village of Störlinge, located at the southern part of the oval
landscape formation, has been interpreted as ‘the place where horses stay, or
where horses are gathered’ by linguists.44 A previously unknown hill-fort has
also been found in the area by studying cadastral maps and the new LIDAR
maps. The fort has long since been destroyed by cultivation, but is mentioned
in a dissertation from 1703 as Sörbyborg.45 The fort, of which the remains can
be seen still today, is situated on a peninsula that stretches into Skedemosse
from the east, but that was formerly an island called Kvinnö ‘women island’(?).
The fact that an Iron Age fort has been found here is interesting in many
ways, especially since there seems to be a connection between horseraces and
hill-forts elsewhere in Europe, especially on the British Isles, and in particular
on Ireland. There, the horseraces were carried out at the annual harvest festival,
called Lughnasa, in early August, held in the god Lugh’s honour. There are a
large number of such places known in Ireland from written sources from the
fifth century onwards, as well as from later folklore. Of the most famous of
these sites — Temair, Emain Macha, Chruiachain, and Carman — there are
several old descriptions. Based on the early sources, we know that there was
always a larger plain, faithche, suitable for racing and other sports and games.
The festivities and competitions usually took place next to or near a hill-fort. In
some cases, the race finished at that hill-fort; in others the race started at it.46
I will describe these places, and make more detailed comparisons with British
and in particular Irish early medi­e val ritual horseraces, as well as with other
horseracing locations in Scandinavia labelled Skede-, in upcoming work.47
I will now conclude with some statements regarding the dates of the sacrificed horses and humans in the lake of Skedemosse. The two latest datings
44
See the name Störlinge in Wahlberg, ed., Svenskt ortnamnslexikon.
Vallinus, De Oelandia.
46
For example Binchy, ‘The Fair of Tailtiu and the Feast of Tara’; MacNeill, ‘The Festival
of Lughnasa’; Smyth, Celtic Leinster; Schot and others, eds, Landscapes of Cult and Kingship;
Gleeson, ‘Gathering the Nations’.
47
Fallgren in prep. ‘Skedemosse – the Ritual Landscape and Early Medi­eval Horseraces in
Scandinavia and Beyond’.
45
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-Names, and Wetlands
79
of animal bones are derived from two horses, indicating that the rituals with
horseraces and the eating of horsemeat have lasted very long. The youngest horse skeleton was dated to 1040–1160 ad. An equally young dating is
given for sacrificed horses from both Eketorp on Öland and other places in
Scandinavia. The youngest dated sacrificed human, an elderly woman, has a
dating that is almost as late as these horses.48 This means that when the first
stone churches were built on Öland, in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries (e.g. in Resmo, Köping, Hulterstad, and Långlöt), people on the island
were still sacrificing to the old gods at the ancient ritual places such as in the
holy wetlands. Furthermore, there are proofs or strong indications that several
of the earliest stone churches had wooden precursors. These were surrounded
by varying numbers of early Christian monuments in stone.49 This must mean
that there was some kind of syncretism on Öland for a fairly long period of one
hundred or maybe two hundred years, before the Catholic Church gained a
firm grip on the people of the island.
48
49
Monikander, Våld och vatten, pp. 58, 87, 95.
See Ljung, Under runristad häll, p. 132.
80
Jan-Henrik Fallgren
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Ritual Space and Territorial
Boundaries in Scandinavia
Torun Zachrisson
Cultic Sites in Liminal Space
It has long been acknowledged that cult sites can relate to borders and thus
territorial organization. The lake Skedemosse on Öland, Sweden, situated in
the border area between the hundreds of Slättbo and Runsten, was mentioned
early in this discussion. It is also placed close to another border, between the
southern and northern mot ‘meeting’,1 which divided the island in two halves.2
The lake Skedemosse functioned as the prime sacrificial site on Öland from
c. 400 bc until c. ad 1100.3 The same type of pattern is repeated in western Scandinavia where the Migration period (ad 400–550) war booty site
Vännebo is situated in the border area between the härads of Mark and Kind,
and the contemporaneous war booty site Finnestorp is situated in the border
1
Holm, ‘Vad var Jamtamot?’.
Hagberg, ‘Skedemosse – en första presentation’, p. 252; Hagberg, The Archaeo­logy of
Skedemosse, p. 81. However, the complexity of the territorial division in Öland has been
stressed especially by Sölve Göransson in several papers: e.g. Göransson, ‘Härad, socken och by
på Öland’, pp. 97–116; see also Hellberg, ‘“Ingefreds sten” och häradsindelningen på Öland’,
pp. 19–29; DMS 4:3.
3
Hagberg, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse; Monikander, Våld och vatten, p. 10. See also the
above chapter by Fallgren.
2
Torun Zachrisson (torun.zachrisson@upplandmuseet.se) is Assistant Professor in Archaeo­
logy at Stockholm Uni­ver­sity and Head of Research at the County Museum of Uppland,
Sweden.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 85–98
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119340
Torun Zachrisson
86
area between Laske and Vilske härads, both in Västergötland. 4 In Halland,
the sacrificial site at Käringsjön, which was in use ad 1–400 for ritual depositions of agrarian objects linked to fertility, is likewise placed in the border area
between Halmstad and Thundrusæ härads.5
Skedemosse remained in long-term use as Öland’s main ritual site. Does the
dating of the depositions indicate that it was already from the Pre-Roman Iron
Age related to territorial tribal units? Whether cultic sites were part of the formation of tribal boundaries, or if cultic sites were placed in liminal spaces that
were later turned into territorial border zones is a question very much like that
of the chicken and the egg — which came first? It seems impossible to answer
with certainty and needs to be approached through interdisciplinary research,
but it is worth noting that archaeo­logically dated cultic sites very often highlight borders known from much later times from written sources. Below I will
discuss certain examples to address this question.
The river valley between Lake Mossø and Illerup Ådal in eastern Jutland,
Denmark has often been called sacred, due to its many ritual sites. These include
cultic sites that are labelled fertility sites like Forlev Nymølle, as well as that of
the army of young males deposited at Alken Enge and the war booty site Illerup
Ådal. There are indications that these sites may partly have functioned at the
same time. Although rituals were being performed there over a long period of
time, the area is especially highlighted by depositions from the late Pre-Roman
Iron Age–Roman Iron Age/early Migration period.6 These cult sites imply
that the river valley would have been perceived as beset with a special holiness.
The name of the river that runs through the valley, Gudenå, Guthen, signifies
that it is the river consecrated to the god(s), which could support such an interpretation.7 But the sacred river valley also forms the southern border area for
Åbosyssel, the territorial district for the people who lived east of the Gudenå.
The names of the syssels in northern Jutland, such as Vendsyssel, Himmersyssel,
and Thysyssel, indicate that the districts are of old age as they contain the names
of tribes. These Old Germanic tribal names may allude to topo­graphy, as in the
cases of the Vandals that lived around the winding Limfjord in Vendsyssel; the
4
Hagberg, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse, pp. 74–75, 81; Nordqvist, ‘Finnestorp’.
Hagberg, The Archaeo­logy of Skedemosse, p. 81.
6
Holst and others, ‘Direct Evidence of a Large Northern European Roman Period Martial Event’, p. 3; Bent Odegaard, paper at the Alken Enge conference, November 2016.
7
Kousgård Sørensen, Danske sø- og ånavne, pp. 286–88; Jørgensen, ‘De danske søers og
åers navne’, pp. 289–300.
5
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia
87
Cimbri, a name that has been translated as ‘shining’, referring probably to a body
of water in Himmersyssel, but could also derive from a word for ‘people’; or the
Teutonen, the people of Thy (ODa Thiuth) in Thysyssel.8 During the early Iron
Age cultural identities were formed through encounters with more distant peoples and realms, reflected not least in the Roman interest in the North.9 Often
it is not known when borders were formed, but in some instances the source
material is richer and it is possible to pose more direct questions.
The human remains of perhaps as many as c. 380 young males who died in
a major martial conflict were brought to Alken Enge and deposited/displayed
there after having lain on a battlefield to be skeletonized for six months to
c. one year. As the landscape setting for Alken Enge in the beginning of the first
century ad was also a strategic transport corridor, the ritual site could be situated close to the battlefield.10 Pollen analysis from the surrounding landscape
shows that the area before the depositions was pastoral grassland scattered with
woodland and groves.11 After the human depositions, it was reforested and
became overgrown with shrubs and trees forming a woodland cover. This reforestation is without parallel in a Danish context.12 The region north of Alken
Enge used to be a settled landscape in the Pre-Roman Iron Age/early Roman
Iron Age. But from the late Roman Iron Age, c. ad 150/60, there seems to be
a lack of settlement continuity and an absence of farms.13 The development in
the river valley from a settled landscape with cultic sites, where food/animal
offerings mainly took place, and occasionally also the depositions of humans,
to the large-scale deposition of the human remains from the martial conflict in
the beginning of the first century ad seems to indicate that the pastoral landscape adjacent to the river valley became a liminal area. However, this depopulated boundary zone continued to be used as a cultic area. In the eastern part of
the river valley several war booty depositions took place in the calm waters at
Illerup Ådal later in the Roman Iron Age and in the early Migration period.14
8
See further Andersson, ‘Altgermanische Ethnika’, pp. 20–23.
Jørgensen and others, The Spoils of Victory.
10
Holst and others, ‘Direct Evidence of a Large Northern European Roman Period Martial Event’, p. 6; Mollerup and others, ‘The Postmortem Exposure Interval’.
11
Søe and others, ‘Late Holocene Landscape Development’.
12
Søe and others, ‘Late Holocene Landscape Development’.
13
Oral information: county archaeo­logist Ejvind Hertz, Skanderborg museum, November 2016.
14
Cf. Ilkjær, Illerup Ådal.
9
88
Torun Zachrisson
Thus, the liminal space that seems to have been created after the martial conflict and depositions of the human remains in the beginning of the first century
ad may mirror a political boundary, identical with the southern borderland of
Åbosyssel.
Hov and Tuna — Special Positions in Territorial Districts
In central-eastern Scandinavia (the area formerly known as Svetjud) the cultic
sites in the wetlands likewise seem to coincide with the hundredal boundaries known in later historical sources. An illustrative example is Lake Bokaren,
where humans and animals have been found dated to the Roman Iron Age,
the Merovingian, and the Viking Age. The wetland is situated on the boundary between the hundreds of Oland and Rasbo. The name of the lake Bokaren,
Botkarsiön, seems to have been given by the settlement Sunnersbol (Sönnersta
bodha) in Stavby parish, but the lake has an alternative name that has been
preserved in historical maps, Hovbo träsk ‘the lake of the inhabitants of Hov’,
as it partly belonged to Hov in Rasbo parish. This alternative name was thus
associated with the Hovboar ‘the inhabitants of Hov’. The old name of the lake,
however, is not preserved and remains unknown.15 A group of larger, twenty to
twenty-five metre in diameter, burial mounds situated by Hov suggests that this
was an elite milieu during the late Iron Age (ad 550–1050).16 Hov is, moreover, located on the outskirts of the larger central place complex of Hov-Husar,
which dominated Rasbo’s settled district.17 Depending on the context, the
place-name Hov can have a sacral meaning.18 In this case, Hov may well have
been the settlement that was involved in the rituals in which men, women,
horses, and pigs were violently killed and deposited in the lake.19
An interesting group of cultic sites are positioned at the wet border of a hundred and in the vicinity of a Tuna-settlement. On the basis of the startling discoveries of gold made at several Tuna-settlements, the oldest Tuna-settlements
15
Zachrisson, ‘Händelser vid vatten’, pp. 11–12; thanks to Per Vikstrand for discussions
concerning the place-names.
16
Cf. Bratt, Makt uttryckt i jord och sten, pp. 130–31, 349, fig. 43 and p. 65 for the dating
of large mounds in this region.
17
Hellberg, manu­script in the archives of Institute for Language and Folklore.
18
Andersson, ‘Germanische Hof – Hügel-Heiligtum’; Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser,
pp. 256–57.
19
Fredengren, ‘Water Politics’, appendix; plus an individual from the Roman Iron Age, in
Eklund, Hennius, and Fredengren, Lake Bokaren, forthcoming.
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia
89
are considered to date to the Roman Iron Age.20 The etymo­logy of tun ‘fenced
area, enclosure’ is clear and may seem simple, but elite burials, gold depositions, and famous boat burial grounds found at some of the Tuna-sites underline their societal importance. Furthermore, Tuna-sites are connected with
hundredal organization, and often the name of a Tuna-settlement is linked to
that of a hundred, for example Ultuna, in Ulleråker hundred, and Torstuna, in
Torsåker hundred.21 The age of the territorial division in hundreds and their
predecessor hunds is disputed,22 but reaches back into the Scandinavian Iron
Age. Interestingly the boundaries of the hundreds are associated with certain
waterlevels that can be indirectly dated through the shore-line displacement.
For example, the borders of the Långhundra hundred follow a water level of
10 m a.s.l., which is roughly equivalent to ad 1 or the early Roman Iron Age.23
As mentioned above, cultic sites can be positioned near a Tuna-site at the wet
border of a hundred. Typical examples are Stora Ullentuna, which is placed
in the eastern outskirts of Tuna/Ärnavi in Långhundra hundred; Lövsta, close
to Tuna in Ärentuna in the same hundred; Rickebasta, once part of Tuna in
Alsike in Ärlinghundra hundred; and Folklandstingstad on the grounds of the
vicarage of Närtuna. Horses and boats seem to have played an important role in
rituals in these places. Most of these cultic sites have not been archaeo­logically
excavated, although some skeletal remains have been recovered from them and
dated, and this, together with the shapes of log boats that were deposited there,
indicates that they may have been in use until the end of the Viking Age. Others
have earlier dates. Rickebasta träsk on the grounds of Tuna in Alsike, famous
for its boat burial ground, was used for depositions of animals from the late
Bronze Age/early Pre-Roman Iron Age until the Migration period. It is situated on the boundary between the hundreds of Håbo and Ärlinghundra.
Meanwhile, Stora Ullentuna, which boasts one 14C-dating to the early Roman
Iron Age, is situated on the boundary between the hundreds of Långhundra
and Seminghundra, and Lövsta in Bälinge is situated on the boundary between
Bälinge and Norunda hundreds. Finally, Folklandstingstad, the thing-site of
the folkland of Attundaland, is found at the same type of location, being placed
on the boundary between Långhundra and Seminghundra hundreds. During
20
Hellberg, ‘Ortnamnen och den forna sveastaten’, p. 109.
E.g. Brink, ‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia 1’, ‘Political and Social
Structures in Early Scandinavia 2’, ‘Social Order in the Early Scandinavian Landscape’.
22
Andersson, ‘Hundare’.
23
Rahmqvist, ‘Långhundraleden under medeltiden’, pp. 127–28.
21
Torun Zachrisson
90
the late Iron Age, the thing-site was an islet in the wetlands below Närtuna.
Four dated human skeletons (890–1150 ad) and several expanded log boats
and clinker-built boats have been discovered there in the wet area near the islet
facing the Viking water route.24
Single Objects at Hundredal Border Zones
However, boundaries were not only linked to larger cultic sites and the deposition of humans and animals there in recurrent rituals that took place over long
timespans; the deposition of single objects could also be related to boundaries. A unique discovery for Sweden is a Roman lar, a family deity of bronze
that according to Roman beliefs would protect a house and farmland and was
placed inside the house in an altar. It had been deposited in Lake Fysingen
where the borders of three hundreds meet: Ärlinghundra, Seminghundra, and
Vallentuna.25
A Misfit
Not all examples fit nicely with those above. At Äversta in Närke in eastern
Scandinavia, close by the river Äverstaån, the remains of humans, swords, a
large vessel, and a horse were found and could be dated to both the Migration
and Viking Age. Three kilometres upstream the same river, a platform at Hassle
was in use for ritual meals during the period c. ad 600–800, and a Husby
manor, placed at the river mouth, indicates the continued importance of the
area from the seventh century onwards.26 However, the river is not a boundary
for the hundred Edhmadha. Should we presume that the Äversta river valley
was chosen as the site of several types of ritual spaces because it was supposed
to be beset with holiness? Or shall we suspect that a change occurred in the territorial borders and that the river was once a territorial border zone and thus a
fitting space for wetland ritual acts?
24
For datings, see Fredengren, ‘Water Politics’, appendix. For Stora Ullentuna and Närtuna,
see Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, pp. 101–02, 110–12, 114, 184–85; Olsson, ‘Offermossen i
Ullentuna’; the cultic site at Närtuna is discussed in Larsson, Ship and Society, pp. 237–39, 247
and the onomastic milieu by Calissendorff, ‘Folklandstingstad’, p. 248.
25
SHM 7414; cf. Andersson, I skuggan av Rom, pp. 50–51.
26
Lindkvist, ‘Husby i Glanshammar’, p. 104; Zachrisson, ‘De heliga platsernas arkeo­logi’, p. 96.
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia
91
Figure 6.1. Archaeo­logically identified pre-Christian ritual sites (hatched areas on map)
situated in the border areas of hundreds known from medi­eval times.
Modified after Atlas över Sverige, cxxxiii, 133–34:5.
Precious Hoards Deposited on Dry Ground by Hundredal Borders
Gold hoards could also be placed in liminal landscape settings, near what were,
or were to become, important territorial boundaries, which could suggest that
aspects of territoriality were addressed at depositional rituals. A gold hoard
comprising, among other objects, six gold bracteates was accidentally discovered at Kläggeröd, Skåne, Sweden. The site chosen for the deposition was the
highest point in south-west Skåne in a non-intensively used part of the landscape where three härads, Bara, Torna, and Vemmenhög, met. From the site
there is a good view over the Baltic in the south, the sound Öresund in the
west, and to central Skåne in the north. It has been suggested that the deposition was performed by representatives from the three different territorial districts at a time of severe climatic crisis, connected to the crop failure starting
in ad 536. Those representatives, it has been suggested, wished to establish
Torun Zachrisson
92
contact with the gods and recipients of the hoard, at the highest topo­graphical
point possible.27 Furthermore, this landscape setting resembles that of other
contemporary gold depositions. The most famous of these is the Söderby hoard
typo­logically dated to c. ad 500, which was placed in a marginal zone in a deep
swamp, Djupkärret in eastern Scandinavia. The site was again situated high in
the landscape, overlooking the large bay of Föret and the important territorial
border between the folklands of Tiundaland and Attundaland. It also looks out
from the heights above the thing-site of Mora, later known as the thing-site
for the inauguration rituals undertaken when kings were chosen.28 The hoard
consisted of ten gold bracteates, a gold sword bead, a small piece of ring-gold,
a rod, and a spiral of gold. No other objects beside the gold were found.29 The
largest bracteate is unique with a central figure and, in the border zone, two
male figures and a snake. The other bracteates form two groups: one depicting
a male with lifted head in a posture that has been interpreted as the god Odin
in ecstasy; the other featuring an equal-armed dotted cross, interpreted as crux
gemmate ‘the jewel-adorned cross’, i.e. Christ. The latter is known from, for
example, contemporaneous mosaics in King Theodoric the Great’s Ravenna.30
Several of the bracteates could be worn as colliers by women. Thus, do we see
here traces of two sets of bracteate-colliers mirroring different religious expressions, each worn by a leading lady who represented her group of people during
meetings at a territorial border for rituals? Was the sword-bead deposition performed by leading men who also attended?
Final Remarks
The pattern outlined above has been noted by different researchers for individual cultic sites in wetlands, but it has never been studied as part of a larger
structural pattern and given meaning with territorial organization as a background. The cultic sites highlight the border zones of territories, such as syssels
and hundreds, and we must ask ourselves whether this was because these were
liminal landscapes that were perhaps feared and connected to the powers of the
27
Larsson, ‘Close to Asgard’, p. 113.
Sundqvist, ‘Features of Pre-Christian Inauguration Rituals’.
29
Cf. Lamm, Hydman, and Axboe, ‘Århundradets brakteat’; Hauck, ‘Zwei Goldbrakteaten von dem Söderby-Fund’; Zachrisson, ‘Kungsämnen i Söderby’, p. 170.
30
Arrhenius, ‘Einige christliche Paraphrasen’, pp. 45–46, 150; Hauck, ‘Zwei Goldbrakteaten
von dem Söderby-Fund’, pp. 290–91; cf. Fabech and Näsman, ‘Kristnandet – en brytpunkt’.
28
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia
93
Otherworlds or if they were used for ritual purposes because they were demarcated as border zones.
Ancient Greece provides a fruitful parallel. Especially the geo­g rapher
Pausanias, in the second century ad, mentions sanctuaries that were placed on
the frontiers between city-states, although often set in topo­graphically difficult
places such as hilltops or at dangerous passages between mountains.31 In fact,
sanctuaries were ‘particularly often situated at the frontiers of the neighbouring
territories’.32 The shrines could be administered from both sides of the border
that shared the ritual use of them. Sometimes this went smoothly, sometimes
not without disputes and killings. Since a sanctuary provided asylum, it also
functioned as a haven for traders and travellers. Therefore, shrines also became
powerful economic nodes, ‘banks’ for safekeeping, and vital for domestic economy.33 Although our historical setting is pre-Christian Scandinavia, the function of the sanctuaries at the border zones could have been similar, if we, instead
of city-states, view the hundreds as the territories.34 We can envision that rituals, such as cult festivals, processions, and depositions reflecting the group identity of each hundred and its relation to the Otherworld were being performed
at the sanctuaries at the hundredal borders, often at wet border zones.
Martial society in the Nordic countries was heavily influenced by its
encounter with the Romans, when auxiliary troops were recruited from far
away, including from the North, to be in service at the Roman border defence
Limes that marked the boundary of the Roman provinces.35 Place-name scholars usually agree that territories like the hundreds/härads were formed early on
to meet the need for crews for ships.36 It is hard to estimate when these territorial units came into function but it was at least long before the Viking Age. The
logistics of sea martial expeditions should not be underestimated, and probably
played a large role in forming the societies of the North.
Another fruitful parallel is the Anglo-Saxon deviant burials that appear
from c. ad 600 onwards and thus ‘too early’, which highlight boundaries that
31
Pausanias, Description of Greece, iii.11.1–iii.18.5; Cole, Landscape, Gender and Ritual
Space, pp. 181–84.
32
Sinn, ‘The Influence of Greek Sanctuaries’, p. 71.
33
Sinn, ‘The Influence of Greek Sanctuaries’, pp. 67–74.
34
The format does not enable me to expand further on this attractive theme.
35
Lund Hansen, ‘The Nature of Centres’; Jørgensen and others, The Spoils of Victory;
Andersson, I skuggan av Rom, pp. 59–79.
36
Cf. Andersson, ‘Hundare’, p. 235; Andersson, ‘Svethiudh’.
Torun Zachrisson
94
are known through historical sources as hundred boundaries by the eleventh
century. Those burials are interpreted as a way in which society pushed social
deviants out to the limits of its territory. Boundaries were associated with the
haunting of the malevolent dead, and formal judicial execution cemeteries were
in the seventh to ninth centuries placed at the limits of demarcated administrative territories. The cemeteries in particular signalled to outsiders the legal
ideo­logies of territories at their judicial borders.37 On this basis, it seems reasonable that matters of the Otherworlds could be especially active in the borders of a tribal region, and that a boundary could be materialized in human
actions detectable archaeo­logically long before the same boundary was mentioned in written sources. We often assume that sanctuaries claimed borders
and acted as hindrances for intruders — that the powers of the Otherworlds
were understood to be guarding a land and its borders. That a sanctuary instead
could neutralize a border, act as a haven, and be used for rituals shared between
neighbouring territories opens new perspectives.
37
Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial.
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia
95
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Karlevi: A Viking Age
Harbour on Öland
Per Vikstrand
O
n the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea there is a village called Karlevi
(Karllawi, Karlawi 1346).1 Karlevi is a linear village, situated beneath
the escarpment (landborgen) that runs along the west coast of the
island. It has its infield towards the sea in the west and wide pastures on the
heath above the ridge to the east. Two lanes run out from the village in the
infield, and the northernmost of these, called Bredväg ‘wide road’, continues
down to the seashore and an old harbour. This has probably been the layout of
the village since it was regulated in the early Middle Ages.2 South-west of the
current row of farms is a field called Tomterna ‘the tofts’, testified on cadastral
maps from the eighteenth century. Such names often indicate the older locations of villages, and this might very well be the case also with Karlevi.
As the writings from 1346 suggest, the name Karlevi is an Old Swedish
Karlavi, composed of genitive plural of the word karl — to which I will soon
return — and vi ‘sanctuary’. This Karlavi has no certain parallels among religious place-names in Scandinavia but could be compared with two probably
cultic Karlåker (Kallåker) on the Swedish mainland.3 There are, however, many
other names in Karl-, especially Karlaby, and these names have been scruti1
2
3
Vikstrand, Bebyggelsenamnen i Mörbylånga kommun, p. 205.
Göransson, Tomt och teg på Öland, p. G:68.
Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, pp. 343–45.
Per Vikstrand (per.vikstrand@arkeo­logi.uu.se) is Reader in Scandinavian languages at Uppsala
Uni­ver­sity, Sweden.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 99–108
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119341
Per Vikstrand
100
nized by Lars Hellberg.4 In his opinion, karl in these names is a designation of
military rank, referring to peasantry warriors and servants. The name Karlevi
should, according to Hellberg, be comprehended as ‘the sanctuary (reserved)
for the karlar’. He links this name with the nearby Iron Age central place at
Björnhovda and Torslunda a few kilometres to the north,5 and also with the
adjacent village of Kalkstad. If this latter name is related to Karlevi, and in such
case how, is, however, uncertain.6
As for the Karlaby-names Hellberg was almost certainly spot on about the
meaning, and his interpretation has later gained support from archaeo­logical
evidence.7 I am, however, not sure that the same goes for karl in Karlevi. In
the ancient Scandinavian languages, the word karl has meanings such as ‘free
man, peasant, freeholder, free but simple man, married man’ etc.8 In the eddic
poem Rígsþula, karl is conceived as a freeborn and married man, socially
above a þræll ‘slave’ but subordinate to a jarl ‘chieftain’. He is described as a
farmer and there are no military implications to his character.9 Given this, it
would be possible that karl did not primarily have a military significance but
rather designated a man as belonging to the class of free men. This supposition is strengthened by the expression karls vægher ‘common highway’ in the
medi­e val provincial laws of Uppland and Östergötland.10 From Gotland, the
place-name Kallgateburg seems to presuppose an equivalent *karl(a)gata.11 In
these words, karl seems to be used with a meaning ‘common, public’, which is
a consecutive development of ‘free man’ etc. (compare the Swedish adjective
allmän ‘common, public’, literally meaning ‘all men’). An alternative interpretation of Karlevi would then be ‘the sanctuary of all free men, common
sanctuary’. Rather than a special sanctuary for the karlar, it would be quite
the opposite: a sanctuary not reserved for a certain group, such as a village or
4
Hellberg, ‘De finländska Karlabyarna’, p. 94; Hellberg, ‘Ingefreds sten’, p. 25; Andersson,
‘Karlevi’, p. 275.
5
About this central place, see Fabech, ‘Slöinge i perspektiv’, pp. 157–58.
6
Vikstrand, Bebyggelsenamnen i Mörbylånga kommun, p. 181.
7
Vikstrand, Järnålderns bebyggelsenamn, p. 101.
8
Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog, ii, 258; Söderwall, Ordbok öfver svenska
medeltids-språket, i, 647.
9
Rígsþula, ed. by Neckel, sts 14–22.
10
Upplandslagen, ed. by Collin and Schlyter, p. 250; Östgötalagen, ed. by Collin and
Schlyter, p. 194.
11
Wahlberg, ed., Svenskt ortnamnslexikon, p. 166.
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland
101
lineage, but open for all to visit. If we add to this that there seems to have been
an old harbour at the site and that — as I will discuss later on — a Danish
chieftain was buried here during the tenth century, we are certainly facing a
very special and interesting place.
To achieve a deeper understanding of the name Karlevi — with the above
suggested interpretation — and the place it has designated, I would like to
turn to the sanctuaries of ancient Greece. This might seem a rather bold crosscultural leap. I do believe, however, that the typo­logy of holy places has some
universals, or at least that such places prove to have widespread common properties, which justifies seeking inspiration in other cultural contexts than the one
under investigation. Contemplating the Greek temenos — the temple area — it
is clear that not only temples are found on its grounds but often also a striking number of treasuries belonging to other cities. In the temenos surrounding
the famous Apollon-temple at Delphi, no fewer than eleven such treasuries or
‘vaults’ have been identified. These treasuries kept offerings that the different
cities presented to the god, but they also acted as secure storage for commercial assets. This might seem strange, but in fact the temenos played a decisive
role in the trade between the Greek cities. In recent years it has become more
and more evident that the economy of ancient Greek was — contrary to earlier
opinions — based on markets and trade. Trade took place within the city-states,
where the agora was the main trading place, as well as at a regional or even interregional level between different states.12 However, this last level posed a problem. The city-states of ancient Greece were often in conflict or even at war with
each other, and outside your own city you were in a statut de non-droit, that is
you were without legal protection and at the mercy of whoever you met. This
made trade a bit tricky, although the consequences could be mitigated by agreements of asylia between different states. There was, however, another safe way
for tradesmen to operate abroad and that was to take advantage of the sanctity
of a temple area. By performing the ritual of hiketeia at a temple, a visitor could
assure himself of protection, as he or she would be embraced by the divine peace
that prevailed within the temenos. According to Greek religion everything
within this sacred area was the possessions of the gods and thus protected by
religious taboo. In accordance, every temenos constituted an inviolable precinct
(asylon hieron) where foreign traders could find a haven, do business, and store
goods or other assets. This possibility was extensively utilized by the Greeks,
and international markets developed in connection with major religious fes12
Harris and Lewis, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–14.
Per Vikstrand
102
tivals. At the Artemis temple in Ephesus even a sort of bank was established,
benefiting from the possibility of depositing money safely at the temple.13
Greek trade, then, depended heavily on the temples and the sanctity they
offered. This right of protection can be regarded as an expression of the inviolability of the holy place and is common for many religious systems. A person
within the holy premises is included in its holiness and may not be harmed.
This idea was certainly also current in Scandinavia. Most vividly it is testified
by the rune-inscription from Oklunda in Östergötland, Sweden, which speaks
about a man called Gunnar who ‘flo sækir, sotti wi þetta’ (fled guilty, sought
[asylum at] this vi).14 The sacrosanct status of the holy place also explains the
expression vargr i véum ‘offender (wolf ) in the sanctuaries’. Originally this designated a person who had violated the sacred peace of the sanctuary, a serious
crime that was punished with the most severe kind of outlawry.15
I would like to consider the possibility that the name Karlevi originally
referred to a protected, sanctified area, which included a harbour. There might
have been (and probably was) some kind of sanctuary or ritual place at Karlevi,
but the main incentive for establishing this site was perhaps not of a religious
nature. At the seashore between Karlevi and the neighbouring village Eriksöre
there seems to have been an old harbour sheltered by a small island called
Karholm (Karholm 1634, Kåreholm 1820). Karholm might be understood as a
*Karlaholmber ‘the free/common island’, alluding to the harbour and the sanctuary. This, then, would have been a harbour open for foreigners (that is, people
that were not from Öland), a place — like a Greek temenos — where foreigners
could call and reside under the peace that prevailed within the holy area, the
vi. This ‘free port’ could have been controlled by the ruler of Björnhovda and
conveniently situated at arm’s length from his residence. We do not know if
trade took place here, but this should be possible to determine archaeo­logically.
I do recognize the hypothetical character of this proposal, but aside from
the name Karlavi and the existence of a harbour, it might be endorsed by at
least a couple of circumstances. To begin with, the occurrence of graves at the
site might be significant. From older sources we know of at least two grave
mounds close to the presumed harbour, one of which was excavated in the early
13
Sinn, ‘The Influence of Greek Sanctuaries on the Consolidation of Economic Power’,
pp. 67–69; Sinn, ‘Greek Sanctuaries as Places of Refuge’, pp. 90–91.
14
Fridell and Veturliði Óskarsson, ‘Till tolkningen av Oklundainskriften’, p. 11; Sundqvist,
An Arena for Higher Powers, pp. 297–98.
15
Ström, Nordisk hedendom, p. 75; Sundqvist, ‘Vapen, våld och vi-platser’, pp. 172–73.
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland
103
nineteenth century, revealing a rich female grave from the second half of the
tenth century.16 The Karlevi rune stone was erected in front of one of these.
Now, Iron Age cemeteries or graves are not usually located by the sea on Öland,
but Jan-Henrik Fallgren has convincingly demonstrated that when such coastal
graves occur, it is often in the vicinity of old harbours.17
Further, the city of Visby on nearby Gotland might actually have its origin
in a similar ‘free port’ as the one suggested for Karlevi. The medi­eval provincial
law of Gotland has an appendix called Gutasagan, ‘The Saga of the Gotlanders’,
a semi-mythical story relating the history of the island. Gutasagan reports that
the first church on Gotland was built by a man called Botair. It was soon burnt
down, but Botair did not succumb to defeat and built a new church in another
and, as it would turn out, much more cunning position. The people wanted to
burn this church as well, but then an influential man called Likair stepped forward and told them: ‘Herþin ai brenna mann ella kirkiu hans, þy et han standr i
Vi, firir niþan klintu’ (Do not persist in burning the man or his church, since it
stands at Vi, below the cliff ).18 Botair turns out to be a crafty chap who, by placing his church in the vi like a cuckoo in the nest, takes advantage of the sanctity of the area.19 This sanctuary beneath the cliffs (i Vi, firir niþan klintu)20 is
commonly and probably correctly identified with the place of Visby. The name
Visby means ‘the town at the sanctuary (vi)’, and it seems plausible that the harbour and the growing community thrived here under the peace offered by the
sanctuary.
Returning to Öland, the protected status of the harbour at Karlevi might
also provide an explanation for the location of the famous Karlevi rune stone,
erected at Sjögärdet close to the sea. The damaged inscription reads: ‘Stæinn
sá was sattr æftir Sibba hinn fróða, sun Foldars, en hąns liði satti at […]’ (This
stone is placed after Sibbe the good, Foldar’s son, and his retinue placed the
stone on […]). Then follows a poem in the skaldic verse form dróttkvætt, from
which it is clear that Sibbe was a man who ruled over land in Denmark.21 His
patronymic sun Fuldars might indicate that he was of Anglo-Scandinavian ori16
Andrén, ‘A Petrified Patchwork’, pp. 295–96.
Fallgren, Kontinuitet och förändring, p. 132.
18
Translation after Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, p. 9.
19
The sanctification of territory on Gotland is discussed by Sundqvist, An Arena for Higher
Powers, pp. 296–97.
20
Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, p. 8.
21
Ölands runinskrifter, no. 1.
17
Per Vikstrand
104
gin.22 In the seventeenth century, the stone stood beside a grave mound with
another grave mound close by (see above).
This rune-inscription has caused much confusion. Why has a Danish nobleman been buried on Öland? The usual explanation has been that he happened
to die on his ship and was buried at a nearby harbour.23 But Anders Andrén
argues — inspired as it seems by a short text by Jan Paul Strid — that he might
very well have been a chieftain based on the west coast of Öland.24 He refers to
the place-names Karlevi and Eriksöre, the latter probably meaning something
like ‘the cairn of the absolute ruler’,25 and argues that ‘the meaning of the neighbouring place-names indicate a strategy of placing the monuments close to central places on the island’. He also points at the fact that the boulder on which
the runic inscription is applied is not of local limestone but of porphyritic
andesite from the mainland. He continues: ‘It must have taken a long time to
collect the boulder and execute the inscriptions as well as to build the mound
and bury at least two persons’, and this, he argues, indicates ‘a more permanent
relation to the site’.26
I will not deny the possibility of Sibbe being a Danish chieftain based on
the west coast of Öland, but with my interpretation of Karlevi this is not a
necessary assumption. The open and legally protected harbour at Karlevi made
it possible for the retinue of Sibbe to call here, bury their leader, and execute
the inscription. It also protected the monument for the future, as it was erected
within the sacred ground of the vi and thus untouchable. As for the origin of
the stone, Öland is dotted with mainland boulders, brought here during the last
ice age. It seems far-fetched that it should have been collected on the mainland
for the purpose of this monument. The traditional opinion of the origin of the
rune stone might thus hold true. An important argument for this is also that
the stone is erected not by Sibbe’s relatives, which would have been expected
had he lived at the place, but by his retinue, the men who followed him at sea.
This strongly contravenes the opinion that he actually resided on Öland on a
22
Andrén, ‘A Petrified Patchwork’, p. 296.
Ölands runinskrifter, p. 27.
24
Erikson and Strid, Runstenar, p. 46; Andrén, ‘A Petrified Patchwork’, p. 296.
25
Vikstrand, Bebyggelsenamnen i Mörbylånga kommun, pp. 179–80. Probably the name
originally designated a cairn on the escarpment, close to the village plots. However, it cannot be
ruled out that it actually referred to a grave close to the harbour. The relation between Karlevi
and Eriksöre is of great importance, but I will not consider it further in this paper.
26
Andrén, ‘A Petrified Patchwork’, p. 296.
23
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland
105
regular basis. As mentioned above, graves do not seldom occur at ancient harbour sites on Öland, and this might even be a common thread in the Baltic
area. Dan Carlsson, who has long worked in the identification of Viking Age
harbours on the neighbouring island of Gotland, points at burials as a common feature of such places, not only on Gotland but in Scandinavia at large.27
This suggests that the burial of Sibbe at the Karlevi harbour was not such an
extraordinary occurrence, but perhaps more of a standard procedure when people died at sea. A parallel to the burial of Sibbe at Karlevi might be an imposing
eighth-century ship burial (the Nabberör cairn) at Grankullavik harbour on
the north tip of Öland.28 At least one of the two individuals from this grave
could — together with a dog — by means of isotope analysis be determined as
non-native to Öland.29
27
28
29
Carlsson, Vikingatidens Västergarn, p. 18.
Fallgren, ‘Böda socken’, pp. 33–35.
Wilhelmsson, Perspectives from a Human-Centred Archaeo­logy, p. 346.
106
Per Vikstrand
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Guta saga: The History of the Gotlanders, ed. and trans. by Christine Peel, Viking Society for
Northern Research: Text Series, 12 (London: Viking Society for Northern Research,
1999)
Ölands runinskrifter, examined and interpreted by Sven Söderberg and Erik Brate,
Sveriges runinskrifter, 1 (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, 1901–06)
Östgötalagen, ed. by Hans S. Collin and Carl J. Schlyter, Samling af Sweriges gamla lagar,
2 (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1830)
Rígsþula, in Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius; Nebst verwandten Denkmälern, i: Text,
ed. by Gustav Neckel, 5th improved edn by Hans Kuhn (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983)
Upplandslagen, ed. by Hans S. Collin and Carl J. Schlyter, Samling af Sweriges gamla lagar,
3 (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1834)
Secondary Studies
Andersson, Thorsten, ‘Karlevi’, in Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, xvi:
Jadwingen – Kleindichtung, ed. by Heinrich Beck and others, 2nd rev. edn (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 2000), p. 275
Andrén, Anders, ‘A Petrified Patchwork: The Rune-Stone at Karlevi and the Early History
of Öland’, in On the Road: Studies in Honour of Lars Larsson, ed. by Birgitta Hård,
Kristina Jennbert, and Deborah Olausson, Acta Archaeo­logica Lundensia in 4º, 26
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2007), pp. 295–300
Carlsson, Dan, Vikingatidens Västergarn: En komplicerad historia, ArkeoDoks, 3
(Stockholm: Books on Demand, 2011)
Erikson, Olof, and Jan Paul Strid, Runstenar, En serie böcker om den nordiska kulturen
och naturen, 1 (Malmö: Edition Erikson, 1991)
Fabech, Charlotte, ‘Slöinge i perspektiv’, in ‘…gick Grendel att söka det höga huset…’: Arkeo­
logiska källor till aristokratiska miljöer i Skandinavien under yngre järnålder; Rapport
från ett seminarium i Falkenberg 16–17 november 1995, ed. by Johan Call­mer and Erik
Rosengren, Slöinge projektet, 1 (Halmstad: Hallands länsmuseer, 1997), pp. 145–60
Fallgren, Jan-Henrik, ‘Böda socken’, in Ölands järnåldersgravfält, iv: Böda, Högby, Källa,
Persnäs, Föra, Smedby, Södra Möckleby, Ventlinge, Segerstad, Gräsgård och Ås, ed. by
Mar­g areta Rasch (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet och Statens historiska museum,
2001), pp. 9–62
—— , Kontinuitet och förändring: Bebyggelse och samhälle på Öland 200–1300 e. Kr., Aun,
35 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2006)
Fridell, Staffan, and Veturliði Óskarsson, ‘Till tolkningen av Oklundainskriften’, Saga och
sed (2011), 137–50
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland
107
Fritzner, Johan, Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog: Omarbeidet, forøget og forbedret
udgave, 3 vols (Kristiania: Den Norske Forlagsforening, 1886–96)
Göransson, Sölve, Tomt och teg på Öland: Om byamål, laga läge och territoriell indelning,
Forskningsrapporter från Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet, 27
(Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1971)
Harris, Edward M., and David M. Lewis, ‘Introduction: Markets in Classical and Hel­
lenistic Greece’, in The Ancient Greek Economy: Markets, Households and City-States,
ed. by Edward M. Harris, David M. Lewis, and Mark Woolmer (Cam­bridge: Cam­
bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2016), pp. 1–38
Hellberg, Lars, ‘De finländska Karlabyarna och deras svenska bakgrund’, in Festskrift till
Åke Granlund 28.4.1984, ed. by Lars Huldén and others, Skrifter utg. av Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 517, Studier i nordisk filo­logi, 65 (Helsingfors: Svenska
litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1984), pp. 85–106
—— , ‘“Ingefreds sten” och häradsindelningen på Öland’, in Festschrift für Oskar Bandle
zum 60. Geburtstag 2. Januar 1986, ed. by Hans-Peter Naumann with the cooperation
of Magnus von Platen and Stefan Sonderegger, Beiträge zur nordischen Philo­logie, 15
(Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1986), pp. 19–29
Sinn, Ulrich, ‘Greek Sanctuaries as Places of Refuge’, in Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches,
ed. by Nanno Marinatos and Robin Hägg (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 88–109
—— , ‘The Influence of Greek Sanctuaries on the Consolidation of Economic Power’, in
Religion and Power in the Ancient Greek World: Proceedings of the Uppsala Symposium
1993, ed. by Pontus Hellström and Brita Alroth, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis,
Boreas, Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations, 24
(Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1996), pp. 67–74
Ström, Folke, Nordisk hedendom: Tro och sed i förkristen tid, Scandinavian Uni­ver­sity
Books (Göteborg: Esselte studium (Akademiförlaget), 1985)
Sundqvist, Olof, An Arena for Higher Powers: Ceremonial Buildings and Religious
Strategies for Rulership in Late Iron Age Scandinavia, Studies in the History of Reli­
gions, 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2015)
—— , ‘Vapen, våld och vi-platser. Skändande av helgedomar som maktstrategi i det
vikinga­tida Skandinavien’, in Krig och fred i vendel- och vikingatida traditioner, ed. by
Håkan Rydving and Stefan Olsson (Stockholm: Stockholm Uni­ver­sity Press, 2016),
pp. 167–95
Söderwall, Knut F., Ordbok öfver svenska medeltids-språket, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska
fornskriftsällskapet, 27, 2 vols (Lund: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 1884–1918)
Vikstrand, Per, Gudarnas platser: Förkristna sakrala ortnamn i Mälarlandskapen, Skrifter
utg. av Kungl. Gustav Adolfs akademien, 77, Studier till en svensk ortnamnsatlas, 17
(Uppsala: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs akademien, 2001)
—— , Bebyggelsenamnen i Mörbylånga kommun, Sveriges ortnamn, Ortnamnen i Kalmar
län, 7 (Uppsala: Institutet för språk och folkminnen, 2007)
—— , Järnålderns bebyggelsenamn, Skrifter utg. av Institutet för språk och folkminnen,
Namnarkivet i Uppsala, B 13 (Uppsala: Namnarkivet i Uppsala, 2013)
108
Per Vikstrand
Wahlberg, Mats, ed., Svenskt ortnamnslexikon: Utarbetat inom Institutet för språk och folkminnen och Institutionen för nordiska språk vid Uppsala universitet, 2nd edn (Uppsala:
Instituet för språk och folkminnen, 2016)
Wilhelmsson, Helene, Perspectives from a Human-Centred Archaeo­logy: Iron Age People
and Society on Öland (Lund: Lund Uni­ver­sity, 2017)
Stafgarþar Revisited
Anders Andrén
‘T
he word is truly enigmatic’. This is how Stefan Brink somewhat resignedly summarizes the discussion regarding the Gotlandic word stafgarþr.1 Consequently, it is a suitable challenge to revisit the enigmatic
word in this context! Stafgarþr is only mentioned twice, in prohibitions against
pagan rituals in the provincial law of Gotland and in a mytho­logical-historical
addition to the law. The law was given the name Guta Lag (Guta Law) and the
addition was called the Guta Saga in 1852 by Carl Säve (1812–76), the first
professor of Nordic languages in Uppsala.2
In the Guta Law, chapter 4, regarding prohibitions against pagan rituals, it
is stated:
4. aff blotan
Þet ier nu þy nest et blotir iru mannum mier firj buþni oc fyrnsca all þaun sum
haiþnu fylgir. Engin ma haita a huathci a hult eþa hauga eþa haþin guþ, huatki a
vi eþa stafgarþa. Þa en nequar verþr at þi sandr oc laiþas hanum so vitni a hand et
hann hafi haizl nequara þa miþ mati eþa miþ dryckiu senni sum ai fylgir cristnum
siþi þa ir hann sacr at þrim marcum viþr kirchiu menn en þair syct vinna.3
(4. Concerning sacrifice
Now the next thing is that sacrifice is strictly forbidden to all men, together with
all those old customs that belong to paganism. No one may pray to either groves
or howes or heathen gods, nor to holy places or stafgarþar. If someone is found
guilty of this, and it is proved against him and confirmed with witnesses that he has
1
2
3
Brink, ‘Law and Assemblies’.
Säve, ‘Om Gotlands äldsta fornlemningar’, p. 132; Säve, Gutniska urkunder, pp. VI, VII.
Gotlands-Lagen, ed. by Schlyter, p. 14.
Anders Andrén (anders.andren@ark.su.se) is Professor of Archaeo­logy at Stockholm Uni­ver­sity.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 109–120
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119342
Anders Andrén
110
invoked something of this sort with his food or drink, contrary to Christian practice, then he is to be fined three marks to the parishioners, if they win the case).4
In the Guta Saga, the same information is rendered in slightly different ways,
concerning pagan times on the island:
Firi þan tima oc lengi eptir siþan troþu menn a hult oc a hauga, wi oc stafgarþa oc a
haiþin guþ, blotaþu þair synnum oc dydrum sinum oc fileþi miþ matj oc mundgati,
þet gierþu þair eptir wantro sinnj, land alt hafþi sir hoystu blotan miþ fulki ellar
hafþi huer þriþiungr sir, en smeri þing hafþu mindri blotan meþ fileþi matj oc mungati, sum haita suþnautar þi et þair suþu allir saman.5
(Prior to that time, and for a long time afterwards, people believed in groves and
grave howes, holy places and stafgarþar, and in heathen idols. They sacrificed their
sons and daughters, and cattle, together with food and ale. They did it in accordance with their ignorance of the true faith. The whole island held the highest sacrifice on its own account, with human victims, otherwise each third held its own. But
smaller assemblies held lesser sacrifice with cattle, food, and drink. Those involved
were called ‘boiling companions’, because they all cooked their sacrificial meals
together.)6
Basically, the word stafgarþr can be interpreted in two different way, either as
a place enclosed with a fence of staves, emphasizing the construction of the
fence, or as one or several staves in an enclosed place, pinpointing the centre of
the enclosed area. The first interpretation was presented by Carl Johan Schlyter
(1795–1888) in his edition of the law of Gotland,7 whereas the second understanding was launched by Axel Kock (1851–1935), in an article on certain
difficult Nordic words.8 Ever since, most scholars have argued for one of these
two interpretations9 or have commented that both are linguistically possible.10
However, a third perspective on the word stafgarþr is possible, because
many arable fields and meadows on Gotland are called — or have been called
4
Guta lag, ed. and trans. by Peel, p. 9, apart from the word stafgarþar, which is preserved
untranslated.
5
Gotlands-Lagen, ed. by Schlyter, pp. 95–96.
6
Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, p. 5, apart from the word stafgarþar, which is preserved
untranslated.
7
Gotlands-Lagen, ed. by Schlyter, pp. 14, 95, 297.
8
Kock, ‘Etymo­logisk belysning’.
9
Overview by Olsson, Gotlands stavgardar, pp. 10–18.
10
Skånelagen och Gutalagen, ed. by Holmbäck and Wessén, p. 248.
Stafgarþar Revisited
111
— Stavgard. These names have primarily been noticed and studied by scholars
born on Gotland or working on the island, and consequently with a profound
knowledge of the Gotlandic cultural landscape. The school teacher and antiquarian Per-Arvid Säve (1811–88), brother of Carl Säve, was early in starting
to collect examples of Stavgard locations. The eccentric archivist and antiquarian Oscar Vilhelm Wennersten (1867–1931) was aware that many Stavgard
locations were connected to house foundations of stone from the middle Iron
Age, i.e. 200–600 ad,11 although he never published these observations. The
same connection, between Stavgard names and house foundations, was noticed
by the archaeo­logist John Nihlén (1901–83), who in 1928–31 excavated an
Iron Age settlement at Stavgard in Känne in the parish of Burs.12
Due to the many Stavgard locations on Gotland, the archaeo­logist and
ethno­logist Nils Lithberg (1883–1934) as well as the place-name scholar
Herbert Gustavson (1895–1986) maintained that not all these names could
be related to the ritual places stafgarþar as mentioned in the Guta Law and the
Guta Saga. Instead, Gustavson suggested that Stavgard primarily was a place
where people collected wood for making objects of staves, such as barrels.13
This mainly profane interpretation of Stavgard was later supported in different
ways by other place-name scholars.14
With this debate on stafgarþr as a background, the place-name scholar
Ingemar Olsson (1923–2001) carried out a fundamental source-critical study of
all Stavgard names on Gotland.15 He collected all references to Stavgard names
from the 1590s until the present. The oldest records usually come from the
comments on the so-called taxation maps of Gotland, surveyed in 1694–1704.
From all these different sources, he was able to collect forty-seven locations
called Stavgard, although two of them, in the parish of Mästerby, probably
refer to the same place, because they are situated only 250 metres from each
other. Of these forty-six places, eighteen have preserved or known house foundations of stone from the middle Iron Age, whereas another twenty-one have
different forms of indications of such settlement remains (stone fences, water
holes, paved roads, and quern stones). Only in seven cases are there no traces
of older settlements, but interestingly enough all these cases were arable fields
11
12
13
14
15
According to Lithberg, ‘Stavar den Store’.
Nihlén and Boëthius, Gotländska gårdar och byar, pp. 237–50.
Lithberg ‘Stavar den Store’; Gustavson, ‘Gotlands ortnamn’.
Modéer, ‘Hornstäve’; Ståhl, ‘Stav-’.
Olsson, Gotlands stavgardar.
Anders Andrén
112
already around 1700, and
consequently remains of
Iron Age settlements could
have been destroyed by earlier cultivation (Fig. 8.1).
Olsson, in other words, was
finally able to confirm the
close connection between
Stavgard names and Iron Age
settlements, which was more
intuitively acknowledged by
Wennersten and Nihlén.
Due to this close connection, Olsson found it natural
to propose that Stavgard was
a Gotlandic word for a place
with Iron Age settlement. 16
Consequently, he believed
that the word was fundamenFigure 8.1. Map of Gotland with
tally profane, but that it in
the location of all the Stavgard
certain cases could have had
names, according to Ingemar
a secondary ritual meaning,
Olsson, Gotlands stavgardar.
as a word designating places
where people could interact
with their ancestors and the
visible remains of these ancestors. And it was only, in his view, these stafgarþar
with a secondary ritual function that were prohibited in the Guta Law and
mentioned in the Guta Saga. With this double perspective, Olsson regarded
stafgarþr as a parallel to the word hult, which could designate a small wood as
well as a holy grove.17 The double interpretation of the Stavgard names meant
that Olsson made a compromise between functionalistic place-name scholars
who advocated a profane understanding of the word, and earlier linguists who
saw the name in primarily ritual perspectives.
Although Olsson found a close connection between Stavgard names and
remains of Iron Age settlements on Gotland, he had problems understand16
17
Olsson, Gotlands stavgardar, p. 101.
Olsson, Gotlands stavgardar, p. 103.
Stafgarþar Revisited
113
ing why the word stafgarþr was used to designate a place with such remains.
His problem was partly the difficulty of determining whether the word was
contemporary with the settlement, i.e. from the period about 200–600 ad, or
whether it was a later description of the ruined settlements. Therefore, Olsson
had problems trying to relate the word stafgarþr to a suitable physical setting.
Although Olsson surveyed many possibilities, he finally gave up, and ended his
study in a somewhat dejected way: ‘de osäkra punkterna är alltför talrika’ (the
uncertain points are too numerous).18
In the early 1990s, three archaeo­logists tried in different ways to expand
Olsson’s study with other perspectives, and later Olsson in his turn commented
on these studies. Kalle Måhl started from Olsson’s problem of finding a link
between the word stafgarþr and a suitable physical setting, apart from the general connection to remains of Iron Age settlements. Since the word staf ‘stave’
in general could designate not only wooden posts but sometimes also stones,
Måhl argued that the staf in stafgarþr referred to Gotlandic picture stones
from the Viking Age. Most of these stones are found in secondary contexts,
but some original locations are known, and in a few cases these locations are
close to house foundations from the Iron Age. Besides, charcoal and animal
bones have been found at locations with picture stones, giving further associations with the pagan rituals of food and drink in stafgarþar.19 Although Måhl
in a sense solved the problem of relating stafgarþr to a suitable physical setting, Olsson rejected his ideas because no picture stone has ever been found at
a Stavgard place.20 Besides, I would argue that the medi­eval word for a picture
stone on Gotland seems to have been sten ‘stone’ and not staf ‘stave’. Evidence
of this is the name of the farm Haugstajns (literally ‘tall stone’) in the parish of
Gammelgarn, where the remains of a huge picture stone still stand close to the
farm buildings.
In a study of the late Viking Age and early Middle Ages on Gotland, Ola
Kyhlberg argued that the link between Stavgard names and remains of Iron
Age settlement was illusory. Instead, he saw that the primary connection was
between Stavgard names and dry hillocks and impediments, on which the
Iron Age settlements were situated. According to Kyhlberg, these dry pieces
of land, called Stavgard, were primarily medi­eval ecclesiastical land. He based
this interpretation on the medi­eval expression staf oc stol ‘stave and stool’, which
18
19
20
Olsson, Gotlands stavgardar, p. 110.
Måhl, ‘Bildstenar och stavgardar’.
Olsson, ‘Stavgardsproblemet’.
Anders Andrén
114
designated the episcopal land in the diocese of Linköping, to which Gotland
belonged. Consequently, he regarded the Stavgard names as a late phenomenon, which could explain why so many had survived through time.21 Although
Olsson acknowledged some of Kyhlberg’s observations, he was highly sceptical towards Kyhlberg’s interpretation, because it did not take into account
his double profane and ritual interpretation of the Stavgard names.22 Besides
Kyhlberg’s ‘Christian’ understanding of the Stavgard names is difficult to combine with stafgarþar in the Guta Law and the Guta Saga.
In a seminar paper, Kjell Andersson made a geo­g raphical study of the
Stavgard names on Gotland. He dismissed Olsson’s double profane and ritual
interpretation of the names, and saw them as identical to the ritual sites of stafgarþar in the Guta Law and the Guta Saga. Andersson regarded the names as
representing the lowest level of the pagan ritual sites on the island, but from
this perspective he found that there were actually not enough locations called
Stavgard. Although there are Stavgard names in thirty-nine medi­eval parishes,
the names are lacking in the other fifty-five medi­e val parishes. Consequently,
Andersson argued that many of the Stavgard names, originally probably around
120–30, had disappeared over time.23 Olsson welcomed some of Andersson’s
opinions, but at the same time criticized him for dismissing the double interpretation of the Stavgard names.24
In 2002, one year after the death of Ingemar Olsson, the historian of religion
Torsten Blomkvist tried to reconcile the ideas of Olsson and Måhl. Blomkvist
proposed that stafgarþar were places of ancestor cult, spatially connected to
ancient settlement remains and sometimes also picture stones.25 Recently,
the archaeo­logist Anders Carlsson and the place-name scholar Per Vikstrand
have also made shorts comment on the Stavgard names. Carlsson noticed that
Stavgard is a place-name in Östergötland as well. Stavgard in Östergötland is
the name of a farm close to the place Götala, which has been discussed as a possible central ritual site.26 In a short notice, Vikstrand found it difficult to relate
the linguistic meaning of stafgarþar/Stavgard with Olsson’s idea that Stavgard
21
Kyhlberg, Gotland mellan arkeo­logi och historia, pp. 105–16.
Olsson, Gotländska ortnamn, pp. 139–47.
23
Andersson, ‘Gotlands stavgardar’.
24
Olsson, Gotländska ortnamn, pp. 139–47.
25
Blomkvist, Från ritualiserad tradition till institutionaliserad religion, pp. 148–51.
26
Carlsson, Tolkande arkeo­logi och forntidshistoria, p. 200; compare Brink, ‘Har vi haft ett
kultiskt *al i Norden’, p. 116.
22
Stafgarþar Revisited
115
referred to a place with ancient settlement remains. Instead, Vikstrand views
the Stavgard names primarily as referring to enclosures often situated on small
hillocks, and possibly with some indirect relation to the remains of older ruined
settlements.27
A return today to the problem of stafgarþr must start from Olsson’s seminal
study in 1976, but aspects of the preceding and the subsequent discussions can
be taken into account as well. A good starting point is the obvious paradox in
Olsson’s study. On the one hand, he could empirically confirm the close relationship between Stavgard-names and remains of Iron Age settlement, but on
the other hand, he had clear problems relating the names to suitable physical
traces, and finally gave up. I think the paradox can be solved by questioning
Olsson’s primary interpretation of the name Stavgard. Although he found it
‘natural’ to interpret Stavgard as a Gotlandic word for a place with remains
of Iron Age settlement, I highly doubt this interpretation, and I do so for two
reasons.
Currently, about 1800 preserved house foundations from the Iron Age are
registered on Gotland, and old maps show that hundreds of these foundations
— if not thousands — have been destroyed by cultivation since the Middle
Ages. Due to the sheer number of settlement remains it is highly implausible that only forty-six preserved Stavgard names should represent a general
Gotlandic word for these settlement remains. In eastern Gotland, where the
Iron Age settlements are best preserved,28 the Stavgard names are virtually lacking (cf. Fig. 8.1). Besides, the Stavgard names belong to a category of names
that have survived in their thousands. The comments on the taxation maps
from 1694–1704 are full of names for arable fields, meadows, pastures, and
woodlands. It is difficult to count the exact number of these names, due to the
complex ownership pattern on Gotland. The name of a meadow, for instance,
could be mentioned several times, because different farms could own pieces of
the same meadow. Usually, however, between 100 and 150 different names are
mentioned in each parish, which means that approximately 10,000 to 15,000
such names have been preserved.29 Given the number of names, it is again highly
implausible that Stavgard was a general word for ancient settlement remains.
A consequence of this rejection of Olsson’s interpretation is that the
Stavgard names were not general designations of places with remains of Iron
27
28
29
Vikstrand, ‘Stavgard’.
Carlsson, Kulturlandskapets utveckling på Gotland.
Ronsten, Gotländska gårdar och ägor år 1700.
Anders Andrén
116
Age settlements, but must have been related to certain features in a few of these
places. And these features must be regarded as identical with the stafgarþar of
the Guta Law and the Guta Saga, meaning that we are back to the starting point
of the debate. According to the Guta Law, the prohibition against pagan rituals at stafgarþar concerned invocations of ‘food or drink, contrary to Christian
practice’. Already Olsson himself touched upon the idea that these rituals were
directed towards ancestors, and Måhl, Andersson, and Blomkvist developed
the same idea.30 From the current debate concerning time and memory in the
Viking Age,31 it is also fairly easy to envisage stafgarþr as a place where the memory of known or claimed ancestors was activated in rituals including food and
drink. Due to the close connection between Stavgard names and remains of
Iron Age settlement, these rituals must have taken place in very suitable environments, surrounded by the material remains of known or claimed ancestors. As expressions of local memory rituals, the number of Stavgard names on
Gotland is quite reasonable,32 and consequently the number of names is not an
argument for a profane interpretation of the name Stavgard, as proposed earlier.
As was clear more than one hundred years ago, a stafgarþr can be linguistically interpreted either as an enclosure made by staves or as an enclosure
with one or several staves. From a ritual point of view, however, only the second interpretation is plausible, because it does not make sense that prohibitions were directed against enclosures made by staves. Prohibitions against
enclosures with one or several staves, however, make sense, because staves and
wooden posts are known in several ritual contexts before Christianity.33
The question remains, however, how a stafgarþr, as an enclosure with one
or several staves, was physically shaped. Olsson tried to find a clear correlation
between the word and the spatial layout of a stafgarþr, but I think his search for
such a correlation was in vain. In the last few decades several theophoric placenames with the compound ‑vi have been investigated in central Sweden, such
as Ullevi in Östergötland, Lilla Ullevi in Uppland, and Götavi in Närke.34 They
were all organized differently, and the only common denominator is that they
30
Olsson, Gotlands stavgardar; Måhl, ‘Bildstenar och stavgardar’; Andersson, ‘Gotlands
stavgardar’; Blomkvist, Från ritualiserad tradition till institutionaliserad religion, pp. 148–51.
31
Hållans Stenholm, Fornminnen; Andrén, ‘Places, Monuments, and Objects’.
32
Compare Andersson, ‘Gotlands stavgardar’.
33
Compare Kock, ‘Etymo­logisk belysning’; Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, pp. 292–97.
34
Nielsen, ‘Under Biltema och Ikea’; Bäck and Hållans Stenholm, Lilla Ullevi; Svensson,
Götavi.
Stafgarþar Revisited
117
Figure 8.2. Plan of Stavgard at Kärne in the parish of Burs, according to Nihlén and
Boëthius, Gotländska gårdar och byar, p. 156. In the main building, which is shaded
in grey, finds from the Viking Age have been discovered. This ruined house could
have been a stafgarþr, with one of several staves placed inside the house foundation.
were all enclosed in various ways and by various means. Although stafgarþar
were used mainly on Gotland, I think it is plausible that, similarly, variations
existed on this island as well.
If the spatial setting of each stafgarþr varied, only detailed excavations will
provide information in the future. For the time being, only possible solutions
can be outlined. One possibility is that the foundations of the main building
in a settlement were reused as an enclosure, with one or several staves erected
in the former house. This idea was actually suggested already in 1976 in a letter
to Ingemar Olsson by his colleague Gösta Holm (1916–2011), professor of
Nordic languages in Lund.35 In a review of Olsson’s study, John Nihlén touched
upon a similar idea. When he excavated the main building at Stavgard in Burs
in 1928–31, he found objects from the Viking Age (Fig. 8.2). Nihlén originally
used these objects to argue for a continuous use of the building from the third
to the tenth centuries, but in the light of Olsson’s study, he acknowledged that
it is much more plausible that the Viking Age objects represented a later return
35
According to Olsson, ‘Stavgardsproblemet’.
Anders Andrén
118
Figure 8.3. Plan of Stavgard at Botvalde in the
parish of Stånga, according to Nihlén and Boëthius,
Gotländska gårdar och byar, p. 14. The area shaded
in grey, which is surrounded by two houses and
stone alignments, could have been a stafgarþr. In
the middle of this area is a round stone pavement,
which could have been the location of a stave.
to the ruined house, i.e. that they were
the remains of rituals taking place in a
stafgarþr.36
Another possible spatial layout
of a stafgarþr could be exemplified
with a Stavgard area, at Botvalde in
the parish of Stånga, mapped by John
Nihlén.37 In this case, an area between
several houses was enclosed with the
help of the walls of two houses and
other stone alignments. In the middle of this enclosed area, Nihlén surveyed a round stone pavement, which
could be the very location of a stave
(Fig. 8.3). Only future excavations,
however, will uncover the actual and varied shapes of the Gotlandic stafgarþar.
Summarizing my revisit to stafgarþar, I want to emphasize that new perspectives can be outlined, even though this debate goes back 165 years. Ingemar
Olsson’s study of the Stavgard names on Gotland will remain seminal, but as I
have tried to show, it is possible to interpret his results in different ways. Instead
of being a general name for remains of Iron Age settlements, Stavgard is identical with stafgarþr in the Guta Law and Guta Saga, and can be interpreted as an
enclosure with one or several staves. The layout of such enclosures probably varied. According to archaeo­logical interpretations of two Stafgarþar sites, they
were constructed in different ways in relation to the spatial properties of the
ruined Iron Age settlements in which they were located and which were once
regarded as the physical remains of known or claimed ancestors.
36
lemet’.
37
Nihlén’s review in a daily newspaper in 1976, according to Olsson, ‘StavgardsprobNihlén and Boëthius, Gotländska gårdar och byar, p. 14.
Stafgarþar Revisited
119
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Gotlands-Lagen, ed. by Carl Johan Schlyter, Samling af Sweriges Gamla Lagar, 7 (Lund:
Berlingska, 1852)
Guta lag: The Law of the Gotlanders, ed. and trans. by Christine Peel, Viking Society for
Northern Research Text Series, 19 (London: Viking Society for Northern Research,
Uni­ver­sity College London, 2009)
Guta saga: The History of the Gotlanders, ed. and trans. by Christine Peel, Viking Society
for Northern Research Text Series, 12 (London: Viking Society for Northern
Research, Uni­ver­sity College London, 1999)
Skånelagen och Gutalagen, ed. and Swedish trans. by Åke Holmbäck and Elias Wessén,
Svenska landskapslagar, 4 (Stockholm: Geber, 1943)
Secondary Studies
Andersson, Kjell, ‘Gotlands stavgardar: Kultplatser från yngre järnåldern. En koro­logisk
undersökning avseende stavgardarnas organisation och krono­logi’ (seminar paper in
archaeo­logy, Stockholm Uni­ver­sity, 1992)
Andrén, Anders, ‘Places, Monuments, and Objects: The Past in Ancient Scandinavia’,
Scandinavian Studies, 85 (2013), 267–81
Blomkvist, Torsten, Från ritualiserad tradition till institutionaliserad religion: Strategier
för maktlegitimering på Gotland under järnålder och medeltid (Uppsala: Institutionen
för teo­logi, 2002)
Brink, Stefan, ‘Har vi haft ett kultiskt *al i Norden?’, in Sakrale navne, ed. by Gillian
Fellows-Jensen and Bente Holberg, NORNA-rapport, 48 (Uppsala: NORNA-förlag,
1992)
—— , ‘Law and Assemblies’, in Pre-Christian Religions of the North: Histories and
Structures, ii, ed. by Jens Peter Schjødt, John Lindow, and Anders Andrén (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2020), pp. 445–77
Bäck, Mathias, and Ann-Mari Hållans Stenholm, Lilla Ullevi: Den heliga platsens geografi
(Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2012)
Carlsson, Anders, Tolkande arkeo­logi och svensk forntidshistoria: Från stenålder till vikinga­
tid, Stockholm Studies in Archaeo­logy, 64 (Stockholm: Stockholm Uni­ver­sity, 2015)
Carlsson, Dan, Kulturlandskapets utveckling på Gotland: En studie av jordbruks- och
bebyggelseförändringar under järnåldern, Meddelanden från Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet, B 49 (Visby: Barry, 1979)
Gustavson, Herbert, ‘Gotlands ortnamn’, Ortnamnssällskapet i Uppsala årsskrift (1938),
3–58
Hållans Stenholm, Ann-Mari, Fornminnen: Det förflutnas roll i det förkristna och kristna
Mälardalen, Vägar till Midgård, 15 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2012)
120
Anders Andrén
Kock, Axel, ‘Etymo­logisk belysning av några nordiska ord och uttryck’, Arkiv för nordisk
filo­logi, 28 (1912), 167–218
Kyhlberg, Ola, Gotland mellan arkeo­logi och historia: Om det tidiga Gotland, Thesis and
Papers in Archaeo­logy, 4 (Stockholm: Stockholm Uni­ver­sity, 1991)
Lithberg, Nils, ‘Stavar den Store’, Gotländskt Arkiv, 5 (1933), 61–66
Modéer, Ivar, ‘Hornstäve’, Namn och Bygd, 27 (1949), 154–75
Måhl, Karl Gustaf (Kalle), ‘Bildstenar och stavgardar – till frågan om de gotländska bildstenarnas placering’, Gotländskt Arkiv, 62 (1990), 13–28
Nielsen, Ann-Lili, ‘Under Biltema och Ikea: Ullevi under 1500 år’, in Liunga. Kaupinga:
Kulturhistoria och arkeo­logi i Linköpingsbygden, ed. by Anders Kaliff and Göran
Tagesson, Riksantikvarieämbetet, Arkeo­
logiska undersökningar, 60 (Stockholm:
Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2005), pp. 204–35
Nihlén, John, and Gerda Boëthius, Gotländska gårdar och byar under äldre järnåldern:
Studier till belysning av Gotlands äldre odlingshistoria (Stockholm: Seelig, 1933)
Olsson, Ingemar, Gotlands stavgardar: En ortnamnsstudie, Gotlandica, 10 (Visby: Barry,
1976)
—— , ‘Stavgardsproblemet ännu en gång’, Fornvännen, 87 (1992), 91–97
—— , Gotländska ortnamn (Visby: Ödin, 1996)
Ronsten, Jakob, Gotländska gårdar och ägor år 1700, samt om lantmäteriarkiven på
Gotland (Klintehamn: Gotlandica, 2011)
Ståhl, Harry, ‘Stav-’, in Kulturhistorisk lexikon för nordisk medeltid, xvii (Malmö: Allhem,
1972), pp. 79–82
Säve, Carl, ‘Om Gotlands äldsta fornlemningar’, Annaler for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og
Historie (1852), 130–70
—— , Gutniska urkunder: Guta Lag, Guta Saga och Gotlands runinskrifter språkligt behandlade (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1859)
Svensson, Kenneth, ‘Götavi – en vikingatida kultplats’, in På väg genom Närke: Ett landskap genom historien, ed. by Anna Hed Jakobsson, Skrifter från Arkeo­logikonsult, 2
(Upplands Väsby: Arkeo­logikonsult, 2012), pp. 85–110
Vikstrand, Per, Gudarnas platser: Förkristna sakrala ortnman i Mälarlandskapen, Studier
till en svensk ortnamnsatlas, 17 (Uppsala: Swedish Science Press, 2001)
—— , ‘Stavgard’, in Svenskt ortnamnslexikon, ed. by Mats Wahlberg (Uppsala: Institutet
för språk och folkminnen, 2016), pp. 301–02
Sacredness Lost:
On the Variable Status of
Churches in the Middle Ages
Bertil Nilsson
Introduction
The Hälsinge Law, to which Stefan Brink has paid a great deal of attention, was
valid in the middle and northern parts of Sweden and also in the eastern half of
the Swedish kingdom (what today is Finland). The law is obviously influenced
by the Upplands Law but does not lack originality in a minor number of cases.1
Among them are the prescriptions in the section on church law reflecting the
view that the church building and the cemetery were especially protected areas
because of their sacredness. There, peace should prevail and legal measures be
taken for crimes against the peace. These prescriptions appear in the canon law
of the western church as well as in the other eight sections on church law that
are preserved from the Swedish Middle Ages. The prescriptions of the Hälsinge
Law are characterized by the extremely thorough division into different zones
of peace. In principle, there is no equivalent in the other laws.2 Only in the section on church law in the Tiohärads Law is there a gradation of zones, although
less detailed.
1
2
See Brink, ‘Hälsingelagens ställning’; Brink, ‘The Hälsinge Law’.
HL Kk 21; Svenska landskapslagar, ed. and trans. by Holmbäck and Wessén, iii, 285 n. 124.
Bertil Nilsson (bertil.nilsson@rel.gu.se) is Professor Emeritus of History of Christianity at
the Uni­ver­sity of Gothenburg. His doctoral thesis dealt with canon law and its encounter
with the domestic legal tradition in Norway and Sweden. His research thereafter has mainly
dealt with medi­eval law as well as the encounter between religions that Christianization in the
Scandinavian kingdoms brought with it.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 121–137
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119343
122
Bertil Nilsson
The starting-point of the Hälsinge Law is the journey of a farmer from his
home to the church. During this journey he was protected by what the law calls
‘absolute church peace’ (‘þa ær han i fullum kyrkiu friþi’). If he was wounded,
i.e. violently attacked, a fine should be paid, which would be divided between
the bishop and the king. The fine increased depending on where the crime
against the peace took place. Within the church environment the sums exceed
by far those applicable in other contexts.3 If the farmer was wounded in the
entrance to the cemetery the fine was nine marks (Sw. marker); in the cemetery,
eighteen; in the church door, forty; at the baptismal font, eighty; in the door to
the choir, one hundred; in the choir, two hundred; and, at the altar, three hundred. In addition, six marks should be paid to the bishop since the consecration
of the church had been destroyed and lost. Thus, it had to be consecrated anew
by him. Similar prescriptions concerning the church building and its loss of
sacredness are also found in other Swedish provincial laws.4
The prescription concerning the recompense to the bishop should be seen in
the light of the fact that the church building, the altar, and the cemetery were
consecrated by means of liturgies celebrated by the bishop.5 Commentaries
to these ritual procedures were made by the most quoted liturgists during the
Middle Ages, i.e. Johannes Belethus (d. before 1182) and Guillelmus Durantis
(d. 1296). According to them, the church and the cemetery became sacri ‘holy’
as a consequence of the rituals according to which the bishop acted. They were
‘in due form’ sanctified (sanctificare) to God.6 The material church itself was
transferred to Him, so, because of the consecration, the proprietorship was His.
3
It is not within the scope of this article to try to elucidate the relations between the size
of the different fines in the twenty-first chapter of the section on church law as a whole, but it
would be worth a small article of its own, since the Hälsinge Law so obviously differs from the
other laws in this case, see Hasselberg, ‘Böter, Sverige’, cols 519–25. As regards the increase of
the fines and the thorough division of the room according to the Hälsinge Law, see also about
the section on personal integrity (Sw. manhelgdsbalken), Brink, ‘Hälsingelagens ställning’,
pp. 128–29; Brink, ‘The Hälsinge Law’, pp. 44–47; Wennström, Brott och böter, pp. 194–218,
280–82, 306 thoroughly registered the different fines in the Hälsinge Law without, however,
trying to explain those concerning the church peace.
4
VgL I Kk 3, 5, 12; VgL II Kk 5, 22; TiL Kk 13§ 2; ÖgL Kk 24§ 1, 25 pr.; SdmL Kk 5§ 1;
UL Kk 15§ 7, 22§ 1; VmL 22§ 2.
5
These liturgies, such as they were performed during the high Middle Ages, are edited in
Andrieu, Le pontifical romain. The rite of consecration of churches was thoroughly analysed by
Ström, Paradisi recuperatio.
6
Belethus, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ed. by Douteil, chs 159b, 159Ab, 159ba; Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.5.2.
Sacredness Lost
123
Thus, the church ceased to be ‘lupanar demonum’ (a brothel of the demons),
as Durantis puts it,7 but instead became a building in which the eternal, invisible, and heavenly dwell. Therefore, it was considered inviolable and at the same
time mysterious and loaded with force.
In two of the Swedish provincial laws there is an allusion to the function of
the liturgies in the following way: ‘tha agho the biscope buth fa. oc kirkiu sinæ
wighiæ læta. meth thy at aaf orthom warther […] kirkiæn hælagh’ (Then they
[the farmers] shall send the bishop a message and make their church become
consecrated, because by means of words […] becomes the church holy).8 The
formulations are limited by the expression ‘aaf orthom’ (by means of words).
This refers to the prayers that partly constituted the consecration rituals. These
rituals, however, comprised much more than just words, and one may ask why
the two laws especially stressed just the words. No answer is given within the
framework of the legislation. The use of different substances also played a decisive role for the consecration, as for instance the use of holy water, chrism, and
relics in combination with exorcising prayers and blessings. The result was that
the physical matter of the church building, including the altar and the cemetery,
got a new status. This status of sacredness could get lost or became violated, the
consequences being that these locations were not allowed to be used for the
proper purpose. Masses and other types of services could not be celebrated,
and it was forbidden to bury dead people until the sacredness was restored. It
could be really felt by the priest as well as the parishioners, partly because the
services had to cease, but also partly because of the expenses associated with the
re-establishing of the church’s status, which could be achieved only by means of
episcopal liturgies.
The detailed prescriptions concerning crimes against the peace will be left at
that. They belong to a special sphere of the legislation which in the case of the
Hälsinge Law has not yet been fully elucidated. It has been suggested, however,
that the decrees in the section on church law derive from ‘older church law’9
but this has not been substantiated. Stefan Brink analysed the fines and the prescriptions on peace in the section on personal integrity (Sw. manhelgdsbalken).10
Possibly there are parallels to the prescriptions in the section on church law.
7
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.8.
TiL Kk 12pr.; UL Kk 4pr.
9
Svenska landskapslagar, ed. and trans. by Holmbäck and Wessén, iii, 285 n. 124.
10
Brink, ‘The Hälsinge Law’, pp. 44–47.
8
Bertil Nilsson
124
The rest of the following article will deal with the loss of material sacredness. The regulations of the Hälsinge Law will be analysed in relation to the rest
of the Swedish provincial laws and elucidated by international canon law, the
contents of the episcopal liturgies, and the commentaries to them.
The Prescriptions of the Swedish Provincial Laws
Why could the sacredness of a church, cemetery, or an altar get lost? The
Hälsinge Law gives at least one reason for that, i.e. if somebody attacked a person with violence so that he was wounded. In this circumstance, it was in the
first instance a crime against the peace but, as a consequence, the church lost
its sacredness. In the same chapter, the law uses three different wordings to
qualify the crime: that somebody gets wounds, that somebody lacerates a person, or that somebody draws blood.11 Thus, it was about assault. In addition,
the Hälsinge Law mentions that if somebody steals from a person in the church
or the cemetery, the peace is broken.12 There, nothing is said about the church
losing its sacredness. How to interpret this silence is not clear: a fine should be
paid to the bishop but whether this had anything to do with his possible obligation to reconsecrate the church is not evident. In this case, the fine is three
marks compared to the six marks required if a wound had been caused and the
church had to be consecrated anew. It is possible that the theft was not regarded
as making the church lose its sacredness but as a crime against the peace.
Which prescriptions are found in the other provincial laws? Regarding the
Göta-laws, in the Older Västgöta Law the prescriptions deal with a person
being killed in a church. Consequently, the church would lose its sacredness
and the bishop should be compensated with three marks for the reconsecration
(Kk 3). Three marks to the bishop also applied when somebody was killed or
wounded in the cemetery (Kk 12pr.). If somebody was beaten or pulled by his
hair in the cemetery, it was regarded a minor crime in relation to the church’s
and cemetery’s sacredness (Kk 12§ 1). The parish priest, however, had to refrain
from celebrating Mass. The case did not require the same contribution from
the point of view of the bishop. The fine was lower, twelve örar instead of three
marks, and the local priest could resume the celebration of Mass after he had
11
HL Kk 21§ 2, 5. The term blodvite ‘bloodshed’ is also found in the law’s section on personal integrity, HL M 14pr. (‘Gör ok blodhwiti i thänne fridh’) and M 1pr., M 9§ 1; see also
Svenska landskapslagar, ed. and trans. by Holmbäck and Wessén, iii, HL Kk 17 and p. 283
n. 88 with reference to other para­graphs concerning bloodshed.
12
HL Kk 18§ 1 with parallel in UL Kk 18§ 1.
Sacredness Lost
125
received permission from the bishop or the bishop’s official (lænsprest), i.e.
approximately a rural dean. Thus, no episcopal liturgy was required in this case.
The Younger Västgöta Law is a little more detailed and decrees that homicide in a church is a heinous deed. The law underscores that the church as a
whole becomes impure and so does the cemetery. The bishop shall get three
marks for the cleansing (Kk 5). The same applies to homicide or wounding in
the cemetery, but then only in relation to the cemetery, not the church (Kk 22).
The section on church law in the Tiohärads Law speaks about the church
and the cemetery becoming unclean when somebody hews a person there.
As mentioned, in this law there is a gradation which resembles the one in the
Hälsinge Law, but not as detailed. Furthermore, the law takes interest in the
ways in which the blood splashes the church and prescribes that the fine to the
bishop will not be higher than three marks even when the crime takes place at
the altar (Kk 13§ 2). The fine implies that an episcopal liturgy was required
after the crime took place.
The Östgöta Law takes a slightly different approach by stating that a scuffle
causes the cemetery to lose its sacredness. According to the law, the parishioners had to make it become clean (Kk 24§ 1). Furthermore, homicide in the
church means that the church loses its consecration, and this also applies to
adultery. The one causing the loss shall make it become consecrated (Kk 25pr.).
The Södermanna Law has an open way of formulation, without stating what
causes a church to lose its consecration. The text just reads ‘meþ nocrum sacum
hwarium lundum þet kan til koma’ (with any deed in any way) and prescribes
that the perpetrator shall pay three marks for the cleansing. If he is not able to
do that or runs away, the parish shall provide the bishop with food at the consecration of the church and the cemetery but not pay a fine (Kk 5§ 1).
The Upplands Law mentions sexual intercourse or fornication in the church
or the cemetery. The fine is three marks, i.e. the standard sum when an episcopal liturgy was required. Directly after the para­graph dealing with fornication,
the law says that the bishop ‘a ranzakæ hwar sum kirkiæ ællr kirkiu garþær ær
o skiær’ (shall investigate when a church or a cemetery is unclean). The law
does not, however, mention the possible causes. The bishop shall then cleanse
the church or the cemetery (Kk 15§ § 6, 7). A special kind of peace applied to
those who ‘þær guzlikamæ fylghiæ’ (followed the body of God), i.e. took part
in some sort of procession outdoors with the consecrated Host. If a person was
wounded when the procession went on, it should be regarded as if that took
place in the church building even though it happened in the cemetery or even
outside it (Kk 21pr.). Crime against the peace also occurred when someone was
violently dragged out of the church or the cemetery. The formulation here indi-
Bertil Nilsson
126
cates that there were different degrees of offences, since the law says that the
bishop was entitled to compensation if he was supposed to cleanse the church
or the cemetery (Kk 22§ 1). The prescriptions of the Upplands Law are not
entirely clear or precise. Obviously, however, it deals with crimes where violence was committed against a person, and also with sexual activities.
The prescriptions of the Västmanna Law (Kk 22§ § 1, 2) are identical with
those of the Upplands Law above and, thus, bring nothing new.
Both the Västgöta Laws differ from the others in the way that they also contain prescriptions regarding the altar. The para­g raph should be seen in light
of the fact that a church’s altar should be consecrated as part of the liturgy of
consecration of the church as a whole. That was almost regarded as the climax
of the liturgy.13 Moreover, a new altar, added after the church was consecrated,
should be consecrated by means of a separate liturgy.14 Both laws say that the
bishop had to carry through a new altar consecration if the altar stone had
come loose in an already consecrated altar.15 Scholars have pointed out that it is
difficult to determine exactly what the words haltæræ sten ‘altar stone’ means.16
Most likely it refers to the altar slab, since the Older Västgöta Law contains the
expression ‘haltæræ sten. oc altare’ (altar stone and altar). The important thing
here is to establish that also the sacredness of an altar could get lost. In that case
the bishop had to consecrate it anew.
The Västgöta Laws testify indirectly to the fact that the church could lose its
consecration if it grew old and fell into disrepair (‘taker kyrkia. at fyrnass’), since
the law says that the church retained its consecration even if it was repaired (‘þo
at hana böte’), as long as the staves still stood, the sills still lay, and the door was
intact, the beams were still attached to the wall plate, and ridge of the roof still
lay intact, as well as the altar stone and the altar (‘standæ stulpær. liggia sillir er
helt dyrni. oc festiband ligger kamber. hell. haltæræ sten. oc altare’).17 In some
other laws, there are prescriptions regarding the church being destroyed by
fire. These were not, however, put in relation to the consecration of the church
13
See Ström, Paradisi recuperatio, pp. 140–92 for a very thorough analysis of the altar consecration within the framework of the rite of the consecration of a church.
14
See also Mattias Karlsson’s comprehensive study, Karlsson, Konstruktionen av det heliga,
pp. 47–53.
15
VgL I Kk 5; VgL II Kk 8.
16
See Karlsson, Konstruktionen av det heliga, p. 21.
17
VgL I Kk 6; VgL II Kk 9. On the construction of the church according to this para­graph,
see Lindscott, Interpretations of Old Wood, pp. 37–38.
Sacredness Lost
127
but focus on who caused the fire. The law assumes that the church was totally
destroyed and had to be rebuilt from scratch.18
Two prescriptions require a little extra attention, which each occupy only
a para­graph. Firstly, the decree of the Upplands Law concerning sexual intercourse (Kk 15 §6). It refers to husband and wife in contrast to fornication, also
mentioned in the same sentence, which refers to sexual intercourse between
two unmarried people. It goes without saying that husband and wife were,
generally speaking, allowed to have sex (with each other) but obviously not
in a church. Fornication was, on the contrary, not allowed at all. Secondly, the
prescription of the Older Västgöta Law that a piece of turf with blood on it
should be cut out and thrown out of the cemetery, when blood had got into it
accidentally, even though its sacredness was not regarded as affected.19 Thus,
the cemetery could be used for its intended purpose in the future. That the prescription did not refer to blood from animals becomes clear from the commentaries from the second half of the twelfth century to one of the fundamental
collections of canon law, Gratian’s Decretum, finished around the year 1150.20
The human blood itself was regarded as incompatible with the sacred ground.
It is not easy to answer the question of what was behind this opinion and why
the para­graph was not inserted in the Younger Västgöta Law.21 It has been suggested that the prescription in the Older Västgöta Law emerged from ‘något
magiskt föreställningssätt’ (some sort of magical way of looking at things),22
but, for as long as this assertion is not elaborated upon and put into a context, it
is not easy to understand what the author actually meant. There is, however, no
doubt that blood played an important role as sacrifice in the old Scandinavian
religion as well as in other ways in culture and folk medicine.23 Whether preChristian conceptions can be connected with this unique prescription of the
Older Västgöta Law remains unclear. In any case, the decree represents a fundamental opinion regarding legal thinking which occurs also in other ways: if
the decree was not about material destruction or damage, it was about morally
reprehensible actions that led to the church and the cemetery being regarded as
having lost their sacredness or having become polluted, but not by blood.
18
19
20
21
22
23
TiL Kk 4§ 1; SdmL Kk 4§ 2; DL Kk 5§ 5; VmL Kk5§ 1.
VgL I Kk 21.
See Gulczynski, The Desecration, pp. 18–19.
See VgL II Kk 46.
Ericsson, Den kanoniska rätten, p. 112.
See Sundqvist, ‘Blod och blót’.
Bertil Nilsson
128
To sum up, the following offences had consequences for sacredness: to
wound or kill somebody is, in almost all the laws, a reason for the church building and/or cemetery to lose their sacredness or became unclean. In addition,
in some laws, sexual acts are mentioned, as well as the fact that the altar/altar
stone had become loose. Furthermore, some laws only say that the consecration
had been lost without mentioning the offences leading to this fact. Concerning
violence, the formulations in the laws somewhat differ both as regards the type
of violence and its consequences. The Hälsinge Law also mentions theft from
a fellow being, but it is unclear how the law-makers looked upon the consequences for the sacredness. Thus, in principle, the law dealt with morally reprehensible actions causing physical damage to a person’s body or to what he
owned, as well as, partly, with sexual activities.
Linguistic Differences
As evident, there are differences between the Swedish laws as to how they
express themselves concerning the consequences of some actions in relation to
sacredness. Manifestly, there are divergent uses of the words ‘unconsecrated’
and ‘polluted/unclean’ as well as ‘consecration’ and ‘cleansing’. The Older
Västgöta Law says that the church as a whole is unconsecrated (‘er kyrkia al
vuighz’) and, according to the Younger Västgöta Law, the church as a whole
is unclean and so is the cemetery (‘ær hun all vskijr. oc kirkyugarther samulund’). The bishop’s skirsl ‘cleansing’ is also mentioned. In the Tiohärads Law,
the word wskirlse ‘uncleanness’ is used. The Östgöta Law says ouighþær ‘unconsecrated’, but some manu­scripts use oskirder/oskærdher ‘unclean’, and also uixla
spiællum ‘loss of consecration’ and that the consecration is ‘þa ær wixl af kirkiu’
(gone from the church). The Södermanna Law uses the expression ‘hwar sum
kirkiu wixlum spieller’ (anyone who destroys the church’s consecration). The
Upplands Law has o skiær ‘unclean’ and the same goes for the Västmanna Law,
whose wording is directly taken from the Upplands Law. Together with the
Hälsinge Law, which speaks about wixlæ spiæll ‘the loss of consecration’, four
of the laws use the expression that the church’s and the cemetery’s consecration
had ‘gone lost’, whereas ‘become unclean’ is found in five laws. The Östgöta Law
distinguishes itself by the fact that both latter expressions are found when you
take different manu­scripts into account. Such variations are not present in the
other laws when looking at the manu­scripts referred to in the only existing text
critical edition of the Swedish provincial laws.24
24
Samling af Sweriges gamla lagar, ed. by Collin and Schlyter.
Sacredness Lost
129
Partially, this variety of terms can be explained by the legal clarification
and definition of the episcopal liturgies during the twelfth century. Pope
Innocent III (1198–1216) decreed that a church which had been polluted as
a consequence of homicide or in which someone had been wounded could be
cleansed (reconciliari) with the help of holy water mixed with wine and ashes.
A totally new consecration (reconsecratio) was not necessary. 25 The papal
decree is found in an answer from 1207 to a direct inquiry from the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The reason why he turned to the
pope was that people from different regions making pilgrimages to the church,
which contained the grave of St James the Apostle, had started to fight with
each other, which led to homicide as well as wounding. Thus, the church lost
its consecration. The archbishop wondered if it could be restored in another
way than by a new consecration. The decree was inserted in the Liber extra in
the year 1234, i.e. the collection of papal decretals valid in the whole of the
western church. At the end of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent’s decree
was regarded as matter of course. Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303) formulated the prescription that when a church was polluted (polluo) due to bloodshed or (human) semen it should be regarded as unclean (pollutus) and should
be the object of cleansing (reconciliatio).26 This liturgy was considerably simpler and less expensive for those who were in charge of its completion. It was
still a liturgical rite reserved for the bishop only,27 but entailed considerably
lower costs. With regard to the Swedish laws, the economic responsibility
lay mostly on the parishioners in the countryside, mainly farmers. The winners — if the expression may be allowed — as a consequence of the legal and
liturgical change were those who committed offences incompatible with the
churchly sacredness. Whether the coming into being of the simpler rite, the
cleansing, mirrors a varied view of the church’s and the cemetery’s sacredness
in an onto­logical perspective may not be determined. It is obvious, however,
that the sacredness was not regarded as totally lost: the church’s and the cemetery’s sacredness had ‘just’ been ‘soiled’, ‘polluted’, or ‘damaged’. And the words
reconciliare/reconciliatio carry with them the meaning of ‘cleansing’, ‘restoration’, and even ‘atonement’.
25
X 3.40.4, Corpus iuris canonici, ed. by Friedberg, ii, col. 634.
VIo 3.21.un, Corpus iuris canonici, ed. by Friedberg, ii, col. 1059.
27
X 3.40.9, Corpus iuris canonici, ed. by Friedberg, ii, col. 635; Gulczynski, The Desecration, pp. 44–47.
26
Bertil Nilsson
130
International Legal Positions
The often very short decrees in the internationally valid texts of canon law were
the object of commentaries by learned jurists as well as scholars commenting on
the liturgies. In this article, these are represented by Guillelmus Durantis. His
texts were widely disseminated in the western church, and his commentaries
on the different rites were exhaustive and detailed. They are found in his comprehensive work Rationale divinorum officiorum which existed in its entirety
before 1291.
Regarding the liturgies of consecration and reconciliation of a church, to a
great extent, he started out from the decretals of the Liber extra from 1234 and
the commentaries on these made by learned jurists, i.e. the decretalists. Because
of his precision, his texts contextualize the Swedish provincial laws by going far
beyond them and contributing to the understanding of which questions were
of interest during the latter part of the thirteenth century. Whether his work
was known to those who compiled the laws in Sweden is not known. In any
case, according to a decree issued by the papal legate Cardinal Bishop William
of Sabina, at the provincial synod of Skänninge in 1248, all Swedish bishops
were obliged to acquire at least the Liber extra within one year.28
Durantis underlined that a church should be consecrated only once unless
it had lost its consecration. This was the case when it had been burnt and all its
walls or the major part of them had been deprived of their ornamentation. He
referred to prescriptions in Leviticus regarding how a house that had become
unclean because of leprosy mould on its walls should be cleaned (Leviticus
14. 49–57). If only the roof or some other part of the church had been damaged, yet the walls were preserved intact or just damaged to a small extent, no
new consecration was needed. If the whole church or the major part of it had
collapsed at the same time and had been repaired with stone in its entirety, the
consecration should mainly consist of anointing on the outside where the stones
had been put. If all the walls had fallen into disrepair successively and were
mended progressively, it should be regarded as the same church. Consequently,
no new consecration was needed. It should only be cleansed with the help of
exorcised water, i.e. water mixed with wine and ashes which had been solemnly
blessed29 and with a solemn Mass. He pointed out, however, that ‘quidam sapientes’ (some learned people) had written that it ought to be consecrated anew.
28
29
See Nilsson, ‘The Provincial Council of Skänninge’, p. 142.
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.38.
Sacredness Lost
131
A consecration should also take place if there were any doubts as to whether the
church had ever been consecrated.30 Thus, Durantis in this case gave an example
of how a prescription in the Old Testament could be used as motivation for
how to act as regards a church building. It is also evident that he included different degrees of ‘destruction’, exactly as the Swedish provincial laws do when
taken together. Some features required a new consecration, others cleansing
only. He also made it clear that there could be different opinions in this case
although he did not state who the ‘learned people’ were who did not share his
opinion. His wording, however, suggests that they were active in an age long
since past.
An altar should be consecrated anew if the altar slab had been moved or
changed in relation to its original form or broken in a considerable way. The
bishop should decide what was ‘considerable’ in this case. A new consecration
was also required when the whole altar had been moved or mended. The whole
church should not be consecrated in this case, since its consecration was one
thing and the altar’s another, according to Durantis. If the church was totally
destroyed but not the altar, and the church was repaired after that, only the
church had to be reconsecrated, yet it would be suitable that the altar was
cleansed with exorcised water.31
After having underlined that the human being is a spiritual temple, Durantis
started to treat the church as the material temple. The temple and its altars
could suffer not only material damage, and consequently lose their consecration and sacredness, but they could also become unclean. Here he used the
verb polluere, which had a number of different meanings: ‘contaminate’, ‘defile’,
‘stain’, ‘profane’. Exactly which connotations it carried in this connection is
not easily determined, but with reference to the Book of Psalms (Psalm 79. 1
(78. 1)) he quoted how the heathens had forced their way into God’s own land
and desecrated his holy temple (‘Polluerunt templum sanctum tuum…’). He
also referred to Leviticus (Leviticus 15) and the purifications prescribed there.
He maintained that in his time the purification took place in a similar way with
water, since there was a solemn cleansing with a Mass and sprinkling with holy
water mixed with wine, salt, and ashes.32
Furthermore, he established that semen ejaculated in the church caused pollution. It was about adultery as well as fornication, irrespective of whose semen
30
31
32
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.31.
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.32.
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.38.
Bertil Nilsson
132
it was: ‘cuiuscumque semine, scilicet maris uel femine, clerici uel laici, heretici
uel pagani, naturaliter siue innaturaliter studiose et peccandi libidine’ (whosoever’s seed, whether man’s or woman’s, cleric’s or layman’s, heretic’s or heathen’s,
in a natural way or unnatural and intentionally in dissolute sin). The same was
also the case if a husband and wife had sexual intercourse there. Pollution did
not arise from nocturnal emission or when it was from animals, since in these
cases it was not sin.33
A church should be cleansed because of murder whether with bloodshed
or not, and also because of human bloodshed caused by violence or criminal
offence whether with wounds or not, e.g. blood running from the mouth or
nose. Again, Durantis referred to Leviticus (Leviticus 14. 15), underlining that
according to these texts it was forbidden to shed blood in the temple, and those
who were bleeding were not allowed to enter. On the other hand, there were
a number of cases when the church did not need to be cleansed as a consequence of bloodshed. These cases had natural causes, as for instance nosebleeds
or when a stone from the church fell on someone. Nor was pollution caused if a
wounded person fled to the church, lost a lot of blood there, and died, since the
murder did not take place in the church. The same reasoning applied if blood
was shed or semen ejaculated on top of the church’s roof, since it was outside
the church.34 Furthermore, cleansing should be performed if theft or robbery
had taken place in the church.35
As a conclusion, Durantis established that a cleansing of the church building served both as a model and a deterrent to people. When they saw that the
church, which does not itself sin in any respect, was washed, cleaned, and purified because of another person’s sins, they would realize how much they should
strive to exonerate themselves from their own sins.36
Liturgical Purification of a Church
As we have seen, some of the Swedish laws prescribed that a new consecration of the church and the cemetery had to take place if the church had lost its
sacredness. This meant that the comprehensive (and expensive) liturgical rite
had to be repeated. Other laws say that only a purification was necessary. Thus,
33
34
35
36
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.39.
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.40.
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.41.
Durantis, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Davril and Thibodeau, i.6.44.
Sacredness Lost
133
they refer to a later point of view within international canon law. What did this
rite of purification entail?
A liturgy with the heading Reconciliatio violate ecclesiae already existed
in the Roman-German pontifical from the tenth century.37 The liturgy starts
with the bishop carrying with him relics and stopping in front of the church
together with the assisting clerics and the people. There, two prayers are said:
that God may come to the church and bless what the priests are going to bless
and that those with pure hearts may proceed to the places that shall be purified
to God’s name. After the bishop and the priests had entered the church while
litanies were said, the bishop blesses water and salt mixed with wine and ashes.
Thereafter, he walks around inside the church and sprinkles it with holy water
while an antiphon and a Psalm are sung. By doing that, the defiled places are
washed and purified. In the following prayer, God is exalted as the one who
forgives criminal offences and cleans the dirty. The prayer also asks that He
may aid the clerics in the struggle against the devil’s snare, and that heavenly
grace may contribute to the purification of any holy place found desecrated
or destroyed as a consequence of the devil’s cunning. Another prayer follows
about the willingness to restore what has been destroyed. Possible causes for
the damage are mentioned in it, namely contempt (for the place’s sacredness),
wrath, drunkenness, or lust. Thereafter, one prays that God in grace may look
upon the machinations of contempt that have affected the sacred edifice and
purify his altar by infusing heavenly grace, so that there may be no evil spirits
there in the future. Through the infusion of God’s spirit, the sanctuary may
remain purified, so that the faithful may come together. Before the relics are
enclosed in the altar, one prays that the place’s consecration may remain inviolable in the future and thus the church a sacred and protected place. Finally,
the prayer asks that God may sanctify the altar which has been adorned with
his saints’ relics and also the church and his faithful, who piously bring prayers,
vows, and gifts to Him in this place.
To summarize, the rite consisted of several main elements. Firstly, an opening prayer for the priests guaranteed that they were well prepared for the purpose of blessing and cleansing the church, followed by a material rite meaning
both a concrete and a symbolic purification. Afterwards, prayers that ascribed
the ultimate responsibility for the pollution of the church to the devil and also
an enumeration of possible reasons for this (mostly a fundamental contempt
37
Text published in Le pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle, ed. by Vogel and
Elze, pp. 182–85.
Bertil Nilsson
134
for the sacred place). This was followed by a prayer for the presence of God’s
spirit, enclosure of relics in the altar, and, finally, a prayer for sanctification.
Taken together, the rite meant that the church’s sacredness had been restored.
It did not imply a totally new consecration but a consecration of a simpler kind
where the essential element from the comprehensive pontifical liturgy of consecration of a church had been preserved.
The structure of the rite remained intact through the whole of the Middle
Ages. The fundamental prayers that existed already in the pontifical in the tenth
century were preserved at the same time as the number of prayers increased. In
this more comprehensive form, the rite is found in Guillelmus Durantis’s pontifical from the latter half of the thirteenth century38 as well as in two Danish
pontificals from Lund and Roskilde respectively from the last phase of the
Middle Ages.39 Although there is no pontifical preserved from the Swedish
medi­eval church we may take it for granted that the rite of reconciliation that
was practised in the dioceses of the Swedish church province was almost identical with the rites in the above-mentioned pontificals. In all probability, there
were some forms of liturgical reconciliation very much like these known to
those who formulated the provincial laws’ prescriptions on purification instead
of new consecration.
Concluding Remark
Where is the Hälsinge Law to be ranged in the perspective of the liturgical and
international legal change taking place during the thirteenth century? From a
legal point of view, the law’s prescriptions in our case belong to the time before
the decretals of the Liber extra, especially Pope Innocent’s letter from 1207,
were implemented. The law presupposes that the church lost its sacredness and
had to be consecrated anew, whereas later it became ‘only’ unclean. The very
detailed division into zones of peace relates to the church’s sacredness. There
is, however, no explanation for this (which is a typical phenomenon for the
Hälsinge Law) in the canon law texts valid in the western church, in the episcopal liturgies of consecration or reconciliation of churches, nor in the prayers
that accompanied the bishop’s actions. From where then do the zones of peace
emerge? Perhaps this will be clarified by Stefan Brink in the future.
38
Text published in Le pontifical romain, ed. by Andrieu, pp. 510–17.
Texts published in Strömberg, Den pontifikala liturgin, pp. 147–52 and pp. 237–42
respectively.
39
Sacredness Lost
135
Did the prescriptions of the Hälsinge Law become obsolete after the
Upplands Law had officially been ratified in 1296, where reconciliation was
prescribed instead of new consecration? Probably this was the case. The one
who had the task of consecrating churches in the law district of the Hälsinge
Law was the archbishop of Uppsala. He can hardly have acted in one way in the
province of Uppland and in another in Norrland after the decrees of the Liber
extra had been made known in Uppsala and the Swedish church province. The
same may be said about the bishops in the dioceses where the other laws were
valid that presupposed that the church lost its sacredness and a new consecration was required. When both canon law presupposed that a reconciliation
ought to take place instead of a new consecration and an elaborated liturgy
for the reconciliation was there, in all likelihood the Swedish bishops, without
exception, used this liturgy, irrespective of the prescriptions in the sections on
church law in the provincial laws. However, this cannot be substantiated by
examples. No concrete cases like the one from Santiago de Compostela can be
found in Sweden from the time before the provincial laws were written down
nor afterwards.
Abbreviations
HL
Kk
M
pr.
SdmL
TiL
UL
VgL I
VgL II
VmL
ÖgL
Hälsingelagen (the Hälsinge Law)
kyrkobalk (section on church law)
manhelgdsbalk (section on personal integrity)
principium (the first part of a para­graph)
Södermannalagen (the Södermanna Law)
Tiohäradslagen (the Tiohärads Law)
Upplandslagen (the Upplands Law)
Äldre Västgötalagen (the Older Västgöta Law)
Yngre Västgötalagen (the Younger Västgöta Law)
Västmannalagen (the Västmanna Law)
Östgötalagen (the Östgöta Law)
136
Bertil Nilsson
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Belethus, Johannes, Iohannis Beleth Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ed. by Heriberto
Douteil, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 41–41A, 2 vols (Turn­
hout: Brepols, 1976)
Corpus iuris canonici, ed. by Æmilius Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchitz,
1879–81)
Durantis, Guillelmus, Guillemi Duranti Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. by Anselme
Davril and Timothy M. Thibodeau, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis,
140–40B, 3 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995–2000)
Le pontifical romain au moyen-âge, iii: Le pontifical de Guillaume Durand, ed. by Michel
Andrieu, Studi e testi, 88 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1940)
Le pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle: Le texte, i: NN. I–XCVIII, ed. by
Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, Studi e testi, 226 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca
apostolica vaticana, 1963)
Samling af Sweriges gamla lagar, ed. by Hans S. Collin and Carl J. Schlyter, Corpus iuris
Sueo-gotorum antique, 13 vols (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & söner; Lund: Berlingska
Boktryckeriet, 1827–77)
Svenska landskapslagar, ed. and trans. by Åke Holmbäck and Elias Wessén, 5 vols (Stock­
holm: Hugo Gebers förlag, 1933–45)
Secondary Studies
Brink, Stefan, ‘Hälsingelagens ställning mellan väst och syd, och mellan kung, kyrka
och lokala traditioner’, Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien: Årsbok
(2010), 119–35
—— , ‘The Hälsinge Law between South and West, King and Church, and Local
Customs’, in New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, ed. by Stefan Brink and
Lisa Collinson, Acta Scandinavica. Aberdeen Studies in the Scandinavian World, 3
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 37–56
Ericsson, Georg J. V., Den kanoniska rätten och äldre Västgötalagens kyrkobalk: En jäm­
förande studie, Rättshistoriskt bibliotek, 1st ser., 12 (Stockholm: Nordiska Bok­
handeln, 1967)
Gulczynski, John Theophilus, The Desecration and Violation of Churches: An Histori­cal
Synopsis and Commentary, Canon Law Studies, 159 (Washington, D.C.: The Cath­olic
Uni­ver­sity of America, 1942)
Hasselberg, Gösta, ‘Böter, Sverige’, in Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid, ii
(Malmö: Allhem, 1957), cols 519–25
Karlsson, Mattias, Konstruktionen av det heliga: Altarna i det medeltida Lunds stift, Skånsk
medeltid och renässans, Skrifter utgivna av Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund, 23 (Lund:
Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund, 2015)
Sacredness Lost
137
Linscott, Kristina, Interpretations of Old Wood: Figuring Mid-Twelfth Century Church
Archi­tecture in West Sweden, Gothenburg Studies in Conservation, 42, Acta Uni­ver­
sitatis Gothoburgensis (Gothenburg: Uni­ver­sity of Gothenburg, 2017)
Nilsson, Bertil, ‘The Provincial Council of Skänninge, Sweden, 1248’, Annuarium historiae conciliorum, 38 (2006), 115–46
Ström, Per, Paradisi recuperatio: Den romersk-germanska kyrkoinvigningens form och
inne­börd med en textutgåva till PRG XL baserad på nya handskriftsstudier (Uppsala:
Uppsala universitet, 1997)
Strömberg, Bengt, Den pontifikala liturgin i Lund och Roskilde under medeltiden: En
liturgihistorisk studie jämte edition av pontificale lundense enligt handskriften C 441 i
Uppsala universitetsbibliotek och pontificale roscildense enligt medeltidshandskrift nr 43
i Lunds universitetsbibliotek, Studia Theo­logica Lundensia – Skrifter utgivna av teo­
logiska fakulteten i Lund, 9 (Lund: Gleerup, 1955)
Sundqvist, Olof, ‘Blod och blót. Blodets betydelse och funktion vid fornskandinaviska
offerriter’, Scripta Islandica: Isländska sällskapets årsbok, 68 (2017), 275–308
Wennström, Torsten, Brott och böter: Rättsfilo­logiska studier i svenska landskapslagar (Lund:
Gleerupska universitetsbokhandeln, 1940)
III.
The Sacred and the Text
Tradition and Ideo­logy
in Eddic Poetry
John McKinnell
I
t is a great pleasure to be able to contribute to this Festschrift in honour of
an outstanding scholar and old friend. This paper is a shorter version of one
given at Stefan’s invitation in Aberdeen in October 2016.
Jónas Kristjánsson1 has suggested four criteria for distinguishing between
eddic and skaldic poetry:
1. Eddic verse metres have no internal- or end-rhyme, whereas skaldic
verse typically uses both.
2. The diction of eddic poems is simple, while skaldic poets employed a
specialized diction which has to be learnt to be fully understood.
3. The themes of eddic poetry come from mytho­logy and legend, while
skaldic poetry deals mainly with recent or contemporary events.
4. Most skaldic poems are attributed to named poets, while eddic poems
never are.
Jónas freely admits that these distinctions do not always work. The poems in
the Codex Regius (K) include examples of both end-rhyme (e.g. ‘vaknaði’ / ‘um
saknaði’, Þrymskviða 1.2 and 1.4) and internal rhyme (e.g. ‘snapir ok gnapir’,
1
Jónas Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas, p. 83.
After studying at George Watson’s College, Edinburgh, and the universities of Oxford and
Copen­hagen, John McKinnell (john.mckinnell@durham.ac.uk) has spent his whole academic
career at Durham Uni­ver­sity, where he is now an Emeritus Professor of Medi­e val Literature
(but officially of ‘English Studies’).
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 141–155
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119344
John McKinnell
142
Hávamál 62.1).2 Kennings, fornǫfn, and contrived word order are also fairly
common (see e.g. the fornafn ‘með sviga lævi’ (with the destroyer of brushwood
[FIRE]), Vǫluspá K 51.2), while Atlakviða st. 32 is as complex in diction as
many helmingar of skaldic verse:
Ok meirr þaðan
dólgrǫgni, dró
menvǫrð bituls,
til dauðs skókr.
(And further on from there the bit-shaker (or ‘the bit-ship’) [HORSE]
carried the necklace-guardian, the battle-causer to death.)
There is even some evidence that kennings and inverted word order existed in
Old Norse verse long before the composition of any skaldic poem that we know
of: a verse line in the runic inscription on Tjurkö gold bracteate 1 (Blekinge,
S. Sweden, probably sixth century), reads:
wurterunoran walhakurne . heldarkunimudiu
Orti rūnar ā Vala korni . Hjaldr Kunnmundi (or Guðmundi)
(H. composed runes for K on the southerners’ corn [GOLD].)3
It is generally true that the subject matter of eddic poetry is mytho­logy, gnomic
wisdom, or heroic legend, but this only looks like an invariable rule because
many stanzas in eddic metres are traditionally ignored or arbitrarily defined
as skaldic. For example, the following helmingr is said to have been recited by
Loftr Pálsson before a battle in 1221:
Hér ferr Grýla
ok hefr á sér
í garð ofan
hala fimmtán.4
(Here comes Grýla down into the farmyard, and she has fifteen tails on her.)
The language here is simple, the metre is fornyrðislag, and Loftr refers to the
folk-legend of the troll-woman Grýla; it may also be significant that he is not
said to have composed the verse himself, only to have recited it. This looks like
eddic poetry in every respect except for its allusion to the contemporary episode in which it appears. Similar proverbial sayings can be found in some eddic
poems, such as the warning against treachery in Fáfnismál 35.7–8: ‘Þar er mér
2
Except where otherwise stated, all citations of eddic poems refer to Eddukvæði.
Moltke, Runes and their Origin, pp. 119–20.
4
Íslendinga saga v. 16, in Sturlunga saga, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason,
and Kristján Eldjárn, i, 281.
3
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
143
úlfs vón, | er ek eyru sék’ (I expect a wolf where I see ears). Many coherent
sequences of verse in eddic metres can also be found in fornaldarsǫgur. Heusler
and Ranisch edited some of these under the title Eddica minora, but they still
omitted poems in eddic metres such as Hugsvinnsmál, Nóregs konungatal, and
Ásbjǫrn’s death song in Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar.5 The common assumption has
been that an eddic poem must contain heathen mytho­logy or legend, and that
it must be ‘old’, whatever we take that to mean. In other words, the statement
that the subject matter of eddic poetry is pre-Christian mytho­logy or ancient
legend relies on the selection by modern editors of which poems to include —
it is a circular argument.
One of Jónas’s criteria remains, namely that skaldic poetry is usually attributed to named poets, while eddic poems are always anonymous. Some poetry in
praise of rulers is also anonymous, but there is an essential difference between
this and the anonymity of eddic verse. In a poem designed to advertise the
poet’s skill and the valour, splendour, and generosity of the ruler he is praising, contemporary anonymity would frustrate his hopes of material reward and
later anonymity would diminish his reputation, so the anonymity of poems
such as Eiríksmál and Liðsmannaflokkr6 must be regarded as ‘accidental’.
By contrast, the anonymity of mytho­logical and heroic poems within the
eddic tradition is functional, because their credibility depended on their perceived faithfulness to the ‘truth’ of the myth or legend they were transmitting.
Of course there must have been individual poets who composed versions that
were in fact original, either in reflecting a particular view of a myth or legend, as
in Atlamál, or in adding new characters or motifs, as in Oddrúnargrátr. But no
eddic poet could significantly contradict existing tradition, and no individual
could ‘own’ an eddic poem or prevent others from creating new versions of it.
Attempts to attribute whole poems to named authors are therefore mistaken
— and so are references to ‘the poet’ of any eddic poem. In a few cases the tradition of an eddic poem may have had only one contributor, but we should start
from the assumption that each text is probably one version among many, most
of which have not survived.
The concept of functional anonymity has consequences for both the editing
and the analysis of eddic poetry. Where more than one manu­script of a poem
survives and there are significant differences between them, it is no longer sat5
SP vii.1, 358–449; SP ii.2, 761–806; Harðar saga, ed. by Þorhallur Vilmundarson and
Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, pp. 410–14.
6
SP i.2, 1003–13 and 1014–28.
John McKinnell
144
isfactory to try to recreate an ‘original’ text. Rather, each significant witness
to the text must be treated as a distinct version, and it follows that we should
also regard Snorri’s quotations from Hávamál, Hyndluljóð, Vafþrúðnismál,
Grímnismál, Fáfnismál, Lokasenna, and Skírnismál as fragments of distinct versions.
In the particular case of Vǫluspá, since the stanzas Snorri quotes appear in
the order imposed by the organization of his prose treatise, we cannot infer the
overall structure of the poem as he knew it, only his detailed text of the individual stanzas he quotes. However, the structure of the Hauksbók (H) version is
clearly different from that in K. Where stanzas or half-stanzas look like alternatives, the acceptance of distinct versions means that we do not have to assume
either that the ‘original text’ included clumsy repetitions or that one version is
genuine and the other spurious. For example, the account of the punishment of
Loki in H is quite different from that in K:
K 34.1–4:
H 30.1–4:
Hapt sá hon liggja
Þá kná Váli7
undir hvera lundi,
vígbǫnd snúa,
lægjarns líki
heldr váru harðgǫr
Loka áþekkjan;
hǫpt ór þǫrmum.
(She saw, lying under
(Then Váli could twist
a grove of boiling springs
deadly bonds,
the body of a deceitful one
they were rather toughly made,
resembling Loki;)
bindings from entrails.)
Some editions incorporate both versions, while others accept K and relegate H
to a footnote. Similarly, the three versions of the stanza describing Þórr’s last
fight at Ragnarǫk differ markedly from each other (K 54, H 47, SnE 25); eight
stanzas which appear in K are lacking in H (K 28–33, 35–36); and only H
includes a penultimate half-stanza (H 57) which seems to allude to the Second
Coming of Christ. In most of these cases it is impossible to say whether the
stanzas in question have been added in one version or forgotten in the other,
and editors who have tried to reconstruct an ‘original’ text have had to rely on
their own aesthetic preferences, and have thus in effect produced new versions
of their own.
7
MS Vála probably results from a thirteenth-century misunderstanding, see Eddukvæði,
ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, i, 312.
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
145
If eddic performers could rework the texts they inherited or import traditional material from elsewhere, we must also be careful about defining what we
mean when we describe part of a poem as ‘an interpolation’; again, this may
amount to little more than a subjective judgement that it does not fit well into
the context where it appears. Admittedly, there may be a case for treating material as scribally interpolated when it is repeated and/or the metre looks severely
disrupted, as in the lines about runes in Hávamál 80 and 142 or the list of
dwarfs in Vǫluspá 11–16, but it is wise to resort to such arguments only when
no other interpretation seems to make sense. Nor should we use the terms
‘interpolation’ or ‘borrowing’ simply because the same material appears in
more than one poem, as in Vǫluspá K 32.7–33.4 and Baldrs draumar 11.3–8,
where Váli’s vengeance for the death of Baldr is narrated in closely similar lines.
In this case Baldrs draumar may be quoting Vǫluspá, but it is equally possible
that both poems are drawing on lines that were already traditional.
The idea that eddic poems were functionally anonymous and liable to
change also forces us to consider what we mean when we assign an approximate
date to a poem. In recent years many scholars have argued that whole poems
are ‘late’ on the grounds that some parts of them show signs of recent origin,
but this assumes a single creating poet like that of Paradise Lost or The Waste
Land, one who must have composed his work after the date of his most recent
source. Of course, any eddic poem can be analysed purely as a product of the
time in which the scribes copied it out, but the only significant evidence of
date is then that of the manu­script, and such a study leaves out of account the
influence exerted on scribes, performers, and audiences by the traditions they
inherited. As Vésteinn Ólason has noted with regard to Vǫluspá: ‘the poem can
be compared with an organism developing through time’.8 In most cases, we
must assume that the surviving versions of poems include material of various
ages, and for the study of the tradition behind the poem the oldest evidence is
at least as significant as the most recent.
However, even the most concrete indications of ancient origins must be
approached with caution. Bjarne Fidjestøl has produced strong evidence that in
West Norse the initial combination vr- became r- at some time around the year
1000, and therefore that lines which require alliteration between v- and original vr- suggest either a date before about 1000 (or possibly conscious archaism), or that a poem is of East Norse origin (which seems unlikely where there
8
Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Vǫluspá and Time’, pp. 25–44.
John McKinnell
146
is no other evidence).9 There are eight clear cases in K where original vr- must
alliterate with v-, but five of them are variations on the single pattern ‘sæi maðr
þik vreiðan vega’ (you will be seen to fight enraged) (Fáfnismál 7.3).10 Some of
these seem to suggest that enraged fighting is admirable, which may look like a
pre-Christian view, but they do not prove that Fáfnismál dates from c. 1000 or
earlier, because this is clearly a poetic phrase that could be adapted to various
situations.
Two other instances of vr- / v- alliteration look more interesting. Vaf­
þrúðnismál 53.3: ‘þess mun Víðarr vreka’ (Víðarr will avenge this) refers to
Víðarr taking vengeance after Óðinn has been swallowed by Fenrir. This does
not prove that Vafþrúðnismál as a whole dates from c. 1000 or earlier, but it may
suggest that by that period there was an eddic poem in ljóðaháttr metre which
included at least some of the material about Ragnarǫk which now appears in
Vafþrúðnismál 44–53.
The other significant example is Atlakviða 2.1–4:
Drukku þar dróttmegir
vín í valhǫllu,
en dyljendr þǫgðu,
vreiði sásk þeir Húna;
(The body of courtiers drank — but those with secrets kept silent —
wine in the exotic hall, they feared the Huns’ anger;)
Here the archaic form vreiði alliterates with valhǫllo, which refers to the
Burgundian royal hall, not to Óðinn’s hall (and see also Atlakviða 14.11, where
it refers to Atli’s hall). Val- in the sense ‘southern, exotic’ also appears in valrauða (Atlakviða 4.6), referring to exotic red clothing, and in valbaugar ‘exotic
rings’ (Atlakviða 28.6), describing the Burgundians’ treasure.11 It is an ancient
sense of val-, as we can see from the kenning an walhakurne ‘á Vala korni’ on
Tjurkö bracteate 1 (see above), and it may be the original one, while the sense
‘hall of the slain’ probably developed in the later tenth century under the influence of skaldic praise poems such as Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál.12 This would
suggest that at least some major plot-elements of Atlakviða — the Burgundian
9
Fidjestøl, The Dating of Eddic Poetry, pp. 231–45.
See also Lokasenna 15.4–5; Fáfnismál 17.3 and 30.3; Sigrdrífumál 27.3.
11
Most other val- compounds with the sense ‘exotic’ appear only in eddic poetry: vala
málmr (Hyndluljóð 9.2), valarift (Sigurðarkviða in skamma 66.3), valbygg (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 3.4), Valland (Hárbarðsljóð 24.1 and Helreið Brynhildar 2.2), and valneskr
(Guðrúnarkviða II 35.3). Only the adjective valskr also occurs in skaldic verse.
12
See Eiríksmál 1, 3, SP i.2, 1006; Hákonarmál 1.6, 9.6, SP i.1, 174, 184.
10
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
147
fear of the Huns, Atli’s treacherous invitation, and Gunnar’s defiant refusal to
reveal the whereabouts of his treasure — already existed by about the middle of
the tenth century.
The narrative content of myths and legends may be much older than any surviving version of them, and although the knowledge of them was also kept alive
by depictions in g­ raphic art (as in images of the Sigurðr story),13 the images on
picture stones would soon cease to be meaningful without words to explain
them. It also seems probable that those words were typically in verse form, and
that they had been for a very long time. At the end of the first century ad,
Tacitus records that ancient songs are the only form of historical record among
the Germanic peoples;14 and the oldest legendary texts in other Germanic languages, such as Hildebrandslied,15 Beowulf, and the Finn fragment,16 are all in
alliterative verse, as are the charms that preserve references to pre-Christian
mytho­logy, such as the Old High German Merseburg Charms17 and the Old
English Nine Herbs Charm.18 By contrast, the earliest prose works by Germanic
writers are usually in Latin, with vernacular prose being a later development. It
is therefore reasonable to consider the nature of the ‘glue’ that held the tradition of eddic verse together and might preserve ancient elements within it.
Maria Elena Ruggerini has demonstrated that composers of Old English
and Old Norse poetry make use of traditional collocations of alliterating words
which often appear together and serve as an aid to composition, adaptation, and
memorization by suggesting each other as poetic possibilities.19 Alternatively, a
surprise effect could be achieved by invoking a traditional collocation and then
making an original addition to it, although this required the poet to have internalized its traditional details. Words are not value-free, however, and traditional collocations were likely to preserve traditional moral values. This may be
why eddic poetry often presents what look like pre-Christian ethics and ideas
13
See Margeson, ‘The Vǫlsung Legend in Medi­e val Art’, pp. 183–211; McKinnell, ‘The
Sigmundr / Sigurðr Story’, pp. 50–77.
14
Tacitus, Germania, ed. by Anderson, ii.3; trans. by Rives, p. 77.
15
In Althochdeutsche Literatur, ed. by Schlosser, pp. 60–63.
16
Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. by Fulk and others.
17
In Althochdeutsche Literatur, ed. by Schlosser, p. 108.
18
In The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. by Dobbie, pp. 119–21.
19
Ruggerini, ‘Alliterative Lexical Collocations in Eddic Poetry’, pp. 310–30 includes all K’s
examples of a string of collocations starting from rún, ráð, and ríða and another which includes
níð, niðjar, nef-, nið, neðan, and nár.
John McKinnell
148
of the ‘sacred’ in a form which seems surprisingly robust and sympathetic, considering that the scribes who wrote the surviving manu­scripts were all medi­eval
Christians.
A spectacular example of a stanza that seems to defy Christian belief both
ethically and emotionally is Hávamál 138, whose subject is a mytho­logical version of human sacrifice to Óðinn. One would have expected this to be objectionable to Christian scribes for at least three reasons: it seems to legitimize
murder, or at least suicide; it involves sacrifice to a heathen god; and it involves
what looks like a travesty of the crucifixion, which may explain why Snorra
Edda (SnE) omits any narrative of this myth, although Snorri clearly knew
it, since he gives a correct interpretation of the kenning ‘hverlǫgr gálga farms’
(pot-liquid of the gallows load [POETRY]) that depends on knowledge of it.20
Veit ek at ek hekk
vindga meiði á
nætr allar níu
geiri undaðr
ok gefinn Óðni,
sjálfr sjálfum mér,
á þeim meiði
er manngi veit
hvers hann af rótum renn.
(Hávamál 138)
(I know that I hung on a windswept tree throughout nine nights,
wounded with a spear and given to Óðinn, myself to myself,
on that tree of which no one knows from what roots it runs.)
Veit ek at ek hekk
vindga meiði á
Where the verb vita ‘to know’ alliterates in eddic poetry it usually introduces
prophetic statements21 or refrains demanding esoteric information;22 here it
probably marks the mytho­logical importance of the statement that follows.
The element vind- is part of a chain of collocations which also includes vargr
(in the sense ‘criminal’) and vestan ‘from the west’; thus in Hamðismál 17.3–6
Hamðir and Sǫrli encounter the hanged body of Randvér:
20
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, i, ch. 3 (p. 13), quoting Eyvindr skáldaspillir, Háleyg jatal 1 (SP i.1, 197–98).
21
E.g. Fáfnismál 7.1; Sigrdrífumál 9.4. In Sigurðarkviða in skamma 19.1 there is no overt
prophecy, but Hǫgni predicts that Brynhildr’s scheming to have Sigurðr killed will cause future
trouble.
22
E.g. Vafþrúðnismál 20.3 and ten others; Alvíssmál 9.3 and twelve others; Hyndluljóð 17.7
and five others; Fjǫlsvinnsmál 7.3 and seventeen others.
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
ok systur son
vargtré vindkǫld
149
sáran á meiði,
vestan bœjar.
(and their sister’s son wounded on a tree,
a wind-cold gallows west of the building.)
The fact that he is sáran ‘wounded’ as well as hanged marks this as an Odinic sacrifice like that of Víkarr in Gautreks saga chapter 7.23 Similarly, in Grímnismál
10.4–5 Óðinn’s hall is marked by a vargr ‘criminal’ hanging west of the door. In
Vǫluspá K 44.9–10 the signs heralding Ragnarǫk include:
vindǫld, vargǫld,
áðr verǫld steypisk;
(a wind-age, a wolf-/criminal-age, before the world collapses)
which may suggest that the coming death of Óðinn at Ragnar ǫ k will be
another sacrifice, albeit of a different sort. There may be another suggestion of
Odinic sacrifice, this time in the form of having died in battle, in Helgakviða
Hundingsbana II 49.5–6, where Helgi must be ‘fyr vestan vindhjálms brúar’
(west of the wind-helmet’s [SKY’S] bridge) before the cock crows. Thus the
alliterative pattern of Hávamál 138.1–2 marks out Óðinn’s sacrifice as the
archetypal example and justification of other ritual sacrifices to Óðinn.
nætr allar níu
Although the situation of Odinic suffering here somewhat resembles that of
Óðinn’s torture for eight nights in Grímnismál 2.1–2, the closest parallel to
this ritual interval of time is in Skírnismál 39.4–6 and 41.4–6:
en ept nætr níu
þar mun Njarðar syni
Gerðr unna gamans.
(and there, after nine nights, will Gerðr grant pleasure to Njǫrðr’s son.)
All the other surviving alliterating examples of a ritual number of nights are
also in contexts involving marriage or sexual relationships (or in Þrymskviða
the pretence of one).24 As we shall see, this is not the only hint in this stanza of
something ‘female’ about Óðinn’s sacrifice.
23
FSN iii, 24–27.
Eight nights in Þrymskviða 26.6 and 28.6, three in Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar 34.7 and
Grípisspá 42.5.
24
John McKinnell
150
geiri undaðr ok gefinn Óðni
This couplet has double alliteration, so we must look at the alliterative associations both of geiri — gefinn and of undaðr — Óðni, though the link between
them was probably traditional.25 I have found only two other poetic examples
of undaðr; neither alliterates, but both are in contexts of thwarted sexual relationships: hjǫrunduð ‘wounded with a blade’, referring to Brynhildr’s ‘marital’
suicide in Sigurðarkviða in skamma 48.3; and sverði undaðr ‘wounded with a
sword’, when Hjálmarr laments his own approaching death (which results from
fighting for the hand of his beloved Ingibjörg) in Heiðreks saga chapter 3 (FSN
i, 197, st. 3.3). It cannot be regarded as an innovation, since it has traditional
cognates in other Germanic languages,26 but it may well have sounded exotic.
The spear is Óðinn’s weapon, and the associations of geirr with words
involving the gods,27 war and Óðinn’s patronage of it,28 military leaders,29 and
gold30 are not surprising. But this is the only example noted in LP of gefa in
the sense ‘to sacrifice’ (possibly because Christian poets were reluctant to be
explicit about it?), and the feminine form gefin ‘married’ may also be relevant
here.31 Although this only appears in the final stressed position and therefore
never alliterates, it may give another hint of something female about Óðinn’s
sacrifice, whose purpose is to gain magical knowledge of a kind usually reserved
for women: the first and last of his magical songs (Hávamál 146, 163) both
refer specifically to female knowledge.32
sjálfr sjálfum mér
There are no other examples in eddic verse of sjálfr in alliterating positions
referring to Óðinn. The word alliterates with itself in Grógaldr 6.6, referring
to Svipdagr, who has an Odinic name and might be regarded as an Odinic
25
See also Gautreks saga ch. 7 (FSN iii, 26) and Hálfs saga v.1, 5–8 (Skj ii.B, 276; FSN ii, 160).
See AEW, p. 634.
27
Óðinn in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 12.7–8; all the Æsir in Fáfnismál 15.3; and
Vǫluspá K 21.3–4.
28
Hárbarðsljóð 40.3–4, Hávamál 38.6, and more generally Atlamál 25.3–4 and Grottasǫngr
15.5–6.
29
Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, 54.3–4; Atlakviða 14.15–16.
30
Atlakviða 5.3–4 and 39.7–8.
31
Hávamál 81.3–4; Sigurðarkviða in skamma 56.5–6.
32
See McKinnell, ‘Wisdom from Dead Relatives’, pp. 140–41.
26
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
151
hero,33 but this may be a direct borrowing from Hávamál. There are thirteen
other examples of sjálfr in alliterating positions, but the words that it alliterates
with vary greatly, with only sonr / synir appearing more than once,34 so it is hard
to see any traditional chain of collocations here. The mystical element of this
line seems to depend on its paradoxical nature rather than on any traditions
inherent in its alliteration.
á þeim meiði er manngi veit
Meiðr is a rather enigmatic reference to Yggdrasill, and possibly a traditional
shortening of Mímameiðr, as it must be in the list of serpents in Grímnismál
34.9 which meiðs kvistum má ‘gnaw the tree’s roots’. It would then include associations with esoteric wisdom through the myth of Óðinn’s other great sacrifice, that of his eye to Mímir,35 whose name probably means ‘thought’.36 In
non-alliterating contexts meiðr appears alongside human sacrifice by hanging
in Hamðismál 17.4 (see vindga meiði above) and with hrafn,37 which suggests
an association with Óðinn’s quest for knowledge through his ravens, Huginn
and Muninn.38 Meiðr was also likely to suggest its synonym viðr, and thus provide a link to the collocational chain vind- / vargr / vestan / viðr (see above).
The alliteration of meiðr with manngi ‘no one’ may be an innovation, but other
alliterating uses of manngi are all in contexts of deprivation of love or trust,39
and the effect of this is to emphasize Óðinn’s emotional isolation, and hence
to call forth for him a sympathy which seems totally unlike the attitude of
most thirteenth-century prose sources, where he is often regarded as a disguise
adopted by the devil.40
33
See Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mytho­logy, pp. 307–08.
Skírnismál 34.3–4; Atlamál 88.7–8.
35
See Vǫluspá K 27.5–7, 28.7–14 and Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, ch.
15 (p. 17).
36
AEW, p. 387.
37
Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 5.6 and Brot 11.3.
38
‘Thought’ and ‘Memory’ — see Grímnismál 20 and Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning,
ed. by Faulkes, ch. 38 (pp. 32–33, 169, 171).
39
Typical is Hávamál 50.4–6, which asks what is the point of a long life for a person whom
nobody loves; for manngi in contexts of deprivation, see also Hávamál 114.4–5, Skírnismál
20.3, Guðrúnarkviða I 8.7–8; for lack of trust see Hávamál 84.1–2.
40
See e.g. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar in mesta ch. 198, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, ii, 86–88.
34
John McKinnell
152
hvers hann af rótum renn
With the possible exception of Hávamál 151.1–3, whose meaning is mysterious, all the surviving alliterating examples of the word rót in eddic poetry probably or certainly refer to Yggdrasill.41 Its only other alliteration with renna is in
Fjǫlsvinnsmál 20.1–3, where it may be borrowed from this stanza of Hávamál,
and it is in fact very rare in Old Norse for a root to be said to ‘run’, either in verse
or prose. The only other example I have found is what looks like a proverbial
saying in Flateyjarbók: ‘var þess vanr, at illr ávöxt mundi upp renna af illri rót’
(it was to be expected that a bad crop would run up from a bad root).42 If this
was a traditional proverb, perhaps the alliteration of rót with renna may have
been associated with belief in the cosmic reach of the world tree, one of whose
roots, according to Gylfaginning chapter 15 reaches down towards Niflheimr,43
thus providing Óðinn with a path to the world of the dead. If so, it must have
originated in Old Norse, since the word rót is not found in Old English or Old
Saxon: modern English ‘root’ is of Old Norse origin.
Overall, this stanza suggests that the traditional resources available to eddic
poets included the three collocational chains:
vind- / vargr / vestan / viðr;
geirr / gefinn;
meiðr / Mímir.
They seem to have been interconnected and likely to suggest each other, and
their common focus was on some of the most sacred aspects of the cult of
Óðinn:
1. patronage of the dead, particularly those who died in battle or by ritual
hanging;
2. a relentless quest for esoteric knowledge, even at the cost of the loss of masculine honour involved in seiðr;
3. heroic defiance of an inevitable fate.
41
See Grímnismál 31.1–3; Skírnismál 35.4–6; Hervararkviða 12.3–4.
Óláfs saga Tryggvason ch. 269 in Flateyjarbók, ed. by Sigurður Nordal and others, i, 359.
43
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 17, and for Niflheimr / Niflhel see
Vafþrúðnismál 43.5–7.
42
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
153
Of course we are not compelled to approve of these aspects of what Óðinn
represents, and the thirteenth-century scribe who copied K can hardly have
done so in his everyday life. The church did not countenance ritual suicide, far
less human sacrifice, seeking wisdom from the dead, or sympathy with a socalled god whom it regarded as actually a devil. But the inherited power of traditional alliterative combinations is such that Óðinn’s situation can be treated
with imaginative sympathy, perhaps even with some admiration, and this may
be what gives much eddic poetry one of its most exciting qualities — the ability
to investigate human problems and feelings wholeheartedly without any pre­
conceived need to arrive at the ‘correct’­religious answers.­
Abbreviations
AEW
Vries, Jan de, Altnordisches etymo­logisches Wörterbuch, 2nd edn (Leiden:
Brill, 1977)
FSN
Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda, ed. by Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vil­
hjálms­son, 3 vols (Rey­kja­vík: Bókaútgáfan forni, 1943–44)
ÍF
Islenzk fornrit (1933–). Rey­kja­vík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag
LP
Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Lexicon poeticum antiquae lingua septentrionalis,
2nd edn, rev. by Finnur Jónsson (København: Lynge, 1933; repr. 1966)
Skj
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, A –B I–II, ed. by Finnur Jónsson
(København: Gyldendal and Kristiania: Nordisk Forlag, 1908–15)
SnE
Snorra Edda (see Snorri Sturluson, below)
SP
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, various editors (Turn­
hout: Brepols, 2007–)
154
John McKinnell
Works Cited
Manu­scripts
H: Hauksbók: Rey­kja­vík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, MS AM 544, 4to
K: Konungsbók (= Codex Regius): Rey­kja­vík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi,
MS GKS 2365, 4to
Primary Sources
Althochdeutsche Literatur, ed. by Horst Dieter Schlosser (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1998)
The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. by Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic
Records, 6 (New York: Columbia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1942)
Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. by Richard D. Fulk and others, 4th edn (Toronto: Toronto Uni­ver­
sity Press, 2008)
Eddica minora, ed. by Andreas Heusler and Wilhelm Ranisch (Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1903)
Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, ÍF, 2 vols (Rey­kja­vík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 2014)
Flateyjarbók, ed. by Sigurður Nordal and others, 4 vols (Akranes: Flateyjarútgáfan,
1944–45)
Harðar saga, ed. by Þorhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, ÍF, 13 (Rey­kja­vík:
Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1991)
Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar in mesta, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, Editiones Arnamagnæanæ,
Series A, 3 vols (København: Reitzel, 1958–2000)
The Poetic Edda, ed. by Ursula Dronke, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press,
1969–2011)
Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Pro­logue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony Faulkes (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1982) (in SnE)
—— , Edda, trans. by Anthony Faulkes (London: Dent, 1987) (= SnE)
—— , Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Anthony Faulkes, 2 vols (London: Viking Society for
Northern Research, 1998) (in SnE)
Sturlunga saga, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols
(Rey­kja­vík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946)
Tacitus, Germania, ed. by John George Clark Anderson (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity
Press, 1938)
—— , Germania, trans. with commentary by James B. Rives (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999)
Secondary Studies
Fidjestøl, Bjarne, The Dating of Eddic Poetry, ed. by Odd Einar Haugen, Bibliotheca Arna­
magnæana, 41 (København: Reitzel, 1999)
Gunnell, Terry, and Annette Lassen, eds, The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to ‘Vǫluspá’
and Nordic Days of Judgement, Acta Scandinavica, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)
Tradition and Ideo­logy in Eddic Poetry
155
Jones, Gwyn, A History of the Vikings (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1968)
Jónas Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas: Iceland’s Medi­eval Literature, trans. by Peter Foote
(Rey­kja­vík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 1997)
Margeson, Sue, ‘The Vǫlsung Legend in Medi­eval Art’, in Medi­eval Icono­graphy and
Narrative, ed. by Flemming G. Andersen and others (Odense: Odense Uni­ver­sity
Press, 1980), pp. 183–211
McKinnell, John, ‘The Evolution of Hávamál’, in John McKinnell, Essays on Eddic Poetry,
ed. by Donata Kick and John D. Shafer (Toronto: Toronto Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014),
pp. 59–95
—— , ‘Wisdom from Dead Relatives: The Ljóðatal Section of Hávamál’, in John
McKinnell, Essays on Eddic Poetry, ed. by Donata Kick and John D. Shafer (Toronto:
Toronto Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014), pp. 123–52
—— , ‘The Sigmundr / Sigurðr Story in an Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norse Context’, in
Medi­eval Nordic Literature in its European Context, ed. by Else Mundal (Oslo: Dreyer,
2015), pp. 50–77
Moltke, Erik, Runes and their Origin: Denmark and Elsewhere, trans. by Peter Foote
(København: Nationalmuseet, 1985)
Ruggerini, Maria Elena, ‘Alliterative Lexical Collocations in Eddic Poetry’, in A Handbook
to Eddic Poetry, ed. by Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and Brittany Schorn (Cam­
bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014), pp. 310–30
Simek, Rudolf, Dictionary of Northern Mytho­logy, trans. by Angela Hall (Cam­bridge:
Brewer, 1993)
Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Vǫluspá and Time’, in The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to ‘Vǫluspá’
and Nordic Days of Judgement, ed. by Terry Gunnell and Annette Lassen, Acta Scan­
dinavica, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 25–44
Sacred Hero, Holy Places:
The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
Carolyne Larrington
[W]e recognise space as always under construction […] it is always in the process
of being made. It is never finished, never closed. Perhaps we can imagine space as a
simultaneity of stories-so-far.1
Introduction
As the Codex Regius compiler moves beyond the poems usually characterized
(though not unproblematically) as mytho­logical, he selects a markedly new
framework within which to present the verse that fills the rest of the manu­
script.2 The bulk of this poetry relates to the history of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani
and the subsequent adventures of his wife Guðrún Gjúkadóttir, relayed in a
more-or-less prosimetrical form. The first three poems in the sequence however deal not with Sigurðr but rather with his supposed half-brother, Helgi
Hundingsbani, and Helgi’s double, Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson. Helgi Hundingsbani
is integrated into the Völsung material by being grafted onto Sigmundr’s lineage, while Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson remains an independent figure, his presence in
the antho­logy explained most likely by the structural similarities between his
story and that relayed in the two versions of Helgakviða Hundingsbana.3
1
2
3
Massey, For Space, p. 9. Thanks to Tom Clark for bringing this observation to my attention.
Heslop, ‘Framing the Hero’.
See Harris, ‘Eddic Poetry’; von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, ad loc.
Carolyne Larrington (carolyne.larrington@sjc.ox.ac.uk) is Professor of Medi­e val European
Literature at the Uni­ver­sity of Oxford and Official Fellow in Medi­e val English Literature at
St John’s College.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 157–170
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119345
Carolyne Larrington
158
Helgakviða Hundingsbana I thus follows Alvíssmál, a poem with a strong
interest in language, synonym, and kenning, one which explores different
ways of denoting and metaphorizing a range of elements and materials in
the universe, ranging from heaven and earth, via wind and sea, to ale and
barley, in the languages of Æsir, Vanir, elves, giants, and men. This engagement with the aesthetics of connotation and variation echoes earlier motifs
in the mytho­logical poetry: the catalogue of the dwellings of the gods in
Grímnismál for example, or the arcane personal name-lore of Vafþrúðnismál.4
In the Helgi poems however the impulse to provide connotative onomastic
detail is not mediated within formal wisdom structures, such as the list or
question-and-answer contest, but is rather present in a highly distributed
form. Place-names characterize and distinguish the heroic landscape within
which the two Helgis live out their destinies; certain places and their constituent elements are common to both narratives while others are restricted
to one or other heroic space. These names are often suggestive, sometimes
obscure, but always interesting, for they convert the broadly imagined heroic
space within which viking heroes are born, battle, and die, into place, in the
sense employed by such theorists as Henri Lefebvre and Gaston Bachelard.5
These names are sometimes ‘speaking’, imbued with resonances that mark
the Helgi-world as a microcosm of the larger universe whose creation was
described earlier in the manu­s cript, sometimes less perspicuous (but with
repeated associations with particular kinds of dramatic action — constituents of Massey’s ‘stories-so-far’), and a few are capable of being mapped onto
the ‘real’ early medi­e val world.6 All however have an important function in
producing the different landscapes within which the events of the stories are
staged; their associations are crucial to building the distinctive episodes that
constitute heroic narratives.
4
Larrington, ‘Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál’ and ‘Myth and the Psycho­logy of Memory’.
Lefebvre, The Production of Space; Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.
6
‘Speaking’ names are those whose constitutents are perspicuous to contemporary speakers of the language, whether medi­eval or modern. Most Icelandic place-names, for example, are
easily construed by the modern population: for example, Rauðasandur ‘Red sand’. UK placenames are usually not immediately perspicuous to modern speakers of English: for example,
‘Wokingham’, ‘York’, ‘Exeter’, though their meaning of their names can be provided etymo­
logically.
5
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
159
Helgi Hundingsbani’s Birthplace and Endowment
The first Helgi is born in Brálundr, the home of his mother Borghildr. The
name occurs in sts 1 and 3 and also in the prose introduction to Helgakviða
Hundingsbana II.7 The meaning of brá is contested; possibilities include ‘eyelash’ or perhaps ‘beam’ or ‘edge’.8 Its etymo­logy is however less important than
its invocation of the heroic locus Brávellir, site of one of the most famous battles
in legendary history, fought between the Geats and the Danes, as recounted
in Saxo.9 Battle is raging indeed in Brálundr (st. 3) as the norns assemble to
determine Helgi’s fate. Bragalundr, where Helgi is said to have hunted bears in
his youth (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, st. 8), is also part of his home territory.
There is thus a clear collocational chain across the opening verse-sequence in
the first poem for the maternal space of Helgi’s origin, comprising borit ‘born’
(st. 1), Borghildr (st. 1), borgir ‘strongholds’ (st. 3), and (in the second poem)
bjǫrnu ‘bears’ (st. 8). These are essential and significant references, symbolizing
both the safely enclosed home and the hero’s earliest adventures.10 Brunavágr
(Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, sts 5, 6), where Helgi first encounters Sigrún,
might also belong to this cluster. Sophus Bugge associated Bruni with fire,
burning — a place that might have been ravaged in a seaborne raid.11 That it
appears close to the reference to Bragalundr however makes it possible that
bruni might rather (or also) punningly suggest brúnn ‘bear’, associating warrior-Helgi with the ferocity and courage of his prey. Brávellir also appears in
the later flyting in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I (st. 42). I discuss the geo­graphy
of the flyting landscapes of the poem(s) further below.
At his birth, Helgi is endowed with a series of estates by his father, Sig­
mundr: Hringstaðir (ring steads), Sólfj ǫ ll (sun mountain), Snæfj ǫ ll (snow
mountain), Sigarsvellir (Sigarr’s plains), Hringstǫð (ring stead), Hátún (high
meadow), Himinvangar (heaven plain) (st. 8), the alliteration linked to the
names of father and son. None of these places are mentioned in Helgakviða
Hundingsbana II, as the second poem condenses the early life of the hero. These
7
All eddic citations from Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Véstein Ólason, ii;
stanza numbering thus differs in places from that given in von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv.
8
Von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 170.
9
Saxo, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, book viii.
10
On alliterative collocations in eddic poetry, see Ruggerini, ‘Alliterative Lexical Collocations’.
11
Bugge, Helge-digtene, p. 124; von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 668.
Carolyne Larrington
160
names encode some cosmic elements, ‘sun’, ‘snow’, ‘heaven’; the ‘high meadow’
perhaps evokes transhumance practices, and they also make reference to the key
aristocratic attribute, the ‘ring’, quintessential gift from lord to retainer. These
places that alliterate on ‘H’ serve as ‘name-gifts’, fixing Helgi’s name to him
through accompanying gifts, an effect which contrasts with the failure of the
hero’s name to ‘take’ in Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar.12 Although Helgi’s estates
have plausible real-world names, this string seems likely to be a poetic invention. Helgi’s liegemen from Hátún (st. 25) will later assemble for the battle off
Brandey.
Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson and his family operate within a territory that has distinctive place-names. The poem takes its dramatic impetus in part from a pro­
logue set in Svávaland, the kingdom of Sváfnir, Helgi’s maternal grandfather;
Helgi’s valkyrie bride is, no doubt significantly, called Sváva. Glasislundr (st. 1),
the ‘shining grove’, is where Hjǫrvarðr lives, Munarheimr (sts 1, 43), the place
where Helgi’s future mother dwells; this may however be a common noun,
‘world of pleasure’.13 The names are auspicious; like Brálundr they characterize the space of the maternal lineage as attractive, with connections also to
valkyrie-places.
Valkyrie-Places
Linked directly to the valkyrie in Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar is Rǫðulsfjǫll
(st. 44). Rǫðull, meaning ‘ray’ or ‘light’ thus connects Sváva to her fellowvalkyrie, Sigrún, who, in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and II, moves through
spaces consistently associated with images of light (Helgakviða Hundingsbana
I, st. 15; Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, 18 pr.). Rǫ ðulsvellir (Helgakviða
Hjǫrvarðssonar, st. 7) is invoked by Sváva as an area over which Helgi will not
be able to exercise authority if he does not abandon his youthful silence and
inactivity; incapacity to wield power over his future wife’s territory is figured in
this threat. Rogheimr (again possibly a common noun, ‘world of strife’) (st. 44)
is collocated with Rǫðulsfjǫll when Heðinn sets off to take vengeance for his
slain brother. Sváva’s places then are light-filled, but they also abound in strife;
as Judy Quinn has noted, even once wed, the valkyries of the Helgi-poems do
not lose the fierceness that characterizes them when in full flight.14
12
13
14
Von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 200.
So Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason.
Quinn, ‘The Gendering of Death’ and ‘Kennings’, pp. 291–92.
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
161
In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I the locations associated with Sigrún and
her valkyrie band are distinct from her paternal abode; these include Logafjǫll
(fire-mountain) (sts 13, 15) — likely not a volcano as Gering-Sijmons has it
— and sky-spaces, Himinvangar (st. 15) (though this may be a kenning and
is also among Helgi’s estates).15 Sevafjǫll is Sigrún’s own home, distinct from
her father’s estate. She becomes ‘Sigrún frá Sevafjǫllum’ (Sigrún from Sevafjǫll)
once her male relatives and Hǫðbroddr are dead (in Helgakviða Hundingsbana
II sts 19, 36). It is there that she and Helgi dwell and whither Helgi returns
after death in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (sts 42, 45, 48). Since Helgakviða
Hundingsbana I ends before the couple set up home together the absence of references to Sevafjǫll there is understandable. The meaning of Sevafjǫll is unclear;
that seva might denote the gen. pl. of sær (sea, lake) seems less likely than the
meaning sefi (soul, spirit).16 This denotation would connect the place with other
emotion-inflected names such as Munarheimr (world of desire) (Helgakviða
Hj ǫ rvarðssonar, st. 43), Unavágr (love bay) (Helgakviða Hundingsbana I,
st. 31), and, in contrast, Rogheimr (world of strife) (Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar,
st. 44), sketching an affective landscape associated with the passions the valkyrie
excites. Dagr offers Sigrún Vandilsvé and Vígdalr in compensation for Helgi’s
death (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, st. 35). Vígdalr (slaughter dale) alludes to
Dagr’s murder; Vandilsvé encodes the name of a sea-king, Vandill (also a giantheiti) and vé ‘sanctuary’. Vé may thus ironically reference the oath-violation
that Dagr has committed in slaying his brother-in-law. Phonically, the chain
of alliterating v’s in Vandilsvé ok Vígdalr cements the connection with víga ‘to
kill’, anticipating both the mention of Vígblær (slaughter-breeze), Helgi’s horse
(st. 36), and Valhǫll (38 pr.), also invoked as ‘sǫlum Óðins’ (Óðinn’s halls) in
st. 50. The v-alliteration connotes a set of places, names, and concepts associated with warrior masculinity and community, contrasting with the s-alliterating formula encompassing Sigrún and her home at Sevafjǫll.
Helgi Hundingsbani’s Sea Voyage
One of the poetic high-points of the first Helgi poem is his dramatically
described sea-journey to do battle against Hǫðbroddr and his brothers and
allies for Sigrún’s hand. The place-names evoked in the voyage are often speak-
15
16
Von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 221; Gering, Kommentar, ed. by Sijmons, ad loc.
Von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 705.
162
Carolyne Larrington
ing ones, although what they have to say is sometimes ambiguous.17 So, for
example, Helgi’s fleet assembles off Brandey (prow island) (st. 22), and then
sails past Stafnsnes (stern-ness) (st. 23). Trǫnueyrr (crane bank) is a landmark in st. 24. Other names in this part of the poem however may be realworld ones; Heðinsey (st. 22) is the term used for the North Sea island of
Hiddensee in Knýtlinga saga; Ǫrvasund (st. 24) appears as iorva sund in the
manu­script, and could relate to iǫrvi (sand, gravel).18 Most editors emend it
to Ǫrvasund for reasons of alliteration (with útan); hence Bugge’s ingenious
suggestion that ǫrva (arrow) is a loan-translation of the German place-name
Stralsund, chiming with the reference to Hiddensee.19 Likewise, Varinsfjǫrðr
(st. 26) has been connected by Bugge with the River Warnowe, which reaches
the sea at Warnemünde.20 There are however two further Varin- place-names
(in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, st. 37, and Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, st. 23);
both of these, as we shall see below, are situated in the imagined landscape
where shape-changing and sexual perversions — the níð-accusations in the flytings of the two traditions — occur; this may militate against a real-world interpretation for the name in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, st. 26. Nevertheless, the
weaving together of places encoding parts of ships with possible genuine Baltic
places gives an individual flavour to the vigorously narrated sea-voyage; the
heroic type-scene takes on a vivid particularity through the suggestiveness of
the landscape-names.
Flyting Landscapes
Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar both contain lively
flytings, verbal exchanges that fly across the water between the protagonist’s
representative (Sinfjǫtli, Atli) and his enemy (Guðmundr, Hǫðbroddr’s altogether more effective brother, and Hrímgerðr the trollwoman). In Helgakviða
Hundingsbana I Guðmundr is charged with being a vǫlva at Varinsey (st. 37),
with giving birth to wolves at Ságanes (st. 39) — likely a reference to the goddess Sága (possibly a by-name for Frigg or Freyja) in Grímnismál st. 7 — and
with being a mare at Brávellir (st. 42) — a place that appears as part of the
17
Bugge, Helge-digtene, pp. 123 ff. regards these place-names as invented by the poet; see
also von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 250.
18
See von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 256–57.
19
Bugge, Helge-digtene, p. 131.
20
Bugge, Helge-digtene, pp. 123–25, 242; von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 261.
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
163
Helgi-origin cluster, but that is more likely the famous battle-site where previous warrior heroics are counterpointed with the cowardly and effeminate behaviour alleged of Guðmundr. Guðmundr’s response to Sinfjǫtli’s charges include
a reference to Gnipalundr (st. 40), where, he claims, Sinfjǫtli was gelded, and
Þórsnes (st. 40) where the girls who gelded him are also said to operate. Within
this arcane and imagined space then are two place-names invoking deities, the
site of a celebrated battle in the heroic past, Varinsey (st. 37), and Gnipalundr,
the last landfall in the voyage where the flotilla was in danger of sinking, fiercely
assailed by Rán and her daughter (st. 30). Indeed, Sinfjǫtli declares (st. 34) that
the Ylfings (Sigmundr and his sons’ clan) have just come from Gnipalundr; thus,
according to Guðmundr, Sinfjǫtli must only just have lost his masculinity: at the
same time as the ships came under female attack from the perils of the sea, gendered female, Sinfjǫtli was supposedly being castrated by ‘þursa meyjar’ (giant
girls). Sigrún’s countering and victorious female power was deployed to rescue
the beleaguered men. The language of the flyting here then overwrites heroic
geo­graphy with the operations of two sets of hostile female figures, diminishing
Sinfjǫtli’s, and by association the Ylfings’, masculinity in troubling ways.
Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson and his crew also face supernatural attack. As they sail
into Hatafjǫrðr (12 pr.) they are assailed by the eponymous giant Hati whom
they kill. Hrímgerðr, Hati’s daughter who takes over the assault on a verbal
level, importunes Atli for sex while invoking the usual níð insults. Only two
further place-names appear in this flyting : Varins vík (Varinn’s bay) (st. 23)
where she proposes an amorous rendezvous (surely linked to the Varinsey of
Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, st. 37) and Þolley (spruce island) (st. 26), home to
the þurs whom Atli offers to Hrímgerðr as a more appropriate sexual partner.
The evergreen imagery must undoubtedly connect back to st. 17 where Atli
wishes Hrímgerðr to be buried nine leagues below ground, and that a pine-tree
should spring from her breast, but its further significance is obscure. The two
flyting name-sequences preserve different kinds of place-names from the other
heroic geo­graphies of the poem, invoking an imagined territory of supernatural
threat, key episodes in the ‘stories-so-far’ embedded in the Helgi-tradition.
Sacral Place-Names
Certain names associated with battle-episodes seem to present cultic or sacral
affiliations. Helgi Hundingsbani’s first major battle is, as his name implies,
against Hundingr’s sons; the sons of the Dog (from Hundland, Helgakviða
Hundingsbana II, prose pro­logue) are no match for the Ylfingar (Sons
Carolyne Larrington
164
of the Wolf ), their altogether fiercer counterparts. Logafjǫll (Helgakviða
Hundingsbana I, sts 13, 15), mentioned above in association with the striking weather phenomena, lightning flashes and thunderous noises that herald
the arrival of the valkyrie troop, is situated near Arasteinn (eagles’ stone), a
name inflected by the beast-of-battle convention. It occurs in both Helgakviða
Hundingsbana I st. 14 and II 13 pr. Fjǫturlundr (fetter-grove) (Helgakviða
Hundingsbana II, 29 pr., st. 30), where Dagr kills Helgi, employing a spear
given to him by Óðinn for the purpose, may well point to a tradition of sacrificial ritual. Tacitus notes that the Semnones, a Germanic tribe, consecrated
their assembly through human sacrifice, after which the participants must all
be shackled before entering their sacred grove. If anyone falls over as a result
of these bonds, he must grovel on the ground.21 The Semnones, a branch of
the Suebii, live a long way away from Helgi’s homeland, but it is possible that
those sacrificed to Óðinn, particularly by the double method of hanging and
piercing, as in Gautreks saga, might have been fettered before they were hanged
on the cultic tree.22 That Dagr’s action offends the gods as well as his sister is
suggested by her answering curse: the shining water of Leiptr and the dewgleaming stone of Unn are invoked (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, st. 31) to
paralyse Dagr’s future activities within the heroic world. His ship becalmed, his
horse sluggish, his sword will not bite, and he will become a ‘vargr | á viðum úti’
(wolf | outlaw out in the woods) (st. 33), condemned to prey on corpses like his
fellow beasts of battle. Here the v-alliteration links the curse formula with the
ominous place-names Vandilsvé and Vígdalr in st. 35. It is not clear whether the
water of Leiptr and stone of Unnr are place-names or features present within a
cultic site, but their invocation in response to events at Fjǫturlund contributes
to the sense of a powerfully elemental curse at work. Myrkviðr too, the archetypal forest of eddic mytho­logy and heroic legend, is mentioned in Helgakviða
Hundingsbana I, st. 51, where, as in other heroic poems, it functions as a significant obstacle within the heroic imaginary to speedy communication between
tribal groups.23
21
See von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 740–42; 746.
Gautreks saga, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, ch. 7, pp. 30–31.
23
Compare Myrkviðr’s functions in Atlakviða, sts 3, 5, 13 where it separates the Gjúkungs
from the Huns; Myrkheimr, the site of Atli’s snake-pit where Gunnarr perishes (Atlakviða, st.
44) may be on its margins. In the mytho­logical poetry, Muspell’s sons will ride across Myrkviðr
at ragnarǫk (Lokasenna, st. 42) and the swan-maiden brides of Vǫlundr and his brothers fly
over it to find their husbands in Vǫlundarkviða, st. 1.
22
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
165
Real-World Place-Names
In addition to the possible Baltic landmarks noted during Helgi’s epic seajourney, other actual place-names appear. Hlésey (the Danish island of
Læsø) is where Helgi lives in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, st. 6; the island
also appears in Hárbarðsljóð, st. 37 as a backdrop for Þórr’s exploits, battling
against berserk women, and in Oddrúnargrátr, st. 30, as Oddrún finds herself there when she hears the dying Gunnarr playing his harp in Atli’s snakepit. Hlésey thus resembles its close neighbour Sámsey (Samsø) in the imaginary of eddic poetics; on Sámsey, so Loki claims in Lokasenna, st. 24, Óðinn
performed a seiðr-related ritual, and it is here that the great battle between
Hjálmarr and Ǫrvar-Oddr and the twelve berserk brothers, led by Angantýr,
occurs. 24 These two Baltic islands thus are loci for significant and typical
mytho­logical activity by Óðinn and Þórr, and also for the active resistance of
men such as Helgi, and of Oddrún, to the constraints of heroic masculinity.
Hlébjǫrg (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, st. 21) may also be a Danish place; so
too, Hringstaðir, both an estate granted to Helgi at birth, and one which he
is said to gain from her kindred after his victory (Helgakviða Hundingsbana
I, st. 56), may be Ringsted on the island of Sjælland. 25 Further afield,
Helgi draws upon allies from Sogn in Norway (Helgakviða Hundingsbana
I, st. 50), while, distressed at his betrayal of his brother, Heðinn leaves
Norway (Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar st. 32) where he encountered the fatal
trollwoman and her wolf, both clan-related fylg jur (31 pr.), and wanders to
the southern lands, where he finds his doomed brother. The two Norwegian
references are unusual in the heroic poems (though of course Ragnarr loðbrók will meet Sigurðr and Brynhildr’s daughter Áslaug there); against these
Danish and Baltic references may be set the Swedish place-name substrate in
the Hjálmarr-Angantýr tradition.26
24
Larrington, ‘A Textscape’.
Læborg in Jutland, Bugge, Helge-digtene, p. 127; and von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 714; for Hringstaðir as Ringsted, see Bugge, Helge-digtene, p. 127; von See and others,
eds, Kommentar, iv, 203. The Kommentar-editors note (p. 203) that both actual and possible
Danish place-names occur quite widely across the heroic poems.
26
Ragnars saga loðbrókar, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, chs 1; 5–6; pp. 221–26; 231–35.
25
Carolyne Larrington
166
Recurrent Names
Sigarsvellir stands out among the list of Helgi’s birth-endowment estates as exceptional; calqued on a personal name, it recurs in Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, here
denoting the district in which Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson is killed (st. 36). Sigarsvellir
may also contain the small island of Sigarshólmr (Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar,
st. 9), where the splendid sword that Sváva offers Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson as a namegift may be claimed.27 Sigarsvellir and the related Sigar- names belong to a small
cluster of places which are common across the Helgi-tradition: Frekasteinn is
the site of Helgi Hjǫrvarðsson’s death (Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, st. 40), but it
is also the place where battle is joined against Hǫðbroddr and his allies in both
Helgi Hundingsbani poems, first in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, sts 44, 53 and
also in the prose following st. 18 in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, most likely
deriving from Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, st. 26. So too, Svarinshaugr recurs
as the home of Hǫðbroddr and his father Granmarr (Helgakviða Hundingsbana
I, st. 31; II, 13 pr.), while Móinsheimar (Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, st. 46; II,
st. 29) is noted as the site of an important past battle. These shared names may
point to borrowing between the three texts within the manu­script tradition,
whether implemented by the Codex Regius scribe or by earlier scribes who wrote
down versions of the Helgi-legends.28 Whether circulated at this later stage or
preserved from the oral phases of transmission, these place-names suggest that
a particular imaginary universe, distinct from that of the Sigurðr-material and
from the mytho­logical poems, is the setting for these three heroic texts.
Conclusion
My enquiry into Helgi-poem place-names was inspired by the illuminating
work on place-names in some of the Codex Regius mytho­logical poems, undertaken by Stefan Brink and John Lindow for the Eddic Handbook.29 I have not
sought to unpack the possible etymo­logies of all the place-names discussed
here: von See et al.’s Kommentar chronicles that rich history of speculation
about meanings and real-world counterparts. Rather, I am interested in the
connections between names, themes, and type-scenes: the contribution which
27
Von See and others, eds, Kommentar, iv, 204 suggests that this name has found its way
into Helgakviða Hundingsbana I from Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar.
28
See Harris, ‘Eddic Poetry’.
29
Brink and Lindow, ‘Place Names in Eddic Poetry’.
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
167
‘speaking names’ make to verse aesthetics. Scribal compilers and oral performers
both, the poets who produced this cluster of poems show a clear predilection
for names which set particular scenes, constructing the varied heroic milieux in
which the heroes and their valkyrie lovers meet and face their fates: ‘stories-sofar’ are staged across separate places where onomastics form a key element in
world-building.30
Alliterative clusters of collocating nouns and verbs establish patterns across
the text which link together key associational networks. Helgi Hundingsbani’s
impressive heritage of property alliterates with his name and that of his father;
his birthplace and youthful feats are characterized by a network formed by
b-alliteration; further patterning of this kind could also be adduced. The
valkyries’ habitats are characterized by place-names which invoke both effects
of brilliant light and, concomitantly, intense emotions. The sea-voyage of
Helgakviða Hundingsbana I takes in real Baltic locations and imaginary landfeatures that evoke ships and the maritime environment. Beyond the valkyrie
epitomization of sexual desire and the allure of heroic death, the grotesquely
unnatural, introduced in the poems’ shared flyting-tradition, is played out
against a backdrop making reference to gods and the shadowy figure of Varinn,
whose v-alliteration links him with other dark motifs, of slaying (víga), sanctuary (vé), elements in the ill-favoured estate names that Dagr offers to his sister to
try to negotiate settlement for his oath-breaking murder of his brother-in-law.
The place-names of the Helgi poems are not systematically deployed, yet
nor is their distribution random. As my epi­g raph from Doreen Massey suggests, the spaces within the poems, coloured by the place-names they contain,
powerfully evoke ‘a simultaneity of stories-so-far’, each one staging key episodes
within the archetypal heroic career; yet within these poems the ‘stories-so-far’
are destined always to end in the same way. The place-names suggest rather than
delineate; gently chiming with one another they weave a series of distinctively
shaded threads through the tapestry of the poems’ texture (to borrow a motif
from a later poem in the manu­script, Guðrúnarkviða II). Here the distraught
and newly widowed Guðrún flees to Denmark; together with the king’s daughter Þóra she embroiders colourful and vivid scenes of the heroic life of Sigurðr’s
kindred.31 Picked out in golden threads, gullbókaði (Guðrúnarkviða II, st. 14),
30
See Wolf, Building Imaginary Worlds and Marta Boni’s thoughtful introduction,
‘Worlds, Today’, in World Building.
31
On Guðrún’s embroidery see Larrington, ‘Völsunga saga’, pp. 257–58 and von See and
others, eds, Kommentar, vi, 663–71.
168
Carolyne Larrington
are southern halls and Danish swans. Men march with red-coloured shields,
Hunnish hordes with swords and helmets follow their leader (st. 15), while
Sigmundr’s ship, crewed by men in golden helmets and with an intricately
carved prow, slips away from the shore (st. 16). Guðrún’s artistry evokes a series
of consolatory heroic scenes, depicting a world like that of the Helgi-poems,
where Óðinn and his valkyries, warrior courage, high lineage, and the inevitable fate of the hero named as sacred plays out, a nostalgic gesture towards a simpler, perhaps more ethically comprehensible mode than the complex betrayals
and deceptions of courtly culture. Within the Codex Regius compilation the
varied landscapes of the Helgi-poems, with their evocative names and clearly
realized locations, establish a brilliant heroic world, gleaming with light from
valkyrie steeds and golden weapons, against which the sacred hero fulfils his
ineluctable destiny in the poems’ dramas of love and death.
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition
169
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Véstein Ólason, 2 vols (Rey­kja­vík: Hið íslenzka
fornritafélag, 2014)
Gautreks saga, in Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, 4 vols (Rey­kja­vík:
Íslendinga­sagaútgáfan, 1954), iv, 1–50
Ragnars saga loðbrókar, in Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, 4 vols
(Rey­kja­vík: Íslendingasagaútgáfan, 1954), i, 219–85
Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes, ed. by Karsten Friis-Jensen,
trans. by Peter Fisher, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2015)
Secondary Studies
Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space, trans. by Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon, 1969)
Boni, Marta, ‘Worlds, Today’, in World Building, ed. by Marta Boni (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam Uni­ver­sity Press, 2017), pp. 9–28
Brink, Stefan, and John Lindow, ‘Place Names in Eddic Poetry’, in A Handbook to Eddic Poetry:
Myths and Legends of Ancient Scandinavia, ed. by Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and
Brittany Schorn (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2016), pp. 173–89
Bugge, Sophus, Helge-digtene i den ældre Edda: Deres hjem og forbindelser (København:
Gad, 1896)
Gering, Hugo, Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, ed. by Barend Sijmons, 2 vols (Halle
an der Saale: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1927–31)
Harris, Joseph, ‘Eddic Poetry as Oral Poetry: The Evidence of Parallel Passages in the
Helgi Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance’, in Speak Useful Words
or Say Nothing: Studies in Old Norse Literature, ed. by Susan E. Deskis and Thomas D.
Hill, Islandica, 53 (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), pp. 189–225 (first publ.
in Edda: A Collection of Essays, ed. by Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason,
Uni­ver­sity of Manitoba Icelandic Studies, 4 (Winnipeg: Uni­ver­sity of Manitoba
Press, 1983), pp. 210–42)
Heslop, Kate, ‘Framing the Hero: Medium and Metalepsis in Old Norse Heroic Nar­
rative’, in Old Norse Mytho­logy: Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Pernille Hermann,
Stephen A. Mitchell, and Jens Peter Schjødt, with Amber Rose, Publications of the
Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, 3 (Cam­bridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity
Press, 2017), pp. 53–88
Larrington, Carolyne, ‘Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál: Cosmic History, Cosmic Geo­
graphy’, in The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Mytho­logy, ed. by Paul Acker and
Carolyne Larrington (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 62–77
—— , ‘Myth and the Psycho­logy of Memory’, in Old Norse Religion in Long-Term
Perspectives, ed. by Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere, Vägar
till Midgård, 8 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006), pp. 272–75
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—— , ‘Völsunga saga and Ragnars saga and Romance in Old Norse: Revisiting the Rela­
tionship’, in The Legendary Sagas: Origins and Development, ed. by Annette Lassen,
Agnete Ney, and Ármann Jakobsson (Rey­kja­vík: Uni­ver­sity of Iceland Press, 2013),
pp. 251–70
—— , ‘A Textscape: On Sámsey’, in Skandinavische Schriftlandschaften: Vänbok till Jürg
Glauser, ed. by Klaus Müller-Wille and others, Beiträge zur Nordischen Philo­logie, 59
(Basel: Narr, Francke, Attempto, 2017), pp. 84–89
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Fifth-Column Mother:
Týr’s Parentage according
to Hymiskviða
Judy Quinn
W
hen I first read Stefan’s chapter, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse
Religion?’, for a Festschrift I was co-editing, I found his approach
of surveying the variegated patterns of place-name evidence in
contrast to textual sources both refreshing and inspiring. By moving beyond
handbooks (medi­eval and modern) and surveying the complexity of surviving
place-name evidence, he demonstrated how the worship of pre-Christian deities appears to have been far from uniform across mainland Scandinavia. He
concluded by noting, for instance, that the cult of Týr seems to have been particularly strong in Denmark.1 In this essay, as a tribute to Stefan, I explore the
expression of a particular aspect of Old Norse mytho­logy in the eddic poem
Hymiskviða, an expression that is at odds with other textual sources and which
suggests that Old Norse mytho­logy was itself not uniform.2
Hymiskviða is preserved in the two eddic antho­logies, the Codex Regius
(GKS 2365 4o), where it is titled ‘Þórr dró miðgarðz orm’ (Þórr caught the
midgard-serpent), and AM 748 Ia 4o, where it bears the name used in most editions, Hymiskviða (the Poem about Hymir). The poem narrates an encounter
between Þórr and the giant Hymir and the two titles indicate the push and
1
2
Brink, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, p. 125.
Hymiskviða is abbreviated in references here to Hym.
Judy Quinn (jeq20@cam.ac.uk) is Reader in Old Norse Literature in the Department of
Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity. With Stefan Brink and John Hines,
she relaunched the journal Viking and Medi­eval Scandinavia in 2005.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 171–182
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119346
Judy Quinn
172
pull of the poem’s perspective, now with the god, now with the giant. Þórr is
assisted in his mission to seize an ale-brewing kettle from within the territory of
the giants by the god Týr, who is presented as having insider knowledge of the
whereabouts of kettles far to the east, where his father Hymir lives. To Þórr’s
considerable advantage, Týr is able to leverage assistance from the beautiful
and sympathetic (apparently non-giant) woman who is Hymir’s wife and, one
might suppose, Týr’s mother. Týr’s parentage is not detailed elsewhere, except
by implication in one of four kennings listed in Skáldskaparmál where he is
called ‘sonr Óðins’ (Óðinn’s son) — though this kenning, and the relationship
it implies, are not attested elsewhere.3 Aspects of the plot of the poem therefore
suggest an orally-transmitted tradition that does not accord with information
about Týr as it is presented in Snorri’s Edda.4
Hymiskviða figures the competitive relationship of the æsir and jǫtnar in a
novel way, deploying shifting focalization and burlesque description to explore
a series of interactions between Þórr and his enemy: his andskoti, as the poem
has it (Hym 11) — the one who shoots from the opposite ranks. His adversary
Hymir is described as ‘inn forn jǫtunn’ (the ancient giant), letting his gaze rest
on Þórr, his own annskoti (Hym 13).5 In Hymiskviða the poet situates himself in the cross-fire between these two opposing shooters and he revels in the
exchanges. More particularly, the poet allows us to get inside the heads of giants
and to observe their resentful machinations against the enterprising æsir.
The plot of the poem is as follows: the gods want ale brewed for them and
ask the giant Ægir to oblige. He claims, possibly disingenuously, that he himself
does not have a sufficiently large kettle. The task of acquiring the coveted vessel
from giantland falls naturally to Þórr, but he has no clue where to locate one.
The god Týr helps out by revealing that his own father, a giant named Hymir,
does have a kettle of the necessary dimensions, but that they will only be able to
acquire it through trickery. When the pair of gods arrive at Hymir’s place, the
giant is out hunting; Týr’s mother conspires with the gods to trick Hymir not
only by cajoling her husband into showing their guests some uncharacteristic
hospitality but, more importantly, into directing his fury at a pillar that holds
3
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, p. 14.
On Týr, see Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 25, 27–28, 50, and
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 1, 5, 19, 40, 114. On Hymir (sometimes
spelt Ymir in the manu­scripts), see Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 44–45
and Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 32, 111.
5
Quotations from the poem are from Edda, ed. by Neckel and Kuhn, with normalized
ortho­graphy. Translations are my own.
4
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða
173
up a cross-beam storing his collection of kettles — thereby breaking it and making one kettle accessible. Hymir serves up three of his farmed oxen for dinner
and Þórr puts away two of them himself, prompting the giant to arrange a hunt
the next day so they will have food for their next meal without depleting his
herd. Þórr then acts opportunistically, seizing the chance to exploit another of
the giant’s possessions, his boat, in order to seek out the world serpent.6 The
enfolding of one mythic narrative within another points up Þórr’s enterprising
opportunism and mirrors, to an extent, the poet’s opportunism in his configuration of mytho­logical material.
Hymir meanwhile is unenthusiastic about the fishing trip, but sends Þórr off
to get some bait. Continuing his excessive behaviour — and with the huge serpent in mind as his catch — Þórr breaks off the head of one of the valuable oxen
in Hymir’s herd. Once out at sea, farther out than the giant thought necessary
to catch enough fish for a meal, the giant lands two whales and Þórr’s ox-head
has its desired effect in attracting the attention of the world serpent. Þórr drags
the huge sea-beast up onto the boat and smashes its head with his hammer,
causing cataclysmic reactions from wild creatures and the sea, into which the
miðgarðsormr nonetheless slips back: down, but not out.
Hymir is not happy. Back at the farm, Hymir launches a new challenge,
requiring Þórr to smash his goblet, a task he can only manage after further helpful advice from Týr’s mother, who suggests he smash it against Hymir’s skull —
Hymir by this stage a bit sluggish from a surfeit of whale. Hymir’s capitulation
is implicit in his maudlin declaration, after the goblet has been smashed, that
he has not only lost a treasure but will never again be able to proclaim ‘þú ert,
ǫlðr, of heitt’ (ale, you are brewed, Hym 32). His personal goblet stands for the
giants’ kettle which is now also lost, their monopoly over brewing ended. Like
the giant Vafþrúðnir in the eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál, Hymir admits defeat.
He does so not by directly acknowledging the superiority of the áss, but by
elegiacally farewelling the symbols of his own superiority, his goblet and the
giants’ capacity for ale-brewing. Having conceded defeat in the contest, Hymir
does not resist Þórr taking the kettle. Týr attempts to take the prize kettle but
cannot manage it (Hym 33):7
6
As Preben Meulengracht Sørensen has noted, the giant is the prerequisite for Þórr getting to the serpent; see Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘Thor’s Fishing Expedition’, p. 268.
7
Týr is, of course, distinguished in the mytho­logy for having lost his hand in an encounter
with the wolf cub Fenrir (Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 29), a detail that might
be obliquely alluded to here as the giant’s son fails in the feat of weightlifting. The main effect of
Týr’s failure is to serve as a foil for the easy accomplishment of the lifting challenge by Þórr.
Judy Quinn
174
Týr leitaði tysvar hrœra,
stóð at hváru hverr kyrr fyrir.
(Týr tried twice to move it, but each time the kettle stayed put.)
In a comic cameo, Þórr manipulates the kettle with such ease the handles dangle
around his heels as he leaves. On his way home, Þórr is pursued by an army of
many-headed giants (called hraunhvalar, or ‘whales of the lavafield’, Hym 36),
led by Hymir. Apparently now in a more familiar and empowering zone, Þórr
is able to kill them all with his hammer, after casually lifting the kettle off his
head. The poem ends with Þórr succeeding in the quest Ægir has set him (with
Týr’s help), bringing the gods a kettle in which Ægir can brew ale for them each
autumn so that æsir culture can thrive. Ægir posed a temporary impediment
to the gods, but through a succession of challenges, the æsir prevail. The gods’
entanglement with giants is highlighted (as is their dependence on them): the
incidental adventure allows Þórr to strike a cosmic blow against giant-kind,
though it is a far from decisive one. Before Þórr arrives back in Ásgarðr, the
poet reminds the audience of the ongoing struggle between the two forces by
alluding to Loki’s involvement in the laming of one of Þórr’s goats, another
challenging configuration of mytho­logical details to which I shall return, but
one that clearly works to broaden the focus to fifth-column interventions on
both sides of the æsir–jǫtnar tug of war.8 With the hindsight of ragnarǫk, Loki
is revealed to have been an imposter himself, working behind enemy lines, in
minor and major ways advancing the interests of giants rather than those of
the gods, no doubt despite the efforts of his mother, Laufey, to bring him up
otherwise.9 Týr’s unnamed mother and Laufey might well have had some interesting stories to trade about raising the sons of giant fathers in their respective
domains, had the mytho­logical imagination strayed in that direction.
But let us return to the beginning of the poem. Hymiskviða opens with a
scene — set in the ancient, mytho­logical past — of the æsir enjoying a meal
together after a hunting expedition. They feel in need of some liquor but
apparently lack the techno­logy of producing it. Through augury they turn to
8
Compare Klingenberg, who regarded the mention of Loki as prefiguring Þórr’s struggle with him in Lokasenna, which follows Hymiskviða in the Codex Regius; see Klingenberg,
‘Types of Eddic Poetry’, p. 141.
9
Loki is described in Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning (ed. by Faulkes, p. 26) as the son
of the giant Farbauti and Laufey, who is described as one of the ásynjur in a þula preserved in
Copen­hagen, Den Arnamagnæanske håndskriftsamling, AM 748 I b 4o; see Snorri Sturluson,
Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ii, 489.
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða
175
the giants, engineers with the know-how to craft huge hard-beaten vessels;
and chemists, with knowledge of successful brewing. The æsir apparently lack
both these things and need both a vessel and a brewer in order to further their
feasting aspirations. As Preben Meulengracht Sørensen and Margaret Clunies
Ross have both noted, the giants represent a more sophisticated agricultural
culture, practising herding as well as hunting and fishing; the gods, by contrast,
apparently just living off the hunt.10 For all Þórr’s posturing in the poem and his
ultimate worsting of Hymir, he could not have effected his encounter with the
miðgarðsormr without the assistance of the giant and his boat.
One of the delights of Hymiskviða is its sympathetic shifts in perspective:
in stanza 2, the object of the gods’ covetousness, the kettle-rich giant Ægir, is
pictured ‘barnteitr’ (happy as a child). His happiness is soon disrupted by the
son of Óðinn most determined to subordinate the giants, Þórr, visiting him and
demanding not only that he brew drink for the æsir, but that he does so often.
That sounds rather like industrial servitude, not a role the giants would willingly submit to.11 Stanza 3 continues to be focalized by the resentful giant, who
is somehow compromised enough not to be able to ignore the demand, but
nonetheless forestalls the contract of subservience by asking Þórr to seek out a
suitable kettle for the brewing. Implicit between stanzas 1 and 3 is the wrestling
for supremacy between the æsir and jǫtnar: the gods need augury to work out
where a suitable vessel might be, but when they arrive at its presumed location,
the giant reputed to have a good supply of kettles neatly sidesteps their incursion by setting them a harder task in order to thwart their easy exploitation
of resources. Þórr’s quest is effectively Ægir’s retributive design for vengeance,
even if it is only a temporary forestalling. During the stages of the poem, the
poet returns again and again to what the giants’ reactions are to their slide from
power. In stanza 14, Hymir’s hugr did not speak well to him, when the giant
saw Þórr, ‘gýgjar grœtir’ (the one who makes giantesses grieve). In stanza 20,
Hymir expresses his lack of enthusiasm for rowing further out to sea, and in
stanza 25, when Þórr attacks the serpent, Hymir is said to be unhappy to the
point of not speaking.
One of the most challenging aspects of the mytho­logical understanding
expressed by the poem is the depiction of the god Týr as descended from giants,
10
See Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘Thor’s Fishing Expedition’, p. 268 and Clunies Ross, ‘Two
of Þórr’s Great Fights’, pp. 20–21, who characterizes the distinction as ‘a hunter-gatherer aristocracy exploiting the resources of a subordinate group of pastoralists’.
11
Resistance on the part of giant-kind to exploitation is also explored in the eddic poem
Grottasǫngr; see Quinn, ‘Mytho­logical Motivation’.
Judy Quinn
176
an identification that has led some scholars to question whether Þórr’s companion in the poem is, in fact, the god Týr. The text of GKS 2365 4o is perfectly
clear at the point in the poem when Þórr’s companion is introduced (Hym 4).12
The poet, adept in the use of kennings and heiti throughout the poem, casts the
grammar of the narrative with precision using the heiti Hlórriði to refer to Þórr
(a heiti which is also attested in Þrymskiða and Lokasenna):
unz af trygðum Týr Hlórriða ástráð mikit einum sagði.
(until Týr, out of loyalty, gave Hlórriði alone well-meaning advice.)
Yet because the god Týr is not elsewhere presented as a companion of Þórr’s,
some commentators have wished to construe the sense of the stanza according to a deduced mytho­logical norm whereby the companion of Þórr must be
Loki (who is Þórr’s companion in Þrymskviða, for example).13 Accordingly, the
word týr is posited as a common noun meaning ‘god’ and, by a considerable
leap of mytho­logical analogy, the identity of the god is inferred to be Loki.
The textual defence of this reading is drawn from the skaldic poem Haustlǫng
where, in stanza 8, the common noun týr is indeed used to refer to Loki, but it
is used with the suffixed definite article (‘the god’) and occurs after an unequivocal antecedent has been established.14 Loki is denoted in previous stanzas of
the poem (quoted in Skáldskaparmál) by a series of kennings including ‘mǫgr
Fárbauti’ (son of Fárbauti, st. 5) and ‘farmr arma Sigyn’ (Sigyn’s lover, st. 7) and
in stanza 8 itself Loki is clearly identified by the kenning ‘faðir ulfs’ (father of
the wolf ) as well as by the name Loptr.15
There is no such context in Hymiskviða and no reason — apart from a desire
to level out mytho­logical variety in favour of a normative understanding — to
interpret the word týr as anything other than the name Týr. (Capitalization,
it should be noted, is not used for proper nouns in the manu­script text.) The
poet of Haustlǫng, Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, also deployed the word týr as a headword in kennings to refer not just to Loki but also to Þórr and the giant Þjazi.16
12
See the digital image of GKS 2365 4o, 14r, l. 2, in the handrit.is archive.
See further von See and others, eds, Kommentar, p. 284.
14
For a discussion of scholarship on the word týr in Hymiskviða, see von See and others,
eds, Kommentar, pp. 284–86; Marteinn Sigurðsson, ‘Þórr’s Travel Companion’; and Vésteinn
Ólason, ‘Formáli’, pp. 216–20.
15
These stanzas of the poem describe the flight of the giant Þjazi in eagle form with Loki in
tow; see Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (SkP), iii, 439–43.
16
See Haustlǫng 6 (SkP iii, 440); Haustlǫng 20 (SkP iii, 461); and Haustlǫng 2 (SkP iii, 434).
13
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða
177
Elsewhere in the skaldic corpus, kennings combining the word týr with a variety of determinants render referents as diverse as a Swedish king, a Norwegian
jarl, the prophet Merlin, the god Óðinn, and a skaldic poet.17 In the absence
of either a determinant to define its meaning or an antecedent to trigger the
definite article, therefore, the word is likely to function in a straightforward
manner as a proper noun denoting the god Týr, just as it does in Lokasenna
(sts 37–41).
In order to make sense of the mytho­logical relations out of which Hymiskviða
is built, we might suppose not just that Týr’s father is a giant, but that he is the
offspring of an ásynja and a giant. This is the feared relationship that the æsir
work to avoid — that the giants will steal away the ásynjur, especially Freyja. In
the paradigmatic example of the taboo relationship, Loki is born to an ásynja
and a giant, though in his case he is raised in Ásgarðr and great effort is made
to assimilate him into æsir culture.18 The giant patriline in that case is expressed
in Loki’s betrayal of the gods at ragnarǫk. Although Týr’s father is also a giant,
according to Hymiskviða, Týr himself seems to be thoroughly assimilated into
æsir culture and there is no hint of defection, even when he goes ‘home’. By the
same token, this quest is not staged as a hostage release drama either, with Týr’s
mother apparently reconciled to living amongst giants. Within Hymiskviða,
Týr provides some further information about his father, by way of explanation
to Þórr. His father Hymir lives at ‘himins endi’ (heaven’s end, Hym 5), well
into hostile giant territory we might assume. To some extent, Þórr’s journey to
giantland is itself a journey through myths; en route, he leaves his goats with
someone called Egill who, according to stanza 7, lives a long way away from
Ásgarðr. We will encounter him, and the myth he participates in, again on the
return journey.
When Týr and Þórr first arrive at Hymir’s home, they are met by Týr’s grandmother (Hym 8). Since she sports nine hundred heads, we might assume she is
his paternal grandmother, a likelihood underlined by the fact that young Týr
finds her quite repugnant: ‘Mǫgr fann ǫmmu, mjǫk leiða sér’ (the boy found
his grandmother, very loathsome to him, Hym 8). More welcoming by far is
the fair woman beautifully adorned in gold, who offers brewed beer to her son:
‘Enn ǫnnur gekk, algullin, fram, brúnhvít, bera bjórveig syni’ (yet another one
17
See Ynglingatal 14 (SkP i, 31); Vellekla 29 (SkP i, 319); Merlínusspá I 14 (SkP viii, 57);
Vellekla 5 (SkP i, 289); and Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld, lv. 16 (SkP i, 827).
18
For an outline of the interaction between the æsir and Loki, see Meulengracht Sørensen,
‘Starkaðr’, pp. 759–68 and Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, pp. 264–65.
178
Judy Quinn
came forward, all-golden, fair-browed, bearing beer for her son, Hym 8). Týr’s
(unnamed) mother mediates between her irascible husband and her son, whom
she terms ‘áttniðr jǫtna’ (descendant of giants, Hym 9). She works on behalf
not just of her son but of the pair of æsir, whom she describes as valiant (‘hugfullr’), leaving no room for doubt about her allegiance.19 She then greets Hymir
warmly and introduces their guests, that is, their son and his friend. Her deictic
orientation is telling. She announces to Hymir the visit of the son they have
waited so long to return to his hall: ‘nú er sonr kominn til sala þinna, sá er við
vættum af vegi lǫngum’ (now the son has arrived at your hall, he whom we have
waited for during his long journey, Hym 11).
There is an unspoken (and unreported) understanding between Týr and
his mother that trickery needs to be used against the giant. When they have
effected their ruse (Hym 13), the poet describes the ancient giant turning his
gaze upon the enemy, erasing any possibility that the presence of his son softens his animosity. Týr’s radiantly beautiful mother later helps Þórr again (Hym
30), by giving him favourable advice, the kind of insider-knowledge that perhaps only a wife could know, telling him that the hardest surface on which to
smash the goblet Hymir challenges him to break is the giant’s own skull. The
same term, ástráð, is used here as was used when Týr offered Þórr advice (Hym
4). With this act, the æsir achieve their aim of commandeering the kettle, and
they prevail against the giant. This is perhaps not so much a case of the ‘helpful giantess’, as it has been described by John McKinnell, as the fifth-column
mother, the ásynja who remains loyal to her tribe despite living among the enemy.20 This kind of permutation of relations is expressive of the fundamental
dynamics of the mytho­logy, of the constant and complex interactions between
gods and other forces.
As I mentioned earlier, Þórr’s journey back from the territory of the jǫtnar
is itself a journey through myths: having killed the giants who pursued him,
Þórr reconnects with his goats. One of them, however, is suddenly lame, a consequence, the poet tells us, of Loki’s intervention: ‘enn því inn lævísi Loki um
olli’ (and Loki the crafty one caused this, Hym 37). Þórr nonetheless extracts
compensation from the culprit, who forfeits both his children. This is presumably a reference to the Egill mentioned earlier in the poem, the one who lived a
19
In the notes to the Íslenzk fornrit edition of the poem, Jónas Kristjánsson observes that
the appearance of Týr’s mother suggests she is one of the gods (Eddukvæði, i, 400). On the positive role of females in mytho­logical quests, see Clunies Ross, ‘Two of Þórr’s Great Fights’, p. 12.
20
See McKinnell, Meeting the Other, pp. 182–83.
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða
179
long way from Ásgarðr and the one to whom Þórr’s goats were entrusted (Hym
7). His identity as a jǫtunn is now confirmed — he is described as a ‘hraunbúi’ (lava-dweller, Hym 38) — and it may be inferred that his children have
been somehow manipulated by Loki into laming one of Þórr’s goats. Once
again, however, the mytho­logical details clash with another source — again it
is Snorra Edda, where the goat-interferer is identified as a farmer’s son named
Þjálfi — though Loki is present at the scene.21 Just as Þórr and Týr emerge triumphant from giantland with the object of their quest in their possession, the
æsir are undermined by one of their own, or one they thought was one of their
own. In this ongoing campaign for dominance between the æsir and the jǫtnar,
the poet complicates the adversity by introducing a fifth-column operative on
either side: Týr’s mother within the quest narrative and Loki on the return
journey.22 And of course also hanging over Þórr’s success is the lack of a result
against the miðgarðsormr.
Hymiskviða is unusual among eddic mytho­logical poems in presenting the
narrator’s voice challenging others to amplify the mytho­logical detail: ‘hverr
kann um þat goðmálugra gørr at skilja’ (anyone able to talk about the gods
may provide information about that, Hym 38). The aside indicates a certain
degree of self-consciousness about competing versions of the mytho­logy and
variant stagings of mytho­logical encounters in eddic verse. Paradoxically, many
scholars have found fault with Hymiskviða because it draws attention to variability and does not fit tidily into a mytho­logy that has been derived in large
part from Snorri’s retellings of it. Otto Gschwantler, for instance, concluded
that the poet ‘did not succeed very well’ in his welding together of individual
episodes while Heinz Klingenberg went further, describing the poem as a ‘turgid, conceptually-inflated kettle-fetching story’.23 If the methodo­logical framework for analysing mytho­logical material is the pursuit of the ‘standard form’,
as Christopher Abram has termed it, then inevitably variation will be harshly
judged.24 Accordingly, Abram considered the presentation of Hymir as Týr’s
father ‘a mytho­logical detail not recorded elsewhere in the corpus, which has
struck many readers as unlikely’ while Klingenberg sought out ‘symptom[s]
21
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 37.
Compare Gschwantler, who regarded ‘the vague mention of the lameness of one of
Þórr’s goats’ as seeming to be ‘quite unmotivated’; Gschwantler, ‘Hymiskviða’, p. 308.
23
Gschwantler, ‘Hymiskviða’, p. 308; Klingenberg, ‘Types of Eddic Poetry’, p. 142.
24
Abram, Myths of the Pagan North, p. 32.
22
Judy Quinn
180
of the poet’s deviation from the established myth’.25 Meulengracht Sørensen
was closer to the mark in assessing the complexity of the mytho­logy when he
observed that considering the span of time and place covered by the sources,
‘we must expect variations’.26 Hymiskviða adds to the variety and it may well be
that Týr’s giant ancestry was indeed a fornt minni, as Vésteinn Ólason has suggested.27 An ancient memory among many.
25
Abram, Myths of the Pagan North, p. 45; Klingenberg, ‘Types of Eddic Poetry’, p. 140.
Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘Thor’s Fishing Expedition’, p. 258. Clunies Ross too, in defence
of her approach of identifying ‘dominant norms’, acknowledged that mytho­logical relationships were ‘a matter of some latitude and imprecision’; Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, p. 58
(note 17).
27
Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Formáli’, pp. 216–17.
26
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða
181
Works Cited
Manu­scripts
Copen­hagen, Den Arnamagnæanske håndskriftsamling, AM 748 I 4o
Handrit.is [archive of digital images]: <https://handrit.is/en/manu­script/view/is/GKS042365> [accessed 30 May 2018]
Rey­kja­vík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenzkum frœðum, AM 748 I b 4o
—— , GKS 2365 4o
Primary Sources
Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, ed. by Gustav Neckel,
and rev. by Hans Kuhn, 4th edn (Heidelberg: Winter, 1962)
Eddukvæði, i: Goðakvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (Rey­kja­vík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 2014)
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross and others
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2007–)
Snorri Sturluson, Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. by [Arnamagnæanske legat], 3 vols
(Køben­havn: [sumptibus Legati Arnamagnæani], 1848–87)
—— , Edda: Pro­logue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society
for Northern Research, 1988)
—— , Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Nor­
thern Research, 1988)
Secondary Studies
Abram, Christopher, Myths of the Pagan North (London: Bloomsbury, 2011)
Brink, Stefan, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, in Learning and Understanding
in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn,
Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills, Medi­eval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 18
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 105–36
Clunies Ross, Margaret, ‘Two of Þórr’s Great Fights according to Hymiskviða’, Leeds
Studies in English, n.s., 20 (1989), 7–27
—— , Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medi­eval Northern Society, i: The Myths, The
Viking Collection, 7 (Odense: Odense Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994)
Gschwantler, Otto, ‘Hymiskviða’, in Medi­eval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, gen. ed.
Phillip Pulsiano (New York: Garland, 1993), pp. 308–09
Klingenberg, Heinz, ‘Types of Eddic Mytho­logical Poetry’, in Edda: A Collection of
Essays, ed. by Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason (Winnipeg: Uni­ver­sity
of Manitoba Press, 1983), pp. 134–64
Marteinn Sigurðsson, ‘Þórr’s Travel Companion in Hymiskviða’, Gripla, 16 (2005), 197–208
182
Judy Quinn
McKinnell, John, Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend (Cam­bridge: Brewer,
2005)
Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben, ‘Starkaðr, Loki og Egill Skallagrímsson’, in Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. juli 1977, ed. by Einar G. Pétursson and Jónas
Kristjánsson, 2 vols (Rey­kja­vik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977), ii, 759–68
—— , ‘Thor’s Fishing Expedition’, in Words and Objects: Towards a Dialogue between
Archaeo­logy and History of Religion, ed. by Gro Steinsland (Oslo: Norwegian Uni­ver­
sity Press, 1986), pp. 257–78
Quinn, Judy, ‘Mytho­logical Motivation in Eddic Heroic Poetry: Interpreting Grottasöngr’,
in Revisiting the Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Heroic Legend, ed. by Paul Acker and
Carolyne Larrington (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 159–82
See, Klaus von, and others, eds, Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, ii: Götterlieder
(Skírnismál, Hárbarðslióð, Hymiskviða, Lokasenna, Þrymskviða) (Heidelberg: Winter,
1997)
Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Formáli’, in Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason,
2 vols (Rey­kja­vík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2014), i, 11–287
IV.
Sacredness across Contexts
From Legend to Myth?
John Lindow
I
n Stefan Brink’s valuable and important contributions to our field, the
importance of place has always stood out. In this small tribute to his work,
I will investigate the relationship between myth and the folklore narrative
genre that is most closely tied to place, namely the legend. To what extent can
it be said that profane narratives in the landscape somehow might have become
sacral?
We owe the technical concept of the legend, as so much else in folklore
scholarship, to the Grimm brothers. They bestowed on future scholars the distinction between Märchen and legends: ‘Das Märchen ist poetischer, die Sage
historischer’ (The Märchen is more poetic, the legend is more historical).1 We
now understand this distinction as invoking the credibility of the genres: animal tales, fairy tales, and jokes and anecdotes, which are usually assigned to
the category Märchen, are less believable, while legends are more believable;
indeed, a useful definition of legend is ‘believable narrative’, as long as we add
‘set more or less locally’ and ‘set within the recognizable past’ in order to make
a more realistic definition — one that would, indeed, distinguish legend from
1
Grimm and Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, i, p. v. The brothers went on to stress the relationship between legend and place: ‘Die Sage, von einer geringern Mannigfaltigkeit der Farbe, hat
noch das Besondere, daß sie an etwas Bekanntem und Bewußtem hafte, an einem Ort oder
einem durch die Geschichte gesicherten Namen’ (The legend, of a more restricted colour palate, has furthermore the special characteristic that it connects to something known and conscious, to a place or to a name certified by history) (i, pp. v–vi).
John Lindow (lindow@berkeley.edu) is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Scandinavian
at the Uni­ver­sity of California, Berkeley.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 185–196
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119347
John Lindow
186
myth, also a believable narrative. Just to be clear, for the rest of this chapter I
will use the word legend as folklorists use it, not to denote either heroic legend
or hagio­graphic narrative, and I will use the word folktale to denote what the
Grimms and later folklorists understood as Märchen: animal tales, fairy tales,
numbskull tales, jokes and anecdotes, and so forth.
Although the Grimms stressed the local nature of legends, folklorists realized that, just as with folktales, the same plots were recorded in multiple places
around Europe and elsewhere — that is, had international distribution. These
came to be known as migratory legends (a translation, perhaps done first by
Alexander Haggerty Krappe in 1930,2 of German Wandersage), based on
ideas of diffusion that were common in many disciplines in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries and came to dominate early folklore scholarship.
Nevertheless, the term migratory legend is probably here to stay, ever since
Reidar Th. Christiansen published a catalogue of Norwegian legends displaying the term prominently in the title.3
Internationally and comparatively, folktales have left many more traces in
myth than have legends. For example, in his definitive treatment of ‘international tales’ found in classical literature, William Hansen located over one hundred folktales but only three migratory legend types.4
For Old Norse mytho­logy, it seems that most scholars would agree that
one legend and myth are somehow related, namely the masterbuilder legend
of the building of a church of folk tradition and the myth of the building of
Ásgarðr according to Snorri in Gylfaginning.5 The versions of the legend generally tell of a troll who is to be paid terrible wages, such as the sun and moon,
and the head, eyes, or life of the person who commissions the building, such
as St Olaf or the local clergyman, if he builds the church before the one who
commissioned the building can guess his name. When all but, say, the spire or
wind vane is missing, the commissioner overhears the troll’s family mention
his name, and when called by name, the troll falls from the church tower to his
death. Carl Wilhelm von Sydow tallied up the similarities between such leg2
Krappe, The Science of Folklore, pp. 101–37.
Christiansen, The Migratory Legends.
4
Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread.
5
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 34–36 (Snorri Sturluson, Edda,
trans. by Faulkes, pp. 35–36). Writing in 1762, Gerhard Schøning (Beskrivelse) appears to have
been the first scholar to note the similarity between the myth and the legend; see Fossenius,
‘Sägnerna om trollen Finn och Skalle’, p. 73, and Harris, ‘The Masterbuilder Story’, p. 69.
3
From Legend to Myth?
187
ends and Snorri’s masterbuilder ‘myth’ in his study of what he called the Finn
legend, based on the version associated with the cathedral in Lund.6 Working
from the premise that Snorri was passing along age-old myth in Gylfaginning,
von Sydow argued that the legend originated in the myth: 7 the sacred preChristian narrative later was attached to sacred places of Christianity. Based
at least in part on the idea that Snorri might well not have been passing down
age-old myth in Gylfaginning, Joseph Harris turned this idea on its head: the
migratory legend would have reached Iceland and been associated with local
landscape, and Snorri took it from there.8 The legend is associated in Iceland
with the berserkjahraun ‘berserks’ lava field’ and berserkjagata ‘berserks’ road’
near Bjarnarhöfn on the Snæfellsnes peninsula. According to both Heiðarvíga
saga and Eyrbygg ja saga, Víga-Styrr Þorgrímsson had taken on two berserks,
and when one proposed to marry Styrr’s daughter, he set them difficult construction tasks to be accomplished without aid and to a strict schedule: build
a road through the lava field, a wall, and a sheep pen. This they do, but Styrr
invites them into an overheated bathhouse he has constructed for the purpose
and kills them when they try to rush out to escape the heat.9
Although Snorri’s story of the building of the wall around Ásgarðr finds
more parallels with the versions of the legend that were collected in Scandinavia
than with the saga events, Harris’s argument is on the whole convincing, and
here it would seem that a legend plot made it into the mytho­logy. However,
Harris does not see a movement from profane to sacred, since in his view Snorri
inserted the story into his systematization of the mytho­logy on the basis of a
guess about what Vǫluspá sts 25–26 were about.
Þá gengu regin ǫll
á røkstóla,
ginnheilǫg goð,
ok um þat gættusk,
hverr hefði lopt allt
lævi blandit
6
(Then all the powers went
to their judgement seats,
the greatly holy gods,
and discussed
who had blended all the air
with evil
Von Sydow, ‘Studier i Finnsägnen’ especially ‘Förhistoria’.
His subsequent change of mind, seeking Irish influence on both (von Sydow, ‘Iriskt
inflytande’), obscures the question I am taking up here and will be left aside.
8
Harris, ‘The Masterbuilder Story’.
9
Heiðarvíga saga, ed. by Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson (The Saga of the Slayings
on the Heath, trans. by Kunz), ch. 4; Eyrbygg ja saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías
Þórðarson (The Saga of the People from Eyri, trans. by Quinn), chs 25–28.
7
John Lindow
188
eða ætt jǫtuns
Óðs mey gefna.
Þórr einn þar vá,
þrunginn móði,
hann sjaldan sitr
er hann slíkt um fregn;
á gengusk eiðar,
orð ok sœri,
mál ǫll meginlig
er á meðal fóru.10
or to the race of jǫtnar
given Óðr’s maiden.
Þórr alone struck there,
swollen with rage,
he seldom sits
when he hears such a thing;
oaths were cast aside,
words and things sworn,
all the powerful accords
that had gone between them.)
Harris thus believes that there never was a pre-Christian myth based upon the
legend, only Snorri’s adaptation of the legend as an explanation of these enigmatic stanzas, and thus that there was no movement from profane to sacred.
On that question we can never be certain. Analogies to Snorri’s masterbuilder story are of course to be found in the objects manufactured by the
dwarfs, another out-group: the golden hair of Sif, the folding ship Skíðblaðnir,
which always has a fair wind, Óðinn’s spear Gungnir, Freyr’s boar with golden
bristles, Óðinn’s golden ring, which makes copies of itself, and Þórr’s hammer.11
There is even the notion of incompleteness in the latter, caused once again by
the intervention of Loki. Nevertheless, the fact that it is a jǫtunn who builds
the fortification offers the best reason to draw the legend into comparison with
the myth, since the Old Norse jǫtunn offers close correspondences to the trolls
of the masterbuilder legend.12
10
Jónas Kristjȧnsson and Vésteinn Ólason follow Codex Regius here; the emendations
accord with Hauksbók and Snorra Edda. Both would move the myth away from the legend;
Codex Regius has hverir ‘who’ (plural) instead of singular hverr in st. 25 and var ‘was’ instead
of vá ‘struck’ in st. 26.
11
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 41–43 (Snorri Sturluson, Edda,
trans. by Faulkes, pp. 96–97). The story has it that Loki cut off all the hair of Sif, Þórr’s wife, and
was compelled to go to the dwarfs to get golden hair for her in compensation. He went first to
dwarfs who were the sons of Ívaldi, and they made the hair, and also Skíðblaðnir and Gungnir.
Loki then wagered with another dwarf, Brokkr, that Brokkr’s brother Eitri could make three
equally precious items. With Brokkr working the bellows, Eitri forged the boar, the ring, and
the hammer, but Loki turned himself into a fly and kept biting Brokkr, with the result that the
hammer came out a bit short.
12
Although the term jǫtunn is often translated with ‘giant’, there is no indication that
jǫtnar (plural) were any larger than the Old Norse gods, just as the supernatural nature beings
of later folklore are no larger than humans. The similarities turn rather on the function of jǫtnar
and trolls as the groups that fundamentally oppose gods and humans, respectively.
From Legend to Myth?
189
Another possible instance of a legend entering into or influencing a myth
recounted by Snorri is perhaps found in the case of the acquisition of the mead
of poetry in Skáldskaparmál.13 This legend has the name ‘Drinking cup stolen from the fairies’ in Christiansen’s catalogue,14 where it bears the number
ML 6045.15 Christiansen’s summary of the plot based on the versions that are
known from Norway is as follows.16 The word ‘or’ indicates variations within
the various versions and the string ‘…’ indicates extreme variation.
At a certain place, a hill or a mound, known to be haunted by fairies, or where
fairy music was often heard, somebody chanced to pass on a certain occasion, in
consequence of a wager after someone had dared him, or quite by chance, or, not
believing in such things, because he wanted to be certain that … In passing, he
asked for a drink, or only challenged the dwellers inside to come out, and somebody appeared, tending a drinking horn. The visitor emptied the contents over his
shoulder, in doing so singeing the horse, or he fled, before being offered any drink,
and carried the drinking horn with him. He was hotly pursued by …, or by a strange
being with three legs, who had to fetch his magic boots (trousers, skis) first, but he
got advice from …, and saved himself by riding into a plowed field, or by hearing
the churchbells, or by riding into the churchyard, or by the sun rising. The pursuer
shouted a curse after him, or threw something at him. As for the later fate of the
cup, it is said to …
Both this composite plot and Snorri’s myth tell of the acquisition of a precious
object or item, related to drinking, from within an Otherworld underground
location. Although Christiansen’s summary suggests that the protagonist visits
the mound with no particular intention of obtaining the cup or anything else,
the visit to the mound is, as Christiansen’s summary notes, usually motivated.
In both legend and myth an Otherworld being gives the item to the protagonist more or less voluntarily, and in the legend it is not infrequently a woman,
13
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 3–5 (Snorri Sturluson, Edda,
trans. by Faulkes, pp. 61–64).
14
Christiansen, The Migratory Legends, pp. 168–77.
15
In this nomenclature, ML stands for ‘migratory legend type’. Most folklore type indices
have some sort of numbering system. Christiansen’s is interesting in that he begins with ML
3000, on the grounds that the international index of folktales goes no higher than 2411. These
types long bore the prefix AT (for Stith Thompson’s The Types of the Folktale, an enlarged edition of an original index by Antti Aarne) and now bear the prefix ATU, based on Hans-Jörg
Uther’s update, The Types of International Folktales.
16
Adapted from Christiansen, The Migratory Legends, p. 168; I have removed letters and
numbers that are used to tie motifs in specific recordings to the summary.
John Lindow
190
as in the myth. Both projects are risky: Baugi tries to kill Óðinn, and no one
in his right mind would be out in the dark of night by a mound known to
be inhabited by trolls, especially on Christmas Night. It is quite obvious that
if the trolls were to catch up with the man with the horn, or Suttungr with
Óðinn, the consequences would have been nasty. In both stories, swallowing
the Otherworld drink is an issue: it would kill the human, but the god can and
does swallow it to obtain it. The drink in the cup is fatal to humans; the mead
of poetry is useful but destabilizing — think not only of Óðinn but of such
human poets as Egill Skallagrímsson. Both legend and myth require flight with
the stolen Otherworld precious item, the owner following in hot pursuit; and
in both the pursuer very nearly catches the protagonist with the stolen item. As
for the ‘later fate of the cup’, it is often a valuable item in the world of humans,
especially in the older recordings.
This legend was widespread in Western Europe,17 and the first written version antedates both Snorri and the Poetic Edda. It is from the Historia rerum
Anglicarum, a history of English kings from 1066 to 1198, by William of
Newburgh, presumably written during the last years of the twelfth century.
Book i, chapter 28, contains an anecdote in which a certain ‘rustic’ is returning
to his village one evening, a trifle intoxicated. He hears a party in a mound, sees
into the mound through an open doorway, is offered a drinking cup, pours off
the contents and rides off with the cup, under hot pursuit. He reaches the village safely, and subsequently various royals possess the cup, finally the contemporary Henry II (r. 1154–89).
The earliest Scandinavian attestation is probably a painting which is dated
to c. 1570 and is found in Våkstorp church in Småland, Sweden. In the bottom of the painting is an explanatory text. The legend reflected in image and
text has several important moments: the troll rock stands open, raised on four
pillars; a troll girl offers a rider a drink in a cup (according to the text, of three
hundred colours); the rider grasps the cup with one hand and pours out its contents, and with the other beheads the girl with his sword (her gruesome troll
body is shown in the picture, the head alongside it); and the rider is chased by
hideous trolls.
In addition, we have written versions of this legend from Norway in 1595
in a visitation report from Bishop Jens Nielsen and from Sweden in 1749 in
Linné’s account of his journey through Skåne, as well as in the story of the
17
For a general study focusing especially on the Nordic variants, see Lövkrona, Det bortrövade dryckeskärlet.
From Legend to Myth?
191
Oldenburg horn, now in Rosenborg castle but supposedly originally obtained
in 989 by Otto, the first count of Oldenburg, in a version of the legend that
may go back to 1599.18
Thus the widespread distribution of the legend in time and space, along
with its presence in northern Yorkshire in the twelfth century, as indicated by
its inclusion in William of Newburgh’s Historia, could be signs that someone
who recounted some version of the myth of the theft of the mead of poetry
could have heard it — even Snorri. The myth itself, however, or at least parts of
it, are older than Snorri, as the kennings relying on it show, such as, for example, Einar Skálaglaum’s ‘geymilá bergs’ (lit. ‘kept-sea of the mountain’).19 But, as
Christopher Abram has pointed out, one particularly interesting stanza from
Egill Skallagrímsson, namely Arinbjarnarkviða st. 6, alludes to the story as it is
found in both Hávamál and Skáldskaparmál.20
Þó bólstrverð
of bera þorðak
maka hœings
markar dróttni,
svát Yggs full
ýranda kom
at hvers manns
hlusta munnum.21 22
(Yet I ventured
my poem to the king,
the bed-prize that Odin
had slithered to claim,
his frothing horn
passed around
to quench
all men’s ears.)22
Here we have both the motif of Óðinn entering the mound as a snake, which
bears no relationship to the legend, and the mead of poetry kenned as a horn,
which does, though a horn whose contents must be consumed aurally.23
These dissimilarities and similarities can stand in for all such when considering the myth and the legend. As I just mentioned, Óðinn drinks the mead, and
the legend protagonist never does. Óðinn can do things humans — or even
18
Printed in Grimm and Grimm, Deutsche sagen, pp. 547–48. See also Dageförde, Die
Sage vom Oldenburger Horn.
19
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, p. 12. Snorri tells us in the passage
preceding the citation of this verse that the mead can be kenned as ‘fengr ok fundr ok farmr ok
gjǫf Óðins’ (Odin’s booty and find and cargo and gift) (Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, ed.
by Faulkes, p. 11 (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes, p. 70)).
20
Abram, Myths, pp. 112–14.
21
Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, pp. 259–60.
22
Egil’s saga, trans. by Scudder, p. 160.
23
Abram, Myths, p. 112.
John Lindow
192
other Æsir — cannot, and to some degree, whether they are related or not, the
legend therefore helps us to think about the myth.
Numerous scholars have, in fact, connected the legend with Old Norse
mytho­logy, but not with the mead of poetry story; rather, they have thought of
the drink of forgetfulness or of drink in the world of the dead.24 Perhaps the
most interesting of these was the Swedish folklorist Waldemar Liungman, who
indeed saw a connection with the mytho­logy of Óðinn.25 Liungman believed
that the legend had originated in north-west continental Europe and spread
out to Britain and Scandinavia, and that it has only been found in areas where
Óðinn was worshipped. He then threw out the idea that the legend originated
in the notion that a dead warrior rode to Valhǫll on Óðinn’s horse Sleipnir
and was greeted by a woman offering him a drink, an image we know from a
great many sources. Then, Liungman speculated, the warrior changed his mind,
refused the drink, and rode away with the cup, back to life. As Liungman himself said about this surmise, ‘Det är en vacker tanke, som vi dock ej kan leda i
bevis’ (It’s a lovely idea that will not, however, admit of proof ).26
Liungman may, however, be on to something important, and it points not
toward association of the legend and myth but away from it. Legends like the
drinking cup stolen from the fairies fit into a narrative system, as does the
myth of the theft of the mead of poetry, about the relationship between social
groups. Liungman’s ‘lovely idea’ is based on the idea that one must stay in the
Otherworld if one eats or drinks the food from there. That is certainly the case
in some legends, but more broadly, the food of the supernatural beings poses a
highly ambiguous issue within legend tradition. Many legends take on exactly
this question: should one eat the food and drink the drink or not? The larger
question is this: are humans and the supernatural owners of nature good neighbours or not? If good neighbours, then patterns of hospitality are at stake. The
answer to this question is, I think, a qualified yes. The legend of the theft of
the drink cup of the fairies must also be read against such legends as those that
Christiansen catalogued as ML 5080, ‘Food of the fairies’.27 Usually there are
24
Lövkrona, Det bortrövade dryckeskärlet, p. 112.
Liungman, Sveriges sägner, pp. 259–99.
26
Liungman, Sveriges sägner, p. 299. As an aside I would mention that little more susceptible of proof are the various hypotheses that have connected the legend with some form of
ancestor worship; limitations of space make consideration of these hypotheses impossible here.
27
Lövkrona agreed with this position: ‘Jag menar, att det ar helt uteslutet att dryckeskärlssägnen har något som helst samband med hednisk nordisk myto­logi. Drycken i dryckeskärlssägnen och mannens vägran att dricka skall i stället ses som ett uttryck för bergtag25
From Legend to Myth?
193
two protagonists in these legends, and the one who does not eat the fairy food
suffers for this breach of hospitality norms — if you ask someone for food, you
had better eat it. But perhaps not at night, especially on Christmas Eve. The situation is extremely complicated, and the legend helped people think about it.
The closest connection between myth and legend is in the perilous escape
with the cup/mead, with monstrous pursuit, as well as the aftermath of the pursuit: unlike Þjazi, whose eagle feathers are singed and who crashes out of the
sky to his death when pursuing Loki and Iðunn in eagle form, after Loki has rescued Iðunn from the jǫtunn, Suttungr apparently survives, just as do the trolls
in the legend. Here the myth is anomalous, since in most myths of acquisition
or reacquisition in Old Norse mytho­logy the giant dies: Þjazi, whom I have just
mentioned, Hymir, Þrymr. This anomaly could perhaps signal influence from
the legend, but that can hardly be proved either.
The distinction between myth and legend is obvious in our received mytho­
logy, where the action takes place in the Otherworld of the gods and other
beings, such as the jǫ tnar, dwarfs, and the dead. But when the real world
intrudes, as it does in euhemerized narratives (which admittedly may not
reflect pre-Christian thought), we can surmise that myths were passed along
as believable stories ordinarily tied to specific places in the landscape — that is,
as legends; or more accurately, we can say that the generic distinction between
myth and legend dissolves. Such would be the case for any narratives describing
interaction between gods and humans in specific places, such as those bearing
theophoric place-names, and we can surmise that there were many of these, even
if they did not survive into our fragmentary written record. And conversely, a
definition of religion as a world view involving an Otherworld and the possibility of contact between the human and Other worlds would see the legends of
pre-industrial Scandinavia as myth.28
As this all too brief survey of two cases will indicate, legends and myths can
have similarities of plot, but proof of influence is very difficult if not impossible to prove. To some extent this has to do with the fact that the genre definitions are arbitrary, as we have just seen. To the extent that the genre distincningsföreställningarnas mattabu…’ (In my opinion it is out of the question that the legend of
the drinking cup has any connection whatever with heathen Nordic mytho­logy. The drink in
the drinking cup legend and the man’s refusal to drink must instead be seen as an expression
of the tabu on food in the conceptions of persons taken into the mountain) (Det bortrövade
dryckeskärlet, p. 112).
28
This is the definition employed in Schjødt, Lindow, and Andrén, eds, Pre-Christian Religions.
194
John Lindow
tions hold, we can say that the believability of legends is anchored in this world,
and the believability of myth is, in effect, anchored in the Otherworld. To put
it another way, in legends there can be interaction between humans and the
sacred (as in the construction of the church), but it takes place in this world.
In myths, which play out in the Otherworld, there is no direct interaction
between humans and the sacred; such interaction occurs in ritual. Although
legend and myth can coexist peacefully and can inform one another, they operate in different spheres of human communication.
From Legend to Myth?
195
Works Cited
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íslenzka fornritafélag, 1933)
Egil’s saga, trans. by Bernard Scudder, in The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection (London:
Allen Lane, 1997), pp. 3–184
Eyrbygg ja saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, Íslenzk fornrit, 4
(Rey­kja­vík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1935)
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Icelanders, v, ed. by Viðar Hreinsson (Rey­kja­vík: Leifur Eiríksson, 1997), pp. 67–131
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Anthony Faulkes (London: Everyman, 1987)
—— , Skáldskaparmál, in Edda: Skáldskaparmál, i: Introduction, Text and Notes, ed. by
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—— , Gylfaginning, in Edda: Pro­logue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony Faulkes, 2nd edn
(London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2005), pp. 7–56
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Lite­rature (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002)
196
John Lindow
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i Lund, 24 (Lund: Folklivsarkivet, 1971)
Schjødt, Jens Peter, John Lindow, and Anders Andrén, eds, Pre-Christian Religions of the
North: History and Structures, 4 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming)
Schøning, Gerhard, Beskrivelse over den tilforn meget prægtige og vidt berømte domkirke i
Trondhjem (Trondhjem: Trycket hos Jens Christensen Winding, 1862)
Sydow von, Carl Wilhelm, ‘Studier i Finnsägnen och besläktade byggnadssägner’,
Fataburen (1907), 65–78, 199–218
—— , ‘Studier i Finnsägnen och besläktade byggnadssägner: Finnsägnens förhistoria’,
Fataburen (1908), 19–27
—— , ‘Iriskt inflytande på nordsik guda- och hjältesaga’, Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund:
Årsbok (1920), 19–29
Thompson, Stith, The Types of the Folk-Tale: A Classification and Biblio­graphy: Antti Aarne’s
‘Verzeichnis der Märchentypen’ (FF Communications No. 3) Translated and Enlarged,
Folklore Fellows Communications, 74 (Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia, 1928)
Uther, Hans-Jörg, The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Biblio­graphy;
Based on the System of Aarne and Thompson, Folklore Fellows Communications,
284–86, 3 vols (Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia, 2004)
The Landscape of
Thor Worship in Sweden
Tarrin Wills
I
n an earlier paper1 I attempted to address a research question about early
Scandinavian religious practice with an approach very much inspired by my
long-term mentor, Stefan Brink. In the first section I brought together a
number of written sources, poetic and prose, which suggested, firstly, that Thor
was associated in the mytho­logy with crossing water and water-dominated
places: sea, rivers, and boggy ground; and that there were certain religious
practices that also seemed to invoke Thor when humans had to deal with these
potentially challenging situations themselves. These practices involve attempting to understand the theophoric landscape and how it relates to human culture and needs, particularly those related to waterways. In the second part I
attempted to find a relationship between specifically religious practices (theophoric settlement names) and more practical attempts to deal with the challenges of the landscape (bridge-building, as exemplified by runic inscriptions
that commemorate the practice). For the theophoric names I relied heavily on
the first paper of Stefan’s I ever read, namely his study of the distribution of theophoric place-names in a Festschrift for my other career-long mentor, Margaret
Clunies Ross.2
Rather than reiterating the primary, secondary, and archaeo­logical sources
presented in my earlier paper, I will simply refer the reader to it and expand on
1
2
Wills, ‘Þórr and Wading’.
Brink, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’.
Tarrin Wills (tarrin@hum.ku.dk) is Editor at the Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Uni­ver­sity
of Copen­hagen.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 197–209
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119348
Tarrin Wills
198
the onomastic and runo­logical evidence that I presented in that paper in order
to support the argument for the relationship between Thor worship and later
bridge-building.
I identified in that study a few areas of Sweden (particularly in Småland
and Uppland) where there seemed to be runic inscriptions commemorating
bridge-building associated geo­g raphically with earlier theophoric settlement
names commemorating Thor. One of the problems with the approach was that,
although there are many inscriptions commemorating bridges (over 100), they
are geo­graphically highly dispersed and therefore difficult to make generalized
statements about their distribution. The maps presented there included nonbridge inscriptions to show the relative distribution of bridge inscriptions, but
I did not take the ‘background’ data into consideration in my discussion.
More problematic still for that paper is the very large time gap between the
formation of settlement names and the erection of bridge inscriptions: a gap
of several centuries is likely. This makes it difficult to argue for a relationship
between the two practices, or a common cause. More useful would be evidence
contemporary to the bridge inscriptions for historical Thor-worship. This
would help to establish that there may be a common cause for both this practice and Thor-worship.
A possible indicator of localized Thor-worship is in personal naming practices. Personal names in Thor- are abundant in both runic inscriptions from
the Viking Age and medi­eval period, as well as medi­eval Scandinavian literary
sources. This practice appears to have arisen after the Migration Age.3
Literary sources from the medi­eval period may help us to understand onomastic phenomena related to religious practices, even if their reconstructions
of the past in general may be unreliable. In the Icelandic Eyrbygg ja saga for
example, Þórólfr Mostrarskegg is said to worship Thor. He determines where
he is to settle in Iceland by throwing overboard his high-seat pillars with the
god Thor depicted on them, declaring he will settle where ‘Thor’ comes ashore.
He names the place where they eventually land (Þórsnes) after the god (chapter
4).4 The saga also records the names of several generations of his descendants,
and a large proportion of these, both male and female, are given names based
on Thor- as the first element (13 of the 19 names over five generations), even
after the conversion to Christianity. While Thor- personal names are common
in the saga, the other major families in the saga do not show such a preponder3
4
Vikstrand, ‘Pre-Christian Sacral Personal Names’, pp. 1015–16.
Eyrbygg ja saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, pp. 7–8.
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden
199
ance of this practice (Arnkell goði’s family has 7 out of 16 over five generations,
and the Kjalleklingar, the main rivals of this family, who also try to desecrate
the assembly ground dedicated to Thor, have just 5 Thor- names out of the 31
named in the saga in the same generational span).5
Whatever the accuracy of the saga’s account of events several centuries earlier, the Thor- place-name (Þórsnes) has survived independently, and the names
within the family are likely to have been transmitted relatively accurately by the
family itself, preserving the relationship between the personal and place naming practices. The evidence of this saga would suggest that landholding families
which worship Thor also name both their settlements after the god, as well as
using the god’s name in personal names in the family for many generations,
even after conversion to Christianity. The corollary is also likely true, namely,
that families with no particular attachment to Thor are less likely to give children and further descendants Thor- names.
To study this relationship I will again turn to Sweden, where there is a large
body of data from both runic inscriptions and theophoric place-names that can
be used to answer this question. The phenomenon of Thor- personal names is,
like bridge-building, something that can be observed and geo­graphically located
using the evidence of runic inscriptions. Moreover, the two types of inscription (those mentioning bridges and those mentioning Thor- personal names)
are broadly speaking contemporary (often in fact the same inscription) and can
therefore be used to observe relationships between contemporary practices of
naming children and interacting with the local landscape. This paper attempts
to establish whether such a relationship exists, specifically, that there is a correlation between the number of Thor- personal names and bridge inscriptions,
such that in regions and areas where the proportion of bridge inscriptions is
low, so is the proportion of inscriptions with Thor- place-names, and vice-versa.
Method
Lena Peterson’s Nordiskt runnamnslexikon was used to identify all Swedish
inscriptions with personal names based on Thor- as the first element (Þōlfr,
Þōr-, Þōra (f.), Þōrbiǫrn, Þōrdiarfʀ, Þōrfastr, Þōrfinnr, Þōrfreðr/Þōrðr, Þōrfrīða
(f.), Þōrfrīðr/Þūrīðr (f.), Þōrgarðr, Þōrgautr, Þōrgīsl/-gils, Þōrgnȳʀ, Þōrgrīmʀ,
5
These figures are based on the genealogies reconstructed in Eyrbygg ja saga, ed. by Einar
Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, pp. 293, 295, and 296–97. Snorri goði was originally
named Þorgrímr (p. 20) and is therefore counted here among the Thor- names.
Tarrin Wills
200
Þōrgunnr/-guðr/-gundr (f.), Þōrgæiʀʀ, Þōrgærðr (f.), Þōrhildr (f.), Þōrhæiðr (f.),
Þōriʀ/Þūriʀ, Þōrkæ(ti)ll, Þōrlafʀ, Þōrlakʀ, Þōrlaug (f.), Þōrlaugʀ, Þōrli, Þōrlæifʀ,
Þōrlæikʀ, Þōrlǫf (f.), Þōrmarr, Þōrmōðr, Þōrmundr, Þōrniūtr, Þōrnȳ (f.), Þōrr,
Þōrstæinn, Þōrulfʀ, Þōrunnr/-uðr (f.), Þōr(v)aldr, Þōrviðr, Þȳrvī/Þōrvī (f.)).6
Uncertain readings were removed and alternative interpretations resolved as a
single reference.
The previous study found bridge inscriptions by doing a simple search
for ‘bridge’ on translations in Rundata. This data was replaced in the present
study by using all inscriptions listed under brō and its compounds (hlaðbrō and
stæinbrō) in Peterson’s Svenskt Runordsregister, which provides more reliable
results.7
The existing database contains almost all Swedish inscriptions and coordinates based on Rundata, and is described more fully in my earlier article.8 In
addition, the previous data deriving from Brink9 was again used in this study,
also incorporated into the database as described in my earlier article on the
topic. The two new datasets were matched to the earlier database by normalizing the two sets of sigla to equivalent forms. This resulted in 98 per cent of
Peterson’s sigla matched to inscriptions with coordinates in the database. The
resulting table was exported for use in GIS software (QGIS).
Regional Differences
Table 14.1 shows the regions as classified by Sveriges runinskrifter with the total
number in the database that have coordinates available in the database (this
will differ from the latest figures in Rundata). The number of inscriptions with
brō are shown in the third column, as well as the proportion by region, and the
expected distribution if the overall proportion is applied. The same set of figures is used for Thor- personal names.
The expected number of inscriptions in each category represents the
number of inscriptions that would be found in each region if the bridge and
Thor- inscriptions were distributed evenly throughout Sweden. 3.26 per cent
of inscriptions throughout Sweden mention brō and 10.3 per cent have Thor-
6
7
8
9
Peterson, Nordiskt runnamnslexikon, pp. 227–38.
Peterson, Svenskt runordsregister.
Wills, ‘Þórr and Wading’, p. 421.
Brink, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’.
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden
201
Table 14.1. Incidence of Thor- and bridge inscriptions by Swedish region.
Thor- personal names
Region
Total
inscriptions
Observed
Proportion
Expected
Observed
Proportion
Expected
Bridge inscriptions
G
401
0
0.0000
13
4
0.0100
41
Gs
23
0
0.0000
1
2
0.0870
2
Hs
20
1
0.0500
1
4
0.2000
2
M
18
0
0.0000
1
3
0.1667
2
Nä
39
0
0.0000
1
2
0.0513
4
Sm
189
9
0.0476
6
17
0.0899
19
Sö
452
14
0.0310
15
72
0.1593
46
U
1468
76
0.0518
48
159
0.1083
151
Vg
313
5
0.0160
10
42
0.1342
32
Vs
36
3
0.0833
1
2
0.0556
4
Ög
445
8
0.0180
15
47
0.1056
46
Öl
182
1
0.0055
6
14
0.0769
19
Totals
3586
117
0.0326
368
0.1026
names, so in a region with 1000 inscriptions, the expected number of brō
inscriptions would be 33 and Thor- name inscriptions would be 103.
We can interpret this information using statistical methods to determine
the probability that the observed differences between the observed and statistically expected number of inscriptions arose by chance. Applying a chi-squared
test to the observed and expected distributions yields very high significance (p
<0.005) for possible regional variation in both brō inscriptions and those with
Thor- names, even when discounting the regions with fewer inscriptions (Gs,
Hs, M, Nä, and Vs). Although it is tempting to make conclusions at this apparently positive result, I have never managed not to get highly significant results
when applying chi-squared tests to geo­g raphical data.10 This means that such
a method does not appear to be able to disprove a given hypothesis using realworld geo­graphical data. I therefore present here a second approach.
10
See also Wills, ‘Þórr and Wading’, p. 421.
202
Tarrin Wills
Figure 14.1. Relationship of Thor- names and bridges in inscriptions by region. Figure by author.
Figure 14.1 plots the relationship between the two types of inscription in
order to test the potential correlation between them. The regions with few
inscriptions (less than 100 in total) have been removed, as the incidence of
bridge inscriptions in particular is so low that there are a number of zero values
that distort the data. The proportion value from the table is used rather than
the overall incidence, as this gives a better indication of possible correlation
(regions with more inscriptions will have a higher incidence of both types, but
the observed correlation will then be due to the overall number of inscriptions
in the region, not the relationship between the two specific types of inscription). The resulting trendline is also shown in the figure.
The correlation of these values is 0.473 (Pearson’s r), showing a moderate
positive correlation between bridge inscriptions and inscriptions with Thorpersonal names by region. That is, the higher the rate of bridge inscriptions in
a region, the higher the rate of Thor- personal names in inscriptions, and viceversa.
The two regions of Sm and U (Småland and Uppland) have a higher proportion of bridge inscriptions than the other regions, and it is probably for this reason that these areas yielded fruitful results for my previously published analysis.
In the next section I will revisit these areas to examine the local distribution of
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden
203
Figure 14.2. Northern Småland. Figure by author.
these inscription types, as well as looking at the regions which lie close to the
trendline in Figure 14.1 and are therefore more typical of the distribution of the
two types of inscription, namely Östergötland (Ög) and Södermanland (Sö).
Local Differences
In this section Thor- settlement names are used to identify areas which can then
be more closely examined for a possible relationship between runic inscriptions
mentioning bridges and those mentioning persons with Thor- names.
Småland (Sm)
Figure 14.2 shows a part of northern Småland, showing Thor- place-names
(from Brink) as grey diamonds; other theophoric place-names as white diamonds; inscriptions with the word brō as grey stars; inscriptions with Thorpersonal names as grey circles (where two appear in the same location they
will appear darker, as will inscriptions where there is both a bridge and a Thorname); all other inscriptions are shown as white circles.
Tarrin Wills
204
Figure 14.3. Uppland (detail). Figure by author. (For key, see Fig. 14.2.)
In the area shown in the figure there are two Thor- place-names (Torsjö
and Torset) and one Frey- place-name (Fröset). In the areas closest to the
Thor- place-names there are 7 inscriptions with Thor- personal names and 39
without (expected 5 such inscriptions based on Sweden-wide distribution, and
3.5 based on Småland-wide distribution). There are also 7 bridge inscriptions
(expected 2 (Sweden) or 3 (Småland)). Both inscription types occur at a significantly higher rate than either the regional or national proportion.
Uppland (U)
In the following discussion I use boundaries between local areas in the maps
based on practical proximity to theophoric settlement names. These boundaries can of course be refined for the purposes of analysis, but do not greatly
affect the results presented here.
Figure 14.3 uses the same legend as Figure 14.2 and shows part of Uppland.
Using the Thor- settlement names as the focus for examination of the runic
inscriptions we can observe the following local distributions (not all features
may be visible on the printed map).
Around the westernmost two place-names (Torslunda, Torstuna), there are
4 inscriptions with Thor- personal names (out of 19; expected 2). There is one
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden
205
bridge inscription, which is the same as the expected number for both Sweden
and Uppland.
Moving east, there is a Thor- settlement name next to a Frey- one (Torslunda,
Fröslunda). Immediately around these we find 1 inscription with a Thor- placename (out of 9; expected 1) and no bridge inscriptions.
In the local area in the north of the map there is one Thor- settlement name
(Torsbro) which in itself suggests earlier bridge-building practices associated
with the god. Around this settlement there are 12 inscriptions with Thor- personal names (out of 40; expected 5) and 5 bridge inscriptions (expected 1.5–2,
depending on whether the Sweden-wide or Uppland rate is applied).
The easternmost Thor- settlement name shown (Torslunda) is in an area
with a very high number of runic inscriptions. Around this settlement there are
8 inscriptions with Thor- personal names (out of 45; expected 5) and 4 bridge
inscriptions (expected 1.5–2).
Not shown on the map is the island of Färingsö in Mälaren with one surviving theophoric settlement name (Torslunda). On the island there are 3 inscriptions with Thor- personal names (out of 20; expected 2) with a further two
such inscriptions on the closest points to the island. There are also two bridge
inscriptions on the island (expected 1).
These particular areas show a three-way correlation between the Thor- settlement names, bridge inscriptions, and inscriptions with Thor- personal names,
with both inscription types showing higher rates of occurrence than elsewhere
in the region or country. Where Thor- settlement names are not dominant (e.g.
around Torslunda-Fröslunda) the rate of both types of inscription is either typical of the region or lower.
Östergötland (Ög)
This region is perhaps easier to analyse because of the way in which it has been
populated, allowing for slightly clearer ways of dividing local areas.
Figure 14.4 has the same legend as Figure 14.2. In Östergötland the rate of
Thor- names is very close to the Sweden-wide rate. We can observe three separate regions with similar patterns of inscriptions.
In the north-east (around Norrköping), there are 3 Thor- settlement names
and two other theophoric settlement names. Out of the 41 inscriptions in the
surrounding are there are 16 inscriptions with Thor- personal names (expected
4) and 2 brō inscriptions (expected 1.3 based on the Sweden-wide rate or 0.7
based on the regional rate).
Tarrin Wills
206
Figure 14.4. Östergötland. Figure by author. (For key, see Fig. 14.2.)
In the west of the region (closer to Vättern) there is a Thor- settlement name
(Torsnäs) and approximately 64 inscriptions in total; 12 of these have Thorpersonal names (expected 6) and 2 brō inscriptions (expected 2 (Sweden) or 1
(region)).
In the centre of the region (around Linköping ) Frey- settlement names
dominate. However, there is a higher than expected rate of inscriptions with
Thor- personal names (10 out of 61 inscriptions, expected 6), and brō inscriptions (4, expected 2 (Sweden) or 1 (region)).
In the southern part of the region around Odensvi (not shown), where there
is one Thor- settlement name and three other theophoric settlement names,
there are no inscriptions with Thor- personal names (out of 16, expected 2) and
no bridge inscriptions.
These figures show that there are local concentrations of Thor- personal
names in inscriptions and bridge inscriptions, and these are mostly, but not
exclusively, associated with Thor- place-names as the dominant theophoric settlement name type.
Södermanland (Sö)
Södermanland also lies close to the trendline for the relationship between
inscriptions with brō and those with Thor- personal names. The region has very
few surviving Thor- settlement names. However, where there are bridge inscriptions we can observe a localized relationship between these inscriptions and
ones with Thor- personal names. For example, near Huddinge there are two
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden
207
bridge inscriptions and in the surrounding area there are 18 inscriptions, 9 of
which have Thor- names (expected number is 2 according to the Sweden-wide
rate, or 3 according to the Södermanland rate).
Conclusion
There is a clearly observable relationship between the occurrence of inscriptions
with Thor- personal names and those commemorating bridges. The correlation
is moderate at the regional level, and in the selected local areas investigated
here there appears to be a very strong relationship. This suggests that the practice of constructing and commemorating bridges was geo­graphically associated
with the practice of naming children with Thor- based personal names.
In locations where Thor- settlement names dominate, either as the only surviving theophoric name or the majority type, in surrounding areas we observe
normally at least twice as many inscriptions with Thor- personal names as the
normal distribution in either Sweden or the region. Where there are other theophoric names, the distribution is often typical or lower than average, although
this is not always the case. The relationship between Thor- personal names and
bridge inscriptions appears to be stronger than that between either type of
inscription and theophoric settlement names. This may be a reflection of the
presumably large time-gap between the settlement names and the runic inscriptions, where a possible early relationship between the god and the landscape
becomes weaker over time. The relationship is stronger between the contemporary phenomena.
To interpret this relationship, I refer back to my previous paper which shows
an association in a range of literary sources between Thor and crossing water:
sailing, wading, and traversing boggy ground. In the areas discussed above, perhaps arising from the challenges of the local landscape itself, we have two related
phenomena: commemoration of Thor (as shown in naming practices of both
people and places) and later attempts to deal with the water in the landscape (as
shown in bridge building). The actual religious significance of these practices
varies, particularly with the conversion to Christianity. Thor- personal names
may have been originally associated with familial religious preference for Thor
worship, but the continued use of the names does not appear to have caused
problems in a conversion context and family naming practices may have continued with minimal influence from the major religious change. Bridge-building
is very much associated with Christian values elsewhere in early Europe, and
the inscriptions which commemorate this practice often use Christian invoca-
208
Tarrin Wills
tions (e.g. kuþ × hialbi × ont × hans ‘may God help his soul’, Sm 137). The
close geo­g raphical association with the Thor- settlement and personal names
suggests that both practices arose from a single cause, perhaps the challenges
of the landscape itself, or the religious relationship to the landscape. Thor may
have been important to farming families in such areas because of his perceived
ability to assist in controlling the weather and travelling across the landscape —
a boggy landscape or one traversed by many waterways would have been highly
affected by rainfall, for example, and which may in turn affect grazing, farming,
and trading. In the Christian era, bridge-building may have been a more practical, modern way of dealing with the challenges of the landscape, but still with
religious significance.
There is a great deal of conjecture in this interpretation, particularly in the
potential religious significance of personal naming practices. The local correlation between bridge inscriptions and those with Thor- personal names nevertheless appears to be strong, and could be further investigated by investigating
incidence by district or parish.
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden
209
Works Cited
The full map data used in this paper is available at: <https://goo.gl/ByXaq3> [accessed 1
December 2019]
Primary Sources
Eyrbygg ja saga, in Eyrbygg ja saga / Brands þáttr ǫrva / Eiríks saga rauða / Grœnlendinga
saga / Grœnlendinga þáttr, ed. by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson,
Íslenzk fornrit, 4 (Rey­kja­vík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1935), pp. 3–184
Secondary Studies
Brink, Stefan, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, in Learning and Understanding
in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn,
Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 105–36
Peterson, Lena, Svenskt runordsregister, Runrön, 2, 3rd rev. edn (Uppsala: Institutet för
språk och folkminne, 2007)
—— , Nordiskt runnamnslexikon, 5th rev. edn (Uppsala: Institutet för språk och folkminne, 2007) <https://www.isof.se/download/18.1708c59f15a1ca6ae3255f5/
1529494663597/Runnamnslexikon_T%20141106.pdf> [accessed 8 May 2018]
Rundata — Samnordisk runtextdatabas, Department of Scandinavian Languages, Upp­
sala Uni­ver­sity (version 3.1, May 2015) <http://www.nordiska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm> [accessed 15 January 2016]
Vikstrand, Per, ‘Pre-Christian Sacral Personal Names in Scandinavia during the ProtoScandinavian Period’, in Names in Multi-Lingual, -Cultural and -Ethnic Contact:
Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17–22,
2008 (Toronto: York Uni­ver­sity, 2009), pp. 1012–18 <https://yorkspace.library.
yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/4045/icos23_1012.pdf> [accessed 6 May
2018]
Wills, Tarrin, ‘Þórr and Wading’, in Die Faszination des Verborgenen und seine Ent­schlüs­
selung–Rāđi saʀ kunni: Beiträge zur Runo­logie, skandinavistischen Mediävistik und
ger­manischen Sprachwissenschaft, ed. by Jana Krüger and others, Reallexikon der
Ger­manischen Altertumskunde: Ergänzungsbände, 101 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017),
pp. 411–28
Conversion, Popular Religion,
and Syncretism: Some Reflections
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
T
he background of this article is that last winter I came across Karen
Louise Jolly’s book Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms
in Context, printed in 1996,1 and I was fascinated by her approach to the
concept of popular religion. She tests her ideas on manu­scripts from late AngloSaxon England that feature charms and an apparent mixture of pre-Christian
and Christian elements. A month or two later I attended an interesting lecture
by a guest scholar at the Faculty of Theo­logy, Uppsala Uni­ver­sity, Daniel Waller
from the Uni­ver­sity of Groningen, about the so-called demon bowls from the
Aramaic and Babylonian cultures of the Middle East, simple earthenware bowls
with a charm against demons written in a spiral on the inside. Such bowls could
be placed upside down either in a house or outside. The incantations were then
assumed to keep the demons away. It was a widespread practice in the areas of
Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor in the same period to use amulets written on
metal sheets to ward off the powers of evil, to heal people, or to gain the love of
a person, but demon bowls were present there as well.2 The common denomina1
Jolly, Popular Religion.
Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, pp. 9 ff.; Shaked, ‘Popular Religion in
Sasanian Babylonia’.
2
Anne-Sofie Gräslund (anne-sofie.graslund@arkeo­logi.uu.se) is Professor Emerita in Archaeo­
logy at Uppsala Uni­ver­sity. Her field of research is the second half of the first millennium ad,
mainly the Viking Age: burial customs and religious issues like conversion and Christianization,
rune stones, art, and ornamentation, as well as gender studies.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 211–228
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119349
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
212
tor for these two pieces of work is their focus on expressions of popular religion
in incantations, consisting of, in the first case, pre-Christian and Christian formulas, and in the second case Jewish, Aramaic, and later also Muslim formulas
on bowls used up to early modern times in the Middle East.
After this digression to the Middle East, which shows the universal human
need for amulets and charms for protection and happiness, let us now turn to
the material from Anglo-Saxon England.
From the beginning, Christianity was a religion for the poor and vulnerable
people. But at the second half of the fourth century it became the official religion of the Roman Empire and thus became seen as a source of prestige, offering status, power, and wealth. It was this type of heroic Christianity for the elite
and for warriors that was taken up by the Germanic tribes in Western Europe.3
The Christianization of England started at the beginning of the seventh century when Pope Gregory I wrote a letter concerning pagan temples and idols.
The letter, dated 18 July 601 ad, was sent to the Abbot Mellitus and has been
preserved through Bede:
Cum ergo Deus omnipotens uos ad reuerentissimum uirum fratrem nostrum
Augustinum episcopum perduxerit, dicite ei quid diu mecum de causa Anglorum
cogitans tractaui – uidelicet quia fana idolorum destrui in eadem gente minime
debeant, sed ipsa quae in eis sunt idola destruantur, aqua benedicta fiat, in eisdem
fanis aspergatur, altaria construantur, reliquiae ponantur, quia, si fana eadem bene
constructa sunt, necesse est ut a cultu daemonum in obseqio ueri Dei debeant
commutari, ut dum gens ipsa eadem fana sua non uidet destrui, de corde errorem
deponat, et Deum uerum cognoscens ac adorans, ad loca quae consueuit familiarius concurrat.4
(When, then, Almighty God shall bring you unto our most reverend brother
Augustine, bishop, tell him what I have long time devised with myself of the cause
of the English: that is, to wit, that the temples of the idols in the said country ought
not to be broken; but the idols alone which be in them; that holy water be made
and sprinkled about the same temples, altars builded, relics placed: for if the said
temples be well built, it is needful that they be altered from the worshipping of devils into the service of the true God; that whiles the people doth not see these their
temples spoilt, they may forsake their error of heart and be moved with more readiness to haunt their wonted place to the knowledge and honour of the true God.)5
3
4
5
Russell, The Germanization of Early Medi­eval, p. 209.
Beda Venerabilis, Storia degli Inglesi, ed. by Lapidge, i, ch. 30.
Beda Venerabilis, Baedae opera historica, trans. by King, i, ch. 30.
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
213
As late Saxon England, Jolly understands c. 900–1050 ad, with the Norman
conquest in 1066 implying an end to the Saxon period. The late Saxon time was
a dynamic phase for popular religion, an acculturating process that increased
cultural diversity and meant a growth of local churches. Typically a single priest
served in these lay-founded churches, usually a man of relatively low birth with
a rudimentary education, isolated from the church hierarchy, who had to meet
the daily, practical needs of an agricultural population. In this environment and
through interactions with local folk culture and domestic life, popular religion
was formed.6
In an article on the Christianization of Scandinavia Stefan Brink has written:
The new religion probably did not bring any immediate changes to people: the
old chieftains and aristocratic families continued to be the social elite, people continued, as a collective, to participate in a communal ‘cult’, if not at the district’s
old cult site, so in a church, which was sometimes erected on the old cult site;
life continued on the whole as before, with cultivating the land, raising the stock,
and probably still being aware of and appeasing the invisible ‘small people’ living
on the farm, the landvættir residing on the farm’s land, the elves and vittror in the
forest and other supernatural powers living among people. However, in the longer
perspective the change to a new religion was very profound, probably the biggest
mental and social change Scandinavia has seen in history, that is, concerning policy,
society, economy, art, gender relations, etc. Gradually the Scandinavians exchanged
an entire pre-Christian world system, including constitutional beliefs on life and
aftermath, to a new, Christian world-system.7
For the Viking Age, including the twelfth century, his ideas are rather close to
Jolly’s and it is very interesting that he mentions the landvættir and the elves
(ON álfar), as the elves play an important role in Jolly’s book; her subheading
is ‘Elf Charms in Context’. He does not say when this ‘biggest mental and social
change […] to a new, Christian world-system’ took place — I should guess that
it was about 1250 (= the beginning of the high Middle Ages).
It is a common idea among scholars working with the conversion of
Scandinavia that the conversion was a gradual process, and that there was not
much change in daily life in the beginning.8 For the later phase, surviving elements of the old religion have been studied with the conclusion that they often
6
Jolly, Popular Religion, p. 39.
Brink, ‘Christianisation and the Emergence’, p. 621; cf. Gräslund, Ideo­l ogi och Mentalitet, pp. 138–39.
8
Nilsson, ‘Kristnandet i Sverige. Avslutande’.
7
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
214
remain in folklore (by Hultgård, Näsström, Gräslund, Nordberg and others,
see below). Just one example is Britt-Mari Näsström’s work on how certain
aspects of the cult of Freyja, especially regarding childbirth, were attributed to
St Mary.9
A common and very important question when it comes to conversion concerns whether it was an event or a gradual process. Jolly’s answer is that it was
both, but above all a gradual process. Conversion was promoted by the dramatic
narratives of kings, for example, Clovis, king of the Franks, who converted to
marry Clotilde, and Æthelbert of Kent who married the Christian Bertha.
But, for the conversion to have had a long-lasting impact, it must have spread
beyond one individual and the decision of one moment to larger numbers of
ordinary people and into daily life, partly by highlighting much more the continuity between religions, for example through building churches on older religious sites. In this later phase of conversion, mutual interchange between popular and formal religion becomes apparent. I find it very important that Jolly
states the significance of women in the popular religion. Their influence in the
spiritual life of the home has been underestimated; in fact the transformation
of everyday rituals was probably accomplished largely by women.10
However, a key aspect of Jolly’s work is that she envisages the formal religion
(= Christianity) and the popular religion as overlapping spheres, where the
popular religion consisted of those beliefs and practices shared by the majority
of the believers. Rather than being a separate, opposite phenomenon from elite
or formal religion, it contained the whole of Christianity. Here Jolly’s work
recalls the concept of Lived Religion, which has recently been formulated and
developed by, in particular, North American socio­logists of religions.11 For
both Jolly and the scholars working with Lived Religion, religion’s inclusivity comprises the formal aspects of the religion as well as the general religious
experience of daily life (see Fig. 15.1).12 In the same way that Lived Religion
would if applied to this material, Jolly emphasizes that the formal church was
not isolated from the Anglo-Saxon culture it was dwelling in; churchmen and
laypeople were Anglo-Saxons too. A common Christian world view was shared
by the popular and the formal religion.
9
Näsström, ‘Från Fröja till Maria’.
Jolly, Popular Religion, pp. 43–44; cf. Gräslund, The Role of Scandinavian Women.
11
See Nordberg, Wikström af Edholm, and Sundqvist, ‘Introduction’.
12
Jolly, Popular Religion, p. 18.
10
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
215
An example of the pre-Christian ritual elements that remained in Christian
times within the Scandinavian area is the prescription in the Norwegian
Gulathings law that three farms should join in brewing a special beer and
drinking it together with their families on a special occasion with a special
ritual to secure ár ok friðr ‘good harvest and peace’, thereby mixing Christian
formulas with pre-Christian ritual expressions, blóta til árs ok friðar.13 In a comprehensive and excellent article, Anders Hultgård has examined the religious
change, continuity, and acculturation/syncretism of Viking Age and medi­eval
Scandinavian religion.14 He uses the word syncretism to characterize the more
profound changes in a religion or of phenomena within that religion which
result from the encounter with another religion; religious acculturation is used
to denote influences or modifications that do not touch central elements of a
religion. The core of Hultgård’s thesis is his statement that: ‘medeltidens och
senare perioders folkliga religion i Norden, som från religionsvetenskaplig
synpunkt har lika stor rätt att kallas kristendom som den officiella och normativa religionen, erbjuder exempel på flera olika typer av kontinuitet och ackulturation inom föreställningsvärlden’ (medi­e val and later popular religion in
Scandinavia has the same right to be called Christianity as the official and normative religion from the viewpoint of history of religions. It gives examples of
several kinds of continuity and acculturation within the imagination world).15
This is close to Jolly’s idea, though without sharing the notion of popular religion as a big sphere that comprises both parts of pre-Christian traditions and
the whole of formal Christianity.
The opposites of pagan versus Christian and magic versus religion are,
following Jolly, an inadequate model for understanding the transformation
involved in the conversion because it gives primacy to a literate mentality that
was only just beginning to emerge in the late Saxon period. The dualistic thinking of reform-minded clergy making distinctions between Christian and pagan,
miracle and magic, existed in a creative tension with the wider and slower process of accommodation and assimilation that formed a larger and ultimately
more influential, if less visible, aspect of Christianization. The tension between
these forces, then, and the consequent Germanicizing of Christianity, is not so
much a symptom of a failure of the Christianizing effort but rather evidence of
its gradual success.
13
14
15
Hultgård, ‘Religiös förändring, kontinuitet’, pp. 57–58.
Hultgård, ‘Religiös förändring, kontinuitet’.
Hultgård, ‘Religiös förändring, kontinuitet’, p. 76.
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
216
Figure 15.1. Karen Louise Jolly’s Model for Medi­eval Popular Religion. After Jolly, Popular Religion.
Popular religion and formal religion thus have a symbiotic relationship
within a shared culture, each actively engaged with the other. The dynamism
of medi­eval Christian society lies in this symbiosis. Christian charms, through
their combination of popular and formal, are a window into the Anglo-Saxon
Christian mentality, into an intriguing holistic world view that effectively
brings together Germanic and Roman Christian heritages to form a new, resilient culture. The strength of this culture only becomes clear when the whole of
it is viewed in all its diversity, with all of its apparent contradictions. The idea of
popular religion gives us this view.
Jolly points out how the pairs of opposites occurring in the meeting between
these two spheres of religion, like priests versus laypeople, doctrine versus practice, literate versus oral, knowing versus doing, have been used to stress the
difference between the formal and the popular religion. Instead we should see
them as bridges.16 This corresponds exactly to the above-mentioned new concept of Lived Religion. Following Meredith McGuire’s reasoning, all cultural
groups are fundamentally syncretic.17
Regarding class boundaries (priests versus laity) the distinction is misleading as it does not take into consideration the Anglo-Saxon culture shared across
16
17
Jolly, Popular Religion, p. 21.
McGuire, Lived Religion, p. 189.
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
217
them. It is true that the clergy played a larger role in the formal church, but they
were also responsible for making Christianity understandable to their congregation, by popularizing doctrines and practices. This was especially important
during the early Middle Ages, when priests were not yet sharply separated from
the laity, particularly those priests in small local churches.18
In the tenth and eleventh centuries there was a rapid proliferation of local
churches with aristocratic proprietorship in England. That meant a closer interaction between priests and the laity than existed in the minsters, a meeting
between everyday domestic and agricultural concerns reflecting Germanic folk
customs and the rudimentary Christian expertise of a local priest. Conversion
by acculturation was the logical result, evident in the transformation of folk
remedies and practices for good health and prosperity through their combination with basic Christian ideas and rituals.19
It is wrong to regard all charms as ‘pagan’, because pagan and Christian elements cannot easily be distinguished in their use. Instead we should look at the
charms as found in the texts through the eyes of the kind of person who read
them, a Christian Anglo-Saxon. This perspective enables us to see the continuity of thought from Germanic folklore and Christianity, both of which express
themselves in these rituals, showing the people’s belief in the possibility of
intervention from an invisible power. In the early medi­eval Augustinian world
view, Christian ritual fused nature and the divine, invisible became visible, and
man experienced the divine in his body as well as in his soul. This is also applicable to the Germanic folk belief in a spiritual presence in natural things.20 As a
category between pagan magic and Christian miracle, Jolly uses the concept of
Middle Practices, which can designate, for example, mentions of healing with
herbs in the same texts as spoken charms.21
Medicine, liturgy, and folklore were intertwined in the literate communities of late Saxon England, and this is reflected in popular culture and religious
practices in two ways. The fusion of Germanic, classical, and Christian traditions reflects an oral tradition that is synthesized in everyday practice. And the
production of written texts shows an effort to meet popular needs by spreading
remedies. The medical books served as manuals of instruction based on Anglo-
18
19
20
21
Jolly, Popular Religion, p. 21.
Jolly, Popular Religion, p. 70.
Jolly, Popular Religion, pp. 94–95.
Jolly, Popular Religion, p. 3.
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
218
Saxon religious folklore concerned with relieving people’s physical and spiritual ills. As Jolly notes regarding this custom:
The inclusion in these manu­scripts of Germanic ideas of disease and cure predating Christianity does not in itself indicate the survival of paganism as a religious
system or of magical beliefs opposing religious rationality. Rather, the similarity
of belief about nature and spiritual agency found in both the Augustinian worldview and Germanic medical folklore set the stage for a relatively easy assimilation
between the two.22
Jolly finishes her book with two chapters in which she carefully inspects various
charms written down in manu­scripts and points out the mixture in these conjurations of pagan and Christian. For example, when traditional herbs should
be used, they need to be blessed in church. She also discusses elves, which are
ambivalent, amoral creatures in Anglo-Saxon folklore. Beowulf lists them along
with other monsters. They were thought to be invisible or hard-to-see creatures who shot their victims with an arrow or a spear, thus inflicting a wound
or inducing a disease. Elf-disease remedies appear in close proximity to or are
combined with remedies for demon possession, nightmares, madness, and
fevers afflicting humans or cattle. In such cases, the efficacy of medicinal herbs
was combined with rituals of power, mostly Christian. Disorders of the mind
were treated with the usual mixture of herbs and Christian rituals performed
with holy water, an amalgamation of Germanic folklore and Christian ideas.23
Fascinated by Jolly’s idea of the popular religion, it is now time for us to
look in greater depth at the time of conversion in Scandinavia — is there any
evidence of a similar mixture of Old Norse beliefs and Christianity? In the article considered above, Anders Hultgård discusses the rupture that was caused
by the conversion from the old religion to Christianity. However, such a rupture is never total; some sort of continuity will always exist, at least during the
centuries following the introduction of a new religion and culture. Hultgård
calls attention to field processions with crucifixes or images of saints that took
place in the countryside in spring or early summer well into the nineteenth century, which belong to a category of rites classified as popular rural traditions
and are attested to as such from the seventeenth century onwards. They were
performed in order to bless the seed and to pray for a good harvest and can
be understood as popular survivals of medi­eval Catholic ceremonies, probably
with a pre-Christian origin. During the Reformation they were condemned
22
23
Jolly, Popular Religion, pp. 130–31.
Jolly, Popular religion, pp. 96–131.
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
219
as papal heresies, though they survived among the peasants in some places in
southern Scandinavia.24
Andreas Nordberg has pointed out that the contents of what missionaries preached in Scandinavia in the period of mission were in all probability
received and interpreted by the Scandinavians in terms of an Old Norse preunderstanding, so that pagan and Christian ideas and rituals partly melted
together. Parts of the later folklore seem to be a token of this.25 This is called
interpretatio Scandinavica and is certainly a common effect in situations of
encounters between religions — in order to understand phenomena in a new
religion, people actually transform them so that they correspond with phenomena in the old one.
Britt-Mari Näsström has investigated medi­eval popular beliefs regarding the
Holy Virgin, especially concerning weddings, childbirth, and the fertility of
the soil and animals. She found many similarities with what is known from Old
Norse literature about the cult of the goddess Freyja, yet without the dissolute
aspect of the Old Norse cult.26 Strictly speaking, in discussions of early Nordic
perspectives, we should not call St Mary the Holy Virgin; her quality of being a
virgin immaculate was not especially praised. In Viking Age runic inscriptions
she is instead called God’s mother and in medi­eval texts Our Lady. Of course, it
is not possible to prove direct contact between the cult of Freyja and the worship of St Mary. However, the analogies that exist suggest that manifestations
of the older cult were not totally changed, but rather were successively incorporated in an entirely new context.
Raising rune-stones in memory of deceased family members was an old
Scandinavian tradition. Memorial runic inscriptions occur from c. 600 ad.27
Including crosses on these rune-stones was, of course, the clearest way of
expressing a Christian identity.28 Certain crosses have an obvious Ringerikestyle design: a transformation of the symbol into a Nordic form. Linn Lager’s
conclusion is, therefore, that the rune-stones were a distinctive way for the first
converts to demonstrate their Christian faith. A clear continuity is shown with
traditional Nordic art forms and with only minimal influence from European
Christian art. The limited number of cross-shapes that were picked out by those
24
25
26
27
28
Hultgård, ‘Religiös förändring, kontinuitet’, pp. 62–63.
Nordberg, ‘Runstenar och själabroar’, pp. 80–81.
Näsström, ‘Från Fröja till Maria’, p. 348.
Gräslund, ‘Late Viking Age’.
Lager, Den synliga tron.
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
220
in the North from the European material shows a very selective attitude towards
external influences. There are also very few obviously biblical or Christian
motifs on the rune-stones, which shows that European Christian monuments
were not imitated to any large extent. Even though it is apparent that the runestones, at least from the presence of cross-shapes, are partly inspired by southern sources, this inspiration is very much on Scandinavian terms. The runestones are clearly part of the conservative Nordic ornamental tradition. The
late Viking Age raising of rune-stones probably reflects independent Christian
communities, formed during the phase of mission, displaying an impressive cultural and religious awareness in the way that they were able to express their
Christian faith as a part of their Scandinavian culture and identity. The late
Viking Age rune-stones are simply an interpretatio Scandinavica of the contemporary European Christianity. Lager contrasts the situation of the converts
in Scandinavia with that of Viking settlers in Britain and argues, totally rightly
in my view, that the Scandinavians in Britain had to stress their Scandinavian
identity more than their Christian identity. As they lived in a Christian area,
the conditions for them were different to those of the Christian converts in
the homeland. The main concern of people in the homeland was to stress their
Christian identity, as their Scandinavian identity was self-evident.29
Lager suggests that British missionaries in Sweden were accustomed to
rune-stone monuments of this kind: many of them were probably aware of
Anglo-Scandinavian crosses, such as Thorvald’s cross on the Isle of Man or the
Gosforth cross in Northumbria, and could therefore easily accept the runestones as Christian monuments. Somewhat later, when the German mission
came to be more dominant in the Lake Mälaren area, the German missionaries
had different, more severe, attitudes to the rune-stones. Their disapproval may
be one of the reasons that raising rune-stones ceased.30
The Forsa ring from Hälsingland, today most probably dated to the ninth or
tenth century, was previously seen as another example of a mixture of Christian
and pagan, as the runic inscription on the ring was interpreted as a statement
of the progressive series of fines that should be paid to the bishop if no service
was held in the church associated with the ring. However, nowadays it has been
shown that the inscription is pre-Christian and that it regulates the maintenance of a vi, a cult and assembly site. For failing to restore the vi in a legal way,
fines were due to be paid.31 Concerning the shape of the ring, formed like a
29
30
31
Lager, Den synliga tron, pp. 193–202.
Lager, Den synliga tron, pp. 198–99.
Brink, ‘Law and Society’, p. 28.
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
221
strike-a-light with the typical expansion of the inner edge, in this case protruding as a hammer-shaped figure, Olof Sundqvist has recently argued that it may
be a token of a Thor cult in Hälsingland in the Viking Age.32 This seems absolutely reasonable. The Forsa ring was already documented hanging on a church
door in 1599, so it could be seen as an example of a pre-Christian object used
in a Christian environment.
The Runic Amulets
Finally, returning to Jolly’s study, it is time to look closer at some of the
Scandinavian runic amulets from the Viking Age and early Middle Ages and to
compare them to the Anglo-Saxon charms presented by Jolly. Today we know
of thirty-four Viking Age runic amulets that were found in Sweden, twelve of
which have been interpreted; probably more will be interpreted in the future.33
The inscriptions are apotropaic or protective or both. They can also be wishes,
and sometimes there are instructions for how to scare off danger. In his study
of Swedish charms from ancient times up to the early modern period, Bengt af
Klintberg has classified them in three groups: 1) exhortative; 2) ritual; 3) epic
with metaphors.34 All three types occur on Viking Age amulets. Furthermore,
there is a fourth group, lönnformler ‘secret formulas’, which do not occur in the
Viking Age but are very popular in the Middle Ages.35
In contrast to England we lack medi­eval medical manu­scripts in Scandinavia.
Illness and diseases are mentioned, though, in inscriptions on runic metal
plates, for example ulcers with a fever being referred to on the Sigtuna plate 1,36
pain on the Kvinneby plate,37 labour pains on the Solberga plate 1,38 and headaches on the Solberga plate 2.39 Healing runes and cure runes are etched on
the Skänninge plate,40 and Galdrande ‘magic chants’ and incantations are men32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Sundqvist, ‘Den hammarliknande figuren’, p. 232.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck.
af Klintberg, Svenska trollformler, pp. 39–40.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 16.
Following Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 100.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 142.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 156.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 160.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 192.
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
222
tioned on the Högstena plate from Västergötland.41 An invocation of Thor is
inscribed on the Kvinneby plate. The fragmentary inscription on the Gamla
Uppsala plate indicates that a woman named Katarina is seeking help from
two saints, one of which is St Michael,42 and this is a form well known from
rune-stones (one in Uppland (U 478), one in Gotland (G 203), one in Lolland
(DR 212) and four on Bornholm (DR 380, 398, 399, 402)). The dating of the
amulet plates is in some cases founded in archaeo­logical strati­graphy, but a general dating for the group is eleventh–twelfth centuries, in one case (Högstena)
extending up to 1200. The Ribe rune pin could, furthermore, be mentioned
here, though it is dated to c. 1300; a charm exorcizing malaria, the incantation
petitions the earth, heaven, and the sun as well as the Lord and St Mary.43
Let us look a little closer at some of the amulets, starting with the twosided runic plate from Södra Kvinneby. The interpretation of this plate has
been attempted many times and by a large number of scholars. It was found
in 1952 on a farm on south-eastern Öland, close to two previously destroyed
Viking Age graves, so the amulet’s context may originally have been as gravegoods.44 The first remarks on this object were published by the philo­logist Ivar
Lindquist;45 in a review of that publication Anders Hultgård offers both praise
and critique and also adds some important new commentary.46 On the reverse
of the amulet there is an image of a fish, which had been interpreted as a symbol
that Bove (the owner of the plate) was a fisherman. Hultgård’s opinion is that
this could be a Christian element, although the incantation is directed at Thor:
‘Þōrr gǣti hans meðʀ þēm hamri sæm ūʀ hafi kam!’ (May Thor protect him
with the hammer that comes from the sea). The runic word for protect is gæta,
a verb usually used in Christian runic texts. A third probable Christian element
is the concluding phrase: ‘Flȳ frān illu! Vitt fǣʀ ækki af Bōfa. Guð eʀu undiʀ
hānum auk yfiʀ hānum’ (Flee from evil! Magic achieves nothing with Bove.
Gods are under him and over him), meaning that divine powers will protect
him from all sides.47 This mixture of pagan and Christian elements tallies with
the dating of the plate to c. 1050–1130.
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 187.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, pp. 189–90.
Hultgård, ‘Religiös förändring, kontinuitet’, p. 77.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 106.
Lindquist, Religiösa runtexter, iii.
Hultgård, review of Lindquist, Religiösa runtexter, iii.
Hultgård, review of Lindquist, Religiösa runtexter, iii , pp. 139, 142.
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
223
Another rectangular copper plate, Solberga 1 was found in 1972 at the
archaeo­logical excavation of a settlement site in which handicrafts were being
produced in Köpingsvik, mid-Öland. It may have been a house offering, as it
was found in a post-hole, and it concerns help in childbirth:
Þigi þess: nū minns ek […] bort eiʀ kaos (?). Ok Kristr ok sankta Maria biargi
þēʀ, Ōlǫf ! Biargguma baugaʀ ok æiʀumarkaʀ. Frān þēʀ in argi iotunn, Ōlǫf, ok
þrymiandi þurs æltit!
(Keep this quiet: I remember/name enough (that I) […] with help delivered her.
And may Christ and Saint Mary save you, Oluv. The helping woman (= midwife)
binds a ring and marks/signs with healing signs. Perverse giant and howling troll,
go from you Oluv!)48
Even in this text the mixture of Christian and pagan ideas is apparent. It was
found together with the amulet known as Solberga 2, which is inscribed with a
text that lacks any Christian element:
Þurs ek fā hinn þrīhǫfðaða hinn meramuldiga frān manns kunu. Hann at seiði,
ōiðki! Sinn haus virkti hann ī, ī loga(?) umliðinn
(I carve (or mark with signs) the three-headed troll, covered with crushed earth,
from the man’s woman. May (I) enchant him there, destroy (him)! His head pained
him (when it) disappeared into the fire.)49
In both cases there is an exhortative formula with ritual elements and a component that is intended to drive away negative forces.
From medi­e val Denmark, forty-eight metal amulets inscribed with runes
or a mixture of rune-like characters were known in 2010, many of them from
the island of Bornholm.50 They are often made of lead and folded. In a recent
article, Rudolf Simek examines some of these and other similar amulets from
medi­eval Germany for the connections that were drawn from elves and other
spirits to illnesses in popular religion.51 Most of the extant amulet inscriptions
that can be understood are written in Latin, sometimes in runes, sometimes
in Latin letters. All six of the amulets upon which Simek focuses his attention
have inscriptions for the prevention of fevers or are conjurations against ill48
49
50
51
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 156.
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 160.
Steenholt Olesen, ‘Runic Amulets’, p. 163.
Simek, ‘Tangible Religion’.
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
224
nesses in an individual’s eyes, limbs, or marrow. Simek compares the amulet
texts with Latin manu­scripts that are also concerned with magical charms and
demons that cause illnesses, and he deals with the question of syncretism too,
demonstrating what can happen to old mythical concepts and beings when
they are placed in new religious contexts.
A mixture of Latin and ancient Swedish may be seen on the amulet designated as Sigtuna 2.52 Helmer Gustavson has found the paradigm ‘hic, haec,
hoc’ at the beginning of its runes, and later in the inscription ‘Kristus’ is apparent, probably alongside ‘Dominus’.53
Michael Barnes has written about Latin inscriptions with runes:
The quality of ‘runic Latin’ varies considerably, from good to indifferent or downright poor. A number of inscriptions are in what is termed ‘pseudo-Latin’, sequences
that suggest Latin words and inflections, but which make no obvious sense. Some
of these may have been written out of ignorance, others by people — with or without proper knowledge of the language — trying to harness magic powers. Much
depends on context.54
Amusing examples of this kind of linguistic misunderstanding, occurring when
formulas in Latin or other foreign languages are transformed into vernacular,
are the two concepts hokus pokus filiokus and abrakadabra, both of which are
used in magic enchantments and are examples of af Klintberg’s fourth group
of charms, lönnformler. Abrakadabra is known earliest in Hebrew in the Old
Testament, Isaiah 28. 10,55 in which priests and prophets in Jerusalem in the
eighth century bc are accused of being drunk when teaching and pronouncing
judgements, and then in Latin from a medical manual, Liber medicinalis from
the third century ad. In Scandinavia, the belief seems to have been that the
word, written on an amulet, would protect against various ailments; a typical
example of this might be the Danish medi­e val lead amulet from Tårnborg,
western Zealand.56 There are a few hypotheses about the origin of the word
abrakadabra, such as whether it was Hebrew or Aramaic and a way to memorize the first letters of the alphabet, a, b, c, and d. The magic meaning of the
52
Pereswetoff-Morath, Vikingatida runbleck, p. 199.
Gustavson, Runristade lösföremål från, p. 8; Källström, ‘Det 22:a internationella fält­
runo­logmötet’, p. 121.
54
Barnes, Runes, p. 122.
55
Bibel 2000.
56
Imer and Uldum, ‘Mod dæmoner og elverfolk’, p. 13.
53
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
225
word has survived in any case, used by both magicians and other people wanting to describe things as supernatural.57 Concerning hokus pokus filiokus the
Canterbury archbishop John Tillotson (1630–94) introduced the hypothesis
that the concept originated in the words of institution in the Latin Mass Hoc
est corpus meum ‘This is my body’. The last element, filiokus, could perhaps come
from the Nicene Creed filioque ‘and of the Son’.58
Concluding Remarks
Apparently, many Scandinavian Viking Age scholars, archaeo­logists, historian
of religions, and runo­logists working with the conversion agree with Jolly’s
opinion that popular culture in the first generations after the conversion was
a mixture of the old and the new, even if the definitions of popular culture
used differ. The old concept of syncretism has been discussed quite extensively
over the years, pro et contra. The first to use the term was the Greek historian
Plutarch (c. 50–120 ad), who did so in an irenic way, exhorting his audience
to act as the Cretans did when they suspended their mutual disagreements and
united to face a common enemy.59 Protestant theo­logians of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries used the concept in a polemical sense meaning ‘to mix
things that are incompatible’. The Protestant Church has over time been more
anti-syncretistic than the Roman Catholic Church.60
McGuire points out that many theo­logians, when regarding the boundaries separating recognized religions from religions considered suspect and syncretic, give privilege to their own religion or the dominant one in their society.61 In modern times the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theo­logians
has taken up a syncretistic view, not to create unity of Christianity, but rather
to encourage ‘the acceptance of “Christianities” in the plural’,62 which is very
much in accordance with Jolly’s ideas and also with the modern concept of
Lived Religion.
57
Eklund, Trolleri som konst, p. 19. Cf. af Klintberg, Svenska trollformler, pp. 53–57.
Eklund, Trolleri som konst, pp. 40–41.
59
Rudolph, ‘From Theo­logical Invective’, pp. 68–69.
60
Leopold, ‘Introduction to Part II’, p. 18; Rudolph, ‘From Theo­logical Invective’,
pp. 69–70, 71.
61
McGuire, Lived Religion, p. 190.
62
Leopold, ‘Introduction to Part II’, p. 18.
58
226
Anne-Sofie Gräslund
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Regarding the rune-stone numbers, see the online database Samnordisk runtextdatabas
<http://www.nordiska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm> [accessed 26 August 2018]
Beda Venerabilis, Baedae opera historica: Ecclesiatical History of the English Nation, based
on the version of Thomas Stapleton 1565, trans. by John E. King, 2 vols (Cam­bridge,
MA: Harvard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1962)
—— , Storia degli Inglesi = Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Michael Lapidge,
trans. by Paolo Chiesa, 2 vols (Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 2008–10)
Bibel 2000, Bibelkommissionens översättning 1999 (Stockholm: Verbum, 2000)
Secondary Studies
Barnes, Michael P., Runes: A Handbook (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012)
Brink, Stefan, ‘Law and Society: Polities and Legal Customs in Viking Scandinavia’, in
The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2008),
pp. 23–31
—— , ‘Christianisation and the Emergence of the Early Church in Scandinavia’, in The
Vik­ing World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2008),
pp. 621–28
Eklund, Per, Trolleri som konst och kultur (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2016)
Gräslund, Anne-Sofie, Ideo­logi och Mentalitet: Om religionsskiftet i Skandinavien från en
arkeo­logisk horisont, Occasional Papers in Archeo­logy, 29 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för arkeo­logi och antik historia, 2001)
—— , ‘The Role of Scandinavian Women in Christianisation: The Neglected Evidence’, in
The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, ad 300–1300, ed. by
Martin Carver (York: York Medi­eval Press, 2003), pp. 483–96
—— , ‘Late Viking Age Christian Identity’, in Shetland and the Viking World: Papers
from the Proceedings of the Seventeenth Viking Congress, Lerwick, ed. by Val E. Turner,
Olwyn A. Owen, and Doreen J. Waugh (Lerwick: Shetland Heritage Publications,
2017), pp. 181–87
—— , ‘Aspects of the Conversion of Scandinavia: Interpretatio Scandinavica’, Neue Studien
zur Sachsenforschung (forthcoming)
Gustavson, Helmer, Runristade lösföremål från Sigtuna <https://www.raa.se/kulturarv/
runor-och-runstenar/digitala…/sigtunas-losforemal> [accessed 12 September 2018]
Hultgård, Anders, Review of Ivan Lindquist, Religiösa runtexter, iii (Lund, 1987), Svenska
landsmål och svenskt folkliv 1988 (1988), 137–44
—— , ‘Religiös förändring, kontinuitet och ackulturation/synkretism i vikingatidens
och medeltidens skandinaviska religion’, in Kontinuitet i kult och tro från vikingatid
till medeltid, ed. by Bertil Nilsson, Projektet Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer, 1
(Uppsala: Lunneböcker, 1992), pp. 49–103
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections
227
Imer, Lisbeth, and Otto Uldum, ‘Mod dæmoner og elverfolk’, Skalk (2015), 9–15
Jolly, Karen Louise, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context
(Chapel Hill: Uni­ver­sity of North Carolina Press, 1996)
af Klintberg, Bengt, Svenska trollformler (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1988)
Källström, Magnus, ‘Det 22:a internationella fältruno­logmötet 11–13 september 2009 i
Sigtuna’, Fornvännen, 105 (2010), 121–23
Lager, Linn, Den synliga tron: Runstenskors som en spegling av kristnandet i Sverige, Occa­
sional Papers in Archaeo­logy, 31 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för
arkeo­logi och antik historia, 2002)
Leopold, Anita Maria, ‘Introduction to Part II’, in Syncretism in Religion: A Reader, ed. by
Anita Maria Leopold and Jeppe Sinding Jensen (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 14–28
Lindquist, Ivar, Religiösa runtexter, iii: Det vikingatida kvädet på en kopparplåt från
Södra Kvinneby i Stenåsa socken, Öland: Ett tydningsförslag, Skrifter utgivna av Veten­
skapssocieteten i Lund, 79 (Lund: Lund Uni­ver­sity Press, 1987)
McGuire, Meredith B., Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (Oxford:
Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005)
Naveh, Joseph, and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late
Antiquity ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985)
Nilsson, Bertil, ‘Kristnandet i Sverige. Avslutande reflexioner’, in Kristnandet i Sverige:
Gamla källor och nya perspektiv, ed. by Bertil Nilsson, Projektet Sveriges kristnande.
Publikationer, 5 (Uppsala: Lunneböcker, 1996), pp. 419–29
Nordberg, Andreas, ‘Runsstenar och själabroar – kyrklig strategi och förkristet gensvar’, in
Bro till evigheten: Brons rumsliga, sociala och religiösa dimension under vikingatid och
tidig medeltid; Ett symposium på Såstaholm, Täby, den 3–4 april 2009, ed. by Andreas
Nordberg and Lars Andersson (Nacka: Stockholms läns museum, 2010), pp. 75–82
Nordberg, Andreas, Klas Wikström af Edholm, and Olof Sundqvist, ‘Introduction’, in
Myth, Materiality and Lived Religion in Merovingian and Viking Scandinavia, ed. by
Klas Wikström af Edholm and others (Stockholm: Stockholm Uni­ver­sity Press,
2019), pp. 1–8
Näsström, Britt-Mari, ‘Från Fröja till Maria. Det förkristna arvet speglat i en folklig
föreställningsvärld’, in Kristnandet i Sverige: Gamla källor och nya perspektiv, ed. by
Bertil Nilsson, Projektet Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer, 5 (Uppsala: Lunneböcker,
1996), pp. 335–48
Pereswetoff-Morath, Sofia, Vikingatida runbleck: Läsningar och tolkningar (Uppsala:
Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet, 2017)
Rudolph, Kurt, ‘Syncretism: From Theo­logical Invective to a Concept in the Study of
Religion’, in Syncretism in Religion: A Reader, ed. by Anita Maria Leopold and Jeppe
Sinding Jensen (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 68–85
Russell, James C., The Germanization of Early Medi­eval Christianity: A Sociohistorical
Approach to Religious Transformation (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994)
Shaked, Shaul, ‘Popular Religion in Sasanian Babylonia’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
Islam, 21 (1997), 103–17
228
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Simek, Rudolf, ‘Tangible Religion: Amulets, Illnesses, and the Demonic Seven Sisters’, in
Myth, Materiality and Lived Religion in Merovingian and Viking Scandinavia, ed. by
Klas Wikström af Edholm and others (Stockholm: Stockholm Uni­ver­sity Press,
2019), pp. 375–95
Steenholt Olesen, Rikke, ‘Runic Amulets from Medi­eval Denmark’, Futhark, 1 (2010),
161–76
Sundqvist, Olof, ‘Den hammarliknande figuren på Forsaringen – en indikation på vikinga­
tida Torskult i Hälsingland’, in Mellannorrland i centrum: Språkliga och historiska
studier tillägnade professor Eva Nyman, ed. by Lars-Erik Edlund, Elzbieta Strzelecka,
and Thorsten Andersson, Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundets Handlingar, 77 (Umeå:
Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet, 2017), pp. 209–40
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods
Bo Gräslund
Swine
‘Djurens konung är inte det torra och illasmakande lejonet utan det ädla
svinet’ (The king of the animals is not the dry and bad tasting lion, but the
noble swine) the Swedish author Frank Heller once stated.1 Few in ancient
Scandinavia would have objected to this view. Certainly the worshippers of the
Vanir gods Freyr and Freyja would not have.2 A close relationship was once perceived between the swine and Freyr and Freyja, in their roles as fertility gods,
manifesting itself in several ways, from the involvement of that animal in the
gods’ transportation (Freyr travels in a chariot pulled by the boar Gullinbursti
‘Golden Bristles’3 while his sister rides the same boar)4 to the naming of Freyja
as Sýr ‘sow’,5 which probably specifically alludes to her fertility responsibilities. The pig’s association with the two gods can be explained by its unusual
reproductive capacity, which is the effect of a short gestation period, numerous
offspring, and a rapid growth.6 The notion that the swine was related to fertil-
1
Heller, Frank Hellers resehandbok, p. 17.
Näsström, Freyja; Näsström Nordiska gudinnor; Ingunn Ásdísardóttír, Frigg og Freyja.
3
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 51; Húsdrápa, ed. by Finnur Jóns­
son, 7.
4
Hyndluljóð, ed. by Neckel, rev. by Kuhn, 6.
5
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 34.
6
Malmsten, On the Reproduction of Female Wild Boar.
2
Bo Gräslund (bo.graslund@arkeo­logi.uu.se) is Professor Emeritus in Archaeo­logy at the
Department of Archaeo­logy and Ancient History at Uppsala Uni­ver­sity, Sweden.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 229–242
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119350
Bo Gräslund
230
ity was probably further emphasized by the animal’s habit of cultivating the soil
with its snout and tusks in a way that is reminiscent of ploughing.
Freyja also travels in a wagon drawn by two cats.7 Since the cat and the pig
are the champions of the champions among domestic animals when it comes to
reproductive capacity, Freyja’s cats can be considered as just another expression
of her role as a fertility goddess. But apparently, Freyja’s association with the
cat is secondary to her relationship to the pig: cats do not appear in the Nordic
countries until the third century ad.
Another name for the divine siblings’ boar Gullinbursti is Sliðrugtanni.8
The traditional interpretation of this name ‘The one with the dangerous
tusks’9 places the stress on the word sliðr ‘dangerous’ but omits the medial
element rug(r). Yet sliðr can also mean ‘sheath’, and, since the underworld river
Sliðr is said to be full of swords and knives10 and boar tusks are associated with
swords in sheaths in both Ynglingatal and the Beowulf poem,11 the element
slið- in Sliðrugtanni could very well refer to a sword sheath. The intermediate
element rugr could then signify a ‘rugged’ sheath, such as one covered with
a material like fur, making the boar name Sliðrugtanni as a whole best translated as ‘The one with teeth like swords’. Either interpretation would emphasize
Gullinbursti’s dangerousness, and, as he is also called hildisvin ‘battle-boar’,12
there is much to suggest that one of his primary functions is that of a war boar.
The myth of the boar Sæhrímnir, who is slaughtered every day and consumed by the warriors in Valhǫll only to be resurrected the same evening,13 has
a clear connection with the two distinctive characteristics of the swine outlined
above, fertility and fighting spirit. As I see it, the essence of this myth is not the
deliciousness of the pork as such but that the warriors, by eating the boar, get
a share of his courage and fighting power, which inspires them to fight and kill
each other during the day, as well as of his reproductive magic, which allows
7
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 23.
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 49, 51; Skáldskaparmál, ed. by
Finnur Jónsson, 6; Húsdrápa, ed. by Finnur Jónsson.
9
Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mytho­logy.
10
Vǫluspá, ed. by Neckel, rev. by Kuhn, 36; Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur
Jónsson, 3.
11
Gräslund, Beowulfkvädet, pp. 150–58.
12
Hyndluljóð, ed. by Neckel, rev. by Kuhn, 7.
13
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 35; Grímnismál, ed. by Neckel,
rev. by Kuhn, 18.
8
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods
231
them to be resurrected in the evening like Sæhrímnir himself. These two special
qualities are the fallen warriors’ divine guarantee of a joyful martial life forever.
That would never have worked with a beef steak from the cow Auðhumla.
Freyja
Against this background, it seems quite consistent that the hall Sessrúmnir,
where the other half of the fallen warriors are welcomed, belongs to the fertility
goddess Freyja.14
Tens of thousands of the prehistoric burials that have been investigated in
the Nordic area were arranged in a way that testifies to a general supposition
that people in general would be resurrected in an afterlife,15 probably, in my
view, alongside slaves, whose labour they would not have liked to be without on
the other side. So where do all those who do not arrive in Valhǫll or Sessrúmnir
go after death?
Two possible spaces are Hel and Fólkvangr. The information in the sources
on Hel is scanty and contradictory. As a gloomy underground place, it stands
out as a counterpart to Hades in Greek mytho­logy. And since Hel is the afterlife home of the god Baldr, Óðinn’s son, and its ruler, the goddess Hel, is the
daughter of the Æsir god Loki,16 it seems reasonable to assume that Hel originated in the mytho­logy of the Indo-European stock of the population with
their Æsir gods.
Etymo­logically, Fólkvangr means ‘The field of the people’, but a common
translation is also ‘The field of the warriors’ as if Fólkvangr was just another
name for Sessrúmnir. But a hall is hardly the same as a field and could not
accommodate a whole people, and in fact Snorri confirms that Sessrúmnir is a
hall located in Freyja’s property Fólkvangr.17 So if Sessrúmnir is a separate hall
in Fólkvangr, and the intended home of half of all the warriors who fall in battle, there is much to suggest that Fólkvangr itself is a spacious afterlife residence
for people in general.
In my view, we have reason to consider the possibility that the Nordic myths
of afterlife places originally go back to the long period of conflict between, on
14
Grímnismál 14 in Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 23; Skáldskaparmál, ed. by
Finnur Jónsson, 20.
15
Gräslund, ‘Prehistoric Soul Beliefs’.
16
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 49.
17
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 23.
Bo Gräslund
232
the one hand, non-Indo-European Neolithic farmers and fertility worshippers
and, on the other, warlike pastoralist Indo-European invaders, conflict which
according to new research seems not to have come to a final end until the early
Bronze Age c. 1500 bc.18 If so, Sessrúmnir would have originally belonged to
the fallen warriors of local farmers with their Vanir gods, and Valhǫll to the
dead fighters of the Indo-European immigrants with their Æsir gods; the
majority of both peoples would have aspired to afterlives in Fólkvangr and Hel,
respectively.
As I see it, Freyja’s role as the ruler of Fólkvangr and Sessrúmnir does not
mean she should be called a death goddess. The real death powers are Óðinn,
Urðr, and the Valkyries who actively select people for death. Freyja’s main function, as a fertility goddess in this domain, is to ensure people an afterlife and a
proper place for that existence. As a fertility goddess, Freyja is rather a divinity
of rebirth and afterlife. No doubt, Britt-Mari Näsström is right in picturing
her as one the main divinities in Nordic mytho­logy.19 Given her position as a
fertility goddess and her responsibility for half of the fallen warriors and of the
majority of the people, Freyja would probably have received more attention in
the written sources had she not been a female goddess of Vanir descent.
Sæhrímnir’s role as a medium of fertility and resurrection in Valhǫll, conversely, should be seen against the background that the god Óðinn himself lacks
fertility qualifications. Correspondingly, the fact that the warriors in Freyja’s
hall Sessrúmnir do not fight each other during the day, like Óðinn’s warriors
do in Valhǫll, tallies with the absence of servings of fight-inspiring boar steak
in Sessrúmnir.
That it is not the male fertility god Freyr but the female goddess Freyja who
is in charge of Sessrúmnir and Fólkvangr could indicate that beliefs concerning the transition to an afterlife in those two residences were originally related
to ideas of rebirth, in a similar way as has been proposed for megalithic grave
monuments during the middle and late Neolithic.20 This gives further support
to the old idea that the Vanir goddess Freyja originally derives from a pre-IndoEuropean Neolithic fertility and Mother Earth goddess.
18
19
20
Kristiansen and others, ‘Re-theorising Mobility’.
Näsström, Freyja.
Gräslund, ‘Prehistoric Soul Beliefs’; Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe.
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods
233
The Folk Name Swede
Unambiguous Nordic traditions testify to a close mythical relationship
between the Swedish kings of the Yngling dynasty and the Vanir god Yngvi
(Ing), alias Freyr.21 A corresponding relationship between the Yngling kings
and the wild boar is therefore to be expected. In fact, in the poem Ynglingatal
the epithet jǫfurr ‘boar’ is used for no less than six Yngling kings in a mythical
past which roughly corresponds to the late Roman and the Migration periods.22 By the much later time of the late Viking period, the epithet jǫfurr has
been transformed into the personal male names Jǫfurr, Jǫfurbjǫrn and female
names Jǫfurfǫst, Jǫfurfast, Jǫfurfríðr, names which are exclusively known from
Uppland, the heartland of the Swedish Yngling kings. In Old Norse skaldic
poetry from that same time, however, jǫfurr has evolved into a heiti for a king in
general,23 a proof as good as anything of the high status of the Yngling kings in
old Scandinavian traditions. Nevertheless, it is worth emphasizing that, in the
sense of a ‘human boar’, the epithet jǫfurr is only known to have been used for
the early kings of the Swedish Yngling family.
The wild boar is in many ways harder to hunt and control than the wolf and
the bear. And far more than those predators, the wild boar stands for qualities such as courage, stony determination, and irresistible power. A furious wild
boar who comes rushing tusks-first, like a cannonball weighing several hundred kilos, would scare anyone out of their wits. So, if a prehistoric warrior king
wanted to appear brave, powerful, and dangerous, he could not have chosen
anything better to be compared with than a wild boar.
Of particular interest in this regard is one of the human figures pictured
on the magnificent helmet from Vendel grave 14, from around the year 600,
a helmeted prince in profile with jaws in the shape of large boar tusks.24 The
man’s nose, his facial profile, and his small pig eyes also clearly distinguish his
face from other contemporary faces, like that of the warrior figure next to him
in the icono­graphy (Fig. 16.1). The man is either wearing a face mask with tusks
21
Noreen, ‘Nordens äldsta folk- och ortnamn’; Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mytho­logy,
pp. 378–79.
22
Beck, Das Ebersignung im Germanischen, pp. 77–79, 183.
23
Beck, Das Ebersignung im Germanischen, pp. 189–95; Heinrich Beck ‘Eber’; Peterson,
Nordiskt runnamnslexikon, p. 143; Kovárová, ‘The Swine in Old Nordic Religion and Worldview’, pp. 111–28.
24
Stolpe and Arne, La Nécropole de Vendel, pl. XLI, fig. 4; Arbman ‘Båtgravarna i Vendel’, p. 27.
Bo Gräslund
234
Figure 16.1. The boar king on the helmet from Vendel grave 14. Drawing by Olof Sörling.
After Stolpe and Arne, La Nécropole de Vendel, pl. XLI, fig. 4.
or depicted as being equipped with boar tusks. In my opinion, this figure is a
clear depiction of a jǫfurr, a boar king.
Neil Price and Paul Mortimer have shown that bronze face masks were common in the North Germanic area during the middle and the late Iron Age, often
alluding to Óðinn.25 However, should the boar face on the helmet from Vendel
14 represent a mask, it rather alludes to Freyr. Since the unmatched wealth and
quality of the grave contents of Vendel 14 can hardly represent anything but a
Swedish king or prince, I consider this boar figure as emblematic of an Yngling
royal, his tusks and boar face ostentatiously alluding to his descent from the
Vanir boar god Yngvi alias Freyr.
25
Price and Mortimer, ‘An Eye for Odin?’.
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods
235
The Gnista mound in the southern part of the city of Uppsala, another
princely burial from the early Vendel period, has yielded mountings in the
shapes of gold-plated boar heads with short-standing tusks. 26 Four similar
mountings with boar heads of bronze belong to a rich burial at Landshammar,
Spelvik parish, in eastern Södermanland.27 All these are of the same type as
the boar figures that stand on the helmets of parading warriors in an image on
the helmet from Valsgärde burial 7 from north of Uppsala.28 However, none
of these figures, which feature the short-standing tusks of a young boar, can
compare with the approximately contemporary boar face of Vendel 14 with its
full-grown tusks. I therefore consider the boar figures with short tusks as symbolizing high-ranking men in eastern Sweden, maybe members of the Yngling
king’s guard, their hird.
Recently, I have tried to show that achieving an understanding of this wild
boar symbolism for the first time makes it possible to reconstruct the actual
meaning of Ynglingatal’s and Ynglinga saga’s extremely confused descriptions of
the death of the Migration period Yngling king Egill. As far as I can see, King
Egill’s head is referred to in Ynglingatal as a farra trióna ‘boar snout’,29 which is
perfectly analogous to the above-mentioned royal boar face on the helmet from
Vendel grave 14 from a century later.
The story of the Old English Beowulf poem clearly reflects not only
Scandinavian material culture but also essentially Scandinavian oral traditions from the first half of the sixth century ad. Since the poem takes place in
Danish Zealand, on the Swedish island of Gotland, and in Uppland in eastern Svealand,30 it is worth noting that boar figures on helmets in this poem
are repeatedly characterized as eofer ‘boar’ and swīn ‘boar, swine’.31 During the
Migration and early Vendel periods, the Swedes seem to have had a more than
usual early love for helmets crowned with plastic boars. The names hildisvin
and hildigöltr, both meaning ‘battle boar’, for plastic boars on helmets also suggest that the boar was seen as a fylgia ‘protective spirit’ in combat.
Another point of interest is the famous quarrel between the Swedish king
Aðils and the Danish king Hrólfr about the Swedes’ old heirloom, the golden
26
27
28
29
30
31
Hennius and others, Människor kring Gnistahögen, fig. 94.
Lamm, ‘Ett vendeltida gravfynd’, fig. 2.
Arwidsson, Valsgärde, vii, Abb. 26, and 120.
Gräslund, Beowulfkvädet, pp. 150–58.
Gräslund, Beowulfkvädet.
Beowulf, vv. 304–05, 1111, 1113, 1138, 1286, 1453, 3033.
Bo Gräslund
236
ring Svíagríss,32 possibly sometime during the third quarter of the sixth century. Neck rings and arm rings, with ends formed as mostly unspecified animal
heads, from the late Roman and the Migration periods, are common, especially in eastern Scandinavia, but none possess a readily distinguishable boar
head, so the royal ring Svíagríss might have been unique. Since the word gríss
originally seems to have referred to wild pigs33 and since gold rings during the
middle Iron Age apparently served as media for binding affiliations not only
between humans but probably also between humans and gods, it is reasonable
to perceive Svíagríss as symbolizing the special relations between the Swedish
Yngling kings and their supposed ancestor god Freyr. The stealing of such holy
regalia was, no doubt, intended as an action of deep scornfulness, comparable
to burning down the enemy’s royal hall building.
Against this background it would seem more than a coincidence that ritually deposited domestic pig heads are, compared to other areas, overrepresented
in graves in Old Uppsala, the central place of the Swedish Yngling kings.34 They
could in my view be interpreted as representing the goddess Freyja in her role
of promoting the rebirth of the deceased for a secondary life in Fólkvangr or
Sessrúmnir. So even if there are no written sources attesting to the role of pigs
as sacred animals in Uppsala, these finds at least give a hint in that direction.
The origin of the folk name Svear is a controversial topic. Tacitus mentions
suiones, which is traditionally perceived as a Latin form of a Proto-Germanic
*swihoniz with the meaning of ‘their own’, ‘ourselves’, ‘relatives’, ‘the independent’, and the like.35 Jordanes has the Latinized form Suetidi but also Suehans,
the latter according to Elias Wessén a purely Gothic language form sweans,
nom. pl. of an n-stem.36 As I have recently tried to demonstrate,37 this interpretation of the folk name Svear suffers from the same semantic weaknesses
as those of the folk names Götar (Gauts), Gutar (Gotlanders), Goter (Goths),
and Jutar ( Jutes). In a Proto-Germanic Nordic world in which everyone spoke
32
Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 45; Bjarkarímur, ed. by Finnur Jónsson; Hrólfs
Saga Kraka, ed. by Finnur Jónsson. See also Kovárová, ‘The Swine in Old Nordic Religion and
Worldview’, pp. 204–07.
33
Beck, ‘Schwein’.
34
Magnell, Prata, and Sjöling, ‘Att behandlas som ett djur’.
35
Noreen, ‘Nordens äldsta folk- och ortnamn’; Andersson, ‘Svethiudh arkeo­logiskt
förankrat’; Andersson, ‘Från Svethiudh till Svearike ur språklig synvinkel’; Nyman, ‘Svear’.
36
Wessén, ‘Nordiska folkstammar’, p. 30.
37
Gräslund, Beowulfkvädet, appendix 2.
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods
237
largely the same language, it would have seemed almost bizarre if a people were
to call themselves ‘ourselves’, if others referred to them as ‘themselves’, ‘their
own’, if Svethiudh meant ‘our own people’38 and others referred to that group as
‘Self-People’, and if Svearike meant ‘Self-Power’.39 When a spotlight is shone on
that hypothetical linguistic practice, the traditional interpretation of the folk
name Svear looks extremely odd.
There are other suggestions for the interpretation of the name svear. Elis
Wadstein argues that its meaning is ‘something that disappears’, referring specifically to water and the effects of land uplift in the flat landscape around
Svinnegarn in south-west Uppland.40 This thought has gained little traction,
and on good grounds. Harry Ståhl comments on both this and the traditional
explanation mentioned above that: ‘Sådana tolkningar verkar abstrakta, och
man har svårt att förstå dem vare sig man anser att svearna själva skapat namnet
eller om man menar att något grannfolk ursprungligen använt det om svearna’
(Such interpretations seem abstract, and it is hard to understand them; either
you think that the Swedes themselves created the name or that some neighbours used it for the Swedes).41 Recently, Åke Sandström has proposed that
the folk name svear is related to words meaning ‘paddle’, though admits himself
that this interpretation is met with linguistic difficulties.42
Against this background, it is surprising how little attention has been
devoted to the Lund philo­logist Erik Harding’s interpretation of the name
svear. Harding proposed that the name reflects a *swihonez, an adjective k-derivation to the base sṷī with the meaning of ‘swine’. Taking into account swine
figures on Upplandic Bronze Age rock carvings, the above-mentioned picture
of the boar king on the helmet in Vendel grave 14, and the swine’s mytho­logical
relationship with the god Freyr, together with that god’s close relation to the
Swedish Yngling kings, Harding argued that the wild boar had been a totem
animal of the Swedes.43 Seemingly without knowing of Harding’s contribution, Lenka Kovárová more recently has come to a similar conclusion, that the
folk name svear is etymo­logically connected with the word svin and that the
powerful, brave, and dangerous wild boar was once an eponymous totem for
38
39
40
41
42
43
Noreen, ‘Nordens äldsta folk- och ortnamn’, p. 32.
Beowulf, vv. 2383, 2495.
Wadstein, ‘Sveriges namn’.
Ståhl, ‘Svear’, p. 480.
Sandström, Hå och hamna, pp. 307–09.
Harding, ‘Om namnen Sve-rige och svear’, pp. 1–5.
Bo Gräslund
238
the Yngling kings and their close allies in the upper world, the gods Freyr and
Freyja.44
Apparently, the swine had a strong symbolic import for Germanic and Celtic
peoples in general.45 But both Harding and Kovárová argue that this was particularly pronounced with the Swedes.46 As a comparison, they refer to continental folk names that in their Latin forms appear to signal links with animals:
Eburones to swine, Cherusci to deer, and Teurusci to bulls. I myself would like
to add from the Beowulf poem the folk name OE Weder ‘ram’ (Proto-Germanic
*weϸru), as an eponymous totem of the inhabitants of the large island Gotland
in the Baltic.47 However, neither Kovárová nor Heinrich Beck, who is also
worth consulting on this line of argument, refers to Harding or discusses the
folk name svear from a philo­logical perspective.
Tacitus mentions Suiones during the first century ad, which underlines the
high age of this folk name. In light of that fact, and because references to swine
are particularly frequent on Bronze Age rock carvings in eastern Sweden, both
Harding and Kovárová think that the link between svear and swine goes back
to the Bronze Age.
My own conclusion is that princes in eastern Svealand, maybe in the late
Neolithic or during the Bronze Age, claimed the desirable boar metaphor as
their own and called themselves Jǫfurr. But since the epithet jǫfurr was closely
related to the Yngling kings who counted mythic descent from the Vanir god
Freyr,48 jǫfurr became regarded as a holy epithet not applicable to the common
people of Uppland. Instead, those people were named with the profane IndoEuropean word for swine, related to the adjective *swihonez, and were called
Svethiudh ‘The Swine People’, which soon became synonymous with ‘The
Swine country’. During the Middle Ages, when the origin of the name had long
been forgotten, Svearike ‘Svea power’ turned into Sverighe and then into the
present-day Sverige ‘Sweden’.
44
Kovárová, ‘The Swine in Old Nordic Religion and Worldview’, pp. 203–08.
Beck, Das Ebersignung im Germanischen.
46
Harding, ‘Om namnen Sve-rige och svear’, p. 4; Kovárová, ‘The Swine in Old Nordic Religion and Worldview’, pp. 203–08. See also Beck, Das Ebersignung im Germanischen,
pp. 183–95; Pesch, ‘Zur Ikonograhie und Hermeneutik der Goldhalskragen’, pp. 360–70.
47
Gräslund, Beowulfkvädet, ch. 8.
48
Sundqvist, An Arena for Higher Powers, pp. 70–74.
45
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods
239
Final Comments
One difficulty in assessing the ideo­logical relationship between the Swedes
and the wild boar is knowing which time perspective to view it in. However,
an ancient eponymous relationship seems obvious. The swine’s close relationship with the Vanir gods Freyr and Freyja, the epithet jǫfurr for early Yngling
kings, the picture of a jǫfurr prince with tusks from Vendel grave 14, various
plastic boar figures on helmets, and the descriptions of King Egill’s death in
Ynglingatal and in the Beowulf poem together clearly show an old and deep
relationship, which incorporates ideas of fertility, rebirth, patronage in combat,
and the position of the swine as a sacred animal.
Considering this relationship to reflect traditions of a mythic Yngling
dynasty, descending from a Pre-Indo European Neolithic people, might seem
far-fetched, but the thought gains some support in the fact that the ProtoGermanic word *ebura (ON jǫfurr) is regarded as a ‘notoriously Non-IndoEuropean’ term from a substrate of pan-European Neolithic.49 In fact, as much
as 30 per cent of the lexical content of the Germanic languages seems to be made
up of non-Indo-European words from a substrate of a Neolithic pan-European
language.50 A useful parallel with an unclear etymo­logy is the Proto-Germanic
word *dīsi, ON dís ‘Lady’, ‘woman’, ‘fairy’,51 which is connected to Freyja in
Snorri’s Gylfaginning.52 *Dīsi may originally have been a non-European name
or epithet for Freyja, which was replaced by the dominant Indo-European
speakers with *Fraujón ‘Lady’, ‘Housewife’, ‘Fairy’, ‘Goddess’, a Proto-Germanic
word with a very similar etymo­logy to *Dīsi. If we search hard enough, it seems,
therefore, we can begin to uncover a complex of language tying together the
Vanir, sacred swine, and fertility in very ancient times.
49
Kroonen, ‘Non-Indo-European Root Nouns in Germanic’. Cf. Iversen and Kroonen,
‘Talking Neolithic’.
50
Rifkin, ‘A Spatial Analysis’.
51
Kroonen, Etymo­logical Dictionary and ‘Non-Indo-European Root Nouns in Germanic’.
52
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 34.
240
Bo Gräslund
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Statens Historiska Museum, 1980), pp. 19–30
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nischen Altertumskunde, ed. by Heinrich Beck and others, xxvii (Berlin: de Gruyter,
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Gimbutas, Marija, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, 7000 to 3500 bc: Myths, Legends
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14–36
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
Terry Gunnell
A
s Jens Peter Schjødt has underlined in a recent article,1 comparative
study can be a highly useful tool for those working in the field of Old
Norse religions, especially when it is remembered that hard cultural
borderlines between the Celtic, Sámi, and Nordic/Germanic cultures did not
exist during the Iron Age, something that also applied to beliefs and forms
of worship.2 As the title of this article suggests,3 the focus here will be on the
theophoric figures that might have been associated with the well-known bog,
spring, well, and lake sacrifices and depositions that took place in Denmark
and Sweden during the Iron Age, which are some of the most obvious powerful sources that we have on living Old Norse religious belief and practice in
the Iron Age. In some places, the offerings at these sites, ranging from stones
to pots to rings to cauldrons, weapons, wagons, ships, and even human beings,
were spread over a period of time that in some places lasted from the late Bronze
1
Schjødt, ‘Pre-Christian Religions of the North and the Need for Comparativism’.
See, for example, Andrén, ‘Behind Heathendom’, p. 126; and DuBois, Nordic Religions
in the Viking Ages, pp. 10–11.
3
This article is based on a lecture originally presented in November 2007 at an international symposium on Old Norse Myth at Aarhus Uni­ver­sity, and was inspired by supervisory
discussions with Ingunn Ásdísardóttir, Karen Bek-Pedersen, and Noémie Beck, who were all
working on female supernatural figures.
2
Terry Gunnell (terry@hi.is) is Professor of Folkloristics at the Uni­ver­sity of Iceland and the
author of a wide range of books and articles on Old Norse religion, Nordic folk belief and
legend, folk drama and performance. His most recent book, Málarinn og menningarsköpun:
Sigurður Guðmundsson og Kvöldfélagið (with Karl Aspelund), received a nomination for the
Icelandic Literature Prize in 2017.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 243–265
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119351
Terry Gunnell
244
Age until around ad 500 or even longer.4 Like the Stone and Bronze Age rock
carvings of Alta or Bohuslän, they underline that some places in the landscape
were seen as being more infused with power or holiness than others.5 Moreover,
if we follow the early contemporary Latin commentators such as Tacitus and
the evidence of later place-names, these sacrifices would appear to have taken
place in areas where people later worshipped certain gods and goddesses that
went by names similar to those later found in eddic poetry,6 Snorra Edda, and
Saxo’s Gesta Danorum.7
Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the emphases and information about
mytho­logy and religious practice provided by recent archaeo­logical finds have
often turned out to be very different from those provided by the later literary sources recorded in Iceland and Denmark. As will be underlined below,
both the archaeo­logical information and that found in the near contemporary
records of foreign commentators such as Tacitus seem to point to the fact that
close associations existed between certain types of water and female deities, and
that these female deities must have played a central role in the Iron Age religious
activities of northern Denmark and southern Sweden.8 In later times, however,
both Snorri and Saxo consistently downplay the role of women, arguing for a
hierarchy of gods topped by the figure of Óðinn.9 The trustworthiness of this
4
See, for example, Todd, The Northern Barbarians, pp. 187–203; Ilkjær, Illerup Ådal,
p. 67; and Müller-Wille, ‘Offerplatser på kontinenten’. On offerings to water sites, see further
Lund, ‘Banks, Borders and Bodies of Water in a Viking Age Mentality’, p. 55; ‘At the Water’s
Edge’, pp. 51–52; and 56–57; and ‘Åsted og vadested’; as well as Fredengren, ‘Where Wandering Water Gushes’, p. 110; Zachrisson, ‘Hyndevadsfallet och den kulturella mångfalden’; and
Monikander, ‘Våld och vatten’, pp. 2 and 56.
5
See Gunnell, ‘The Power in the Place’.
6
In this article, all references to eddic poems refer to Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Icelandic are those of
the author.
7
See, for example, Tacitus, Germania, ed. by Sleeman, pp. 35–36 and 51–52; Todd, The
Northern Barbarians, pp. 182–87; and the place-name maps in Brink, ‘How Uniform Was the
Old Norse Religion?’.
8
See Tacitus, Germania, ed. by Sleeman, pp. 51–52 (on the tribes of Jylland that worshipped Nerthus); 35 (on the Suevi who worship ‘Isis’ who is represented by a light galley); 54
(on the Aestii who like the Suebi worship the Mother of the Gods, and wear the emblem of a
wild boar in her honour); and 55 (on the Sitones for whom women were the ruling sex). With
regard to the archaeo­logical evidence, see further below.
9
On the question of the hierarchy of gods, see further Gunnell, ‘Pantheon? What Pantheon?’.
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
245
male-dominated, hierarchical image is one of the key enigmas faced by scholars
dealing with the source material on Old Nordic religions. As has been increasingly argued over the last decades, both archaeo­logical and literary evidence,
as well as place-name study, suggest that the religions that existed in the preChristian north varied greatly in practice and belief by time and area around
a body of shared concepts that would have been associated with a shared language.10 It also needs to be remembered that authors like Snorri and Saxo were
not only writing over two hundred years after the advent of Christianity, drawing on cultural oral memory that had been influenced by Christian and classical
thought, but also had their own political and cultural agendas.
How then do we go about bridging the apparently increasing information
gap that seems to exist between archaeo­logy and Snorri, especially when it
comes to the offerings made to the bogs, lakes, wells, and springs many hundreds of years before Snorri was born and the eddic poems came to be recorded?
An eternal problem for those involved is that archaeo­logical finds like those
found in the Danish and Swedish bogs lack the accompaniment of explanatory
words. Meanwhile, those extant texts that deal with the religions that might lie
behind these offerings have an origin far removed from the ‘scene of the crime’
that they describe. In short, we cannot blindly trust in their authenticity. If we
wish to attain any understanding of pre-Christian Nordic religious practice and
thought, it is necessary to use these two forms together, somehow bringing the
explanatory into contact with the contemporary. Furthermore, as I have argued
elsewhere,11 if we wish to use effectively the Old Norse literary sources, we need
to consider their original cultural background. We need to remember that, like
a pearl, while they may well have acquired new material and accumulated new
levels and functions in the process of adjusting themselves to new audiences
and new surroundings, the probability is that they often retain certain key
features that are very old. Obvious examples are those mytho­logical features
that would have made little or no sense in the contemporary Icelandic environment in which the eddic poems and Snorra Edda were recorded, such as the
mention of ash and oak trees (Vǫluspá [K],12 sts 17, 19, and 46; and Völsunga
10
One of the first scholars to stress this idea was John McKinnell, in Both One and Many,
pp. 9–10. For further references, see, for example, Gunnell, ‘Pantheon? What Pantheon?’; and
‘How High Was the High One?’.
11
On eddic performance, see most recently Gunnell, ‘Eddic Performance and Eddic
Audiences’.
12
In references to the text of Vǫluspá, [K] refers to the Konungsbók (Codex Regius) text,
and [H] to that in Hauksbók.
Terry Gunnell
246
saga),13 wooden idols scattered around the landscape (Hávamál, st. 49), golden
goblets in marshes (Grímnismál, st. 7), enormous warrior halls (Grímnismál,
st. 23), berserkir,14 and wolves capable of swallowing gods and celestial bodies
(Vǫluspá [K], sts 39 and 52). They may well also contain evidence about earlier
beliefs about the role of goddesses that have since faded into the background.
There is little question that the close relationship that originally existed
between the pre-Christian religions of the north and the local environment
(and the cultural memories associated with it) must have been seriously disrupted by the migration of the northern peoples to new lands, and especially to
near untouched environments like the Faroes and Iceland which had no previous inhabitants or cultural history.15 It is generally accepted that even at the
time of these migrations in the Iron Age, in their homelands, the people of
mainland Scandinavia would have envisaged their gods and spirits as being intimately connected with the ancient environment and especially the landscape
surrounding the homestead. As Stefan Brink effectively noted some years back:
During pre-Christian times, all nature and landscape were metaphysically ‘charged’
in different ways, with different degrees of energy, as regarded holiness or sacrality;
the landscape was metaphysically impregnated as a totality, and people lived in a
numinous environment. Everything ‘out there’ was, as Mircea Eliade would have
called it, a huge hierophany.16
Stefan adds: ‘A religion may either bind people to a place or free them from it.
The pagan religion of Scandinavia was obviously of the former kind. The worship of local and regional gods probably bound people to places and districts’.17
As Stefan notes, breaking this intrinsic link between people and their landscape
was potentially a very effective political tool, because ‘the territory is not only a
land resource for the physical existence of a people, it is also their past and their
memory’.18 This is worth bearing in mind.
As Charlotte Fabech and other archaeo­logists have pointed out,19 it seems
that around ad 500, in the Age of Migrations, in very general terms (and with
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Völsunga saga, ed. by Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, p. 6.
Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Pro­logue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 46.
See further Gunnell, ‘The Power in the Place’.
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, pp. 81–82.
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 86; see also Sanmark, Power and Conversion, p. 176.
Brink, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, p. 81.
Fabech, ‘Centrality in Sites and Landscapes’, p. 459; and Fabech and Näsman, ‘Ritual
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
247
natural exceptions), an important change was taking place across the more
southerly areas of Scandinavia, whereby the depositions that had been taking
place in natural sites like bogs, lakes, and islands situated around the periphery
of settlements were being brought to a halt. For some reason, it seems that these
activities were gradually being superseded in many areas by a new phenomenon
of offerings being directly associated with central man-made halls like that in
Uppåkra near Lund in Sweden.20 This was the period of the tiny guldgubber
(gold foils) which are often found grouped around key pillars within the same
central halls (or the cult houses associated with them).21 In very general terms,
this change in focus seems to be associated with a religious development that
followed (or was associated with) a period of warfare in Denmark and southern
Sweden that seems to have involved increasingly powerful male rulers uprooting religious activities from the natural environment and moving them into
the halls they had built, something perhaps associated with these same rulers
taking on the role of goðar, an interesting word implying a semi-god-like status.22 In short, it seems that these men were not only accumulating political
power, but also religious control. As will be discussed in more detail below,
the same development seems to have led to the independent valkyrjur becoming barmaids and servants of Óðinn;23 to Valhǫll taking over from Hel (and
Fólkvangr (Grímnismál, sts 14 and 23)) as a home of the dead warriors;24 to
Mímisbrunnr (the well25 of Mímir) (Vǫluspá [K], st. 28) potentially taking
Landscapes and Sacral Places’; pp. 94–95; as the archaeo­logist Julie Lund has shown noted,
wetland sacrifices nonetheless continued in some areas until the Viking Age: see, for example,
Lund, ‘At the Water’s Edge’, pp. 51–52.
20
See, for example, Larsson, ‘Uppåkra’; and Jørgensen, ‘Pre-Christian Cult at Aristocratic
Residences’.
21
See, for example, Herschend, ‘Hus på Helgö’, pp. 225–27; Stamsö Munch, ‘Hus og hall’,
pp. 328–29; and Hansen, ‘Dankirke’ on finds at Helgö, Borg, Dejbjerg, and Dankirke. On the
guldgubber themselves, see, for example, Watt, ‘Images of Women on “Gulgubber” from the
Merovingian Age’.
22
See further Sundqvist, An Arena for Higher Powers; and most recently Rood, ‘Ascending the Steps to Hliðskjálf ’.
23
See further Murphy, ‘Herjans dísir’. For references to Ynglinga saga in this article, see
Ynglinga saga, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson.
24
On the question of the relationship between Hel and Valhǫll, see further Ellis, The Road
to Hel; and Abram, ‘Representations of the Pagan Afterlife in Medi­eval Scandinavian Literature’.
25
As Julie Lund notes in ‘At the Water’s Edge’, p. 56 (and elsewhere), brunnr can potentially refer to a spring or lake. It nonetheless needs to be borne in mind that the word is directly
248
Terry Gunnell
over from Urðarbrunnr (the well of Urðr) (Vǫluspá [K], st. 19); and to Óðinn
becoming an expert at the female art of seiðr (Lokasenna, st. 24, cf. Ynglinga
saga, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, pp. 13 and 18–20).26
As suggested above, part of this development seems to have involved female
supernatural figures associated with the dead gradually being superseded by
male figures and male environments. A natural question is whether the same
applied to the landscape itself, and not least bodies of water (as is possibly
implied by the case of Mímisbrunnr and Urðarbrunnr noted above). It is generally accepted that deep-rooted connections existed between the Vanir gods and
their partners and the landscape.27 Why then should one consider connecting
the sacrificial bogs, lakes, and wells of the pre-Óðinnic Danish and Swedish
landscape to predominantly female figures rather than to Freyr or Njǫrðr (both
of whom had associations with water)? This is where one finds good reason to
make effective use of bridges between literature, archaeo­logy, and place-name
studies, calling on parallels from neighbouring cultures. Returning to Vǫluspá,
and its account of the first real problems faced by the Æsir after their creation of the world: as Margaret Clunies Ross has noted,28 it is noteworthy that
most of these threats are female and that they come from ‘outside’ the world of
the Æsir. First are the three ‘þursa meyjar | ámáttkar mjǫk | ór jǫtunheimum’
(extremely powerful jǫtunn-women from Jǫtunheimar) who appear in st. 8
after the gods have established the process of time in st. 6. These women are followed by (if they are not the same as) the ‘meyjar | margs vitandi | þrjár’ (three
women with knowledge of many kinds) who enter the scene in st. 20 (following
the awakening of the previously ‘ørlǫglausa’ (lacking in fate) Askr and Embla in
st. 17); the attempted murder (if not also raping) of Gullveig in Óðinn’s ‘hǫll’
(hall) in st. 21; and the mention of the seiðr-wielding, far-seeing Heiðr in st. 22,
yet another figure that, like the others, seems to come from and exist essentially
outside houses and halls. The ‘þrjár meyjar’ of st. 20, however, are not merely
moving figures: like the vǫlva speaking to Óðinn, they appear to come from
below (see st. 2). As Karen Bek-Pedersen, among others, has stressed, 29 the
associated first of all with drinking water (as with the verb að brynna, meaning ‘to take animals
to water’). It also has a strong sense of depth.
26
On the nature of seiðr, see further Strömbäck, Sejd; Price, The Viking Way; and Tolley,
Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic.
27
See, for example, Gunnell, ‘Blótgyðjur, Goðar, Mimi, Incest, and Wagons’.
28
Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, i, 164–65 and 201–02.
29
Bek-Pedersen, The Norns in Old Norse Mytho­logy, pp. 73–121 on the ‘women in the well’.
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
249
older Konungsbók manu­script also states that these women came ‘ór þeim sæ |
er und þolli stendr’ (out of the waters beneath the tree: my emphases), thereby
referring directly back to ‘Urðarbrunnr’ (Urðr’s well) which, according to the
previous strophe, lies directly below Yggdrasill, giving the tree life.
While the scribe of the later Hauksbók seems to have had trouble with this
image of the nornir appearing out of the water like something from a Bond
movie, and uses the odd wording ‘ór þeim sal | er á þolli stendr’30 (from that
hall | that stands on the tree: my emphases) (Vǫluspá [H], st. 20), there is good
reason to focus on the wording of the older manu­script. Even though Vǫluspá
contains features that seem to draw on more recent Christian ideas,31 the idea
of the nornir emerging from water seems to be an inherited, and unquestioned
cultural memory. Indeed, similar ideas are found elsewhere in both Vǫluspá and
Grímnismál, underlining the fact that this idea of women living in water was a
comparatively widespread and deeply rooted concept. Vǫluspá, st. 33, describes
how Frigg ‘grét | í Fensǫlum’ (wept in marsh halls),32 while Grímnismál, st. 7,
which is probably an older work, talks of ‘Søkkvabekkr […] | en þar svalar knegu
| unnir yfir glymja; | þar þau Óðinn ok Sága | drekka um alla daga | glǫð ór
gullnum kerum’ (Sunken Benches, where cool streams thunder; where Óðinn
and Sága drink daily joyfully from golden goblets). The parallel between the
names of the halls of Frigg and Sága and the shared association with Óðinn has
naturally encouraged many scholars to argue that these must be two names for
the same figure.33 There is nonetheless good reason to tread warily here. Snorri
appears to have viewed both as separate figures,34 and it should be remembered
that Frigg is never mentioned by name in Grímnismál. The fact remains that
alongside the close association between the nornir and water (reflected also
perhaps by the name of Fenja in Grottasǫngr, st. 1) are two leading goddesses
who are directly linked to underwater domiciles. It is also hard to ignore the
fact that Sága is a perfect name for a potential marsh goddess. While there
seems to have been some uncertainty about the spelling of the name (while
30
The strophe is not quoted in Snorra Edda.
See further the articles in Gunnell and Lassen, eds, The Nordic Apocalypse, pp. 113–201.
32
As with the mention of ‘sæ’ in Vǫluspá, st. 20, this strophe is missing in both Hauksbók
and Snorra Edda.
33
See Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, i, 369.
34
Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Pro­logue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 29 and 45. Here
Sága is listed as second of the goddesses after Frigg. The same applies in the Uppsala Edda: see
Snorri Sturluson, The Uppsala Edda, ed. by Heimir Pálsson and trans. by Faulkes, pp. 50–53.
31
Terry Gunnell
250
the Konungsbók manu­script of Grímnismál has ‘Sága’, the Uppsala Edda has
‘Saga’), it should never be forgotten that this was a poem that originated in
the spoken oral tradition. In short, the sound came first, and then the attempt
to find some way of recording it correctly. There is little question that Sága
sounds wonderfully marsh-like, encouraging aural parallels with Old Icelandic
words like sog ‘sucking’ and að soga ‘to suck’, found in Icelandic place-names
like Sogamyri and the river Sogið.35 It reminds us of the fact that phenomeno­
logically, the idea that objects ‘sink’ in water rather than being sucked down,
is a comparatively recent idea. Also worth bearing in mind here is that Óðinn
is described as visiting Sága rather than vice versa, in a similar fashion to the
way in which he visits other powerful women that he requires something from
(such as the vǫlur in Vǫluspá and Baldrs draumar and Gunnlǫð in Hávamál,
sts 105–10). She seems to be the more powerful of the two.
Another feature of particular interest in the description of Sága and Óðinn
is the mention of them drinking from golden goblets below the water in
Søkkvabekkr, a feature that encourages direct cultural parallels, first and foremost to the bog depositions noted above,36 and then to Beowulf, which has
close cultural connections to the world of Denmark and Sweden in the period
around ad 500.37 Here we find not only similar cultural clashes of power
between the central male hall and the pool at the edge of the wild, but also
mention of an unnameable female power that lurks at the bottom of this pool,
surrounded by weapons.38 As Hilda Ellis Davidson among others has argued,
Grendel’s mother is no mere monster.39 She is certainly described as a ‘brimwylf ’ (wolf of the lake) (Beowulf l. 1599) and a ‘grund-wyrgen’ (monster of the
deep) (Beowulf l. 1518), but she is also a ‘grund-hyrd’ (guardian of the depths)
(Beowulf 1. 2136) and an ‘ides’ (lady of high standing) (Beowulf ll. 1259 and
35
While it has been argued that Old Icelandic sá did not change to Modern Icelandic
so (as with vágr and vogur), it is worth remembering there were a wide range of dialects in
Scandinavia, and that the scribal choice of á rather than o in the spelling may well have been a
haphazard decision, especially if the original sound was closer to the later Norwegian å. (I am
grateful to Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson of the Arnamagnaean Institute for discussing this
further with me, and lending his support to the logic of this suggestion.) On the question of
Sága and vágr>vogur, see further Noreen, Altnordische Grammatik, i, 146 and 230; and Hreinn
Benediktsson, ‘Relational Sound Change’.
36
See also Ström, Nordisk hedendom, p. 186; and Steinsland, Norrøn religion, p. 237.
37
See, for example, Ellis Davidson, ‘Archaeo­logy and Beowulf ’, pp. 357–59.
38
See also Herschend ‘Ordering Landscapes’, p. 334.
39
Ellis Davidson, Roles of the Northern Goddess, pp. 21–22.
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
251
1351), the latter word raising obvious parallels with Nordic words like dísir,
and the ídisi found on the first Merseburg charm from the ninth or tenth century.40
The references noted above underline that a Nordic oral tradition evidently
existed of powerful female figures being associated with those inland pools,
wells, lakes, or marshes that received valuable offerings, something that encourages one to consider whether those poetic kennings associating gold with water
(‘eldr vatna eða á ok allra árheita’ (the fire of lakes, rivers, or all river names))41
might go back to a similar origin. Obvious parallels are also found in the story
from a neighbouring medi­eval culture of the Lady of the Lake who gives and
takes back Arthur’s sword Excalibur.42 One might also consider the much later
folk legends from Dejbjerg and elsewhere telling of golden wagons being hidden in lakes in southern Scandinavia,43 legends which received concrete support when the Dejbjerg wagons came to light.44 With logical reason, these wagons have commonly been placed in connection with Tacitus’s account about
Nerthus, a powerful goddess who apparently lived on an island, and seems to
have received drowned human sacrifices.45
It is worth bearing in mind that in the neighbouring Celtic world (from
which the Arthurian motif of the Lady of the Lake probably springs), those
spirits or deities that are directly associated with springs, rivers, and lakes tend
to be female, and it is evident that these figures received similar votive offerings during the Celtic Bronze and early Iron Age.46 As numerous scholars have
noted, the River Boyne near Dublin was originally associated with the goddess Bóinn/Bóand (derived from the Old Irish Bóuvinda).47 Other rivers and
springs clearly associated with female spirits in the Celtic world are the Shannon
40
On the dísir and the Merseburg fragment, see Gunnell ‘The Season of the Dísir’. For
references to Beowulf, see Beowulf, ed. by Wyatt.
41
Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, i, 41.
42
Malory, Le Morte Darthur, pp. 38 and 791.
43
See af Klintberg, ‘Traditioner om guldvagnar’.
44
On the Dejbjerg wagons, see Glob, The Bog People, pp. 166–71; and ‘The Wagons from
Dejbjerg’.
45
Tacitus, Germania, ed. by Sleeman, pp. 51–52. See also Tacitus’s note on the Suevi and
the worship of ‘Isis’ on p. 35. On Nerthus, see also Motz, ‘The Goddess Nerthus’.
46
For one recent example from 2016, see Yip, ‘Large 2,000 Year-Old Lump of Butter
Found in an Irish Bog’.
47
Ó hÓgáin, The Lore of Ireland, pp. 38–39; Myth, Legend and Romance, p. 49; and
MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mytho­logy, pp. 40 and 45.
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Terry Gunnell
in Ireland (associated with the goddess Sionainn/Sinann);48 the springs at
Bath in Britain (connected to Sulis Minerva, who received among other
things images of breasts in bronze and ivory);49 the springs at Carrawburgh,
on Hadrian’s Wall (linked to the figure of Coventina who received coins and
jewellery);50 a spring in Hochscheid in Germany (associated with Sirona);51 the
River Marne in France (associated with the Matronæ);52 the Saône (associated
with Souconna); the Severn (associated with Sabrina); the Wharfe (associated with Verbeia); the Danube (associated with Danu);53 and the Seine (in
the shape of the temple of Sequana in Sirona).54 In the present context, it is
also worth bearing in mind that some of these goddesses, such as Sionainn and
Bóinn, were also directly associated with knowledge.55 The enduring spiritual
importance of many of these sites appears to have been so deeply rooted in their
local communities that even today they are still the sites of a variety of seasonal
rituals, most of which have taken on a Christian guise.56
Bearing the above in mind, it is worth noting that some archaeo­logists
have suggested that in the Nordic world there seems to have been a difference
in the types of votive offerings made to different kinds of water. As Anders
Andrén has noted, objects more associated with men, like weapons, are more
often found in open water, while those associated with women (jewellery and
clothes) are mainly found in marshes and bogs, the suggestion being that the sex
of the recipient may have varied in accordance with the type of watery space.57
48
Ó hÓgáin, The Lore of Ireland, pp. 454–55; and MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mytho­
logy, p. 341.
49
Davidson, Roles of the Northern Goddess, p. 156; and Green, ‘The Celtic Goddess as
Healer’, pp. 33–36. For other British examples (from between 1500 bc to ad 600), see Hutton,
The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, pp. 184–92.
50
Davidson, Roles of the Northern Goddess, pp. 157–59.
51
Green, ‘The Celtic Goddess as Healer’, pp. 29–30.
52
Ó hÓgáin, The Sacred Isle, pp. 64–65.
53
Ó hÓgáin, The Sacred Isle, pp. 64–66.
54
MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mytho­logy, p. 341.
55
See MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mytho­logy, p. 341; and Ó hÓgáin, The Lore of Ireland, pp. 454–55.
56
As Mircea Eliade notes in Patterns in Comparative Religion, p. 200, ‘The cult of water
— and particularly of springs held to be curative, hot springs, salt springs and so on — displays
a striking continuity. No religious revolution has ever put a stop to it’.
57
Andrén, ‘Platsernas betydelse’, p. 317. See, however, the other more recent articles on
wetland deposits noted above in n. 4.
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
253
Certainly, the idea that goddesses might have been more associated with marshes
and wells is given some support by the mytho­logical associations attached to
Fensalir, Søkkvabekkr, and the well Urðarbrunnr. Nonetheless, even if this was
the case, as Rudolf Simek has argued,58 there is no logical reason for assuming
that the figure who received the offerings should necessarily have been of the
same gender as that commonly associated with the type of offerings. As noted
above, Freyja seems to have received dead warriors in Fólkvangr, and both the
Lady of the Lake and Grendel’s mother were associated with swords. One cannot ignore the warlike image of the valkyrjur, Skaði, or Þorgerðr Hǫlgabrúðr
(the name has a number of variants) either.59
Further concrete support for the idea of goddesses having been associated
with bogs, lakes, and wells in Denmark in the early Iron Age can certainly be
found in the shape of the obviously female wooden idols that have been discovered at some of these sites accompanied by offerings, particularly striking
examples being that found in Foerlev Nymølle in Jylland where the early Iron
Age figure was surrounded by pottery vessels, bones of animals, and flax; and
in the shape of the Bronze Age figure found in the Rebild Skovhuse bog, also
in Jylland.60 An evident riposte to the idea that these sites were only associated with goddesses is found in the fact that obvious male idols have are also
been found in some of these places, in at least one case (in Braak, in SchleswigHolstein) accompanying a female figure.61 This latter example nonetheless
serves to remind us of the fact that many of the Celtic water goddesses, like
Frigg and Sága, were directly associated with male deities. In general, however,
water in the form of wells, lakes, marshes, and springs is commonly seen as representing a liminal connection point between worlds — the sky and the underworld; earth and water; the present and the past; the living and the dead; the
male and the female. The idea of a watery realm associated with women also
being associated with death might, of course, find some support in the fact that
the worlds of death are commonly associated with the female sex in Old Nordic
mytho­logy (in the shape of Hel, Freyja, Rán, Gefjun, the valkyrjur, and even
the nornir), something which adds potential weight to the idea that for many
58
Simek, ‘Goddesses, Mothers, Dísir’, p. 118.
McKinnell, ‘Two Sex Goddesses’.
60
See Glob, The Bog People, pp. 180–82. See also the further details on dating collected in
Matsenius, ‘Det levande träet’, pp. 3–14. See also Müller-Wille, ‘Offerplatser på kontinenten’,
pp. 146–50.
61
Glob, The Bog People, pp. 182–87; and Matsenius, ‘Det levande träet’, pp. 6 and 10–11.
59
Terry Gunnell
254
people these watery entrances to the underworld also provided access to some
kind of ‘dark’ knowledge relating to the future.62 Indeed, it is possible that such
an idea might also have been connected with a variety of ancestor belief.63
In general, as Folke Ström and Gro Steinsland have previously suggested,64
there seems little reason to question the idea that many of the Nordic spring, well,
and bog sacrifices were originally associated with female figures, as they were in
the neighbouring Celtic countries. It also seems logical that the goddesses associated with these sites would have gone under a variety of names. After all, it has
been argued that the most regularly used sites of votive offerings may well have
been associated with individual nations or tribes, and it is equally logical that
each of these would have had their own ‘mother’ figure who would have received
the sacrifices that would have been given to the water this figure inhabited.65
This argument nonetheless faces two key problems when applied to the
Nordic countries: first of all, why is it that in spite of the literary evidence,
the archaeo­logical remains, and earlier Anglo-Saxon laws, such as those issued
by King Knut in 1020–23 (which explicitly ban offerings to wells, rivers, and
springs),66 the only Nordic law that bans offerings made to water is the later
Gulaþingslǫg from western Norway which only mentions waterfalls.67 With
62
On Hel and the other female figures associated with death, see further Ellis, The Road
to Hel; and Abram, ‘Representations of the Pagan Afterlife in Medi­eval Scandinavian Literature’. On the connection between these sites and access to knowledge, see Harder Klitgaard, ‘In
Search of askr Yggdrasill’, pp. 113–20.
63
See Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Germanic World. On ancestor cults, see also Sundqvist,
An Arena for Higher Powers, pp. 430–75; and Laidoner, ‘Ancestors, their Worship and the Elite’.
64
Ström, Nordisk hedendom, p. 186; and Steinsland, Norrøn religion, p. 237.
65
See Todd, The Northern Barbarians, pp. 194–95 (and maps on 81 and 188); and Shaw,
Pagan Goddesses in the Germanic World. On the various tribes, see also Brink, ‘People and land
in Early Scandinavia’. The idea of differing tribes having varying names for similar concepts is
naturally reflected in the accounts given in Tacitus’s Germania (noted above). Indeed, the name
Freyja (simply meaning ‘Lady’) is probably itself a noa word that covered a range of local names
(something suggested by the various other names for Freyja given in Snorri Sturluson, Edda:
Pro­logue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 29 (see also pp. 24–25)).
66
See Sanmark, Power and Conversion, p. 151 on this and other Anglo-Saxon laws. As
Sanmark notes, Knut’s laws also ban the worship of the sun, moon, fire, stones, and trees. See
also pp. 156–57 on condemnations of the worship of wells and trees in Saxony in the tenth and
eleventh centuries.
67
See Norges gamle love indtil 1387, ed. by Keyser and Munch, p. 308 (the later Gulaþingslǫg
article on ‘trolldom’). See also Gunnell, ‘The Fiddler and the Waterfall’ on practices and beliefs
concerning waterfalls in the Nordic countries in both pagan and Christian times.
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
255
regard to enduring pagan worship, the emphasis in these laws is on land-related
sites such as stocks, stones, altars, and gravemounds, something that suggests
that, by this time at least, watery sites were less associated with pagan activities.68
The second problem was voiced fifty years ago by Gabriel Turville-Petre
who, with regard to the evidence concerning Frigg as a goddess, notes:
Considering her [Frigg’s] antiquity and exalted position, it is surprising how little
evidence there is of her worship. Some have claimed to find her name in placenames, for the most part in Sweden. Most of these are of doubtful origin.69
One can, of course, say the same thing about Freyja. As Lennart Elmevik has
noted,70 in many cases, place-names with a Frö- prefix may simply refer to
sites that were particularly fertile. In short, the essential problem is that while
we have a range of environmental place-names associated with Þórr, Freyr,
Óðinn, Týr, Njǫrðr, and Ullr (including a number of water-associated names
like Odensbrunn ‘Óðinn’s well’, Onsmossen ‘Óðinn’s bog’, Onsjö ‘Óðinn’s lake’,
Onsjömyren ‘Óðinn’s marsh’, Onstjärn ‘Óðinn’s pool’, Odensjö ‘Óðinn’s lake’,
Torsmyra ‘Þórr’s marsh’, and Ullfors ‘Ullr’s waterfall’), place-names related to
goddesses are notably absent.71 One of the few exceptions is the highly interesting site at Käringsjön in Halland, southern Sweden, which seems to have only
received offerings of food and farming implements and no weapons, although
even here some place-name experts have expressed doubt about whether the
name was originally based on the word käring ‘old woman’.72 We are thus faced
with an abiding question: if those wells, springs, bogs, and lakes on the periphery that were sites of offering were originally associated with goddesses rather
than gods, why should earlier place-names reflecting such worship have disappeared? Is this another example of male hall-based worship displacing that
which used to take place in the borderlands which had been more associated
68
See Gunnell, ‘Nordic Folk Legends, Folk Traditions and Grave Mounds’ on the persistence of ritual practices regarding grave mounds in the Nordic countries.
69
Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, p. 189.
70
See Elmevik, ‘Freyr, Freyja och Freyfaxi’.
71
See the place-names listed in Olsen, Hedenske kultminder i norske stedsnavne; Brink
‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, ‘Mytho­logizing Landscape’, and ‘Naming the
Land’; and Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser (especially pp. 120, 126–30, 142, and 169). See also
the well and spring place-names associated with Old Norse gods given in Olrik and Ellekilde,
Nordens Gudeverden, i, 389–91. It is noteworthy how many more water place-names seem to be
associated with Óðinn than with other gods.
72
See Carlie, ‘Käringsjön’.
Terry Gunnell
256
with women? Certainly, it must be borne in mind that the Anglo-Saxon religion
reflected in early British Christian laws noted above reflected an earlier stage of
Germanic/Nordic belief than that encountered in the Nordic sources. In the
Nordic countries, such beliefs and practices went on developing for another
five hundred years before they came to be superseded by Christianity. It should
not be forgotten either that it was during this period that, in many areas, the
new ‘central places’ came into being, which were based around the halls of a
new kind of aristocracy that strengthened its role with a stress on a new hierarchic male-focused religion rooted in the hall environment and the figure of the
god-like ruler.73 Nonetheless, if the disappearance of place-names connecting
watery sites with goddesses was possibly a reflection of such a change in religious thought and practice, how exactly would this have been brought about?
In Ireland and Britain, continued ritual practices relating to sites often connected by place-names to female saints such as St Anne and St Brigit underline the earlier-noted fact that the well and spring worship originally associated with female goddesses (and the superstitions related to this) was extremely
difficult to eradicate.74 The range of powerful Olavskilder (St Ólafr’s wells)
in Norway,75 Gvendarbrunnir (St Guðmundur’s wells) in Iceland,76 and even
Manswal (St Magnús’ Well) in Orkney77 suggests that the same thing applied
in the Nordic countries, and that the church in later times employed similar
tactics to those used in Ireland and Britain, effectively renaming pagan sites
with the names of Christian saints (although here, interestingly enough,
using the names of male saints rather than females).78 Renaming was an effective means of converting both landscape and people, as Pope Gregory, among
others, was well aware. Indeed, as Pope Gregory’s letter to Mellitus shows, it
was often best to start missionary activities by christening the environment.79
73
On these central places, see further Brink, ‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia’; Sundqvist, An Arena for Higher Powers; and most recently Rood, ‘Ascending the Steps
to Hliðskjálf ’.
74
On St Anne and St Brigit and wells, see further Westwood and Simpson, The Lore of the
Land, pp. 579–80; and Ó Catháin, The Festival of Brigit, pp. 138–43.
75
See ‘Olavskilder’; and Bø, Heilag-Olav i Norsk folketradisjon, pp. 111–44.
76
See, for example, Árni Óla, ‘Gvendarbrunnar’.
77
See ‘Holy Wells and Magic Waters’.
78
On wells (and other watery sites) in later Nordic folk beliefs, see Olrik and Ellekilde,
Nordens Gudeverden, i, 372–401.
79
Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by Colgrave and
Mynors, pp. 106–09.
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
257
Similar ideas can be seen in the Irish Acallam na Senorach.80
As noted above, there is evidence to suggest that large-scale, ‘official’ votive
offerings to water sources were beginning to move into the background in
the Nordic countries in around ad 500 (probably moving into the field of
the kind of superstitious folkloristic offerings of food to rocks reflected in a
homily in Hauksbók).81 One wonders though how the new aristocracy went
about changing things, effectively moving worship indoors? As I have noted
elsewhere,82 Snorri makes few connections between the gods he favours and
the environment, and Óðinn was perhaps the least environmentally friendly
god of them all. In spite of this, as Stefan Brink has shown,83 a wide range of
environmental place-names are associated with Óðinn in Denmark and southern Sweden in particular (see above), most of them being found in what Jytte
Ringtved refers to as the main zone of unrest during the conflicts that seem
to have taken place in mainland Scandinavia around the Age of Migrations.84
One wonders whether some of the Óðinnic place-names relating to lakes and
wells reflect a similar sort of environmental takeover to that carried out by
the supporters of the Christian church in Anglo-Saxon Britain and (later) in
the Nordic countries. The extant mytho­logy certainly seems to demonstrate
Óðinn and his now domesticated but once marsh-based wife Frigg gradually
taking over motifs that were once more obviously associated with other gods
and goddesses, Freyr’s ship Skíðblaðnir, and Freyja’s bird cloak being cases in
point. Indeed, the same might even apply to Óðinn’s high seat which could well
have originally been associated with Freyr.85 Other examples might be seen in
Óðinn’s apparent adoption of elements drawn from Sami religion.86
Especially worthy of note in this context is the fact that Óðinn’s sole mytho­
logical connection to the natural environment (over and above his act of selfsacrifice on Yggdrasill (Hávamál, sts 138–41)) seems to be directly related to
80
See The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland, ed. and trans. by Harmon, which contains
several examples of such Christian renaming.
81
Hauksbók, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, p. 167.
82
See Gunnell, ‘Blótgyðjur, Goðar, Mimi, Incest, and Wagons’, pp. 122–24.
83
Brink, ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, pp. 112–13.
84
Ringtved, ‘Settlement Organisation in a Time of War and Conflict’, p. 362. On theophoric place-names relating to male gods and water, see also Fredengren, ‘Where Wandering
Water Gushes’, p. 112.
85
See further Gunnell, ‘Blótgyðjur, Goðar, Mimi, Incest, and Wagons’, p. 127.
86
See Lindow, ‘Cultures in Contact’, pp. 97–99.
Terry Gunnell
258
wells in the shape of Mímisbrunnr which, as noted above, seems to be deliberately set up as a parallel to Urðarbrunnr in Vǫluspá (it is worth bearing in mind
that Óðinn is never mentioned in connection with the nornir or Urðarbrunnr,
even when he is in search of knowledge about the future).87 In between the
mention of the two wells in Vǫluspá (in sts 19 and 28) is the attempted slaughter of Gullveig (who may well be the seeress Heiðr mentioned in the following
st. 22), which seems to lead to the war between the Æsir and Vanir and the
essential changing of times. One also notes that a knowledgeable old seeress is
shown sitting by Mímisbrunnr when it is first mentioned in Vǫluspá, sts 28–29;
and that Vǫluspá mentions no independent women after this point (the valkyrjur in st. 30 are described as ‘nǫnnur Herjans’ (the women of Óðinn)). Indeed,
the poem stresses that no females are included in the new world that follows
ragnarǫk.
With regard to this second well, Ynglinga saga (ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson,
p. 13) tells how Mímir was decapitated by the Vanir, and how his head was sent
back to Óðinn, who kept it for consultation purposes. In Vǫluspá, st. 28, meanwhile, the vǫlva states that Óðinn has given his eye to the well and that Mímir
then daily drinks ‘af veði Valfǫðrs’ (from the pledge of the father of the slain),
the implication being that he drinks from the well containing the eye. St. 45 of
the poem then suggests that the only part remaining of Mímir is his head. The
link between Mímir and the well is then underlined by Snorri in Gylfaginning
when he states that the well contains ‘spekð ok mannvit’ (wisdom and knowledge) and that Mímir ‘er fullr af vísindum fyrir því at hann drekkr ór brunninum af horninu Gjallarhorni’ (is full of wisdom because he drinks from the
well with his horn Gjallarhorn),88 reference then being made to Vǫluspá, st. 28.
We tend to take these images of Mímir’s head and Óðinn’s eye at face value,
forgetting that, in practical terms, wells are somewhat different to marshes and
lakes in that the last thing an average Iron Age villager would have wanted is
87
A possible exception is Hávamál, st. 111, where the speaker states that he is speaking
in a ‘þularstóll’ (chair of þulr or reciter) by Urðarbrunnr, although the strophe ends by stating that both of these are situated in the ‘Hávahǫll’ (the hall of the high one, that is Óðinn).
Arguably here we see yet another example of the female well being swallowed up by the male
hall-owner (somewhat like the way in which the well seems to have been symbolically adopted
by the church in the shape of the font). See further below.
88
Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Pro­logue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 17; see also
pp. 50–51. It is noteworthy that in Gylfaginning, Snorri says nothing about Mímir being decapitated, although on p. 51 he does quote Vǫluspá, st. 45 which explicitly mentions Óðinn talking
with ‘Míms hǫfuð’.
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
259
for body parts to be deposited into his drinking water. Indeed, the more one
considers the images of the decapitated head and the extracted eye in the well,
the more they resemble deliberate acts of sacrilege, part of a process of limiting
access to powerful parts of the environment, and then moving earlier religious
practice into the male environment of the hall and its ruler. In short, one can
argue that the text of the poem seems to contain a memory of wells (as a source
of knowledge) being moved out of female hands and into those of the male
god. As my colleague Pétur Pétursson has recently suggested to me in conversation, perhaps the final step was when the sacred well, spring, and lake came to
be replaced by the male-controlled stone font in the church.
Such an argument is naturally extremely simplified, but it is no more simplistic than a statement suggesting that a country like Iceland could be completely ‘converted’ on such and such a date, or that a homogeneous pantheonic
religion ruled over by Óðinn ever existed in the north. It does nonetheless help
explain some of the strange motifs found scattered around the earliest literary
sources which seem to provide a hazy literary reflection of the archaeo­logically
proven gradual move that took place in the Germanic and Nordic countries
away from a multifarious religious system in which a range of differently named
goddesses were closely associated with water sources (perhaps as a liminal space
providing access to the world of death and the knowledge that can be attained
from it). The implications of the sacrifices given to them are that these powerful
women were seen as being capable of bestowing luck on their followers (be it
in the form of battle or fertility). While the extant Nordic literary texts (which
focus on the male world) contain few accounts of mythical encounters with
women living in watery realms (like those found in Beowulf or the Arthurian
legends), or of such figures ever being worshipped or given sacrifices, the implications are hard to ignore, and not least the implication that the domestication
of Sága and the fading of these powerful figures into the background formed
just one part of a wider, larger process that led away from worship connected
with a local natural environment to the gradual acceptance of first of all the
male god situated in the male hall and then the Christian god based around
Jerusalem. All the evidence suggests that this was closely tied up with a process of clan leaders becoming regional leaders, and eventually the advent of
single national rulers based in Lejre, Uppsala, Nidaros, and Víkin, who also
controlled religious activities.
260
Terry Gunnell
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The Goddesses in the Dark Waters
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V.
Afterlives of Sacredness
Valhǫ ll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’
Mountains of the Dead
Andreas Nordberg
T
here is no doubt that some mountains in Scandinavia were perceived as
being holy in pre-Christian times. In Sweden, for example, the names of
several mountains are composed from pre-Christian deities’ names and
the element -berg ‘mountain’ or -berga (pl.), such as Torsberga ‘[the god] Þórr’s
mountain’, Odensberga ‘Óðinn’s mountain’, et cetera. Many of these mountains
have attracted motifs in local and more general folklore.1 Furthermore, several
cult sites and sanctuaries from the Bronze Age and Iron Age are located on
mountains or in a spatial relationship with cliffs and rocks,2 and from all over
the Nordic region survive folk beliefs concerning the dead dwelling in nearby
mountains,3 the most well known of course being Helgafell in Iceland, mentioned in Eyrbygg ja saga and other Icelandic family sagas.4
1
Vikstrand, ‘Berget, lunden och åkern’, pp. 318‒24. According to Per Vikstrand, the plural form (deity + berga) is a later linguistic harmonization with other kinds of -berga placenames, which are usually in the plural form. The original form was however deity + -berg
(sing.), and as such even the theophoric -berga names refer to single mountains.
2
Olausson, Det inneslutna rummet; Zachrisson, ‘Det heliga på Helgö’.
3
Nordland, ‘Valhall and Helgafell’; Strömbäck, ‘Några drag ur äldre och nyare isländsk
folktro’.
4
Eyrbygg ja saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, chs 4, 11 (pp. 9, 19).
Andreas Nordberg (andreas.nordberg@rel.su.se) is Associate Professor in History of
Religions at the Department of Ethno­logy, History of Religions and Gender Studies at the
Uni­ver­sity of Stockholm, Sweden.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 269–281
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119352
Andreas Nordberg
270
Several scholars of Old Norse religion have suggested that even Óðinn’s
celestial residence Valhǫll ‘the hall of the slain’ developed out of this strand of
folk belief. In Old Norse texts, Valhǫll is of course depicted as a mythic counterpart to the majestic aristocratic warrior halls of the Viking Age. But is this
historical context the origin of the mythic motif ? Several researchers have
called attention to certain mountains in Swedish Götaland that allegedly are
called Valhall and suggested that the motif of Óðinn’s otherworldly Valhǫll was
derived from older conceptions of the dead dwelling in rocks.5 For example,
Gabriel Turville-Petre emphasizes the idea in his well-known handbook Myth
and Religion of the North from 1964:
It has been noticed that the name Valhall is applied to certain rocks in southern
Sweden, and these were believed to be dwelling-places of the dead. It is, therefore,
likely that the second element in the name Valhǫll was not originally hǫll (hall) but
rather hallr (rock). In this case, it was the imagination of the poets which turned
the rock of the dead into a noble, glorious palace. If this is so, Valhǫll represents
little more than a refinement of the common belief that the dead dwell in a rock, or
that men die into a rock, as they died into the Helgafell in western Iceland. Óðinn
presides over them, originally perhaps as god of death rather than as god of war.6
To my knowledge, this interpretation was introduced into academic research
on Germanic and Old Norse religion in 1891 by Eugen Mogk. Arguing that
medi­eval and later folk legends about the dead dwelling in mountains, and of
armies disappearing into mountains, were survivals of pre-Christian eschato­
logical conceptions, Mogk in passing acknowledged that some mountains in
Swedish Götaland were called Valhall, suggesting that ‘Valhǫll selbst war aber
nichts anders […] als der Totenberg’ (Valhǫll was nothing but the mountain of
the dead).7
The motif of the dead dwelling in rocks and mountains is well substantiated
in Old Icelandic sagas, and there is no reason to doubt that it reflects actual preChristian religious conceptions. But do the Swedish Valhall mountains relate
to the same context? As will be shown below, the link between Valhǫll in Old
Norse mytho­logy and the alleged Valhall mountains in Swedish folklore is not
5
Cf. Schröder, Germanentum und Hellenismus, p. 21; Strömbäck, ‘Några drag ur äldre
och nyare isländsk folktro’, pp. 68–69; Ström, ‘Döden och de döda’, pp. 437–38; Buisson, Der
Bildstein Ardre VIII auf Gotland, p. 98; Lindow, ‘Valhalla’, p. 350; nn. 1, 2, 34, 38, 39; Simek,
Dictionary of Northern Mytho­logy, p. 347.
6
Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, p. 55.
7
Mogk, Mytho­logie, p. 1005.
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead
271
based on any historic affinity, but on popular etymo­logies and learned speculations during the period of Gothicism and National Romanticism in Sweden.
And it all began with the publication of Olof Verelius’s Swedish translation of
Gautreks saga.
Göthreks saga and the Development of the Swedish ättestupa Tradition
Entitled Göthreks och Rolfs Wesgötha kongars historia, Verelius’s Swedish translation of Gautreks saga was published in 1664. The introductory chapters of
Gautreks saga relate the story of a king Gauti, who goes astray in a forest in
Swedish Västergötland and subsequently arrives at a small farm, located deep in
the woods. By Snotra, one of the daughters of the household, Gauti is told of a
cliff not far from the farm:
Hér er sa hamarr við bæ várn, er heitir Gillingshamarr, ok þar í hjá er stapi sá, er vér
köllum Ætternistapa. Hann er svá hár ok þat flug fyrir ofan, at þat kvikendi hefir
ekki líf, er þar með fækkum vér várt ætterni, þegar oss þykkir stór kynsl við bera, ok
deyja þar allir várir foreldrar fyrir utan alla sótt ok fara þá til Óðins.
(There is a crag called Gillingshamarr close to the farm, and we call its peak
Ætternistapi [Sw. ättestupa ‘family cliff ’]. It is so high and steep that no living being
can survive the fall. We use it to reduce our family whenever anything extraordinary happens, and our parents will die there without having to suffer from illness
and go straight to Óðinn.)8
Subsequently in the saga one family member after the other throws themselves
over the ättestupa (family cliff ) for the silliest of silly reasons. Snotra’s parents
jump from it to go to Valhǫll (‘ganga fyrir Ætternisstapa ok fara svá til Valhallar’),
because they cannot endure the extra expense caused by Gauti’s arrival. Her three
brothers do the same in turn because two snails crawl over a gold plate, because a
sparrow eats from an ear of corn, and because of the death of an ox.
It is obvious that the episode is meant as a satire upon the assumed backwardness of the Swedes of the time. Still, in the period of Gothicism and
National Romanticism in Sweden, Gautreks saga was regarded as a reliable
source on ancient Swedish history. In 1671, only seven years after the publication of Verelius’s translation, the antiquarian Johan Hadorph identified the
saga’s Gillingshamarr with a cliff close to a farm Gullhammar in Vättlösa parish. In 1691, the architect and field marshal Erik Dahlberg depicted this cliff
8
Gautreks saga, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, ch. 1 (p. 5).
Andreas Nordberg
272
for his grandiose work Suecia antiqua et hodierna. When published in 1705,
his illustration was supplemented with a caption explaining that the hill was an
‘Ættestupa, Ættestörta and Ættestapul’, and that people threw themselves over
it to come to ‘Glysisvall, Valhall or Gimle’.9 In subsequent decades, the ättestupa
at Gullhammar was again the focus of distinguished scholars of the time, such
as the Reverend Sven Digelius, the bishop and historian Andreas Rhyzelius,
and Pehr Kalm, the botanist and disciple of Carl von Linné. The latter visited
the rock in 1742 and later expressed his surprise at the precipice’s very insignificant size, although he maintained that the peasants in the district were certain
that it was the ättestupa mentioned in old traditions. The hill was also visited
by the geo­g rapher Eric Tuneld in 1739, who even claimed to know of other
ättestupor in Götaland.10
By the latter half of the eighteenth century, the ättestupa was an established
tradition in learned circles,11 and not long thereafter in popular folklore in
Sweden as well.12 A principal reason for this development is that the ättestupa
motif was retold in the main Swedish history books of the time, such as in
Anders Fryxell’s Berättelser ur svenska historien (‘Tales from Swedish History’,
1823) and, most importantly, in Svenska folkets historia (‘The History of the
Swedish People’, 1832) by Erik Gustaf Geijer.13 Since these books were used as
elementary school textbooks during the nineteenth century, they were read by
most Swedes during this period. Consequently, the ättestupa motif was gradually transformed into a part of the Swedish collective memory.14
The ättestupa and the Valhall Mountains
In Gautreks saga, people threw themselves from the ättestupa or family cliff to
go to Óðinn in Valhǫll. But among Swedish scholars in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, the noun ättestupa and the proper noun Valhall were
9
Dahlberg, Suecia antiqua et hodierna, iii, pl. 50.
Rhyzelius, De Sepultura veterum Sveo-Gothorum, p. 12; Digelius, Historiskt lärdomsprov, p. 52; Kalm, Västgöta och Bohusländska resa, pp. 234–35; Tuneld, Inledning til Geo­
graphien öfwer Sverige, 1st edn, pp. 168–69, 186.
11
Sallander, Beskrivningar från 1700-talet, pp. 11–12; Lagerbring, Swea Rikes historia,
p. 448; Sjöborg, Fäderneslandets Antiquiteter, pp. 215–17; Tham, Anmärkningar till Förbättring af Ordaförståndet, pp. 13–14.
12
Cf. Götlind, ‘Valhall och ättestupa’; Odén, ‘Ättestupan – myt eller verklighet’.
13
Fryxell, Berättelser ur svenska historien, p. 12; Geijer, Svenska folkets historia, p. 115.
14
Odén, ‘Ättestupan – myt eller verklighet?’, p. 223.
10
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead
273
sometimes conceived of as being synonyms. Accordingly, Carl von Linné stated
that ‘Ättestörtan är en Valhall’ (the family cliff is a Valhall), Pehr Tham maintained that ‘Valhall var det samma som Eternistapa’ (Valhall was the same thing
as the family cliff ), and Jöran Johan Öller alternated ‘Walhall, eller Ättestupa’
(Valhall, or family cliff ).15 This identification of ättestupa and Valhall seems to
have been conducive to the process of some mountains with alleged ättestupor
subsequently being called Valhall in local folklore.16 This development was of
course particularly likely for mountains with original names that were phonetically similar to the proper noun ON Valhǫll. Geijer mentioned three such
mountain names in his much-read Svenska folkets historia, and Johan Rietz
added a fourth example in his Svenskt dialektlexikon (‘Lexicon of Swedish
Dialects’), published in 1867. It might be of interest at this time to quote
Rietz’s short para­graph in full:
VAL-HALL, f. Namn på några berg, hvarest fordomtima varit ättestupor. En sådan
finnes i Blekinge (Hellaryds s:n) nära kyrkan och ha menniskor enligt urgammal
sägen störtat sig i den under berget belägna Val-sjön (de dödas sjö), numera nästan
uttorkad. En dylik ättestupa förekommer på berget Valhall vid sjön Strängen i Vestergötland (Kylingareds s:n); likaledes på berget Valhall i Gemshögs s:n af Blekinge.
På Halleberg i Vestergötland kallas öfversta berget Våle-hall och sägen förtäljer
att de, som störtat sig utföre, sedan blifvit tvättade i en numera igenvuxen damm,
hvilken kallas Ons-källa (Odens källa). Fn. Vallhöll.
(VAL-HALL, f. Name of a number of mountains which served as ättestupor in
the past. An example of such a mountain is located in [the province of ] Blekinge
(Hellaryd parish) near the church. According to an ancient legend, people threw
themselves from it to plunge into Val-sjön (the lake of the dead), which is situated
under the mountain and has now almost dried up. A similar ättestupa is located
on the mountain Valhall on Lake Strängen in [the province of ] Västergötland
(Kylingared parish); likewise on the mountain Valhall in Gemshög parish in
Blekinge. On Halleberg in Västergötland, the uppermost mountain is called Vålehall, and a legend tells us that those who hurled themselves from it were subsequently washed in a now overgrown pond, which is called Ons-källa (Óðinn’s
well). Old Norse: Valhǫll.)17
15
Linné, Västgöta-resa, p. 226; Tham, Anmärkningar till Förbättring af Ordaförståndet,
p. 13; Öller, Beskrifningar öfwer Jemshögs Sochn i Blekinge, p. 171.
16
For many such far-fetched cases, cf. Andersson, ‘Åsgård’.
17
Rietz, Svenskt dialektlexikon, p. 789.
Andreas Nordberg
274
When Eugen Mogk introduced the alleged Valhall mountains of the dead
into academic research on Germanic and Old Norse religion, he referred exclusively to this para­graph by Rietz. For this reason, the names of these four mountains may well be examined a bit closer.
The ättestupa in Hällaryd parish, Blekinge, is first mentioned by Nils Henrik
Sjöborg in 1797, and again by Geijer in 1832.18 The mountain is called Wal
Hall in a document from 1753, and the lake is named Walsjön in a proof from
1793, although it is earlier evidenced as Hwalakullasiöö in 1671, suggesting
that the original name of the mountain might have been *Valakulle. According
to zoo­logist Sven Nilsson, who visited the cliff in the early nineteenth century,
peregrines used to breed on the mountain and this bird was called Walhöken
sing. ‘val-hawk’ in the local dialect.19 Thus the first element in *Valakulle, or
Wal Hall, is probably val, pl. gen. vala, from ON valr m. ‘falcon’.20
The ättestupa in Kölingared parish, Västergötland, is first mentioned by
Geijer in 1832 and subsequently in 1861 by Claes Johan Ljungström, who
maintained that the ättestupa was so low that it seemed to him impossible that
anyone could die from falling off it.21 According to late information, the mountain is called Valshalla, but in the earliest evidence this is instead the name of a
farmstead situated near the alleged ättestupa. In documents from the 1480s the
name is spelled Walshalth, Waltzhaldh, Walshal, and Walsal, and subsequently
Wardzhall (1581), Wardzal (1582), Wårdzhall (1605). The name seems to be
derived from the Old Swedish vardh[s]-hald ‘watch, guard duty’, or vardhshal
‘cliff for guard duty’.22
The alleged ättestupa in Jämshög parish, Blekinge, is first mentioned in 1800
by Johan Öller, whose own words indicate that he may even be the originator of
the tradition, since he speculatively maintains that it is ‘ej olikt’ (not unlikely)
that the steep cliff called Warhallarne once was ‘et Walhall, eller Ättestupa
til de Sällas boningar’ (a valhall, or ättestupa to the abode of the blessed).23
Some half a century later, the same cliff and ättestupa is instead called Walhall
18
Sjöborg, Fäderneslandets Antiquiteter, pp. 216–17; Geijer, Svenska folkets historia, p. 115.
Nilsson, Skandinaviens fauna, p. 18.
20
Hallberg, Ortnamn i Blekinge, p. 166.
21
Geijer, Svenska folkets historia, p. 115; Ljungström, Redvägs härad, p. 33.
22
Lundahl, Sveriges ortnamn: Inledning, p. 48; Sveriges ortnamn: Ortnamnen i Älvsborgs
län, x, 182.
23
Öller, Beskrifningar öfwer Jemshögs Sochn i Blekinge, p. 171.
19
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead
275
in a historic-geo­graphic reference book, with reference to Öller.24 Still, in the
earliest evidence from 1709, the cliff is called Warhallen. According to Göran
Hallberg, the first element of this prior name may be derived from the noun
vara, the meaning of the place-name Warhallen itself being then ‘the stony,
wooded hill’ or ‘outlying land’.25
The ättestupa on the south-west corner of the mountain Halleberg in Västra
Tunhem parish, Västergötland, which is called Våle-hall by Rietz (in the quotation above), is first mentioned (and depicted) in 1705 by Erik Dahlberg. The
name of the precipice is often said to be Hälleklint, Häcklan, or Häckleklint.
According to Linné (1746), this ättestupa ‘is a Valhall’,26 although Tuneld
(1762) instead maintained that Wålehäll is the name of a heart-shaped rock
situated on the top of the part of the mountain where the ättestupa is located.27
This latter notion is confirmed by Sjöborg in 1815, and by P. G. Berg in 1863.
In addition, Tuneld mentions a ‘Brunn eller Dam’ (well or pond) situated
under the precipice, in which those who threw themselves from the cliff were
subsequently washed. According to Geijer, the ättestupa is called ‘Våhlehall
(Valhall)’ and the well/pond is named ‘Onskälla (Odenskälla)’, i.e. ‘Óðinn’s
well’. Identifying Våhlehall with Valhall, Rietz later rendered Geijer’s description almost word for word.28 The first element of the place-name Wålehäll,
Våhlehall, is etymo­logically derived from Old Swedish vardhe m., meaning
‘beacon’ (Sw. vårdkase), ‘cairn’, or ‘boundary mark’.29
Of the four alleged Valhall mountains exemplified by Rietz, none have a
name that is etymo­logically derived from ON valr m. ‘the dead’ (or, more precisely, ‘the fallen in battle’). Instead, the identification with ON Valhǫll is fundamentally the result of popular etymo­logy and learned speculations produced
within the context of the Gothicist ättestupa tradition. In the same way, additional Valhall mountains with ättestupor appeared in local folklore during the
24
Historiskt-geografiskt och statistiskt lexikon öfver Sverige, p. 40.
Hallberg, Ortnamn i Blekinge, p. 166.
26
Dahlberg, Suecia antiqua et hodierna, iii, pl. 51; Linné, Västgöta-resa, p. 226.
27
Tuneld, Inledning til Geo­g raphien öfwer Sverige, 4th edn, p. 252. In the first edition
of this book, from 1741, the ättestupa is mentioned in passing, but not the name Wålehall
(p. 168).
28
Sjöborg, Försök till nomenklatur för nordiska fornlemningar, p. 12; Geijer, Svenska folkets
historia, p. 115; Berg, Nytt sockenbibliothek, p. 197.
29
Sveriges ortnamn: Ortnamnen i Älvsborgs län, xii, 165.
25
Andreas Nordberg
276
later part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.30 For example, in
1913 August Melander identified an ättestupa on the mountain Liagärdsberget
on Lake Stora Hålsjön, in Hyssna parish, Västergötland, noting that this mountain was called Valhall in everyday speech.31 Yet, while the name Liagärde is
testified to in the 1540s, there is no evidence of a place-name Valhall in Hyssna
parish,32 and certain contemporary information suggests that the traditions
surrounding this ättestupa and the mountain name Valhall actually originated
in learned speculations among the gentlefolks at the manorial estate Eskilsered,
situated not far from the lake and the mountain.33
From ättestupa to Mountain of the Dead
A few scholars continued to defend the authenticity of the ättestupa motifs in
the mid-1900s,34 but generally there was a growing awareness during that century that the ättestupa tradition was but a literary creation that subsequently
was adapted into local folklore.35 This also had consequences for understandings of the alleged Swedish Valhall mountains, which gradually became disconnected from their original context within the ättestupa tradition. Instead, they
were now regarded as possible evidence of pre-Christian popular conceptions
of the dead dwelling in mountains.
Some scholars argued that these supposedly pre-Christian Valhall mountains secondarily had attracted the false ättestupa motifs.36 But in most cases,
the ättestupa was just not mentioned at all. For example, when Mogk introduced the Valhall mountains into the academic research on Germanic and Old
Norse religion, he did not mention the ättestupor even though his only source
was Rietz, who had explicitly emphasized the relation between the ättestupa
tradition and the Valhall mountains.37 Neither did Hugo Jungner, although
30
Cf. Götlind, ‘Valhall och ättestupa i västgötsk tradition’; Andersson, ‘Åsgård’.
Melander, Anteckningar om Marks och Bollebygds härader, p. 249.
32
Sveriges ortnamn: Ortnamnen i Älvsborgs län, ix.1, 62.
33
According to Hugo Jungner, Gudinnan Frigg och Als härad, pp. 311–12, who nevertheless believed that the name Valhall was genuine and ancient.
34
For example, Hans Ellekilde in Olrik and Ellekilde, Nordens gudeverden, pp. 470–74;
Åke V. Ström, in ‘Ättestupa’, pp. 601–03.
35
Cf. Odén, ‘Ättestupan – myt eller verklighet?’.
36
Cf. Strömbäck, ‘Några drag ur äldre och nyare isländsk folktro’, pp. 68–69.
37
Mogk, Mytho­logie, p. 1005.
31
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead
277
he referred extensively to Sjöborg, Rietz, and others when interpreting Mount
Ålleberg in Västergötland as an ancient ‘dödsberg’ (mountain of the dead), i.e.
a ‘Valhall’.38 Similarly, Otto Höfler did not mention the ättestupa tradition in
his discussion of possible Swedish Valhall mountains of the dead, although he
knew these mountains through Götlind’s paper ‘Valhall och ättestupa i västgötsk tradition’, in which the author explicitly defended the ättestupa tradition
as genuine.39
The disconnection of the Valhall mountains from their original ättestupa
context during the early twentieth century seems to be a fundamental prerequisite for those scholars of the time who would construe the Valhall mountains as
evidence of a historic (or rather evolutionistic) development of Óðinn’s celestial Valhǫll from older conceptions of the dead dwelling in rocks.
Conclusion
If we follow the development of the ättestupa tradition from the seventeenth to
the twentieth centuries, we can see three overall phases in the scholarly attitude
to the Swedish mountains allegedly named Valhall.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Gothicist intelligentsia
of the time identified several supposed ättestupor in the Swedish landscape.
Inspired by Gautreks saga, their reports were usually strikingly standardized:
a certain cliff was once an ättestupa; in pagan times, old people used to throw
themselves from it to go to Óðinn in Valhǫll; the bodies of the dead were subsequently washed in a lake at the foot of the mountain. In these early accounts,
the noun Valhall was sometimes used synonymously with the noun ättestupa.
Sometimes, a proper noun Valhall was instead supposed to be the name of the
cliff or of the mountain. Sometimes, this latter assumption was the result of
learned speculations and popular etymo­logical interpretations of already existing place-names.
During the nineteenth century, the ättestupa motif was transmitted from
popular history books and educational textbooks to local folklore, and consequently it was adapted in Swedish collective memory. At this time additional
mountains with alleged ättestupor were called Valhall in local lore, and, also in
this period (although not discussed in this short paper), the ättestupa tradition
seems to have attracted a wealth of common folkloristic motifs, such as legends
38
39
Jungner, Gudinnan Frigg och Als härad, pp. 310–13.
Höfler, Der Runenstein von Rök, p. 46.
278
Andreas Nordberg
of bottomless lakes and of armies waiting inside mountains for doomsday’s
final battle, et cetera.
Since the early twentieth century, there has been a growing awareness
among scholars that the ättestupa tradition originated as a literary creation,
which subsequently was adapted in local folklore. However, this insight did not
fully amend the general understanding of the alleged Valhall mountains, which
were gradually transformed from locations with ättestupor to being conceived
of by academic researchers on Germanic and Old Norse religion as possible
reminiscences of mountains of the dead in pre-Christian popular eschato­logy.
Concluding this essay, then, one can say that the Valhall mountains constitute a most interesting folklore phenomenon on the one hand, while on the
other, from a perspective of religious history, they must be dismissed as sources
for research into pre-Christian Scandinavian religion. For sure, there are certain mountains in Scandinavia that were perceived as being holy and as dwelling places for the dead in pre-Christian times, but the alleged Valhall mountain
names are not evidence of these. Being products of popular etymo­logies and
learned speculations from the Swedish Gothicist and National Romantic era,
the alleged Valhall mountains cannot be the basis for theorizing that the conceptions of Óðinn’s celestial hall were developed from older beliefs about the
dead dwelling in rocks.
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead
279
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Place-Names, Periphrasis,
and Popular Tradition:
Odinic Toponyms on Samsø
Stephen A. Mitchell
W
riting about landscapes as mental constructs, Stefan Brink concludes his comments by arguing that, ‘En aspekt av mentalitet i
landskap är alltså att spåra sakralt och kultiskt laddade landskap
och objekt, vilka inte direkt kan “läsas” i ett landskap, utan måste uttolkas och
rekonstrueras framförallt via namn’ (One aspect of landscape mentality is thus
to trace sacral- and cult-charged landscapes and objects, [things] which cannot be ‘read’ directly in a landscape, but must be interpreted and reconstructed
primarily through names).1 Here and elsewhere,2 Professor Brink ably demonstrates the value and possibilities of exploring ‘Nordens mentalitetsförhistoria’
(the pre-history of Nordic mentalities) by relying on the naming patterns of
specific landscapes.3 The following brief examination of a place-name accepts
the importance of these observations, yet looks to take the discussion and its
hypothesis in a slightly different direction, namely, how in modern contexts
1
Brink, ‘Landskap och plats som mentala konstruktioner’, p. 119. This and all other
unmarked translations are my own. I take this opportunity to express my deep thanks to the
residents of Samsø for their many kindnesses over the years — not least with regard to my
attempts to turn Swedish into some form of serviceable samnordiska during the Harvard Summer School stays on the island. I am especially grateful to Jens Øster Mortensen of Tønnesminde, Brundby, and the former director of Økomuseum Samsø, Tranebjerg, Lis Nymark.
2
Brink, ‘Verba volant, scripta manent?’.
3
Brink, ‘Landskap och plats som mentala konstruktioner’, p. 119.
Stephen A. Mitchell (samitch@fas.harvard.edu) is the Robert S. and Ilse Friend Professor of
Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard Uni­ver­sity and author of, for example, Heroic Sagas and
Ballads and Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 283–295
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119353
Stephen A. Mitchell
284
toponyms can be popularly informed by, and reinterpreted through, references
to the distant past.
Such would appear to be the case on the Danish island of Samsø, a small but
strategically critical pinch-point on the maritime route from the North Sea to
the Baltic. The significance of the island already in the pre-Viking Age is clearly
suggested by the eighth-century construction of the Kanhave canal in order to
facilitate the movement of ships from one side of the island to the other, presumably for military purposes or in order to levy taxes — or both. This same
geo­graphical significance no doubt led to the fact that few non-Icelandic venues receive more attention in pre-modern Scandinavian textual traditions than
does Samsø, a history widely-appreciated, albeit not yet particularly well-leveraged in tourist marketing, on today’s Samsø.
Likely the most famous of these episodes to modern readers is the battle
between a group consisting of Angantýr and his berserk brothers on one side
and the heroes Ǫrvar-Oddr and Hjálmarr on the other, an event reported in
the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks konungs,
Ǫrvar-Odds saga, and a substantial number of Nordic ballads.4 These events
are also heavily reflected in the inventive legendary landscape of the island, there
being several mounds on Samsø which, at least in modern times, are known, for
example, as Angantyrs høj ‘Angantýr’s mound’. And the supposed locations and
conditions of the graves of Angantýr’s berserk brothers have been commented
on over the centuries by such Nordic luminaries as Anders Sørensen Vedel and
Thormod Torfæus, who spent 1671–72 on Samsø.5
Especially important in the current context are references to Samsø and the
pagan past that appear, for example, in Ragnars saga Loðbrókar,6 when sailors
who have come ashore on the island encounter the moss-covered tree-man (trémaðr) to whom sacrifices had been made. But the island’s connection to the
pre-Christian past is particularly famous from a single verse containing Loki’s
calumny about Óðinn (Odin):
Loki qvað:
‘Enn þic síða kóðo Sámseyo í,
oc draptu á vétt sem vǫlor;
vitca líki fórtu verþióð yfir,
oc hugða ec þat args aðal’.
4
5
6
Mitchell, ‘The fornaldarsögur and Nordic Balladry’.
Poulsen, Historiske og kulturhistoriske Efterretninger om Samsø, pp. 25–27.
Ragnars saga Loðbrókar, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, ch. 20.
Place-Names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition
285
Loki said [to Odin]:
But you, they say, practised seiðr on Samsey,
and you beat on the drum as seeresses do,
in the likeness of a wizard you journeyed over mankind,
and that I thought the hallmark of a pervert.7 (Lokasenna v. 24)
This reference to seiðr, the darkest and most-discussed aspect of pagan magical
practices, occurring on Samsø takes on special significance in the minds of many
observers given the fact that Samsø is the site of one of the relatively few theophoric place-names in Denmark which can with certainty be associated with
Óðinn based on evidence in medi­e val sources. The testimony of Lokasenna
has inevitably led to certain conclusions about the worship of this deity on the
island: ‘Der kan ej heller være Tvivl om, at Samsø har haft sin Odinsdyrkelse,
hvorom Kirkebyen Onsbjerg vidner, Othensberg 1424, Odensbergh 1445’ (There
can be no doubt about Samsø having had its worship of Odin, as evidenced by
the parish of Onsbjerg, Othensberg 1424, Odensbergh 1445).8
Figure 19.1. Detail of Ons=bierg=dyr and Ons=bierg parish from
Resenii descriptio et illustratio Samsoæ (1675), oriented with north to the right.
Image released into public domain, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard Uni­ver­sity.
Usually understood to mean ‘the hill dedicated to Óðinn’, Onsbjerg is
believed to have originally referred to a certain squat mound, rising fiftyone metres above sea level c. three kilometres north-west of Tranebjerg, making
it the highest point on the southern end of the island. It has presumably lent
7
Loki’s Quarrel, trans. by Larrington, p. 85, with my emendation of modern Scandinavian sejd to Old Norse seiðr.
8
Nielsen, ‘Bidrag til Fortolkning af danske Stednavne’, p. 259; cf. Brink, ‘How Uniform
Was the Old Norse Religion?’, p. 130 et passim for context.
Stephen A. Mitchell
286
Figure 19.2. Detail of Øns=höÿ from Resenii descriptio et illustratio Samsoæ (1675),
oriented with north to the right. Ons=bierg=dyr is in the upper right-hand corner.
Image released into public domain, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard Uni­ver­sity.
its name to the nearby village and church — Onsbjerg and Onsbjerg Kirke —
located less than a kilometre north-east of the hill itself (see Fig. 19.1).
Of possible relevance to contextualizing this Odinic place-name is another
location at the far south-eastern corner of the island designated on Peder
Hansen Resen’s 1675 map as Øns = höÿ ‘Øns-mound’ and in his text with
the ortho­g raphic variation Ønß = høy. 9 In 1758, Lauritz de Thurah refers
explanatorily to the now pluralized location as ‘Onshøyene (pro Ørnshøyene)’
(Onshøyene (for ‘Eagle’s mounds’)).10 Samsøs Stednavne is somewhat less cer9
10
Resen, Resenii descriptio et illustratio Samsoæ, p. 46.
Thurah, Omstændelig og tilforladelig Beskrivelse af Øen Samsøe, p. 53.
Place-Names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition
287
tain about the etymo­logy and suggests that, rather than a direct avian reference,
the name ‘Indeholder mul. Mandsnavnet Ørn, el. Øn, oldn. Auðunn’ (Perhaps
contains the man’s name Ørn or Øn, Old Norse, Auðunn).11 The similarity of
the first element of the compound, especially in the Ons- form, has influenced
what I understand to be the modern ‘popular learned’ tradition on the island
about this place-name, Onshøjene, Ønshøj, and so on (that is, to the extent the
name is known, and I note that my enquiries in the period 2014–18 with various residents with generations-long connections to the island suggest that the
name is, in fact, no longer widely known). In the ‘popular learned’ view, there
exists a clear relationship between the two locations: ‘Odindyrkelsen har især
været knyttet till Onsbjerg, som oprindelig har heddet Odinsbjerg. “Dyret”
ved Onsbjerg har nok engang været det store samlingssted for de hedenske
samsinger, men også Onshøjene, Odinshøjene, på Sydøen, synes at stamme fra
en ældgammel hedensk dyrkelse af Odin på Samsø’ (Odinic worship has been
especially tied to Onsbjerg, which was originally called Odin-hill. ‘Dyret’
at Onsbjerg was surely at one time the major gathering place for the pagan
residents of Samsø, but also [the name] Onshøjene, Odin’s mounds, on the
south island, would appear to derive from ancient heathen worship of Odin
on Samsø).12
To summarize briefly the data thus far, modern perceptions of the relationship of Samsø’s landscape to the mytho­logical and heroic past are robust, with
numerous tendrils leading from the medi­eval testimony to the island’s modern
physical, onomastic, and narrative landscapes — and, in fact, there may even be
yet further such connections to be uncovered.13
Yet strikingly, the presumed original Onsbjerg, one of the most visible physical features on the island south of the Kanhave Canal, after which the town
and church are named, is almost never referred to as such in modern times.
Instead, this feature is called Dyret ‘the animal’, a name already in evidence on
Resen’s map from 1675 (see Fig. 19.2), where the hill, as distinct from the parish, is labelled Ons = bierg = dyr. How far back the change, if change it is, dates
is uncertain, but Resen’s seventeenth-century use of the term appears to be the
11
Samsøs Stednavne, p. 31.
Andersen, Der ligger en ø—Samsø, p. 163. See also the review in Boberg, ‘Sagn og Overlevering om Samsøs Høje og Bakker’, pp. 10, 25–27.
13
See, e.g., the curious case of DgF 526 ‘Lokket med runer – Maiden seduced by runic
spells is deserted’, known from multiforms collected almost exclusively from Samsø, on which,
see Mitchell, ‘DgF 526 “Lokket med runer”, Memory, and Magic’.
12
Stephen A. Mitchell
288
Figure 19.3. Detail from the map by I. Haas, Nye og tilforladelig accurat Geo­graphisk Charte over
Öen Samsoe af Aar 1755, clearly showing the Onsberg — Dÿret distinction. Image available
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
oldest evidence for the renaming of the hill.14 The Jens Sørensen map of 1691
shows roughly the same forms (Onsbierre Dÿer — Onsbierre), yet by the time
of Haas’s 1755 Nye og tilforladelig accurat Geo­graphisk Charte over Öen Samsoe
(Fig. 19.3), the toponyms are no longer linked: Dÿret and Onsberg (the parish)
are, for the first time, I believe, presented with entirely distinct nomenclature.
It is a distinction apparent in subsequent writing, as when, e.g., immediately
after discussing Onsbjerg Kirke, an 1809 correspondent describes the contents
of a Bronze Age find ‘ved Gravning i den høieste Bakke paa Samsøe som kaldes
Dyret’ (at an excavation on the highest hill on Samsø which is called Dyret).15
It is generally believed, following Johannes Steenstrup, that Onsbjerg, the
hill (if indeed that is the history),16 got its new name as a result of the addi14
Cf. Danmarks Stednavne.
Danske præsters indberetninger til Oldsagskommissionen af 1807, p. 248.
16
Cf. ‘det ligger nær at tro, at det er denne Højderyg [Dyret], der hæver sig stejlt op fra
Sletten, der har været Odins hellige Bjerg, og som Byen har faaet Navn efter […] men E. C. Werlauff og R. Nyerup mener i deres hist.-antiq. Beskrivelse, at Odensberg her staar for Odensberg
Mark’ (It is easy to believe that it is this ridge [Dyret], rising from the plain, which had been
Odin’s holy hill, and that from it the village has its name […] but E. C. Werlauff and R. Nyerup
15
Place-Names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition
289
tion of the descriptor diger ‘thick’, ‘broad’, ‘large’, and so on (ODa dighær; OSw
dygher; ON digr). In explaining the modern form, Dyret, Danmarks Stednavne
notes, ‘Naar Navnet er blevet opfattet og skrevet som Dyret, er det antagelig
fordi det har haft et Efterled f. Eks. -høj (Digerhøj), som er blevet afslidt […]
der i Lyd er faldet sammen med det bestemte Kendeord i Intetkøn’ (When the
name is understood and written as Dyret [the animal], it is probably because
it had a final element, for example, ‘høj’ [mound] (Digerhøj), which has been
abraded […] such that the sound has fused with the enclitic definite article in
the neuter).17
Similarly, the name Dyret is fully in effect by the time of Evald Tang
Kristensen’s monumental nineteenth-century project collecting Danish legends and other popular traditions, as in this narrative:
En tidlig morgen gik en kone fra Onsbjærg forbi den bakke, der kaldes Dyret, og da
var det, ligesom der kom en flok heste farende forbi hende, og lidt efter kom der en
flok store fugle susende om hovedet på hende. Da hun kom hjem, blev hun syg og
døde kort efter.
(Early one morning a woman left Onsbjærg and walked by the hill called Dyret, and
then it was as though a herd of horses ran by her, and a little while later it seemed
as though a flock of large birds rushed around her head. When she came home, she
fell ill and died shortly thereafter.)18
In addition to this tale of ill omens and portents of death, Timothy Tangherlini’s
WitchHunter & TrollFinder online tool identifies several other legends from
the Kristensen materials at Dansk Folkemindesamling that are said to have
taken place at Dyret: a few narratives concern frustrated searches for buried
treasure on and near the hill,19 and another is a multiform of the widespread
‘midwife to the fairies’ story.20
maintain in their historical-antiquarian description that Odensberg here means ‘Odensberg’s
field’), Boberg, ‘Sagn og Overlevering’, pp. 25–26.
17
Cf. Steenstrup, De danske stednavne, p. 91, ‘diger, fyldig, tyk, stor — Digerhøj, Digrbjerg, Diernisse [Dighærnæs]’.
18
Kristensen, Sagn og Overtro fra Jylland, Story 607 (p. 346).
19
Tangherlini, ‘WitchHunter & TrollFinder’, Stories 1239, 1241, 6039, 6110; Kristensen,
Danske Sagn, som De har lydt i Folkemunde, p. 380.
20
Christiansen, The Migratory Legends, ML 5070; Tangherlini, ‘WitchHunter &
TrollFinder’, Story 1111; Kristensen, Danske Sagn, som De har lydt i Folkemunde, pp. 336–37.
Speaking of the island’s mound and hill traditions as a whole, Boberg, ‘Sagn og Overlevering’, p. 41, comments, ‘De flesta af de Optegnelser, vi har haft at gøre med, er Beretninger on
290
Stephen A. Mitchell
Given that these tales involve supernatural events at one of the most prominent south Samsø landscape features, these reports of preternatural activity and
attendant legends are not especially surprising, but what is arresting is the way
the use of this transposed name is interpreted in contemporary popular tradition. In these tales, as in the 1755 map, Onsbjerg is reserved for the village and
the church — Dyret is exclusively used as the name for the hill. This specialization of the toponyms is not lost on the people of Samsø. Indeed, popular opinion has its own explanations for why this situation should be as it is. Writing in
the early part of the last century, Hakon Grüner Nielsen comments:
Særlig mærkelig er en bakke på Samsø — den höjeste på øen — kaldet ‘Dyret’,
liggende 6–7 minuters gang fra byen Onsbjerg. Bakken har fået sit navn, fordi den
ligner en dyreryg. Men den har også et andet navn, kun ganske enkelte véd det, men
nævner man det navn, sker en ulykke. Der er vel ingen tvivl om, at bakkens ældste
navn er Odinsbjerg. Medens byen ved höjen har fået lov til at beholde sit hedenske
navn, har man søgt at fortrænge navnet fra höjen, det egentlige kultuscentrum, og
derved er opstået overtroisk sky for at bruge den ældste benævnelse.
(Especially remarkable is a hill on Samsø — the highest on the island — called
‘Dyret’ [the animal] situated some 6 or 7 minutes’ walk from the village of Onsbjerg.
The hill has been named thus because it resembles an animal’s back. But it also has
another name, although very few know it, but even a mention of that name causes
an accident. There is no doubt but that the hill’s oldest name is Odinsbjerg [Odin’s
hill]. But while the village near the mound has been allowed to retain its heathen
name, people have tried to distance the name from the hill, the actual cult centre,
and thus a superstitious cloud hangs over the oldest term.)21
Here Grüner Nielsen bundles together several elements of popular tradition:
the supposed physical resemblance of the hill to an animal’s back that leads to
its substitute name; the idea that few people know the real name of the hill; and
the danger of even mentioning this potent name.22 The belief that this supplied
name, Dyret, is used by the islanders as a kind of noa-term, that is, an acceptable
euphemism for an unacceptable term, of which there are many examples in the
Nordic languages,23 is certainly not impossible — but just why the church and
Højfolkene’ (The majority of those records we have dealt with concern reports about mounddwellers).
21
Grüner Nielsen, ‘Danse på höj’, p. 126.
22
Cf. DFS (Dansk Folkemindesamling) 1906/23: 353, likely to have been Grüner Nielsen’s source. Cf. Boberg, ‘Sagn og Overlevering’, p. 26.
23
See Flom, ‘Noa Words in North Sea Regions’.
Place-Names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition
291
Figure 19.4. A local website presents ‘Dyret’ <https://www.visitsamsoe.dk/inspiration/dyret/>
[accessed 14 May 2018]. Screenshot reproduced by kind permission.
the village should be allowed to use the name of the pagan deity while the same
toponym should be tabu for the (presumed) original location is scarcely justified by the theory that the hill was ‘det egentlige kultuscentrum’ (the actual cult
centre). If the Christian residents of Samsø were aware that the first element of
the compound is the name of the chief pagan deity, and perturbed by that fact,
why would these same Christians not look to expunge the term everywhere?
Yet the notion that Onsbjerg, the original name of the hill, is a tabu-name on
account of its pagan connections is an explanation still widely encountered on
Samsø in the opening decades of the twenty-first century, and is provided with
significant validation in various media outlets, a few examples of which bear
mentioning.
The principal organization for tourism outreach on the island, for example,
Visit Samsø (www.visitsamsoe.dk) has a section of its site dedicated to ‘Dyret’
(see Fig. 19.4), one page of which helpfully explains that, ‘I hedensk tid kaldte
man det for Odinsbjerg, hvilket har givet navn til byen Onsbjerg. Da Odin
blev et tabubelagt navn, fandt folk på navnet “Dyret” i stedet for’ (In heathen
Stephen A. Mitchell
292
times, it was called Odinsbjerg, which gave the name to the village of Onsbjerg.
When Odin became a tabu-freighted name, people created the name ‘Dyret’
[the animal] for it instead).24 A similar comment is made in Gyldendal’s Den
Store Danske in a sidebar note in the article on ‘Dyret’: ‘Dyret er muligvis et
erstatningsnavn for højens virkelige navn, som ikke måtte nævnes pga. tabu’
(Dyret may be a euphemism for the hill’s true name, which may not be named
on account of tabu).25
The (re-)naming of landscape features in early modern and modern tradition is well attested, and often such toponymic renovations align these physical
features with medi­eval texts: famous Swedish examples, as Brink enumerates,26
include Kung Björns hög, or Hågahögen, Uppsala; Björn Järnsidas hög, Munsö;
Anundshögen, Västerås, Västmanland; and Ottarshögen, Vendel. In these
cases, human-built mounds are identified with legendary kings and heroes. The
Samsø case of Dyret, where a physical descriptor lends itself to more extended
interpretations connecting it to pre-Christian traditions has an analogue in,
for example, the interpretation one hears periodically of modern Pétursey, formerly known as Eyjan Há ‘high- or tall- island’, in south Iceland, an interpretation suggesting a connection to Óðinn through his apparent sobriquet, Hár
‘the high one’, in such texts as Snorra Edda and the title of Hávamál. No doubt
bolstered by the presence nearby of the theophoric place-name, Þórsmörk, in
this view, Eyjan Há would suggest an island (now a hill) dedicated to Óðinn.
Something similar appears to be taking place in the present case, although
with the notable exception that Dyret has well-attested medi­eval connections
to the name Óðinn in its earlier place-name, Othensberg (1424), Odensbergh
(1445). When that name was changed through the addition of dighær (?), perhaps as a way of distinguishing between the hill, the village, and the parish/
church, popular imagination, or let us call it the community’s emerging cultural
memory, was offered a canvas onto which it could etch its own theories, here by
taking the island’s famous and very specific connection to Óðinn and turning
it into a sensible explanation, complete with various supportive tales justifying
and explaining the change.
In a recent essay on the broader function of what he calls ‘geo­graphical memory pegs or “spatial etiquettes”’, Brink takes special note of their cognitive significance, what he refers to as ‘a transfer of landscape to mindscape’, continuing,
24
25
26
‘Dyret’, Visit Samsø.
Serritslev and Hansen, ‘Dyret’.
Brink, ‘Onomastics’, pp. 567–72.
Place-Names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition
293
Since toponyms are unique designations for places and areas which have been identified by people for some reason, and subsequently been given a name, it is not only
the linguistic entity, the name, that interests scholarship, but also the actual denotatum, the location in reality. Place names have this dual function, i.e. as a reference
and a location […] A background exists for the appellation and the place or area has
therefore by definition some — real or imagined — invested ‘quality’.27
In the case of ‘Dyret’, it would seem that contemporary residents and visitors to
Samsø have found a ‘quality’, as Brink notes, convivial to local beliefs about the
island’s history, as well as to an emerging aesthetic that delights in the notion of
a pagan-derived tabu-name, an act of periphrasis paradoxically and simultaneously forbidding and extolling the island’s fabled connections to the past —
specifically to the pre-Christian worship of the master of magic, Óðinn, who,
one imagines, is meant to be conceived of as atop that squat fifty-one-metre
high hill that bore his name, ‘beat[ing] on the drum as seeresses do’.
27
Brink, ‘Onomastics’, p. 566.
294
Stephen A. Mitchell
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Danske præsters indberetninger til Oldsagskommissionen af 1807, iv: Sjælland, Samsø og
Møn, ed. by Christian Adamsen and Vivi Jensen (Højbjerg: Wormianum, 1995),
pp. 241–54
Haas, I., Nye og tilforladelig accurat Geo­graphisk Charte over Öen Samsoe af Aar 1755, in
Lauritz de Thurah, Omstændelig og tilforladelig Beskrivelse af Øen Samsøe, og de derunder hørende smaae Øer: Med hosføjede accurate Charte over Samsøe og andre Til dens
histories Oplysning fornødne Kobber-Stykker (København: Nicolaus Møller, 1758);
also available at <http://www.kb.dk/maps/kortsa/2012/jul/kortatlas/object69995/
en/> [accessed 1 December 2019]
Lokasenna, in Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, i: Text, ed.
by Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn, 5th rev. edn (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983), pp. 96–110
Loki’s Quarrel, in The Poetic Edda, trans. by Carolyne Larrington, 2nd rev. edn, The
World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2014), pp. 80–92
Ragnars saga Loðbrókar, in Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda, i, ed. by Guðni Jónsson (Rey­
kja­vík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1954), pp. 219–85
Resen, Peder Hansen, Resenii descriptio et illustratio Samsoæ, insulæ maris Balthici […]
(København: Typis Georgii Gödiani Reg. Majestatis Typogr., 1675)
Thurah, Lauritz de, Omstændelig og tilforladelig Beskrivelse af Øen Samsøe, og de derunder
hørende smaae Øer: Med hosføjede accurate Charte over Samsøe og andre Til dens histories Oplysning fornødne Kobber-Stykker (København: Nicolaus Møller, 1758)
Secondary Studies
Andersen, John Roth, Der ligger en ø—Samsø (Tranebjerg: I samarbejde med Flemming
Andersens Boghandel, 1981)
Boberg, Inger M., ‘Sagn og Overlevering om Samsøs Høje og Bakker’, Årbog for Historisk
Samfund for Holbæk Amt, 26 (1932), 5–41
Brink, Stefan, ‘Verba volant, scripta manent? Aspects of Early Scandinavian Oral Soci­
ety’, in Literacy in Medi­eval and Early Modern Scandinavian Culture, ed. by Pernille
Hermann, The Viking Collection, 16 (Odense: Uni­ver­sity Press of Southern Denmark,
2005), pp. 77–135
—— , ‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, in Learning and Understanding in the
Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn, Kate
Heslop, and Tarrin Wills (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 105–36
—— , ‘Landskap och plats som mentala konstruktioner’, in Facets of Archeo­logy: Essays in
Honour of Lotte Hedeager on her 60th Birthday, ed. by Konstantinos Chilidis, Julie
Lund, and Christopher Prescott, Oslo arkeo­logiske serie, 10 (Oslo: Institutt for arkeo­
logi konservering og historiske studier, Universitetet i Oslo, 2008), pp. 109–20
Place-Names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition
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—— , ‘Onomastics’, in Handbook of Pre-modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary
Approaches, ed. by Pernille Hermann, Jürg Glauser, and Stephen A. Mitchell (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 2018), pp. 565–74
Christiansen, Reidar Thoralf, ed., The Migratory Legends: A Proposed List of Types with a
Systematic Catalogue of the Norwegian Variants, Folklore Fellows Communications,
175 (71.1) (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1958)
Danmarks Stednavne <http://danmarksstednavne.navneforskning.ku.dk/> [accessed 14
May 2018]
‘Dyret’, Visit Samsø <https://www.visitsamsoe.dk/inspiration/dyret/> [accessed 14 May
2018]
Flom, George T., ‘Noa Words in North Sea Regions. A Chapter in Folklore and Linguistics’,
The Journal of American Folklore, 38 (1925), 400–18
Grüner Nielsen, Hakon, ‘Danse på höj’, Danske Studier (1918), 119–26
Kristensen, Evald Tang, Sagn og Overtro fra Jylland, samlede af Folkemunde ved Evald
Tang Kristensen: 2. Samling: 2 Afd (Kolding: Konrad Jörgensen i komm, 1886)
—— , Danske Sagn, som De har lydt i Folkemunde. I. Afdeling. Bjærgfolk (Århus: Århus
Folke­blads Bogtrykkeri i komm. hos Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1892)
Mitchell, Stephen A., ‘The fornaldarsögur and Nordic Balladry: The Sámsey Episode
across Genres’, in Fornaldarsagornas struktur och ideo­logi, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson,
Annette Lassen, and Agneta Ney, Nordiska texter och undersökningar, 28 (Uppsala:
Insti­tutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala Universitet, 2003), pp. 245–56
—— , ‘DgF 526 “Lokket med runer”, Memory, and Magic’, in Emily Lyle: The Persistent
Scholar, ed. by Francis J. Fischer and Sigrid Rieuwerts, Ballads and Songs International
Studies, 5 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), pp. 206–11
Nielsen, Oluf, ‘Bidrag til Fortolkning af danske Stednavne’, in Blandinger til Oplysning
om dansk Sprog i ældre og nyere Tid, 2 vols (København: Universitets-Jubilæets Danske
Samfund, 1881–87), i: 168–92; 227–73; 326–46
Poulsen, Fredrik, Historiske og kulturhistoriske Efterretninger om Samsø, samlede fra trykte
og utrykte Kilder (København: Udgivne paa Foranledning af Samsø Landboforening,
Haandværkerforening og Foredragsforening, 1902)
Samsøs Stednavne, Stednavneudvalget, Københavns Universitet, Institut for Navne­forsk­
ning, Danmarks Stednavne, 1 (København: Gad, 1922)
Serritslev, Lars, and Niels Ulrik Hansen, ‘Dyret’, in Den Store Danske (København:
Gylden­dal) <http://denstoredanske.dk/index.php?sideId=67522> [accessed 14 May
2018]
Steenstrup, Johannes C. H. R., De danske stednavne: Deres tolkning og hvad de oplyser om
vort lands bebygelse og folkets kultur gennem tiderne, Folkelaesning, 280 (København:
Gad, 1908)
Tangherlini, Timothy, ‘WitchHunter & TrollFinder: Mapping the Evald Tang Kristensen
Collection’ <http://etkspace.scandinavian.ucla.edu/maps/witchhunter.html>
[accessed 14 May 2018]
Sacred Sites and Central Places:
Experiences of Multidisciplinary
Research Projects
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
L
ooking back over the last thirty years of our research, it is interesting to
realize how our use of place-names has changed over time. The results of
our research have been published elsewhere, but we thought it interesting to give an overview of the use of place-names in archaeo­logy as a tribute to
Stefan Brink. Based on their own experiences, other scholars will have different
perspectives on the same period.
Ulf ’s interest in place-names in the 1980s grew out of discussions at that
time over the long-term development of south Scandinavian agrarian societies
in the first millennium ad, which considered the Migration period as a period
of fundamental change. Typical of this strand of scholarship was a Nordic
archaeo­logical conference on Öland that had as its subject the ‘Migration
period crisis’.1 Among the ‘younger’ scholars invited, archaeo­logists dominated,
but participants from other disciplines were present, including a single placename scholar. His name was Stefan Brink, and he contributed with a paper titled
‘Folkvandringstida namn?’ (Migration Period Names?).2 Stefan arrived late
and did not join us until our excursion to the famous ruins of an Iron Age ham1
2
Näsman and Lund, eds, Folkevandringstiden.
Brink, ‘Folkvandringstida namn’.
Charlotte Fabech (charlotte-fabech@outlook.com) and Ulf Näsman (ulf.naesman@outlook.
com) are retired archaeo­logists. Both worked in a number of research projects at Aarhus Uni­
ver­sity and at the Linnaeus Uni­ver­sity in Kalmar.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene
García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, TCNE 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020),
pp. 297–313
BREPOLS
PUBLISHERS
10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.119354
298
Figure 20.1. Stefan Brink on an excursion to Hunneberg,
Västergötland, during a conference on the gold finds
made at nearby Vittene. Since his footwear was unsuitable,
he borrowed a pair of impressive boots.
Photo Charlotte Fabech 1998.
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
let at Rönnerum. When he
stepped out of the taxi his
elegant dress revealed that
he represented a discipline
unfamiliar with fieldwork.
Nevertheless, a relationship
was established that would
go on to become very fruitful, even if, ten years later,
he still lacked the foresight
to carry with him good
footwear (Fig. 20.1).
Charlotte’s eyes were
op ene d to the imp ortance of close cooperation
between archaeo­log y and
onomastics by a Nordic
research course ‘Ortnamn
och bebyggelse’ (PlaceNames and Settlement)
at Uppsala Uni­v er­sity in
1989, which gave participating research students an
intense, week-long introduction to the fascinating world of place-name
research. The papers given
by scholars representing
several disciplines (archaeo­
log y, history, human geo­
graphy, onomastics, and
vegetation history) demonstrated how fruitful a multidisciplinary approach could
be. A recurrent lecturer was
Stefan Brink. His settlement historical approach,
in which place-name studies
Sacred Sites and Central Places
299
did not have a preferential right of interpretation compared to archaeo­logy or
human geo­graphy, made a great impact on Charlotte and engendered in her a
lasting interest in place-names as a source material in archaeo­logy. From then
on, a warm scholarly relationship was established, not real cooperation but
involving a number of meetings and fruitful discussions; over time, our families
established close relations too.
Surveying our own projects, conference presentations, published papers,
and so on, we can see the change that has occurred in the use of place-names as
a source in archaeo­logical studies. There was already a long tradition of using
place-names in settlement archaeo­logy,3 but they were mainly exploited as
chrono­logical indicators. The distribution of different place-name types in the
landscape was supposed to reflect long-term settlement history on the assumption that one can distinguish between early names (mainly pre-Viking Age),
younger names (mainly Viking Age), and late names (high medi­eval and later),
as well as recent names.4 And sacral names were used in the study of sacred
landscapes (more below).
Then followed a period in which the focus was on central places in economic, political, and ritual landscapes. Archaeo­logical discourse continued and
explanations based on the information about mentalities offered by Old Norse
written sources prospered. Those discussions led back to the archaeo­logy of
sacred places and sacral place-names. Of course, this trajectory reflects general
changes in archaeo­logical research, but it can also be detected in the different
research projects in which we have been engaged. We consider the sequence of
themes we have studied as constituents of a research spiral,5 indicating, we suppose, a growing understanding and increase in quality.
Among Danish archaeo­logists a revived interest in place-names in archaeo­
logical contexts could be traced back to studies of Gudme, the mother of central places.6 Gold finds made in the nineteenth century had already drawn
attention to the place, but new investigations in the 1980s placed Gudme at the
centre of south Scandinavian settlement archaeo­logy. Metal detecting surveys
and excavations made Gudme famous as a site rich in artefact material, a mate3
For instance Stenberger, Öland, pp. 81–85.
For example, Pamp, Ortnamnen, pp. 20–25; Brink, Korhonen, and Wahlberg ,
‘Bebyggelsenamn’, p. 134; Jørgensen, Stednavneordbog.
5
Sensu Gardin, Archaeo­logical Constructs, fig. 26.
6
Nielsen, Randsborg, and Thrane, eds, The Archaeo­l ogy of Gudme; Näsman, ‘Central
Places’, pp. 186–87.
4
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
300
rial that clearly indicated that power and religion were inseparable constituents
of this important site. In 1986 a new sewer system prompted excavations at
nearby Lundeborg, which added another facet to the central place complex at
Gudme: a coastal landing and trade place was revealed.7
Contributions by two scholars, a historian and an onomastician, were significant for the introduction of sacral place-names to the resulting discussion of
central places. Reasoning by analogy, Karl Hauck, the historian, demonstrated
that the concordance in south-west Germany in the spread of bishop’s seats and
cross-decorated bracteates was comparable to the concordance in the distribution in Northern Europe of sacral place-names and gold bracteates.8 Hauck
suggested a combined mapping of gold bracteates and sacral place-names to
help us to identify superregional sacred centres,9 and the importance of his
idea became obvious when metal detecting revealed a growing number of settlement sites with a wealth of exclusive finds. Hauck’s maps had demonstrated a
concurrence in sacral place-names and artefacts with religious significance like
gold bracteates, thereby revealing how gold finds could be used as indicators of
wealthy settlements and central places.10
At the invitation of Henrik Thrane, also a place-name scholar, John Kousgård
Sørensen participated in the Gudme project, contributing with a fundamental paper on sacral place-names in south Scandinavia,11 and since then sacral
place-names have been integrated as a source material in archaeo­logical central place studies. His map of sacral place-names was particularly influential in
stimulating archaeo­logists’ interest in using place-names in settlement studies.
In the same period the Swedish archaeo­logists Johan Callmer and Majvor
Östergren demonstrated that many Viking Age silver hoards are in a settlement context.12 Based on their observations, we formulated the hypothesis that
Migration period gold hoards and stray finds could also have a close relation
to contemporary settlements. Choro­logical analyses of gold finds revealed that
gold objects were not deposited in the wilderness, but near or in the inmark of
7
Thomsen, ‘Handelspladsen ved Lundeborg’.
Hauck, ‘Missionsgeschichte’, figs 7–8.
9
Hauck, ‘Gudme als Kultort’ and ‘Gudme in der Sicht’; cf. Fabech, ‘Society and Landscape’, pp. 123–37.
10
Fabech, ‘Samfundsorganisation’, pp. 292–97.
11
Sørensen, ‘Gudhem’ and ‘Haupttypen sakraler Ortsnamen’.
12
Callmer, ‘Topo­graphical Notes’, pp. 147–48; Östergren, Mellan stengrund och stenhus,
pp. 247–51.
8
Sacred Sites and Central Places
301
settlements (enclosed arable and meadows).13 Finds of gold bracteates seem to
cluster in two different landscape contexts: sites near the coast, whether along
the sea or fjords; and sites at important watersheds where rivers cross road systems. Obviously, there was a preference for localizing many residences/central
places at such communicative nodes rather than at the centre of economically
productive areas.14
To understand the use of the concept of central place in Scandinavian Iron
Age archaeo­logy we also have to mention a Nordic Iron Age conference that
took place at Sandbjerg Slot in 1989.15 By then the investigations at GudmeLundeborg had been going on for some years and the results were central to
many of the papers read at the conference. The observations that the interesting finds and contexts were spread out at different sites in a large area around
Gudme and that they represented various functions were important in the
first attempts to define the concept of the central place complex.16 Place-name
research was not represented at the conference by a scholar but was indirectly
present through its strong impact on the discussions of Hauck’s study of the
relation between sacral place-names and gold bracteates.
The significant results presented and good experiences enjoyed at the
Sandbjerg conference were foundational for a five-year research project,
Bebyggelse och kulturlandskap (Settlement and Landscape), that we, together
with Steen Hvass and Jytte Ringtved, were granted funding for in 1993.17 We
were looking to develop the use of place-names in Danish landscape archaeo­
logy while meeting Danish settlement archaeo­logy with Swedish geo­graphical
traditions. The result was a wide-ranging landscape archaeo­logy that cooperated with human geo­g raphy, onomastics, history, vegetation history, and history of religion. In that period our understanding of settlement and society,
of continuity and discontinuity, was developing through new finds and excavations, intense discussions, workshops, and fresh definitions. Guest scholars
invited to the Department of Archaeo­logy at Aarhus Uni­ver­sity included two
human geo­g raphers, Dan Carlsson and Mats Riddersporre, and a place-name
13
Näsman, ‘Öland, Eketorp’, p. 351; Edgren and Herschend, ‘Arkeo­logisk ekonomi’,
figs 9–10; Fabech ‘Samfundsorganisation’, pp. 292–07; Ringtved ‘Fremmede genstande’,
pp. 64–69. For another view, see Henriksen, ‘Gold Deposits’.
14
Fabech and Ringtved, ‘Magtens geografi’.
15
Fabech and Ringtved, eds, Samfundsorganisation.
16
Näsman, ‘Some Comments’, p. 332.
17
Fabech and others, ‘Settlement and Landscape’.
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
302
expert, Stefan Brink. They contributed considerably to the development of
our project and to Danish landscape archaeo­logy in general,18 with new definitions and models of central places being created based on arguments from
archaeo­logy, place-name research, and human geo­graphy.19 One was primarily
based on south Scandinavian archaeo­logy, the other on place-name clusters in
central Sweden, but the great similarities between them reveal how close the
contacts between Uppsala and Aarhus were in this period. The new landscape
archaeo­logy and the role of central places formed the background of a growing archaeo­logical interest in the cognitive aspects of society. A feature of central places that has attracted great interest is that they fulfilled important ritual
tasks; some even began as natural sacred places.20 Cult buildings excavated on
some settlements have changed our view of the complexity of Scandinavian
paganism, e.g. at Uppåkra.21
The results of our studies of the landscape made us attractive partners in a
couple of multidisciplinary research programmes that took a long-term perspective on landscape changes and which aimed to produce methods and results
that would be useful in modern landscape management; place-names were a significant feature in our analyses. In 1997, after ‘Settlement and Landscape’, Jytte
Ringtved and we joined another five-year Danish project, Foranderlige landskaber (Changing Landscapes), which was organized as an open research centre.
It was a multidisciplinary centre subdivided into five projects, though with a
shared focus on perspectives dictated by landscape management and administration. Our part was to argue for the presence of historical values in a cultural
landscape and the need to protect them as that landscape changes. We hoped
to contribute to an understanding of the value of a deep historical perspective
on the present landscape, reasoning, in particular, that knowledge of the cultural landscape of Denmark had to be implemented in landscape planning and
administration.22 Important remains that significantly reflect past landscapes in
the present ought to be protected in the same way as rare plants or red-listed
animals. In Denmark only a few visible ancient sites and monuments are scheduled and protected. The landscape is intensively cultivated and most ancient
18
19
20
21
22
Brink ‘Social Order’; Riddersporre, ‘Village and Single Farm’.
Brink, ‘Social Order’, fig. 10; Fabech, ‘Organising the Landscape’, fig. 8.
Fabech and Näsman, ‘Ritual Landscapes’, p. 86.
Larsson and Lenntorp, ‘The Enigmatic House’.
Møller and others, ‘Bæredygtig arealanvendelse’, pp. 170–75.
Sacred Sites and Central Places
303
sites are ploughed over. Consequently, we tried to develop methods to predict
where hitherto unknown ancient sites are to be expected.
In our experience of the cooperation between different disciplines in
Foranderlige landskaber, a lot of time and resources were wasted simply on
understanding one another. It is clear to us that, to succeed, multidisciplinary
projects need ample time, sufficient funding, and scholars with open attitudes
to the different culture and traditions of other disciplines.
However, in our project tools were developed to be used in analyses of cultivated landscapes. If you combine maps of good soil quality, place-names, and
archaeo­logical finds you will get a first impression of where Iron Age man settled. We tried to qualify this impression through a deeper understanding of the
relation between intensively and extensively used areas. Generally speaking, we
tried to find the Iron Age inmark in which arable and meadows were fenced off
from the surrounding pastures and forest, focusing on an area at Bjerringbro,
Jutland.23 The data used consisted of topo­graphy, soil cover, the archaeo­logical
record, medi­eval churches, and historical cadastral maps as well as place-names,
including any names which indicated forest. Using these sources, it was possible to suggest which areas were intensively used and which extensively. Several
place-names in the area of our investigation indicated the presence of settlements with a long continuity from the name-giving to the present. But there
were also major difficulties. When a settlement moved the name often followed, so in spite of name continuity we cannot expect the present location of
a name to be the site where it was originally coined. Old settlements, moreover,
could pick up new names for various reasons. Nevertheless place-names proved
to be useful.
The place-names in the Bjerringbro area were sorted into the traditional
chrono­logical phases. The spread of early phases of place-names coincided with
the occurrence of archaeo­logical finds of the first millennium ad, as well as
with the distribution of Romanesque churches, and represents long settlement
continuity. Later names, especially those ending in -torp, do not show this tendency; obviously they reflect a settlement expansion in early historical time
(the twelfth century).
We used maps at 1:120,000 published by Videnskabernes Selskab (the
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters) around 1800, the first trigonometric maps covering the entire country. They reflect a landscape from before
the large land-use reforms of the nineteenth century. However, when the maps
23
Fabech and Ringtved, ‘Områder med stort fundpotentiale’.
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
304
were drawn very little forested land remained, only the remnants of once much
larger forests. We had to correct for this and place-names offered possibilities
for doing so.
In order to reconstruct the forest cover of the first millennium we combined
the forests on the maps of Videnskabernes Selskab with all the names that had
been preserved indicating the presence of forest or groves of any age, excluding
only those referring to recent plantations. Standing alone such a name cannot
be considered to mark the presence of old forest, but clusters of such names
support that assumption. Furthermore, forest names are concentrated in areas
close to forests mapped around ad 1800. Areas with a slope steeper than 6°
were also included. When combined, those indicators increased the probability
that an area was covered by forest. Both present forest and forest-indicating
names are overrepresented on clayey soils, an observation that likewise supports the assumption that the names reflect now removed forest. Many of the
names are late but we suggested that they are also relevant forests indicators for
the first millennium.24
The endpoint of our methodo­logy was a map in which the landscape was
subdivided into intensively and extensively used areas. In the intensively used
areas the presence of ploughed-over ancient monuments is supposed to be
high. However, this method does not indicate qualitative differences between
different types of sites or their value as ancient monuments. Metal detecting
can give hints, but archaeo­logists have to dig trial trenches on a site to be able
to give a qualified evaluation. And one must not overlook the possibility that
remarkable finds can be made also in extensively used areas, such as depositions
in wetland.
This approach to landscape analysis was continued in a research project that
ran between 1998–2003, Agrar 2000,25 which studied land-use changes over
the last two thousand years in different Danish landscape types. The basis of
the project was pollen analyses of samples from nine lakes, selected to represent east and west Denmark as well as three historical landscape types: agerbygd
‘open cultivated landscapes’, skovbygd ‘forested landscapes’, and hedebygd ‘heath
landscapes’.26
24
Fabech and Ringtved, ‘Områder med stort fundpotentiale’, p. 88, fig. 8.
Odgaard and Rømer, eds, Danske landbrugslandskaber.
26
Møller and Porsmose, Kulturhistorisk inddeling; Odgaard, ‘Forskningsprojektet
AGRAR 2000’, fig. 1.
25
Sacred Sites and Central Places
305
Historical landscape types must not be applied to an Iron Age context without critical discussion, and it is a complex task to elaborate practicable definitions of Iron Age landscape types. The archaeo­logical record has to be related
to place-, field-, and other names, historical maps, and geo­logical as well as geo­
graphical conditions, etc. The archaeo­logical analyses conducted in our project
of the surroundings of the nine lakes in three landscape types are a good beginning.27 According to those analyses, the now open tilled landscape was in the
first millennium more like a mosaic composed of small arable fields, meadows,
pastures, groves, and small forests. Since the arable was only a small proportion
and vast pastures characterized a settled Iron Age landscape, agerbygd came to
be renamed overdrevsbygd ‘pasture landscape’.
Land-use changes in the three landscape types were summarized in ‘cartoons’
with six phases from c. 200 bc to c. 1800 ad.28 The ‘cartoons’ are preliminary
working models. To develop them further, close cooperation with other scholars including place-name researchers is still needed. There are a few examples
of younger scholars who have contributed to the development of an archaeo­
logical-onomastic approach,29 and we hope that they are soon followed by others. Another example of our application of this analytical approach is found in
a study of the historic landscape surrounding Skjern river in west Jutland.30
When in the 1990s we were engaged in our large landscape projects, other
archaeo­logists were abandoning traditional settlement archaeo­logical analyses
of economy and society in favour of studies of past mentalities and religion —
cult and ritual. Eventually, this brought us back to sacral place-names and their
contexts.31 Place-names are important for our understanding of the variety of
sacred sites. The meaning of the various sacral place-names can be studied,32
whereas at present it is not possible by archaeo­logical means to identify the different types of sacred sites indicated by sacred names. The number of excavated
sites is simply too small and they are widely distributed in time and space.33
27
Fabech and Ringtved, ‘Arealanvendelse’.
Fabech and Ringtved, ‘Arealanvendelse’, fig. 102a–f.
29
Christensen, Stednavne som kilde; Hansen, ‘Landsbydannelse’; Svensson, Nämnda ting
men glömda.
30
Ringtved, ‘Skjern Å’, pp. 27–29, 34.
31
Fabech and Näsman, ‘Ritual Landscapes’.
32
Brink, ‘Political and Social Structures’; Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser.
33
Cf. Bäck, Stenholm, and Ljung, Lilla Ullevi, pp. 28–30.
28
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
306
Any place could be holy after the sacred had appeared there. When a hierophany had taken place, the site could become holy and acquire a sacral name.34
As a consequence, we find a great variety of sacred places. Their size, shape, and
localization vary considerably. Sites in the landscape are, however, often found
at conspicuous formations: cliffs, boulders, water courses, caves, springs, great
trees, groves, hills, etc. Since we lack contemporary written descriptions of the
sacred places of the Iron Age we have to use dispersed finds and other indications. From the time after the conversion we do, though, have written texts,
which reveal how ancient sacred places were remembered hundreds of years
later. Natural sites mentioned in those texts comprise stony outcrops, groves,
and, once, a well; regarding constructed sites, we find cult buildings, barrows,
stavgårdar, and harg. The written sources may be late and not very informative
but indicate that some rituals did take place indoors and that some houses were
equipped with an altar. To evaluate the accuracy of the medi­e val sources we
turned to place-names to see how they describe sacred sites.35
Many sacral place-names consist of or include words signifying natural features: woodland, trees like oak and beech, hills, islands, headlands, bays, rivers,
and lakes. Other sacral place-names allude to human land-use (pasture or cropfields), to settlements (home, farmstead, house, or hall), or specifically to a cult
place (sanctuaries referred to with labels like hov, vi). Other constructed places are
indicated by names compounded with terms for mound, stave, and enclosure. It
is uncertain whether stony outcrops (harg) and havens are natural or constructed.
It is important to note that natural places occur in greater number among
the place-names: trees, hills, islands, headlands, bays, rivers, and lakes. The
place-names reflect a ritual landscape that existed before the conversion. Some
sacred places were possibly already named during the Roman Iron Age or the
Migration period, while others are from the Merovingian (Vendel) period
(sixth to eighth centuries) and the Viking Age. In either case, all the names
were given before the conversion.
Sacred groves are described in written sources from Tacitus to Adam of
Bremen. It appears from those sources, which encompass over a millennium, that
this type of sacred place was common. In such groves and small woods the gods
resided, and here hierophanies could take place. Corpses were hung from the holy
trees. The groves could be used for gatherings by leaders who had to plan hazardous actions, and there the outcome of future events could be foretold.
34
35
Vikstrand, Gudarnas platser, pp. 17–34.
References in Fabech and Näsman, ‘Ritual Landscapes’, pp. 66–67.
Sacred Sites and Central Places
307
At Lunda in Södermanland, a settlement was excavated in 2001–02.36 It is
dated from the fourth to the seventh centuries. Three figurines found near a
long hall there have been interpreted as building offerings. Nearby a cemetery
was discovered. Close to the settlement was a prominent hill with a grove, and
the name Lunda and topo­graphy led the excavator to the assumption that the
grove on the hill was once sacred. Excavations revealed that the hill was covered
by a large number of stone settings. All over the hill fragmented burnt bones,
small pieces of burnt clay, and tiny drops of resin were spread. Furthermore,
unburnt glass beads and edged tools had been dispersed. The activities are
dated by artefacts to the fifth century and onwards into the Viking Age.
Lunda did not remain a unique discovery for very long. Potential sacred
groves were suspected at a number of sites, and indeed, another was found in
2004 during rescue investigations at Vång in Blekinge.37 Early in that process,
a hill with a grove in the middle of a cultivated valley was identified as a probable sacred place. The hill rises above a large settlement and on its top plateau
remarkable finds were made in trial trenches: shards of glass vessels, remains
of large cauldrons of copper-alloy, twenty-nine gold foil figures, and a lancehead. The artefacts range in date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age to the Viking
Age. North of the hill is a small boggy area and a field named wiåkersängarna, a
name that could indicate nearness to a cult site (on the hill?) and that its appellative was vi ‘sacred site’.
Ravlunda, Scania is a legendary lund-site.38 Local legends tell us about a
sacred grove near the mouth of the Skepparp River, and in the archaeo­logical
record one finds gold bracteates, gold-foil figures, a solidus, and a golden neckring, as well as a Viking Age silver hoard. South of the river, occupation layers
and stray finds indicate a settlement. Remains of a large cemetery are found
north of the river, still including a large number of erected stones. As part of
small multidisciplinary projects, a few areas of Ravlunda were investigated
through metal detecting and field surveying (Fig. 20.2). These investigations
also revealed a landing-place with the remains of handicrafts at the small river.
The finds cover a period from c. 300 to c. 1100 ad. Moreover, field names of
note in relation to the site are recorded on a cadastral map from the early nineteenth century. One such name Stigelund, which can mean ‘the fenced-in grove’,
may have designated the sacred grove mentioned in the legends. Other interest36
37
38
Andersson and Skyllberg, Gestalter och gestaltningar.
Henriksson and Nilsson, eds, Vikten av Vång.
Fabech, ‘Centrality in Sites and Landscapes’.
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
308
ing names from the area are Maletofta, Lunnastycket, and Ahlgukärret. Recent
detector surveys and small trial trenches have demonstrated that Maletofta was
really a large, wealthy settlement. The recorded artefacts cover a period from
the Migration period to the Viking Age with conspicuous finds including a
shard of a glass vessel with reticella decoration, and a piece of a hilt ring for
a sword made from gilt silver.39 A hoard of four amulet-rings of iron supports
the assumption that rituals took place at Ravlunda. Investigations on the hill at
Stigelund have not yet taken place, so its status as a sacred grove remains hypothetical. Nevertheless, Ravlunda appears to be a multifunctional central place
complex of superregional significance.40
In those years Stefan Brink held a Chair in Landscape History at the
archaeo­logy department of Uppsala Uni­ver­sity and arranged ‘The Seminar for
the Study of Early Scandinavian Society and Culture’, with weekly seminars
that attracted many younger scholars from other regions in Sweden representing several disciplines. However, Stefan left for a chair at the Uni­ver­sity of
Aberdeen in 2004, leaving a void that was hard to fill.
Nevertheless, rescue excavations continued to produce new results. They
revealed that not all cult sites were placed in settlements. At Lilla Ullevi,
Uppland, a remarkable stone construction was uncovered; certainly it was a
sacred place, and possibly a sanctuary, a -vi.41 The excavators interpret its central
stone construction to be a harg, an essential part of the vi. Among notable finds
are sixty-five amulet-rings of iron and an elaborate handle belonging to a (perhaps) ritual iron staff. The artefacts date the construction to the Merovingian
(Vendel) period. The sanctuary was abandoned at the end of the eighth century
and sealed under a thick blanket of soil.
A survey of excavations at -vi sites would present locations with few common traits and a chrono­logical spread from Pre-Roman Iron Age to late Viking
Age: Vi in Uppland, Ullevi in Östergötland, and Frösvi, Götavi, and Odensvi
in Närke.42 But excavations at other places show that not all cult sites have
sacral names. Possibly some never had one and in other cases such a name may
have been forgotten or lost as a result of societal changes. Interesting examples
include the sacred hill at Vång (mentioned above) and the cult site at Abbetorp,
Öster­g ötland.43
39
40
41
42
43
Helgesson, Maletofta, Ravlunda.
Helgesson, Järnålderns Skåne, passim.
Bäck, Stenholm, and Ljung, Lilla Ullevi.
Bäck, Stenholm, and Ljung, Lilla Ullevi, pp. 29–30.
Lindeblad and Pettersson, ‘Riter vid berg, block och vatten’.
Sacred Sites and Central Places
309
In our opinion the
results of Swedish rescue
archaeo­log y and of the
multidisciplinary projects
mentioned above ought to
stimulate younger scholars
into initiating a research
programme focused on
sacred sites. One beginning could be to try to
select a number of interesting hills with names that
include the appellative
lund or other sacral names.
Quick surveys with metal
detectors could indicate
which hills should be subject to more expensive trial
excavations. In such a project the fieldwork should
be multidisciplinary with
the participation of scholFigure 20.2. A find made by Stefan Brink during metal
ars from at least archaeo­ detecting of an area at Ravlunda, Scania, is discussed with
log y, human geo­g raphy, Mats Riddersporre, the human geo­grapher. The Baltic Sea
place-name research, and is visible in the background. Photo Charlotte Fabech 2001.
vegetation history. In an
earlier paper we presented a couple of promising hills, Lunden near Häglinge
church in Scania and Lundskulle at Blackstad church in Småland.44 One could
add the hill at Stigelund at Ravlunda (above) and Lönnebjär near Sösdala in
Scania,45 along with Odenskulle in Gökhem parish in Västergötland, another
interesting hill that commands its surrounding landscape.46 The name was
already recorded in 1561 and is probably not a result of National Romantic
speculation. Certainly, there are many more sites to investigate and the examples of Lunda and Vång demonstrate the results that we can hope for.
44
45
46
Fabech and Näsman, ‘Ritual Landscapes’, pp. 76–77.
Fabech, ‘Sösdala and Fulltofta’, fig. 1.
SOFI, ‘Odenskulle’.
310
Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman
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Ringtved, Jytte, ‘Fremmede genstande på Sejlflodgravpladsen, Nordjylland’, in Samfunds­
organisation og regional variation: Norden i romersk jernalder og folkevandringstid,
ed. by Charlotte Fabech and Jytte Ringtved (Højbjerg: Jysk arkæo­logisk selskab,
1991), pp. 47–73, summary
—— , ‘Skjern Å – Bebyggelse og arealanvendelse i et 2000-årigt perspektiv’, in Skjern Å,
ed. by Ivan Nielsen and Hans-Henrik Schierup (Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag,
2007), pp. 23–46
Stenberger, Mårten, Öland under äldre järnåldern (Stockholm: Kungl. vitterhets historie
och antikvitets akademien, 1933), summary
Svensson, Ola, Nämnda ting men glömda: Ortnamn, landskap och rättsutövning (Växjö:
Linnéuniversitetet, 2015), summary
Sørensen, John Kousgård, ‘Gudhem’, Frühmittel­alterliche Studien, 19 (1985), 130–38
—— , ‘Haupttypen sakraler Ortsnamen Südskandinaviens’, in Der historische Horizont der
Götterbild-Amulette aus der Übergangsepoche von der Spätantike zum Frühmittel­alter,
ed. by Karl Hauck (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1992), pp. 228–40 and
fold-out map
Thomsen, Per O., ‘Handelspladsen ved Lundeborg’, in Lundeborg: En handelsplats fra
jernalderen, ed. by Per O. Thomsen and others (Svendborg: Svendborg and Omegns
Museum, 1993), pp. 68–101
Vikstrand, Per, Gudarnas platser: Förkristna sakrala ortnamn i Mälarlandskapen (Uppsala:
Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien, 2001), summary
A Biblio­graphy of
Stefan Brink’s Publications
Compiled with the assistance of Per Vikstrand
1979
‘Bodlanden i Järvsö socken’, in Uppsalastudier i namnforskning, Ortnamn och samhälle, 5
(Uppsala: Uppsala universitet), pp. 7–49
1981
‘Offerberg’, Ortnamnssällskapets i Uppsala årsskrift, 13–17
‘Namnet Hälsingland’, Namn och bygd, 69, 115–51
‘Vad betyder Hälsingland?’, GHASETTEN: Gästrike-Hälsinge Nation, 19.7, 10–12
(with Thorsten Andersson, Eva Brylla, Evert Melefors, Aino Naert, Leif Nilsson, and
Mats Wahlberg) Review of Vibeke Dalberg and John Kousgård Sørensen, Sted­
navneforskning, ii: Udnyttelsesmuligheder (Copen­hagen, 1979), Namn och bygd, 69,
190–97
1982
‘Namnet Norrbo’, in Några blad ur Norrbo sockens historia, ed. by Albin Gunsth (Norrbo:
Norrbo hembygdsförening)
Review of Per Lundström, De kommo vida… Vikingars hamn vid Paviken på Gotland
(Stockholm, 1981), Namn och bygd, 70, 176–78
‘Så tolkar du våra ortnamn’, Historiska Nyheter, 21, 9
1983
‘Modenamn och inge-namn’, Upsala Nya Tidning, 6 June 1981
‘När bildades våra äldsta bebyggelsenamn?’, Ortnamnssällskapets i Uppsala årsskrift, 5–17
Ortnamnen och kulturlandskapet: Ortnamnens vittnesbörd om kulturlandskapets utveckling
och dess utnyttjande i södra Norrland, särskilt Hälsingland, Ortnamn och samhälle, 8
(Uppsala: Uppsala universitet)
316
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
‘Place-Name Evidence for Rural Expansion in Marginal Areas: An Onomastic-Geo­
graphic Study from Central Sweden’, in Villages, Fields and Frontiers, ed. by Brian K.
Roberts and Robin E. Glasscock, British Archaeo­logical Reports, International Series,
185 (Oxford: British Archaeo­logical Reports), pp. 257–73
1984
‘Absolut datering av bebyggelsenamn’, in Bebyggelsers og bebyggelsesnavnes alder: NORNAs
niende symposium i København 25–27 oktober 1982, ed. by Vibeke Dalberg and others, NORNA-rapporter, 26 (Uppsala: NORNA-förlaget), pp. 18–66
Ortnamn i Hälsingland (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell)
‘Ortnamn och bebyggelse i Hållnäs’, Upsala Nya Tidning, 25 September 1984
‘Ortnamn som källa i historisk forskning’, Fornvännen, 79, 165–72
Review of Mats Widgren, Settlement and Farming Systems in the Early Iron Age (Stock­
holm, 1983), Namn och bygd, 72, 173–75
‘Studies in the Development of Settlement in Prehistoric and Medi­eval Times in
the Province of Hälsingland, Sweden’, in Der Eigenname in Sprache und Gesellschaft:
XV. Internationaler Kongreß für Namenforschung 13.–17. August 1984, ed. by Ernst
Eichler, Elke Saß, and Hans Walther (Leipzig: Karl-Marx-Universität) (repr. in
Egennamn i språk och samhälle: Nordiska föredrag på femtonde internationella kongressen för namnforskning i Leipzig 13–17 augusti 1984, ed. by Thorsten Andersson,
Ortnamn och samhälle, 9 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1987), pp. 7–12)
‘Tännäs’, in Nordiska namnstudier: Festskrift till Harry Ståhl, ed. by Thorsten Andersson
(Uppsala: Lundequistska Bokhandeln), pp. 145–55 (repr. in Namn och bygd, 73
(1985), 145–55)
1985
Review of Thorsten Andersson and Sölve Göransson, eds, Äldre territoriell indelning
av Sverige Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 4 (Stockholm, 1983), Namn och bygd, 73,
249–54
1986
‘Personnamn i de nordskandinaviska staðir-namnens förleder’, in Personnamn i stadnamn:
Artikkelsamling frå NORNAs tolvte Symposium i Trondheim 14.-16. mai 1984, ed. by
Jørn Sandnes and Ola Stemshaug, NORNA-rapporter, 33 (Trondheim: NORNAförlaget), pp. 49–65
1987
‘Nordisk Bebyggelseonomastik. Några Allmänna och Speciella Synpunkter med Finlands­
svensk Utgångspunkt’, in Klassiska Problem inom Finlandssvensk Ort­namnforskning:
Svenska Litteratursällskapets Jubileumssymposium på Hanaholmen 4–6 oktober 1985,
ed. by Lars Huldén, Studier i nordisk filo­logi, 67 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland), pp. 99–110
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
317
Review of Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer, and Ian Wood, eds, The Christianization of
Scandinavia (Alingsås, 1987), Namn och bygd, 75, 194–96
Review of Klas-Göran Selinge, ed., Fornlämningar och bebyggelsehistoria (Bebyggelsehistorisk
tidskrift, 11 (1986)), Namn och bygd, 75, 197–201
‘Till frågan om ortnamnselementet -setr, dess ursprung och betydelse’, Namn og Nemne:
Tidsskrift for norsk namnegransking, 4, 79–84
1988
‘Denotationsförändringar – nya namn. En fråga om olika beskrivningsnivåer?’, in Deno­
tations­byte i ortnamn: Rapport från NORNAs trettonde Symposium i Tvärminne,
9–11 oktober 1986, ed. by Peter Slotte, NORNA-rapporter, 37 (Uppsala: NORNAförlaget), pp. 129–36
‘Denotationsförändringar bland våra äldsta bebyggelsenamnstyper’, in Denotationsbyte
i ortnamn: Rapport från NORNAs trettonde Symposium i Tvärminne, 9–11 oktober
1986, ed. by Peter Slotte, NORNA-rapporter, 37 (Uppsala: NORNA-förlaget),
pp. 63–88
‘Ett försök till rekonstruktion av en förkristen kultplats’, in Ingemar Olsson 25 augusti
1988, ed. by Jan Einarsson and Barbro Söderberg, Meddelanden från institutionen
för nordiska språk, 28 (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet), pp. 53–58
‘Folkvandringstida namn? Ortnamn som källmaterial för att belysa bosättningen i Norden
vid mitten av det första årtusendet’, in Folkevandringstiden i Norden: En krisetid mellem ældre og yngre jernalder? Rapport fra et bebyggelsesarkæo­logisk forskersymposium i
Degerhamn, Öland d. 2.-4. oktober 1985, ed. by Ulf Näsman and Jørgen Lund (Århus:
Aarhus Universitetsforlag), pp. 13–31
Review of Emanuel Svenberg, trans., Adam av Bremen: Historien om Hamburgstiftet
och dess biskopar (Stockholm, 1984) and Eva Odelman, trans., Boken om Ansgar
(Stockholm, 1986), Namn och bygd, 76, 207–08
Två stora farsoter i Hälsingland: Medeltidens ‘digerdöd’ och 1743 års ‘blodsot’ (Uppsala:
Logica)
‘Vad innebär bebyggelsehistoria?’, Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 13, 195–99
‘Vattrång, Vattlång och Yttre’, Ortnamnssällskapets i Uppsala årsskrift, 5–25
1989
‘Ett bidrag till onomastisk teori. Bosättningshistoria’, in Studia Onomastica: Festskrift till
Thorsten Andersson den 23 februari 1989, ed. by Lena Peterson and Svante Strandberg
with Lennart Elmevik, Lennart Moberg, and Allan Rostvik (Uppsala: Almqvist &
Wiksell), pp. 19–28 (also publ. in Namn och bygd, 77 (1989), 23–32)
‘Gamla naturnamn längs Norrlands kust, särskilt ånamn’, in Stadnamn i kystkulturen: Rapport frå NORNAs fjortande symposium i Volda 4.–6. mai 1987, ed. by
Peter Hallaråker, Arne Kruse, and Terje Aarset, NORNA-rapporter, 41 (Uppsala:
NORNA-förlaget), pp. 11–33
318
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
1990
‘Bynamn på Frösön’, Jämten, 83, 90–93
‘Cult Sites in Northern Sweden’, in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic PlaceNames: Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on Encounters between Religions in
Old Nordic Times and on Cultic Place-Names Held at Åbo, Finland, on the 19th-21st
of August 1987, ed. by Tore Ahlbäck, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 13 (Åbo:
Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History), pp. 458–89
Review of Kristinn Jóhannesson and others, eds, Aktuella frågor inom ortnamnsvården:
Handlingar från DOVA:s och Göteborgs universitets symposium den 8–10 mars 1988
(Göteborg, 1989), Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 20, 178
Review of Lars Holstein, ed., Det maritima kulturlandskapet kring Bottenviken (Umeå,
1989), Namn och bygd, 78, 234–35
‘Den senmedeltida agrarkrisen i Hälsingland’, Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 20, 39–46
Sockenbildning och Sockennamn. Studier i Äldre Territoriell Indelning i Norden, Acta
Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi, 57, Studier till en svensk ortnamnsatlas, 14
(Uppsala: Uppsala Uni­ver­sity)
‘Tåkernbygden. En bosättningsonomastisk studie’, in I Heliga Birgittas trakter: Nitton
uppsatser om medeltida samhälle och kultur i Östergötland ‘västanstång’, ed. by Göran
Dahlbäck (Uppsala: Humanistisk-Samhällsvetenskapliga forskningsrådet), pp. 29–55
1991
‘-arv(et)’, ‘-bor’, ‘-bränna’, ‘-hals’, ‘-hem’, ‘-hammar(e)’, ‘-lock’, ‘-rossel’, ‘-skåle’, ‘-torp’, in
NONELex: Lexikon över Nordiska Ortnamnselement <http://www.norna.org/
?q=nonelex> [accessed 1 December 2019]
‘Forsaringen’, Läddikan: Aktuellt från Länsmuseet i Gävleborg och Gästrike Hälsinge hembygdsförbund (1991.2), 22–24
‘Iakttagelser rörande namnen på -hem i Sverige’, in Heidersskrift til Nils Hallan på 65-årsdagen 13. desember 1991, ed. by Gulbrand Alhaug, Kristoffer Kruken, and Helge Salve­
sen (Oslo: Novus), pp. 66–80
‘Iakttagelser rörande sockenbildningen i Hälsingland’, in Faxeholm och nordsvensk
medeltid: Ett idéseminarium i Söderhamn 11–12 april 1991, ed. by Mats Mogren
(Gävle: Länsmuseet i Gävleborgs län), pp. 21–25
‘Presentation av tre forskningsprojekt’, in Den 6. nasjonale konferansen i namnegransking
Blindern 23. november 1990: Innleiingar og diskusjon, ed. by Botolv Helleland and
Anne Svanevik (Oslo: Avdeling for namnegransking, Universitetet i Oslo)
‘S:t Petersburg> Petrograd> Leningrad>?’, Upsala Nya Tidning, 26 February 1991
‘Sockenbildningen i Sverige’, in Kyrka och socken i medeltidens Sverige: En samling uppsatser, ed. by Olle Ferm, Studier till det medeltida Sverige, 5 (Stockholm: Riks­
antikvarieämbetet), pp. 113–42
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
319
1992
‘Digerdöden och den medeltida jordbrukskrisen’, Jämten, 86, 51–55
‘Edsätra i Hållnäs’, Upsala Nya Tidning, 24 March 1992 (repr. in Uppländska namnstudier: Valda namnspalter ur Upsala Nya Tidning 1982–2002, ed. by Katharina Leibring,
Staffan Nyström, and Mats Wahlberg (Uppsala: Ortnamnssällskapet i Uppsala, 2011),
pp. 114–16)
‘Har vi haft ett kultiskt *al i Norden?’, in Sakrale Navne: Rapport fra NORNAs Sekstende
Symposium i Gilleleje 30.11.-2.12.1990, ed. by Gillian Fellows-Jensen and Bente
Holmberg, NORNA-rapporter, 48 (Uppsala: NORNA-förlaget), pp. 107–21
‘“Hälsinglandsprojektet” – en presentation’, in Mittnordisk medeltid: Medeltidssymposium
11–12 september 1986 på Hola folkhögskola, ed. by Anders Wallander and Leif Grund­
berg (Härnösand: Länsmuseet Murberget), pp. 21–28
‘Kultkontinuitet från bosättningshistorisk utgångspunkt’, in Kontinuitet i kult och tro
från vikingatid till medeltid, ed. by Bertil Nilsson, Projektet Sveriges kristnande.
Publikationer, 1 (Uppsala: Lunne böcker), pp. 105–27
‘Kyrkan organiserar bygden’, Jämten, 86, 40–48
‘Den norröna bosättningen på Grönland. En kortfattad forskningsöversikt jämte några
nya forskningsbidrag’, Scripta Islandica, 42, 3–33
‘Något om namnen på Härjedalens vattendrag. En förberedande undersökning’, Oknytt,
13.1–2, 16–43
‘Utnyttjandet av det äldre kartmaterialet inom namnforskningen’, in Rapport från
Karteum-symposiet vid Lantmäteriverket i Gävle 1992 (Gävle: Lantmäteriverket)
‘Våra socknars ursprung och deras namn’, Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i
Uppsala: Årsbok [1991–92], 159–70
1993
‘Anderson och Peterson och Lundstrom och jag. Skandinaviska ortnamn i Australien’,
in Nordiska orter och ord: Festskrift till Bengt Pamp på 65-årsdagen den 3 november
1993, ed. by Göran Hallberg and others, Skrifter utgivna genom dialekt- och ortnamnsarkivet i Lund, 7 (Lund: Dialekt- och ortnamnsarkivet i Lund), pp. 31–34
‘Bertil Flemström’, in Norrländsk uppslagsbok, i, ed. by Kari Marklund with Lars-Erik
Edlund and Tore Frängsmyr (Höganäs: Bra Böcker), pp. 293–94
‘Forsaringen’, in Norrländsk uppslagsbok, i, ed. by Kari Marklund with Lars-Erik Edlund
and Tore Frängsmyr (Höganäs: Bra Böcker), p. 313
‘Sockenbildning och sockennamn. Studier i äldre territoriell indelning i Norden’, in Fönster
mot forskningen: Sammanfattningar av svenska doktorsavhandlingar 1989–1991 med
teo­logisk anknytning, ed. by Evah Ignestam, Tro & Tanke 1993, 3 (Uppsala: Svenska
kyrkans forskningsråd)
‘Var står onomastiken idag? En epistemo­logisk betraktelse’, Namn og nemne: Tidskrift for
norsk namnegranskning, 9–10 [1992–93], 7–29
‘Varför heter jag Robin, pappa Krister och farfar Vilhelm?’, Vårt namn – vårt historiska arv
(= Historiska Nyheter, 56), 13–14
320
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
1994
‘En vikingatida storbonde i södra Norrland’, Tor: Journal of Archaeo­logy, 26, 145–62
‘Forsa i Hälsingland’, Namn och bygd, 82, 127
‘Hälsinglands äldre bebyggelsehistoria. Ett försök till en syntes’, in Hälsinglands bebyggelse
före 1600, ed. by Stefan Brink (= Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 27), 153–72
‘Hälsinglands äldre bebyggelsenamn’, in Hälsinglands bebyggelse före 1600, ed. by
Stefan Brink (= Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 27), 51–60
‘Namnet Hersby i Sollentuna’, in Arkeo­logi i Attundaland, ed. by Gunnar Andersson and
others, Studier från UV Stockholm. Riksantikvarieämbetet. Arkeo­logiska undersökningar. Skrifter, 4 (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet), p. 98
‘Onomastikens institutionella framtid i Sverige. En personlig betraktelse’, in Spår
av odling: Festskrift till Hugo Karlsson, ed. by Birgitta Ernby, Meijerbergs arkiv för
svensk ordforskning, 19 (Göteborg: Meijerbergs institute), pp. 44–48
‘The Place-Names of Markim–Orkesta’, in The Twelfth Viking Congress: Developments
around the Baltic and the North Sea in the Viking Age, ed. by Björn Ambrosiani and
Helen Clarke, Birka Studies, 3 (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet and Statens
Historiska Museer), pp. 277–79
‘Vad betyder Uppsala?’, Upsala Nya Tidning, 23 January 1993
ed., Hälsinglands bebyggelse före 1600 (= Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 27)
ed., Hälsinglands äldsta skattelängd: Hjälpskattelängden ‘Gärder och hjälper’ från år 1535,
Ortnamnsarkivet i Uppsala. C. Källskrifter, 2 (Uppsala: Ortnamnsarkivet i Uppsala)
(with Olavi Korhonen and Mats Wahlberg) ‘Bebyggelsenamn’, in Sveriges Nationalatlas:
Kulturminnen och kulturmiljövård, ed. by Klas-Göran Selinge (Höganäs: Bra Böcker,
1994), pp. 134–43
1995
‘Gamle land, bygder og distrikt i Midt-Norden’, Spor: Fortidsnytt fra Midt-Norge, 10.2,
26–29
‘Home. The Term and the Concept as Seen from a Linguistic and Settlement-Historical
Point of View’, in The Concept of Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings and Environ­
ments, ed. by David N. Benjamin with David Stea (Aldershot: Avebury), pp. 17–24
‘Marknadernas och forböndernas epok’, in Perspektiv på Härjedalen, ed. by Ulf Sporrong
(Sveg: Svenska vyer), pp. 57–65
‘Socknens genes i Ångermanland. Namnens vittnesbörd och eventuell anknytning till
äldre profan indelning’, in En norrlandsbygd möter yttervärlden, ed. by Leif Grundberg
and Pia Nykvist, Styresholmsprojektets skrifter, 3 (Härnösand: Länsmuseet
Västernorrland and Hola folkhögskola), pp. 77–83
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
321
1996
‘Forsaringen – Nordens äldsta lagbud’, in Beretning fra Femtende tværfaglige Vikinge­
sym­posium, ed. by Else Roesdahl and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen (Højbjerg:
Hikuin), pp. 27–55
‘Hampus finner sig ett språk’, in Samspel och variation: Språkliga studier tillägnade Bengt
Nordberg på 60-årsdagen, ed. by Mats Thelander with Lennart Elmevik, Britt-Louise
Gunnarsson, and Björn Melander (Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala
universitet), pp. 67–73
‘Kristnande och kyrklig organisation i Jämtland’, in Jämtlands kristnande, ed. by Stefan
Brink, Projektet Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer, 4 (Uppsala: Lunne böcker),
pp. 155–88
‘Land, makt och tro. Något om de norrländska landskapssamhällena och centralmakten under medeltid, jämte S:t Olovskultens betydelse för Norrland’, in Før og etter
Stiklestad 1030: Religionsskifte, kulturforhold, politisk makt; seminar på Stiklestad,
1994, ed. by Øystein Walberg (Verdal: Stiklestad), pp. 109–27
‘Onomasticon and the Role of Analogy in Name-Formation’, Namn och bygd, 84, 61–84
‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia I. A Settlement-Historical Pre-study
of the Central Place’, Tor: Journal of Archaeo­logy, 28, 235–81
‘Problemet “Jämtlands kristnande” i ett tvärvetenskapligt perspektiv. Slutbetraktelse och
syntes’, in Jämtlands kristnande, ed. by Stefan Brink, Projektet Sveriges kristnande.
Publikationer, 4 (Uppsala: Lunne böcker), pp. 201–13
‘Skånke-släkten i Jämtland’, in Jämtlands kristnande, ed. by Stefan Brink, Projektet
Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer, 4 (Uppsala: Lunne böcker), pp. 215–20
‘Tidig kyrklig organisation i Norden – aktörerna i sockenbildningen’, in Kristnandet i
Sverige: Gamla källor och nya perspektiv, ed. by Bertil Nilsson, Projektet Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer, 5 (Uppsala: Lunne böcker), pp. 269–90
‘Torsåker – Hamrånge, Delsbo – Harmånger. Något om ortnamnen i Hälsingland
och Gästrikland’, in GH i fest och vardag under 350 år: Gästrike-Hälsinge Nations
Jubileumsbok, ed. by Bo G. Hall (Uppsala: Gästrike-Hälsinge nation)
ed., Jämtlands kristnande, Projektet Sveriges kristnande. Publikationer, 4 (Uppsala:
Lunne böcker)
1997
‘Onomastiska utbredningskartor: Vad står de för – egentligen?’, in Kartan i kulturforskningens tjänst: En artikelsamling, ed. by Lars-Erik Edlund, Kulturens frontlinjer.
Skrifter från forskningsprogrammet Kulturgräns norr, 2 (Umeå: Umeå Uni­ver­sity),
pp. 74–82
‘Names and Naming of Slaves’, in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, ed. by
Junius P. Rodriguez, 2 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO), i, 454–56
‘När norrlänningen bytte religion’, in Helgonet i Nidaros: Olavskult och kristnande i Norden,
ed. by Lars Rumar, Skrifter utgivna av Riksarkivet, 3 (Stockholm: Riksarkivet),
pp. 240–52
322
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
‘Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia II. Aspects of Space and Territoriality
– The Settlement District’, Tor: Journal of Archaeo­logy, 29, 389–437
‘Västsvenska namnmiljöanalyser’, in Ortnamn i språk och samhälle: Hyllningsskrift till
Lars Hellberg, ed. by Svante Strandberg, Nomina Germanica, 22 (Uppsala: Acta Uni­
versitatis Upsaliensis), pp. 61–84
1998
‘The Formation of the Scandinavian Parish, with Some Remarks Regarding the English
Impact on the Process’, in The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power
in Early Medi­eval Europe, ed. by Joyce Hill and Mary Swan, International Medi­
eval Research, 4 (Brepols: Turnhout), pp. 19–44
‘Land, bygd, distrikt och centralort i Sydskandinavien. Några bebyggelsehistoriska nedslag’, in Centrala platser, centrala frågor: Samhällsstrukturen under järnåldern; En vänbok till Berta Stjernquist, ed. by Lars Larsson and Birgitta Hårdh, Acta Archaeo­logica
Lundensia. Series in 8°, 28, Uppåkrastudier, 1 (Lund: Bloms), pp. 297–326
‘Odlingslandskapet och namnen i Hälsingland’, Läddikan: Aktuellt från Länsmuseet i
Gävleborg och Gästrike Hälsinge hembygdsförbund (1998.1), 23–24
1999
‘Fornskandinavisk religion – förhistoriskt samhälle. En bosättningshistorisk studie av
centralorter i Norden’, in Religion och samhälle i det förkristna Norden: Ett symposium,
ed. Ulf Drobin with Jens Peter Schjødt, Gro Steinsland, and Preben Meulengracht
Sørensen (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag), pp. 11–55
‘Nordens husabyar – unga eller gamla?’, in Et hus med mange rom: Vennebok til Bjørn Myhre
på 60-årsdagen, ed. by Ingrid Fuglestvedt, Terje Gansum, and Arnfrid Opedal, AmSrapport, 11A–B, 2 vols (Stavanger: Arkeo­logisk museum i Stavanger), ii, 283–91 (repr.
in Michael Olausson, ed., En bok om Husbyar, Riksantikvarieämbetet. Avdelningen
för Arkeo­logiska Undersökningar. Skrifter, 33 (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet,
2000), pp. 65–73)
Review of Torun Zachrisson, Gård, gräns, gravfält: Sammanhang kring ädelmetalldepåer
och runstenar från vikingatid och tidigmedeltid i Uppland och Gästrikland (Stockholm,
1998), Fornvännen, 94, 58–65
‘Social Order in the Early Scandinavian Landscape’, in Settlement and Landscape: Pro­
ceedings of a Conference in Århus, Denmark, May 4–7 1998, ed. by Charlotte Fabech
and Jytte Ringtved (Århus: Jutland Archaeo­logical Society), pp. 423–39
‘Styrd namngivning. Exemplet Canberra’, Ortnamnssällskapets i Uppsala årsskrift, 9–22
2000
‘Forntida vägar’, Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 39, 23–64
‘Husby’, in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, xv, ed. by Heinrich Beck,
Dieter Geuenich, and Heiko Steuer, 2nd rev. edn (Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 274–78
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
323
2001
‘En bosättningshistorisk analys av centrala Möre’, in Möre: Historien om ett Småland;
E22-projektet, ed. by Gert Magnusson with Susanne Selling (Kalmar: Kalmar läns
museum), pp. 517–30
‘Mytho­logizing Landscape: Place and Space of Cult and Myth’, in Kontinuitäten und
Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte: Festschrift für Anders Hultgård zu seinem 65.
Geburts­tag am 23.12.2001, ed. by Michael Stausberg with Olof Sundqvist and Astrid
van Nahl, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 31
(Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 76–112
‘Norrstigen’, in Plats, landskap, karta: En vänatlas till Ulf Sporrong, ed. by Margareta Elg
and Mats Widgren (Stockholm: Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet), pp. 116–17
2002
‘Hålvägar och andra lämningar av gamla vägar. Några heretiska funderingar’, Braut, 2,
149–52
‘Law and Legal Customs in Viking Age Scandinavia’, Scandinavians from the Vendel Period
to the Tenth Century: An Ethno­graphic Perspective, ed. by Judith Jesch, Studies in
Historical Archaeoethno­logy, 5 (Woodbridge: Boydell), pp. 87–117
‘Medeltida urkunder rörande Hälsingland’, in Ny väg till medeltidsbreven: Från ett medeltidssymposium i Svenska Riksarkivet 26–28 november 1999, ed. by Claes Gejrot, Roger
Andersson, and Kerstin Abukhanfusa, Skrifter utg. av Riksarkivet, 18 (Stockholm:
Riksarkivet), pp. 280–95
‘Namn, landskap och bebyggelse i Rytternebygden’, in Nya anteckningar om Rytterns
socken: Medeltidsstudier tillägnade Göran Dahlbäck, ed. by Olle Ferm, Agneta
Paulsson, and Krister Ström, Västmanlands läns museum och fornminnesförenings
årsbok, 78 (Västerås: Västmanlands läns museum), pp. 47–68
‘Nordic Language History and Archaeo­logy’, in The Nordic Languages, ed. by Oskar
Bandle with Kurt Braunmüller and others, Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kom­muni­
kationswissenschaft, 22, 2 vols (Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 317–25
‘Ortnamnen berättar’, Jämten, 95, 9–16
‘Runstenar och gamla vägar i norra Småland’, in Om runstenar i Jönköpings län, ed. by Jan
Agertz and Linnéa Varenius, Småländska kulturbilder, Meddelanden från Jönköpings
läns hembygdsförbund och Stiftelsen Jönköpings läns museum, 71 ( Jönköping:
Jönköpings läns museum), pp. 103–18
‘Slavery in Scandinavia, as Reflected in Names, Runes and Sagas’, in Slavery across Time
and Space: Studies in Slavery in Medi­eval Europe and Africa, ed. by Per Hernaes and
Tore Iversen, Trondheim Studies in History, 38 (Trondheim: Department of History,
NTNU), pp. 107–28
‘Sociolinguistic Perspectives and Language Contact in Proto-Nordic’, in The Nordic
Languages, ed. by Oskar Bandle with Kurt Braunmüller and others, Handbücher zur
Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 22, 2 vols (Berlin: de Gruyter), i, 685–90
324
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
‘Sociolinguistic Perspectives in the Transitional Period between Proto-Nordic and Old
Nordic’, in The Nordic Languages, ed. by Oskar Bandle with Kurt Braunmüller and
others, Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 22, 2 vols (Berlin:
de Gruyter), i, 761–69
2003
‘ambátt, seta, deig ja – þræll, þjónn, bryti. Termer för trälar belyser träldomens äldre historia’, in Trälar: Ofria i agrarsamhället från vikingatid till medeltid, ed. by Janken Myrdal
and Thomas Lindkvist, Skrifter om skogs- och lantrukshistoria, 17 (Stockholm:
Nordiska muséet), pp. 103–17
‘Den förkristna muntliga kulturen i Norden: Till frågan om det kollektiva minnet’, Saga
och Sed, 71–81
‘Legal Assemblies and Judicial Structure in Early Scandinavia’, in Political Assemblies in the
Earlier Middle Ages, ed. by Paul S. Barnwell and Marco Mostert, Studies in the Early
Middle Ages, 7 (Turhout: Brepols), pp. 61–72
2004
‘Handske som ord, namn och ortnamnselement’, in Namn: Hyllningsskrift till Eva Brylla
den 1 mars 2004, ed. by Svante Strandberg, Mats Wahlberg, and Björn Heinrici,
Namn och samhälle, 15 (Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet), pp. 15–21
‘Legal Assembly Sites in Early Scandinavia’, in Assembly Places and Practices in Medi­eval
Europe, ed. by Aliki Pantos and Sarah Semple (Dublin: Four Courts), pp. 205–16
‘Myto­logiska rum och eskato­logiska föreställningar i det vikingatida Norden’, in Ordning
mot kaos: Studier av nordisk förkristen kosmo­logi, ed. by Anders Andrén, Kristina
Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere, Vägar till Midgård, 4 (Lund: Nordic Academic
Press), pp. 291–316
‘New Perspectives on the Christianization of Scandinavia and the Organization of
the Early Church’, in Scandinavia and Europe, 800–1350: Contact, Conflict, and
Coexistence, ed. by Jonathan Adams and Katherine Holman, Medi­eval Texts and
Cultures of Northern Europe, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 163–75
‘Rekonstruerade ånamn’, in Namenwelten: Orts- und Personennamen in historischer
Sicht, ed. by Astrid van Nahl, Lennart Elmevik, and Stefan Brink, Reallexikon der
Germanischen Altertumskunde. Ergänzungsbände, 44 (Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 15–21
‘Varför är vikingatiden och medeltiden viktig?’, Tvärsnitt, 4.04, 28–31
(co-ed. with Astrid van Nahl and Lennart Elmevik) Namenwelten: Orts- und Personen­
namen in historischer Sicht, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Ergän­
zungs­bände, 44 (Berlin: de Gruyter)
2005
‘Folke Hedblom som ortnamnsforskare’, Saga och Sed, 91–101
‘De jämtländska ödesbölena’, Namn och bygd, 93, 81–87
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
325
‘Ortnamn kring Skälsjon’, in Språk i tid: Studier tillägnade Mats Thelander på 60-årsdagen, ed. by Björn Melander with Görel Bergman-Claeson and others (Uppsala:
Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet), pp. 574–78
Review of Hans Antonson, Landskap och ödesbölen: Jämtland före, under och efter den
medeltida agrarkrisen (Stockholm, 2004), Fornvännen, 100, 151–54
‘Some Aspects of the Christianization of Sweden and Early Church Organization’, in
Church Centres: Church Centres in Iceland from the 11th to the 13th Century and their
Parallels in Other Countries, ed. by Helgi Þorláksson, Snorrastofa. Rit, 2 (Reykholt:
Snorrastofa), pp. 211–19
‘Verba volant, scripta manent? Aspects of Early Scandinavian Oral Society’, in Literacy in
Medi­eval and Early Modern Scandinavian Culture, ed. by Pernille Hermann, Viking
Collection, 16 (Odense: Odense Uni­ver­sity Press), pp. 77–135
2006
‘Freluga och Garluö. Om norrländska ortnamn på -lo’, in Namn och runor: Uppsalastudier
i onomastik och runo­logi till Lennart Elmevik på 70-årsdagen 2 februari 2006, ed. by
Lena Peterson, Svante Strandberg, and Henrik Williams, Namn och samhälle, 17
(Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet), pp. 25–36
2007
‘Geo­graphy, Toponymy and Political Organisation in Early Scandinavia’, in Ohthere’s
Voyages: A Late 9th-Century Account of Voyages along the Coasts of Norway and
Denmark and its Cultural Context, ed. by Janet Bately and Anton Eglert, Maritime
Culture of the North, 1 (Roskilde: Viking Ship Museum), pp. 66–73
‘How Uniform Was the Old Norse Religion?’, in Learning and Understanding in the
Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn,
Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills, Medi­eval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 18
(Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 105–36
‘Skíringssalr, Kaupang, Tjølling – the Toponymic Evidence’, in Kaupang in Skiringssal,
ed. by Dagfinn Skre, Kaupang Excavation Project Publication Series, 1, Norske
Oldfunn, 22 (Århus: Aarhus Uni­ver­sity Press), pp. 53–64
(with Nils Blomkvist and Thomas Lindkvist) ‘The Kingdom of Sweden’, in Christianization
and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’, c. 900–1200,
ed. by Nora Berend (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2007), pp. 167–213
2008
‘Christianisation and the Emergence of the Early Church in Scandinavia’, in The Viking
World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price, Routledge Worlds (London: Routledge),
pp. 621–28
‘Introduction’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price, Routledge Worlds
(London: Routledge), pp. 1–3
326
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
‘Landskap och plats som mentala konstruktioner’, in Facets of Archeo­logy: Essays in Honour
of Lotte Hedeager on her 60th Birthday, ed. by Konstantinos Chilidis, Julie Lund, and
Christopher Prescott, Oslo Archaeo­logical Series, 10 (Oslo: Unipub), pp. 109–20
‘Law and Society: Polities and Legal Customs in Viking Scandinavia’, in The Viking
World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price, Routledge Worlds (London: Routledge),
pp. 23–31
Lord and Lady – ‘Bryti’ and ‘Deig ja’: Some Historical and Etymo­logical Aspects of Family,
Patronage and Slavery in Early Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England, The Dorothea
Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies 2005 (London: Viking Society for
Northern Research)
‘Naming the Land’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price, Routledge
Worlds (London: Routledge), pp. 57–66
‘People and land in Early Scandinavia’, in Franks, Northmen and Slavs: Identities and State
Formation in Early Medi­eval Europe, ed. by Ildar H. Garipzanov, Patrick J. Geary, and
Przemysław Urbanczyk, Cursor Mundi, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 87–112
‘Slavery in the Viking Age’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price,
Routledge Worlds (London: Routledge), pp. 49–56
‘Who Were the Vikings?’, in The Viking World, ed. by Stefan Brink with Neil Price,
Routledge Worlds (London: Routledge), pp. 4–7
ed. (in collaboration with Neil Price), The Viking World, Routledge Worlds (London:
Routledge)
2009
‘Familj och kollektiv i det äldre samhället i Norden’, Saga och Sed, 79–89
2010
‘Hälsingelagens ställning mellan väst och syd, och mellan kung, kyrka och lokala traditioner’, Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademiens: Årsbok, 119–35
‘Ortnamn på -hem’, in Språken i Sverige, ed. by Östen Dahl and Lars-Erik Edlund, Sveriges
nationalatlas, 22 (Stockholm: Norstedts), p. 87
‘Ortnamn på -säter’, in Språken i Sverige, ed. by Östen Dahl and Lars-Erik Edlund, Sveriges
nationalatlas, 22 (Stockholm: Norstedts), p. 92
‘Pastoral Care before the Parish: Early Ecclesiastical Organization of Scandinavia,
Especially Sweden’, in England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in
Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947), ed. by David Rollason, Conrad Leyser,
and Hannah Williams, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 37 (Turnhout: Brepols),
pp. 399–410 [cf. ‘Early Ecclesiastical Organisation of Scandinavia, Especially Sweden’
(2013)]
‘Scandinavia: Place Names in’, in The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. by Robert E.
Bjork, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press), iv, 1480
Review of Wendy Davies, Guy Halsall, and Andrew Reynolds, eds, People and Space in the
Middle Ages, 300–1300 (Turnhout, 2007), Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 34, 115–21
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
327
‘Var ligger Tjottaheiti?’, in Bo65: Festskrift till Bo Ralph, ed. by Kristinn Jóhannesson and
others, Meijerbergs arkiv för svensk ordforskning, 39 (Gothenburg: Meijerbergs institut for svensk etymo­logisk forskning), pp. 11–14
‘Är Forsaringen medeltida?’, Hälsingerunor, 109–17
2011
‘Comments on Inger Storli: “Court Sites of Arctic Norway: Remains of Thing Sites and
Representations of Political Consolidation Processes in the Northern Germanic
World during the First Millennium ad?”; Are the Court Sites Multi-Purpose Meeting
Places?’, Norwegian Archaeo­logical Review, 43, 89–91
‘Gudhem – the Toponymic Evidence (or Rather Challenge)’, in The Gudme/Gudhem
Phenomenon: Papers Presented at a Workshop Organized by the Centre for Baltic and
Scandinavian Archaeo­logy (ZBSA), Schleswig, April 26th and 27th, 2010, ed. by
Oliver Grimm and Alexandra Pesch, Schriften des Archäo­logischen Landesmuseums
Ergänzungsreihe, 6 (Neumünster: Wachholtz), pp. 15–23
‘Mediality and Usage of Medi­eval Laws: The Case of the Hälsinge Law’, in ‘Liber amicorum Ditlev Tamm’: Law, History and Culture, ed. by Per Andersen, Pia Letto-Vanamo,
and Kjell A. Modeer (København: Djöf ), pp. 71–74
‘Oral Fragments in the Earliest Old Swedish Laws?’, in Medi­eval Legal Process: Physical,
Spoken and Written Performance in the Middle Ages, ed. by Marco Mostert and Paul
Barnwell, Utrecht Studies in Medi­eval Literacy, 22 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 147–56
Review of David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medi­eval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200
(Leiden, 2009), Early Medi­eval Europe, 19, 373–75
2012
‘Vikingarnas slavar’, Populär Historia, 6 (reprinted online as ‘Vikingarnas trälar – slaveriet
i Norden’ (2017))
Vikingarnas slavar: Den nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid
(Stockholm: Atlantis)
2013
‘Die Christianisierung Skandinaviens’, in Credo: Christianisierung Europas im Mittel­
alter, ed. by Christoph Stiegemann, Martin Kroker, and Wolfgang Walter, 2 vols
(Petersberg: Imhof ), i, 250–60
‘The Creation of a Scandinavian Provincial Law: How Was It Done?’, Historical Research,
86, 432–42
‘Early Ecclesiastical Organisation of Scandinavia, Especially Sweden’, in Medi­eval
Christianity in the North: New Studies, ed. by Kirsi Salonen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and
Torstein Jorgensen, Acta Scandinavica, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 23–39 [cf. ‘Pastoral
Care before the Parish: Early Ecclesiastical Organization of Scandinavia, Especially
Sweden’ (2010)]
‘Hund i Mälarlandskapen’, Namn och bygd, 101 [2014], 203–04
328
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
‘Myth and Ritual in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Landscape’, in Sacred Sites and Holy
Places: Exploring the Sacralisation of Landscape through Time and Space, ed. by Sæbjørg
Walaker Nordeide and Stefan Brink, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 11 (Turnhout:
Brepols), pp. 33–51
‘De nordiska språkens påverkan på ortnamnsskicket i Storbritannien’, in Svenskans
beskrivning 32: Förhandlingar vid trettioandra sammankomsten för svenskans beskrivning, ed. by Björn Bihl, Peter Andersson, and Lena Lötmarker (Karlstad: Uni­ver­sity of
Karlstad), pp. 38–51
Review of Olof Holm, Självägarområdenas egenart (Stockholm, 2012), Bebyggelsehistorisk
tidskrift, 66, 94–98
co-ed. with Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide, Sacred Sites and Holy Places: Exploring the Sacra­
lisation of Landscape through Time and Space, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 11
(Turnhout: Brepols)
2014
‘Bryten’, in Medeltida storgårdar: 15 uppsatser om ett tvärvetenskapligt forskningsproblem,
ed. by Olof Karsvall and Kristofer Jupiter, Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi,
131 (Uppsala: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur), pp. 73–82
‘The Hälsinge Law between South and West, King and Church, and Local Customs’, in
New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, ed. by Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson,
Acta Scandinavica, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 37–56
‘Knockouten i Ytteryg. En minnesvärd sommarnatt 27 juni 1959’, in Hälsingeliv: Nya hemligheter, hemskheter och härligheter, ed. by Jonas Sima and Claes Sundelin (Hudiksvall:
Hälsinge Akademi Förlag), pp. 43–52
‘Librum legum terre Hælsingie: The Inspection and Approval of Versions of the Law-Book
of the Hälsingar’, in The Power of the Book: Medial Approaches to Medi­eval Nordic
Legal Manu­scripts, ed. by Lena Rohrbach, Berliner Beiträge zur Skandinavistik, 19
(Berlin: Nordeuropa Institut, Humboldt-Universität), pp. 157–62
‘Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men in Legal Cases’, in ‘Minni’ and
‘Muninn’: Memory in Medi­eval Nordic Culture, ed. by Pernille Hermann, Stephen A.
Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, Acta Scandinavica, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols),
pp. 197–210
‘Reading Cult and Mytho­logy in Society and Landscape: The Toponymic Evidence’, in
Nordic Mytho­logies: Interpretations, Intersections, and Institutions, ed. by Timothy R.
Tangherlini, The Wildcat Canyon Advanced Seminars, 1 (Berkeley: North Pinehurst
Press), pp. 157–72
‘Skatteböndernas roll under medeltiden’, Historisk tidskrift, 134, 71–77
co-ed. with Lisa Collinson, New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, Acta Scan­di­
navica, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols)
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
329
2015
‘Bygdekyrkor eller egenkyrkor i Norrland?’, in Kyrkan i landskapet, ed. by Ulf Sporrong,
KVHAA Historiska serien, 30 (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets
Akademien), pp. 77–98
‘Early Law in the North’, Quaestio Insularis, 16, 1–15
‘Trading Hubs or Political Centres of Power? Maritime Focal Sites in Early Sweden’, in
Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medi­eval World, ed. by James H. Barrett and
Sarah Jane Gibbon, The Society for Medi­eval Archaeo­logy Mono­graphs, 37 (Leeds:
Maney), pp. 88–98
2016
‘Kyrkobyggande enligt Upplandslagen och Hälsingelagen’, in Kyrklig rätt och kyrklig orätt:
Kyrkorättsliga perspektiv; Festskrift till Professor Bertil Nilsson, ed. by Martin Berntson
and Anna Minara Ciardi‚ Bibliotheca theo­logiae practicae, 97 (Skellefteå: Artos),
pp. 41–52
‘Sockenbildningen i Sverige: Forskningsläget 25 år senare’, Riksarkivets årsbok, 23–35
‘Transferred Names and Analogy in Name-Formation’, in The Oxford Handbook of Names
and Naming, ed. by Carole Hough with Daria Izdebska, Oxford Handbooks in
Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press), pp. 158–66
‘(Wiking) Gesellschaft und Kultur’, in Wikinger!, ed. by Michaela Helmbrecht (Hamburg:
Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft), pp. 78–89
(with John Lindow) ‘Place Names in Eddic Poetry’, in A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths
and Legends of Early Scandinavia, ed. by Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and
Brittany Schorn (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press), pp. 173–89
2017
‘Avaldsnes, Kormt and Rogaland. A Toponymy and Landscape Survey’, in Avaldsnes: A
Sea-King’s Manor in First-Millennium Western Scandinavia, ed. by Dagfinn Skre, Real­
lexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, Supplement, 104 (Berlin: de Gruyter),
pp. 665–86
‘Law, Society and Landscape in Early Scandinavia’, in Comparative Law and Anthropo­logy,
ed. by James Nafziger, Research Handbooks in Comparative Law Series (Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar), pp. 319–37
‘Nationernas och regionernas återkomst’, in Stad och land, ed. by Kurt Almqvist
(Stockholm: Axess Publishing), pp. 47–53
‘Uppsala – in Myth and Reality’, in Theorizing Old Norse Myth, ed. by Stefan Brink and
Lisa Collinson, Acta Scandinavica, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 175–94
co-ed. with Lisa Collinson, Theorizing Old Norse Myth, Acta Scandinavica, 7 (Turnhout:
Brepols)
330
A Biblio­graphy of Stefan Brink’s Publications
2018
‘Memory in Law’, in Handbook of Pre-modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary
Approaches, ed. by Pernille Hermann, Jürg Glauser, and Stephen A. Mitchell (Berlin:
de Gruyter), pp. 185–97
‘Onomastics’, in Handbook of Pre-modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary
Approaches, ed. by Pernille Hermann, Jürg Glauser, and Stephen A. Mitchell (Berlin:
de Gruyter), pp. 565–74
2019
‘Gekauft, geraubt, verdingt. Spurensuche zum Sklaventum’, in Die Wikinger: Entdecker und
Eroberer, ed. by Jörn Staecker and Matthias Toplak (Berlin: Propyläen), pp. 161–72
2020
‘Laws and Assemblies’ in The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures,
ii, ed. by Jens Peter Schjødt, John Lindow, and Anders Andrén (Turnhout: Brepols),
pp. 445–78
Tabula Gratulatoria
Sirpa Aalto, Oulu, Finland
Lesley Abrams, Oxford, UK
Anders Andrén, Stockholm, Sweden
Birgit Arrhenius, Stockholm, Sweden
Sverre Bagge, Bergen, Norway
P. S. Barnwell, Oxford, UK
Karen Bek-Pedersen, Århus, Denmark
Johan Berg, Uppsala, Sweden
Maths Bertell, Stockholm, Sweden
Paul Bibire, Crail/St Andrews, UK
John Blair, Oxford, UK
Ann Catherine Bonnier, Stockholm, Sweden
Rosalind Bonté, Nottingham, UK
Dan Brändström, Sundbyberg, Sweden
Hannah Burrows, Aberdeen, UK
Margaret Clunies Ross, Adelaide, Australia
Margaret Cormack, Reykjavík, Iceland
Richard Dance, Cambridge, UK
Lennart Dehlin, Gävle, Sweden,
Department of Scandinavian Languages,
Uppsala, Sweden
François-Xavier Dillmann, Versailles, France
Heidi Synnøve Djuve, Aberdeen, UK
Stefan Drechsler, Bergen, Norway
Lars-Erik Edlund, Holmsund, Sweden
Beñat Elortza Larrea, Gothenburg, Sweden
Charlotte Fabech, Ålsgårde, Sweden
Jan-Henrik Fallgren, Öland, Sweden
Oren Falk, Ithaca, USA
Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Galway, Ireland
Iréne Flygare, Uppsala, Sweden
Staffan Fridell, Uppsala, Sweden
Anders Fröjmark, Kalmar, Sweden
Michael Frost, Lewes, UK
Irene García Losquiño, Alicante, Spain
Leszek Gardeła, Bonn, Germany
Claes Gejrot, Stockholm, Sweden
Jürg Glauser, Zürich/Basel, Switzerland
Anne-Sofie Gräslund, Uppsala, Sweden
Bo Gräslund, Uppsala, Sweden
Elisabeth Gräslund Berg, Uppsala, Sweden
Terry Gunnell, Reykjavík, Iceland
Jan Ragnar Hagland, Trondheim, Norway
Joseph Harris, Cambridge, USA
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson,
Uppsala/Stockholm, Sweden
Pernille Hermann, Aarhus, Denmark
Kate Heslop, Berkeley, USA
Botolv Helleland, Oslo, Norway
Olof Holm, Stockholm, Sweden
Alf Hornborg, Gunnebo, Sweden
Anders Hultgård, Uppsala, Sweden
Kristin Ilves, Helsinki, Finland
Lisbeth Imer, Copenhagen, Denmark
Institutet för språk och folkminnen,
Uppsala, Sweden
Ármann Jakobsson, Reykjavík, Iceland
Kristina Jonsson, Gällö, Sweden
Ole-Jørgen Johannessen, Bergen, Norway
Magnus Källström, Stockholm, Sweden
Tommy Kuusela, Uppsala, Sweden
Triin Laidoner, Edinburgh, UK
332
Carolyne Larrington, Oxford, UK
Lars Larsson, V. Nöbbelöv, Sweden
John Lindow, Berkeley, USA
Thomas Lindkvist, Gothenburg, Sweden
Cecilia Ljung, Stockholm, Sweden
Jeff Love, Stockholm, Sweden
Lars Lönnroth, Gothenburg, Sweden
Daniel Löwenborg, Uppsala, Sweden
Niels Lund, Solrød Strand, Denmark
Dan Långström, Uppsala, Sweden
John McKinnell, Durham, UK
Rory McTurk, Leeds, UK
Memory and the Pre-Modern North: An
International Memory Studies Research
Network Focussing on Viking Age and
Medieval Scandinavia
Nicolas Meylan, Lausanne, Switzerland
Blake Middleton, Folcroft, USA
Stephen A. Mitchell, Cambridge, USA
John Morrison, Lincoln, UK
Marco Mostert, Utrecht, Netherlands
Håkan Möller, Gothenburg, Sweden
Luke John Murphy, Reykjavík, Iceland
Ulf Näsman, Ålsgårde, Sweden
Agneta Ney, Uppsala, Sweden
Bertil Nilsson, Lund, Sweden
Andreas Nordberg, Stockholm, Sweden
Eva Nyman, Uppsala, Sweden
Staffan Nyström, Stockholm, Sweden
Ralph O’Connor, Aberdeen, UK
Claire Organ, Aberdeenshire, UK
Erik Opsahl, Trondheim, Norway
Anne Pedersen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Jörg Peltzer, Heidelberg, Germany
Neil Price, Uppsala, Sweden
Judy Quinn, Cambridge, UK
TABULA GRATULATORIA
Sigurd Rahmqvist, Vallentuna, Sweden
Duncan Rice, Aberdeen, UK
Anne Irene Riisøy, Oslo, Norway
Lena Rohrbach, Basel/Zürich, Switzerland
Lukas Rösli, Berlin, Germany
Mats Roslund, Lund, Sweden
Ludwig Rübekeil, Zürich, Switzerland
Keith Ruiter, Nottingham, UK
Håkan Rydving, Nesttun, Norway
Lennart Ryman, Stockholm, Sweden
Kirsi Salonen, Bagarmossen, Sweden
Alexandra Sanmark, Perth, UK
Jens Peter Schjødt, Aarhus, Denmark
Michael Schulte, Kristiansand, Norway
Svavar Sigmundsson, Reykjavík, Iceland
Gísli Sigurðsson, Reykjavík, Iceland
Lars Sjösvärd, Gnisvärd, Gotland
Olof Sundqvist, Stockholm, Sweden
María Svavarsdóttir, Reykjavík, Iceland
Declan Taggart, Alicante, Spain
Ditlev Tamm, Copenhagen, Denmark
Jhonny Therus, Uppsala, Sweden
Orri Vésteinsson, Reykjavík, Iceland
Vikingeskibsmuseet, Roskilde, Denmark
Per Vikstrand, Kalmar, Sweden
Kurt Villads Jensen, Bagarmossen, Sweden
Helle Vogt, Copenhagen, Denmark
Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide, Bergen, Norway
Mats Wahlberg, Uppsala, Sweden
Tiffany Nicole White, Reykjavík, Iceland
Mats Widgren & Ellen Anne Pedersen,
Fisksätra, Sweden
Per-Axel Wiktorsson, Uppsala, Sweden
Tarrin Wills, Copenhagen, Denmark
Torun Zachrisson, Uppsala/Stockholm,
Sweden
Medieval Texts and Cultures
of Northern Europe
All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic
grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned
by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the
screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive
texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being
approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the
publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.
Titles in Series
Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. by Alan Hindley (1999)
Showing Status: Representations of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Wim
Blockmans and Antheun Janse (1999)
Sandra Billington, Midsummer: A Cultural Sub-Text from Chrétien de Troyes to Jean
Michel (2000)
History and Images: Towards a New Iconology, ed. by Axel Bolvig and Phillip Lindley (2003)
Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence, ed. by Jonathan
Adams and Katherine Holman (2004)
Anu Mänd, Urban Carnival: Festive Culture in the Hanseatic Cities of the Eastern Baltic,
1350–1550 (2005)
Bjørn Bandlien, Strategies of Passion: Love and Marriage in Old Norse Society (2005)
Imagining the Book, ed. by Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson (2005)
Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe: Decline, Resistance, and Expansion,
ed. by Paul Freedman and Monique Bourin (2005)
Grant risee?: The Medieval Comic Presence / La Présence comique médiévale. Essays in
Honour of Brian J. Levy, ed. by Adrian P. Tudor and Alan Hindley (2006)
Urban Theatre in the Low Countries, 1400–1625, ed. by Elsa Strietman and Peter Happé
(2006)
Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathy M. Krause and Alison
Stones (2006)
The Narrator, the Expositor, and the Prompter in European Medieval Theatre, ed. by Philip
Butterworth (2007)
Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret
Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills (2007)
Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands
from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Wendy Scase (2007)
Parisian Confraternity Drama of the Fourteenth Century, ed. by Donald Maddox and Sara
Sturm-Maddox (2008)
Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Medieval Britain and France, ed. by Raluca L.
Radulescu and Edward Donald Kennedy (2008)
Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature, ed. by Jane Tolmie and M. J. Toswell (2010)
Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours, ed. by Christopher
Kleinhenz and Keith Busby (2010)
The Playful Middle Ages: Meanings of Play and Plays of Meaning. Essays in Memory of
Elaine C. Block, ed. by Paul Hardwick (2011)
Emilia Jamroziak, Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian Houses in Medieval
Scotland and Pomerania from the Twelfth to the Late Fourteenth Century (2011)
Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates, ed. by David Crouch
and Kathleen Thompson (2011)
Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History
Writing in Northern, East-Central, and Eastern Europe (c.1070–1200), ed. by Ildar H.
Garipzanov (2011)
Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (c. 1066-1520): Sources and Analysis, ed. by Judith
Jefferson and Ad Putter with the assistance of Amanda Hopkins (2013)
The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle
Ages, ed. by Joyce Coleman, Markus Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith (2013)
Stefka Georgieva Eriksen, Writing and Reading in Medieval Manuscript Culture: The
Translation and Transmission of the story of Elye in Old French and Old Norse Literary
Contexts (2014)
Keith Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two
Worlds (2017)
Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France: Studies in the Moving Word, ed. by
Nicola Morato and Dirk Schoenaers (2019)
Colmán Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Elizabeth Ashman
Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World (2019)
Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, ed. by Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood (2019)
The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts, ed. by
Ben Guy, Owain Wyn Jones, Georgia Henley, and Rebecca Thomas (2020)