Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives

Origins, Changes, and Interactions

By Anders Andrén, Kritina Jennbert, Bengt Almgren

Nordic Academic Press

Copyright © 2006 Nordic Academic Press and the authors
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-91-89116-81-8

Contents

The conference and its context,
Old Norse religion Some problems and prospects Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert and Catharina Raudvere,
WORLDVIEW AND COSMOLOGY,
Can archaeologists study prehistoric cosmology? Richard Bradley,
Narrative worlds, human environments, and poets The case of Bragi John Lindow,
Centrality in Old Norse mental landscapes A dialogue between arranged and natural places? Charlotte Fabech,
A world of stone Warrior culture, hybridity, and Old Norse cosmology Anders Andrén,
Bound animal bodies Ornamentation and skaldic poetry in the process of Christianization Maria Domeij Lundborg,
The imperative way Nanouschka Myrberg,
Homogeneity and heterogeneity in Old Norse cosmology Jonas Wellendorf,
The gendering of death in eddic cosmology Judy Quinn,
The Askr and Embla myth in a comparative perspective Anders Hultgård,
The edges of the Old Norse world-view A bestiary concept? Agneta Ney,
Hanging on the world tree Man and cosmos in Old Norse mythic poetry Henning Kure,
RITUAL AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE,
Rituals, witnesses, and sagas Thomas A. DuBois,
Iron in the making – Technology and symbolism Ethnographic perspectives on European iron working Randi Haaland,
The origins of Old Norse ritual and religion in European perspective Mike Parker Pearson,
How to sort out ritual from context of practice Peter Habbe,
Escaping the allure of meaning Toward new paradigms in the study of ritual in prehistory Liv Nilsson Stutz,
Myth and metallurgy Some cross-cultural reflections on the social identity of smiths Randi Barndon,
Humans and gods interacting at Augusta Treverorum in Late Antiquity A project presentation Heike Peter,
Performing death The function and meaning of Roman drinking vessels in Scandinavian mortuary practices Fredrik Ekengren,
The Roman Iron Age in perspectives and perceptions Louise Ströbeck,
Harnessing the hunger Religious appropriations of animal predation in early medieval Scandinavia Aleksander Pluskowski,
Wolves, serpents, and birds Their symbolic meaning in Old Norse belief Anne-Sofie Gräslund,
The horse and its role in Icelandic burial practices, mythology, and society Ulla Loumand,
The heroized dead People, animals, and materiality in Scandinavian death rituals, AD 200–1000 Kristina Jennbert,
Cemeteries and ritual meals Rites and their meaning in the traditional Seto world-view Heiki Valk,
The universe container Projections of religious meaning in a Viking Age burial-ground in northern Småland Tore Artelius and Anna Kristensson,
Scandinavian burial rites on the southern Baltic coast Boat-graves in cemeteries of early medieval trading places Marcus Gerds,
Grinding processes and reproductive metaphors Titti Fendin,
Spinning seidr Eldar Heide,
The concept of shamanism in Old Norse religion from a sociological point of view Tine Jeanette Biering,
RITUAL SITES AND IMAGES,
What’s in a name? An archaeological identity crisis for the Norse gods (and some of their friends) Neil Price,
Bridging mythology and belief Viking Age functional culture as a reflection of the belief in divine intervention Andres Siegfried Dobat,
Ornaments, ornamentation, and female gender Women in eastern central Sweden in the eighth and early ninth centuries Johan Callmer,
Among trees, bones, and stones The sacred grove at Lunda Gunnar Andersson,
My home is my castle Protection against evil in medieval times Ann-Britt Falk,
Ancient building cults Aspects of ritual traditions in southern Scandinavia Anne Carlie,
Odin and Mithras Religious acculturation during the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period Anders Kaliff and Olof Sundqvist,
Thor’s hammer in Norway A symbol of reaction against the Christian cross? Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide,
The temple in Rhetra-Riedegost West Slavic pagan ritual as described at the beginning of eleventh century Leszek Slupecki,
Parchim-Löddigsee – late Slavonic temple and trading site Dietlind Paddenberg,
Pre-Christian cult at Arkona A short summary of the archaeological evidence Astrid Tummuscheit,
“Til holts ek gekk …” The performance demands of Skírnismál, Fáfnismál and Sigrdrífumál in liminal time and sacred space Terry Gunnell,
Rituals and power About a small building and animal bones from the late Iron Age Ann-Lili Nielsen,
Ritual building and ritual space Aspects of investigations at the Iron Age central site Uppåkra, Scania, Sweden Lars Larsson,
The Uppåkra beaker A discussion of the figure representations Birgitta Hårdh,
Guldgubber Relics of Pre-Christian law rituals? Sharon Ratke and Rudolf Simek,
MYTH AND MEMORY,
Erfikvædi – myth, ritual, elegy Joseph Harris,
Myth and the psychology of memory Carolyne Larrington,
The generic aspect of the Eddic style Bernt Øyvind Thorvaldsen,
Textual figures of Ódinn Annette Lassen,
Theories, explanatory models and terminology Possibilities and problems in research on Old Norse mythology Else Mundal,
Mythology as a mnemonic and literary device in Vatnsdoela saga Lars van Wezel,
Poetry and practice Egil’s art of poetry and the Odinic legacy Catharina Raudvere,
Where does Old Norse religion end? Reflections on the term Old Norse religion Maths Bertell,
Archaeology and sacrifice A discussion of interpretations Åsa Berggren,
Misconceptions concerning paganism and folklore in medieval art The Rogslösa example Gunnar Nordanskog,
Völuspá and the tree of life A product of a culture in a liminal stage Pétur Pétursson,
On wind and waves Bryan Weston Wyly,
Potentialities of Loki Yvonne S. Bonnetain,
Interpretations of Ynglingasaga and the Mabinogi Some Norse-Celtic correspondences Karen Bek-Pedersen,
Love among gods and men Skírnismál and its tradition Daniel Sävborg,
Past memories Spatial returning as ritualized remembrance Ann-Mari Hållans Stenholm,
Ancient mounds for new graves An aspect of Viking Age burial customs in southern Scandinavia Anne Pedersen,
Ásgardr, Midgardr, and Útgardr A linguistic approach to a classical problem Per Vikstrand,
What shall we do with Reinaert the Fox? Tina Hamrin-Dahl,
Heroes, kings, and gods Discovering sagas on Gotlandic picture-stones Jörn Staecker,
The advent of the esteemed horseman-sovereign,
A study of rider-motifs on Gotlandic picture-stones Andreas Lundin,
RECEPTION AND PRESENT-DAY USE,
The use and abuse of Old Norse religion Its beginnings in high medieval Iceland Rudolf Simek,
Kings, cowpies, and creation Intertextual traffic between “history” and “myth” in the writings of Snorri Sturluson Bruce Lincoln,
The “Allgermanische Heidnische Front” and Old Norse religion Fredrik Gregorius,
The organism within On the construction of a non-Christian Germanic nature Henrik Janson,
From queen to sorcerer Nina Nordström,
Drudgery dwarf On the absence of labour in the Nibelungen tradition Stefan Arvidsson,
The measures of Old Norse religion in long-term perspective Margaret Clunies Ross,

CHAPTER 1

WORLDVIEW AND COSMOLOGY

Can archaeologists study prehistoric cosmology?

Richard Bradley

An unusual collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The three dimensions of rock carvings

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

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

(Continues…)Excerpted from Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives by Anders Andrén, Kritina Jennbert, Bengt Almgren. Copyright © 2006 Nordic Academic Press and the authors. Excerpted by permission of Nordic Academic Press.
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