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11178 results in Anglo Saxon and medieval literature

Page 362 of 559

  • 3 - Sources

  • from Part One - Aims, Methods and Sources
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 37-49

  • Summary

    ‘Segðu þat iþ tólfta, hví þú tíva rǫc

    ǫll, Vafþrúðnir, vitir.’

    ‘Say, twelfthly, Vafþrúðnir,

    how you know the whole downfall of the gods.’

    Vafþrúðnismál 42,1–3

    Óðinn's question to Vafþrúðnir is extremely pertinent: how do we know the myths that (we think) we know? This chapter will consider the sources for Other World encounters in Old Norse myth and legend and the rationale for using them. Unlike religious practice, for which the best sources are often archaeological, mythology is essentially narrative and depends chiefly on written sources. Although there are important sources in both prose and verse, most of the prose works derive their material from older poetry, so it is the poetic tradition whose evidence is usually primary. It can be divided into two poetic genres: eddic and skaldic.

    1. Eddic poetry

    Most eddic poems are anonymous; their metres and diction are relatively simple, and they present whole myths or segments of myths in narrative, monologue or dialogue form. They are difficult to date, but linguistic evidence suggests that none can be earlier than c. 800; most were probably composed between the mid-ninth century and the mid-thirteenth. They were apparently not written down until the early thirteenth century. Eddic poetry has traditionally been regarded as having a limited ‘canon’ and containing two distinct sets of subject matter: mythological (poems about gods and other supernatural beings) and heroic (poems about legendary human beings). The main body of this ‘canon’ is found in the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, where the first eleven poems form what looks like a separate mythological section, although the headings in the manuscript do not make this division explicit.

    A few poems found in other manuscripts are traditionally called Eddica Minora, and some editors also categorise these as either mythological or heroic. Usually accepted as mythological are Baldrs draumar, Rígsþula, Hyndluljóð, Grottasǫngr and Svipdagsmál, though the last survives only in post-medieval manuscripts.1 There are also some quotations in Snorra Edda (see section 4 below) from poems which are otherwise lost.

  • 8 - Fighting the Giantess: Þórr

  • from Part Three - The Æsir
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 109-125

  • Summary

    1. Þórr's destruction of Giantesses

    ‘Ec var austr oc iǫtna barðag,

    brúðir bǫlvísar, er til biargs gengo;

    mikil myndi ætt iǫtna, ef allir lifði,

    vætr myndi manna undir miðgarði.’

    ‘I was in the east and fighting giants, those girls skilled in evil,

    as they went towards the rock; the tribe of giants would be

    large if all of them lived – there would not be a single human

    being throughout the world.’

    Hárbarðsljóð 23,1–8

    The myths in which the Æsir encounter Other-World females can be divided into what I shall call myths of exploitation and of confrontation. In the first group, the protagonist is usually Óðinn, and the giantesses he seduces seem to represent a natural power which gods and men need in order to defend themselves, generate ruling families or gain poetic inspiration. These are myths about exploitation of and co-operation with the Other World (see Chapters 10–11). But this chapter and the next will consider myths of confrontation, which reject the Other World, assert the defence of mankind against it, and often regard any negotiation with it as dishonourable. The god who typifies this attitude is Þórr, who is an exultant destroyer of giants and giantesses. Þrymskviða 32 is typical: Þórr, finally recovering his lost hammer, immediately uses it to strike down Þrymr's grasping giant sister, and we are clearly expected to regard her destruction as right and proper.

    Hárbarðsljóð

    In the quotation above, Þórr destroys giantesses to prevent the giants from multiplying to the point where they would oust human beings from the world. Similarly, in Þrymskviða 18,5–8 Loki tells Þórr that unless he dresses up as Freyja in order to get his hammer back, the giants will soon be living in Ásgarðr. In these texts, the natural fertility of giantesses will lead to disaster unless they are vigorously ‘culled’. In Hárbarðsljóð there is also a more general fear of the natural-magical powers of brúðir bǫlvísar, ‘brides/women skilled in evil’. The only other use of the adjective bǫlvís in verse (Sigrdrífumál 27,4) warns against women skilled in evil who sit near the path and blunt the swords and minds of warriors.

  • 7 - The Vǫlva

  • from Part Two - The Vanir
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 95-108

  • Summary

    1. The nature of the vǫlva

    Ækki vældr hon þui siolf at hon er troll

    ‘She can't help being a troll.’

    Ældre Borgarthings-Christenret I, 16

    The patterns considered in Chapters 5 and 6 often include a prophetess or magic-working woman. She may be the ally or sister of the Winter Princess (Hulð in Ynglinga saga, Irpa, Heiðr in Vǫluspá), or herself the princess (Hvít in Hrólfs saga kraka), or the opponent of the goddess (Hyndla, Hrímgerðr in Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar). Her role may seem secondary, but it is essential to the narrative. In this chapter I shall consider the typical features of the vǫlva figure, whether she is of naturalistic or mythic origin, and whether she can be associated with particular patterns of narrative.

    TERMS USED FOR THE VǪLVA

    The usual terms applied to the prophetess are vǫlva ‘prophetess’ (from vǫlr ‘staff’) and seiðkona ‘enchantress’, but spákona ‘prophesying woman’ and vísindakona ‘wise woman’ also appear; any of them may refer to the same woman.

    One might have expected a vǫlva to predict the future and a seiðkona to perform effective magic, but this distinction hardly emerges. Some women who are called vǫlur also use effective magic; others make predictions but are not called vǫlur. Family sagas often avoid the word, employing euphemisms such as kona . . . fróð ok framsýn ‘a wise woman who could see the future’,5 or nǫkkut fornfróð ‘rather skilled in ancient things’. Alternatively, narrators may disavow responsibility for the information: þat tǫluðu menn, at hon væri fjǫlkunnig ‘people reckoned that she was skilled in magic’. The activities of the vǫlva were evidently seen as disgraceful or dangerous, at least in the thirteenth century, and there is also a general tendency in family sagas to play down supernatural elements.

    In legendary sources, by contrast, the vǫlva is sometimes referred to in terms that imply non-human origins. Thus Hulð in Ynglingatal 3 is vitta véttr ‘creature of spells’ and trollkund liðs grím-Hildr ‘the people's troll-born woman of night’; Busla in Bósa saga ch. 5 is vánd vættr ‘evil creature’; and Heiðr in Hauks þáttr hábrókar is hin mikla trǫll ‘the great troll woman’.

  • 13 - Consulting the Dead

  • from Part Four - Encounters with the Dead
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 197-217

  • Summary

    1. Traces of early belief

    birgŋu(bo)r(o)swestarminu liubumeRwage

    This inscription appears on the early fifth century rune stone from Opedal, Hordaland, Norway. Krause's translation is ‘Grave. Bora, my sister, dear to me, Wagar’. Alternatively, the last word might be the present subjunctive of Old Norse vægja ‘to spare’, which would give the translation: ‘Grave. May Bora, my dear sister, spare me’; Krause objects that this should have appeared in runic Old Norse as *wagije, but his own solution is also doubtful, since the single-element personal name *Wagar is not found elsewhere. Both interpretations share another difficulty: *birg(i)ŋu is equivalent to Old English byrging, which does not mean ‘grave’, but ‘the act of burying someone’. Some other early Norwegian memorials are ‘labelled’ with a noun referring to the monument and the genitive singular of a personal name, but that is not done here. The nearest burial is about twenty metres away, and unlike the tall bautarsteinar commonly found on grave-mounds, the Opedal stone is irregular in shape and unworked, and large and heavy enough (132 x 77 cm) to be difficult to move. It may always have lain flat on the ground where it was discovered.

    Von Friesen had earlier taken birg as the imperative singular of bjarga ‘to save, defend’, and (i)ŋuboro or (i)ŋubor(g)o as the common Old Norse female name Ingibjõrg. In that case, the last word could be the dative singular of vágr ‘bay’, ‘sea’ (though von Friesen, like Krause, regarded it as a proper name). The inscription could then be interpreted: ‘Ingubora, my dear sister, preserve me at sea’; the site is beside Sørfjord. This would then be a prayer rather than a memorial, and that would suggest that at least some Migration Age Scandinavians believed that the spirits of individual dead female relatives could give them protection. Unfortunately, this is hard to support from other inscriptions.

    There is, however, abundant evidence that dead female relatives in general were venerated in the pre-Christian Germanic world. Votive stones and altars from the Roman period dedicated to the matronae or matres are common on the lower Rhine, in eastern Gaul and in upper Italy.

  • 6 - The Goddess and Her Lover

  • from Part Two - The Vanir
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 81-94

  • Summary

    Æ trúði Óttarr á ásynior.

    ‘Óttarr always trusted in goddesses.’

    Hyndluljóð 10,7–8

    When we turn to myths associated with goddesses of the Vanir type, the male protagonist is almost unavoidably a human ruler. Simple inversion of the god's marriage with a giantess would have been intolerable, since it would have implied the subjection of a divine wife to a giant husband and her removal to a frozen, infertile giant world. This would have been to give away the principle of fertility to the forces of chaos; it is a constant desire of the giants, but one which the gods must at all costs resist (see Chapter 1, and as Clunies Ross's idea of ‘negative reciprocity’, Chapter 2).

    1. Þorgerðr Hõlgabrúðr

    The role of priest to the goddess was probably the hereditary right of successive rulers, and this may provide an explanation for the use of gubber (see Chapter 4). One goddess whose cult flourished in western Norway and southern Iceland in the tenth century is Þorgerðr Hõlgabrúðr, who is mentioned in a variety of prose sources.

    According to Skáldskaparmál, she was the daughter of Hõlgi, after whom Hálogaland was named; they both received sacrifice, and Hõlgi's mound was made of alternate layers of gold and silver (which were sacrificial offerings) and of earth and stone. A verse is then cited in which Skúli Þorsteinsson (c. 1000) calls gold and silver Hõlga haugþõk ‘thatch of Hõlgi's mound’. This sounds like a mythicised account of the use of gubber as offerings. There may be another allusion to Þorgerðr in Tindr Hallkelsson's Hákonardrápa 1, where Hákon's battle with the Jómsvíkingar (c. 986) is said to be ‘not as if the beautiful gims Gerðr (“jewel's Gerðr”) made a bed for the jarl in her arms’; however, this may be no more than a peculiarly apt woman-kenning.

    In Njáls saga Víga-Hrappr enters the temple owned by Hákon jarl while the earl is away, strips the idols of Þórr, Þorgerðr and her sister Irpa, plunders their gold rings and Þorgerðr's headdress, and sets the temple on fire. When the jarl returns, he says that the man who has done this will never get to Valhõll; he goes off by himself, falls on his knees and covers his eyes.

  • 11 - Seduced by the Giantess: the Odinic Hero

  • from Part Three - The Æsir
  • John McKinnell, John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
  • Book:
    Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 October 2017
    Print publication:
    15 May 2005, pp 172-180

  • Summary

    When the sexual partner of a giantess is a human being, he may sometimes be a transformation of Óðinn, as in Bárðar saga (compare the human equivalents of Þórr discussed in Chapter 9), but usually he is either a devotee of Óðinn or, by a simple Christian reversal, a conspicuously outspoken opponent to him.

    1. Óðinn's protégés

    Hadingum grandævus forte quidam, altero orbus oculo,

    solitarium miseratus …

    ‘An aged man with only one eye happened to take pity on the

    lonely Hading …’

    Saxo I.vi.7

    Five stories of this kind show a common pattern. They are those of:

  • a. Hadingus and Harthgrepa in Saxo I.vi.2–6;

  • b. Ǫrvar-Oddr and Hildigunnr in Ǫrvar-Odds saga (ǪOs) chs. 18, 21;

  • c. Ketill and Hrafnhildr in Ketils saga hoengs] chs. 3–4;

  • d. Búi and Fríðr in Kjalnesinga saga (Ks) chs. 12–14, 18;

  • e. Bárðr and Þórdís in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss chs. 11–12, 21.

    • Although they differ in many respects, all show a shared sequence of motifs; none includes every feature of the pattern, but each major feature is shared by at least three texts. The main elements are:

  • The protagonist is associated with Óðinn. Hadingus is Óðinn's protégé and eventually hangs himself, presumably as a sacrifice to the god. Ǫrvar-Oddr and Ketill hoengr are grandson and grandfather; Oddr resembles the Odinic hero Starkaðr, and is fated to live for three hundred years (Starkaðr lives for three lifetimes), while Ketill, by Christian reversal, becomes a notable opponent of Óðinn. Búi also opposes heathenism, and is sent on his adventure because he has burned a heathen temple. Bárðar saga is more naturalistic, but Bárðr still appears demanding hospitality from his host's son Eiðr, wearing a grey cowl and calling himself Gestr (cf. Óðinn's alias Gestumblindi, and his disguise as Grímnir and patronage of the king's son in Grímnismál). Bárðr has himself been brought up by the giant-king Dofri and is worshipped as a god.

  • 15 - Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 706 (R)

  • from Part I - The Collections
  • Siegfried Wenzel, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book:
    Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England
    Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    17 February 2005, pp 88-90

  • Summary

    As indicated, four sermons of the first set in MS Bodley 649 (O/1) also appear in MS Laud misc. 706. Patrick Horner, who has studied the latter manuscript in detail, describes it as “a composite manuscript assembled from sermons made and collected by Benedictine monks at Oxford in the fifteenth century.” According to an ex libris on its last folio, the book belonged to John Paunteley, Benedictine monk of St. Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, who had been ordained a priest in 1392 and incepted as “professor sacre pagine” at Oxford. On 3 May 1412 he preached the funeral sermon of his abbot, Walter Froucetur, which is preserved as R-3. Some of the sermons, however, may go back to earlier times. The first sermon here, on “How shall the realm stand?” and for the third Sunday of Lent, applies a story from Augustine's De urbis excidio to contemporary England and declares:

    In our East a frightful cloud is rising up against us, by which I understand the kingdom of France. Our enemies, the French, are preparing arms with high council and the support and help of all their friends and are lifting their bow to our destruction!

    Against this danger, the preacher urges going to confession and prayer. Fear of an imminent French invasion disturbed England particularly in the late 1380s, and the sermon could well belong to that time.

    The manuscript, consisting of several booklets, is written by several hands, all of the early fifteenth century.

  • 18 - John Dygon (DY)

  • from Part I - The Collections
  • Siegfried Wenzel, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book:
    Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England
    Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    17 February 2005, pp 100-115

  • Summary

    Another unified sermon collection made in the second quarter of the fifteenth century may be the work of a collector who is known to us by name and whose interests, as they are reflected in a number of manuscripts that he owned or wrote himself, included the collecting of sermons. John Dygon studied at Oxford, where he is attested as having earned bachelor degrees in both laws. He must also have incepted as a master, probably of Arts, because in several subscriptions he calls himself “M[agister].” From 1406 to 1435 he held appointments in several parishes in southern dioceses, the last one being St. Andrew's, Holborn, London. Then he was admitted as the fifth recluse to a cell at the recently founded Carthusian priory at Sheen in Surrey, where he lived from 1435 until at least 1449.

    Dygon has left various owner's notes and subscriptions in a number of manuscripts, many of which he gave to Magdalen College, Oxford. The notes are all written in the same hand, and this has been identified as Dygon's. They can be separated into two types: in one, besides calling himself Magister, he titles himself only presbiter; in the other he also mentions that he is a reclusus at Sheen. If this distinction is meaningful, it indicates that books with the first form were owned and written before he entered the charterhouse. In this case, Dygon's activity of collecting books and writing them reaches back into his period as a parish priest.

Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England
  • Orthodox Preaching in the Age of Wyclif
  • Siegfried Wenzel
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    17 February 2005
  • Until the Reformation, almost all sermons were written down in Latin. This is the first scholarly study systematically to describe and analyse the collections of Latin sermons from the golden age of medieval preaching in England, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Basing his studies on the extant manuscripts, Siegfried Wenzel analyses these sermons and the occasions when they were given. Larger issues of preaching in the later Middle Ages such as the pastoral concern about preaching, originality in sermon making, and the attitudes of orthodox preachers to Lollardy, receive detailed attention. The surviving sermons and their collections are listed for the first time in full inventories, which supplement the critical and contextual material Wenzel presents. This book is an important contribution to the study of medieval preaching, and will be essential for scholars of late medieval literature, history and religious thought.

  • 44 - University preaching

  • from Part II - Occasions of Preaching
  • Siegfried Wenzel, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book:
    Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England
    Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    17 February 2005, pp 297-304

  • Summary

    In the medieval university, giving sermons represented one of the basic academic actitivies, together with lectures and disputations. As Peter the Chanter put it famously near the end of the twelfth century, the graduate in theology had to be proficient in the acts of legere, disputare, praedicare. This highlights the fact that in the medieval university, preaching was the end to which all higher study of theology led. But not all university students worked to become full-blown theologians by incepting as masters. We have seen that, from the early fourteenth century on, monks were sent to the university primarily to learn how to preach; and recent studies of the educational organization of the mendicant orders point out that many friars similarly spent some time at the university, not to gain a higher degree but to receive the necessary theological training for their use as future lectors in convents and study houses. To the secular clergy, too, the possibility of some university study had opened up with the constitution Cum ex eo of Pope Boniface VIII in 1298, which made it possible for beneficed clergy to take a leave of absence in order to study at the university for a shorter or longer period; and episcopal records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are full of such dispensations. But whether a degree candidate or a priest who simply meant to deepen his theological knowledge, all students were exposed to a good deal of preaching.

  • 5 - John Waldeby (WA)

  • from Part I - The Collections
  • Siegfried Wenzel, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book:
    Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England
    Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    17 February 2005, pp 40-44

  • Summary

    Judging by the number of extant manuscripts as well as his own words, John Waldeby was one of the most popular preachers surveyed in this book, and he has deservedly drawn some scholarly attention. He entered the convent of the Austin friars in Lincoln in the early 1330s and then studied at Oxford, where he had became a doctor of theology by 1354. In 1354 he was at the convent in York and licensed to hear confessions. Except for a brief journey to the General Chapter of the Austin friars at Perugia in 1354, he stayed in York until his death shortly after 1372. Perhaps he served as prior provincial of the English Austin Friars in 1366. As he tells us himself, his preaching in York drew such large crowds that, in order to get some writing done, he had to withdraw to the quieter convent of Tickhill. He was highly esteemed by Thomas de la Mare, the powerful and well-known abbot of St Albans. The latter, during his nine-year tenure as prior of Tynemouth, in the 1340s, spent three years “studying how to preach the word of God, in both English and Latin,” for which he surrounded himself with “clerics and masters, both secular and mendicants” who were to teach him.

Page 362 of 559