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When Gods Become Bureaucrats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2020

Richard Cole
Richard Cole*
Affiliation:
Aarhus Universitet; richardcole@cas.au.dk
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Abstract

Even gods are not always above bureaucracy. Societies very different from each other have entertained the idea that the heavens might be arranged much like an earthly bureaucracy, or that mythological beings might exercise their power in a way that makes them resembles bureaucrats. The best-known case is the Chinese “celestial bureaucracy,” but the idea is also found in (to take nearly random examples) Ancient Near Eastern cosmology, the Hebrew Bible, Late Antiquity, and modern popular culture. The primary sources discussed in this essay pertain to an area of history where bureaucracy was historically underdeveloped, namely medieval Scandinavia. Beginning with the Glavendrup runestone from the 900s, I examine a way of thinking about divine power that seems blissfully bureaucracy-free. Moving forwards in time to Adam of Bremen’s description of the temple at Uppsala (1040s–1070s), I find traces of a tentative, half-formed bureaucracy in the fading embers of Scandinavian paganism. In the 1220s, well into the Christian era, I find Snorri Sturluson concocting a version of Old Norse myth which proposes a novel resolution between the non-bureaucratic origins of his mythological corpus and the burgeoning bureacratization of High Medieval Norway. Although my focus is on medieval Scandinavia, transhistorical comparisons are frequently drawn with mythological bureaucrats from other times and places. In closing, I synthesise this comparative material with historical and anthropological theories of the relationship between bureaucracy and the divine.

Keywords

Adam of BremenbureaucracyGlavendrup stoneGothic BibleLokasennarunesScandinaviaSnorri Sturluson
Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 113 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 186 - 209
Copyright
© President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2020

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References

1 Sverre Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c. 900–1350 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010) 155.

2 Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Short Circuits; Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003) 120.

3 Christopher Kelly, “Emperors as Gods, Angels as Bureaucrats: The Representation of Imperial Power in Late Antiquity,” Antigüedad: Religiones y sociedades 1 (1998) 301–26.

4 Toni Flores, “Art, Folklore, Bureaucracy and Ideology,” Dialectical Anthropology 10 (1986) 249–64, at 254.

5 Christopher J. Samuel, “‘Heavenly Theologians’: The Place of Angels in the Theology of Martin Luther” (PhD diss., Marquette University, 2014).

6 Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society: New Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social Stratification (ed. and trans. Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters; New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) 73–127.

7 Lowell K. Handy, Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 79–92, 99–116.

8 Handy, Host, 152–67. See also Vilém Flusser, Does Writing Have A Future? (trans. Nancy Ann Roth; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) 104, 107. One can profitably contrast this situation with the Old Norse situation, where rather than one centralized communications service (e.g. Hermes in the Greek pantheon) each God appears to have their own page (e.g.Skírnir for Freyr, Hermóðr for Óðinn, Gná for Frigg).

9 Handy, Host, 121–22.

10 H. Wheeler Robinson, “The Council of Yahweh,” JTS 45 (1944) 151–57; Lowell K. Handy, “Dissenting Deities or Obedient Angels: Divine Hierarchies in Ugarit and the Bible,” BR 35 (1990) 18–35; Michael S. Heiser, “Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible,” BBR 81 (2008) 1–30.

11 Unless otherwise specified, all quotations of the Bible are from the KJV.

12 Ellen White, Yahweh’s Council: Its Structure and Membership (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014) 65–79; Christopher A. Rollston, “The Rise of Monotheism in Ancient Israel: Biblical and Epigraphic Evidence,” Stone Campbell Journal 6 (2003) 95–115, at 102–6.

13 Weber, “Bureaucracy,” 97–98.

14 Richard Cole, “Bureaucracy and Alienation: Some Case Studies from Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar,” Saga-Book 43 (2019) 5–36, at 9–12.

15 Karl Marx, Early Writings (trans. Rodney Livingstone & Gregor Benton; London: Penguin, (1975) 324.

16 Karl Marx, Capital (trans. Ben Fowkes; 3 vols.; London: Penguin, 1976) 1:209.

17 Regrettably, a word limit prevents me from discussing this further.

18 Adapted from Erik Moltke, Runes and their Origin: Denmark and Elsewhere (trans. Peter Foote; Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1985) 226. All translations from Latin and Old Norse are my own.

19 Judith Jesch, “Runes and Words: Runic Lexicography in Context,” Futhark 4 (2013) 77–100, at 88–95. See also eadem, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2001) 218–19.

20 Martin Syrett, “Drengs and Thegns Again,” Saga-Book 25 (2000) 243–71, at 246–49.

21 Svend Aakjær, “Old Danish Thegns and Drengs,” Acta Philologica Scandinavica 2 (1927/1928) 1–30; Klavs Randsborg, The Viking Age in Denmark: The Formation of a State (London: Duckworth, 1980) 31; Birgit Sawyer, “The Evidence of Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions,” in The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway (ed. Alexander R. Rumble; London: Leicester University Press, 1994) 23–26.

22 Syrett, “Drengs and Thegns,” esp. 253, 268; Eric Christensen, The Norsemen in the Viking Age (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) 335–36; Judith Jesch, “Scaldic and Runic Vocabulary and the Viking Age: A Research Project,” in The Twelfth Viking Congress: Developments around the Baltic and the North Sea in the Viking Age (ed. Björn Ambrosiani and Helen Clarke; Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1994) 294–301, at 299; John Kousgård Sørensen, “Om personnavne på -vi/-væ og den førkristne præstestand med nogle overvejelser over en omstridt passage i Glavendrup-stenens indskrift,” Danske studier (1989) 5–33, at 25–26.

23 Judith Jesch, The Viking Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2015) 129–30.

24 Jesse L. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London: Penguin, 2001) 118–32; Jón Jóhannesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth (trans. Haraldur Bessason; Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1974) 53–63; Ólafur Lárusson, “Goði og goðorð,” Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder 5:363–66; Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (2 vols.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1956) 1:401.

25 Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, Austfirðinga sǫgur (ed. Jón Jóhannesson; Íslenzk Fornrit 11; Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950) 98–99.

26 By my count, the formula or variants thereof are attested in five inscriptions out of a possible corpus of roughly 6,710 Viking Age and High Medieval inscriptions (the latter included to facilitate comparison between the pagan and Christian periods): Vg 150, Sö 140, DR 110, DR 220, DR 419. In contrast, the Virgin Mary is invoked at least 149 times. On Germanic pagan invocations more generally, see Franz E. Dietrich, “Drei altheidnische Segensformeln,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum 13 (1867) 193–217.

27 Sóti the rune-carver, on the other hand, appears to have been selling his labor in a manner instantly intelligible to Marxist critique. He also appears to have been the hand behind DR 202 (in honour of his brother) and DR 230 (again commissioned by Ragnhildr). When he calls Alli his trutindróttinn (lord), his precise relationship is left ambiguous. Was he a member of the lið? Was this just an affectation to pretend a degree of intimacy with the deceased when primarily he was a craftsman doing a job? On runestones and class relations, see H. A. Koefoed, “The Heroic Age in Scandinavia in Light of the Danish Inscriptions in the Younger Runes,” Scandinavian Studies 35 (1963) 110–22, at 112–13.

28 Irene J. Winter, “Legitimation of Authority Through Image and Legend: Seals Belonging to Officials in the Administrative Bureaucracy of the Ur III State,” in The Organization of Power: Aspects of Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East (ed. McGuire Gibson and Robert D. Biggs; Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1991) 69–116, at 74–77.

29 Handy, Host of Heaven, 174–75; Dale Launderville, Piety and Politics: The Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2003) 185–91.

30 Gabriel Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964) 8–17; Christopher Abram, Myths of the Pagan North: The Gods of the Norsemen (London: Continuum, 2011) 16–20; John McKinnell, “Vǫluspá and the Feast of Easter,” in Essays on Eddic Poetry (ed. Donata Kick and John D. Shafer; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014) 3–33.

31 Note the parallel between Hebrew beney ha’elohim (Vulgate filii Dei) in Job 1:6 and Old Norse ása sonum. In the Old English sermon on Job, Ælfric removes the term, presumably so as to eliminate any vestiges of henotheism. De Boors connects the Old Norse term with other Eddic voculabury that he suggests as an attempt to create a more self-consciously religious register in Late Stage paganism (Helmut de Boor, Kleine Schriften [2 vols.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964] 1:215–16). Fidjestøl notes that “men” might also mean “gods” in some of de Boor’s examples (Bjarne Fidjestøl, The Dating of Eddic Poetry: A Historical Survey and Methodological Investigation [Copenhagen: Reitzels, 1999] 162).

32 Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst Verwandten Denkmälern (ed. Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn; Heidelberg: Winter, 1983) 97 [stz. 3].

33 Edda, 6 [stz. 23].

34 Abram, Myths, 160, 162.

35 De Vries, Religionsgeschichte, 1:346.

36 Edda 56, 69; Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda (ed. Klaus von See et al.; 7 vols.; Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011) 7:255–57.

37 Edda, 69. The same mytheme is found in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda from ca. 1220: “There was one day when Freyr had occupied Hliðskjálf and saw over all the worlds …” (Þat var einn dag er Freyr hafði gengit í Hliðskjálf ok sá of heima alla …). Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning (ed. Anthony Faulkes; London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2005) 31.

38 Anne Holtsmark, “Rǫkstólar,” Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder 14:624.

39 Catharina Raudvere, “Fictive Rituals in Völuspá: Mythological Narration between Agency and Structure in the Representation of Reality,” in More than Mythology: Narratives, Ritual Practices and Regional Distribution in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions (ed. Catharina Raudvere and Jens Peter Schjødt; Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2012) 97–118, at 104.

40 Gro Steinsland, Den hellige kongen: Om religion og herskermakt fra vikingtid til middelalder (Oslo: Pax, 2000) 82–97, 169–70.

41 Abram, Myths, 127–57. See also de Boor, Schriften, esp. 1:282–83. Fidjestøl dismantles most of de Boor’s arguments but agrees: “… there may be some truth in this picture” (Dating, 165). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this dialogue.

42 Olof Sundqvist, Freyr’s Offspring: Rulers and Religion in Ancient Svea Society (Uppsala: Uppsala University Library, 2002) 112–17; Britt-Mari Näsström, “Från Fröja till Maria: Det förkristna arvet speglat i en folklig föreställningsvärld,” in Kristnandet i Sverige: Gamla källor och nya perspektiv (ed. Bertil Nilsson; Uppsala: Lunne böcker, 1996) 335–49, at 346–47.

43 Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (ed. Bernhard Schmeidler; 3rd ed.; Scriptores rerum Germanicum in usum scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis separatim editi; Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1917) 257–59.

44 Regrettably, space does not allow examples.

45 Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis, 258.

46 This scholion is attributed to Adam by Werner Trillmich, Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches (Ausgewählte Quellen zur Deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 11; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961) 155. Medieval geographers commonly deferred to sources they thought to be prestigious. If a second, apparently respectable informant later communicated an account of Uppsala to Adam, and that second source contained a borrowing from 1 Kings, then Adam may well have accepted it despite the naked biblical allusion. Just as, to the medieval Christian mind, Christianity had replaced Judaism and paganism alike, the idea that pagans should in some way appear like Jews was not outlandish.

47 Handy, Host, 114–16.

48 Sundqvist, Freyr’s offspring, 124.

49 Weber, “Bureaucracy,” 85–86; Sverre Bagge, Cross & Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014) 82–90.

50 Abram, Myths, 229–31.

51 Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (ed. G. Turville-Petre; London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1976) 70–71.

52 Richard Cole, “Æsirism: The Impossibility of Ideological Neutrality in Snorra Edda,” in Myths and Ideologies: Critical Studies in Political Uses of Old Norse Myths (ed. Nicolas Meylan and Lukas Rösli; Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).

53 Snorri, Prologue and Gylfaginning, 26 [ch. 32]. The cited verse, slightly at variance, is Edda, 60.

54 H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (London: Penguin, 1964) 171–72. De Vries, Religionsgeschichte, 2:281–84.

55 Handy, Host, 77, 88 nn. 90, 91.

56 William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) 209–10; Steve A. Wiggins, A Reassessment of Asherah with Further Considerations of the Goddess (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgia, 2007) 69–74, 84.

57 Kevin J. Wanner, Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medieval Scandinavia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) 39–43.

58 Snorri, Prologue and Gylfaginning, 25.

59 Snorri, Prologue and Gylfaginning, 25.

60 Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson, “Týr: The One-Handed War God” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2002) esp. 166–87.

61 Snorri, Prologue and Gylfaginning, 26.

62 Structurally, the passage reminds one of Hesiod’s Theogony, where he lists goddesses whose names are also socially desirable virtues: “Secondly, he married shining Themis [Order], who gave birth to Horae [Ὥρας, Seasons],/Eunomia [Legality] and Diké [Justice] and flourishing Irene [Eἰρήνην, Peace],/who ensure the works of mortals” (δɛύτɛρον ἠγάγɛτο λιπαρὴν Θέμιν, ἣ τέκɛν Ὥρας,/Eὐνομίην τɛ Δίκην τɛ καὶ Eἰρήνην τɛθαλυῖαν,/αἵ τ᾿ ἔργ᾿ ὠρɛύουσι καταθνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι). Hesiod, Theog. 900–902 (Hesiod, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia [ed. and trans. Glenn W. Most; LCL 57; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007] 76). The resemblance must have something to do with the universal traits of mythographical treatises, not direct influence, as the Theogony was virtually unknown in the Latin West in Snorri’s time.

63 Snorri, Prologue and Gylfaginning, 29–30.

64 Ormr Steinþórsson, “Poem about a Woman 3” (ed. Russell Poole), in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics (ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold; 2 vols.; Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3; Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) 1:327. See also the þula known as Ása heiti: Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál (ed. Anthony Faulkes; 2 vols.; London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1998) 1:114.

65 Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson, “Lausavísur 12” (ed. Russell Poole), in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035 (ed. Diana Whaley; 2 vols.; Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1; Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) 1:231. In Ása heiti: Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, 1:115.

66 “Anonymous Þulur, Dœgra heiti 1” (ed. Elena Gurevich), in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics (ed. Gade and Marold), 2:914. In Ása heiti: Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, 1:114.

67 Eilífr Goðrúnarson, “Þórsdrápa 20” (ed. Edith Marold), in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics (ed. Gade and Marold), 1:119. In Ása heiti: Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, 1:115.

68 Johan Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog (Kristiania: Feilberg & Landmarks, 1867) 416.

69 Landnámabók in Íslendingabók. Landnámabók (ed. Jakob Benediktsson; 2 vols.; Íslenzk Fornrit 1; Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968) 1:163.

70 Weber, “Bureaucracy,” 77.

71 Weber, “Bureaucracy,” 96.

72 Weber, “Bureaucracy,” 116.

73 Weber, “Bureaucracy,” 77.

74 Weber, “Bureaucracy,” 95.

75 On Snorri’s complex political views, see: Helgi Þorláksson, “Snorri Sturluson, the Politician, and his Foreign Relations: The Norwegian, Orcadian and Götlandish Connections,” in Snorri Sturluson and Reykholt: The Author and Magnate, His Life, Works and Environment at Reykholt in Iceland (ed. Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir and Helgi Þorláksson; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2018) 79–107; Sverre Bagge, Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) 192–251; Kevin J. Wanner, Snorri Sturluson and the Edda,18–25, 39–43.

76 Jesse Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power (Enfield Lock: Hisarlik, 1993) 59–76.

77 William Ian Miller, Eye for an Eye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) esp. 58–63, 174–79; Jón Jóhannesson, A History, 222–84; Helgi Þorláksson, “Historical Background: Iceland 870–1400,” A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (ed. Rory McTurk; Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) 136–54, at 148–52.

78 Technically, Óðinn is discussd as a king in the deliberately unreliable narrative frame of the Prose Edda. I discuss this in more detail in Cole, “Æsirism.”

79 Theodore M. Andersson, “The Politics of Snorri Sturluson,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 (1994) 55–78; idem, “The King of Iceland,” Spec 74 (1999) 923–34, esp. 927–34.

80 Sverre Bagge, From Gang Leader to the Lord’s Anointed: Kingship in Sverris saga and Hákonar saga (Odense: Odense University Press, 1996) 148–50; David Brégaint, Vox Regis: Royal Communication in High Medieval Norway (Leiden: Brill, 2016) 174.

81 On the critique of bureaucracy from both left and right, see: David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (London: Random House, 2015) 3–44.

82 Peter Heather, Goths and Romans 332–489 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) 122–56.

83 E. A. Ebbinghaus, “Some Remarks on the Life of Bishop Wulfila,” General Linguistics 32 (1992) 95–104, at 103.

84 Heather describes the support of the recently arrived Goths as an “administrative nightmare” (Goths and Romans, 122–23).

85 Or any word for clothing. In Mark 16:5 the angel wears wastjai 𐍈eitai (white clothes), and in Luke 9:29 it is said of Christ that gawaseins is 𐍈eita skeinandei (His clothes [were] shining white). Other extant words for clothing include gafeteins in 1 Tim 2:9 and gaskadweins in 1 Tim 6:8.

86 Sverre Bagge, Fra knyttneve til scepter: Makt i middelalderens Norge (Rapportserien Makt- og demokratiutredningen 67; Oslo: Makt- og demakratiutredningen, 2003) 38–53.

87 Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo’ Cults in Melanesia (New York: Schocken, 1968) 204, 207, 247; Lamont Lindstrom, Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993) 88–91.

88 See Lindstrom, Cargo, 41–72, 183–210.

89 Lindstrom, Cargo, 89.

90 Graeber, Utopia, 152.