Bears, Boars, and Other Socially Constructed Bodies in Hrólfs saga kraka

This article analyzes one motif related to the Old Norse-Icelandic character Bodvar Bjarki. The motif of the body double is analyzed in four extant witnesses to the Bjarki tradition. The motif is then compared to so-called out-of-body experience, as fomulated in parapsychological studies, to provide new insights into this fascinating motif, which has been otherwise ignored or dismissed by literary scholars. The concept of "body" is then historicized to widen the interpretive gamut for the body double motif. Finally, Oriential traditions of multiple bodies and growingly popular and scientific concepts of multiple bodies and energy bodies are briefly considered as one possible way to update the context of literary science. While making this analysis of the body double motif, the paper advocates for a new sense of the literary, more consciously in dialogue with vanguard thought of other disciplines.