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Reviewed by:
  • Reflections on Old Norse Myths
  • Jana K. Schulman
Reflections on Old Norse Myths. Edited by Pernille Hermann, Jens Peter Schjødt, and Rasmus Tranum Kristensen. Studies in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Pp. xiii + 176. $73.

This collection of eight essays plus an overview of contemporary research on Old Norse mythology includes papers presented at a symposium at the University of Aarhus in 2005, and then revised, as well as three other invited essays. The purpose of this volume is to introduce and to provide further methodologies for its audience, to educate and to inspire them to further investigations of their own. The subject, as the piece entitled "Contemporary Research into Old Norse Mythology" demonstrates, is Old Norse mythology: how to read, interpret, situate, and discuss it. Jens Peter Schjødt points out in this survey of recent books that there are many approaches with which to examine Old Norse mythology (structuralist, ritual, shamanistic, and comparative, just to name a few), that there are problems with the sources, and, no matter how broad a previous discussion has been, that there is not much agreement. As a result, the field remains open to possibility, methodology, and approach.

Pernille Hermann's essay about Íslendingabók raises questions about modes of discourse, typology, approaches, and reading history as fact. She notes that Íslendingabók "was considered to be history at the time it was written," but it would have also taken on the function of myth, specifically the foundation myth of Iceland (p. 19). Performing a typological analysis, Hermann argues it is the presence and then absence of the Irish monks that allows for a reading of Iceland as a terra Christiana that provided both paradise and consecrated ground to its pre-Christian settlers. She argues further that both pagan and Christian periods belong to the same textual level, concluding that there is a continuity that is further developed with this typological approach: the pagan past is the promise, the Christian present the fulfillment.

John McKinnell interrogates a Christian audience's interest in mythology, especially given the labor and expense necessary to produce a manuscript. Using a comparative approach, he examines practical magic, texts that condemn heathenism, and royal and divine ancestry. His analysis reveals that, while other Germanic accounts contain such material, the level of sophistication found in Old Norse sources trumps these others. What explains this sophistication is the fact that many Icelanders trained to become professional poets, that heathen myths were a source of pride as part of an inherited culture, and that these myths interested Icelandic secular aristocrats because they "could be used to investigate some of the personal, social, and moral issues" that faced them in a manner that Scripture did not allow (p. 49).

Rory McTurk examines Ragnars saga to determine whether it reflects pre-Christian Scandinavian ritual initiation practices and whether it offers an unusual example of female initiation in the case of Ragnarr's second wife, Áslaug. McTurk assesses the respective importance of Ragnarr and Áslaug to the saga by means of Jan de Vries's international heroic biography, a ten-part pattern derived from studies of creation myths and ritual initiations, demonstrating that de Vries's pattern is divided almost equally between the two. Next, he examines Áslaug's career [End Page 82] in relation to a five-part pattern established by Walter Burkert derived from Greek mythology and another five-part initiation sequence outlined by Jens Schjødt, concluding that these provide further evidence of both Áslaug's importance and female initiation. McTurk's essay raises a lot of questions, a fact he revels in, as he considers still another possible influence, that of Greek romance, on the careers of both Ragnarr and Áslaug. Frustrating as this "and then, and then" style may be, especially in the first ten pages, the essay does open channels for further discussion, its intended purpose, and that of the volume.

Stephen Mitchell analyzes Skírnismál, focusing on Skírnir's curse of Gerðr, situating and explicating the scene in the poem against a "vast tradition that intertwined lust, love, violence, and magic . . ." (p. 78). An examination of other charms and...

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