Old Norse Women's Poetry: The Voices of Female Skalds (review)

Old Norse Women's Poetry is another installment in the Library of Medieval Women series edited by Jane Chance. Selections from nearly fifty medieval Scandinavian poetic texts appear in six thematic sections: 1) Real People, Real Poetry, 2) Quasi-Historical People and Poetry, 3) Visionary Women: Women's Dream-Verse, 4) Legendary Heroines, 5) Magic-Workers, Prophetesses, and Alien Maidens, and 6) Trollwomen. The result is a diverse and intriguing database of verse written by female authors as well as verse written by male authors who quote the direct speech of Old Norse women.

The overall organization of the book is an effective way to present and access the contents of the book. The format for the textual passages is a standardized tripartite presentation, beginning with actual lines of Old Norse poetry in the left column and a form-focused semi-free verse translation into English in the right column, followed by a meaning-focused semi-literal prose translation into standard English below the parallel verse lines. Here is the form-based verse translation of the words of Steingerðr Þórketilsdóttir in a tribute to her beloved:

Should the gods be goodly,grant Fate I'll be mated

with none else, O ring-breakerother than—Fróði's brother.

(17)

The meaning-based prose translation reads: "If it happens such that the gods and fate arrange things well for me, ring-breaker, I would betroth myself to the blithe brother of Fróði." Although the three-part format is helpful, these semi-literal translations do not consistently capture the stylistic and structural features of the Old Norse texts throughout the book. Neither of the translations above capture the non-configurational grammar of the original text:

Bræðr mynda ek blíðum,

Brother-of,—arrange—I—blithe,

bauglestir, mik festa,

ring-breaker—join-hands-with,

yrði goð sem gerðisk

happen gods should perform

góð mér ok sko.p, Fróða.

good—any but—fate—Fróði's.

A more literal translation in the parallel right columns, or the addition of a word-by-word vertical interlinear translation, would have more fully captured word orders, rhetorical figures, skaldic conventions, and the breathless tone of the passage, making the language features more transparent for stylistic analysis and linguistic exegesis. Perhaps this would be an improvement for future editions.

Old Norse Women's Poetry is laden with golden nuggets of historical information and cultural insight, but the reader has to dig them out and refine them in order to obtain and utilize the riches of the texts. In section five, we learn about the ways, words, and works of wise women, also known as spákonur, vǫlva, skalds, seers, or magic-working prophetesses (72-85). In our day, such figures have been obscured or caricatured because of taboo associations with witchcraft, but remnants of their more positive roles as sibyls, oracles, midwives, or fairy godmothers still surface in the western literary tradition, and it is good to see their roots in Old Norse attestations.

The text selections are silvered with veins of intercultural relations between Norway, Sweden, Greenland, and Iceland, as well as Ireland, Finland, Lapland, and more distant lands. In one passage, a Norwegian saga hero named Oddr hears an Irish princess describe one magic shirt made by seamstresses in six different places:

... One sleeve was made by Sámi [Finnish],and the other by the Irish [Celtic].Saxon sisters [West Germanic] strung the silk,and southern maidens spun it.Welsh women [Franco-Italian] wove the shirt,on looms warped by No-One.

(88)

Such passages expand our perceptions of the Old Norse worldview in medieval times, subverting one-dimensional stereotypes of brutal Viking barbarians and their mute, ravaged women.

The end matter of the volume includes four highly useful tools: an "Old Norse Literature Time Line," a "Glossary of Personal Names," a "Bibliography," and an "Index of Names." The time line provides a chronology...