The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to Völuspá and Nordic Days of Judgement ed. by Terry Gunnell, Annette Lassen (review)

The collection of essays in The Nordic Apocalypse is the product of a conference held at the National Museum of Iceland in 2008 that brought together scholars from a variety of backgrounds to consider the key eddic poem Völuspá, the “Prophecy of the Sybil,” in the context of a special exhibition of a set of medieval carved wooden panels of the Last Judgement, believed to have come from Hólar Cathedral in the north of Iceland. It was obviously the hope of the conference organizers that the presence of art historians and historians of religion would stimulate new approaches to Völuspá among the philologists also present, but the evidence of this volume suggests otherwise: polite scepticism on the part of the contributors to Parts I–III of the book toward the material of Part IV on the visual evidence is what comes through to the reader.

The essays are arranged in four unequal parts, the first of which consists of a single chapter by Annette Lassen on the early scholarly reception of Völuspá. This chapter would have been better placed right at the end of the volume, as a large part of it deals with the postmedieval period, while the other three parts concern aspects of the poem’s medieval reception. Although Lassen’s chapter contains much interesting information, it gets a little bogged down in the discussion of Snorri Sturluson’s euhemerism (pp. 4–7), taking a somewhat different view of this subject from the author of the chapter following.

Vésteinn Ólason’s chapter on “Völuspá and Time” (pp. 25–44) begins Part II, “Völuspá and The Pre-Christian World: The Oral Tradition.” It is a beautifully written and sensitively argued chapter, probing the poem’s concept of time and, with it, its conception of cosmology and eschatology. As a consequence of that analysis, Vésteinn is able to state a well-founded view that Völuspá is effectively a creation of the pre-Christian age with some Christian admixtures. The most original part of the chapter is his proposal that the penultimate stanza H65, unique to Hauksbók, which refers to a powerful, mighty being coming from above after ragnarök, may be inspired by the same notion that led Snorri Sturluson to posit such a Creator-being as the product of the reasoning of those who had lost the name of God according to the Prologue to his Edda.

Vésteinn is followed by Gísli Sigurðsson, who, predictably, urges his readers to understand “Völuspá as the Product of an Oral Tradition,” asking “What does that entail?” (pp. 45–62). The chapter has a slightly polemic tone and discourses on the right way (and the wrong way) to approach a work with oral roots. While most people would now agree with Gísli’s basic premises, there is not a lot that could be considered new in this chapter.

Next comes Terry Gunnell’s “Völuspá in Performance” (pp. 63–77). As with Gísli’s interest in orality and its implications for the study of Old Norse literature, Gunnell revisits issues on which he has written many times before: orality, oral performance, and the dramatic qualities of eddic poetry. Some way into the chapter (pp. 69–72), he offers an analysis of the poem’s musical qualities with some close readings of the rhythmic and alliterative qualities of several stanzas. I found little that was new in the conclusion to this chapter, and several statements that were quite obscure, like, “The present performer (male or female) is the mythological völva, and we are reminded of our own mythological connections”—whatever they may be (p. 73)!

By contrast with the two preceding chapters, Henning Kure’s “Wading Heavy...