Seasons in the Literatures of the Medieval North by P. S. Langeslag (review)

This is an ambitious work that examines the seasonal cycles as presented in literary works from the northern European climes, namely England and Scandinavia. Using a host of literary genres but primarily narrative and lyric texts, P. S. Langeslag covers early medieval Old English poetry, mid-medieval Old Icelandic texts (sagas), and late medieval Middle English poetry. One academic goal focuses on the “medieval north-western Europe [as] an appropriate test case” that highlights “a number of relevant conditions [such as] …. higher-latitude region[s], ensuring considerable contrasts between seasons” (3). The noteworthy literature reflects material relevance for the medieval writers and the audiences spread throughout the regions. Langeslag argues that this region and its literature “constitut[e] a loose cultural sphere with sufficient shared material to permit the detailed comparison … [of] individual cultures” (4) using parameters such as time patterns, climate history, and economic cycles. The latter expansion makes this project a toilsome enterprise.

The book begins with a thoughtful introduction presenting the overarching approach to the project; thereafter, Langeslag divides the analysis into four sections. In “Myth and Ritual” the presence of origin myths as natural outcroppings of the seasonal cycles produces “ritual traditions that acknowledge the seasons’ yields” (29). Orthodox texts written by Bede and Ælfric and heterodox writings such as Genesis B categorize the corpus and genre boundaries themselves, although Langeslag quantifies that only the Scandinavian legacies offer significant creation myths at odds with spreading Christian doctrines. The bitter winter season becomes a narrative for human punishment, a stimulus to juxtapose the Christian terrestrial paradise with purgatory, hell, and postlapsarian locales. Vision literature incorporates detailed “narrative descriptions of heaven and hell” (32) and points to a biblical tradition that “earthly and heavenly paradise” (33) seem to lack seasons; ergo the postlapsarian exists only in a hellish preview of hell. Langeslag highlights Christ and Satan as one incongruous “se wonna læg (‘the dark flame’)” (33). The deeper scrutiny of Genesis B bears this out.

In counterpoint, Langeslag uses the eddic poem Vafϸrúðnismál to discuss Scandinavian “personifications of the two seasons of the year” (40). This is bolstered by the Eddic mythology of “fimbulvetr…’great winter’ or ‘terrible winter’” (40), in which an annihilation of humans except for one couple remains after warfare and winter converge. These traditions function under a “wintertime feasting [that] strengthens[s] the social differentiation between the literary seasons” (61), and resolves in the time-honored advancement of summertime. It comes full circle to demonstrate how “the season cycle has profound and inevitable implications” (61) for both the labors and the leisure acts routinely performed throughout the cycles, creating an engaging seasonal mythology and “meaningful contrast … between rivalling aetiologies” (62) of those time periods.

The second chapter “Winter Mindscapes” reiterates established ideas of landscape descriptions as more conventional but gives way to more recent attitudes towards these paradigms. Langeslag turns to “the more recent projection paradigm for its recognition that the extrasocietal other is defined in contrast with the psychological and societal self, and vice versa,” especially incorporating current examples “called environmental determinism, literary autonomy, and environmental projection” (65). The main concentration on Old English and Old Norse literatures starts with Anglo-Saxon elegiac poetry, such as but not limited to The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Lament, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin. The poetry describes water in winter (ice, freezing waters, or desolate seas) as critical windows into winter psycho-geographical mindsets. Then, an analysis of Beowulf and its triad of water, monsters, and the hardened realities of winter-scapes begins and ultimately ends with supernatural forces in literary responses. The second half focuses on Old Norse literature, where “myth and legend firmly associate winter with real and imagined social groups peripheral to society” (100), namely, the giants (in mountains and hibernal sites) and the Finnar or Sami (on the plains and fells where their “sorcery” takes on winter connections). This expansive analysis does reap some interesting conclusions...