Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia: Retying the Bonds by Jonas Wellendorf (review)

This short study is an important contribution to the emergent literature on the reception and interpretation of pre-Christian Scandinavian culture and religion by medieval and early modern Scandinavian writers. Chapter 1, 'Retying the Bonds', is interesting because recent scholarship has moved away from the view that texts by Christians contain no real information on 'pagan' religion; Jonas Wellendorf notes general agreement that 'prevailing notions of fundamental categories such as time, fate, and divinity changed radically in the course of Christianization' (p. 2). Christians demoted polytheistic deities to demons, and Wellendorf considers a range of texts to 'examine a number of responses elicited by the metamorphosis of gods into demons as expressed in Scandinavian texts from c. 1200 to the early eighteenth century' (p. 6). He uses the model of Varro (d. 27 bce), who classified accounts of the gods in three ways: mythic, physical (from physis, nature, and indicating a kind of natural philosophy), and civic. The Eddas are mythic, but are systematized in various ways (for example, the World Serpent fights at Ragnarok, so versions in which it perished in Þórr's fishing are downgraded). Christianity destroyed the cultic aspects of Scandinavian religion, and the philosophical aspect was underdeveloped. This book explores how the bonds between humans and gods, severed in the conversion, were 're-tied' by authors who created a 'physical theology' (p. 22) that explained them anew.

Chapter 2, 'The Hierarchy of Disbelief in Antipagan Polemics', discusses false gods as presented in the deutero-canonical Wisdom of Solomon and in Baarlams saga. The latter is a thirteenth-century Norse version of the tale of Baarlam and Josaphat, a popular Christian story 'which ultimately derives from an Indian legend about the Buddha' (p. 27), in which Nachor makes a speech that ranks types of wrong or false beliefs hierarchically. Chapter 3, 'Universalist Aspirations in Hauksbók', examines 'On the Origins of Disbelief', which is based on De falsis deis by the English abbot Ælfric of Eynsham (955–1010). Wellendorf argues Hauksbók is a collection that 'betrays a considerable interest in paganism as a historical phenomenon' (p. 61). The view that is expressed in it is of universal pagan gods, the identity of Norse deities being matched to Roman deities. Chapter 4, 'The Byzantine Gods of Saxo Grammaticus', analyses the Gesta Danorum in terms of its author's euhemerist approach to the pre-Christian gods, the way he reserves full condemnation of paganism for the Wends but not the Danes, and the influence of 'silver age Latin authors' (p. 82) including Maximus and Justinus.

The final chapter, 'Gods and Humans in the Prose Edda', argues that demonology is not present in the Prose Edda or Ynglinga saga, but rather 'a set of analogies between Christian and Norse teachings has an ennobling effect on Norse myth' (p. 91). The Prose Edda includes themes of analogy, euhemerism, poetry, and invention. Wellendorf notes that the lengthier version in the Codex Wormianus is less sympathetic. His 'Epilogue: Óðinn and Odysseus' continues the universalist mode of interpretation with the identification of Óðinn and Odysseus posited by the eighteenth-century Norwegian priest Jonas Ramus. Wellendorf indicates that Ramus, though unpersuasive, was compared with Olof Rudbeck (1630–1702), who accorded a higher status to Scandinavia as the 'cradle of humanity' (p. 117). This connection between Germanic tribes and the Greeks manifests in the Trojan origins of the Franks found in Gregory of Tours and is not historical, but testifies to the myriad ways that Christians in the medieval and early modern eras found clarity and structure in the relationship of their pasts to their presents. Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia: Retying the Bonds extends beyond the Middle Ages and is highly intelligent, well-written, and deserving of a large audience. It is highly recommended.