A Note on the Old Norse-Icelandic Verb at dreyma “to dream”

In Old Norse-Icelandic writing, excepting a few outlier cases, the verb at dreyma, “to dream” is accompanied by an accusative noun or pronoun (for example, the first person singular accusative pronoun mik, “me”) and sometimes an accusative object (for example, the singular accusative noun draum, “dream”).¹ This morphological feature of the language has led some to claim that the absence of a nominative subject in references to the act of dreaming reflects a certain cultural attitude toward dreams in medieval Norse society. Ronald Grambo, for example, has asserted that the “special structure of the clauses reveals that people in ancient times in the Norse area conceived the dream as a supernatural message, e. g., from enemies, friends or from supernatural powers.”² Popular writer Jane Smiley, author of the historical novel The Greenlanders (1988), has likewise suggested that this construction represents the medieval Norse view that dreams were “actually coming from without.”³ Similar claims feature throughout and persist in scholarship on the subject.⁴

In a rather detailed analysis, anthropologist Adriënne Heijnen identifies the phrase mik dreymdi draum “I dreamed a dream” as a “double (accusative) object construction.” She suggests that the morphological features of this phrase are indicative of a belief that

there is an unidentified agentive entity (the implicit nominative subject of the verb), a “power” exercising a direct influence (marked by the direct objects) on both the dreaming person and the dream.⁵

Heijnen argues, based on the generative grammar approach she adopts in her analysis, that this common construction reflects an understanding that the dreamer both acts and undergoes action simultaneously and that Old Norse-Icelandic speakers must have regarded the act of dreaming as one in which “a complex constellation of entities is involved.”⁶ Though more thorough and nuanced in her approach than many other scholars, Heijnen nevertheless reiterates the familiar claim that the morphological features typically associated with the verb at dreyma show that medieval Norse people regarded dreams as something that happened to them, at least in part, at the order of some external and frequently paranormal or supernatural power.

Readers of Old Norse-Icelandic literature would doubtless agree that such a view is evident in a variety of written works and was likely held by at least some if not a large proportion of medieval Norse people. Yet there are two significant flaws in the argument that the morphological features associated with the verb at dreyma provide evidence of the common existence of this view. The first is that this argument does not take into account the many other Old Norse-Icelandic verbs that exhibit the same or highly similar morphological features. The following nonexhaustive list contains numerous such verbs that, like at dreyma, typically refer to the experiencer of an action, occurrence, or state of being using an accusative noun or pronoun and sometimes take an accusative object as well:

at bresta, “to lack, fall short of,” at fýsa, “to wish for,” at gruna, “to suspect, doubt,” at hungra, “to hunger,” at iðra, “to repent of,” at kala, “to freeze,” at langa, “to long for,” at minna, “to recollect, remember,” at sundla, “to be giddy,” at syfja, “to get sleepy,” at ugga, “to fear,” at undra, “to wonder, be astonished,” at vanta, “to want, lack,” at verkja, “to feel pain,” at þrjóta, “to fail, lack, run short of,” at þyrsta, “to be thirsty”⁷

Notably, many of these verbs refer to things that modern readers would associate with different kinds of cognitive or emotional processes. Several others are associated with different kinds of embodied states. Regardless of whether the act of dreaming should fall within either of these categories, following the same line of argument mentioned above, medieval Norse people must have also viewed the activities, occurrences, or states of being described by these verbs as happening at the order of some external and perhaps paranormal or supernatural power.

Yet few if any scholars have made such arguments. With this in mind, rather than distinguishing dreams from other kinds of experiences, the typical...