The Elder Edda

[Jackson Richardson]

I went to the British Museum yesterday to see their exhibition on the Vikings. The exit was through a compulsory shop and I wanted to get a souvenir, unsympathetic though I find these violent, homophobic slave owners. (They were the least sexist society in Europe of the time - women could easily divorce a husband and were honoured for magic powers to ensure the success of her menfolks violent raids. Not very commendable when someone like me would have been strung up soon as look at me with the approval of men and women.)

As my souvenir I bought the new Penguin translation of the Elder Edda by Professor Andy (sic) Orchard, who now has J R R Tolkien's former position of Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo Saxon at the dear old University of Oxford. Andy has no qualms at translating Old Norse words as "bloke".

I've read the first two poems and recognized the Wagnerian references.

I'll read on.

(The cover has a sticker saying this inspired The Hobbit. O dear.)

[Lokasenna]

Eh, you over-estimate the gender-based cantankerousness of the medieval Scandinavians. For a start, homosexual behaviour was not itself illegal - the offense was in calling someone argr (which Andy Orchard translates not-quite-correctly as 'a ****-craver' in his Edda). This term covers a wide-range of meanings - effeminacy, cowardice, passivity, homosexuality, sexual deviance of any other kind, and an inclination towards magic. To accuse someone of being argr in medieval Iceland was illegal, but like all criminal prosecutions of the time it was up to the victim to mete out the punishment if they were able to do so. In essence, if you accused someone of being gay they had justification to kill you, but no one would interfere to stop you fighting back.

Like many early societies that had an absolute taboo on a single sexual act (in this case anal penetration), there was an amazing tolerance for a lot of the peripheral sexual activity. ON society placed a considerable importance on homosocial bonds as those most important in a man's life, even to the exclusion of his married life: men were expected to spend a lot of time together, and some of the texts we have are rather euphemistic about what they might have got up to. A number of sagas are charged with considerable homoerotic tension, and there are a number of skaldic stanzas that refer obliquely to concepts of mutual masturbation and oral sex. There's even a common insult across several sagas that roughly translates as 'you'd rather spend time having sex with your wife than hanging with us manly men, you wimp' - make of that what you will!

The Poetic Edda is superb, and Andy's translation is the best published one (though not without its share of mistakes, I'm afraid). If you're interested, I've posted up a few translations of various poems myself in the recent past - you'll find them easily enough if you look in my 'threads created' section. They might be of interest. Actually, I'll be posting another translation in the near future, once I find 30 minutes to sit down and edit it properly for LitNet.

The sticker about The Hobbit on the new edition is a rather hideous attempt by Penguin to cash in on the current films - Andy resisted it, but you know what publishers are like. It would also be fairer to say that the Edda influnenced Tolkien's entire mythology, more than just poor old Bilbo...

[Jackson Richardson]

I'm getting stuck into the wacky world of the Elder Edda - just finished the disastrous dinner party after which you've named yourself Loka. I though Andy could have used an earthier word than "toilet" when Loki insults a goddess (or should we say female god nowadays?) It made me think of Nancy Mitford.

I see there are two Penguin translations of the Prose Edda. What version would you recommend?

The Hobbit (the book) is far too cosy by comparison but a sticker saying "Now a major operatic tetrology" wouldn't have selling potential. (I'm wondering if I can get the sticker off without spoiling the book.) At least they aren't trying to sell the book cashing in on Chris Hemsworth's noted hunkiness.

[Lokasenna]

In terms of the Prose Edda, I wouldn't actually recommend Penguin (albeit I'm only aware of the one edition, translated by Jesse Byock) - the translation is fine, but volume does not advertise the fact that it is in fact an abridged version that cuts out well over a third of the full Edda. My main recommendation is always for the Everyman edition, translated by Anthony Faulkes, which represents the whole thing and is a translation of a very high standard.

I imagine you've by now read Þrymskviða - a poem that presents us with a very good reason for the publishers not to cash in on Chris Hemsworth's rather-too-pretty Þórr...

Lokasenna is a great poem, isn't it? Tremendously entertaining, but if you sit down and think about the potential motives and meanings of each stanza you come to the realisation that it is a very clever poem indeed.

[Jackson Richardson]

Yes, there is only one Penguin version. I was mislead by the University of California having a version with similar front translated by Jean I Young. Thanks for the recommendation of Faulkes. I've got him on my wishlist.

I've only read Lokasenna once. I imagine that like Jane Austen, the social and conversational nuances are more appreciated on repeated readings.

[Jackson Richardson]

I can imagine young Mr Hemsworth's many admirers would be unimpressed to see him in a frock.

I've compared two translations of stanza 13 of Harbarthsljoth. (Unlike Lokasenna I don't have a thorn - that's the Norse and Saxon character for th - on my keyboard.)

Here's Henry Adams Bellow in 1936

"Thor spake:
13. Great trouble, methinks, | would it be to come to thee,
To wade the waters across, | and wet my middle;
Weakling, well shall I pay | thy mocking words,
if across the sound I come."

And here's Andy Orchard

"Thor said
13 It seems a dreadful pain to me,
To wade over the water and wet my balls:
I’ll get you back you dribbling git
For your smarmy words, if I get over the straits."

[Lokasenna]

Andy does have a way with words, doesn't he...

To be fair, he's the more accurate of the two. ON poetry can be crude - it delights in being shocking and salacious, which makes the moments of profound beauty and introspection all the more special.

[Jackson Richardson]

Yes, I thought that might be the case(Prof Andy is more accurate). Does the earlier translation keep to the alliteration more accurately?

(Bear in my mind my favourite novelist is Jane Austen and my favourite poem The Rape of the Lock and I prefer Verdi (but not that wanker Puccini) to Wagner. So I'm not a natural enthusiast for Old Norse poetry. But it is fascinating.)

I've started the heroic section of the Elder Edda, but so far I've been more taken with the earlier sections.

[Lokasenna]

Bellow does attempt to keep the alliterative qualities, though he does not do so consistently - his is a translation I can't really go in for, I'm afraid.

The heroic poems are generally less entertaining than the mythological ones in my opinion, but there are some wonderful gems in there. Atlakviða and Hamðismál, in particular, are among the finest poems of the entire ON corpus.

[Jackson Richardson]

Here's Andy Orchard's version of stanza 34 of Lokasenna (and the Bellows translation isn't that different, bar talking about privy rather than toilet, which is rather less twee as a word to my ears).

Shut your mouth, Njőrd, East from here
You were sent as a hostage to the gods;
Hymir’s daughters took you for a toilet
Which is why they pissed in your mouth.

Hm. S bends in Asgard.

[Lokasenna]

Although Loki is making a crude joke, the general scholarly interpretation of this stanza is that might actually reflect pre-Christian ritual belief. In Norse poetry, single proper nouns can often stand for the whole social group that surrounds it - so these are not specifically Hymir's daughters, but the daughters of giants more generally. Giantesses are associated with the natural world, particularly with bodies of water - lakes, waves, and (in this case most likely) rivers. Njörðr is the god of the sea, and rivers run into the sea - hence the idea of giantesses 'pissing' into Njörðr's mouth.

It also reflects the idea that the Vanir tribe of gods have a more relaxed approach to deviant sexual practices, as opposed to the much more conservative Æsir - they are, for example, commonly associated with incest and sex magic.

[Helga]

What about Skírnismál, the poem about Freyr finding a wife. I like that. It has always been considered 'romantic' but in reality it is about taking a woman from her home because a god wanted her. Like we all know, men who buy women will die in Ragnarök.

[Iain Sparrow]

What about Skírnismál, the poem about Freyr finding a wife. I like that. It has always been considered 'romantic' but in reality it is about taking a woman from her home because a god wanted her. Like we all know, men who buy women will die in Ragnarök.

I had always understood that it was just symbolism and ceremony, that even the Vikings didn't take these things as literal?

[Helga]

My point is it has always been considered a romantic story about love at first sight, in Gerður's case it probably wasn't.

[Lokasenna]

Skírnismál is usually seen as a manifestation of the ancient idea of hieros gamos - the idea a monarch making love to his land. Gerðr's name means 'enclosure', and Freyr is presented in terms of his regal aspects. Whilst that might be the meaning behind the original myth, the poet of Skírnismál is clearly playing with the idea in interesting ways. It's ambiguous as to whether we are supposed to embrace the misogyny of the poem - whether we are to see this as an affirmation of the power and righteousness of patriarchal society, or as a catastrophically inept courting ritual that culminates in Gerðr's rape and probably adds to the blood-feud between the gods and the giants that will consume the world.

Actually, I have some very strong opinions about Gerðr, and how she is characterised in the mythology - I've just devoted several thousand words of thesis to explaining how she can be seen to emerge from this poem as a potentially powerful figure.

To answer Iain's point about how medieval people actually considered this stuff, the simple answer is that we have no idea how literal all of this was. It's certainly true to say that there was genuine belief in the gods - and that they were worshiped. Whether the stories were supposed to be allegorical or literal, who knows. That's even assuming there was any kind of religious orthodoxy, which there almost certainly wasn't. Not to mention, of course, that all the texts we have date from post-pagan times and have been substantially edited and rewritten by the Christian compilers of this material.