Northern Myths Modern Identities 2019

Northern Myths, Modern Identities
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National Cultivation of Culture
Edited by
Joep Leerssen (University of Amsterdam)
Editorial Board
John Breuilly – Katharine Ellis – Ina Ferris

Patrick J. Geary – Tom Shippey – Anne-Marie Thiesse
volume 19
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ncc
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Northern Myths, Modern
Identities
The Nationalisation of Northern Mythologies since 1800
Edited by
Simon Halink
leiden | boston
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This publication was made possible through the generous support of:
The Royal Netherlands Academy

of Arts and Sciences The Frisian Academy
The Study Platform on

The Frisian Museum Interlocking Nationalisms
The Groningen Research Institute

The Huizinga Institute for the Study of Culture
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Halink, Simon, editor.

Title: Northern myths, modern identities : the nationalisation of northern
mythologies since 1800 / edited by Simon Halink.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2019] | Series: National cultivation
of culture, ISSN 1876-5645 ; volume 19 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019014390| ISBN 9789004367470 (harback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9789004398436 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Mythology, Norse. | Nationalism--Scandinavia. | National
characteristics, Scandinavian. | Scandinavians--Ethnic identity. |
Nationalism in literature.
Classification: LCC BL863 .N68 2019 | DDC 293/.13--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014390
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1876-5645
ISBN 978-90-04-36747-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-39843-6 (e-book)
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii

About the Authors viii
Northern Myths, Modern Identities: An Introduction 1

Simon Halink
Part 1
Imagining the North
1 The North: A Cultural Stereotype between Metaphor and Racial

Essentialism 13
Joep Leerssen
2 Within or Outside Europe? Modernists and Anti-modernists Visiting

Iceland in the Mid-Nineteenth Century 33
Sumarliði R. Ísleifsson
3 Is Nordic Mythology Nordic or National, or Both? Competing National

Appropriations of Nordic Mythology in Early Nineteenth-Century
Scandinavia 49
Tim van Gerven
Part 2
Ancient Heritage, New Meaning
4 Norse Myths, Nordic Identities: The Divergent Case of Icelandic

Romanticism 73
Gylfi Gunnlaugsson
5 Redbad, the Once and Future King of the Frisians 87

Han Nijdam and Otto S. Knottnerus
6 Norse Mythology in Icelandic Fiction about the Second World

War 115
Daisy L. Neijmann
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vi Contents
7 Of Gods and Men: Uses and Abuses of Neo-Paganism by Nationalist

Movements in the “North” 127
Robert A. Saunders
Part 3
Travelling Ideas and Artistic Expressions
8 Heirs of Lönnrot: From Longfellow to Tolkien 159

Tom Shippey
9 Kalevala in International Masks: A Japanese Aino and Kalevala

dell’Arte 179
Kendra Willson
10 The Quest of Gangleri: Theosophy and Old Norse Mythology in

Iceland 192
Simon Halink
Part 4
Beyond the Nation?
11 Crossing the Borders: Loki and the Decline of the Nation State 217
Katja Schulz
12 Apocalypse Now: Norse Gods and the End of the Nation 231

Carline Tromp
Index of Names and Subjects 253
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Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 Desert scene. Illustration facing the title page of Richard Burton’s Travels in
Arabia (1892) 38
2.2 Ingolf tager Island i besiddelse (“Ingólfr Takes Possession of Iceland”): painting
by Peter Raadsig (1850) 44
3.1 Three Valkyries riding to battle: painting by Johan Gustaf Sandberg
(1820) 57
3.2 Bronze statuette of Odin by Hermann Ernst Freund (1827) 65
5.1 Redbad refuses to be baptised by Wulfram. Illustration from: M. Hamconius,
Frisia seu de viris rebusque Frisiae illustribus (1623) 91
5.2 Opening page of the text The Tale of Kings Charles and Redbad from a sixteenth-
century manuscript 97
5.3 The official flag of the Dutch province of Friesland 99
5.4 The official coat of arms of the Dutch province of Friesland 101
7.1 Midvinterblot (“Midwinter Sacrifice”) by Carl Larsson (1915) 134
7.2 A dolmen in the Kermario Alignment, Brittany 139
7.3 Statue of Perun in Volodymyr Park, Kyiv, Ukraine 147
9.1 Johanna MacDonald as Louhi and Soile Mäkelä as the slave in Kalevala
dell‘Arte 185
10.1 King Gylfi addresses “High”, “Just-As-High” and “Third”. Illustration from an
eighteenth-century manuscript 196
10.2 The relief Flight of the Gods to Iceland’s Mountains by Einar Jónsson
(1907) 205
10.3 Skuld (“Fate”) by Einar Jónsson (1927) 208
10.4 The Birth of Psyche by Einar Jónsson (1918) 209
10.5 Thor and Elli by Einar Jónsson (1940) 210
11.1 Andy Li Jørgensen’s cover illustration for Villy Sørensen’s Ragnarok.
En gudefortælling (1982) 226
Tables
7.1 Representative examples of “nationalist” Neo-Paganism 130

7.2 Pagan places: Geographical orientation, ethnolinguistic affiliation(s)
and Neo-Pagan paths 137
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About the Authors
Tim van Gerven

obtained a master’s degree in European studies at the University of Amster-
dam in 2012. In his master’s thesis, he studied the image of the EU in contem-
porary Norwegian literature. Since 2016 he has been working on a PhD project
at his alma mater, the subject of research being Scandinavism, understood as
a primarily cultural movement. Of particular interest are the interconnections
between the transnational pan-Scandinavian movement and the various na-
tionally specific expressions of cultural nationalism in Denmark, Norway and
Sweden.
Gylfi Gunnlaugsson
is a research fellow at the Reykjavík Academy, Iceland. He has taught at the
University of Kiel, Germany, and the University of Iceland. His current areas
of research include the remediation of Old Norse literature in literary works
of later periods and the role of Old Norse philology in the formation of na-
tional and transnational identities in north-western Europe during the long
nineteenth century. He has participated in several international research pro
jects, most recently as a codirector in Icelandic Philology and National Culture
1780–1918, a project financed by the Icelandic Research Fund.
Simon Halink
studied history and German literature in Utrecht and at the Free University
of Berlin. He specialised in the intellectual history of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, and graduated cum laude with a study concerning
images of Iceland in Nazi Germany. In 2017, he received his PhD at the Univer-
sity of Groningen, where he studied the cultivation of Old Norse mythology
in Icelandic national culture between 1820 and 1918. He has published on the
role of landscape in identity formation, and on the functions of Nordic philo
logy, historiography and mythology in national discourses. He is affiliated with
the Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms (SPIN) based in Amsterdam,
and with the international research project Icelandic Philology and National
Culture 1780–1918 at Reykjavík Academy. He is based in Reykjavík, where he
lectures at the University of Iceland.
is a historian and associate professor in the University of Iceland. His main
research field has been the identity of the Icelanders and how it has evolved
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About The Authors ix
through the ages. He has also been writing on the ideas of the north in
connection with Iceland and Greenland. Among other fields, he studies the
social history of Iceland, especially the labour movement. Among books he has
written or edited are Ísland, framandi land (The Wonderland Iceland, 1996),
Iceland and Images of the North (2011, editor), Tvær eyjar á jaðrinum. Ímyndir
Íslands og Grænlands (Two Islands on the Edge. Images of Iceland and Green-
land, 2014) and Utanlandsverslun Íslands (Icelandic Foreign Trade through the
Ages, two volumes, editor, 2017).
Otto Samuel Knottnerus

studied sociology at the University of Groningen. He specialised in the social
history of the Wadden Sea area. His publications span topics such as the his-
tory of landscapes, religious movements, agrarian history, workers’ movements
and religious worldviews from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
Joep Leerssen
is a professor of European studies at the University of Amsterdam. His research
deals with ideas of national character, national stereotypes and national self-
images (Imagology, edited with Manfred Beller, 2007; Spiegelpaleis Europa “Eu-
rope: Palace of Mirrors”, 2011), and with the transnational history of cultural
nationalism (National Thought in Europe, 2006; De bronnen van het vaderland
“The Sources of the Homeland”, 2011). He is the editor of the Encyclopedia of
Romantic Nationalism in Europe (available at http://romanticnationalism.net,
and published in two volumes in 2018).
Daisy L. Neijmann
received her PhD from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1994. She was an
assistant professor in Icelandic–Canadian studies at the University of Ma
nitoba and a reader in Icelandic at University College London. She currently
teaches Icelandic literature and culture at the University of Iceland. She is the
author of The Icelandic Voice in Canadian Letters and Colloquial Icelandic (2000,
revised edition 2013) and editor of A History of Icelandic Literature (2006), and
she has published widely on Icelandic–Canadian literature, modern Icelandic
fiction, Icelandic literary historiography, war memory and trauma texts, and
Icelandic as a second and heritage language.
Han ( J.A.) Nijdam

is a principal investigator for Old Frisian at the Frisian Academy in Leeuw
arden, the Netherlands. He is a medievalist and anthropologist by training.
His dissertation (2008) dealt with the Old Frisian compensation tariffs and
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x About The Authors
the views of medieval Frisians on body, honour and law. Since 2008, he has
continued to publish on medieval Frisian law from a comparative perspective,
with a special interest in the perspectives offered by the behavioural sciences
and the study of human universals. He is a member of the steering committee
of the international network Voices of Law, which studies medieval law in the
North Sea region between circa 600 and 1250.
Robert A. Saunders
is a professor in the Department of History, Politics and Geography at Farming-
dale State College – SUNY, where he teaches courses in comparative religions,
European culture and world history. His research explores various intersections
of popular culture, geopolitics, nationalism and religious identity. Saunders’
scholarship has appeared in Progress in Human Geography, Slavic Review, Na-
tions and Nationalism, and Geopolitics, among other journals. He is the curator
of the Popular Culture and IR blog at E-International Relations and the author
of four books, including Popular Culture and Nation Branding in the Post-Soviet
Realm (Routledge, 2016) and Ethnopolitics in Cyberspace: The Internet, Minority
Nationalism, and the Web of Identity (Lexington Books, 2010).
Katja Schulz
studied German and Scandinavian languages and literature, history and law
at the Universities of Kiel and Bergen (Norway). She received her doctorate in
2002 at the University of Frankfurt with a dissertation on giants in Old Norse
literature. She conducts research and publishes on Old Norse literature and
mythology and their reception in post-medieval times. She is a member of the
research projects Edda-Kommentar and Edda-Rezeption at Goethe University
Frankfurt and co-author of the Frankfurt Edda-Commentary.
Tom Shippey
is a professor emeritus at Saint Louis University. Among his books are The Criti-
cal Heritage: Beowulf, co-edited with Andreas Haarder, the edited collection
The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous and several
books on Tolkien. He has also published widely on medieval topics and on me-
dievalism, and his book on Old Norse literature, Laughing Shall I Die, came out
in 2018.
Carline Tromp
holds a master’s degree in Old Norse Philology from the University of Oslo.
She wrote a master’s thesis about dreams in the Icelandic family sagas, and
has since been studying the use of Old Norse material in contemporary
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About The Authors xi
(Scandinavian) literature. On this subject, she has published several articles in

both journals and newspapers. Currently, she works for the opinion section of
the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen and as a literary critic.
Kendra Willson
is eurias Junior Fellow at the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies in War-
saw. Previous affiliations include the Universities of Turku, Helsinki, California
(Los Angeles), and Manitoba. She holds a PhD in Scandinavian languages and
literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests
include personal names and name law, Finnic and Sami elements in runic
inscriptions, continuity and change between Old and Modern Icelandic lan-
guage, literature and folklore, and theatrical interpretations of medieval and
traditional texts.
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Northern Myths, Modern Identities:
An Introduction
Simon Halink
In 1867, the North British Review published the anonymous essay “Character
of the Old Northern Poetry”, in which the myths of the Old Icelandic Eddas
are heralded as testimonies to Nordic greatness. The author singles out several
of the most tantalising scenes of the Eddic corpus, and highlights especially
the tragic – but simultaneously “sublime” and even “humorous” – narrative of
Ragnarök: the pagan version of the Apocalypse, in which the gods themselves
(the Æsir) meet their end:
But what is humor, if not Ragnarök’s swallowing up of the gods, them-

selves knowing that they are no true gods, and in the midst of their daily
strife and toil aware of their decay? And what is sublime, if not the assur-
ance that this evening twilight of the gods, which threatens them with the
gloom of a northern winter night, while the storm howls in the branches
of the world’s tree, and the serpent gnaws at its root, – is to make way for
a better world and one almighty All-father?
Thomsen, 1867, p. 63
Nowhere does the author indicate whether the “Nordic spirit”, strong and fa-
talistic enough to face the extreme living conditions of the north, had been
hardened by this mythological discourse, or whether this worldview was the
product – a spiritual survival kit – of an already hardened Nordic spirit. The
central assertion, however, on which the entire argumentation rests, is that
there exists a natural link between mythological worldview, strong survival in-
stincts and – last but not least – national character.
It may come as no surprise that the anonymous author of this piece was him-
self a man of the far north, and a strong advocate for the political and cultural
unification of Scandinavia at that. Grímur Thomsen (1820–1896) was a Roman-
tic poet from Iceland, who considered it his task to protect his Nordic heritage
against its critics, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), who con-
sidered the primitive myths inferior to the chivalric romances of medieval Eu-
rope. According to Thomsen, the Æsir of the Old Norse faith were more human,
and therefore weaker and more capricious than the gods of Mount Olympus.
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2 Halink
For this reason, Thomsen argues, the peoples of the north had always placed
their trust in their own strength and abilities, rather than those of the Æsir.
This self-confident attitude toward the gods nurtured the belligerent m entality
and heroic self-reliance that Thomsen considered the trademarks of all the
great heroes of Nordic saga and legend (Thomsen, 1846, p. 181; Halink, 2017,
p. 467). By explaining Nordic character through the ancestral conception of the
gods, Thomsen interprets the religion of the Æsir (Ása trú or Ásatrú) as a posi-
tive and creative force in history to which modern Scandinavians owe their
identity, and which sets their culture apart from that of the rest of Europe. For
Thomsen, who was in the first place a scholar of modern literature, this histori-
cal force was by no means merely a thing of the past; in his address to the Scan-
dinavian Society of Copenhagen (Skandinavisk Selskab), he urged his listeners
to return to the ancient sources of Scandinavian literature in order to become
more true to their own unique spirit – that is, to become more national.
Thomsen’s views on national character and ancient mythology – which are
further examined in Gylfi Gunnlaugsson’s contribution to this volume – are by
no means a singularity in nineteenth-century culture, and they are best under-
stood when contextualised in both the historical development in which they
emerged, and the Europe-wide network of corresponding intellectuals and
travelling ideas in which people such as Thomsen were deeply embedded. The
ideas expressed in the 1867 article – and in his earlier Danish publications – are
indebted to the intellectual achievements of German idealists such as Johann
Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), who, some seventy years earlier, encouraged his
German compatriots to turn to the mythologies of northern Europe – rather
than those of Greece or Rome – to find inspiration in the heritage of a “neigh-
bouring people, also of German stock” (Herder, 1796, p. 488). The Romantic
discovery of the north – instigated to a large extent by the internationally ac-
claimed “ancient” Ossian poems of James McPherson from the 1760s (Leerssen,
2005) – manifested itself in an ambivalent relationship with the hegemonic
cultural legacies of the south, the prestige of Classical civilisation, with which
the “barbaric north” had to compete (Arndt, 2004). In the early nineteenth
century, the Æsir were generally not contrasted to, but rather assimilated with
the gods of Olympus; sculptors such as Hermann Ernst Freund (1786–1840),
working in the Neoclassical tradition, emancipated the Old Norse gods by
presenting them in a Classical guise, hardly distinguishable from their Greek
counterparts. Freund’s statue of Odin (1828) has the supreme god seated on his
throne, bearing a striking resemblance to ancient statues of Zeus or Jupiter,
and only recognisable as the “All-Father” by the stylised wolves and ravens
(see Figure 3.2). This classicising approach to Old Norse heritage, amounting
to the reproduction of Greek culture with a new, Nordic nomenclature, was
succeeded by a more antagonistic approach of later Romantics, who sought to
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Introduction 3
appreciate their national heritage on its own Nordic terms. The poet and priest
N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), arguably Denmark’s most influential Romantic,
maintained that the Nordic spirit was not equal, but rather superior to that of
the south, and that elitist “southern” culture (i.e., “Rome”) had to be actively
eradicated from Danish society. Especially Denmark’s archenemy Prussia – and
Teutonic culture in general – had to be opposed; Grundtvig was well aware of
the Germans’ infatuation with Eddic mythology, but he considered their Teu-
tonic renditions thereof distorted and degenerate. In fact, the Germans were
Loki – the Eddic god of mischief – in disguise and posed a very real threat to
true Nordic culture (Lundgreen-Nielsen, 1994). At the same time, in Victorian
Britain, the ideal of the noble savage, embodying the exact antitype of every-
thing civilised and southern, elicited a veritable Viking hype (Wawn, 2002).
Under the banner of national Romanticism, so-called indigenous tradi-
tions were reinvigorated – or invented – and motifs from national epics and
native mythologies were cultivated in all sectors of cultural production in
order to boost a sense of national identity. In many respects, national – or
nationalised – mythologies replaced the familiar pan-European mythologies
of Classical Antiquity and Christianity, and became classical in their own
right, constituting a new narrative template generating myriad reinterpreta-
tions in text, art, media and public culture (Böldl, 2000). After the paradigm
shift in early nineteenth-century philology, brought about by Jacob Grimm’s
ground-breaking studies, nothing short of a “new mythology” (Shippey, 2005,
p. 1) found its way into the learned centres of Europe, infusing intellectuals in
different countries with dreams of reconstructing the native mythologies of
their respective nations, both academically and culturally. The mythological
genre proved an astoundingly fruitful one in the context of the cultivation of
national cultures (Leerssen, 2006, 2016); rather than merely constituting a cor-
pus of interrelated narratives, mythologies are a way of saying things (Barthes,
1957), a mode of expression and especially a rhetorical device for conveying
one’s own view of good and evil:
Myth confers “rightness” on a course of action by extending it to an other-

wise murky contemporary view. One reason which accounts for the par-
ticular efficacy of myth in this regard is its a-historical character. As one
writer has put it, myth is “beyond time”. It “blocks off” the past, making it
impervious to the rationalistic scrutiny of historians, lawyers and others
who may dispute precedent and historical validity…
cohen, 1985, p. 99
This statement can be illustrated with the historical example given above, in
which Grundtvig portrays the Germans as Loki. By cloaking his arguments
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4 Halink
in Eddic language, the priest presents the divine north and the maleficent
“Teutons” as two sides of a primordial binary opposition that can never be re-
solved. It makes everything seem so simple; who would want to argue with
any statement expressed in the symbolic language of mythology, which was so
closely associated with the sublime in the Romantic mind? The cultural pres-
tige of the Eddic motifs that Grundtvig applied exempted him from the burden
of having to justify his antagonistic views, even though, on the other side of the
border, German nationalists were appropriating the exact same corpus in or-
der to convey the exact opposite political message (Zernack, 2011). The actual
content of a statement does not seem to matter that much; the more mytho
logy one uses in its expression, the deeper the impact (Lincoln, 2014).
As a certain type of narrative template (Wertsch, 2008), mythological nar-
ratives serve to simplify and polarise a complex world that can be readily
divided into good guys (the gods) and bad guys (giants, trolls and Loki). It is
exactly because of its vagueness and its complete lack of nuance that mytho
logy is never wrong. It accelerates the process of ideological inclusion and ex-
clusion, which is the very engine of identity formation. This dynamic role of
mythology in human society was already recognised by the Dutch cultural
historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945), who maintained that communities ga
thered around an exclusive canon of narratives form “a closed culture group of
a very ancient type” (Huizinga, 1958, p. 138). The link between myth and iden-
tity – which forms the central theme of this volume – is indeed an ancient one,
but it is by no means confined to the (distant) past; mythologies continue
to shape societies and cultural identities all over the globe and up to the
present day. For this reason, the artificial distinction between the original
historical mythologies on the one hand and their later receptions on the oth-
er – for instance: the original lays of the Poetic Edda versus Wagner’s Ring des
Nibelungen – is an untenable one; both the oldest historical sources and their
modern interpretations are part of the same mythological process, and fulfil
a similar role in society. Quests for the original, undefiled version of a myth
are futile. In their very essence, myths are always interpretations, and this ev-
er-evolving palimpsest of consecutive interpretations of stories is all we have
(Blumenberg, 1979; Clunies Ross, 2018a).
About This Volume
All the contributions brought together in this collection are based on papers
delivered at an international conference organised by Monika Baár and myself
at the Department of Modern History of the University of Groningen, in the far
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Introduction 5
north of the Netherlands.1 Monika and I agreed that we wanted to approach the
cultural construction of “northernness” – or northern identities – in relation to
national mythologies from an interdisciplinary, international and comparative
perspective. Our goal was to move beyond the excellent research already per-
formed in Old Norse mythology in modern times2 and to follow the thread of
modern myth interpretation all the way through to our own days. How does the
“new mythology” of the long nineteenth century affect the representation of
Eddic motifs in modern media? And how are northern identities formulated in
other mythological traditions, such as the Finno-Ugric, Frisian or Celtic ones?
The international conference Northern Myths, Modern Identities: The Na-
tionalisation of Mythologies in Northern Europe 1800–2014 took place from 27 to
29 November 2014 and brought together a wide range of scholars from Europe,
the United States and Canada, including (cultural) historians, literary scholars,
musicologists, linguists and religious scholars. They all presented their own
particular take on the topic of mythology and northernness over the course
of six thematic sessions: The North as a Mythical Space, Modern Scandina-
vian Literature, Northernness in the East, Regional Northernness: The Case of
Friesland, The Visual Arts and Music, and The Myth of the North from an In-
ternational Perspective. The broad spectrum of topics treated in these sessions
stretched from the philological construction of a northern literary space in the
nineteenth century (Leerssen and Ísleifsson) to the ideological application
of myths in the national movements of Iceland (Gunnlaugsson) and Dutch
Friesland (Nijdam and Knottnerus), and the role of myths in supra-nation-
al movements such as Pan-Scandinavianism. The global reverberation of
rediscovered or invented mythologies in the nineteenth, twentieth and
twenty-first centuries often followed mysterious patterns, as Tom Shippey
demonstrated in his keynote address on the unexpected, intercontinental
web of relations between the Finnish Kalevala, Henry Wadsworth Longfel-
low’s Song of Hiawatha and Tolkien’s Silmarillion. The subtler, often implicit
employment of Eddic motifs in modern Icelandic literature dealing with the
Allied occupation of the island during the Second World War is carefully exam-
ined by Daisy L. Neijmann. Several papers, some of which crystallised into book
chapters, addressed the cultural crosspollinations of postmodernity, leading
1 The only exception here is Tim van Gerven, who joined the team of contributors at a later
stage.
2 This research includes, but is not limited to, Lassen (2008), Egilsson (1999), Schulz and
Heesch (2009), Schulz (2011), Clunies Ross (1994), Greenway (1977), Ægidius (1985), Wawn
(1994), Helgason (2017) and Shippey (2005). Clunies Ross, M. (ed.), The Pre- Christian Reli-
gions of the North. Research and Reception: From c. 1830 to the Present (2018) appeared just too
late to be taken into consideration in this introduction.
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6 Halink
to, for instance, a “classical” Japanese adaptation of Finland’s national epic, the
Kalevala (Willson).
The critical assessment of national ideologies – a dominant theme in post–
Second World War art and literature – has resulted in radically new inter-
pretations, and even complete inversions of the same myths that were once
considered the very pillars of national identity. In contemporary Scandinavian
literature, modern phenomena and social developments such as globalisation
are thematised in Eddic terms (Tromp), and Loki – the archetypal villain of
old – has become the excluded other, the underdog, the immigrant (Schulz).
Viking culture has gone mainstream around the globe, and Neo-Pagan recon-
structionists everywhere, from the Baltics to Australia, continue to find new
ways to give shape to their particular religious notions of northernness (Saun-
ders). Does mythology still give rise to Huizinga’s “closed cultural groups” even
if its members are no longer tied to traditional tribes or nations, but dispersed
over all the corners of the spaceless space of the World Wide Web? As this vo
lume demonstrates, the myths of old have acquired new layers of significance
in our (post-)modern age, making them – in some cases – tools of inclusion
rather than exclusion. In her contribution to this volume, Willson demon-
strates for instance that foreign artists living in Finland view their cultivation
of material from the Kalevala as an opportunity to demonstrate “their interest
in participating in Finnish culture, and [of] promoting the idea that they could
bring something to it”.
The creative energy generated by the interaction of so many renowned ex-
perts in so many different fields was simply spectacular, and I am convinced
that this volume of selected articles will do justice to the dynamic character of
the conference. The topics under discussion may be diverse and (seemingly)
worlds apart from each other, but they are by no means unrelated; the great
variety of subjects highlighted in the chapters of this book serves as a testi-
mony to the boundless resourcefulness of mythological narratives and their
effects on the way communities fashion themselves. Due to the comparative
perspective of the conference, general themes – such as contestation and ap-
propriation, and the ideological ambivalence of myths – became more clearly
discernible, allowing the participants to further develop their understanding
of the ideological dynamics of mythology.
Within the borders of the Netherlands, there is certainly no better location
for a conference on northern identity than the city of Groningen, the largest
urban centre of the northern provinces, located between the Frisian Islands
to the north, German East Frisia to the east and Dutch Friesland to the west.
The Frisians have been actively cultivating their own distinct culture, language
(West Frisian is the second official language of the Netherlands) and history
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Introduction 7
vis-à-vis their “significant other” – the “Hollanders” – ever since the ideals of
Romantic nationalism found its adherents even in this rural periphery (Jensma,
1998). The fact that Friesland lies north of Holland has had a profound
effect on the development of the Frisian national narrative, in which the an-
cient binary opposition between a “pagan north” and a “civilised south” has
been reactivated, this time – contrary to its medieval cultivation – in favour
of the undefiled, free and noble northern heathens. King Redbad, the last
heathen ruler of the Frisians in the seventh and eighth centuries – before the
Franks took over and Christianity was imposed – became a national hero, a
symbol of Frisian freedom, and something of a pagan deity in his own right (as
demonstrated in the contribution by Han Nijdam and Otto Knottnerus). The
need to emphasise the cultural otherness of Friesland led to a strong associa-
tion with everything Nordic and Scandinavian in Frisian culture and, around
the turn of the twentieth century, Frisian intellectuals – who considered them-
selves “southern Scandinavians” rather than “northern Dutchmen” – flocked to
the university town of Groningen to study Norwegian and Old Norse, and to
establish linguistic and cultural ties with the north that could separate them
culturally from the Netherlands.
This Frisian presence in Groningen manifested itself in the Frisian contribu-
tions to our conference, providing the whole event with a couleur locale and
linking regional history with the better-known national traditions of larger
nations. Although Frisians nowadays are still very proud of their own heri-
tage and identity, Frisian independence is no longer very high on the political
agenda. However, the northern element in the province’s self-image is still very
much alive, as can be experienced first-hand during the annual Explore the
North festival in Leeuwarden – the capital of Friesland – where artists, bands
and poets from the Nordic world and from Friesland express their common
northernness in a wide variety of cultural events. Because our conference in
Groningen coincided with this festival, we decided to include an excursion to
Friesland and to “explore the north” in a less academic fashion. In this context,
Tom Shippey delivered a popular lecture on the multiple links between Tol
kien and the north, which was very well attended and succeeded in building a
bridge between interested members of the general public and the ivory tower
of academia.
Acknowledgments
At this point, I would like to thank Sjoerd Bootsma, Harmen van der Hoek and
the entire Explore the North team for their enthusiasm and cooperation, and
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8 Halink
for granting the conference members free entrance to all events. Gratitude is
also due to Nelleke IJssennagger and the Frisian Museum (Fries Museum) for
letting all participants experience a taste of Frisian culture at their exquisite
permanent exhibition, which was distinguished with an important Dutch mu-
seum award in 2015.
The conference Northern Myths, Modern Identities – and hence also this book
– would never have been realised without the kind support of our sponsors, to
whom I would like to extend my gratitude on these pages. We received generous
support from the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (icog),
the Frisian Academy in Leeuwarden, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences (knaw) and the Huizinga Institute: the Dutch research institute
and graduate school for cultural history. Furthermore, the project is deeply in-
debted to Joep Leerssen and the interactive Study Platform on Interlocking Na-
tionalisms, which not only provided the theoretical framework for approaching
national identity from an international perspective, but also the financial means
to do so. I would like to thank Jón Karl Helgason and Terry Gunnell for their valu-
able comments on the entire manuscript, Donald Reindl for proofreading all the
contributions, and Masja Horn and Wendel Scholma of Brill Publishers for our
very pleasant collaboration and for including this volume in Brill’s acclaimed se-
ries National Cultivation of Culture, to which it so clearly belongs.
Last but not least, I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and, especially,
all contributors to this volume for their incredible patience and dedication.
The completion of this book was a very (very!) long and sometimes tedious
process, and I am greatly indebted to all of the authors for hanging in there. I
hope this book will contribute to the international discussion on mythology
and identity formation at large, and open new paths for further research in this
fascinating and ever-expanding field.
References
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Barthes, R. (1957). Mythologies. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Blumenberg, H. (1979): Arbeit am Mythos. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Böldl, K. (2000). Der Mythos der Edda. Nordische Mythologie zwischen europäischer
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Introduction 9
Clunies Ross, M. (1994). Prolonged Echoes. Volume 1: Old Norse Myths in Medieval North-
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Reception Volume II: From c. 1830 to the Present. Turnhout: Brepols.
Cohen, A.P. (1985). The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Ellis Horwood
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íslenska bókmenntafélag and ReykjavíkurAkademían.
Greenway, J.L. (1977). The Golden Horns. Mythic Imagination and the Nordic Past.
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Halink, S. (2017). Noble Heathens: Jón Jónsson Aðils and the Problem of Iceland’s
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Reaktion Books.
Herder, J.G. (1796). Iduna, oder der Apfel der Verjüngung. Die Horen 1, 488.
Huizinga, J. (1958 [1938]). Homo Ludens. Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der
cultuur. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon.
Jensma, G. (1998). Het rode tasje van Salverda. Burgerlijk bewustzijn en Friese identiteit in
de negentiende eeuw. Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy.
Lassen, A. (ed., 2008). Det norrøne og det nationale. Reykjavík: Stofnun Vigdísar
Finnbogadóttur.
Leerssen, J.T. (2005). Ossian and the Rise of Literary Historicism. In Gaskill, H. (ed.),
The Reception of Ossian in Europe (pp. 109–125). London: Thoemmes Continuum.
Leerssen, J.T. (2006). Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture. Nations and National-
ism 12(4), 559–578.
Leerssen, J.T. (2016). Gods, Heroes and Mythologists: Romantic Scholars and the Pagan
Roots of Europe’s Nations. History of Humanities 1(1), 71–100.
Lincoln, B. (2014). Between History and Myth: Stories of Harald Fairhair and the Foun
ding of the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lundgreen-Nielsen, F. (1994). Grundtvig’s Norse Mythological Imagery – An Experi-
ment That Failed. In Wawn, A. (ed.), Northern Antiquity. The Post-Medieval Reception
of Edda and Saga (pp. 41–68). Enfield Lock, UK: Hisarlik Press.
Schulz, K., and Heesch, F. (2009). Edda-Rezeption. Volume 1: “Sang an Aegir” Nordische
Mythen um 1900. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
Schulz, K. (ed., 2011). Edda-Rezeption. Volume 2: Eddische Götter und Helden. Milieus
und Medien ihrer Rezeption. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
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Shippey, T.A. (ed., 2005). The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Mon-
strous. Turnhout: Brepols.
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1(22) 169–172, (23), 177–181, (25), 193–197, (26), 201ff.
Thomsen, G. (1867; published anonymously). On the Character of the Old Northern
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Enfield Lock, UK: Hisarlik Press.
Wawn, A. (2002 [2000]). The Vikings and the Victorians. Inventing the Old North in 19th-
Century Britain. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
Wertsch, J.V. (2008). Collective Memory and Narrative Templates. Social Research: An
International Quarterly 75(1), 133–156.
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Winter.
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Part 1
Imagining the North
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Chapter 1
The North: A Cultural Stereotype between

Metaphor and Racial Essentialism
Joep Leerssen
The idea of the north is one of those things that require not so much a history
of ideas as an archéologie du savoir. It permeates cultural, social and scholarly
attitudes, and it is not so much part of today’s conscious and explicit know
ledge as it is part of the implicit frame within which knowledge is situated. My
approach to this archaeology of the north can only be of a broadly surveying,
inventorising nature, drawing on a great body of work already done, especially
on the growth of scientific racialism in nineteenth-century Europe.1 In par
ticular, my approach is informed by previous research in imagology. In what
follows, I summarise existing imagological insights and then apply them to
what is known from other historical disciplines about the history of a Nordic
mirage (philological and ethnographical) in the nineteenth century. Although
I can only offer the most modest of introductions to the imagery of a Nor
dic cultural/ethnic mirage, I wish to suggest that the north is structurally and
necessarily ambivalent, representing both a cultural/moral metaphor and an
ethnographic doctrine; that between those two modalities there is a constant
back-and-forth slippage and a noticeable tendency to gravitate from cultural
metaphor toward racial essentialism; and that this persists even after its real-
world ethnographical claims have been bankrupted.
1 The Image of the North
Imagology, a specialised area in comparative literature that critically studies

the imputation of characters or temperaments to nations, has long observed
1 Existing surveys are, for instance, Augstein (1996), Gould (1981), Montagu (1962), Poliakov
(1987) and Stocking (1987); an excellent contribution from archaeology is Demoule (2014).
I also draw gratefully, and without specific references in each case, on the many relevant con
tributions to the Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (Leerssen, 2018). Nor have
I felt it necessary to reference canonical, widely repertoried literary and philosophical texts
other than by title and chapter (all translations are mine).

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14 Leerssen
a general trend to oppose northern and southern characters.2 Indeed, it is a

fundamental principle in imagology that a given image can only be adequately
studied as part of a discourse of contrasting opposition: the idea of the north
must thus be studied as the discourse of a north–south opposition.
To offer some examples, in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette a young woman from
Yorkshire (with the wintry name Lucy Snow) finds herself in a F rench-speaking
Continental city calqued on Brussels; in Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger, a young
man from a northern German town wrestles with the opposing tempera
ments he has inherited from his Hanseatic father and his Brazilian mother;
the film comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Welcome to the Sticks) revolves
around the opposition between the sun-soaked French Riviera and the rain-
drenched French–Belgian border area north of Lille; an important episode
in Lampedusa’s Il gattopardo (The Leopard) contrasts the civic Italy of Turin
and Milan with the feudal stupor of Sicily; and A.M. de Jong’s Dutch Merijntje
Gijzen novels oppose the rustic traditions of communitarian, intensely Catho
lic Brabant with the industrial modernity of Rotterdam, invoking a proverbial
Dutch opposition between the areas south and north of the Great Rivers, but
also schematising that opposition in terms that are remarkably parallel to the
two Englands evoked in George Eliot’s Silas Marner and Mrs Gaskell’s North
and South.
As those parallels suggest, the terms of these north–south oppositions are
generic rather than case-specific. No matter where the north–south contrast is
located, in Italy or England, or anywhere in between, no matter whether it is
within a country (Holland vs. Brabant, or Lille vs. Côte d’Azur) or between coun
tries, the opposition will deploy the same set of schematising characteristics.
In a given north–south opposition, the north will gravitate to individualism, a
preference for honesty over appearances, and a more introspective and moral
approach to life, whereas the south will gravitate toward gregariousness, a pre
ference for appearances over earnestness, and a more extraverted and sensual
approach to life. The contrast is ubiquitous: it ranges from high literature to tele
vised advertisements (for instance, for Canadian beer or Italian pasta sauce).3
It informs not only high and low culture, but also politics – witness the pro
gramme of Italy’s Northern League (Lega Nord) or the anti-Mediterranean re
servations of northern European eurosceptics. It has even been exported to other
parts of the world: the American opposition between civic-minded, puritan
2 For imagology as a method, see Beller and Leerssen (2007) and Dyserinck (2015). Specifically
on the image of the north, see Boele (1996), Fjågesund (2014), Fjågesund and Symes (2003)
and Povlsen (2008).
3 On the “banal nationalism” of such ethnotypes, see Leerssen (2015).
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The North: A Cultural Stereotype 15
New England and the chivalric, slave-owning, plantation culture of the South
ern states is demonstrably derived from the European north/south template.4
The pride that Canadians take in their northern character is a moral one, link
ing that point on the compass with moral qualities such as integrity and love
of freedom. As the Canadian national anthem has it,
O Canada! Our home and native land!

True patriot love in all thy sons command!
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North, strong and free!5
The template has even been exported to fictional worlds. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Middle Earth, the qualities of the people of Rohan, when juxtaposed with the
more Imperial (although slightly faded) grandeur of neighbouring Gondor,
takes on a recognisable north–south contrast; and, in the universe of George
R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones cycle, the grimly northern Winterfell, home of
the rough-hewn but honest Stark clan, is opposed to the decadently sybaritic
southern metropolis of King’s Landing, whose wily, scheming denizens have
better-groomed bodies, more elegant (and revealing) clothes, better social
graces and polysyllabic names. As Boele (1996) has shown, the association
between iciness and the north is so ingrained that in western European dis
course even eastward locations such as Russia or Siberia tended to be qualified
as “northern” – a triumph of cultural/climatological associations over physical
geography, as is the constant failure to realise that “northern” cities such as
Toronto and Chicago lie at a more southerly latitude than Marseille or Venice.
This extremely wide textual diffusion and semantic vagueness bespeaks the
long, deep roots of the image of the north, which is traditionally linked to the
idea that cool climates make for cool heads, and hot climates for hot bodies. It
can be traced back as far as Hippocrates’ epidemiology of temperaments and
conditions (in On Airs, Waters and Places), and Aristotle’s Politics.6
4 The standard work on climate theory is Zacharasiewicz (1977); that author’s work on the
United States is collected in Zacharasiewicz (2010).
5 Nordicity permeates Canadian culture and can be encountered in unexpected spots, such
as the 1977 album Au nord de notre vie (In the North of Our Lives) by the French-Canadian
prog-rock band cano (which stands for Coopérative des Artistes du Nouvel-Ontario “Artists’
Cooperative of Northern Ontario”); the suite containing the album’s title track is named “A la
poursuite du nord” (In Pursuit of the North).
6 Zacharasiewicz (1977). In what follows, the references to classic texts from Aristotle to
Madame de Staël, available in many editions and also online, is by book or chapter heading
only; the English translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
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16 Leerssen
People that inhabit cold climates, like that of Europe, are usually coura
geous, but inferior in intelligence and industry. Although they preserve
their liberty, they are unruly and incapable of dominating their neigh
bours. In Asia, on the other hand, the people are more intelligent and
more skilful in the arts, but they are spineless and subsist under eternal
despotism. The Greek race, which is situated between the two, unites
their qualities.
Politics vii, 7
Aristotle’s Greek self-congratulation on having, in one’s own nation, a juste mi-

lieu between the extremes of the cold north and hot south is also often encoun
tered in this tradition. The tradition itself was given an enormously important
sounding board and launch pad by the literature of Classical Rome. Thus, the
opening sentences of Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico (Commentaries on
the Gallic War) invoke an opposition between the effete south of Gaul (the
Provincia Narbonensis) and the stalwart, belligerent land of the Belgae in the
north – a passage that marked, ever since the Middle Ages, every schoolboy’s
first step on the path to learning Latin and thus, for centuries, was inculcated
into the brains of literally every European intellectual:
All Gaul is divided in three parts; one is inhabited by the Belgae, another
by the Aquitani and the third by those that in their own language are
called Celts (and Gauls in ours). All these differ in language, institu
tions and laws. Of them all, the strongest are the Belgae because they
are furthest removed from the refinement and civility of the Provence,
merchants reach them least frequently to import those luxury goods that
tend to effeminate the spirit, and because they are closest to the Germani
that live across the Rhine, with whom they are in a constant state of war.
Commentarii de bello gallico i:1
Caesar’s implicit critique of Rome as a centre of luxury and decadence, to which

more northern climes were less exposed, came to the fore in full force a cen
tury and a half later in Tacitus’s Germania: describing an inclement, cold and
frugal habitat, and hence both barbarous and full of freedom-loving, rugged,
egalitarian manliness. This is implicitly opposed to Roman decadence (Tacitus
wrote after the transition from Cato’s and Cicero’s Republic to Caligula’s and
Nero’s Empire) in terms that foreshadow the opposition between Winterfell
and King’s Landing. Tacitus links locale to ethos, situs to mores Germanorum:
The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at

all with other races through immigration or intercourse…. Who would
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leave Asia, or Africa, or Italy for Germany, with its wild country, its in
clement skies, its sullen manners and aspect, unless indeed it were his
home?
Their country, though somewhat various in appearance, yet generally
either bristles with forests or reeks with swamps; it is more rainy on the
side of Gaul, bleaker on that of Noricum and Pannonia. It is productive of
grain, but unfavourable to fruit-bearing trees; it is rich in flocks and herds,
but these are for the most part undersized, and even the cattle have not
their usual beauty or noble head. It is number that is chiefly valued; they
are in fact the most highly prized, indeed the only riches of the people.
Silver and gold the gods have refused to them, whether in kindness or in
anger I cannot say.
Germania i: 2–5; translated by Church and Brodribb as posted on Wikisource
Germania, rediscovered in the fifteenth century after centuries of oblivion, fa

mously boosted the ethnic self-awareness of Reformation Germany (around
humanists such as Conrad Celtis and Martin Luther) as being the moral op
posite of Roman frivolousness and corruption. Thus, from the Reformation on
ward, the idea took hold of a Europe consisting of a cerebral, moral north and
a sanguine, sensuous south. A major consolidation of this scheme was Montes
quieu’s De l’esprit des loix (The Spirit of the Laws), which aligned climate and
political constitution. For Montesquieu, hot climates gravitated toward autho
ritarian or despotic rule and cold climates toward tribalism or republicanism
– the implicit ideal being a mixed government suitable to temperate climes
such as that of France, midway between the extremes of Cromwell and Philip
ii. Montesquieu connected climate and constitutions by means of physical
anthropology:
Cold air constricts the extremities of the external fibres of the body; this
increases their elasticity and favours the return of the blood from the ex
treme parts to the heart. It contracts those very fibres; consequently, it
also increases their force. In contrast, warm air relaxes and lengthens the
extremes of the fibres; of course, it diminishes their force and elasticity.
People are, therefore, more vigorous in cold climates…. The inhabitants
of warm countries are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold coun
tries are, like young men, brave…. In cold countries they have very little
sensibility for pleasure; in temperate countries, they have more; in warm
countries, their sensibility is exquisite. As climates are distinguished by
degrees of latitude, we might also distinguish them in some measure
by those of sensibility. I have been at the opera in England and in Italy,
where I have seen the same pieces and the same performers; and yet the
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18 Leerssen
same music produces such different effects on the two nations: one is so
cold and phlegmatic, and the other so lively and enraptured, that it seems
almost inconceivable.
Montesquieu, De l’esprit des loix, book 14, chapter 2
This physical underpinning resonated with the fact that the Hippocratic hu
mours or temperaments had long been factored into the north–south scheme:
melancholic and phlegmatic humours belonged to cold climates (with, respec
tively, dry and wet living conditions) whereas sanguine and choleric tempera
ments were more at home in the hot south (again, in wet or dry conditions,
respectively). The scheme found its full expression with Madame de Staël and
her De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales
(On Literature and Its Relationship to Social Institutions) of 1800:
It appears to me that there are two quite distinct literatures: one from
the south and one from the north – one having Homer for its source,
the other originating with Ossian … that literature of the north that
began with Scottish bards, Icelandic fables and Scandinavian poems….
The poetry of melancholia is closest to philosophy: sadness penetrates
deeper into the character and destiny of man that any other mental dis
position…. the northern imagination, which dwells on the shoreline, the
sound of the wind, the wild heathland: it leads the tired soul from its
destinies into the future, toward another world. Nature exercises a deep
influence on the peoples of the north; its influence is like its aspect in
their climes, always sombre and nebulous.
De la littérature, chapter 9
Although the terms of the opposition are fairly constant, their revalorisation
is remarkable: the north is now no longer rough-hewn, but melancholy and
contemplative. This revalorisation is of its time and coincides with the dis
covery of the new aesthetics of the sublime (which appreciates awe-inspiring
grandeur in landscapes that before 1700 counted as merely inhospitable and
repugnantly uninviting). Romanticism made its entrance onto the intellectual
scene.
Around the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Classical tradition
(derived, ultimately, from Homer) was seen as southern, whereas a Romantic-
vernacular tradition, derived from Ossian and the Celtic-Scandinavian bards, is
properly northern (in line with Ossian’s long-standing epithet as the “Homer of the
north”). The Tweedledee-Tweedledum relationship between beautiful, south
ern, Classical, sanguine Homer and sublime, northern, Romantic, melancholic
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Ossian had, in the runup between Montesquieu and De Staël, been patented
by the long Ossianic interpolations in Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
(The Sorrows of Young Werther), where the hero, as he moves from cheerful
vitality to suicidal love-sickness, replaces his reading of Homer with that of
Ossian (“In my heart, Ossian has altogether displaced Homer”).
With Madame de Staël and the name of Ossian, one sees the moment in
history when a north–south opposition crosses over into the developing new
science of philology. The emergence of the new philology is one of the inci
sive scholarly and intellectual revolutions of the modern period, linked to the
discovery of Sanskrit as a reference language for the European languages, the
rediscovery of the vernacular medieval literatures and non-Classical mytholo
gies, and the growth of the historical-comparative method, among other fac
tors. The modern languages and the new philology took their place alongside
the Classics; in important editors such as Karl Lachmann, one sees a transfer
of philological expertise in the Classics toward the modern languages (Leers
sen, 2004).
Most practitioners of the new philology were from northern Europe: next
to Lachmann, there were the Schlegel brothers, the Grimms and Rasmus Rask.
Furthermore, one of its first important manifestations was the elaboration of
a northern mythology: a systematisation of the pagan Germanic belief system
and its pantheon of gods and heroes to provide a northern counterpart to the
accustomed Classical one. This culminates, of course, with Jacob Grimm’s
Deutsche Mythologie (Germanic Mythology) of 1835, but has a long runup
among Danish scholars, of whom the historian Peter Frederik Suhm was the
first one, providing a kick-off with Om Odin og den hedniske gudelære og guds
tjeneste udi Norden (Odin and Pagan Mythology and Worship in the North,
1771), later followed and consolidated by Rasmus Nyerup’s Edda eller Skandi-
navernes hedenske Gudelære (The Edda or Scandinavian Mythology) and N.S.F.
Grundtvig’s Nordens Mytologi, eller Udsigt over Eddalæren for dannede Mænd,
der ei selv ere Mytologer (Nordic Mythology or an Overview of the Teachings of
the Edda for Educated Men Who Are Not Themselves Experts in Mythology,
both 1808). It was only when this Danish Nordic-mythological tradition was
well-established that the new generation of Germanisten in Germany caught
on, both as literary inspiration (La Motte Fouqué, Der Held des Nordens “The
Hero of the North”, 1810; Ludwig Uhland, Der Mythos von Thôr nach nordischen
Quellen “The Myth of Thor Based on Nordic Sources”, 1836) and as philological
challenge (Friedrich Rühs, Die Edda, nebst einer Einleitung über die nordische
Poesie und Mythologie “The Edda, Alongside an Introduction to Nordic Poetry
and Mythology”, 1812). The paradigm also affected philologists in the British
Isles, from Thomas Percy to Max Müller (Leerssen, 2016). By then, the idea of
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nordicity, including its moral qualities (melancholic manliness as opposed to

sensual hedonism), was also inscribed in the enterprise. When the Estonian
student and poet Kristjan Jaak Peterson translated Kristfried Ganander’s My-
thologia Fennica (Finnish Mythology, 1789) into German (Reval/Tallinn, 1822),
he already stressed that this Finnish–Baltic belief-system was melancholic and
chilly (and, in a manner, still post-Ossianic), as befitted its clime:
Do not expect to find here the fair fantasy-creations of Greece, do not

search in the Finnish lays those hymns that the Greeks sang to their gods,
that they could sing in their country under the blue of their sky. High in
the north is the home of the Finns, ice and snow cover their mountains,
the summer is as it were a brief appearance, staying a little while before
giving way to a raw winter. It is almost the same for the neighbouring
Estonians, related to their Finnish kin.
peterson, 1822, p. 3
When, in Germany, Grimm-style Germanic studies got under way, it did so

in an anti-French political and intellectual climate, and as part of the anti-
Napoleonic backlash of 1806–1813. The Germanic specialists saw themselves,
and their subject-matter, as the very opposite of Latin or Romance culture. If
one read the collected book reviews by Jacob Grimm (gathered in volumes four
and five of his Kleinere Schriften “Minor Works”), his anti-French Germanism
appears as a noticeable tincture, a flavour to everything he writes. He shares
Fichte’s belief that the northern Germans are superior because they remained
true to their original language and, in a manner, to the tribal structures under
lying the feudal duchies of the old empire; this as opposed to those Franks,
Goths, Lombards and Burgundians (among others), who, after they had con
quered the lands of the former Roman Empire, themselves adopted vulgar Latin
as their language and became speakers of French, Spanish or Italian. Grimm
saw the pattern repeated in modern Belgium and called the francophone Bel
gians entartet “degenerate”. The types of medieval literature that he prefers are
the oldest epics, based on Nordic topics. Romances derived from Chrétien de
Troyes or inflected by the chivalric ethos of courtly love are for him already a
sign of decadence from the primitive stalwart manliness of tribal Germanic
times. Moreover, in modern scholarship, there is a noticeable dislike of the
French school of diplomatic editing, which he considers superficial and spe
cious, aiming for facile glamour, as opposed to the German philological virtues
of earnest dedication to hard toil and a penetration into deep structures by
critically collating manuscript variants toward an ideal-typical Urtext. The ad
jectives of praise for colleagues are always within the moral spectrum of the
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German self-image and opposed to French frivolousness: the Germans are bie-
der “honest”, fleissig “hard-working”, gründlich “thorough” and ernst “serious”.
Thus the moral qualities of an ethnic stereotype overlap with the professional
values of a new type of scholarship.7 Philology is, in short, a Nordic science.
Even in the fictional worlds of Tolkien and George R.R. Martin, the northern
families are endowed – almost implicitly, as a matter of course – with lapidary
Germanic name-forms gravitating toward the monosyllabic: Bard, Beorn and
Eorl; and Robb Stark.
2 Ethnography and the Rise of Nordic Racism
The history of the New Philology (with the New Mythology as an outrider)
runs concurrently with the development of pseudoscientific European ra
cism. However, it would be a drastic simplification to conflate the two, and see
figures such as Jacob Grimm as direct forerunners and even pathbreakers for
Nazism – although it would be no less of a simplification to deny the connec
tion altogether and to give nineteenth-century intellectuals an ideological “Get
out of jail free” card solely on the merit of their being pre-twentieth-century.
Overlaps there were; in some cases, these were no more significant than that
philologists shared the prejudices of their century. In other cases, they were
weightier (as in the case of the völkisch chauvinism of Felix Dahn, on whom
see Frech, 1996). However, these interactions can only be adequately gauged
after setting the history of racial-ethnographic thought beside that of philo
logical thought.
Around 1800, the scholarly division of humankind into different genealogi
cal lines of descent moved away from a biblical derivation from the shared
starting point of Adam and Eve (or Noah’s nuclear family) and toward some
thing more differentiated known as polygenism; scholars were less prepared
to accept familiarity with non-European populations and preferred to stress
differences over a putative common origin (monogenism). This attitude com
bined the gradual decline of the Bible as a scholarly authority for organising
7 The relationship cut both ways: when the Germanic specialists convened as a professional
body under Grimm’s chairmanship in Frankfurt in 1846, the national nature of their subject
matter almost automatically informed the nationalist justification of their endeavours, and
they wanted to demonstrate their public status by providing Germany with scholarly, philo
logical reasons justifying anti-Danish claims on Schleswig-Holstein. Grimm followed this
through in 1848 with his Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Language)
and his interventions in the Frankfurt Parliament, philologically vindicating German claims
not just on Schleswig-Holstein, but on all of Jutland (cf. Leerssen, 2011).
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22 Leerssen
knowledge and a growing post-Enlightenment sense of European superiority

of development. Stadialism (the idea that societies went through invariant
stages of refinement, Europe counting as the world’s developmental frontrun
ner as opposed to the more backward rest) was aligned with physical features:
skin, hair and eye colour. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s late eighteenth-
century division of mankind into Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian
and American races partly applied a traditional alignment by continent and
partly relied on cranial features. Around the same time, the study of the diver
sity of humankind (ethnology) split off from the study of the unifying charac
teristics of humanity (anthropology in the classical sense). The term ethnology
was coined in Adam Franz Kollár’s description of the lands of the Hungarian
crown, Historiae iurisque publici Regni Ungariae amoenitates (Amenities of
the History and Constitutional Law of the Kingdom of Hungary, 1783); shortly
thereafter, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Plan einer vergleichenden Anthropologie
(Plan for a Comparative Anthropology, 1792) consolidated this ethnic inter
est, also advanced in Alexandre-César Chavannes’s Anthropologie ou science
générale de l’homme, qui esquisse la séparation entre anthropologie physique et
ethnologie (Anthropology or the General Science of Man, Which Sketches the
Separation between Physical Anthropology and Ethnology, 1788).
The scientific-taxonomic division of mankind into descent communities
played itself out primarily in the colonial relations of Europe’s empires with
the wider world. However, within Europe, the genealogical descent of the na
tion also provoked ethnographic work. In Britain, the old political division of
the nation’s bloodstreams into an aristocratic French-Norman and an oppos
ing tribal-democratic Anglo-Saxon one (with representative names such as
De Courcy, De Vere and Montagu opposing the likes of Thorne, Browne and
Oak8) had been systematised in Sharon Turner’s benchmark History of the
Anglo-Saxons (1799–1805) and Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820). Inspired by this
racial view of the nation’s history, French historians such as the Thierry bro
thers raised the question whether the French were descendants of the ancient
8 Those last three names I sample from later Victorian novels: Edward Hughes’s Tom Brown’s
School Days (1857), Anthony Trollope’s Doctor Thorne (1858) and Thomas Hardy’s Far from the
Madding Crowd (1874). In all three novels, the names and characters connote down-to-earth,
homegrown, rustic and indeed Anglo-Saxon Englishness. The opening chapter of Hughes’s
book explicitly presents the lineage of the Brown family transhistorically, as the backbone
of rural England “in their quiet, dogged, homespun way” and contrasting their collective-
anonymous Englishness to the magnates with their Norman-French names: “Talbots and
Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but
those noble families would be somewhat astounded – if the accounts ever came to be fairly
taken – to find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of the Browns”.
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Franks or the ancient Gauls (which, as in Britain, was a question with political
overtones: the Franks stood for conquering aristocrats, and the Gauls for tribal
democracy; cf. Viallaneix and Ehrard, 1982). This antiquarian question was
shifted into the ethnographic realm when William Frederic Edwards, an Eng
lish physician established in Paris, addressed an open letter to Thierry entitled
Des caractères physiologiques des races humaines considérés dans leur rapports
avec l’histoire (Physiological Characters of Human Races Considered in their
Relationship with History, 1829); this same Edwards (1777–1842) submitted a
prize essay to the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres (Academy of
Inscriptions and Letters) called “Recherches sur les langues celtiques” (Studies
on the Celtic Languages, 1831, printed 1833) and took cranial measurements
to collect physical evidence for the ethnic background of the French popula
tion so as to determine its ambiguous (Celtic-Gaulish or Germanic-Frankish)
descent. Edwards was also a founding member of the Société Ethnologique
de Paris (Paris Ethnological Society), founded in 1839 in imitation of a simi
lar London society that was active between 1837 and 1842 (and which was re-
founded on the Parisian model later in the century). With representatives of
European prominence such as the celebrated anatomist and physician Paul
Broca (1824–1880), Paris (and the measuring methods and instruments devel
oped there) became a leading centre for ethnological studies. An additional
measuring instrument was, from the mid-nineteenth century, the characterisa
tion of proportional cranial dimensions (dolichocephalic vs. brachycephalic)
as indicators of descent (by the Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius). From the
late nineteenth century onward, almost immediately after the development of
portable photographic cameras, photography was used as a recording instru
ment of facial and racial types. After 1900, additional measuring methods were
introduced, from cranial volume (measured by filling skulls with fine-grained
material such as millet or mustard seeds) to blood type and, more recently,
dna genetics.
This ethnographic tradition, based on physiological observations and mea
surements, became itself mired in the ideological hang-ups of the century. The
reactionary Ancien Régime nobleman Count Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882),
highly regarded as an art historian, published his Essai sur l’inégalité des races
humaines (Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races) in 1853–1855, in which
all the aristocratic phobia of unsuitable marriages and spoiled bloodlines was
transferred into the racial idea of European supremacy. This was threatened, as
Gobineau saw it, by the pernicious tendency for interracial marriages to sully
ethnic purity (i.e., miscegenation). Darwinian thought (heredity passed on
genetically as an evolutionary agency) played into this phobia, which mean
while was feeding into a revival of antisemitism (after a period of relative
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24 Leerssen
hilosemitism during the Romantic decades). Racial purism and xenophobia

p
spread from Gobineau to Germany and the English-speaking world; in Germa
ny, it was taken up by the Wagner circle and the new völkisch types of national
ism (and it is here that one encounters the direct forerunners of Nazi thought);
in the English-speaking world it led to the eugenics of Darwin’s nephew Sir
Francis Galton (Hereditary Genius, 1869; generally also Horsman, 1981).
Racial ethnography, like the New Philology, developed its Nordic myth, and
indeed developed the concept of a “Nordic race”, condensed around Scandi
navia, by correlating the cephalic index of Retzius to geographic location. The
notion of a Nordic race was first put forward by the French anthropologist
Joseph Deniker (Les races de l’Europe “The Races of Europe”, 1899) and eagerly
taken up in America and Germany – witness Madison Grant’s The Passing of
the Great Race of 1916 (cf. Spiro, 2009) and Der nordische Gedanke unter den
Deutschen (The Nordic Idea among the Germans, 1925), by the notorious Hans
F.K. Günther (on whom, cf. Lützhoft, 1972 and Schwandt, 2008). Cranially mea
sured races did not easily align with language families – certainly in the case
of Slavic-, Celtic- or Baltic-speaking populations – but the idea of a Nordic
race was habitually associated with “Germanic” traits also involving blue eyes,
blonde hair and other features, much as the wider concept of Blumenbach’s
Caucasian race was aligned with the larger Indo-European language cluster,
and the word Aryan came into general usage. Thus a terminology was born in
which European supremacism was translated into that of Aryan hereditary su
periority, with the “Nordic” Germanic race as the pinnacle of that human elite.
Georges Vacher de Lapouge published his L’Aryen: Son rôle social (The Aryan:
His Social Role) in 1899. Lapouge (on him: Augustin, 2011) would later translate
the work of American nordicists (Madison Grant and William Z. Ripley) into
French, which, alongside the adoption of Gobineau’s thought in German ra
cism through intermediaries such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927;
son-in-law of Richard Wagner; cf. Field, 1981), indicates the tight-knit transna
tional ramifications of this type of pseudoscientific thought.
3 Ethnocultural Mix-Ups: The North as Orientation
Names such as Deniker, Lapouge, Grant and Günther stand well apart from the
history of philology. In the various tributaries that in the specific historical cir
cumstances of the twentieth century would feed into pseudoscientific racism
(Nazi-style and otherwise), this tradition is perhaps more important than,
and should not be simply conflated with, the textual-philological one. There
were crossovers between the two, of course, and these intensified around 1900,
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with figures such as Felix Dahn, and with the development of something called
Völkerpsychologie “ethnic psychology”, which claimed to demonstrate or de
scribe how moral temperaments and mentalities were determined by ethnic
descent.
Such racial profiling of cultures exposed its intellectual shoddiness in the
first half of the twentieth century, when it became a cultist and speculative
pseudoscience. It could only flourish in covens of believers and because it en
tered into a symbiosis with the ideologues of dictatorial regimes whose poli
cies it rationalised and whose protection it enjoyed. The interchangeability of
race, language and geographical location is now wholly discredited, and much
scholarly reflection in the second half of the twentieth century has gone into
paying off the mortgages it has saddled mankind with. A critical reckoning
with the murkier back pages of the sciences of anthropology and Germanic
studies gained momentum in the 1970s (cf. Stepan, 1982; Stocking, 1987; See,
2006; Dainat and Danneberg, 2003). Around the same time, also as a result of
the feminist “nature/nurture” interrogation of the relationship between physi
cal sex and social gender, a recalibration took place of the far-from-straight
forward relationship between race (as a transgenerationally inherited physical
constitution, subject to the accidents of genetic mixing and matching) and
culture (as a transgenerationally communicated lifestyle, subject to historical
changes and moral choices).
The very notion of transgenerational continuity can gravitate to the termi
nology (metaphorically or literally used) of “nation” or “race”. Weighing the
sharply biological connotations of the latter against the fuzzily cultural con
notations of the former is a tricky business, even nowadays. It was all the fuz
zier two hundred years ago, when the concepts of nation and race had not yet
spawned political doctrines with an -ism suffix. Jonathan Swift could still refer
to “the whole Race of Politicians”, and to say that something was “in the blood”
was undecidedly hovering between a cultural metaphor and a physiological
reality; indeed, given the medical and biological knowledge of the time, there
was no way of knowing where one ended and the other began. Although, as
I have shown above, the intellectual filiations of ethnography and philology
were quite distinct, they shared intermediaries and a common paradigmatic
ambience: the tendency to see contemporary culture in terms of its geographi
cal footprint, and historical culture in terms of a branching family tree. A bi
ology of human descent began to develop in tandem with the genealogical
language-tree of comparative linguistics; the two tree-types were aligned in
Ernst Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (General Morphology
of Organisms, 1866; cf. Dayrat, 2003; Gonthier, 2011). Unavoidably, therefore,
there were fuzzy overlaps and entanglements between the two. It became an
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26 Leerssen
ingrained habit to consider the Indo-European cluster of languages as the joint

property of a seamlessly overlapping actual human aggregate of tribes speak
ing those languages: the Aryans or Indo-Europeans, to be distinguished from
Semites, Finns and “Turanians” (i.e., Turks and Magyars).9
To be sure, that ethnic-linguistic conflation was also criticised and rejected
by the likes of Max Müller and others. Müller in particular is remembered now
adays for his often-quoted, feisty denunciation of the application of linguistics
to ethnic taxonomies:
To me an ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan

eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichoce
phalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar. It is worse that a Babylo
nian confusion of tongues – it is downright theft. We have made our own
terminology for the classification of languages; let ethnologists make
their own for the classification of skulls, and hair, and blood.
müller, 1888, p. 120
However, although Müller objected to linking race and language, he had no

such scruples when it came to linking race and mythology. An expert not only
on historical linguistics, but also on comparative religion and comparative
mythology, Müller habitually saw the larger family units within the Indo-
European tree (Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, etc.) as ethnic (racial) as well as lin
guistic categories, derived (nay, descended) from the original speakers that by
default were presented as the tribal ancestors of the contemporary nations
speaking the successor languages.
Comparative linguistics and comparative anthropology had always been
twin sisters (cf. Leerssen, 2010, pp. 207–208). The Welsh antiquary Samuel
Prichard (on whom, Augstein, 1997), author of a Physical History of Man (1813),
had attempted to trace The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations (1831) by moving
with equal ease in the fields of craniology and linguistics. Nicolas Wiseman re
ferred to “philological and physiological ethnography” as “sister sciences”. Max
Müller himself, whose righteous indignation at that type of conflation I have
just quoted, had no compunction whatsoever about speaking of an Aryan race
when he identified “organic” or “primary” myths as those “which were known
to the primæval Aryan race, before it broke up into Hindus, Greeks, Romans,
Germans, and Celts” (Müller, 1868, p. 242). In other words, the slippage from
language to race, from inherited culture to physical bloodline, was a given, and
9 Demoule (2014). On the racial status of the Finns (Nordic but not Aryan, and hence a ca
tegorical mismatch for racial nordicists), see Halmesvirta (1990) and Kemiläinen (1998).
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what is remarkable was, if anything, the extent to which linguists were in de
nial about their own racial essentialism; the inheritance of language was inex
tricably intertwined with the notion of physical descent.
For many nations, the purity of their descent from the tribal ancestors of pri
meval antiquity was a question of national honour; as was, indeed, the purity
of the national language, to be kept free from foreign admixture, exotic loan
words, “bastardisations” or “creolisations” – the words themselves speak vol
umes. This emphasis on ethnic purity was not necessarily a Nordic thing.
Autochthonous nativism informed Basque and Greek nationalism; Hungar
ians proudly traced their descent from those Magyar tribes whose right of
conquest had been established in historical memory (the ninth century, a mil
lennium celebrated in 1881); and Romanians variously invoked either their Da
cian tribal rootedness or the persistence of the Latin language of the Roman
conquerors. For the Greeks, the imputation that they fell short of unmixed
ethnic descent was a major irritant; that argument had been advanced in 1830
by Jakob Fallmerayer, who argued that the present-day Greeks were culturally
Hellenised Slavs and Albanians rather than linear descendants of the ancient
Hellenes. This provoked Greek cultural nationalism throughout the second
half of the century. Variations on these themes can be encountered through
out Europe.
However, the metaphor of the north cut both ways. If nations wanted to de
rive their roots from the freedom-loving, moral north as opposed to the deca
dent south, they could use the myth as a convenient projection screen for their
political or moral preferences. Fichte and Grimm celebrated the fact that the
Germans (unlike other nations that had migrated into their present-day ter
ritories in the course of recorded history and/or had changed their language
in that process) could boast an unbroken continuity of descent from the tribes
mentioned in Tacitus’s Germania; Danes cherished the historical continuity
from the days of Odin to Saxo Grammaticus, Sweden had its Götiska förbundet
(Geatish Society) and Iceland derived great prestige from the documented, un
broken continuity of its settlement. Various temperamental traits in the Eng
lish self-image of its cultural “character” were also typified in terms of descent
and inherited temperament. Ethnography also affected how the relationship
was conceived between the English heartland of the United Kingdom and its
various outlying parts (Wales, Scotland with its “Saxon” lowlands and “Celtic”
highlands, and Ireland with its “Celtic” natives and “Anglo-Irish” or “Ulster
Scots” colonial overlays). This was pursued in physical anthropology in John
Beddoe’s The Races of Britain: A Contribution to the Anthropology of Western
Europe (1862). In the mid-century decades, the kinship between English and
German was heavily stressed. In Germany, Germanic specialists saw the Saxons
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28 Leerssen
that had migrated across the North Sea as tribal cousins, who had kept their
Germanic heritage pure and unaffected (unlike the Franks, Burgundians,
Goths and Vandals, who had become Romanised during their wanderings);
Beowulf and even Shakespeare were seen as German literature by proxy, and
“Anglo-Saxon” institutions such as trial by jury were celebrated as a common
Germanic heritage. Even stronger was the Saxon self-identification in England,
a Saxonism that flourished in particular under the benign sponsorship of the
truly Saxon Prince Consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.10 Whatever was
high-minded in Victorian culture (the value of honesty; the “earnestness” lam
pooned by that gay Celt, Oscar Wilde; stern dedication to duty; a practical sense
of getting the job done; the containment of emotionality) was aligned with a
Saxon-Germanic ethnotype and implicitly or explicitly contrasted against the
perceived character of the frivolous French or the head-in-the-clouds Celts of
Wales, the Scottish Highlands and Ireland. Thomas Carlyle, the godfather of
Saxonism and of Victorian values, chided his adept, the Irish poet William
Allingham, for a proclivity to sentimental leprechaun balladry, and admon
ished him that it sat particularly badly with someone carrying a fine Saxon
name such as Allingham.
That moral-Victorian Saxonism dwindled after 1864, and something in that
process is highly relevant to my argument. In the 1860s, Matthew Arnold began
to denounce the Victorians’ pragmatic stolidity and unimaginative earnestness
as a form of philistinism: Saxonism was alright for the Germans themselves,
but in England it needed to be leavened by a “Hellenic” notion of sweetness
and light and a “Celtic” appreciation of imaginative fancy (Leerssen, 2006).
What is more, the Germans themselves, no longer the bumbling and amiable
Romantics or earnest improvers of the times of Prince Albert, morphed from
Saxons into Prussians, fused their operetta states into an empire, and posed an
increasingly competitive threat to Britain’s power position in Europe and the
world. This disenchantment with Germany has been well analysed in numer
ous studies (the best being Firchow, 1986), but usually in terms of a British
rapprochement with the erstwhile enemy, France. No less significant, perhaps,
is what happened when one consort was replaced by another, and, after the
death of Saxon Prince Albert, the new wife of the future Edward vii, Princess
Alexandra of Denmark, was welcomed in Britain. This was in 1863, on the very
eve of the disastrous defeat of Denmark by Prussia in the traumatic 1864 war,
which left Alexandra an implacable anti-Germanist. Tennyson, the poet laure
ate, greeted her upon her arrival by claiming the ethnic connection:
10 On this rich and well-researched topic, see Frantzen and Niles (1997), MacDougall (1982),
Oergel (1998) and Young (2008).
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Sea-kings’ daughter as happy as fair,

Blissful bride of a blissful heir,
Bride of the heir of the kings of the sea,
O joy to the people and joy to the throne,
Come to us, love us and make us your own:
For Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be,
We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee, Alexandra!
The refrain adroitly summarises the ethnically coded moral reorientation that
was at work in English society at the time. Saxonism, the old default men
tioned initially and almost in passing, was juxtaposed with its Norman and
Celtic counterparts, and all of them united in a jolly acknowledgement of a
“Danish” identity dating back to the sea-kings (the Vikings and Danes that
settled in medieval England). Shortly afterward, William Morris turns to the
Scandinavian North (A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of
the Mark, 1889), and a great vogue for Scandinavian nordicity (more broadly
analysed in Wawn, 2000) took hold, which was to reach across the centennial
divide to reach the Kalevala- and Edda-derived myths of J.R.R. Tolkien.
The north, as a metaphor, was something that could be adjusted to cater for
the cultural and moral needs of the moment. It was so for Tennyson and Mor
ris. In the decades after Tolkien and amplified by George R.R. Martin, it still
functions as such, and one also sees its workings in the neo-pagan and “gothic
metal” niches of contemporary culture. The price to be paid for unlocking that
rich and suggestive reservoir of cultural allusions, references and positionings
was – and remains – to skittle uneasily on the slippery slope that inclines from
affiliatory acknowledgement to derivation-by-descent, from cultural invoca
tion toward racial essentialism.
To conclude. The associations linked to the north and to the north–south
opposition have been moral in character for millennia. That is to say: they
reflect an opposition in terms of mores, manners and customs, in terms of
reflection on social relations and behavioural patterns. As part of a “moral”
philosophy, the trope could inform and characterise a long-standing discourse
of literary and cultural representations. That tradition in cultural production
continues to this very day. As “natural philosophy” came into its own alongside
moral philosophy, with the rise of empiricism and experimental science in the
century after Newton, the trope also began to inform that scientific discourse:
the north–south opposition was used, largely unthinkingly, in the schematisa
tion of what pretended to be hard, observation-derived facts, and in the field
of knowledge (rather than cultural) production. Philology, mythology/folklore,
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30 Leerssen
ethnography and the social sciences, as they emerged in the nineteenth

century, aligned their scientific observations with something that became
increasingly less a metaphor and increasingly more a metonymy: “the North”
and its culturally (morally) associated characteristics became not an “as-if”
concept, but a stand-in proxy term to label and summarise a whole complex
of empirically verifiable facts-of-life. The new scientific academic discourse
slotted into the pre-existing and continuing moral discourse of premodern
pseudoscience, and the moral discourse of a northern character accordingly
also began to inform a scientific trend toward biological essentialism and ra
cism. The process is well known, indeed notorious; but its historical dynamics –
the role of ethnotypes and rhetorical tropes in the shifting dynamics between
cultural production and knowledge production – continue to pose fresh and
important challenges for scholars.
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Chapter 2
Within or Outside Europe? Modernists and

Anti-modernists Visiting Iceland in
the Mid-Nineteenth Century
For a few years in the early 1870s, the Icelandic poet and scholar Benedikt
Gröndal published the magazine Gefn.1 Among other topics explored in this
publication, Gröndal discussed the situation of Iceland according to contem-
porary foreign narratives. He stated that many foreigners considered Iceland to
be “terra incognita et barbara”, a nation that had nothing in common with the
other Nordic countries; it was inhabited by Skrælings (a medieval, denigrating
term for the Inuit and other indigenous inhabitants of Greenland and Vínland)
and was depicted as something of a Hell on Earth. Gröndal complained that
most people believed Iceland to be similar to Greenland in most respects,
and that nothing could be obtained there but fish and birds, whales and seals,
feathers and fish oil, just as in Greenland. By his account, it never crossed peo-
ple’s minds that educated and cultured people lived in that country: a people
not to be treated as Skrælings, or savages (Gröndal, 1871, p. 28).
Gröndal’s statements are loaded with racial prejudice against the Inuit, but
his text does raise important questions. Are there arguments to be made in
defence of his bleak observations? How do they relate to more positive i mages
of Iceland as a nation closely related to the rest of Europe, and as a cultured
people responsible for Scandinavia’s greatest literature of the late Middle
Ages? Had Icelanders not served as custodians of Nordic and Germanic heri-
tage, playing a similar role for the culture of northern Europe in the Middle
Ages as the Greeks did in ancient times for southern Europe and later for the
entire continent? This view appears to have been the dominant one in Iceland
and Scandinavia since the nineteenth century – namely, that Iceland, the dis-
tant and isolated island in the north, played a pivotal role in European history,
and was particularly important in cultural terms. For this reason, one might be
led to conclude that Gröndal’s assertion must have resulted from some sort of
misunderstanding, or as a testament to the heavy mood of a poet that was not
always very happy with his lot (Gröndal, 1965, p. 269).
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34 Ísleifsson
Or was Gröndal perhaps right? Is it possible that foreign authors and

guests that came to Iceland in the nineteenth century were convinced that
the Icelanders were beyond civilisation and not really part of Europe, as
Gröndal stated? Did they believe that the lifestyles of the inhabitants rather
resembled the situation outside Europe – that is, the lifestyles of inhabitants
in America and Africa – and that the Icelanders were similarly far removed
from being modern and civilised in any of their attitudes? Was Gröndal possi-
bly right when he stated that Danish mariners, who occasionally came to Ice-
land, considered themselves to be “in Greenland among Skrælings” (Gröndal,
1871, p. 9)?
This is a matter worth exploring. Was there great doubt among those that
dealt directly with Iceland and its people in the mid-nineteenth century as to
what kind of place Iceland was? Were the views of those that wrote about the
country from afar perhaps of an entirely different character? Were the people
considered modern or primitive, noble or immoral, educated or ignorant, and
European or not? And what was the basis for these views? To answer these
questions, I explore books from 1835 to 1882 by four travellers to Iceland: John
Barrow, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Jane Oswald from the British Isles, and
the American Pliny Miles. I also investigate the varying attitudes that parti
cularly marked the discourses on Iceland and its people in the Anglo-Saxon
world: nationalism, Romanticism and racism, colonialism and modernity, en-
lightenment and utilitarianism.
1 Like the Irish, Like the Greenlanders
One of the foreign authors Benedikt Gröndal might have had in mind when he
wrote his article was the Englishman John Barrow. Barrow travelled to Iceland
in 1834 and published his book A Visit to Iceland the following year. His father
John Barrow Senior was also drawn to distant lands; he was a known explorer
with a particular interest in the Arctic and a senior official in the Royal Navy.
John Barrow Junior had similar inclinations and was one of the cofounders of
the Hakluyt Society, as well as a publisher of travelogues and related material
from 1846 onward. It is therefore no wonder that he felt the need to travel to
Iceland (Sigurðsson, 1994, pp. 11–13).
Barrow’s fellow countryman Richard Burton came to Iceland almost forty
years later, in 1872. One of the best-known foreign travellers in Iceland in the
nineteenth century, Burton was renowned for his adventures in Africa, Amer-
ica and the Middle East. He had, among other things, travelled to the Arabian
Peninsula and all the way to Mecca in disguise: (see Figure 2.1) Burton visited
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Within or Outside Europe? 35
Iceland in the summer of 1872, and three years later he published his book Ul
tima Thule: Or, A Summer in Iceland in two volumes.
I now examine how John Barrow and Richard Burton discussed Iceland.
When Barrow arrived in the country in 1835, he found little to indicate that he
had come to a civilised land. Even in the capital, Reykjavík, most of the houses
were ragged and shabby huts. There was no vegetation, merely endless mashes.
Outside the town, there was only desolation, hardly any life to speak of. He de-
scribed the road to the neighbouring trading port of Hafnarfjörður as follows:
[It is] quite impossible to picture to the imagination anything more rugged,
more forbidding or more barren of all appearance of vegetable life –
animal life being quite out of the question – than the face of the coun-
try [as it] was here, covered over with immense masses of irregular lava
rocks, by which the traveller, at every step he takes, finds himself inter-
cepted and turned aside out of his direct path.
barrow, 1835, pp. 220–221
Iceland was thus useless; nothing could grow there, rendering it “barren” and
“forbidding”. Here it is also worth bearing in mind what the American histo-
rian Karen Oslund has discussed in conjunction with tourists to Iceland in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; on many occasions, they considered
themselves to be at the boundary between the known and the unknown, on
the border, the frontier, uncertain of where they were, and trying to find indi-
cators in order to define the place they had reached (Oslund, 2011, pp. 169–170).
The frontier is seen a place where rules and laws do not apply, where men
can try themselves and their strength, and renew their strengths. By picturing
oneself in such an environment, the travellers elevate themselves and show
how they manage to survive in the face of such insurmountable difficulties.
According to these descriptions, Iceland is thus a place to overcome, a place to
survive (see, e.g., Thurtle, 1820, pp. 133–134). It was an alien place, anything but
friendly, and in most or all respects different from the civilised surroundings
Barrow had been accustomed to in his homeland.
Richard Burton appears to agree with Barrow that Iceland was barren, more
or less “useless” and not “European”. It was part of the Arctic, but according to
Burton Iceland was not as dangerous as Barrow had stated, and its sublimity
was grossly exaggerated:
[W]e have all drawn for ourselves our own Iceland – a distorted and exag-
gerated mental picture of what has not met, and will not meet, the eye of
sense. Moreover, the travellers of the early century saw scenes of thrilling
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36 Ísleifsson
horror, of majestic grandeur, and of heavenly beauty, where our more

critical, perhaps more cultivated, taste finds very humble features.
burton, 1875 [vol. 1], pp. ix–x
The reason for these exaggerated descriptions was, in Burton’s view, that many
of the visitors to Iceland had been rather inexperienced travellers. They simply
did not know the world. Many of the older descriptions, including compari-
sons of the Icelandic mountains with the Andes or the Himalayas, were there-
fore simply ridiculous. The volcano Hekla had, for example, been considered
one of the “seven wonders of the world”, but in reality it was but a “pigmy”;
only the glaciers in Iceland could be considered sublime according to Burton
(Burton, 1875 [vol. 1], pp. x–xi). The erupting hot spring of Geysir and Mount
Hekla were thus nothing more than “gross humbugs” (Burton, 1875 [vol. 2],
pp. 161–162, 168, 183).
Barrow’s transnational comparisons are indicative of his impressions of Ice-
landers, who mostly looked like Irishmen to him. For example, he observed
that “the fishermen’s huts [could be likened] … to those of the Irish, who are
said to have been the first people who visited Iceland”. Nowadays, nothing re-
mained of this past but miserable huts, full of smoke, mess and stench. Barrow
used every opportunity to put forth his views on the Irish, whom he did not
hold in high regard (Barrow, 1835, pp. 114–117, 133). His opinions on them were
similar to those that the Scottish scholar John Pinkerton had expressed a few
decades earlier on the Celts in general, when he stated that they had not yet:
even advanced to the state of barbarism; and if any foreigner doubts this,
he has only to step into the Celtic part of Wales, Ireland or Scotland, and
look at them, for they are just as they were, incapable of industry or civi-
lization… For the Celts were so inferior a people, being to the Scythæ as a
Negro to an European…
pinkerton, 1787, pp. 69, 123
Barrow repeatedly placed the Icelanders in the same context. They were slow
in everything and it had taken ages to prepare his travels: “The Icelander is not
a very active person, and our guides fully participated in the general character
of the country which is that of a want of energy and bodily exertions. Some
hours were consumed in packing the baggage horses, yet the articles were nei-
ther bulky nor heavy”. He also mentioned “the leisurely or lazy manner and the
awkward contrivances” of the persons employed to prepare his journey to the
geysers (Barrow, 1835, pp. 121, 134). The manner in which the people sang could
be considered indicative of the cultural situation in Iceland; it was “harsh and
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uncouth”, and consumption of alcoholic beverages did not improve the cir-
cumstances (Barrow, 1835, pp. 150, 218). It was common in this period for Euro-
pean writers to describe colonial otherness along the same lines. For example,
the “Hottentots” in Africa were both lazy and slow (Pratt, 2008, p. 44). Barrow’s
descriptions of the unmodern Icelanders are clearly linked to this British co-
lonial discourse.
Upon closer inspection, Barrow did not consider these characteristics sur-
prising when he thought of the “long cold and dreary winter nights and the
destitution of almost every article of life that constitutes comfort”; how could
a civilisation be cultivated under these conditions? Barrow was apparently not
very touched by Romantic ideas of the northern lands. His views on the north
were in keeping with Classical notions: the high north could not foster civili-
sation, and Iceland was thus not part of the cultural world, but rather of the
extreme north, where human life could hardly exist (Barrow, 1835, pp. 150–151).
Barrow’s attitude toward the Danes in Iceland was quite different from his
attitude toward the Icelanders themselves. The Danes were “admirable”, “full of
humour”, their houses “admirably fitted and furnished” and the food of “every-
kind good” (Barrow, 1835, p. 219). Barrow thus found civilisation in Iceland, but
only in the living rooms of Danish merchants and officials, not in those of the
Icelanders. The Danes were modern like himself, a man dressed in the new-
est model of “waterproof Wellington boots” (Barrow, 1835, p. 135). However,
civilised people could hardly thrive here in the long term; they simply lost their
health and became desperate. Barrow saw reason to express his sympathy for
the Danish governor Krieger for having been assigned to this post. The gover-
nor had complained bitterly about being forced to stay in the country during
the winter months in apathy and loneliness. A prolonged stay in the country
could not possibly lead to anything else but despair (Barrow, 1835, pp. 110, 129).
Similar to Barrow, a few decades earlier, Burton described the people he met
in Iceland and wondered about the life they lived. How could these people
have reached the miserable state they were in today, a nation “once so famed
for arms, if not for arts”? How could the nation’s former culture have disap-
peared so completely? Burton felt he could not see any signs of ancient fame or
education among modern Icelanders; there was no fine art to be found among
them, no music – nothing. He was clearly well acquainted with the accounts of
medieval Icelandic society and the supposed achievements of the Icelanders
of the past, a matter that is addressed later in this article (Burton, 1875 [vol. 1],
p. xiii). However, that glorious past did not occupy Burton very much; he was
more interested in the present.
According to Burton, degeneration, helplessness and immorality seemed
to dominate the society and the lives of Iceland’s inhabitants, and he agreed
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38 Ísleifsson
with Barrow that Iceland embodied the very opposite of modernity. Most of
the Icelanders’ tools, for example, seemed to be unusable, and their scythes
were simply “ridiculous” (Burton, 1875 [vol. 2], p. 258). Their uncleanliness was
overwhelming, and in this respect the Icelanders were situated somewhere be-
tween Scotland and Greenland but far behind modern Norway. Burton also
found the overwhelming drunkenness terrible and much more visible than in
most other countries. It seemed that the further north people lived, the more
they drank (Burton, 1875 [vol. 1], pp. 155, 160, 359–361, 369).
Among those that have recently debated similar topics in travel literature is
the Swedish scholar Sofia Eriksson. In an article on travelogues from Sweden,
she considers the concepts of hygiene and uncleanliness, and argues that de-
scriptions of cleanliness and dirt have often been used to indicate a people’s
status with regard to modernity, race and the cultural development of the
country in question (Eriksson, 2010, pp. 74–92). That is exactly how Burton ap-
plied these categories in his descriptions of Iceland; he contrasted Icelandic
culture to modern civilisations on account of the Icelanders’ drunkenness and
filthiness. Burton strengthened his arguments through the use of comparisons
Figure 2.1 Richard Burton was an experienced explorer when he came to Iceland; he
had a lready travelled to the Arabian Peninsula and even all the way to Mecca,
disguised. He often cited his experiences among the Arabs when he spoke of his
stay in Iceland and found that much was similar.
Illustration from Travels in Arabia (1892). Compiled and arranged
by Bayard Taylor. New York: Charles Schreibner’s Sons, facing
title page
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and metaphors; Icelanders were “worn out” like the hot spring Geysir, and the
houses of the general public were usually miserable huts, similar to those of the
Eskimos (Burton, 1875 [vol. 1], pp. 136, 332, 334, 336). Greenlanders were thus
used as a measure of Iceland’s lack of modernity, in a rhetorical strategy similar
to Barrow’s when he likened Iceland to Ireland. Burton thought, however, that
the Icelanders bore more similarities to Norwegians than to “Skrælings”. He
was clearly aware of the aforementioned negative stereotype of the Inuit, and
he considered it evident that the Icelanders were of mixed blood. In his view,
this was evidenced by people with “flat faces”, “oblique eyes and long black
horsehair”. According to Burton, Icelandic men had u ndoubtedly sometimes
found wives from the land “Where the short-legged Esquimaux / Waddle in
the ice and snow”. Their skulls, however, often resembled those of the Teutons
(Burton, 1875 [vol. 1], pp. 130–132). Burton was clearly well versed in the racial
theory of the period; the skulls’ appearance was of great significance when
assigning people to their proper racial category. However, he was still unsure
as to whether the Icelanders were Europeans or not (Burton, 1875 [vol. 2],
pp. 215–220). His conclusion was that they represented a mixture of Norwegian,
Irish and Eskimo blood, and that this combination was not particularly
appealing.
It is interesting to see how much Burton connects Iceland with the east, the
Orient, which he knew very well, as mentioned earlier. Many examples verify
this. He stated, for example, that it was common to spend the night in church-
es, just as in Abyssinia. A teacher in the Latin school of Reykjavík, Björn Gunn-
laugsson, is likened to a Muslim boy reading the Quran as he moved back and
forth over his books (Burton, 1875 [vol. 1], p. 11, also pp. 13, 19, 25, 37, 77; [vol. 2],
pp. 159, 288). Furthermore, the farmer Peter at the Reykjahlíð farm in the Mývatn
area in northern Iceland is described as resembling an old Jew; Burton found
similarities with the Orient everywhere he went (Burton, 1875 [vol. 2], p. 315).
Burton was well aware that Icelanders were Christians and that a high per-
centage of the population was literate: both signs of civilisation and m odernity.
All their habits, however, seemed so alien and exotic that they looked more
like the peoples of the Middle East. Nonetheless, Burton also needed another
kind of comparison to reveal the real nature of Iceland: Africa. The Icelanders
worked like “negroes”, were drunkards just like them and had a similar way of
thinking (Burton, 1875 [vol. 2], pp. 29, 42, 68). One Icelandic farmer was “silly”
enough to try to sell Burton a lamb at the same price as an adult sheep. Accor
ding to Burton, the Icelander was quite similar to the African in that respect,
and “equally logical, expect[ing] a chicken to bring the price of a hen”. Iceland-
ers were also thought of, just like the Africans, as terribly sluggish, greedy and,
not least of all, lazy, all of which characterised their lives and culture (Burton,
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40 Ísleifsson
1875 [vol. 2], pp. 252, 285). Burton described life in the Mývatn area as follows:
“We are curious to know how all these sturdy idlers live. They fish, they eat rye
bread and skýr [skyr: a yogurt-like cheese], they rob the nests and at times, they
kill a few birds” (Burton, 1875 [vol. 2], pp. 43, 160).
When reflecting on the potentials of the land itself, Burton stated that there
were hardly any valuable metals to be found, but that something could per-
haps be done with the sulphur, with the sulphur mines in northern Iceland
potentially being an unlimited source of wealth. However, the exploitation had
to be carried out by workers from Britain because the natives were unsuitable
for such work (Burton, 1875 [vol. 2], pp. 301–302, 362). For Burton, the island’s
inhabitants seemed as useless as the country itself. Was it possible to change
their lives, to enlighten them, to educate them? The method to achieve any-
thing should be similar to the one applied to the Africans, “shipment to Mil-
waukee, where they would learn industry under a Yankee taskmaster” (Burton,
1875 [vol. 2], p. 288). This conclusion is hardly surprising; with his colonialist
and imperialist mindset, he looked upon people outside of Europe as children
to whom he, or Europe, was the tutor.
2 A Perfect Grecian Picture
The views that have been presented here so far demonstrate the prevalence of
the notion that Iceland was comparable to regions and countries at Europe’s
outer edges, and exotic lands on other continents. However, at the same time,
attitudes of a different character are also well attested. I now consider these
different, more positive views and examine the ideas of two other travellers
in Iceland in the mid- and late nineteenth century; Pliny Miles was an Ameri-
can traveller described by The New York Times as “a striking figure, tall, thin, of
nervous-sanguine temperament, wearing a beard that never scraped acquain-
tance with a razor; a rapid walker, keen observer, talking with wonderful volu-
bility, always cordial, open-hearted, and everywhere welcome for his agreeable
social qualities” (The New York Times, 4 May 1865). Miles had travelled widely,
having visited most of the United States and Europe, including Norway, Scot-
land and Italy. He also came to Iceland for a few weeks in 1852, and after the
journey he wrote the book Norðurfari: Or, Ramble in Iceland. Elizabeth Jane
Oswald, on the other hand, was a Scottish travel writer that came to Iceland
three times in the years from 1875 to 1879. She was one of the very first wo
men to travel to the country on her own; that is, not as a companion of others.
Her book By Fell and Fjord, Or, Scenes and Studies in Iceland was subsequently
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ublished in 1882. Oswald was a well-educated middle-class woman and had

p
travelled widely, although not as widely as Burton.
Pliny Miles knew that Iceland was a sought-after destination because of
both its medieval literary tradition and its nature and landscape. Miles de-
scribed a country where everything was drawn with sharp strokes, the colours
clear and the mountains as in “a perfect Grecian picture”. The view from Mount
Hekla was even more beautiful, diverse and sublime than that from the famous
volcanoes in Italy, Etna and Vesuvius (Miles, 1854, pp. 49–51, 70, 106, 142). He
praised life in the countryside, the sun shining on the fields, and the sheep and
cattle grazing there (Miles, 1854, pp. 62, 179, 213). Likewise, Oswald described
Iceland in a pastoral, idyllic way. She saw a land of “quiet pastoral beauty”,
“a true Arcadia” (Oswald, 1882, pp. 3, 21, 67, 248; Gifford, 2012).
However, Iceland had two faces. Apart from the pastoral idylls there were
the black deserts, the volcanoes, the ravines in the lava rock and all sorts of
terrifying landscapes. In discussing this rough side of Iceland, Miles connected
the account to his own manhood. He described his ascent of Hekla as follows:
A more awful scene or a more dangerous place, I hope never to be in. Had
it not been for my long staff, I never could have proceeded. The dangers
and terrors of the scene were greatly increased by the clouds and cold
wind that came up on our left and the smoke and sulphurous stench that
rose from the craters on our right. One moment in danger of falling over
the perpendicular side of the mountain on the one hand, and the next of
being swallowed up in the burning crater on the other.
miles, 1854, pp. 138–139
Even the dog accompanying Miles was whining with fear. Travellers’ lives were
truly at risk in Iceland: “It makes my blood boil like the springs of Hecla”, Miles
wrote, as he described his boldness in the face of threats in Iceland, quoting
Lord Byron’s Don Juan, which he had brought with him on the trip (Miles, 1854,
p. 100). He also brought Sir Walter Scott’s Lord of the Isles, in which he had read,
for example: “A scene so rude, so wild as this / Yet so sublime in barrenness /
Ne’er did my wandering footsteps press” (Scott, 1833, p. 595). Miles sought
sublimity and found it in Iceland; this epic landscape formed an appropriate
backdrop to the island’s medieval culture. Through accounts of his own bra
very, Miles sought to prove to his readers that he possessed the spirit of a true
Viking. However, it was also important for him to demonstrate to the world
that he was not just a regular mountain climber; he made it explicit that he
knew where he was, that it was no ordinary place or nation he had visited. It
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42 Ísleifsson
was therefore of crucial importance to Miles to reject ancient notions of the

country and its people, misrepresenting Iceland as “a cold, dreary and uninter-
esting region inhabited by a few dwarfish and ignorant people who have little
knowledge of the world and of whom little is known” (Miles, 1854, p. 33). He
dismisses these opinions as laughable.
Miles experienced Iceland as a museum, and the people he encountered
reinforced that feeling. He described one of them, “the young Sivertsen, and
his is one of the finest faces. It has the lofty brow and intelligent countenance,
beaming eye of the Anglo-Saxons and [is] equal to the finest specimens of the
Caucasian race in any part of the world” (Miles, 1854, p. 317). Miles was happy
that people in his motherland had discovered how magnificent Icelandic soci-
ety, with its thriving culture, had been in the Middle Ages, and he claimed that
American scholars had now finally recognised the small nation’s achievements
because they knew that Icelandic seafarers had come to America long before
Columbus. After that, it became clear that the Americans made an effort, ac-
cording to Miles, to learn “the entire history of this energetic and intellectual
race” (Miles, 1854, p. 270).
The Icelanders’ Viking Age explorations were noteworthy, but so was their
culture. The tales of the ancient religion of the Norse and the Germanic nations
had been preserved and recorded in Iceland, and the sagas had also been writ-
ten there. Miles dwells at length on this topic and builds his account mainly
on the writings of Paul-Henri Mallet and Thomas Percy.2 He indicates the im-
portance of medieval Icelandic culture by declaring Nordic mythology “quite
as interesting as the mythology of the Greeks and Romans” (Miles, 1854, p. 183).
The same comparison is used concerning the Eddic poems that describe “the
deeds and prowess of heroes and warriors and some of them abound in mytho-
logical machinery to an extent quite equal to the writings of Homer and Virgil”
(Miles, 1854, p. 271). Miles saw Iceland as a holy place, a cradle of the north, and
as a unique land and nation.
For Elizabeth Oswald, a journey to Iceland was like entering a time machine,
and an experience similar to how “classical scholars would feel if some lonely
2 The Swiss professor Paul Henri Mallet wrote Introduction à l’histoire de Dannemarc, où l’on
traite de la religion, des loix, des mœurs & des usages des anciens Danois (Introduction to the
History of Denmark, Discussing the Religion, the Laws, the Manners and the Customs of
the Ancient Danes) and Monumens de la Mythologie et de la Poésie des Celtes, et particulière
ment des Anciens Scandinaves (Monuments of the Mythology and Poetry of the Celts, and
Especially of the Ancient Scandinavians). Comprising several volumes, the study dealt with
Nordic culture and literature in the Middle Ages and was first published in 1755 and 1756,
when Mallet was a professor at the University of Copenhagen. Part of his work was later
translated into English by the English bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1770 under the
title Northern Antiquities.
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island could be found where the Greek of Pericles or the Latin of Augustus was
still common speech” (Oswald, 1882, p. 1). Reminders of a glorious past were
everywhere. Already on the ship to Iceland, Oswald encountered a young Ice-
landic girl that seemed to have reached her through this time machine; she was
“fair against the darkness, with floating golden hair, as tranquil as the figure-
head of the ship or as any of her military sea-roving ancestors” (Oswald, 1882,
p. 11). Passages such as this one convey Oswald’s idea that the heathen past was
still very much alive in the present.
In tracing the historical reasons why Iceland gave rise to an ideal medieval
society, Oswald pointed to the character of the people that moved to the coun-
try from Scandinavia at the time of Iceland’s settlement in the late ninth and
early tenth centuries: (see Figure 2.2). These people were no outcasts in their
country of origin, but “a race already advanced in civilisation, and not as most
colonies by the mere overflow of the population of the mother country, but by
the most able and spirited of the Northmen” (Oswald, 1882, p. 35). Iceland was
thus settled by the crème de la crème of the north, both in terms of culture and
physical composition. Later on, the bravest of the Icelanders left the country in
search of fame and battles. Poets became central to life in Iceland, due to the
confluence of the blood of the earth-bound Norsemen and that of the poetic
Celts. The Icelandic skalds were eventually sought after by kings throughout
northern Europe (Oswald, 1882, pp. 37–38, 46).
According to Oswald, one could still see signs of the ancient customs and
culture in modern Iceland; hospitality and honesty were common character
traits, and the people were energetic, hardworking and well educated (Oswald,
1882, pp. 12, 47, 49–50, 58–59). Furthermore, the social position of women
was much better than elsewhere. Their dignity could be seen, for example, in
their caps that resembled the helmets of the Ancient Greeks (Oswald, 1882,
p. 184). However, much had also changed for the worse since the Viking Age, as
Oswald illustrated in her descriptions of the Icelanders’ dwellings: “We went
into a cavern, called the kitchen”, she wrote, and then likened the house to a
catacomb. The priest at the Reynivellir farm in southwestern Iceland lived in a
place “which suggested the hole of an untidy rabbit, much magnified” (Oswald,
1882, p. 32). She also wondered sometimes at the Icelanders’ inactivity, why
there was only “one good bath in Iceland and that one six hundred years old?”
(Oswald, 1882, pp. 68–69). Why did people not make the most of the situation
they found themselves in, so they could lead better lives?
Oswald found the cause for this cultural degeneration in “the tyranny of the
Danes in Iceland” (Oswald, 1882, p. 213). Such tyranny had gradually broken
down the spirit of freedom, as had natural disasters and pestilence. In that
respect, her mode of reasoning in terms of degeneration and devolution was
similar to that of many other writers in the nineteenth century. However, was
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44 Ísleifsson
Figure 2.2 Danish artist Johan Peter Raadsig’s painting Ingolf tager Island i besiddelse (Ingólfr
Takes Possession of Iceland, 1850) depicts settlers arriving in Iceland in the ninth
century. Raadsig’s depiction is in line with a common idea about Icelandic
medieval society in the nineteenth century; namely, that it was only outstanding
people that had moved to Iceland. Pliny Miles and Elizabeth Oswald were both of
the same opinion.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
there a reason to change Icelandic society? Certainly, some changes could be

made, but still, was it not most important to preserve what was original and
to maintain those traditional values that were most precious and essential to
the nation? Are modern “improvements” necessarily beneficial, she asked?
Was there any cause for transformation in a land where people were honest
and polite, where there was hardly any crime, everyone considered themselves
equals and where life was happy? Was not the simplicity of life to be preferred
to modernisation? Could anything be more attractive than going to a nearby
hot spring, cooking one’s food there and enjoying it under conditions that were
unforgettable (Oswald, 1882, p. 69)?
According to both Oswald and Miles, Danish merchants formed the great-
est threat to the Icelandic way of life; they polluted the lives of the islanders,
especially those that lived in the capital, Reykjavík. Miles claimed, for example,
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that the Danes did “nothing but traffic, make money, gamble and drink”, and
such conduct could not “improve the morals of a simple, pious and intellec-
tual people” (Miles, 1854, pp. 306–307; Henderson, 1819 [vol. 1], p. 290). Oswald
agreed with this view and maintained that various bad habits had taken root as
a result of this, primarily in Reykjavík. She noted that some of the inhabitants
there were clearly following the latest European fashion instead of w earing
traditional Icelandic clothing. Miles would have full-heartedly subscribed to
her wish that “our feverish civilisation may never destroy the charm of this
rough and simple land”. The Icelanders should be free to live their own culture,
even if this entailed a primitive lifestyle, and to read Njáls saga or other an-
cient stories as they did their daily work (Oswald, 1882, pp. 112–113). Icelanders
were truly “so superior to their surroundings” (Oswald, 1882, pp. 142, 168), and
both Miles and Oswald wished to keep the Icelandic community unchanged,
primitive, a bit dirty even, but also friendly, simple, happy and educated. To
emphasise this point, Oswald juxtaposed Iceland to her homeland, S cotland,
where, according to her, modernity had taken over. Everything was tidy, but it
was also “clean and unhappy”. Civilisation and technology had taken over, and
the country was lifeless, fast-paced and devoid of joy and happiness; Scotland
was now a country where people were not aware of their history and origins.
Was this a desirable future for Iceland (Oswald, 1882, pp. 112–113)? Both Miles
and Oswald would have answered that question in the negative.
3 Summary and Conclusions
Upon investigation, the nineteenth-century discourse on Iceland as analysed

in the four works treated in this chapter reveals two main characteristics in
particular. The period saw an increasing debate on Icelandic medieval society,
depicted as an ideal society with hardly any historical equivalents. According to
such views, Iceland was the core, the essence of Nordic and Germanic culture,
and comparisons to Ancient Greece served to strengthen this positive image of
Iceland. Part and parcel in the repetition of this myth were descriptions of the
unique physical and mental abilities of individuals in medieval Icelandic society;
people that had been the best specimens of the Nordic race, as noted in the texts
by Pliny Miles and Elizabeth Oswald. Racial essentialism largely characterised
descriptions of Iceland and its inhabitants, increasingly so in the nineteenth
century, growing steadily in importance in the first decades of the twentieth
century. Dovetailing with nationalism, such essentialism celebrated the Ice-
landers’ racial purity and the country itself, and the so-called Viking discourse
on Iceland gradually became dominant in foreign descriptions of the island.
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46 Ísleifsson
In this context, contemporary Icelanders were sometimes considered to be

on another level than modern Europeans, and their simple lifestyles could be
seen as exemplary of life in a celebrated ancient and medieval past. The role
of Iceland was hence to serve as some sort of museum of undefiled Germanic
culture, and a shelter for those that feared the consequences of modernisation.
Travellers with such views felt that the country still preserved values that most
Europeans had lost. Anti-modernists such as Miles and Oswald therefore ad-
mired Iceland and feared the corrupting effects of the civilised modern world.
For those authors, the Romantic, sublime, often terrifying and “heathen” land-
scapes of Iceland served as an appropriate backdrop for life in the country’s
ideal medieval society.
Parallel to the Viking discourse, another type of rhetoric thrived – namely,
the colonial discourse, or the discourse of modernity, as traced in the travel-
ogues by John Barrow and Richard Burton. These authors had little interest in
the Icelandic “Golden Age” and focused instead on the present. In their view,
Iceland embodied the opposite of civilisation and modernity, its inhabitants
characterised by laziness, squalor, drunkenness and stupidity. The Icelanders
were in that respect no different from people outside Europe, and they had
even intermingled with the inferior Skrælings, or Inuit.
Fashionable racial discourses thus could be applied both to elevate Iceland-
ers and to humiliate them at the same time. Descriptions of the country itself
were coherent with these ideas; it was more or less useless, like most other
Arctic countries. Nothing could be cultivated there, and it was cold, evil and
dangerous. It could, however, be used to prove one’s manhood and strength.
Iceland had been described in this way for centuries.
The discourses that have been discussed here were clearly characterised by
ambivalence and doubts about what kind of country and society Iceland really
was, and these conflicting views continue to manifest themselves well into the
twentieth century. However, the discourse that ultimately came to determine
general views of Iceland depicted it as a country where the sublime and the
beautiful merged, both in nature and society (Ísleifsson, 2009, pp. 149–158); a
Romantic myth forged in the nineteenth century.
In the period under scrutiny, both the discourse of modernity and of anti-
modernity appeared in descriptions of Iceland. However, these views were
mixed, and the anti-modernists believed that some aspects of life in Iceland
might be improved, at least partly. Oswald and Miles were also modern in the
sense that they were promoters of “national character”, which in itself was a
new concept. When Elizabeth Oswald defined the core of her ideas about Ice-
land, she claimed that the country had played a major role in world history.
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In fact, contemporary Britain, the unrivalled imperial superpower, could be

regarded as the representative and heir of medieval Iceland:
[W]e have inherited, with a strain of their race, their spirit of enterprise
and their love of the sea. Everything relating to them has therefore a spe-
cial interest for us; and when we inquire into their history, we find Iceland
holds the key to the knowledge we desire to gain. As her natural features
are unique, so her place in the eyes of students of the past and lovers of
romance is exceptional and of significance.
oswald, 1882, p. 280
These foreign authors were important agents in the construction of Iceland’s

modern national identity, and writings such as theirs could convince members
of the Icelandic elite that Iceland was indeed a nation, in a country they could
and should be proud of.
References
Barrow, J. (1835). A Visit to Iceland, by Way of Tronyem, in the “Flower of Yarrow” Yacht, in
the Summer of 1834. London: John Murray.
Burton, R.F. (1875). Ultima Thule; or, A Summer in Iceland (two volumes). London: Wil-
liam P. Nimmo.
Eriksson, S. (2010). A Rarity Show of Modernity: Sweden in the 1920s. Annals of Tourism
Research 37(1), 74–92.
Gifford, T. (2012). Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral and Post-Pastoral as Reading Strategies. In Slovic,
S. (ed.), Critical Insights: Nature and Environment (pp. 42–61). Ipswich: Salam Press.
Gröndal, B. (1871). Frelsi – menntan – framför. Gefn 2(1), 1–51.
Gröndal, B. (1965). Dægradvöl (ed. Stefánsson, I.). Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
Henderson, E. (1819). Iceland; or, The Journal of a Residence in that Island during the
Years 1814 and 1815: Containing Observations on the Natural Phenomena, History, li
terature and Antiquities of the Island; and the Religion, Character, Manners and Cus
toms of Its Inhabitants (two volumes). Edinburgh: Oliphant, Waugh and Innes.
Ísleifsson, S. (2009). Icelandic National Images in the 19th and 20th Centuries. In
Jakobesson, S. (ed.), Images of the North. Histories, Identities, Ideas (pp. 149–158).
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Miles, P. (1854). Norðurfari, or Rambles in Iceland. New York: Charles B. Norton.
New York Times (4 May 1865). The Death of Pliny Miles, the American Advocate of
Cheap Postage (p. 8).
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48 Ísleifsson
Oslund, K. (2011). Iceland Imagined. Nature, Culture and Storytelling in the North Atlan
tic. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Oswald, E.J. (1882). By Fell and Fjord, or Scenes and Studies in Iceland. Edinburgh:
W. Blackwood.
Pinkerton, J. (1787). A Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths,
Being an Introduction to the Ancient and Modern History of Europe. London: John
Nichols.
Pratt, M.L. (2008). Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York:
Routledge.
Scott, W. (1833). The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott with a Biography and his Last
Additions and Illustrations in Seven Volumes (volume 1). New York: Conner & Cooke.
Sigurðsson, H. (1994). Formáli þýðanda. In Barrow, J., Íslandsheimsókn. Ferðasaga frá
Íslandi 1834 (translated by Sigurðsson, H., pp. 5–16). Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
Thurtle, F. (1820). Popular Voyages and Travels throughout the Continent & Islands of
Europe in which the Geography, Character, Customs and Manners of Nations Are De
scribed [etc.]. London: G. & W. B. Whittaker and N. Hailes.
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Chapter 3
Is Nordic Mythology Nordic or National, or

Both? Competing National Appropriations of
Nordic Mythology in Early Nineteenth-Century
Scandinavia
Tim van Gerven
Humanity’s highest goal is truth; it is therefore our duty not to neglect the
wisdom and faith of our ancestors, but to try to understand them as best
as we can during our lifetime, using our ability to grasp human life. And
what is the very beginning of every meaningful history if not its myths?1
ling, 1819, p. 15
∵
Among scholars today there appears to exist an unspoken consensus that at the
very beginning of Scandinavism lies Nordic mythology.2 Usually, this very be
ginning is traced back to the latter half of the eighteenth century and connec
ted to the pre-Romantic fashion for the sublime that emerged around the 1750s.
The new vogue in art and literature for everything dark and terrible informed
an unprecedented scholarly and artistic enthusiasm for the violent tales and
mysterious imagery of the Eddas throughout north-western Europe, a move
ment that was later termed the Nordic Renaissance (Blanck, 1911). Although
an antiquarian interest in Old Norse poetry had persisted in Scandinavia ever
since the Middle Ages, the eighteenth-century revival of Nordic myth gave
new impetus to age-old preoccupations. The subsequent realisation by men
1 Translations are by the author unless indicated otherwise.

2 Because the term Scandinavism was plausibly coined only as late as 1843 in connection with
the emergence of the political movement, it might seem anachronistic to employ the term
when writing about the preceding decades. Can one write about Scandinavism before Scan
dinavism? I propose that one can as long as the term is used heuristically to describe the
awareness of and the commitment to a shared Scandinavian identity, and not with reference
to a well-organised, clearly defined cultural and/or political movement.

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50 VAN GERVEN
of letters that the objects of their research belonged to a shared Scandinavian

or Nordic heritage went a long way toward making the idea of Scandinavia
imaginable as a focal point of (pan-)national identification (Clausen, 1900;
Sanness, 1959; Hemstad, 2008; Haarder Ekman, 2010).
The presupposed status of Nordic mythology as a pan-Scandinavian
commonality never went completely unchallenged, however. In addition to
extra-Scandinavian claims from Britain and Germany (see, e.g., Jacob Grimm’s
Deutsche Mythologie “Germanic Mythology”, 1835), Nordic mythology was the
topic of several fierce debates in Scandinavia itself in the early nineteenth
century. To be sure, at the primary level these debates centred around the
question whether Nordic mythology could function as a valuable alternative
to the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian traditions as an inspiration for
contemporary literature and art (see below). As such, this side of the debate
constituted a unifying force: the rhetorical division between north and south
that stood at the basis of the evolving argument helped harness the idea of a
common Scandinavian identity (Van Gerven, 2018). At a subaltern level, on the
other hand, there was in these self-same debates a subtle but clear tendency
to appropriate the treasured corpus of Norse myth as being part – or rather,
as being “more” part – of a specific national heritage rather than of a shared
Scandinavian legacy. As a result, this undercurrent had the opposite effect of
undermining the pan-national profile.
In what follows, the overlapping and conflicting importance of Nordic my
thology for both early Scandinavism and the separate national movements in
Scandinavia is examined through the analysis of arguably the two best-known
debates on Nordic mythology from this period. The first of these debates took
place within the learned circles of the Götiska förbundet (Geatish Society) dur
ing the years 1818–1820 and evolved from a personal feud between the poets Erik
Gustaf Geijer and Pehr Henrik Ling. In 1820, things were heating up in Denmark
as well; the Icelandic philologist Finnur Magnússon was personally targeted by
the brothers Gustav Ludvig and Torkel Baden for his (in their eyes) unjustified
and immoral promotion of Old Norse culture as an inspirational source for the
modern artist. Both debates are frequently mentioned in scholarly literature,
mostly in art-historical or biographical contexts, but the pamphlets, essays and
treatises written in the heat of the battle have hitherto not been the subject of
a more thorough source-critical analysis, nor have the two controversies been
studied in relation to each other. In this article, the application of a transna
tional-comparative approach shows, first, that the debates were intimately
connected and, second, that the ultimate ownership of the sources of Nordic
mythology – the Eddas and sagas – became a bone of contention, a dispute that
to no small degree was instigated by the perception of the other.
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Is Nordic Mythology Nordic or National, or Both? 51
Before turning to the exploration of the debates, I first return to the Nordic
Renaissance and discuss its implications for the rise of both national and pan-
Scandinavian self-consciousness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. This provides the arguments employed by the persons involved with
the necessary background.
1 The Nordic Renaissance: Old-Norse Culture between Scandinavia

and the Nation
Paul-Henri Mallet’s histories of Denmark from 1755 and 1756, the poems of
Thomas Percy and Thomas Gray of the 1760s and, last but not least, James
Macpherson’s notorious collection of Ossian poems, also from the 1760s, in
fused Europe with an enthusiasm for the literary heritage of the north – both
the Gaelic/Celtic and the Nordic – that up to that point had been disregard
ed as the naive and superstitious tales of barbaric peoples (Fjågesund, 2014).
In a cultural climate dominated by Neoclassicism, the blood-stained adven
tures of death-defying Vikings and doomed gods and goddesses by no means
matched the refined Classical standards taught at the European art academies
(Grandien, 1987). However, the Eddic myths fitted perfectly with the newly
emerging taste for the “sublime”, which, after Edmund Burke, found aesthetic
pleasure in “whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible ob
jects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror” (Burke, 1757, p. 58). In fact,
the pre-Romantic (re)discovery of the Eddas and sagas was fundamentally
connected to a growing critique of the hegemonic Classical models. For an in
creasing number of artists and scholars, Greek and Roman mythology suffered
from overuse and decadence, and there was a deep-felt need for fresh, more
authentic alternatives. Old Norse poetry provided perhaps the most viable of
such alternatives.
In a way, the Nordic revival originated from Scandinavia itself. The Swiss
Mallet had stumbled upon the Eddas and Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the
Danes) while working as a professor of belles lettres at the University of Co
penhagen, and he included translations of Old Norse material, the first into
French, in his Histoire de Dannemarc (History of Denmark, 1755) and Monu-
ments de la mythologie (Monuments of Mythology, 1756).3 The relatively swift
3 To give the full titles: Introduction à l’histoire de Dannemarc, ou l’on traite de la religion, des
loix, des mœurs et des usages des anciens Danois (Introduction to the History of Denmark,
Discussing the Religion, the Laws, the Manners and the Customs of the Ancient Danes,
1755) and Monuments de la mythologie et de la poesie des Celtes, et particulièrement des
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52 VAN GERVEN
translation of his work into German (1765–1769) and English (1770) resulted in
a rapid spread of knowledge about Nordic mythology on the continent.
Through a group of German poets residing in the Danish capital, the influ
ence of Mallet was returned to sender. The Denmark-born Heinrich Wilhelm
von Gerstenberg had read Mallet (and Ossian) and adopted Eddic motifs in
his Gedicht eines Skalden (Poems of an Old Norse Bard) from 1766. Whereas
Gerstenberg’s agenda was explicitly anti-Classical, his colleague Friedrich
Gottlieb Klopstock was in addition also nationalistically motivated. In fact,
Klopstock would be the first to claim Nordic mythology as part of German
history. Unknowingly, however, he also played a minor role in stimulating the
same nationalistic ardour in Danish literature, being an important inspiration
for the young poet Johannes Ewald to work with themes from the Old Norse
past. Ewald was introduced to Klopstock and the German circle in 1769; the
next year he published his drama Rolf Krage (Hrólfr Kraki), taking his subject
matter from Saxo. Although a true milestone in Danish (and in Scandinavian)
literature as one of the first literary works to be based on the ancient sagas,
Rolf Krage was nevertheless no great success. Ewald’s second completed work
based on Saxo, Balders Død (The Death of Balder, 1775), by contrast, would have
an impact for generations to come. Ironically, part of its immediate success can
be ascribed to a mounting resistance in Danish society against German influ
ences on Danish culture, as personified by Gerstenberg, Klopstock and others
adhering to their circle. In this context, Balders Død was immediately hailed as
a national masterpiece and a successful attempt to reclaim Norse mythology
from the clutches of the Germans, although Ewald himself had not entertained
such nationalistic pretences (Klitgaard Povlsen, 2007).
The popularity of Balders Død would, importantly, also have a bearing on the
visual arts. Inspired by a staging of the play in 1778, the Neoclassical sculptor
Johannes Wiedewelt made a series of seventy-two sketches based on the tragic
tale of Balder. However, the Classical tradition held a much stronger position
in material culture than in literature, and only a handful of artists in Scan
dinavia ventured to work with subjects from Nordic mythology (Kuhn, 2000,
pp. 209–210). Wiedewelt never converted his sketches into full-flown pieces
of art, and the big name in Danish painting of the time, Nicolai Abraham
Abildgaard, only produced one major work based on the Eddas (Christensen,
1999, pp. 142–144).
a nciens Scandinaves, pour server de supplement et de preuves à “L’Introduction à l’histoire de

Dannemarc” (Monuments of the Mythology and Poetry of the Celts, and Especially the An
cient Scandinavians, to Serve as a Supplement and Evidence for the Introduction to the His
tory of Denmark, 1756).
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As a consequence, at least in the eighteenth century, the Nordic Renais

sance primarily remained a literary movement. In Sweden, it affected the poet
ry of, among others, Thomas Thorild, Frans Michael Franzén and Johan Gabriel
Oxenstierna, as well as the playwriting of King Gustaf iii and Carl Gustaf af
Leopold. Norwegian authors belonging to Det Norske Selskab (The Norwegian
Society) in Copenhagen equally took inspiration from the Icelandic sagas,
something that in the context of growing dissatisfaction with Danish rule ac
quired patriotic potential. For instance, the staging of Johan Nordahl Brun’s
Einer Tambeskielver (1772) was prohibited at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen
because it was deemed too critical of both royal authority and Denmark in
general (Christensen, 1998, p. 59).
In all three Scandinavian countries, then, Old Norse poetry was attributed
local-nationalistic significance. At the same time, the Old Norse revival was
harnessing the awareness of shared cultural and historical origins, grounded
in the idea that the Scandinavian people formed a single undifferentiated Ur-
community during pagan times, speaking one language and practising one
religion. Denmark’s foremost antiquarian of the time, Peter Frederik Suhm,
started his History of Denmark (Kritisk Historie af Danmark, 1774–1781) with
an exploration of these common roots before moving into differentiated na
tional history. In Sweden, Sven Lagerbring followed the same procedure in his
Svea Rikes Historia (History of the Swedish Kingdom, 1769–1783). The Danish
historian Frederik Sneedorff summarised the notion that had become widely
accepted by the end of the century in one of his lectures:
The first inhabitants of the north came from Asia, and … these inha
bitants were of two kinds, Finns and Jötnar or Goths; from these Goths
the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes descended …. [A]n older Odin … was
worshipped by his people, from whom our forefathers descended, like a
god; it is him the Eddas speak of, and whose worship became common
in the north.
sneedorff, 1797, pp. 57–58
Sneedorff himself came to tie far-reaching consequences to this notion of

common ancestry. In 1792 he held a speech before the London-based Nordic
Society and called for the political unification of the three Nordic nations,
which, according to him, had become a geopolitical necessity against the
backdrop of the growing political power of both Russia and the German states.
Less radical, but no less important, was the establishment of the Skandinaviske
Litteratur-Selskab (Scandinavian Literary Society) four years later, which sig
nalled the first initiative to institutionalise literary cooperation in Scandinavia.
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54 VAN GERVEN
In practice, however, the society hardly lived up to its ideals; most articles in its
journal Skandinavisk Museum were only very loosely connected to Scandina
vian cultural life, and the Danish contributions by far outnumbered those from
Sweden (Clausen, 1900, pp. 11–19). Nevertheless, these early pan-Scandinavian
endeavours, however flawed or over-ambitious they may have been, not only
reflect the awareness of a common Scandinavian identity, but they also show a
willingness to build on this shared identity.
Moving into the next century, an academic paradigm shift occurred that
Peter Burke has termed the “nationalisation of knowledge”: “the increasing im
portance of national consciousness, national rivalry and nation-building in the
processes of gathering, analysing and disseminating knowledge” (Burke, 2011,
p. 1). Mythology was of particular interest in the new nationally minded con
text because it was perceived by many as the primal expression of a nation’s
identity. In Scandinavia, the national value of Nordic mythology was raised
even more in the wake of political developments. During the onslaught of the
Napoleonic Wars, Sweden lost Finland to Russia in 1809, and Denmark lost
Norway to Sweden in 1814, which for both constituted a harsh reality check:
for all their former military prowess and international standing, they were
now definitively relegated to the status of small nations. On both sides of the
Kattegat, this caused a severe crisis of identity among the intelligentsia, and in
both countries the cure was sought in folk culture, Nordic mythology and the
glorious past.
Despite the advance of nationalisation, within both culture and the sci
ences, the notion of a shared Scandinavian dna derived from a de-historicised
“Nordic antiquity” persisted. Finnur Magnússon speaks in the introduction to
his translation of the Poetic Edda of “the three main peoples generally called
Nordic (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian)”, who, according to him, “were
brothers by origin, who previously spoke one language and were of one faith”
(Magnússon, 1821, p. v).4 At the same time, however, he had dedicated his am
bitious project to the Danish king and the Danish people, and self-consciously
presented it as a “monument of the Danish language” (Magnússon, 1821, p. iii).
The two statements seem at odds with each other, but are in fact illustrative
for the way Nordic mythology was generally perceived at the time as being
simultaneously national and pan-national; this multiple identity was not seen
as contradictory or problematic.
Finnur was considered by his contemporaries as an authority on Nordic my
thology (among others Jacob Grimm relied a great deal on his work); it was
no coincidence that it was him that the Danish Royal Art Academy asked to
lecture its students on Old Norse culture, something that he would do between
4 Translation by Halink (2015, p. 246).
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1819 and 1828. Through his lectures, as much as through his Edda translations,
Finnur exerted great influence on the artistic cultivation of Nordic mythology.
The Icelandic professor can as such be seen as a primary example of Joep Leers
sen’s thesis that the success of mythology as a field of study lay not so much in
its academic achievements (which were, for all intents and purposes, very lim
ited), but rather “in focusing a cultural interest, and making available … a reser
voir of mythical narratives for cultural recycling and reproduction” (Leerssen,
2016, p. 97).
The adaptation of Eddic themes in literature would indeed be swiftly ac
cepted, not least owing to the enthusiastic reception of the plays and poetry
of the Dane Adam Oehlenschläger, both in Denmark and in the other Scandi
navian countries. In Sweden, the members of the Geatish Society promoted
the use of the Eddas and sagas in the arts. Established in 1811, shortly after
the cession of Finland, the society aimed to restore national pride through
the exploration of the nation’s glorious past. One of the founding fathers, the
poet, historian, composer and philosopher Erik Gustaf Geijer, formulated the
Geatish Society’s programme in the poem “Manhem” (The Swedish Realm),
which was published in the first issue of the society’s journal Iduna (1811), and
which urged the reader to “relive the ancient examples of honour, strength
and faith” so that “we will be revenged” and “Manhem’s name will once again
resonate throughout the world”.
In the visual arts, the adaptation of Old Norse themes was, as mentioned
earlier, a completely different story. For one thing, Nordic mythology’s image
less character was a complicating factor. Contrary to Greek mythology, there
were at the time no appealing archaeological remains from the saga period
that could provide the artist with inspiration (Ljøgodt, 2012, pp. 146–147). The
Norse gods were essentially paper creatures; there was no Nordic iconography.
Moreover, as paper creatures, the “crude” descriptions given in the Eddas by
no means resonated with the dominant Neoclassical aesthetics that aimed at
Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s ideals of noble simplicity, harmony and sym
metry (as formulated in his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums “History of
the Art of Antiquity” from 1764). As a result, Nordic mythology in painting
and sculpture met with great scepticism, even from those that were otherwise
enthusiastic about the Eddas. One of the more outspoken sceptics was none
other than Geijer.
2 A Contested Painting Exhibition: Geijer versus Ling
In 1817, the Geatish Society received an anonymous letter and fifty ducats to
spend on organising a painting competition on Nordic mythological themes
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56 VAN GERVEN
(Figure 3.1). The objective of the competition was the advance of Scandinavian
independence – also within the arts. Geijer reacted with great enthusiasm and
hailed the initiative, but in an essay on the subject he published in Iduna the
following year he turned out to be quite critical of the artistic potential of Nor
dic mythology. Covering poetry, sculpture and painting, he acknowledges that
the Nordic artist can most certainly benefit from the use of Old Norse themes,
but he simultaneously identifies a considerable number of limitations. With
regard to literature, he even completely dismisses the possibility of reworking
the myths into modern poetry. This, to his mind, would be highly unnatural
because the myths are no longer part of practised religion:
There are those that want to make Nordic mythology into some kind of
standing repository for a national epos, with which it would be torn away
from its time, its life, its historical foundations, and would become –
which is most striking when it is applied to modern topics, you can do all
you like – nothing more than dressing-up.
geijer, 1875 [1818], pp. 184–185
For Geijer, the only way the modern poet could use the myths is by starting
from the human experience, by showing how their religion influenced ancient
people’s feelings, mindset and actions, because only then would the myths be
placed in their own time and on their own ground. The poet should thus try to
project himself into the spirit of that long-gone age. Only on the basis of these
elaborate studies could he create “real Nordic poems, even if none of them
make mention of either Thor, Odin or Frigga” (Geijer, 1875 [1818], p. 187). Here,
Geijer was quite clearly promoting his own work: in his early poems such as the
aforementioned “Manhem” he does not name a single mythological character.
Geijer is most sceptical of the usability of Nordic mythology for sculpture.
He attributes the lack of visual remains to the very character of ancient Nordic
art “that appeals more to the mind than to the eye”, arguing that it can be de
scribed as a “destructive” force, rather than a creative one: “Visual beauty could
hardly be the guiding line for characters that were mere symbols of a never-
ending battle that could only be reconciled by complete destruction”. He goes
on to argue that it is impossible to construct a completely new iconography,
once again because Nordic mythology is no longer a living religion; as he
states, the sculptor is “about a thousand years too late” (Geijer, 1875 [1818],
p. 188). Another disadvantage, to his mind, is that the literary sources either
present incomplete images of mythological characters, thus leaving the artist
with little to work with, or images that are highly displeasing or unnatural and
consequently do not comply with the simplicity and elegance art should strive
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Figure 3.1 One of the highlights of the painting exhibition organised by the Geatish Society
was a sketch by Johan Gustaf Sandberg (1782–1854) of three Valkyries riding to
battle. Sandberg completed the painting in 1820. The work was displayed during
the exhibition of the same year.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
for. As examples, Geijer mentions the one-eyed Odin and his eight-legged horse
Sleipnir, neither of whom meets the high standards of Neoclassical aesthetics.
However, for Geijer, it is precisely these aesthetics that offer a way out of the
woods for the Nordic sculptor that wants to build on Nordic mythology. Geijer
urges the visual artist to employ the approved forms of Greek Antiquity. He
thereby counters the misconception, or what he perceives as a misconception,
that the application of this iconography would be un-national by stating that
the art of the ancient Greeks is not Greek-national but universal. Moreover, in
his eyes, sculpting is the least national art form because it strives for the depic
tion of universal physical beauty.
The last art form Geijer turns to is painting. Although the painter encounters
the same problems related to the imagelessness of Nordic myth as the sculptor,
Geijer ascribes Nordic mythology more value for the drawing arts. Whereas the
sculptor gives shape to the external and the universal of the human physique,
the painter works with the internal and the national, and the subject of his
art is the depiction of action. As in poetry, however, he feels that the human
perception of mythology should always take centre stage. The painter should
therefore take his inspiration from the heroic sagas rather than from the myths
about the Norse gods. In this extensive literature he will find rich descriptions
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58 VAN GERVEN
of what these heroes looked like, which could serve as a guideline for his own
work. For Geijer, working with subjects from the most ancient times holds the
further advantage of allowing exceptional creative freedom: the obscurity of
the long-gone age releases the artist from the shackles of historical accuracy
(Geijer, 1875 [1818], pp. 192–196).
Although Geijer’s judgement can be described overall as careful and rela
tively mild – and, as Dag Hedman has rightfully observed, also rather vague
(Hedman, 2002, p. 30) – it was reason enough for Pehr Henrik Ling, a poet and
gymnastics pioneer, to resign as a member of the Geatish Society. In a private
conversation with Geijer he explained his seemingly rash decision as follows:
“Would my lord … stay a member of a Christian congregation when someone
there stood up and with general approval denied our Lord Jesus Christ?”5
In a letter from 1818 to a friend, the poet P.D.A. Atterbom, Geijer only casu
ally mentions the affair: “With regard to prose I appear in the latest issue of
Iduna with a treatise on the utilisation of the Nordic myths in the arts. Ling
is much displeased because my views contradict his and are in every respect
not Hyperborean enough for him. He has even left the Geatish Society” (1854
[1818], p. 435). Geijer himself does not make a great deal of this and stresses
that he does not hold a grudge: “Ling is angry with me because of my objec
tions to the application of the Lingian (or what he calls the Nordic) mythology
in the visual arts. I ignore it – I just associate with him as before – and his anger
will fade eventually”. He continues, remarkably, in the very same sentence, by
praising “the painting exhibition of the Geatish Society” as “superb, and surely
the most beautiful collection of this kind that has ever been organised in Swe
den” (Geijer, 1854 [1818], pp. 438–439).
Two years later, however, Geijer’s regard for Ling made a 180-degree turn. In
another letter to Atterbom, he writes:
I cannot say that I am curious about his Eddornas sinnebildslära [The Sym
bolic Reading of the Eddas]. In this book Ling, once again, is preaching –
about himself. His true nature is that of a self-consuming, self-combusting
abstraction. He truly is a miserable soul, but a noble one, and one cannot
observe him without feeling sorry for him. In the desolate rooms where he
scurries about you will find thousands hanging around feeling satisfied
with their own blankness. He has, you will have to give him that, the fire, and
therefore the burden, of his eternal restlessness. The poor fellow! He will ul
timately burn up and start to spread his personal curse through his works.
geijer, 1854 [1820], pp. 444–445
5 Cited by Hedman (2002, p. 30).
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Geijer claims not to have read Eddornas sinnebildslära, which had been
published in the time separating his last two letters to Atterbom, but his sud
den change in tone suggests otherwise. In the introduction to his reading of
the Eddas, Ling had written the following, something that Geijer could very
well have taken personally: “Yes, I dare to defend the position that the fellow-
citizen that is indifferent to the legacy of his ancestors and holds doubts about
the possibility of restoring the nation’s honour runs the risk of being on the
verge of betraying his fatherland” (Ling, 1819, p. 17). A couple of pages earlier,
when Ling states that it is of the utmost importance for a nation to know its
mythological roots, Geijer might equally have suspected that the words were
directly intended for him: “A people that wants to know itself should also know
its ancestors, and a people that despises them despises its country and stands
on the brink of slavery” (Ling, 1819, p. 15).
At the end of the introduction, Ling explains that his book is partly intended
as a glossary from which artists can take information on what the Norse gods
and heroes looked like, on their dress and weaponry, the places they lived and
so on. At the same time, he makes it clear that he does not want to prescribe
rules for the artist about how Old Norse culture should be cultivated. This pas
sage can also be interpreted as being an implicit gibe at Geijer: “I do not in
tend to present myself as a self-declared advisor for the artist, for I have always
objected to the presumptuous narrow-mindedness of those that credit them
selves with the genius of others” (Ling, 1819, p. 23).
The introduction can be read as a defence of Nordic mythology’s intrinsic
value against Ling’s “one-sided attackers”, and in doing so Ling addresses a
number of the shortcomings Geijer brought forward in his treatise. First, he
refutes Geijer’s argument that the myths cannot be made into modern art be
cause they no longer form part of religious experience. Ling, of course, can
not deny this, but he argues that Norse mythology is still engrained in public
consciousness – for example, in the names of the days of the weeks, in daily
speech, and in the folktales and folksongs that people still tell each other on a
regular basis. Secondly, Ling argues that the Eddas indeed contain a great many
creatures and characters that might seem unsuitable for artistic depiction, but
this also holds true for Greek mythology with its centaurs, Cyclopes and satyrs.
Indeed, in Ling’s eyes, the imagery of Nordic mythology even exceeds that of
the Greeks in moral value. Third, and finally, Ling contradicts Geijer’s claim
that he wants to turn Nordic mythology into “some kind of standing repository
for a national epos”, in the act replacing or erasing Greek mythology: “I have
only stated that the Nordic myths are primordially interwoven in our own po
etic language; … that we should know these myths to know our history; and
that we have to know them to truly love our country” (Ling, 1819, p. 19).
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Ling’s primary objective in writing this book is thus that of fostering

ational identity, and he applauds the development that Nordic mythology is
n
starting to enter school curricula and has become a popular subject among
poets, painters and sculptors. However, it pains him to see that Sweden is lag
ging behind the rest of Europe (in comparison to Germany, England, Denmark
and even France and Italy) with regard to the study of Old Norse religion
and culture. Although both the Eddas had recently been published in a new
Swedish translation, Nordic mythology had not yet become the subject of an
extensive scholarly study in Sweden, and Ling wanted to fill this void with his
book. Ling expresses his gratitude toward the Danes for preparing the ground;
he explicitly mentions the editions of both the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda by
Rasmus Rask from 1818 (in Icelandic), and he especially hails N.F.S. Grundtvig
as being most influential and engaged in this field (his Nordens mytologi “Nor
dic Mythology” from 1808 had just been translated to Swedish). Furthermore,
he looks forward to the new Edda translations by Finnur Magnússon. However,
Ling also posits Scania (Sweden’s southernmost province) as the Nordic heart
land, simultaneously presenting the Old Norse literary heritage as something
originally Swedish:
Denmark has a great deal to offer for they have the most prominent col
lection of ancient Nordic manuscripts, and Danish scholars are noted for
their knowledge of the Old Norse language. Scania nevertheless has a lot
more to offer; for it holds in its solemn, abundant nature the entire range
of poetic imagery that reveals itself in our mythology, and it encloses the
entire northern-classical world within its dominions …. The Edda myths
should therefore find a new life in Scania in particular, for they shine
through in its nature and its history; and our indifference and ignorance
in these matters is exactly for this reason so disgraceful, whereas the dili
gence of our neighbours holds such high esteem. Iceland has been the
north’s national archive for centuries, but did these myths not originate
from Scania, before her migrating sons brought them to Iceland?
ling, 1819, pp. 21–22
Interestingly, in these lines Ling repeats a sentiment Geijer had expressed eight
years earlier in the introduction to the début issue of Iduna: “Our neighbours
have … cultivated the land of which the richest profits should befall the Swedes”
(Geijer, 1811, p. 5). Both Geijer and Ling clearly perceive Nordic mythology to
be part of a shared Scandinavian cultural heritage, but, when push comes to
shove, they qualify it as being “fundamentally more Swedish”. At the same
time, both authors are concerned that this rich more-Swedish-than-Danish
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heritage is slipping through Swedish fingers. The fervour with which Danish
scholars and poets were appropriating the material was for this reason looked
upon with a mixture of admiration and suspicion; both perceived a worrying
inequality in the scholarly appropriation of the Edda material: Sweden was
losing ground to Denmark. In short, the endeavours of Geijer, Ling and the
other members of the Geatish Society, then, were not merely aimed at foster
ing the national spirit. To a very large extent they were also about securing
Nordic mythology for Swedish culture.
The question now is whether Danish scholars knew about the Swedish
claims and, if so, whether they reacted to it. The answer to both questions is
yes. In both cases, the answer is provided by the work of Finnur Magnússon.
3 The Mythology Feud in Denmark: The Baden Brothers versus

Finnur Magnússon
From a footnote in a treatise he published in 1820 on the artistic usability of

Nordic mythology, it becomes clear that Finnur had read both Geijer’s disserta
tion and Ling’s book. He does not react directly to Ling’s bold claim, but early
on in his text one finds the following passage, in which he seems to address the
issue rather casually:
The study of art based on nature and the examples derived from Greek
Antiquity is the most proper pursuit for the young, learning artist, but it
would be useful for them … to also become acquainted with the ancient
mythology of their own fatherland, which has already attracted the at
tention of the rest of Europe’s (at least Gothic-Germanic) men of science;
yes, even partly of their artists, to a higher degree than here in Denmark,
the true home of its literature.
magnússon, 1820, p. 6, italics added
It might be wrong to draw too many conclusions from this one oblique remark.
On other occasions (e.g., in the introduction to his Edda translation, cited ear
lier), Finnur had expressed more Scandinavist leanings. This small passage is
nevertheless remarkable; Finnur expresses the same worries as Ling, but in
reverse: in his eyes, it is Denmark that is chasing Sweden (and Germany, the
use of the amalgam “Gothic-Germanic” is an interesting one) and not the other
way around. That same year, Finnur wrote in a letter to the German philologist
Friedrich David Gräter that “the artists there [in Sweden] have so far achieved
more with regard to subjects from Nordic mythology than our Danish artists”
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62 VAN GERVEN
(Magnússon, 1908 [1820], p. 24). In this sentiment he was certainly not alone.
For instance, when Grundtvig’s Nordens mytologi (Nordic Mythology, men
tioned by Ling) appeared in 1808, a Danish newspaper welcomed it as a greatly
needed Danish contribution to the field, regretting the fact that the Germans
had looked “significantly deeper into the splendid well that has sprung from
our Nordic soil [than we have done]” (Nyeste skilderie af Kjøbenhavn, 3 Decem
ber 1808, p. 247).
Finnur’s and Ling’s opposing positions on the ultimate ownership of the
Eddas had the potential for conflict, but a confrontation between the two never
occurred. One reason for this could be that, at the time, Finnur had quite a dif
ferent conflict on his hands. This conflict was also connected to the value of
Nordic mythology for the contemporary arts, and as such it went a step further
than the quarrels between Geijer and Ling. Geijer had been sceptical toward
the usability of Nordic mythology, but he did not denounce it as altogether in
valuable. Finnur’s opponents did exactly this; a firm reminder that the central
position Nordic mythology came to occupy within national identity was no
foregone conclusion.
In 1818, Finnur published an article on Old Norse culture in the influential
journal Minerva. It provoked an agitated reaction from the historian and lawyer
Gustav Ludvig Baden, who went to great lengths in the next issue of the same
journal to demonstrate the elementary immorality of the ancient peoples of
the north, thereby fully resorting to the pre-Nordic Renaissance stereotypes
of the murderous, rapacious and incestuous Vikings. Once Finnur had com
menced his lectures on Nordic mythology and archaeology at the Royal Art
Academy in Copenhagen the following year, Baden intensified his attacks, this
time in a rather more malicious manner. He published a small treatise under
Finnur’s name, entitled Professor Finn Magnussens Beviis for, at vore kunstnere
ved Reiser til Iisland kunde naae det Samme, som ved at reise til Italien eller Rom
(Professor Finn Magnussen’s Proof of the Fact That for Our Artists Travelling to
Iceland Is as Profitable as Travelling to Italy or Rome), ascribing the professor
such grotesque statements as crediting the ancient Icelanders with the inven
tion of the oil painting and the glass window (G.L. Baden, 1820a). In addition,
Baden furnished the fraudulent essay with equally fraudulent and ridiculing
comments by one Ludvig Jacobsen, all in all a fairly transparent pseudonym
(Gustav Ludvig was the son of the well-known Classical philologist and literary
critic Jacob Baden). The words Baden put in Finnur’s mouth were so o utrageous
that hardly anyone acquainted with Finnur’s work could have mistaken them
for genuine. Nonetheless, Finnur felt compelled to defend his good name, and
a controversy started that dragged on for months, with Baden now “openly”
taking the stance on behalf of “his good friend” Jacobsen.
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However comical Baden’s attacks may seem, Nordic mythology was no

laughing matter. For Baden and his fellow “anti-Eddists”, cultural life in Den
mark was under serious threat of “the scourge that the Icelanders and their
accomplices have brought upon our literature” (G.L. Baden, 1820b, p. 7). Their
fundamental rejection of the Eddas as medieval Icelandic distortions of bibli
cal tales and Graeco-Roman myths made them susceptible to allegations of
unpatriotic behaviour. Finnur was certainly not alone in his belief that the
Old Norse myths from the Poetic Edda stood (as Ling also maintained) at the
very beginning of national identity and formed the expression of the origi
nal, untainted national spirit. For Finnur, the adaptation of ancient myth in
contemporary culture was of national importance: it served the purpose of
popularising national culture (Halink, 2015, pp. 245–248). Nevertheless, the
firm clampdown of the anti-Eddists on what was after all their own national
heritage should not be perceived as having been unpatriotic. On the contrary:
the fervour behind their furious critique was to a large extent inspired by a
concern for their country’s reputation among the other European nations, a
reputation that, in their eyes, was under serious threat if art and literature in
the north were systematically exposed to the poisonous barbarity of ancient
Norse culture. In order not to become the laughing stock of the continent, the
fine arts should remain firmly embedded in the universal European traditions
of Classical Antiquity and the Bible. In the words of Gustav Ludvig’s younger
brother Torkel Baden, Finnur and company were in all their supposed patrio
tism acting like “enemies of the arts”. Their strivings would have devastating
consequences. Indeed, “in Nordic mythology art will find its grave” (T. Baden,
1820, p. 6).
Torkel Baden would prove to be a more serious – in both senses of the word –
opponent to Finnur than his trickster brother. Moreover, with Torkel, Finnur
now had to endure an attack from the Royal Art Academy’s own ranks because
the younger Baden, himself a classically schooled philologist and philosopher,
was the acting secretary and librarian of the academy. In several pamphlets
published between 1820 and 1821, Torkel Baden targeted the introduction of
the Norse muse in the fine arts. The arguments Torkel employs have a very fa
miliar ring to them, echoing the traditional, pre-Nordic Renaissance prejudices
toward Norse mythology and the north in general, by pointing out once more
the absence of an appealing Nordic visual culture, and by repeatedly stressing
the immorality of the death-defying ancestors and their gods and goddesses,
“which my brother has, I believe, irrefutably proven” (T. Baden, 1820, p. 26).
The Baden brothers indeed seem to have been the representatives of a by
gone age, lining up behind the Enlightenment’s ideal of universalism that was
steadily m arginalised once the ideology of Romantic nationalism had started
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64 VAN GERVEN
its triumphant march across the continent. Their appeal to the timeless and
universal heritage of Classical Antiquity thus clashed with Finnur’s call for the
proliferation of national authenticity. Torkel wrote:
The reputation of a piece of art does not only depend on the intimacy of
the execution, but also on the fortunate choice of subject. It has to be big
and important; it has to captivate the observer. For this reason, people
have advocated Nordic mythology as a repository where one can find
more interesting subjects than in Greek mythology – but the opposite
is true. The latter does not just concern one single people, but the entire
educated world.
t. baden, 1820, pp. 20–21
Equally anachronistic is Torkel’s implicit assumption that art could only be

grounded in a single standardised imagery. There is not a single point in all
of his writings at which he expresses the possibility that Greek and Norse
mythology can peacefully coexist as sources of artistic inspiration; it has to be
either the one or the other, and, once the splendid pillar of Classical culture has
been replaced by a decrepit Nordic buttress, he fears, the entire c onstruction
of art will collapse. As Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen has pointed out, this line
of thought was not unintelligible in the early nineteenth century, given the fact
that European high culture for centuries had been solely supported by the twin
pillars of the Classical and biblical traditions, and it was not yet apparent that
the Romantics’ propagation of originality and spontaneity would ultimately
make such a collective “repository of subjects”, as Torkel calls it, a thing of the
past (Lundgreen-Nielsen, 1994, p. 65).
In many ways, consequently, the Badens saw themselves entangled in a rear-
guard battle. Although the heated polemics between Torkel and Finnur that
followed after Torkel’s first pamphlet included a tug-of-war over who could
count the most, and the most prestigious, names from the Danish cultural
community on their side, Torkel and Gustav Ludvig in the end stood virtually
alone, supported only by the history painter C.F. Høyer. The mythology feud
would eventually reflect badly on this triumvirate of anti-Eddists, leading in
the case of Torkel to the loss of his job. However, the impact of the mythology
feud, of course, far exceeded the personal level. More than anything else, the
polemics that ensued over the course of 1820 and 1821 helped propel Nordic
mythology into the public sphere, coming to engage the reading public for
several months. Its echoes also reached Sweden, where Finnur’s lectures on
archaeology, which had lit the fuse, would be published in 1825, in a transla
tion by Johan Gustaf Liljegren (himself an archaeologist and a member of the
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Figure 3.2 Hermann Ernst Freund (1786–1840) took first prize for sculptors with a series of
sketches of Norse gods. This bronze statuette of Odin from 1827 shows how dif
ficult it was for artists to escape the Greek examples when working with Nordic
themes, thus underlining the argument forwarded by Torkel Baden and others
that works such as Freund’s Odin were nothing more than Greek gods in Nordic
dress and presented nothing original.
Geatish Society). More importantly, the feud would stimulate exactly what
the Badens had feared: the popularisation of the Norse gods in the visual arts.
During these years of excitement, the influential state official and business
man Jonas Collin, the later patron of Hans Christian Andersen, initiated a
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66 VAN GERVEN
c ompetition for drawings on Old Norse themes. Collin proved to be a tireless

advocate of Nordic mythology, continuously bringing the subject to the atten
tion of Denmark’s artists. He had no success with Bertel Thorvaldsen (Kofoed,
2014), one of Europe’s most renowned exponents of Neoclassicism, but he did
manage to inspire several others, perhaps most notably one of Thorvaldsen’s
pupils, the sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund, sending him Oehlenschläger’s
epic poem Nordens guder (The Gods of the North, 1819) and the first volume of
Finnur’s Edda translation (1821) for inspiration.
Freund won the competition (Figure 3.2), sharing the prize with the painters
J.L. Lund and Andreas Ludvig Koop, and would be responsible for one of the
masterpieces of Edda-inspired art, the Ragnarök frieze in Christiansborg Castle
in Copenhagen. The ambitious project, a depiction of the Norse gods and their
enemies preparing for the final world-ending battle, could only be finished af
ter Freund’s death in 1840, and it suffered a catastrophic (and, one could say,
ironic) end when the castle burned down in 1884.6 In the meantime, however,
the Nordic trend had caught on in all three of the Nordic countries, and the
Norse gods and heroes were now inhabiting the museum halls and walls that
had formerly been the favoured home of Greek creatures and Christian saints.
4 Conclusions: Between Shared Roots and National Appropriation
The two conflicts described in this article were fought out in local intellectual
circles, without any direct cross-border confrontation. The participants were
nevertheless well aware of the shared preoccupations of their fellow scholars
in neighbouring countries. Grundtvig’s and Finnur’s publications on Nordic
mythology were translated into Swedish, and Finnur had read Geijer and Ling.
With regard to fiction, it is noteworthy that works inspired by the sagas now
formed a substantial share of translations from Danish to Swedish and vice
versa – even though they were otherwise still a rarity at the time. In Sweden,
Oehlenschläger was very popular; between 1810 and 1830 seven of his works
were translated into Swedish. Esaias Tegnér similarly became a household
name in Denmark; his pieces Nattvardsbarnen (The Children of the Lord’s
Supper, 1820) and Frithiofs saga (1825) were both translated a year after their
original Swedish publication (Clausen, 1900, p. 30; Haarder Ekman, 2010, p. 36).
In the theoretical works on Norse myth, in fictional literature and in the
texts spawned by the mythology debates, the awareness that Nordic m ythology
formed part of a common Scandinavian heritage is evident. Adhering to the
6 A single drawing made by Henrik Olrik offers an impression of what the frieze must have
looked like in reality.
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treasured Scandinavian cultural heritage provided a confidence boost that was

dearly needed in the years following the Napoleonic Wars and the identity cri
sis that came with it. Sneedorff’s adagio “better together” indeed held true for
culture as much as for politics.
Mutual perception, however, did not only tie the countries closer together, it
also caused competition, and this had the opposite effect of undermining the
sense of shared identity. The impressive work done by Grundtvig, Rask, Finnur
Magnússon and other prominent Danish scholars instilled in Ling and Geijer
a fear that their country was lagging behind in the knowledge of the Eddas,
and Finnur expressed similar worries in reaction to, among other things, the
painting exhibition organised by the Geatish Society, fearing that Sweden, as
well as Germany, were outflanking Denmark in the creation of Eddic art. As
he says: “with the anticipated rise in literary production we should hope that
Denmark’s gifted artists, who cherish and understand the profound ideas of
our ancestors, will also show the world that we truly own a Nordic mythology”
(Magnússon, 1820, p. 45). Underlying these anxieties slumbered the deeper fear
of somehow losing the treasure trove of Nordic mythology to the c ompeting
other – who could be a Scandinavian neighbour but also, perhaps more impor
tantly, Germany. As a consequence, the cultivation of Scandinavian culture also
acquired a tendency for national appropriation; not necessarily because the
theme chosen for a certain poem or a certain painting was deemed specifically
“Danish” or intrinsically “Swedish”, or was presented as such, but through the
simple fact that it was a Danish poet or a Swedish painter that had adopted the
theme; in short, every new artwork fortified the position of Nordic mythology
as forming part of national culture. It is not for nothing that Magnússon, Ling,
Collin and others pushed the use of Nordic mythology in contemporary art
with such fervour; popularising appropriation was absolutely vital for building
a strong national culture grounded on the ancient myths.
The parallel importance of the ancient myths for the specific national
movements on the one hand, and for the emerging pan-Scandinavian self-
consciousness on the other, clearly left room for conflict. At the beginning of
the nineteenth century this conflict, if it can even be called a conflict, was still
indirect, and, as this article has shown, nationalistic claims were almost un
noticeably concealed in the debates on the artistic usability of the myths, or, in
addition, in the mythically saga-inspired artworks themselves. Oehlenschläger
is a good example; although he had based his 1807 play Hakon jarl hin rige (Earl
Hakon the Rich) on Snorri Sturluson’s saga of Norwegian King Olav Tryggvason
(c. 963–1000), he wilfully presented it as a “national” play. Of course, Norway
was at the time of publication still part of the Danish realm, but it is not hard to
imagine why Oehlenschläger’s claim on this saga in particular would eventu
ally cause some Norwegian eyebrows to raise.
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68 VAN GERVEN
It would indeed prove to be only a matter of time before the undercurrent of

the mythology debates would rise to the surface. In 1845, the Norwegian histo
rian P.A. Munch openly accused his Danish colleagues of unjustifiably presen
ting the sagas as part of their national literature, while “no one would deny …
that from the three Nordic nations it is to the Norwegian nation the saga litera
ture truly belongs, both with regard to language and to content, and the histori
cal memories it conveys” (Munch, 1873 [1845], pp. 103–104). This would be the
starting shot for yet another intense controversy that would engage Scandina
vian scholars for several decades. Yet, even in this context of conflict, national
appropriation and Scandinavism did not necessarily bite each other. For all
his criticism of his Danish counterparts, Munch nevertheless supported pan-
Scandinavian cooperation within the arts and sciences. All was well, as long as
the Scandinavist ideology was not abused to rob the Norwegians of that which
was rightfully theirs (Seip, 2012). Old Norse literature, after all, was simply too
valuable a treasure to be shared unselfishly.
References
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Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & Söner Konglige Boktryckare.
Gerven, T. van (2018). The Copenhagen Question of 1800. Tracing the Intellectual Roots
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Skandinavismen. Vision og virkning (pp. 45–72). Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag.
Grandien, B. (1987). Rönndruvans glöd. Nygöticistiskt i tanke, konst och miljö under 1800–
talet. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag.
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dinavismen under 1800–talet. Gothenburg: Makadam förlag.
Halink, S. (2015). A Tainted Legacy. Finnur Magnússon’s Mythological Studies and Ice
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Povlsen (ed.), Northbound: Travels, Encounters and Constructions 1700–1830
(pp. 129–149). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
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ska Boktryckeriet.
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tion of Edda and Saga (pp. 41–67). Enfield Lock, UK: Hisarlik.
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Magnússon, F. (1820). Bemærkninger ved hr. prof. Torkel Badens skrift om den nordiske
mythologies kunster. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
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Sange (volume 1). Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
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Oldskriftselskabs Virksomhed. In Storm, G. (ed.), Samlede Afhandlinger. Volume 1:
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Part 2
Ancient Heritage, New Meaning
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Chapter 4
Norse Myths, Nordic Identities: The Divergent Case

of Icelandic Romanticism
Gylfi Gunnlaugsson
The principal sources for Norse mythology, the Poetic and the Prose Edda, were
written in Iceland in the thirteenth century and preserved there, while their
existence remained largely unknown outside Iceland until the seventeenth
century. In 1665, a publication entitled Edda Islandorum1 offered the inter-
national scholarly community the first opportunity to gain a proper insight
into the Norse myths. Writers and poets outside Iceland paid little attention to
this heritage until about a century later. Its re-mediation in new literary works
reached its apogee in Scandinavian Romanticism. Several of the leading figures
of Romanticism in Denmark (Oehlenschläger, Grundtvig), Sweden (Atterbom,
Tegnér), Norway (Welhaven) and even Finland (Runeberg) wrote significant
poetic works, some of them extensive, in which the Eddic myths either provide
the subject matter or are otherwise an essential feature. The myths played an
important role in the authors’ quest to establish and articulate the identity of
their nation, or of the Scandinavian nations as a whole. In view of the Icelandic
origins of the written sources, Icelandic Romantic poets might have been ex-
pected to follow the example of their Scandinavian colleagues enthusiastically.
But in fact they produced only one cycle of poems, which was never popular,
and a handful of individual poems of this kind. Many of them, however, dis-
played a scholarly interest in Norse mythology. This difference cannot be at-
tributed to Icelandic isolation from the other Nordic countries: the Icelandic
poets that are generally classified among the Romantics all lived in Copenha-
gen for a time – and some of them for decades. Account must be taken of the
fact that, during most of the nineteenth century, Icelanders were engaged in
a campaign to achieve self-determination and ultimately independence from
Danish rule, and hence they tended to focus on what distinguished them from
the Danes, rather than on what the two peoples had in common. However, this
did not entail them neglecting the material in the old manuscripts that had
1 Faulkes, 1977. This flawed edition, credited to the Dane Peder H. Resen, was published in
Copenhagen. It contains the bulk of the Prose Edda in Icelandic, Danish and Latin. Two
separate appendices each contained one Eddic poem in the original and in Latin.

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74 Gunnlaugsson
relevance for all the Nordic region, no less than for Iceland. On the contrary, for
much of the century, Icelandic scholars placed the major emphasis on publica-
tion of this part of the literary heritage – especially the Eddas and kings’ sagas
(cf. Thomsen, 1846a, pp. 27–28). In the end, the Icelandic Romantics’ lack of
interest in Norse mythology in their creative writings appears to arise precisely
from the fact that it had survived in Iceland. This heritage had not simply been
preserved like a museum piece: it had been actively used in Icelandic poetry
down through the centuries. By the nineteenth century, this usage had become
quite mechanical and had lost much of its aesthetic value. On the other hand,
Icelanders had made limited use of the metres of the Poetic Edda over the cen-
turies, and thus poets that wished to revitalise Icelandic literature around 1800
were able to adopt these metres.
I shall begin by briefly discussing the continuity in the application of Norse
mythology in traditional verse in celand from the Middle Ages until the end of
the nineteenth century, and then explore how the Eddic metres gained popu-
larity among educated Icelandic poets. I shall then go on to discuss the two
Icelandic representatives of Romanticism that displayed the greatest interest
in the Eddas, in both scholarly and creative writing: Grímur Thomsen (1820–
1896) and Benedikt Sveinbjarnarson Gröndal (1826–1907). I intend to show that
their ideas about the relationship between the heritage and definite national
or transnational identities were far from simple.2
The Prose Edda is assumed to have been written around 1220 by the chieftain
Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241). He appears to have intended it to serve as a refer-
ence book for poets – or, perhaps more accurately, as an attempt to invigorate a
certain poetic tradition that he saw as threatened: a tradition that was at its ze-
nith when Icelandic poets were an indispensable presence at the courts of Nor-
dic kings. In Icelandic this form is called dróttkvæði “court poetry”, but in English
it is generally known as skaldic poetry. The prosody of this verse was quite strict,
with little variation in number of syllables, regular alliteration and simple but
systematic internal rhyme. However, what sets skaldic verse apart is its vocabu-
lary, a distinctive poetic language, based to a great extent on Norse mythology.
This unique vocabulary continued to be used within this tradition, even af-
ter the Nordic countries became Christian. The skaldic vocabulary comprises,
2 This chapter is based on a study subsidised by the Icelandic Research Council. I have dis-
cussed some aspects of the material presented here in greater detail elsewhere; see references.
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Norse Myths, Nordic Identities 75
on the one hand, heiti – nouns that were used only in poetry, and not confined
to skaldic verse. On the other hand, and a more striking element, is the ken
ning, or periphrasis, a more or less elaborate circumlocution. In its simplest
form, a kenning consists of two nouns, one in the nominative case, and the
other in the genitive: for instance, beður ormsins “the worm’s/dragon’s bed” is
a kenning for gold. Kennings often contain a puzzle that is hard to decipher
unless one is familiar with the myths and legends of the Eddas. However, with
a little knowledge of them – in this case the story of Sigurd Fafnirsbane (Fáf
nisbani) and the Rheingold – the meaning is generally clear. Snorri presumably
composed the Prose Edda so that future generations could continue to make
use of the treasures of established kennings (and metres) that had been avail-
able for centuries, and so that they could be familiar with the stories behind
the kennings and understand how each of them was originally conceived. The
Prose Edda was, in fact, not only useful for poets; it was also helpful for those
that read or heard the verses.
The skaldic tradition gradually waned in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, in spite of Snorri’s efforts. But its poetic language – both heiti and
kennings – took on a new lease of life in a new poetic form, rímur or rimes,
which emerged in the fourteenth century. Rímur generally comprised four-line
stanzas, strictly alliterated and with end-rhyme, and ideally internal rhyme too.
Clearly, it was helpful to have a large vocabulary at one’s disposal when com-
posing within such a strict form. The poetic language also served, of course,
to make the poems more ornate, and somewhat enigmatic. As a rule, rímur
closely paraphrase, at great length, a saga or a foreign romance. This type of
poetry enjoyed enormous popularity among the people of Iceland for about
five hundred years. Many rímur are of course lost, but more than a thousand
have survived, of which only a quarter have ever been printed. For all that
time, the Prose Edda served as a reference work for poets and the public at
large, generally disseminated in the form of handwritten copies – as were the
rímur. In addition to the parchment manuscripts, about 170 paper manuscripts
of at least substantial parts of the Prose Edda, from various times, are extant
(Seelow, 1998).
Around 1600, when Icelanders started efforts to reawaken interest in their
literature in other countries, they emphasised precisely this complex and ar-
cane verse tradition. In an essay published in Latin in 1636, in an appendix to
a publication about runes by the Danish antiquarian Ole Worm, the Reverend
Magnús Ólafsson (c. 1573–1636) wrote:
If I should say that our poetry surpassed the verse of all ordinary languag-
es in art and technique, I would perhaps not be maintaining anything
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76 Gunnlaugsson
absurd; and if I should believe that it vied with the rest, one who, learned
in them, was also fully acquainted with ours, would maybe not judge me
completely the victim of a vain fancy. And indeed this poetry contains so
many unique ornaments of diction, figurative usages, and various ways
of referring to things derived from ancient stories in a manner graceful,
varied, and obscure, that I should think it would be impossible to explain
it all to one unacquainted with our language.
faulkes, 1979, p. 408
Magnús is well aware that this poetic tradition is not Icelandic in origin, but
he maintains that it has become so because all but the Icelanders have lost
the language from which it springs. He draws a distinction, however, between
the Icelandic of daily use and the poetic language, which he says was called
Ásamál “the gods’ language” by the ancients. He clearly sees the composers of
rímur in his own time as the direct successors of the Icelandic court skalds of
old, and in some cases no less skilled then they were.
No doubt Magnús would have taken a different approach here, had the prin-
cipal manuscript of the Poetic Edda been known at the time of writing.3 But it
did not come to light until some years later, in 1643. For centuries prior to that
time, very few Eddic poems were known. The metres of Eddic verse are far
simpler than those of skaldic verse, let alone those of the rímur. The language
is, admittedly, archaic, and heiti are commonly used, but kennings are a rarity.
After its rediscovery, Eddic poetry never became part of Icelandic folk culture
in the same way as the rímur did; but Eddic metres were always to some degree
in use, in folk poetry and elsewhere.
Educated Icelanders were, of course, aware of Graeco-Roman mythology,
but for a long time it rarely featured in Icelandic verse. The natural scientist
and poet Eggert Ólafsson (1726–1768) included references to classical mytho
logy in some of his poems; but he appears to have been concerned, when wri
ting a foreword to a collection of his verse (published posthumously), that his
use of this material might strike his Icelandic readers as strange. He takes the
precaution of pointing to precedents in the poetry of neighbouring countries:
“all the nations of the northern world now employ in their vernacular poetry
the Romans’ kennings and methods in order to compose verse that is cryptic
and ingenious” (Ólafsson, 1832, p. 2). He sees every reason to do the same, while
warning Icelandic poets not to go too far in that direction so as not to under-
mine the old Icelandic verse traditions.
3 The essay was written in 1629, although not published until 1636. A second edition of the
book, including the essay, was published in 1651.
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Educated Icelandic poets more often opted for a different way to revita
lise Icelandic verse in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: they
chose the freedom offered by the simple Eddic metres. Together with this, they
often employed some of the language of the Eddic poems in order to maintain
an archaic flavour. An important landmark on the path toward increased use of
Eddic forms was a book written in Danish by Eggert Ólafsson’s younger broth-
er, Jón Ólafsson of the Svefneyjar islands (1731–1811), Om Nordens gamle Dig
tekonst, dens Grundregler, Versarter, Sprog og Foredragsmaade (On the Ancient
Poetic Art of the North, its Principles, Metres, Language and Presentation,
1786). The book was based on an essay that had won a prize some years earlier
in a competition held by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Eddic verse is here accorded far higher status than other Old Norse verse – and
the qualities singled out for special praise are precisely the opposite of those
in Icelandic verse extolled by Magnús Ólafsson. In Jón’s view, the principal vir-
tue of the Eddic poems is their noble simplicity (Ólafsson, 1786, p. 14). This
book clearly displays influence from European thinkers such as Rousseau and
Winckelmann. Jón makes no attempt to assert that the Eddic poems are spe-
cifically Icelandic, rather than belonging to the Nordic peoples as a whole – as
he was convinced that the poems long predated the discovery and settlement
of Iceland. He believes that the Eddic metres themselves (all of which he terms
fornyrðislag) are of very ancient origin and closely related to the oldest poetic
forms of mankind. In his view, they were not confined to strictly poetic usage
by the early Norse peoples; he maintains that they used them whenever they
wished to express themselves in a formal or high-flown manner. Jón envisages
some kind of chanting, and thus he calls this form of expression Syngesprog
et (“song-speech”). He sees this direct connection between Eddic poetry and
the primitive form of expression as giving the verse special significance. The
poems of the Poetic Edda, he says, “should thus be seen as precious relics of
song-speech” (Ólafsson, 1786, p. 10). In accord with these views, he places spe-
cial emphasis on the frequency with which variations on the main rules of the
metre occur in Eddic poetry.
A year after the publication of Jón’s book, the first volume of what was
intended to be the first complete edition of the Poetic Edda was published
in Copenhagen, with Latin translations. This was largely the work of Icelan-
dic scholars. A few years later, in 1790 and 1791, the major part of Alexander
Pope’s The Temple of Fame was published in an Icelandic translation by Bene-
dikt Jónsson Gröndal (1762–1825, grandfather of Benedikt Sveinbjarnarson
Gröndal). His translation, in the fornyrðislag metre, was the first of many
translations of long narrative poems in that metre: Paradise Lost by Milton,
Der Messias (The Messiah) by Klopstock, the verse of Ossian, Homer’s Iliad
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78 Gunnlaugsson
and Odyssey, and so on. At that time Icelanders also started to make much
more use of Eddic metres in their original verse. These are especially promi-
nent in the verse of the principal pioneers of the Romantic movement in
Icelandic literature: Bjarni Thorarensen (1786–1841) and Jónas Hallgrímsson
(1807–1845). Both use Eddic metres more than other metres. The revival of
Eddic metres seems not to have any direct correlation to the rise of national-
ism, in the narrow sense; it appears to have arisen more from aesthetic fac-
tors. At that time there was a general trend toward greater simplicity and freer
form in European poetry.
Contemporaneously, the rímur came in for increasing criticism from in-
tellectuals. Jónas Hallgrímsson wrote a well-known article in 1837 that com-
mences with the words: “As rímur (in Iceland) are composed, and have been
composed until this time, most of them are a disgrace to the nation” (Hall-
grímsson, 1837, p. 18). The intellectuals’ disdain was especially prompted by
the overuse of heiti and kennings in the rímur. Their disapproval had no im-
mediate impact on the popularity of rímur among the common people, but
this ultimately declined to a low ebb toward the end of the nineteenth century.
For as long as the rímur tradition remained strong, it maintained knowledge
of Norse mythology among the common people of Iceland, together with the
appropriate vocabulary.
The scornful attitude of the educated Romantic poets toward rímur appears
to have deterred most of them from utilising Norse mythology in their own
poetry (cf. Egilsson, 2008, p. 105). Hence it is especially interesting to consider
how the subject was addressed by those two Icelanders of the Romantic school
that took the most serious interest in it.4
4 In 1851, Benedikt Sveinbjarnarson Gröndal published his first volume of poetry, the “heroic
poem” Drápa um Örvar-Odd (A Lay of Arrow-Oddur). The publication of the book was an-
nounced in an advertisement in the newspaper Þjóðólfur (2 May 1851), which clearly indi-
cated that it was seen as challenging the rímur. By 1893, however, Gröndal had become suf-
ficiently reconciled with the genre to publish an original work of his own in the tradition:
Gaungu-Hrólfs rímur (Rímur of Göngu-Hrólfur). This work probably owed its origin mainly
to a lack of money on the part of the poet; he could expect it to sell well. He still had his re
servations about the poetic value of rímur. In a newspaper article he wrote in 1897, he stated
his view that it was hardly possible to infuse rímur with poetic beauty; they could scarcely be
anything other than rhymed prose (Gröndal, 1953, p. 102). A decade after Grímur Thomsen’s
death, a long previously unpublished narrative poem by him appeared, entitled Rímur af Búa
Andríðssyni og Fríði Dofradóttur (Rímur of Búi Andríðsson and Fríður Dofradóttir, 1906). The
title is misleading, however, as these are not true rímur. The work is probably best seen as
Grímur’s answer to rímur poetry (cf. Egilsson, 1999, pp. 138–175).
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II
Grímur Thomsen received his master’s degree in aesthetics from the Universi-
ty of Copenhagen in 1845. His thesis on Lord Byron made an impression in the
Danish literary world when it was published in book form. He had previously
published another book, on contemporary French poetry, and had contributed
to the general cultural debate in Denmark, expressing his views through pam-
phlets and articles in periodicals – one of very few Icelanders to do so. Shortly
after he graduated from university, he apparently embarked on writing a his-
tory of Icelandic literature in Danish (Björnsson, 1975, pp. 6–8). Although the
project was abandoned unfinished, he published four essays on the subject –
three in 1846 (Thomsen, 1846a–c) and the fourth eleven years later (Thomsen,
1857). There is good reason to believe that this last one was written soon after
the other three. One of the essays was translated into Swedish and published
in the journal Frey in 1848. Much later, in 1867, Grímur adapted two of the es-
says for an English readership and published them (anonymously) in a Scottish
journal, The North British Review.5 Taken together, the four essays are roughly
equivalent to a whole book in length. One of Grímur’s main aims in publishing
them was to encourage Scandinavian writers to familiarise themselves with
Old Icelandic writings and to make use of them in their work. To facilitate this,
he published Udvalgte Sagastykker (Saga Selections) in his own Danish transla-
tion in 1846. The majority of these twenty short excerpts had, however, already
been translated into Danish. Grímur Thomsen published a second collection
of Udvalgte Sagastykker in 1854.
Grímur was of the view that Nordic authors of the time (other than Ice-
landers) were generally in need of a closer knowledge of the Old Norse literary
heritage in order to stop imitating the literature of larger nations and to make
a fresh start on the basis of their own national character. In one of the four es-
says, written as a lecture to a Pan-Scandinavianist assembly and later printed
as a pamphlet, he says: “And the North, gentlemen, if it is to be reborn, not only
nationally but also historically and poetically, it must truly, and seriously, look
back to its childhood memories and immerse itself in its own old spirit as this
is found in all forms – in Icelandic literature” (Thomsen, 1846a, p. 34). Grímur,
who was himself a Pan-Scandinavianist at that time, spoke of the Nordic peo-
ples as variants of one nation. In his essay he calls the Icelanders (employing
Hegelian terms): “one of the individuations of the Scandinavian Idea” and “one
of the essential variables of the Nordic spiritual oneness” (Thomsen, 1846a, p. 3).
5 Thomsen, 1972 (reprint).
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80 Gunnlaugsson
In accord with this principle, he sees Old Norse literature as a common heri-
tage of the Nordic nations – but he also stresses that this literature was written
overwhelmingly by Icelanders and preserved in Iceland. This, of course, serves
as a reminder of the important place of the Icelanders in this cultural entity.
The two journal articles of 1846 (Thomsen, 1846b–c) express Grímur’s fun-
damental ideas about this heritage. In them he seeks to describe the main
features of the spirit that pervades Old Norse literature by way of compari-
son with ancient Oriental and Greek literature. His focus is on the verse and
mythology of these different cultures. The essays clearly display the influence
of Hegel’s aesthetics and philosophy of history. The main difference between
Ancient Greek and Old Norse literature stems, in Grímur’s view, from a specific
Nordic trait: the people of the Nordic nations are better able than the Greeks
to restrain their emotions, and thus they have greater determination and te-
nacity. The Nordic type is easily able to postpone exacting revenge, and will
take action later, when the right moment occurs – and when least expected.
This restraint of passion, with its accompanying control of expression, says
Grímur, is manifested even in the form of Old Norse literature, which alludes
indirectly to its content rather than overtly stating it. The self-discipline of the
Norseman is grounded in his belief in his own might – a logical corollary of
the fact that the Norse gods were not omnipotent. The myths indicate that the
gods are aware of the coming Twilight of the Gods, and also that they have no
power to prevent it. This makes them more like humans than the Olympian
gods and renders all their strife somewhat absurd. As a consequence, main-
tains Grímur, all Old Norse literature is characterised by the supremacy of
the subjective: “the same domination of subjectivity, which is otherwise only
found in the Christian condition of the world, also belongs to the Norse cycle
of tales” (Thomsen, 1846b, col. 181). This is, in fact, part of his argument for
where to place Old Norse literature in Hegel’s aesthetic hierarchy. In his lec-
tures on aesthetics, Hegel divides the history of art and literature broadly into
three periods, which he identifies by the dominant art form of each era: the
Symbolic, the Classical and the Romantic. The Romantic era begins, according
to this tripartite system, with the advent of Christianity in Europe – that is, the
Romantic is a Christian phenomenon – and extends after the conclusion of
Hegel’s survey, which ends with Shakespeare. Grímur is keen to demonstrate
that even the heathen part of Old Norse literature has more in common with
the Romantic than with the Graeco-Roman Classical. In that context he refers
to Old Norse literature as the “heathen Romantic” (Thomsen, 1846b, col. 180).
Moreover, not content with this, Grímur seeks to liken it precisely to the third,
most evolved stage of the Romantic as defined by the German philosopher.
Hegel elucidates the characteristics of that stage by describing the personality
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of leading Shakespearean characters. Grímur argues that what Hegel describes

is precisely the character type of the Nordic man – the same spirit as is ex-
pressed in Old Norse literature.6 This means, Grímur continues, “that Shake-
speare was more of a Nordic than a Christian poet in the moments in which
he conceived and developed these characters” (Thomsen, 1846c, p. 98). Hence
Grímur Thomsen sees no reason to make a clear distinction between English
drama and Old Icelandic literature. His intention, however, is obviously to en-
hance the status of the latter.
Most of Grímur’s verse was written long after the essays, in his later years.
Many of his poems take their subject matter from Old Norse literature, but only
in one of them, Ásareiðin (The Ride of the Heathen Gods) from 1880–1881, do
the Norse gods play an important part (Thomsen, 1969, pp. 113–116). It is char-
acteristic of Grímur that he derives the essential idea for the poem not from
Old Icelandic writings, but from folklore that was widespread in northern and
central Europe, while being unknown in Iceland: the myth of the Wild Hunt.
Some time before, the Norwegian poet Johan S. Welhaven had used the same
folklore theme in his poem Asgaardsreien (The Ride of Asgard; Welhaven, 1868,
pp. 229–234). Grímur is highly likely to have been familiar with that work. In
both poems it is made quite clear that the beings that regularly ride across the
heavens on dark winter nights are the ancient Norse gods; in Grímur’s poem
they are constantly fleeing from Christ, with the exception of one goddess,
Saga, who signifies History. She has never been driven to flee – for this goddess
will always retain her position of importance, regardless of changes in religious
belief.
Benedikt Sveinbjarnarson Gröndal was renowned in his own time mostly
for his verse, but today it is his prose that is more widely read, especially his en-
tertaining autobiography Dægradvöl (Passing the Time). Benedikt spent many
years as an independent scholar and author living in Copenhagen, supporting
himself largely by commissions from the Royal Society of Northern Antiquar-
ies, while also pursuing his own research, inter alia in the field of what he called
“comparative mythology”. Benedikt was permitted to submit a master’s thesis
in Norse studies to the University of Copenhagen without having formally
studied the discipline, and he received his degree in 1864. A doctoral disserta-
tion on King Harald Fairhair’s poets was, however, rejected by the university,
after which Benedikt abandoned his attempts to establish an academic career.
Prior to that time, he had published a number of papers in learned Danish
journals, not least on the subject of Old Norse verse and mythology. His views
were respected, admittedly, but he had a tendency to undermine his academic
6 Grímur first proposes this idea in his book on Lord Byron (Thomsen, 1845, pp. 20–25).
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82 Gunnlaugsson
credibility with sweeping assertions and eccentric opinions (cf. Ólason, 2008).
After his doctoral dissertation was rejected, he continued to write about Norse
mythology, but only in Icelandic and for a more diverse readership. Benedikt
Gröndal’s views about the Eddic heritage were often at odds with those of the
scholars of the time.
Benedikt was also well-read in the classics, as his father had long taught
Greek at Iceland’s only high school and ensured that young Benedikt studied
both Latin and Greek from an early age. Unpublished writings by Benedikt
include a long essay in Latin on the importance of the study of the classics in
modern times, written for a competition held by the University of Strasbourg.
He also completed Icelandic translations of the Homeric epics in the Eddic
fornyrðislag metre, which his father had begun but did not get far with.
Benedikt espoused the views of Finnur Magnússon (alias Finn Magnusen,
1781–1847), another Icelandic scholar, who had maintained that Norse mytho
logy had its origins in Asia: Finnur had written four volumes on the subject,
Eddalæren og dens Oprindelse (The Eddic Lore and Its Origins), published in
1824–1826. Finnur had been highly respected in the Danish academic world,
but by the mid-nineteenth century his reputation was in tatters.7 Benedikt be-
lieved that the similarities between Norse and Greek mythology arose from a
common origin, and not from any direct influence attributable to interaction
between the Norse and the Greek. This view of the origins of the mythology
entailed that he did not feel that the Nordic peoples could lay any exclusive
claim to the heritage. In an essay written in 1872, Benedikt dismisses as absurd
“if one were to imagine that the Norse religion originated here in the Nordic
countries, or were the private property of the Nordic peoples, in which they
can take pride as belonging to them, and no-one else” (Gröndal, 1872, p. 9).
From that perspective, Norse mythology cannot be seen as any kind of mani-
festation of Nordic identity.
On the other hand, Benedikt strove to establish the Poetic Edda as a unique-
ly Icelandic national heritage. Contrary to accepted scholarly opinion, he be-
lieved that the poems had been composed in Iceland, over a century after the
adoption of Christianity around the year 1000. He was certainly convinced that
the subject matter had originated elsewhere, that the poems were based on
lore that far predated the settlement of Iceland – and even that of Scandina-
via; but he maintained that this material had first been put into poetic form in
Iceland. He explains the archaic language of the poems by claiming that the
poet or poets deliberately used archaisms, and left gaps here and there, to give
the impression of something older, of which part was lost. In an essay written
7 This was mainly because purported runic inscriptions carved on a dolerite dike in Sweden,
which Finnur had “deciphered”, were a few years later proven to be erosion marks.
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late in life, Benedikt is no longer certain that this theory is correct; but he sticks
to his conviction that the Poetic Edda belongs to the Icelanders more than to
anyone else: “Even if we were to say that an Icelander had simply revised the
Eddic verses as he copied them; even if we accepted that much of them is older
than the settlement of Iceland; that would make no difference. They would be
Icelandic nonetheless” (Gröndal, 1892, p. 87).
Benedikt’s main problem in this context is that he, personally, was not im-
pressed with the Poetic Edda as poetry. He wrote favourably of skaldic verse,
but in a Danish scholarly publication he delivered this judgement on Eddic
poetry: “they are not poems, but merely poem embryos” (Gröndal, 1864, p. 371).
And in a paper published in an Icelandic journal he wrote: “None of the poems
of the Edda are such a poetic whole as not to be full of inconsistencies and
nebulous ideas” (Gröndal, 1873, p. 8). The Poetic Edda did not quite meet Bene-
dikt’s standards for being called poetry, which he defined as follows: “Literary
art is a description in words of ideas in the domain of beauty – a domain that is
precisely more elevated and refined than the daily round of life: in other words,
it is an ideal domain” (Gröndal, 1953, p. 217). It is easy to agree that the Poetic
Edda lacks that kind of ideal beauty – and the text of the Prose Edda was not
really regarded as literary art by Icelanders at that time.
In two of his poems, Benedikt Gröndal explicitly juxtaposes Graeco-Ro-
man and Norse mythologies. In Venus og Freyja (Venus and Freyja, 1860), the
former symbolises a culture whose days of glory are far in the past, whereas
the latter represents one that has not yet fulfilled its promise (Gröndal, 1948,
pp. 164–166). In 1864 or 1865 Benedikt composed his Brísingamen (not pub-
lished until 1871), which depicts a more complex relationship between Nordic
and southern cultures (Gröndal, 1948, pp. 202–207). Brísingamen is the name
of a piece of jewellery that belonged to the goddess Freyja and was her iden-
tifying attribute. The usual interpretation of the old writings is that this was
a necklace, but in Benedikt’s poem it is a pectoral brooch. In his notes to the
poem, Benedikt says:
This poem is originally based on the story in Gylfaginning [a chapter of

the Prose Edda] that Óður, Freyja’s husband, vanished, and Freyja tra
velled far and wide to search for him: this led to the thought that people
from the Nordic countries always from time to time looked southward
to warmer, sunnier places where there was more education and wealth.
gröndal, 1948, p. 542
Óður is here conflated with Óðinn and is hence the god of poetry. Óður meets
the southern god of poetry, Apollo, in his home environment, and Apollo tells
Óður how to find a magical flower to give Freyja. She is of dual nature, goddess
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84 Gunnlaugsson
not only of love but also of war, as in the sources. Apollo says that the flower
will mellow “a harsh spirit made strong in battle” (Gröndal, 1948, p. 205). At
the conclusion of the poem, Freyja and Óður have been reunited, and she has
replaced Brísingamen with the flower. The main idea appears to be that Nordic
culture needs southern, mellowing influence.
Benedikt Gröndal’s most ambitious literary work – or at least the one that
was the longest in the making – was his cycle of poems Ragnarökkur (Twilight
of the Gods), published in 1868. He had begun it in 1848. Here the poet strove to
elevate the Norse myths to that “ideal” plane that he felt was lacking in the sourc-
es – and of course the rímur. All that was grotesque and vulgar in the Eddas has
been eliminated – and with it the humour that was otherwise typically a feature
of Benedikt’s work. The god Þór, generally presented as a clumsy, even crude
character in the old writings, has been almost entirely expunged by the poet:
he has only one line of speech in the entire cycle of poems. The same desire to
refine the world of the gods (or to present it in a more noble light) explains the
omission of the entire episode where Iðunn disappears along with her apples
of youth – leading to the gods growing old until she and her apples are recov-
ered. In his foreword to the work, Benedikt explains that he had deemed the
tale “not suitable for poetic treatment” (Gröndal, 1868, p. 13). Benedikt exten-
sively remakes and reinterprets the old myths, and also portrays life among the
gods as far more civilised – and classical – than in the Eddas. Ragnarökkur may
perhaps be seen as an attempt to remake from scratch the Icelanders’ reception
of Norse mythology. There was no need to draw the Icelanders’ attention to this
mythology, as they were already familiar with it. In Benedikt’s view it had no
national significance, in any case. However, he felt it was worth trying to show
this familiar material to Icelanders in a different light – similar to the light in
which other European nations had long viewed Graeco-Roman mythology. The
reading public were not impressed with the heathen gods in this guise, and the
magnum opus met with a poor reception, although it was praised by critics.
The attitudes of these two Romantics – Grímur Thomsen and Benedikt
Gröndal the younger – toward the Eddic heritage manifest a certain conflict
between viewing the Eddas as a specifically Icelandic heritage, or as the shared
heritage of the Nordic peoples, or even a more international phenomenon. For
both of them, the latter, non-exclusive view ultimately prevailed. In fact, few
Icelandic intellectuals of that time saw national and Scandinavian or north-
ern European identity as exclusive and opposed aspects of cultural identity,
despite the rise of the Icelanders’ campaign for self-determination. It is hard-
ly possible to speak of any strong tendency among them to nationalise (in a
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arrow sense) the Eddic heritage until the end of the nineteenth century. But
n
in this context it is, of course, relevant that there was plenty more material in
Old Icelandic manuscripts – the family sagas, for instance – for which a better-
grounded claim of Icelandic ownership could be made.
References
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Chapter 5
Redbad, the Once and Future King of the Frisians

Han Nijdam and Otto S. Knottnerus
Frisian King Redbad (died 719) has become a solid part of Frisian history and
Frisian identity in the course of the centuries, and he is remembered as the
greatest king the Frisians ever had. It took a very long time for this image to
evolve; during and shortly after his life he was portrayed as the prototype of
a stubborn pagan king because of his encounters with Christian missionaries
and with the Carolingian rulers Pepin of Herstal (died 714) and his son Charles
Martel (c. 680–741). It was only through his adoption in the narrative matter
of the chansons de geste tradition that the idea of a noble Christian king of
Frisia emerged. This positive image would over time come to overshadow the
original, negative image. Starting at the end of the Middle Ages, Redbad was
portrayed by the Frisians as their king, and he would eventually become the
most important king the Frisians ever had.
Our objective is to show that this image of Redbad did not fall out of thin air
in the period after 1800. The manner in which he had been present in chronicles
and literature during the entire Middle Ages and the modern period formed the
starting point for him to finally to become the most important Frisian king of all
times. To our knowledge, this is the first time that Redbad’s reception and devel-
opment is traced in this manner. In this respect, Redbad can be seen as a case
study for a more a long-term perspective on the phenomenon of national iden-
tities, and as an attempt to widen the scope of this volume. We demonstrate how
medieval and early modern developments facilitated Redbad’s later reception
in the context of modern Frisian identity, which one could interpret as a cor-
rective to exclusively modernistic interpretations of nation-building processes.
We have also taken the liberty to take the concept of mythology to mean the
“myth of the nation” because there is a fair amount of myth creation around
the Frisian king, both in the chansons de geste and in the Frisian historiography
of the modern period, where a continuous line of Frisian kings was forged,
working back to Friso, the mythical founder of Frisia.
1 The Early Middle Ages: The Historical Redbad
Despite a considerable dearth of information, both archaeological and histori-

cal sources shed some light on early medieval Frisia. Archaeologists now agree

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88 Nijdam and Knottnerus
that the Frisian coasts were largely depopulated between c. AD 300 and 400
and repopulated by people coming from Scandinavia and Saxony from the fifth
century onward (Nicolay, 2014). This explains the cultural connections that can
be observed between Anglo-Saxon England, Frisia and Scandinavia. Inhabiting
the coastal fringes of the continent, the Frisians soon became widely known as
traders and as a rich and powerful people. The North Sea was still called Mare
Frisicum ‘the Frisian Sea’ as late as the twelfth century.
Seen in this light, it is not surprising that early medieval sources mention
Frisian kings. Legendary Frisian King Finn Folcwalding appears in the Anglo-
Saxon literary texts Widsith and Beowulf (Halbertsma, 2000; Salomon, 2000).
During the seventh and eighth centuries, the Frisians clashed with their
southern neighbours, the Franks. At the same time, Anglo-Saxon and Frank-
ish missionaries started travelling to the Frisian territories in order to endow
the pagan Frisians with the Christian faith. It is through these encounters that
one learns of three Frisian rulers – Aldgisl, Redbad, and Bubo or Poppo. Aldgisl
resided in Utrecht or Dorestad. He was visited by Wilfrid, bishop of York, in the
winter of 678/9. The Frisian king showed great hospitality and even allowed
Wilfrid to preach among the Frisians. The next time one hears of a Frisian king,
in the year 680, this concerns Redbad. After Redbad’s death, in 719, one more
Frisian ruler is mentioned. In 734 the Frankish leader Charles Martel defea
ted dux ‘duke’ Bubo (of whom close to nothing is known) at the river Bordina
(present-day Boorne) in the Frisian heartland; that is, the present-day province
of Friesland (Halbertsma, 2000, pp. 229–230, 250–253). It is not known what
the relationship was between Aldgisl, Redbad and Bubo. Aldgisl has been seen
as Redbad’s father or at least his predecessor, but this is not substantiated by
the sources (Halbertsma, 2000, p. 77).
This sequence of events shows how the Frisian territory was slowly being
conquered by the Franks during the eighth century. The Lex Frisionum (Law
of the Frisians) was written down by the end of that century, and it testifies
to the fact that the Frisians now fell under Frankish rule. The Lex Frisionum
distinguishes three separate regions: one located between the rivers Vlie and
Lauwers (i.e., the present-day Dutch province of Friesland), a western realm
between the rivers Sincfal and Vlie (i.e., the present-day Dutch provinces of
Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Zeeland as well as parts of the province of
Utrecht), and an eastern realm between the rivers Lauwers and Weser (i.e., the
present-day Dutch province of Groningen, the German district of East Frisia
and parts of Oldenburg). This article refers to these regions as Friesland, West
Frisia and East Frisia, respectively.
Although Redbad is the Frisian ruler about whom the most has been writ-
ten in the sources, there are still a number of questions that remain. Redbad’s
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Redbad, the Once and Future King of the Frisians 89
name is usually spelled Radbod(us) in the early medieval Latin sources. The
earliest attestation of the linguistically Frisian form Redbad can be found in
Annales Fuldenses Antiquissimi (Ancient Annals of Fulda, c. 800; Miedema,
1968). He is alternatively called dux ‘duke, war leader’, princeps ‘prince, ruler’ or
rex ‘king’ in various sources, with the Frankish sources usually calling him dux
and the Anglo-Saxon sources more often calling him rex. Was he the Frisian
“super king” as an older generation of scholars likened him to, ruling over all
the Frisian regions distinguished in Lex Frisionum? Or was he one of several
Frisian rulers, his actual power limited to (parts of) West Frisia (Halbertsma,
2000, 79–92; Egmond, 2005)? It is true that most of the sources with informa-
tion about Redbad only describe events taking place in this western realm.
One episode in The Life of Willibrord, however, is staged on the island of Heli-
goland (modern-day Helgoland) near the Danish border, and, according to the
story, this archipelago was under the rule of Redbad (a closer look is taken at
this story below).
Whatever his exact status was, Redbad was a formidable opponent of the
Frankish rulers. The battles they fought were hard. Between 688 and 695, Pepin
of Herstal (c. 635–714) often had the upper hand and Redbad had to yield
Utrecht and Dorestad. During the 690s, a truce was reached. In 711, Redbad
married his daughter Theudesinde off to Pepin’s son Grimoald (died 714). No
children from this marriage are known, although Grimoald’s son Theudoald
(born c. 708) might well be his and Theudesinde’s, based on the evidence of
the combination of name elements (Meeder and Goosmann, 2018, pp. 116–122).
One of Redbad’s sons was probably exchanged as a hostage. According to the
Life of St. Wulfram, he was baptised with his father’s name, but he died within
a few days, still wearing his baptismal clothes (in albis; Levison, 1910, p. 664;
Lynch, 1998, p. 129). After Pepin died in 714, Redbad made a comeback. Forming
a pact with the Neustrian faction of the Frankish nobility, Redbad reconquered
Utrecht and Dorestad and attacked Cologne in 716. Redbad’s death in 719 was
met with a sigh of relief throughout Frankish Europe (Halbertsma, 2000, p. 93).
Three stories depicting Redbad as a stubborn pagan king were written down
in the early Middle Ages and would be retold for centuries to come. The first
one stems from The Life of Willibrord, written by Alcuin (735–804) around 795.
Because of his missionary activities in Frisia, the Northumbrian saint Willi-
brord (c. 658–739) was later called the “Apostle of the Frisians”. He was ap-
pointed archbishop of the Frisians by Pope Sergius i (650–701) in 696 and
became the first bishop of Utrecht.
In chapters nine to eleven of Vita Willibrordi (The Life of Willibrord), Alcuin
states that Willibrord travelled from Frisia to Danish King Ongendus (Angantýr
according to literary sources), who resided in the coastal town of Ribe. Willibrord
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preached the Christian faith among the Danes with little success. He sailed
back to Frisia, taking thirty Danish boys with him, whom he baptised. When
they reached an island called Fositesland, after the god Fosite (to whom the
entire island had been consecrated), Willibrord ordered his companions to kill
and eat the sacred cattle and to draw water from the holy well. The infuriated
islanders captured Willibrord and his company and brought them before Red-
bad. The Frisian king ordered that the lots be cast three times on Willibrord
and his followers “according to his custom”. Alcuin goes on to inform his rea
ders that God protected Willibrord, and that only one member of the company
was appointed by lot to be killed.
This episode in The Life of Willibrord contains some realistic elements.
First of all, not all of Willibrord’s company were spared. The “lot of the dead”
fell upon one of them and he was put to death. Second, a number of sources
tell about the practice of lot casting among the Frisians. This adds to the cre
dibility of this account (Pesch, 2003). Third, Saint Liudger, a Frisian missionary
that preached among the Frisians living east of the river Lauwers, visited Fo
sitesland again around 790 and Christianised it, destroying the shrine of Fosite
and building a church on the island (Diekamp, 1881, p. 26). Finally, Old Icelan-
dic sources (such as Gylfaginning ‘The Beguiling of Gylfi’ in the Prose Edda)
speak of a god Forseti in whom scholars have recognised the Frisian god Fosite
(Tveitane, 1995).
The remaining two stories featuring Redbad can be found in Chapters 9
and 10 of the Life of Saint Wulfram, written in the second half of the eighth
century by an anonymous writer calling himself Jonas (Levison, 1910). Wulf
ram (c. 640/50 – c. 700) was bishop of Sens (Normandy) and, like Willibrord,
preached the gospel among the Frisians in the last decade of the seventh
century.
In the story of the failed baptism (Chapter 9; see Figure 5.1), Wulfram has
persuaded Redbad to be baptised. Before undergoing the ritual, Redbad asks
Wulfram one final question: will he see his ancestors and the Frisian kings
before him again in the Christian afterlife Wulfram promises him after his
death? Wulfram answers that, because they died as pagans, they are surely
in hell whereas Redbad will reside in heaven once he has been baptised.
At this point, Redbad retracts his foot from the font, saying that, if this be
the case, he would rather go to hell and see his ancestors again than spend
eternity with a bunch of paupers (cum parvo pauperum numero; Levison,
1910, p. 668).
The Life of Saint Wulfram continues to describe the dream Redbad receives
the night before he is to undergo baptism by Wulfram. In this dream, the dev-
il appears before Redbad in the form of an angel, adorned with a crown and
dressed in beautiful clothes. This figure addresses Redbad as follows:
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Figure 5.1 Redbad refuses to be baptised by Wulfram. Illustration from: M. Hamconius,

Frisia seu de viris rebusque Frisiae illustribus (Amsterdam, 1623).
Tell me, I ask you, strongest of men, who has seduced you to consider
turning away from the cult and the religion of your ancestors? Don’t do
it, I beseech you, but stay with the cult of the gods you have adhered to
until now, and you will go to the golden abodes which will exist eternally,
which I promise to give you, to prove my sincerity.
levison, 1910, p. 669
The next day, Redbad tells Wulfram of his dream. As is to be expected, Wulfram
warns Redbad that it was the devil that visited him. To settle the truth of the
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matter, two envoys are then sent from the court of Redbad: one pagan and one
Christian. Almost as soon as they are underway, they encounter a third person,
who volunteers to show them the golden house that was promised to Redbad
in his dream. Indeed, after a long journey through unknown territories, the
men come to a wide road, paved with marble, leading to a golden palace;
As they entered the golden and incredibly beautiful house, they saw a
throne of immense splendour. Then the guide said: “This is the house
and that is the beautiful seat that his god promises to give to King Redbad
after his death.”
levison, 1910, p. 669
At this point, the Christian envoy makes the sign of the cross saying that if this
was made in the name of God it may remain, but that it may disappear if it was
made by the devil. At that moment the house and its surroundings vanish, and
the two envoys find themselves in the middle of a swamp. They return home,
only to find that Redbad has died.
Scholars have debated the meaning, context and background of this story
(Eis, 1936; Gosses, 1948; Halbertsma, 2000; Lebecq, 2007; Meens, 2015). Some
(Eis, Gosses) argued that the two narratives, that of the dream and the failed
baptism of Redbad, belong together and formed one coherent story that circu-
lated among the pagan Frisians in the eighth century. If this hypothesis proves
to be correct, one may assume that Redbad was initially remembered by the
Frisians as their great king and hero, who had opposed the Franks. In its origin
al form, this coherent story told of the great deeds of a pagan king; how he re-
sisted the new faith and remained loyal to what his ancestors had believed and
practised, and how he entered the splendorous Valhǫll-like halls of his gods
(Dillmann, 2007). It is interesting to see that this story fits perfectly into the
context of a new religion “testing” an indigenous religion, in this case on the
matter of the afterlife. The story also fits the unstable socio-political context of
that century; in 784, the Frisians helped the neighbouring Saxons, who openly
rebelled against the Carolingian rulers. The Saxons were led by Duke Widukind
(743–807), who had returned from his exile in Denmark.
However, the Saxon leader Widukind was defeated in 785, after which he
agreed to be baptised on Christmas Day that same year. In a way, Redbad and
Widukind came to be each other’s mirror images, Redbad retreating from the
font and Widukind stepping into it. Widukind came to be venerated by his
aristocratic descendants as a saint (at least since the twelfth century), even
though his legacy was also linked to subsequent rebellions against the Frank-
ish king. In a song from the late eleventh century, which only survives in later
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versions, Frisians and Flemings support Charlemagne in the final battle against
Widukind and his Saxon warriors. As recent studies show, the setting of this
story was later relocated to Spain, where the Saxons were replaced by Saracens
(Beckmann, 2010, p. 84; Millet, 1999). The original stories about the Saxon war
were, however, retold in the Nibelungen tradition, where Widukind is replaced
by his pagan successor Liudeger (actually Lothair of Supplinburg, 1075–1137; Mc-
Connell et al., 2002, p. 98). This Liudeger, then, reappears in the Frisian tradition
as an adversary of Charlemagne, who is subdued by the Frisian standard-bearer
Magnus (Buma and Ebel, 1969, pp. 110–119; Mol and Smithuis, 2008, p. 171).
2 Redbad in the Old Frisian Sources (c. 1100–1500)
After Redbad’s demise, a few centuries passed that hardly left any documenta-
ry trace. Between c. 800 and c. 1100, the Frisian lands were part of the Frankish
realm. Frisia became a country ruled by Saxon dukes and counts. Most of these
officials, however, lived outside of Frisia (Henstra, 2012). Between 850 and 950,
Frisia experienced a Viking Age to the extent that Carolingian rule seriously
faltered (De Langen and Mol, 2017). Parts of East and West Frisia were given
as fiefs to Danish warlords. During this period and into the 1100s, Frisians had
contacts of various natures with the Vikings. They traded with them, they were
plundered by them and partly ruled by them, and it seems they also went on a
few Viking expeditions together (IJssennagger, 2013).
In the aftermath of this Viking Age, the Frisians were able to regain an auton-
omous status within the empire. This Frisian autonomy, or “Frisian freedom”,
is discernible from the eleventh century onward (Schmidt, 1963; Vries, 2015).
This situation yielded a large corpus of indigenous law texts written in the Old
Frisian vernacular. Some of these texts, notably the compensation tariffs, show
a clear continuity with the material in the Lex Frisionum, attesting to an un-
broken chain of legal practice since the early Middle Ages (Nijdam, 2008). The
oldest individual text, Santjin kêsten (the Seventeen Statutes), is traditionally
dated to the end of the eleventh century, although the thirteenth-century man-
uscripts do not offer direct evidence for a written version of these texts predat-
ing c. 1200 (Bremmer, 2004). There is however, fragmentary evidence of writing
in the Frisian vernacular from shortly after 1100 (Langbroek and Brands, 2015).
In most surviving manuscripts, the Old Frisian law texts are interspersed
with ideologically motivated narrative comments, which tell how the Frisian
freedom was lost in the times of King Redbad and how it was restored by Char-
lemagne. Moreover, there is a series of chronicles and long poems, dating from
the end of the Middle Ages, that tell the story of the Frisian freedom in fourteen
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episodes, partly derived from older Saxon and Frankish sources (Mol and
Smithuis, 2008). The first four episodes are relevant to the character of Redbad:
(A) Once there were three brothers called Friso, Saxo and Bruno. They were
generals in the army of Alexander the Great.
(B) The three brothers left India and sailed to the shores of the North Sea.
There, Friso founded Frisia, Saxo founded Saxony and Bruno became the
founding father of Brunswick. Friso had seven sons. Each was granted
one of the “Seven Frisian Sea Lands”.
(C) The descendants of Friso were subjugated by Redbad, a Danish king.
He forced them to wear wooden collars as a token of their enslavement.
Saint Willibrord, however, led the Frisians to their freedom by advising
them to become lieges to King Charlemagne (c. 747–814).
(D) The two kings, Charles and Redbad, fought over the dominion of Frisia
in a duel.1 The duel consisted of standing still the longest. At one point,
Charles dropped his gauntlet and Redbad gallantly picked it up for him.
In this way, the latter lost the duel and left the country (see Figure 5.2).
It is clear that, in these stories, Charlemagne has become the hero of the Fri-
sians because he granted them their freedom.2 Redbad is still present at a nar-
rative level, but quite ambiguously. On the one hand, he is made into a villain:
a pagan Danish king that subjugated the Frisians. On the other hand, he is a
model of chivalry, losing the duel due to civility. The idea of a final duel, more-
over, might have been borrowed from the Saxon tradition, according to which
Widukind was said to have surrendered to Charlemagne after having lost a
duel. It has been recorded in the oldest versions of the Life of Saint Mathilda
(written between 974 and 1002) and pops up again in Jehan Bodel’s Chanson
des Saisnes (late twelfth century) as a reworking of the older traditions men-
tioned above (Meijering, 1970; Beckmann, 2008, p. 138).
Although these indigenous texts are only known from late medieval sour
ces, the stories they tell probably circulated in the Frisian lands in some form
as early as the twelfth century. A singular and mysterious piece of evidence is
a spindle weight, dated to the eleventh century, which bears the inscription
CERLE REX, ‘King Charles’ (Bremmer, 2004, pp. 24–25). The oldest Old Frisian
manuscripts that have survived, dating to the end of the thirteenth century,
contain a version of the seventh statute, in which there are clear references to
the material about Redbad the Danish king and Charlemagne as the bestower
of the Frisian freedom:
1 This “King Charles” must refer to Charlemagne although Charles Martel (c. 689–741), his
grandfather, was the actual contemporary of Redbad.
2 This is in line with the great veneration of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages.
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Figure 5.2 Opening page of the text The Tale of Kings Charles and Redbad. Page from a Low
German manuscript from the sixteenth century
Source: Tresoar Leeuwarden, Von Richthofen Collection, ms. R7
The seventh statute. Our free land, that is, the lawful free chair (within
a court of law) where we are allowed to bring a case before court freely
and defend ourselves freely. This was given to us by King Charles because
we turned away from the Danish king and swore allegiance to the Ro-
man king, so that we paid him taxes and tithes and acknowledged his
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d ominion. Then he led us away from Redbad, the Danish king, and from
the tax called clipskelde and from the oaken collars which all Frisians
wore around their necks, and from all unlawful dominion.3
These stories were widely known among the Frisians throughout the Middle
Ages; around 1500, almost every castle contained at least one book with stories
on the Frisian freedom (Noomen, 1994, p. 166). In 1525, the nobleman Dou-
we Gerbranda told the chronicler Petrus van Thabor that the duel between
Charles and Redbad had taken place at Kiestersyl, a dike-lock located in the
vicinity of the Frisian towns of Harlingen and Franeker (Halbertsma, 1970,
p. 89; Noomen, 1994, pp. 167–168).
3 Raimbault, Roi de Frise (c. 1000–1500)
Surprisingly, in spite of his negative reviews, several Frisian noble families

claimed to have descended from Redbad. More surprising still, several high-
ranking aristocratic families in Holland, such as the houses of Egmond and
Brederode, traced their ancestry back to King Redbad at least since the end of
the fifteenth century (Noomen, 1994, p. 167). To understand what was going on,
it is necessary to shift the attention from the north to the south.
In the second laisse of the famous Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland), one
of the oldest chansons de geste, probably dating from the second half of the
eleventh century, a warrior called Rembalt (i.e., Redbad) leads a contingent
of Frisian knights to aid Charles Martel in his campaign against the Moors in
Spain. It seems, moreover, that he doubles into the champion Rabel, who is
entrusted with Roland’s sword (in other versions of the story with his horn
Olifant). It has been observed that in Chanson de Roland and in other chansons
de geste some of the greatest Carolingian adversaries of the eighth and ninth
centuries were turned into loyal allies (Beckmann, 2010, pp. 52–54). After his
first attested appearance in Chanson de Roland, Rembalt or Raimbault contin-
ues to play a role in various chansons de geste, often with his companion and
close friend Hamon de Galice, who heads the Flemish contingent.
A fifteenth-century poem called Le livre du roy Rambaux de Frise (The Book
of King Rambaux of Frisia) has come down in one manuscript. Everything in
this story, however, shows that it comes at the end of a long tradition. Here,
Rambaux (Redbad) is an old king and the plot actually revolves more around
his daughter and her suitor. Barbara Nelson Sargent (1967, p. 27), who studied
3 Buma and Ebel (1963, p. 36). On clipskelde, see Nijdam (2009).
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the sources of this poem for her edition, sums up the character of Rembalt or
Raimbault in the corpus of the chansons de geste as follows:
Raimbault was a great warrior and the ruler of Frisia. He fought variously
for Charlemagne and against him. He had Doon de Mayence for a father,
Hamon de Galice for a companion, Charlemagne’s sister for a wife, and
Flandrine for a daughter. He died, appropriately enough, in battle, and it
was Ogier de Danemarche who struck him down. Of his attributes, three
are unvarying: his lordship over Frisia, his prowess in battle, and his con-
nection (in one way or another) with Charlemagne.
This summary shows how much Rembalt/Raimbault/Raimbaut/Rambaux was

one of the basic stock of characters in the chansons de geste.
Redbad’s fame eventually also reached the far north; he figures prominently
in the Old Norse translation of the French material known as Karlamagnús
saga (Charlemagne’s Saga), dating from the second half of the thirteenth cen-
tury. Karlamagnús saga is not only of interest because it shows how widely this
literature spread, but also because this work contains some material that has
not survived in its regions of origin. On the basis of this evidence, the philolo-
gist Paul Aebischer convincingly argued that there must have existed a Geste
de Raimbault et Hamon (The Deeds of Raimbault and Hamon), which he dated
to the late eleventh century. In the restyling of the story around 1200, commis-
sioned by the bishop of Liège, Redbad became a predecessor of the counts of
Holland (and thus serving their political aspirations), ruling the entire coastal
area between Flanders and Denmark on behalf of the emperor. According to
Karlamagnús saga, Charlemagne bestows on him three lances with white gon-
falons, which apparently refer to the triple bends in his coat of arms (see be-
low; Aebischer, 1957, p. 24; Beckmann, 2005, p. 390).
Once the concept of a Frisian king had been infused into the corpus of
the chansons de geste, literary fiction took off and created some extravagant
by-products. Already in Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi (History of Char-
lemagne and Roland), a crusade manifesto from the 1130s by an author known
as the Pseudo-Turpin, Frisian King Gandelbodus is mentioned as one of the
heroes that died in the Battle of Roncevalles. His remains may apparently be
visited along the western pilgrim route to Compostela in the Gascon village of
Belin, resting in a collective tomb with his fellow warriors Olivier, Ogier (Holger)
the Dane and other heroes. According to a contemporary travel guide, the
sweet fragrance emanating from it can heal the sick (Pita, 1882, p. 44).
Although it is difficult to reconstruct where the story originated, it might be
conceivable that the name Radbodus was somehow misinterpreted or misread
as Gandelbodus, and confused with another character, Gundobad of Burgundy
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(c. AD 452–516). The name is then garbled into forms such as Gondebald, Gondel-
buef, Gondrebrues, Gouldebeuf, Gandobol and Gundilber (Jongkees, 1961; Mois-
an, 1986, pp. 240–241). This Gondebald is a prominent character of the chansons
de geste, a close friend of Roland. An Occitan catalogue from the 1170s mentions
the chanson of Gondalbon lo Frizon, together with Rambaut et N’Aimon and an
unknown song about a certain Frizon. The latter might be the warrior Saint Fris,
who apparently fell in the village of Bassoues near Auch in 732. At the close of the
Middle Ages, this Saint Fris came to be known as the son of the king of Frisia, who
wore the famous war banner of France. Seventeenth-century clerics then eager-
ly identified him as Redbad’s baptised namesake mentioned in Vita Wulframni
(The Life of Wulfram; Pirot, 1972, pp. 548, 551, 553; Bénac, 1916–1923, pp. 67–102).
To sum up, at least three Redbad characters are encountered between c.
1000 and c. 1500. First, the reports on the historical Redbad in the Frankish
annals and chronicles continued to be copied and used in later accounts. Fur-
thermore, the lives of Wulfram and Willibrord remained in circulation, which
meant that the stories of Redbad’s failed baptism and of the episode at Fo
sitesland were available throughout this period. Second, within the Frisian
borders a new Redbad arose. Because the Frisians attributed their freedom to
Charlemagne, they could not depict Redbad as a hero. Instead, his character
took on the image of a Danish pagan king, subduing the Frisians and forcing
them to wear a wooden collar as a token of their serfdom. Nevertheless, in
the story of the duel between King Charles and King Redbad, the latter acts
valiantly, picking up the gauntlet Charles dropped as a ruse to win the duel.
Future research might reveal a link between this story and the third form, in
which Redbad appears: that of Frisian King Raimbault in the chansons de geste.
The character of the chivalric Raimbault developed into that of a righteous
Christian knightly king. He was even “cloned” a few times, leading to several
Frisian kings, of which Gondebald or Gondebeuf was the most widespread.
4 Intermezzo: Redbad and the Frisian Coat of Arms
The multiple Frisian kings in the chansons de geste gave birth to the notion that
there existed a Frisian Christian kingdom. In the minds of the French-speaking
audience of the chansons de geste, this realm was situated somewhere far away
in the north. At some point, medieval heralds came up with a coat of arms of
the Frisian kings, which is first attested in French and British armorials toward
the end of the thirteenth century (Adam-Even, 1954). Modern heraldic scho
lars are convinced, however, that its origins lie further north, probably in the
Frisian regions (Brault, 1993, pp. 32–34; Goodall and Brault, 1994, pp. 295–297).
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Figure 5.3
The official flag of the Dutch province
of Friesland
Source: www.echtefriesevlag
.nl
It consists of three white (silver) bends on a blue field, the bends adorned with
red hearts, which are commonly interpreted as stylised leaves of the water lily
(Nymphaea alba). In heraldry, these are known as sea-leaves (Frisian: pompe-
blêden). The colour red was introduced in the late fourteenth century, probably
in order to underline the royal status of the design; older specimens bore a
semy of white leaves. The number of hearts or leaves varied over time, but is
now fixed at seven, symbolising the Seven Frisian Sealands mentioned earlier
(see Figure 5.3).
Since the last decades of the fourteenth century, one finds attestations of
the continued use of this coat of arms in the Dutch province of Friesland, the
heartland of modern Frisia, as well as in West Frisia.4 The original design is
included in the coat of arms of the province of North Holland, approved in
1907. It consists of two golden lions passant (and “guardant”; that is, looking
at the viewer) on a blue field interspersed with silver pennies. In an early fif-
teenth-century Hollantsche Cronike (Holland Chronicle) by the herald Claes
Heynensz, this coat of arms is explicitly called that of “Rabboldus”, king of the
“Vriensen” (i.e., Frisians; Vries, 1995, p. 94). It was introduced in Friesland after
the end of the Frisian freedom in 1498, whereby the pennies were replaced by
golden bricks. The number of bricks became fixed at seven, again as a reference
to the Seven Frisian Sealands. Sixteenth-century heraldry books sometimes de-
pict both coats of arms, either with bands or lions – the former referring to the
ancient kingdom of Frisia, and the latter to the actual lordships of West Frisia
and Friesland.
For both coats of arms, there is an inherent connection to Scandinavian her-
aldry. Various coats of arms of medieval Scandinavian kings show red waterlily
4 The first erroneous records of the coat of arms of the “rey de Frisia”, here still confused with
Denmark, stem from Catalan sources (Ricquer, 1987, p. 316).
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leaves, lions, blue background colours and sometimes – as in the Swedish case –
white bends comparable to those in the Frisian flag. According to Olaus Mag-
nus (1555), these bends were perceived as “white streams on a field of heavenly
blue”, apparently representing the waterways subdividing the country (Olaus
Magnus, 1555, p. 88). The novel colour blue, moreover, was highly valued as
an alternative to the aristocratic red (Pastoureau, 2001). The High German
Kudrunlied from the 1230s is the first to describe a banner of sky-blue silk stud-
ded with sea-leaves, attributed to the fictitious model King Herwic of Sêlande.
The Frisians are amply documented in this poem, which is set somewhere in
the coastal area between Flanders and Denmark and must have had older pre-
decessors.5 Perhaps the sea-leaves were perceived as a token of freedom and
personal honour. According to a fifteenth-century tradition, the red leaves in
the coat of arms of Engern – Widukind’s home-country – were given to the
Saxons by Charlemagne himself (Bote, 1868, p. 485). The Frisian tradition, how-
ever, maintained that the emperor granted them a royal crown to be depicted
on their shields as a token of their privileged status.
Because the notion that Redbad was a Danish king seems to have existed
early on, these Scandinavian parallels to the coat of arms are not surprising. In-
deed, in his memoires, written around 1528 while imprisoned due to the politi-
cal upheavals of his time, the Frisian nobleman Jancko Douwama (1482–1533)
tells an appealing story (Amersfoordt et al., 1849, p. 39); around the time of
Frankish King Pepin, the Danish king conquered many lands, including Eng-
land and Frisia. He gave the latter to his beloved youngest son, Radboet (Red-
bad), and took two lions from the Danish coat of arms, which consisted of five
until that time, and gave them to Redbad. Redbad put these lions onto the old
Frisian coat of arms, which consisted of seven golden spanen ‘boards, bricks,
billets’ on a blue field, thus creating the Frisian coat of arms as it is still known
today (see Figure 5.4).6
This story may well have been borrowed from a Low German tradition sta
ting that the pair of Brunswick lions had been granted around 1170 to Duke
Henry the Lion by his father-in-law King Henry ii of England, who kept three
lions in his coat of arms (Meibom, 1688, p. 54).7 Nonetheless, the story might
hint at the fact that the lions were a secondary addition to the original coat of
arms, only consisting of bends and sea-leaves. Additionally, both were associ-
ated with Redbad.
5 The antiquity of the Kudrunlied is probably overstated by Voorwinden (2003).

6 Except that both the Frisian and the Danish coats of arms used to have lions passant guar-
dant, which were called leopards as heraldic figures, and that both now feature lions passant;
that is, looking straight ahead.
7 The same holds for the Duchy of Schleswig.
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Figure 5.4
The official coat of arms of the Dutch
province of Friesland
Politics often played a major role in the way Frisia and a Frisian kingdom were
portrayed in terms of heraldry; Philip the Good (1396–1467), Duke of Burgundy,
was very much aware of the fact that as hereditary count of Holland, Zealand
and West Frisia he could also lay claim to Friesland east of the Vlie River. Hol-
land, moreover, had been founded from a former part of Frisia. If Frisia had
been a kingdom once, this meant he could also claim the title of king. Con-
sequently, heraldry provided extra ammunition for the political struggle the
Burgundians were fighting against the kings of France (Sargent, 1967, p. 28;
Jongkees, 1946; Verbij-Schillings, 1997).
In 1956, when the province of Friesland wished to have its flag officially
documented and registered, the Frisian Academy (Fryske Akademy) commis-
sioned a group of historians to study its historical roots. The commission re-
ported on its findings in a special issue of the journal of the Frisian Academy,
It Beaken, in 1956 (Bruch et al., 1956; Vries, 1995). This was the first time the
connection between the Frisian flag – that is, the old coat of arms of the king
of Frisia – and Redbad was made explicit. It facilitated a stronger emphasis on
Redbad as the most important king of the Frisians.
5 A Family Tree of Frisian Kings and Two Redbads (c. 1500 to c. 1800)
In the case of Friesland, the Middle Ages ended quite abruptly in 1498. After
long and fierce internal struggles, Emperor Maximilian bestowed the title of
hereditary governor of Friesland upon Albrecht, Duke of Saxony (1443–1500).
As a result, an effective central government was formed in Frisia for the first
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time since Charlemagne, and the Frisian freedom that had lasted for centuries
came to an end (Vries, 2015). One of the far-reaching changes was the abandon-
ment of Old Frisian traditional law in favour of Roman law.
This new situation affected chroniclers, who now began to ask themselves
what had gone wrong. Why had the Frisians lost their precious liberty? As a re-
sult of the Dutch Revolt in the sixteenth century, however, things changed for
the better again; in 1578, Friesland became one of the provinces of the newly
established Dutch Republic, and thus regained its autonomy. After this period,
a new historiography can be observed. Apart from the fact that the impact of
the Renaissance or Humanism can be felt in these works, a strong accent was
now placed on the role of the Frisian nobility in Frisian history. This led to
an impressive but largely imaginary genealogy of Frisian kings, reaching back
many centuries (Noomen, 1994).
Two chroniclers from the beginning of the sixteenth century need to be
addressed. The first of these, Jancko Douwama, has already been mentioned.
Together with the fifteenth-century Frisian chronicles mentioned earlier, Dou-
wama’s text provides evidence that the chivalric tradition (i.e., the chansons
de geste tradition) concerning Redbad was known in Frisia around this time.
Douwama explicitly mentions some details about Redbad’s life and his de-
scendants that are, without a doubt, derived from chivalric literature, such as
the name of Gondebald (Gandelbodus), who is made into one of three sons
that Redbad apparently had. Douwama knows that Gondebald was killed at
Roncevalle, together with Roland, which points to the writings of Pseudo-
Turpin. Douwama also states that one of the descendants of Redbad was
Prester John, the legendary Christian king of India (Amersfoordt et al., 1849,
pp. 46–47).
Thabor was an Augustinian monastery near the town of Sneek in southwest-
ern Friesland, founded at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Between 1517
and 1538, Worp of Thabor, a regular canon of the monastery, wrote a chronicle
divided into five “books” or parts. It treats Frisian history from its earliest be-
ginnings up to the age of the author. Worp is very explicit about the sources
he uses for his work and thus offers valuable insight into the library of one
of the Frisian monasteries, which were mostly destroyed after the Reforma-
tion in Frisia (1580). Worp uses Classical authors such as Tacitus and Caesar,
who reported on the Germanic peoples. He explicitly refers to Vita Wulframni
to tell the story about Redbad’s failed baptism and his dream (Ottema, 1847,
pp. 54–56). Worp also has knowledge of a King Gondebald that died at Ron-
cevalles. Apparently, he was the brother of King Redbad “of whom the lords
of E
gmond are said to have descended” (Ottema, 1847, p. 91). So here again
one can see where this information came from; Worp had read a chronicle
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from Holland that traced the ancestry of the noble family of Egmond back
to Redbad, probably the influential Division Chronicle by Cornelius Aurelius,
printed in 1517 (Bolhuis van Zeeburg, 1873, p. 98).
In 1873, the study on Frisian historiography by Jan Bolhuis van Zeeburgh
marked the end of a long period in which many Frisians still more or less held
the legendary Frisian chronicles to be true, despite the devastating reviews by
more critical historians such as Ubbo Emmius (1547–1625). In this tradition,
the work by the mysterious author Andreas Cornelius played a key role. It was
written around 1578 and printed in 1597, and, somehow, it was able to pro-
pel medieval material into the modern age, sketching a fabulous – or, rather,
fabulated – image of ancient Frisian history that proved so appealing to the
Frisians that they clung to it for centuries to come (Jensma, 2004, pp. 74–86).
The text is unique in many ways. It pretends to be the work of four consecutive
authors: Solcko Forteman (c. 760), Ocko Scharlensis (c. 960), Johannes Vlietarp
(c. 1312) and finally Andreas Cornelius himself (c. 1560). Bolhuis van Zeeburgh
showed that the first three of these authors must have been invented by the
actual author of the text in order to authenticate his information. It is not even
known whether Andreas Cornelius was a real person; Edzo Waterbolk (1995)
suspects this was a nom de plume for the politician Joachim Hopperus (1523–
1576), on whom more below.
In a way, Frisian historiography was standing at a crossroads in the sixteenth
century. Bolhuis van Zeeburgh is very explicit about his own preferences. He
praises Worp of Thabor for his diligent use of the sources available to him and
chastises Andreas Cornelius for fabricating the ancient history of the Frisians.
His lamentation at the end of his paragraph on Worp cannot be misunder-
stood: “If only later historiographers had followed in Worp’s footsteps! But An-
dreas Cornelius’ book spoiled everything” (Bolhuis van Zeeburgh, 1873, p. 109).
Although the damage done by Cornelius was bad enough, its negative im-
pact was increased by the works of the first official “state historian” (landshis-
torieschrijver) of Friesland, Suffridus Petrus (1527–1597). Suffridus Petrus had
studied Latin and Greek at the University of Louvain and taught at the univer-
sities of Louvain, Erfurt and Cologne. Between his appointment in 1590 and
his death in 1597, he was able to finish only two of the sixty books on Frisian
history he had planned: De Frisiorum antiquitate et origine (1590) and De scrip-
toribus Frisiae (1593; Bergsma, 1994; Noomen, 1994).
Suffridus Petrus tried to forge all sources at his disposal into one s weeping
narrative: the “big history” of the Frisians, so to speak. Unfortunately – according
to Bolhuis van Zeeburgh – he made ample use of the material presented to
him by Andreas Cornelius. This enabled him to create an unbroken line
from Friso, the mythical founding father of the Frisians, to the present day of
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Suffridus Petrus’ own age. It resulted in the following list of consecutive “princ-
es”, “dukes”, “kings”, “potestates” and “archgovernors”:
7 Principes (Friso conditor Frisiae, Adel, Ubbo, Asinga Ascon, Diocarus

Segon, Dibbaldus Segon, Tabbo)
7 Duces (Asconius, Adelboldus, Titus Boiocalus, Ubbo, Haron Ubbo, Odil-
baldus, Udolphus Haron)
9 Reges (Richoldus Uffo, Odilbaldus, Richoldus ii, Beroaldus, Adgillus,
Radbodus, Adgillus ii, Gondobaldus, Radbodus ii)
Carolus Magnus, libertatis et insignium modernorum Frisiae dator
16 Potestates (Magnus Fortema, Taco Ludigmannus, Adelbricus Adelen,
Hesselus Hermana, Igo Galema, Gosso Ludigmannus, Saco Reinalda, Reg-
nerus Cammenga, I.H. Martena, Ivo Juwinga, Galo Hania, Sixtus Dekema,
Odo Botnia, Suffridus Wiarda, Haringus Harinxma, Julius Dekema)
5 Archigubernatores (Albertus Dux Saxoniae, Georgius Dux Saxoniae,
Carolus v Caesar, Philippus Rex Hispaniae, Albertus et Isabella archiduc-
es Burgundiae, etc.)
As can be observed from this list, by this time several characters had been split
into two kings with identical names. This had also happened to the most im-
portant historical characters before Charlemagne: Aldgisl and Redbad.
Notwithstanding this overwhelming number of Frisian kings and princes,
Redbad retained his special position. One of the pieces of evidence for this is
a portrait tradition depicting Redbad that started after the middle of the six-
teenth century. One first learns of this tradition from the correspondence be-
tween Joachim Hopperus (1523–1576) and Viglius Aytta (1507–1577), two highly
influential Frisian politicians serving the central government. Hopperus col-
lected a huge collection of Frisian antiquities – manuscripts, maps and objects.
In several letters dating between 1570 and 1571, Hopperus asks his friend to send
him the portrait of Redbad owned by Aytta so that he can have a copy made
of it (Wild and Altheer, 1802, pp. 283, 312, 328). Attestations of such portraits of
Redbad can be found in West Frisia, Friesland and East Frisia from the end of
the sixteenth century onward. Quite a number of copies must have circulated,
although today only two exist. One hangs in the city hall of Medemblik, where
the West Frisian tradition concerning Redbad has retained a firm basis. A cas-
tle built by the counts of Holland in the early fourteenth century came to be
known as Radboud Castle in the nineteenth century. The second copy resides
in Leeuwarden and is the property of the Royal Frisian Society for History and
Antiquity (Koninklijk Fries Genootschap voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde).
It can be concluded then that during the period between c. 1500 and c. 1800
the story of the ancient Frisian history was made complete. The blanks of
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many ages were filled in with rows of fabled kings that had been figments of
the imagination of various chroniclers of past centuries. They were compiled
and ordered into a neat story by Suffridus Petrus. Among all these Frisian kings,
Redbad still retained a special place.
6 The Age of Frisian Nationalism
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the perception of Frisian his-

tory and identity were greatly affected by two major developments. After the
defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1813, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was
formed. This transformed Friesland from an independent federal state within
the Dutch Republic into a province of a centralised kingdom ruled from The
Hague, two hundred kilometres to the south. During the heyday of the Repub-
lic, Friesland had been the second-wealthiest province after Holland. Now,
its economy became increasingly marginalised, so that around 1900 the com-
mon perception prevailed that Friesland was a slightly backward and largely
rural area. Napoleon had already closed down the University of Franeker in
1811; founded in 1585, it had been the second-oldest in the Netherlands, after
Leiden. The university was replaced by an Athenaeum, which subsequently
closed its doors in 1843 (Jensma, 2012). From then onward, the province lacked
a centre of higher education. The shrinking nobility followed the trend and
largely left the province; only a few aristocratic families remained.
In the early days of the new kingdom, several issues had to be settled. One
of these was the unification of the regional elites into a single nobility under
the direction of the new king, Willem i. More than once Frisian noblemen re-
fused the novel titles of count or baron. They preferred the indigenous title
of jonker, but in the new system this meant that they were only entitled to
the rank of jonkheer, which denotes the lower nobility or landed gentry. Some
of them pleaded that they deserved better treatment because they descended
from Frisian King Redbad (Noomen, 1994; Dijkstra, 1895–1896, p. 110).
The early 1800s also saw the rise of the Romantic movement, and a renewed
interest in traditional culture also affected the Frisian language. The educated
elite started writing and reading in Frisian, which had only been in use as a
spoken language for centuries. The Frisians had their own Grimm brothers:
Justus, Eeltsje and Tsjalling Halbertsma, of whom the first was the most pro-
lific. Justus Halbertsma (1789–1869) corresponded intensively with various
scholars throughout Europe, including Jacob Grimm (De Jong, 2009).
In 1825, the Halbertsma brothers wrote a collection of short stories in Fri-
sian. This publication may be seen as the beginning of Modern Frisian, mark-
ing the point where Frisian once again became a written language. The little
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volume eventually grew into an extensive collection of short stories and anec-
dotes: Rimen en Teltsjes (Rhymes and Stories). In 1829, Justus Halbertsma wrote
a fairy tale about an old soldier that is forced to become a physician and heals a
princess. The story is called “Miswier” (Continuously Bad Weather) and is set at
the court of King Redbad, who is depicted as a model king typical of fairy tales
(Breuker, 1993, pp. 68–76). Redbad is called “Radbod the Second”, and so Hal-
bertsma’s inspiration clearly came from the tradition of Andreas Cornelius /
Suffridus Petrus.
Like the Grimm brothers, the Halbertsmas collected fairy tales and other
folklore material, but not as systematically as their German counterparts, and
they did not publish the result. Others did, however, and so one can now study
the folk traditions concerning Redbad from West Frisia, Friesland and East Fri-
sia (Wiersma, 1934, 1937, 1973). As with all folktale studies, it is sometimes dif-
ficult to distinguish oral traditions from material recently derived from written
sources. As can be expected, the influence of material from Vita Wulframni and
Vita Willibrordi is detectable. West Frisia has yielded more than fifteen stories
in which Redbad is the main character. Some depict him as a stubborn pagan
king, but most of them as a noble Frisian king that defends his people. In one
of them, he receives a magical sword called Asbran from a magical ancient
warrior that comes to him in the form of a black swan accompanied by six
white swans that transform themselves into beautiful women.
The legal historian Arian de Goede (1915–1957) from de Purmer played a
prominent role in the creation of a more ideological image of Redbad. Together
with his father, he founded the West-Frieze-Styk (West Frisian Association) in
1932, a society for the conservation of culture, language and folklore devoted to
the study of the history of West Frisia. De Goede wrote a volume on the histori-
cal Redbad (1946), in which he emphasised the historical continuity between
pagan Frisia and (early) modern Dutch history; he maintains, for instance, that
it is no coincidence that it was the descendants of these noble heathens that,
during the sixteenth-century Reformation, smashed “Christian statues” wher-
ever they saw them (De Goede, 2018, pp. 40–41). Thus, Redbad and the indig-
enous pagan culture he represents could be perceived as Protestant avant la
lettre. In De Goede’s personal archive, now in the Frisian A cademy, there used
to reside an unpublished typescript of 158 pages titled “Heroic Tales of King
Redbad of Frisia according to the West Frisian Tradition”, dated 1956 (Arends,
2002, p. 12). This typescript was unfortunately borrowed out in 2002 and never
returned.
There is also supposed physical evidence of Redbad in West Frisia. Mention
was already made of Radboud Castle at Medemblik. The church at Hoogwoud
houses a stone font from the end of the thirteenth century, which is said to
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have been the font Redbad was almost baptised in (Halbertsma, 2000, p. 244).
Furthermore, a “Redbad Road” and a “Redbad’s cemetery” can be found in the
area (Halbertsma, 2000, p. 248).
The province of Friesland, the old Frisian heartland, has yielded a meagre
harvest of folktales concerning Redbad (Wiersma, 1973; Halbertsma, 1970).
Only a few “baroque” tales have been written down in which Redbad is a typi-
cal fairy-tale king or in which only elements of the baptism story, the dream or
the Fositesland episode are used. The physical memories of Redbad are scant
as well; there is one attestation of a “Redbad Road” and one source from 1754
mentions a plot of land called Radbodus Hemelrijk (Redbad’s Heavenly King-
dom), undoubtedly a reference to the story of Redbad’s dream (Halbertsma,
2000, p. 248).
In Groningen and especially East Frisia, a very different picture emerges
(Sello, 1921/1922; Wiersma, 1973; Halbertsma, 1970; Halbertsma, 2000). Not only
are there several Konrebberswegen (King Redbad Roads) attested in this region
since the fifteenth century, but Redbad is also said to have travelled these roads.
Moreover, he also travels the skies because he becomes the leader of the Wild
Hunt (Lübbing, 1928, pp. 214–215; Wiersma, 1934, pp. 260–261; Wiersma, 1937,
pp. 36–37). Other famous leaders of this army of the dead are the Germanic
god Wodan and a handful of very famous medieval kings, such as Charlemagne
and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. At Berumerfehn, there is a Radbodsgehölz
‘Redbad’s Woods’, which contains a monument made of four megaliths, one
of which bears the inscription Radbod Rex Frisiae. Ao dccviii, ‘Redbad king of
Frisia. Anno 708’. There are also a few hills called Konrebbersberg (King Red-
bad’s Mount), where Redbad is supposedly buried (Sundermann, 1922, pp.
20–26). The old king is not dead, however: he is asleep and will awaken again
when his people need him the most. In this setting, Redbad truly develops the
characteristics of a Rex iustus rediturus, a just king that will return in times of
need. Thus, Redbad becomes a member of an elite group of kings of whom the
same is said: Arthur, Charlemagne, Holger the Dane and Frederick Barbarossa,
to name the most famous examples (Samplonius, 1993).
Although Central Friesland did not have a strong folklore tradition con-
cerning Redbad, the region caught up later; in the course of the nineteenth
century, Redbad became increasingly important as a symbol of Frisian nation-
alism and Frisian identity. Two songs were composed for him in the influential
Frysk Lieteboek (Frisian Songbook), which was published in 1877 (Faber, 2003,
pp. 232–237). As the Frisian (Emancipatory) Movement started to grow over
the course of the twentieth century, striving toward greater independence for
the Frisian people and an official status for the Frisian language, more poems
and plays were devoted to him. The fact that Frisia had once been a kingdom
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with a famous king was an element that could be, and at times was, used in
their political struggle.
Miedema (1968, pp. 52–53) pointed out that the book Bodders in the Fryske
Striid (Protagonists of the Frisian Cause) by Geert Aeilco Wumkes (1869–1954),
which was published in 1926, marked a turning point. Wumkes drew attention
to Redbad’s name and the fact that the correct Frisian form of it was Redbad,
and not Radbod or Radboud. As soon as the Frisian students at the University
of Utrecht realised the mistake they had originally made by calling their as-
sociation Radbod at its founding in 1930, they changed it to Redbad a few years
later.
The writer Douwe Kalma (1896–1953) was an important figure from the
1910s until just after the Second World War. He reinvigorated the Frisian Move-
ment and founded the Jongfryske Mienskip (Society for Young Frisians) in 1915.
Kalma had a huge impact on the Frisian Movement because of his visionary
appeal. Unfortunately, convinced that the Germans would help realise the po-
litical goals of the Frisian Movement, he collaborated with the Nazis during the
Second World War. This discredited him after 1945.
Kalma also wrote a series of plays devoted to the Frisian kings from the early
Middle Ages (Hoekstra, 2016). The earliest of these was Kening Aldgillis (King
Aldgisl, 1920), followed by Kening Finn (King Finn, 1937) and Leafwyn (Lebui-
nus, 1941). After he had served his prison sentence and his writing ban because
of his collaboration during the war, Kalma synthesised these plays in one vo
lume: Keningen fan Fryslân. Fiif toanielstikken yn fersen (Kings of Frisia. Five
Plays in Verse, 1949–1951). Of course, Redbad as well as the other Frisian kings
are portrayed as heroic champions of paganism and the anti-Frankish, Frisian
cause.
By the end of the twentieth century, Redbad had acquired an indelible po-
sition in Frisian culture as the greatest king of the Frisians. In 1968 and 1969,
however, Miedema (1968) and Halbertsma (1970, p. 78) pointed out that, al-
though 1969 saw the 1250th anniversary of Redbad’s death (719), there were no
plans for any festivities to commemorate this. Willibrord and Boniface how-
ever, had both received ample attention in 1939 and 1954 (and would again in
1989 and 2004) to commemorate the 1200th anniversary of their deaths.
7 Conclusion: Redbad Today
The character of Redbad continues to play a role in Frisian history in the twenty-
first century. In 2004, he was designated de ferneamdste Fries aller tiden, ‘the
most important Frisian of all times’ in an internet poll (Leeuwarder Courant,
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11 December 2004). On the internet, his name can be found as the most distant
ancestor of several online genealogies. In 1895, the German historian Hugo
Jaekel proposed that the counts of Holland descended from Redbad. This the-
ory was revived in the 1990s and has proved to be very tenacious (Niewenhuij-
sen, 2009).
In 2009, Redbad featured in one of the forty-one “windows” or core narra-
tives of the official “canon” of Frisian history written at the request of the prov-
ince of Friesland.8 In 2011, the Frisian writer Willem Schoorstra wrote Rêdbâd.
Kronyk fan in kening (Redbad: Chronicle of a King). This historical novel, writ-
ten with sympathy for the Frisian pagan cause, completes the image of Redbad
as an Arthur-like pagan king. Schoorstra chose the historically correct form
Rêdbâd, which Miedema (1968) had pointed to. In 2015, an official website for
digitalised cultural heritage was launched called www.redbot.frl as an explicit
allusion to the king. Finally, 2018 saw both the premiere of a Dutch spectacle
movie Redbad. De Legende (Redbad: The Legend), and of an outdoor theatre
play (iepenloftspul) in Frisian based on Schoorstra’s novel, which simultane-
ously came out in a reprint and in a Dutch version.
It is safe to conclude with a quotation from Miedema’s article on Redbad’s
name: “Thus the name of the Frisian king and especially its Frisian form has be-
come a symbol of Frisian national sentiments” (Miedema, 1968, p. 54). Redbad
is here to stay. He truly has become the “once and future king” of the Frisians.
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Chapter 6
Norse Mythology in Icelandic Fiction about the

Second World War
Daisy Neijmann
“We in our haste can only see the small components of the scene / We cannot
tell what incidents will focus on the final screen”. Thus the British war poet
Donald Bain (1944, p. 150) describes the predicament of turning the Second
World War into literature at the time. The difficulties of capturing the mo
dern war experience, its magnitude and multifarious nature, have been attest
ed to by many authors since, even with the benefit of hindsight (Mackay, 2009).
Although Iceland was spared the violence and brutality of combat, Blitzkrieg
and enemy occupation, its wartime situation nevertheless produced profound
and unprecedented social and cultural tensions, resulting in a complete water
shed that left the nation reeling and has proved exceptionally challenging for
authors to capture since.
Iceland’s predicament lay partly in the fact that it was occupied by Allied
forces, which constituted a violation of its neutrality, and partly in the extreme
social, cultural and economic changes brought by the occupation. Iceland had
no military tradition and no experience of war, and the sudden overwhelming
presence of a foreign armed force had consequences for which the Icelandic
people were completely unprepared.1 The political and social ramifications
represented a severe challenge to Icelandic national identity, which had been
importantly shaped by a rural culture and its preservation of a strong medieval
literary tradition. It should therefore not come as a great surprise that those
writers that sought to capture the deeper implications of what had happened
and consider their future consequences looked to this cultural heritage for
inspiration. In this chapter I discuss two novels that deal with the Allied oc
cupation of Iceland, one written during the war and one forty years later, and
1 On the occupation of Iceland and its consequences, see Guðmundur Hálfdanarson (2011),
Dagný Kristjánsdóttir (2006), Stefán Hjartarson (1997), Tóman Þór Tómasson (1983–1984),
Sólrún B. Jensdóttir (1974) and Þór Whitehead’s four-volume work on Iceland during the Sec
ond World War (1980–1999), as well as his Ísland í hers höndum (Iceland and the Allied Mili
tary Presence, 2002) and Iceland and the Struggle for the Atlantic (2007). See also the more
recent publication Stríðsárin 1938–1945 (The War Years 1938–1945) by Páll Baldvin Baldvins
son (2015).

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116 Neijmann
examine the ways in which the authors make use of Norse myths and legends
in their treatment of the occupation and its effects on Icelandic society and
identity: Verndarenglarnir (The Guardian Angels) by Jóhannes úr Kötlum, pu
blished in 1943, and Drekar og smáfuglar (Dragons and Small Birds) by Ólafur
Jóhann Sigurðsson, published in 1983.
When Iceland was occupied by British forces on 10 May 1940, the govern
ment issued a formal protest but knew that, despite its declaration of neutrali
ty, the occupation was inevitable at this stage due to Iceland’s strategic location
and the island being within the British sphere of influence. To many Icelanders
the occupation nevertheless came as a complete surprise and shock. With so
vereignty (in a personal union with Denmark under a common monarch) only
recently achieved in 1918, many had serious objections and concerns about the
presence of a foreign armed military in the country that all but outnumbered
the locals, fearing the country might end up exchanging one colonial master
for another. However, it was not just a foreign army that occupied Iceland at
this time, but also modernity, which followed in its wake. As a result, Icelan
dic society was transformed almost overnight. Apprehensions about all these
sudden and profound changes and their ramifications soon dominated public
discourse.2
Verndarenglarnir is the first Icelandic novel that has the occupation as its
main topic, published at a time when the war was still raging. It was written
from the heart by a writer who was both appalled by what he considered to be
a British invasion and profoundly anxious about the consequences for Iceland
and Icelandic culture. The text also clearly shows that the author, Jóhannes
úr Kötlum, was searching for a form and a language to tackle this unwieldy
and highly sensitive topic. His situation may be seen as comparable to that of wri
ters elsewhere at this time, but was exacerbated not only by the fact that Ice
land did not have a history and literature of war and thus no literary models,
but also because modern Icelandic fiction as a genre was still quite young and
only just starting to come to a real fruition.3 Modernity had begun to make
some very carefully controlled inroads in Iceland at the beginning of the
twentieth century, and a few authors had experimented with modernism in
Icelandic literature during the 1920s, but their attempts were not followed up.
Instead, it was social realism that became the dominant mode and produced
2 Much of this public discourse can be found in Gunnar M. Magnúss’s three-volume work on
the occupation of Iceland, Virkið í Norðri (Fortress North, 1947–1950).
3 For an account of the development of modern Icelandic fiction, see Þórir Óskarsson (2006,
pp. 292–297), Guðni Elísson (2006, pp. 317–327), Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson (2006, pp. 357–391)
and Ástráður Eysteinsson (2006, pp. 404–438). See also Matthías V. Sæmundsson (1996), Árni
Sigurjónsson (2006) and Halldór Guðmundsson (2006).
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Norse Mythology in Icelandic Fiction about WW II 117
the most influential works of Icelandic fiction during the 1930s (Jóhannsson,
2006). A committed socialist, Jóhannes úr Kötlum stuck to social realism, and,
instead of looking to the modernist techniques that writers elsewhere had
used to give expression to the scars and ruins left by the First World War, he
turned to Icelandic literary heritage, to the ancient tales of Norse warriors,
gods and Ragnarök, the ultimate battle, to give shape to his narrative, as well
as to the memoirs and experiences of an Icelandic volunteer fighting on the
Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, which had been appearing in the
Icelandic papers.4
At the centre of the novel is Miklibær, an Icelandic farm, which clearly is
meant as a synecdoche for Iceland as a whole. Indeed, the members of the
Miklibær family are symbolic of the various attitudes toward the occupation
that were prevalent in Iceland at the time. The head of the family is Brynjólf
ur, the archetypal Icelandic farmer that was so fundamental not only to Ice
landic history but to Icelandic nationalist discourse, which saw the farmer as
the very essence of Icelandic identity. His wife is the dutiful and loving Hildur.
The couple have four children. The eldest are the twin brothers Haraldur and
Hákon, who in fact represent complete opposites; the former returned with
deep physical and psychological scars from fighting in the Spanish Civil War,
the latter is a calculating, opportunist businessman and collaborator who
works with the occupying army for personal gain. Next is Máni Mýsingur, a
young idealist, socialist revolutionary, poet and representative of the author’s
own views: he is appalled by the occupation and ashamed of Icelanders’ lack
of resistance. Máni eventually ends up being arrested and deported, and fi
nally enlists in the Soviet army. The youngest child is also the only daughter,
Embla, who clearly is a female incarnation of Iceland: pure and innocent, she
is seduced and sullied by a British army officer. Living on the farm as well is
Brynjólfur’s ancient mother Geirlaug, “the most knowledgeable of all women
in the district” (Jóhannes úr Kötlum, 1943, p. 55), who recites ancient literature
and wisdom, and is described as a “living book” (Jóhannes úr Kötlum, 1943,
p. 35) by the children:
No stories were told nowadays about a steel memory like hers, all her life
she had been learning, no one knew when or how, she knew complete
4 The name of this Icelandic soldier was Hallgrímur Hallgrímsson (1910–1942), and his ac
counts were later collected and published in book form under the title Undir fána lýðveld
isins (Under the Republic’s Flag, 1941). After the war, Jóhannes úr Kötlum abandoned social
realism for modernist poetics, although initially under a pseudonym. See also Halldór Guð
mundsson (1978) and Ástráður Eysteinsson (2006, p. 473).
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118 Neijmann
sagas of the Icelanders, knights’ sagas, folktales, epic poems in their en
tirety and vikivaka poems from beginning to end…
jóhannes úr kötlum, 1943, p. 55
From this description it is clear that Geirlaug is the keeper of Icelandic cultural
heritage.
The names of the various family members obviously allude to northern my
thology and legend: Brynjólfur means the “wolf in armour”, Hildur (“battle”) is
a Valkyrie’s name and Geirlaug carries connotations of war (geir means “spear”
and Geirölul is a Valkyrie’s name). Haraldur and Hákon are warrior kings’
names from the sagas, Máni means “moon” and Embla is the name of the first
human woman in the Old Norse myth of creation. The author thus links this
microcosm directly to the origins of Icelandic history and culture from the very
start. There are also, however, indications of cracks in the foundation of this
little world. All the children except Haraldur have left home for the city even
before the occupation takes place, and none of them will take over the farm;
it will pass into the hands of strangers. Moreover, although Miklibær is at the
heart of the novel, most of the action nevertheless takes place elsewhere; the
farm is losing its central role in Icelandic cultural history.
It is not only the Miklibær family that is connected to mythology and an
cient cultural history, however. When the occupation force arrives in Reykjavík
harbour on the morning of 10 May, the invading military ships are described in
terms that refer to mythological forces and monsters: they are “snapping myth
ological wolves” (Jóhannes úr Kötlum, 1943, p. 41) that come from the “world of
troll witchcraft” (Jóhannes úr Kötlum, 1943, p. 41), and the overflying plane is a
“bird from Hel” (Jóhannes úr Kötlum, 1943, p. 26). These terms are still actively
used in modern Icelandic today and do not necessarily carry mythological con
notations in and of themselves, but in the context of the novel they clearly
do because on that same day, on the Miklibær farm, Geirlaug starts reciting
from Völuspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy) the mythological visionary poem about
Ragnarök, the end of the world. The news of the occupation has not travelled
beyond Reykjavík yet because the British have cut off all communications, but
Geirlaug’s dreams have been strange that night, although no one pays heed to
them. Geirlaug’s recitations from Völuspá and Snorri Sturluson’s descriptions
of Ragnarök all indicate that the final battle has begun; “There will be great
battles throughout the world. Then brothers will kill each other out of greed
…”, she murmurs (Jóhannes úr Kötlum, 1943, p. 58; Sturluson, 1997, p. 53), and
proceeds to recount stanza forty-five from Völuspá:
Brother will fight brother and be his slayer,

Brother and sister will violate the bonds of kinship;
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Hard it is in the world, there is much adultery,

Axe-age, sword-age, shields are cleft asunder,
Wind-age, wolf-age, before the world plunges headlong. (Poetic Edda,
1996, p. 10)
Geirlaug does not stop reciting the story of the final battle until the fire giant
Surtur has burned the entire world to ashes.
The occupation is, in other words, described in apocalyptic terms, and not
just as a battle of good against evil, but also an internal battle, in which the old
world, the old Iceland, will disappear. With the occupation, modernity made
its inroad almost overnight, and although it brought Iceland unprecedented
wealth it also meant that nothing was ever the same again. Life in Iceland as
people had known it was gone, and traditional knowledge no longer applied
because it was replaced by a modern consumer culture. The description of the
Allied army casts it in the role of the attacking enemy hosts, the sons of Mus
pell in Norse mythology. It not only brings war and destruction but provides
the conditions and setting for an internal moral corruption to thrive. Just as
moral degeneracy and a lust for power and gold among the Æsir gods precedes
Ragnarök, so Icelanders rush to sell themselves, their country, their culture and
their self-respect in order to profit as much as possible from the occupation
and the war. Thus it signals a change of epic, indeed traumatic, proportions,
and many lost their footing and their bearings. The imagery from Ragnarök
aptly and powerfully conveys the overpowering impact and magnitude of
these events: an apocalyptic end of the world as Icelanders had known it.
Framing the story of the occupation and the fate of Miklibær is the story of
Haraldur, the injured soldier who has lost the use of one eye and is severely
psychologically scarred. On the opening page of the novel, Haraldur is intro
duced as follows:
One might have thought that here went one of the ancient gods in mo
dern attire, a young Ás, come down to earth from Valhöll itself. And thus
it was, too, strange as it may sound, for this was Odin the One-Eyed, look
ing for his ravens.
jóhannes úr kötlum, 1943, p. 5
Haraldur is searching for a raven’s nest to steal its eggs, which he believes to
be fjöregg: eggs that contain the life force that will allow him to bring his dead
friends back to life.5 It turns out who he is the only survivor of a battle in which
5 On the phenomenon of the fjöregg as a carrier of a being’s vital force in Icelandic folk belief
and tales, see Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (2003, pp. 59–61).
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120 Neijmann
all his comrades-in-arms were killed. The memory of this is so painful to Haral
dur that it makes him physically ill and sets off his delusions. Clearly, Haraldur
suffers from war trauma: he cannot remember the actual experience, yet he
relives it over and over again through his hallucinations. The idea that an event
can be both experienced and forgotten, known and not known, is central to
trauma theory. As Lindsey Stonebridge describes it: “Trauma divides the mind
not only from itself, but also splits it in time” (Stonebridge, 2009, p. 196).6 Al
though he participates in the regular farm-life routine to an extent, Haraldur
does not really inhabit chronological time; his every thought and individual
action revolves around the obsessive search for “his” ravens, recalling Freud’s
theory on “how the psyche tried to master trauma retroactively by reliving
unconsciously a catastrophe which could not be experienced fully first time
around” (Stonebridge, 2009, p. 197). Haraldur needs to believe that he is Odin,
so that he can return to the battlefield every night to bring the fallen warriors
back to life (Sturluson, 1997, pp. 21, 31–34). This is the only way in which he can
represent to himself what has happened. The need to revive his fellow soldiers
is clearly prompted by survivor’s guilt. Indeed, as Stonebridge points out, an
important aspect of war trauma is to encounter an alien part of the self, not
least the part that kills others, thereby destroying the fantasy of the self as a
peacetime subject (Stonebridge, 2009, p. 197).
Haraldur, in the guise of the war god Odin, thus serves as an Icelandic ex
ample of what war does to people. The author uses imagery from Norse mytho
logy in order to convey to a readership with no experience of war that which is
believed to be beyond expression: war trauma. This is in fact what makes this
novel so remarkable despite its obvious flaws; as the first Icelandic work of fic
tion about the war, written during the war, it attempts to deal with the complex
and elusive subject of trauma, so integral to twentieth-century warfare, where
so few other Icelandic writers to this very day have. The author’s use of imagery
from Norse mythology is no less remarkable. The choice to use mythological
imagery is particularly effective because it both represents a classical Icelandic
literature dealing with war and is thereby a way of dramatising the effect of
war in a modern context by giving it mythological proportions. At the same
time, it emphasises a connection with a past that is now in danger of being
severed.
6 See also Cathy Caruth’s description of trauma as “an overwhelming experience of sudden
or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, un
controlled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena” (Caruth,
1996, p. 11).
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Conspicuously absent from the novel, however, is the hope held out by the
Norse apocalyptic myths for a new and better future, a Gimlé for the best of
gods and men (Poetic Edda, 2014, pp. 11–12; Sturluson, 1997, p. 20). At Miklibær,
the great tragedy is that all the children are lost to the war, in one way or an
other: Embla kills herself when Haraldur, in a fit of delusion, kills the child
she has with the British officer that seduced and then abandoned her. Máni is
fighting in the Soviet army and no one knows if he will return. Hákon turns his
back on Miklibær and his family to profit from the army, and Haraldur destroys
his healthy eye after realising what he has done to Embla’s child, thereby lo
sing both his sight and his memory. Moreover, it is not just the children that are
lost; the landvættir, the old Icelandic spirits of the land, have fled the country as
well. The landscape is nothing but water and rocks, and Iceland is left defence
less “against the monster that now stretched its claws out over the … country”
(Jóhannes úr Kötlum, 1943, p. 224). A new age will dawn, and a new Iceland with
it, because life will endure, the novel tells its readers. However, it nevertheless
ends in complete darkness; in the final scene, Haraldur rejoices in his blindness
because all the evil in the world is now hidden from him. This seems to indicate
that the author put little faith in the dawning of this new age as long as internal
moral corruption and greed continue to hold sway. Verndarenglarnir thus poses
an ancient mythological narrative, the cultural matrix of the old Iceland, vis-
à-vis modernity and a modern Iceland, to portray the death of the ideal of an
independent Iceland rooted in its own traditional culture. When viewed in this
light, Haraldur’s loss of memory takes on a wider meaning, extending to collec
tive Icelandic memory; no stories will circulate again of Icelanders that have
entrusted their cultural heritage to memory and pass it on to future generations.
Forty years after the publication of Verndarenglarnir, the events that fol
lowed in the wake of the occupation during the Second World War still have
not taken on a clear focus on Donald Baine’s “final screen”, or so the novel Dre
kar og smáfuglar by Ólafur Jóhann Sigurðsson seems to suggest. The novel was
published in 1983 and constitutes the last volume in a trilogy written over a pe
riod of twenty years about the journalist Páll Jónsson. The trilogy relates Páll’s
struggle to come to grips with his experiences and memories of the war years in
Iceland, which he experienced as a young man who recently moved to Reykja
vík from the countryside. As such, it is, together with Verndarenglarnir, among
only a very few Icelandic literary works dealing with memory, trauma and guilt
relating to the years of the occupation. Remarkably, like Verndarenglarnir, it
also uses mythological imagery to do so. The motif running through Drekar og
smáfuglar is that of Sigurður and the dragon, and the curse of gold, explained
by Snorri Sturluson in Skáldskaparmál (The Language of Poetry) as the “otter’s
payment” and “Æsir’s forced payment” (Sturluson, 1987, p. 95):
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122 Neijmann
It was strange how often the Saga of the Volsungs [Völsunga saga] came
into my mind in those days, the hatred in that ancient tale, the scheming,
the cruelty, evil deeds and killings, the endless blood feuds, the ruthless
fight for gold, that lifeless red metal that eventually disappeared into the
depths of the Rhine and has not been found since.
sigurðsson, 1983, p. 219
This motif appears literally in the form of a thread because Páll’s wife is em
broidering the image of Sigurður stabbing the dragon while Páll is wrestling
with his memories that he is trying to commit to paper. At the same time, the
motif creates a link between the past and the present in Icelandic history, but
also in Páll’s own life, where his obsession with the saga’s imagery and message
during the final year of the war returns during the time of writing and informs
the mnemonic process. Páll reflects on the significance of the warrior’s deed;
by slaying the dragon, is Sigurður avenging a grief, or is it just to get the gold?
This final volume of the trilogy is set during the time when the war is com
ing to an end, and the American army, which replaced the British in 1941, is
supposed to be leaving. Gradually, however, it is becoming clear that secret ne
gotiations are being held that will eventually allow the Americans to maintain
a military base in Iceland. Páll pictures the American army as a mythological
monster, a giant “Other” that is threatening the peaceful, defenceless “dwarf
nation” (dvergþjóð) that is Iceland:
And what would happen to little Tom Thumb if the trolls started fighting?
And what would happen to his small home, his small country and his
small children? Would not a dwarf have a better chance of survival if he
left the steel grey trolls to themselves, and made sure he would not lose
his freedom and his self-esteem?
The opposition drawn up here between the giant Other and the tiny dwarf na
tion of Iceland is a recurring theme of the novel, which is underscored by the
novel’s title, Dragons and Small Birds.
On his travels through the countryside, Páll observes that both culture and
landscape have been colonised by a foreign “god of battle” (orustuguð), whose
presence has obliterated older memories of time and place:
Remnants of the presence of this cruel god of battle in Iceland are spread
out here and there on the shore: rusted army barracks, concrete walls
of kitchens and pantries, fortifications built from sandbags and rocks,
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a bandoned gunning stations, rubbish and scraps of various kinds. This

violent god comes to my mind again near the national road around Kópa
vogur: this was once a parliamentary site, I say to myself…
Violence and war have desecrated the sacred places of Iceland. The effect of such
a violation of a familiar, even sacred place on memory and identity has been
discussed by Paul Connerton in the context of both occupation and modernity.
These “carriers of place memory”, as he calls these familiar places, become “
defamiliarised” by foreign occupation, and the experience of this defamiliar
isation is so profoundly distressing, Connerton suggests, that it shakes one’s
very being (Connerton, 2009, pp. 24–32).
Thus, while the political anti-war, anti-base message of Drekar og smáfuglar
is obvious, its main concerns clearly go much deeper. In Drekar og smáfuglar,
the landvættir, the mythological protective spirits of Iceland, also flee, as they
do in Verndarenglarnir. It is striking that, in the two Icelandic novels that pro
blematise memory in relation to the war years, the country is abandoned by its
ancient protective spirits. Their disappearance seems to be indicative of the
defamiliarisation of the landscape as a carrier of cultural memory. The two
novels share a profound anxiety concerning cultural amnesia, a loss of me
mory, a fracture in the connection with origins and the past, because a foreign
culture, modernity itself, is occupying the country. At the heart of both novels
is the image of a small, defenceless nation that is in serious danger of losing
itself. Elsewhere I have argued that Páll, like Haraldur, can in fact be read as
suffering from a form of trauma (Neijmann, 2012). Páll is symbolic of a nation
paralysed by deep shock in the wake of the sudden and pervasive onslaught
of modernity, which transformed everything it knew almost overnight. Paul
Terdiman has termed this a “cultural disquiet” that causes a crisis of memory.
As Terdiman puts it:
The loss of a sense of time’s continuous flow and of our unproblematic

place within it, the disruption of an organic connection with the past
evidenced in numerous texts from this period – such representations in
dicate an epochal rupture, a perception by those who were living within
it that the world had decisively changed.
terdiman, 1993, p. 5
Beyond the danger posed by foreign superpowers is the danger of the greed for
gold within Icelanders themselves, which would make them sell themselves
and their country. Páll is distraught and guilt-ridden over the fact that Iceland
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124 Neijmann
is allowing a modern consumer economy to take over traditional culture and

values, and that Icelanders are profiting from a war that has caused unpre
cedented horrors for so many. This blood money, these ill-gotten gains, consti
tute a grave threat to Iceland because, as the ancient myths and legends show:
“The companion of the red gold is death alone” (Sigurðsson, 1983, p. 311). It will
destroy whoever owns it. Thus, Páll looks not just to the political implications,
but even more so to the moral message that the ancient saga holds for Icelan
ders in the present.
As Páll ponders the final days of the war and the message of the legend
about Sigurður and the Dragon, he remembers his bafflement and shock at
discovering that his journalist colleague did not even know about Sigurður or
the Saga of the Volsungs, and had never heard of Snorri’s Edda: “I’ve never had
time to be pouring over old books” (Sigurðsson, 1983, p. 11). What happens to a
nation that no longer heeds, or even remembers, traditional wisdom and lore?
Páll is an orphan brought up on the knowledge and wisdom of his maternal
grandmother who, like Geirlaug in Verndarenglarnir, acts as a guardian of Ice
landic cultural heritage. Her values no longer seem to work, however. Instead,
they make Páll a laughing stock to his contemporaries, who call him Signor
Anakróníus “Mr Anachrony” (Sigurðsson, 1983, p. 474). In his quest for his ori
gins, Páll learns that his identity is split between, on the one hand, his matri
lineal inheritance of an organic bond to the nourishing source of the land,
culture and the past (the mother, mother Iceland) and, on the other, a patri
linear heritage of poverty, humiliation and a colonialist mindset characterised
by dependence, cowardice and lack of self-respect. Páll struggles to come to
terms with his patrimony, the mindset that threatens to sell the country into a
new colonialism in exchange for gold, polluting its very source. At the end of
the novel, as she finishes her embroidery, Páll’s wife, also called Hildur, says to
him: “Nothing can kill us. We are consecrated to the land” (Sigurðsson, 1983,
p. 593). However, Páll, although he looks up to the stars in hope, seems inca
pable of sharing her faith in this holy bond. All he really feels is anxiety about
the fate of Iceland and the world against the powers of greed and destruction.
Drekar og smáfuglar and Verndarenglarnir are the only Icelandic occu
pation novels that make use of northern mythology, and it can hardly be a
coincidence that, in both, the effect of the Allied occupation is viewed with
an emphasis on memory, trauma and identity. These two novels look to the
timelessness of the old myths in an attempt to remember, to reconnect with
a cultural past perceived to be under grave threat of being forgotten and lost.
Although written forty years apart, both works convey a post-apocalyptic vi
sion in which the old world lies in ruins, without the promise of a beautiful
Gimlé rising. Under extreme pressure from the forces of modernity, following
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in the wake of war and moral corruption, they powerfully express a deeply felt
sense of the disruption of an organic connection with the past, displacement,
and a split in time and subjectivity as the nation struggles to find its place in a
new world.
References
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The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Connerton, P. (2009). How Modernity Forgets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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of Icelandic Literature (pp. 308–356). Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.
Eysteinssson, Á. (2006). Icelandic Prose Literature: 1940–1980. In Neijmann, D.L. (ed.),
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Guðmundsson, H. (1978). Sjödægra, módernisminn og syndafall Íslendinga. Svart á
hvítu 2(2), 3–9.
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G.A. (ed.), Íslensk bókmenntasaga IV (pp. 193–223). Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
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Jensdóttir, S.B. (1974). The “Republic of Iceland” 1940–44: Anglo-American Attitudes
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D.L. (ed.), A History of Icelandic Literature (pp. 357–403). Lincoln, NB: University of
Nebraska Press.
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menntasaga IV (pp. 419–661). Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
MacKay, M. (2009). Introduction. In MacKay, M. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
the Literature of World War II (pp. 1–9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Magnúss, G.M. (1947–1950). Virkið í norðri (three volumes). Reykjavík:

Neijmann, D.L. (2012). Hringsól um dulinn kjarna: minni og gleymska í þríleik Ólafs
Jóhanns Sigurðssonar. Ritið 12(1), 115–139.
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(ed.), Íslensk bókmenntasaga III (pp. 497–588). Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
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Íslensk bókmenntasaga IV (pp. 19–124). Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
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Chapter 7
Of Gods and Men: Uses and Abuses of Neo-

Paganism by Nationalist Movements in the “North”
Robert A. Saunders
Unlike the universalist, proselytising monotheisms of Christianity and Islam,

or even the “open door” faiths of Buddhism, Baha’i and Scientology, Modern
European Paganism (mep), or Neo-Paganism, in its various forms is closely
tied to ethnic identity, a most powerful mythic construction.1 These linkages
confer upon Neo-Paganism some level of commonality with such monoeth-
nic faiths as Sikhism, Shinto and Judaism. With few exceptions, the belief sys-
tems that are categorised as “Neo-Pagan” tend to be linked to specific historical
geographies and express affinities with specific ethnic groups, although these
propinquities are sometimes rather loosely defined. Of all the contemporary
forms of Modern European Paganism, Wicca and Goddess Worship are the
least constrained in terms of the salience between ethnic affiliation and be-
lief; however, even among Wiccans, there is a statistically measurable connec-
tion to ethnicities of the British Isles (Jensen and Thompson, 2008), as well
as the belief among some practitioners that Celtic “blood” forms the basis of
spiritual connection (Gardell, 2003). Similarly, many Goddess Worshippers
tend to accentuate pre-Christian notions of female-male duality embodied
in pan-European nature worship, reconstructing “identities” associated with
the Celts (Hale, 2002), often labelled the “first Europeans” (Saunders, 2013,
p. 790).2 Consequently, the constructed geographies and actual demographic
presence of Neo-Pagan communities across Europe and the so-called “white
dominions” (More, 2014) of North America and the Antipodes relate closely
to imagined/imaginary affiliations between “the land” (territory) and ethnos
(ethnic community).
1 I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Michael Strmiska for his assistance with this
essay, including multiple readings and edits, as well as his supportive critiques, comments
and suggestions, and to the anonymous referee whose valuable critique greatly improved the
final version of this chapter. Any errors, deficiencies or oversights are my own.
2 Of course, the Indo-European Celts were not the “first Europeans”, but instead descendants
of invaders from the Russian–Kazakh borderlands that ultimately displaced or subsumed the
already-resident peoples of Europe, according to the most recent archaeological theories on
the genesis of the proto-Indo-European tribes (see Gimbutas, 1991; Anthony, 2007).

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128 Saunders
As a historical overview, this essay focuses on that link, and particularly

on the ways in which nationalist movements have drawn on pre-Christian
myths, Paganism and Modern European Paganisms over the past two cen-
turies. My thesis is that nationalist elites have often made use of political,
social and cultural “toolkits”3 of mep to achieve political outcomes, a not-un-
controversial contention that is further explored, employing historical analy-
sis as well as human geography and poststructural International Relations
(IR) perspectives. I am particularly interested in how nationalist movements
have mythologised pagan place (which is resonant in the very terms pagan
and heathen, both meaning “country-dweller”) in their respective struggles to
establish or resist spatial legitimacy in various regions of northern, eastern
and central Europe. Such a process has involved the yoking together of three
entities: mythologies, the land and the people. Resulting discursive practices
have thus centred on the notion of “authenticity” in the modern/postmodern
eras wherein myths (despite being highly suspect) seemingly feel “true” to
both Pagans and nationalists alike.4 In the contemporary (and arguably post-
national) milieu, these discursive interventions have fuelled identitarianism,
Radical Traditionalism and other emerging forms of ethnicised politics (see
Bernauer, 2006; Hale, 2011). Although many modern Pagans in northern Eu-
rope (and followers of “northern paths” in other corners of the globe) eschew
nationalism and downplay links to ethnicity, there is a strong correlation be-
tween nationalist sentiment and the identity-constructions of mep, particu-
larly in North America and parts of northern and north-eastern Europe. With
this chapter, my aim is to interrogate and problematise these issues, focusing
on how constructions of “authentic faith” inform the so-called invention of
tradition (see, e.g., Ozoliņš, 2013; Stukuls Eglitis, 2002). I am particularly inter-
ested in popular culture as a mechanism for the ideological melding together
of Neo-Paganism and national identity via “synthetic experiences” (Musgrave
and Daniel, 2017), including visual arts (von Schnurbein, 2014), Neofolk music
(Strmiska, 2012), television series (Saunders, 2014) and social networking sites
(Magliocco, 2012).
I begin with a brief overview of the evolution of Neo-Paganism in north-
ern and eastern Europe since 1800, focusing on separate historical eras (Early
Romantic, Late Romantic, Modern and Postmodern) and highlighting how
3 In my use of this term, I am relying on Swidler’s (1986) concept of culture as a repertoire that
actors draw upon to achieve outcomes through various strategies and “lines of action”.
4 For many, this comes through what Snook (2015) identifies as an “unverified personal gnosis”
(upg), which allows a great deal of individualism in constructing religious “truths” associ-
ated with Neo-Pagan practice, customs and belief.
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Of Gods and Men 129
certain regions of northern Europe saw different manifestations of the rela-

tionship between national identity and Neo-Paganism. A variety of Modern
European Pagan movements are then catalogued, including Celto-Romano,
Teutonic-Scandinavian paths, Balto-Slavic and Finno-Ugric native religions.
This analysis focuses on how nationalist elites have taken advantage of Neo-
Pagan “toolkits” to gain followers, mobilise support and exercise influence, re-
flecting the contention that both Neo-Paganism and nationalism are twinned
forces catalysed by the arrival of modernity (Saunders, 2013). Close attention
is paid to the role of Neo-Paganism as a performative tool of anti-imperialism,
especially in the case of small nations such as the Welsh, Estonians, Latvi-
ans and Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia. I also highlight the paradoxical ways
in which Neo-Pagan themes and symbols have been employed by “imperial”
elites and propagandists to advance racist political platforms (specifically,
Ariosophy in Nazi Germany and post-Soviet Russia), especially via völkisch
symbols and language. Drawing on the larger framework of religious diversity
and “national forms” of Christianity within and across Europe, I present an
argument for why the ties between Modern European Paganism and national-
ist myth-making appear particularly strong in the northern reaches of con-
tinent (i.e., the British Isles, Germany and Scandinavia, and the Baltic Rim).
The chapter concludes with a summary of trends in mep that suggest that, al-
though ethnic nationalism and native faiths are linked among certain groups,
many “everyday” Pagans and mep groups are decidedly anti-nationalist in
their political orientations.
1 A Brief Historiography of the Neo-Pagan-Nationalism Connection

in Northern Europe
In order to ground the subsequent analysis within an accessible historical

framework, it is prudent to provide an overview of the historical interactions
between nationalism, national identity and (Neo-)Paganism in Europe (see
Table 7.1). Modern nationalism is often viewed as one of the most lasting out-
growths of the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars, both
of which spread the ideal of republicanism (rooted in the national polity, as
opposed to the monarch’s divine right to rule) and triggered anti-French senti-
ment among the occupied peoples of Europe, who now possessed a discur-
sive capacity for articulating their “distinctiveness” from their Francophone
invaders. However, as the historian Philip W. Barker (2008) points out, various
forms of “religious nationalism” were already evident in various parts of Europe
prior to issuing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, from Greece
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130 Saunders
Table 7.1 Representative examples of “nationalist” Neo-Paganism
Period Political orientation(s) Path Country/ethnos
Early Romantic Extra-political, Druidry Wales

fraternalist
Late Romantic Anti-Christian, Ariosophy Germany/
primordialist Austria
Modern Anti-imperialist, Maausk Estonia
ethno-nationalist
Postmodern 1 Progressive, Wicca Global-“Celtic”
environmentalist
Postmodern 2 Anti-capitalist/ Radical “White
socialist, identitarian traditionalism European”
in the southeast to Ireland in the northwest of the continent.5 Sparked by the

Renaissance and Enlightenment, there was growing interest in the ideas of the
(pagan) Ancient Greeks, with thinkers across Europe challenging the power of
the Catholic Church, as well as other entrenched institutions in society.6
Perhaps then it is no surprise that the first Neo-Pagan order of the modern
period saw its genesis during this time period; namely, the Druidical Society,
founded in 1771 at Beaumaris on the Welsh island of Anglesey (Cunliffe, 2010).
This act marks one of the most important events in modern Welsh national-
ism because the image of the Druid was yoked to Welsh identity through the
publication of Evan Evans’s poem The Love of Our Country (Morgan, 1992) and
other works by Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826), later coming to serve as a symbol of
“cultural resistance and continuity” for the peoples of Wales (Magliocco, 2011,
p. 36). The model established in Anglesey, particularly the use of the eisteddfod
“festival” as a locus for faith and ideology, would evolve and flourish, providing
a guidepost for subsequent pagan-nationalist organisations across the Celtic
lands (Cooper, 2010). The Druidical Society soon spawned imitators elsewhere
in the British Isles, although some groups such as the Ancient Order of Druids,
5 Nationalism scholar Anthony Smith (1991) identifies religious nationalism as one the ma-
jor precursors of modern nationalism, focusing on the Greeks, Armenians and Jews as key
examples.
6 As Marion Gibson points out, the “reimagining” of the pagans greatly predates the 1500s;
however, the Renaissance “amplified” the interest in pre-Christian religion and “decisively
shaped” its portrayal among future generations (Gibson, 2013, p. 40).
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Of Gods and Men 131
established in London in 1781, more resembled the Freemasons than minority

nationalist movements.
In the wake of the French Revolution, Romanticism swept the continent,
influencing high and popular culture in nearly equal measures, effectively
“fusing” nationalism and (neo)paganism (Granholm, 2014, p. 54). During this
period, nationalist elites tended to grasp ready tools at hand, and cultural-eth-
nic and religious tropes often proved the most useful catspaws and cudgels to
achieve their own goals associated with the “nation”.7 Themes associated with
the primordial past proved exceptionally popular, particularly in the British
Isles, Scandinavia, the German states, and other parts of central and eastern
Europe. Not coincidentally, these parts of Europe also happened to be in the
zone where “national forms” of Christianity had fairly recently come to domi-
nate religious life (following periods of religious conflict in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries). The Church of England, Presbyterianism and Metho
dism all vied for influence in the British Isles, and Lutheranism with its links
to the national sovereigns dominated Nordic Europe. In north-eastern Europe,
Eastern Orthodoxy had already manifested itself though an ethno-national
structure with separate churches for Russians, Ukrainians and others. Even in
the northern parts of Europe where Catholicism held sway (Ireland and Po-
land/Lithuania), the universal faith tended to take on specifically “national”
traits due to its anti-imperial associations vis-à-vis the hegemon (Anglican
Britain and Orthodox Russia, respectively). Given the “space” for alternative
religious practices (and no practice of religion at all), as well as the steady de-
linking of Gemeinschaft with an all-encompassing religious body (such as the
Catholic Church) in the northern half of Europe, it is perhaps no surprise that
it is here that Neo-Paganism began to gain followers from the late 1700s onward.
The Romantic-era “rediscovery” of a pre-Christian past, abetted by new forms
of “observative and imaginative” (Cusack, 2009, p. 338) intellectual and artis-
tic engagement with a host of themes from ancient gods to fairy folk, allowed
7 In my usage of the term national(ist) elite in this framework, I refer to those individuals that
are in a position to “reproduce” the nation (Jones and Fowler, 2007) through the military, the
education system, media platforms or political speech, as well as those individuals that “af-
fect expressions of popular nationalism, and do take advantage of popular nationalism and
use it to their own ends” (Whitmeyer, 2002, p. 321). National elites are first and foremost pro-
ducers of culture, and their work delimitates the borders of the nation, identifies friends and
foes, and promotes a comparatively unified narrative of what makes any given nation unique
from all other. As Fox argues, “Elites and non-elites (if indeed such a division is sustainable)
have different (material and symbolic) interests in the nation, and therefore different uses of
the nation. Elites (at least nationalist elites) often have vested interests in promoting nation-
alism (e.g., vying for or consolidating their power base); non-elites do not (though they may
directly or indirectly benefit from nationalism)” (van Efferink, 2011).
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132 Saunders
for the “beautiful barbarity” of the noble savage to guide an ethnification of

nascent nations (see Gajda, 2013). Paganism was increasingly tapped for raw
materials to form the “sacred narrative” of respective national myths (Misāne
and Priedīte, 1997). As Halink (2017) explores, Iceland represents a paragon of
this trend with noble paganism in the form of Ásatrú (the religion of the Æsir)
serving as a key element of the ideological mobilisation and a reservoir for
shaping a new national discourse. Heroes were excavated from the misty past
(or created from whole cloth), establishing nationalist mythopoeses that pre-
sented archetypes of the “pure” German, Pole, Irish and so on, thus allowing for
the “pagan” to function as a synecdoche for the “nation”, unadulterated by the
flows of recorded history. A kind and gentle Christ that spoke to all of Europe
(and the world) thus made way for rough-and-tumble pagan gods and often-
less-than-valiant heroes in their service, from Elias Lönnrot’s Lemminkäinen
to Richard Wagner’s Siegfried; in fact, Wagner’s operas offer the best example
of the linking of Deutschgläubigkeit “German faith” and nationalist aspira-
tions, with the performances in the geopolitically situated “theatre-temple” in
Bayreuth serving as a projection site for the emerging “Pan-Germanic national
utopia” (Noll, 1997, p. 70).
Although Greek gods were a major component of such re-imaginings,
northern European cultural producers such as William Butler Yeats, Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe and Hans Christian Andersen were also interested
in rooting their visions of the past in the local environs, thus leading them
to work with folkloric – and by definition pagan(esque) – themes, although
sometimes overlaid with a patina of Christianity, whereas others such as the
Brothers Grimm and Andrejs Pumpurs revelled in uncovering the Christian-
free “wisdom” of the ancestors. In the Celtic fringe, standing stones and other
physical sites that obviously predated the conversion to Christianity served to
reify transmogrified identities, with “key figures within the inchoate discipline
of archaeology” making “use of ancient sites as symbols of nationalist pride”
(Jones and Fowler, 2007, p. 418). Whereas the Middle Ages had wiped away
any allegiances to the old gods in favour of Christ-worship even as countless
aspects of pagan practice continued as de-sanctified lifeways (Hutton, 2013),
the “new cultural system” associated with the pagan revival (Porterfield, cited
in Cusack, 2009, p. 338) established a milieu wherein various streams of na-
tionalism could make use of fluid and malleable “pasts” to construct new and
disruptive “futures” dependent on the Herderian Volksgeist of each nation (see
Rountree, 2015b).
As the long nineteenth century drifted into twilight, the nexus between
nationalist sentiment and Neo-Paganism strengthened, often being opera-
tionalised for a variety of political purposes. On one end of the spectrum,
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Of Gods and Men 133
the racialist theories of Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) began to ferment in

the sediment of fin-de-siècle Europe intellectualism, producing an outcome
whereby the relationship between pagan ideals and national fervour took on
a decidedly darker hue in certain quarters of the north, particularly as “na-
tive faith” came to be seen as autochthonous antidote to “Semitic” Christian-
ity. Elsewhere, cultural elites took it upon themselves to build pagan-infused
ideological apparatuses to combat imperial domination, producing a curious
Euro-nativist corollary to similarly religious-inspired anti-colonial movements
coming to life in India (the Sepoy Mutiny), Sudan (the Mahdist War) and China
(the Boxer Rebellion). Bridging the period from the 1880s through the 1920s, Eu-
rope witnessed a wide variety of liaisons between Neo-Paganism and national-
ism, thus affirming Roland Barthes’ contention that contemporary societies are
“much more mythological than those of the past” (Meletinsky, 2000, p. 121).
In Ireland, Catholic and Protestant mystics alike “transmuted pagan themes
into national symbols” (Hutchingson, 2012, p. 137). In Austria, the mystic Guido
von List (1848–1919) melded the Buddhist-inspired theosophy of the Russian
occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) with a dose of Anglo-Saxon
rune lore and Germanic paganism to craft the “rediscovered” Lichtreligion “re-
ligion of the light” (Koehne, 2014, p. 766) of Armanism or Armenenschaft (later
renamed Ariosophy by his disciple Lanz von Liebenfels; Lurhrseen, 2012). In sa-
cralising the German “race”, von List laid the groundwork for twentieth-century
mystical-ideological movements including the Thule Society and other neo-
völkisch streams of thought, including Nazi paganism as articulated by Alfred
Rosenberg and others (see Goodrick-Clarke, 1992; Luhrssen, 2012). On the Bal-
tic Rim, revivalist pagan religions – often structured as “societies” – f lourished
in the early years of the twentieth century, being established in Lithuania by
1911, Latvia by 1926 and Estonia by 1928 (Gajda, 2013). Reflecting a radical rejec-
tion of both Germanic (Catholic/Lutheran) and Russian (Eastern Orthodox)
suzerainty, the politico-religious movements resembled an intricately woven
tapestry: one part faith, one part ideology (see Ozoliņš, 2013; Strmiska and
Dundzila, 2005; Västrik, 2013). Quasi-academic treatises propagating pagan-
ism also appeared during this period, most notably George Frazer’s The Golden
Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890) and Charles Leland’s Aradia, or the
Gospel of the Witches (1899). Architectural forms, including buildings designed
by Bernhard Hoetger (1874–1949; see Jones and Pennick, 1995), and popular cul-
ture kept pace with a plethora of cultural production situating “Old Religion”
as a mechanism for adapting to the brave new world, from Igor Stravinsky’s The
Rite of Spring (1913) to Carl Larsson’s Midvinterblot (Midwinter Sacrifice, 1915;
see Figure 7.1), which employed primary sources related to pagan sacrifice in
veneration of the Swedish nation (Moynihan, 2007–2008).
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134 Saunders
Figure 7.1 Carl Larsson’s Midvinterblot (Midwinter Sacrifice, 1915)

Source: Google Art Project
With the advent of modernity, a variety of historical forces created condi-

tions that more strongly joined “native faith” and national identity, from the
Irish Rising of 1916 (Jean, 2012) up to the New Age movement in the 1960s
(Saunders, 2014).8 The end of the ban on witchcraft in the United Kingdom,
which came in 1951, facilitated an open espousal of Celticism-cum–native
faith across the country, although the blending of these two strands would
not reach its full potential for several decades. Various intellectual currents
also influenced the mythologisation and ideologisation of the “pagan” roots
of contemporary national identities, including a massive interest in the Indo-
European bases of modern ethno-linguistic differences across the continent
and the ramifications for “European” ethnic identities in other parts of the
world (see Arvidsson, 2006; Strmiska, 2005a). An important case in point is the
modern d istinction between pre-Christian and “Celtic” and “Germanic” peo-
ples, from the perspectives of both ethno-nationalism and polytheist belief
systems. These distinctions are now treated as though they are u nproblematic.
However, as archaeologists have demonstrated over the past few d ecades,
8 I do not select these two examples at random, but instead use these as key markers of “un-
settled cultural periods” wherein “explicit ideologies directly govern action” (Swidler, 1986,
p. 273). The years surrounding the Great War and the uprisings of 1968 were perhaps the most
important eras of transformation in twentieth-century Europe, periods defined by crisis and
rejuvenation wherein culture served as a lodestone for political action.
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Of Gods and Men 135
these terms (which imply strong historical distinctions) are outgrowths of

nineteenth-century nationalism(s) rather than any genuine cultural-ethnic
formations associated with the Europe’s Iron Age and or its Early Medieval pe-
riod. Much the same can be said of the largely constructed divisions between
Finnic and Germanic “identities” on the ancient Baltic Rim (see, e.g., DuBois,
1999). Rather than suggesting that such distinctions undermine the genuine-
ness of national identity projects in northern Europe, I contend that contrived
beliefs systems and constructions of “authentic faith” inform the “invention
of tradition” (Hobsbawm, 1992) and the creation of “imagined communities”
(Anderson, 1991).
Following the dramatic cultural shift in 1968, the floodgates to new forms
of religious and ident(it)arian expression were opened, blurring the lines be-
tween faith, personal identity and nationalism. Fuelled by interest in the past
and informed by a culture of individualism, Modern European Paganism came
into its own in the decades that followed. Whereas the Cold War seemed to
solidify the state-based containers of identity associated with the Westphalian
system of international relations, from the 1970s onward there was an inelucta-
ble shift toward more global and local identity matrices across Europe. In this
new world order defined as much by “identity work” (Albertazzi, 2006, p. 23)
as any other form of politics, the allure of Neo-Paganism cascaded, often with
paradoxical results. As Barbara Jane Davy asserts, “Paganism can be categorised
as a religion of late modernity because it embraces relativism, globalism, and
skepticism” (Davy, 2007, p. 27). Such a description reflects many Modern Eu-
ropean Pagans’ veneration of the natural world, attempts at re-enchantment
of the universe and rejection of late capitalism, combined with a progressive
outlook toward practitioners of other faiths. Within this congeries, one finds
Neo-Pagan paths that espouse ecumenicalism, anti-racism, feminism and
strong pro-lgbt orientations. However, this analysis examines only one side
of the coin, ignoring the paradox that in North America Neo-Paganism devel-
oped in a multi-ethnic environment, producing streams of thought whereby
some Neo-Pagans embraced multiculturalism, and others have attempted to
invest more deeply in (imagined) ties to the “ethnic homeland” via pagan prac-
tice (see Magliocco, 2011; Snook, 2015). Adapting the work of Zygmunt Bauman
(2000), some scholars have asserted that, with its focus on “heritage” and its
obsession with place, Modern European Paganism is a paragon of “liquid mo-
dernity”, providing individuals with a set of tools to navigate a complex and
ever-changing world system (see Spracklen, Lucas and Deeks, 2014).
Although Wiccans, Goddess Worshippers and neo-Druids may have em-
braced the flows of postmodernism, other practitioners of mep have chosen a
different (many would say regressive) path, rejecting the “global monoculture”,
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136 Saunders
espousing radical forms of traditionalism and “biologising” spirituality (Gardell,

2003; Snook, 2015). As such, Neo-Paganism in the current era has become af-
filiated with a “white nationalist discourse [that] draws on a range of markers
which incorporate Celtic identities and others into a syncretic ‘Northern Eu-
ropean’ heritage” (Wilson, 2013, p. 200). Similarly, many Russian Neo-Pagans
have adopted core components of Ariosophy, as well as borrowed elements of
Nazi-era Germanic paganism, as part of their identity politics. In some cases,
this is taken to the extreme of rabid “anti-national” (or, more accurately, anti-
civic) nationalism, whereby the “nation” is viewed as so polluted by immigra-
tion, multiculturalism and egalitarianism that only small groups of individuals
can form the basis of the community (even when these people lack propin-
quity, thus requiring virtual connections made possible by new media). For
such adherents, mythological pasts and construed futures are the palimpsests
upon which the present is written, a trend that paganism scholar Ádám Koloz-
si (2012) has identified as a “protochronism”.9 Whether these völkisch faithful
speak of a Hyperborea concealing the “Hidden Masters”, occult colonies of Na-
zis on the Moon and Mars, or a pan-Aryan transatlantic homeland cleansed
of Christianity (see Gardell, 2003; Goodrick-Clarke, 2002; Shnirelman, 2014),10
it is only in the mind’s eye that such epic fantasies of “pagan imperialism” can
come true. Nonetheless, the espousal of such geopolitical chimeras only serves
as a reminder of how tightly bridled nationalism and Neo-Paganism remain
today, particularly among those affiliated with northern paths.
2 Northern Paths: An Overview of Modern European Paganisms

above the Alps
Modern European Paganism is one of the fastest-growing faith systems in

Europe, North America and the Antipodes. Moreover, when looking specifi-
cally at which brands of Neo-Paganism are experiencing the greatest growth
and interest, one sees that the “northern” and “western paths” (Ásatrú, Druidry,
Rodnovery and so on) dramatically outpace the “southern paths” (Hellenismos
9 Adapting the Romanian term from the way it was used in the Ceaușescu regime, proto-
chronism refers to a belief system whereby an ethnic group presents itself as the perfect
rendering of humanity capable of producing great works of art, science and technology
needed for development, thus supporting “isolationistic autochthonism” against influ-
ences from globalisation or a hegemonic “Western Civilisation” (Liiceanu, 2000, p. xx).
10 The notion of a Nazi colony in outer space was famously parodied in Finnish director
Timo Vuorensola’s Iron Sky (2012).
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Of Gods and Men 137
Table 7.2 Adapted from “Pagan Places: Towards a Religiogeography of Neopaganism”

(Saunders, 2013)
Geographic
orientation Ethnolinguistic affiliation(s) Neo-Pagan paths
Northern Germanic Ásatrú/Asatro, Heathenry,

Odinism, Wotanism, Theo-
dism, Ariosophy
Western Celtic and Celto-Romano Druidry, “Old Religion”, Celtic
Reconstructionism, Wicca,
Goddess Worship
Southern Hellenic and Latinate Hellenismos, Religio
Romana, Stregheria
(la vecchia religione)
Eastern Baltic, Slavic and Finno-Ugric Romuva, Dievturība, Zadruga,
Ridnovira/
Yazychnystvo, Rodnovery/
Vedism, Maausk/Taaraism,
Suomenusko, Ősmagyar
Vallás, Oshmari-Chimari, Vos
and Religio Romana; see Table 7.2).11 Among the former, Celtic-inspired neo-
faiths have proved to be the most dynamic. Wicca and Goddess Worship are
particularly popular, commanding large numbers of adherents across Europe
(particularly the UK) and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United
States. Although they draw inspiration from reputed Celtic practices – particu-
larly by invoking the Horned God and the celebration of pre-Christian holidays,
including Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh – the Celtic-inspired neo-
faiths tend to be rather eclectic and less linked to physical geographies than is
the case with some other Neo-Pagan communities. Nonetheless, Eurocentrism
and emotional attachment to key European spaces and political outcomes are
11 As I discuss in my study of the religious geography of Modern European Paganism (Saun-

ders, 2013), the northernmost countries of Europe have the highest number of pagans,
with the UK, Scandinavia and the Baltics leading the pack. Moreover, the “northern paths”
of Celtic and Germanic Neo-Paganism tend to be quite popular in countries such as Spain
and Italy, and even in South America, where, arguably, Roman-style Neo-Paganism would
seem to have the greatest allure.
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138 Saunders
evident among Wicca and Goddess Worshippers, and, although many Wiccans
are more focused on “emplacement” rather than historical identities, Kathryn
Rountree (2015a) points out that Celticity is a foundational element for many
followers of Wiccan paths.12 This is evidenced by online discussions associated
with the preservation of pre-Christian religious sites in Ireland, Wales, Scot-
land and England, and their linkage to a paganised form of “national identity”
espoused by adherents of these paths, one that is often rooted in a vehement
rejection of “traditional” gender roles associated with the Abrahamic faiths.
Reconstructionist Celtic Neo-Pagan movements possess an even stronger
link to the sacred “national” geographies associated with their purported an-
cestral forebears than the Celtic neo-faiths. It is common among Celtic Re-
constructionist (CR) Pagans to observe nationally oriented paths (Irish, Welsh,
Gaulish and so on) within a pan-Celtic tradition, further underlining the con-
temporary elisions between nationalism and Neo-Paganism. Modern druids
have adopted the mantle of “new indigenes” and the tactics of subaltern native
peoples in the developing world to ensure preservation of and access to these
sites (Blain and Wallis, 2004), whereas “tree worship, druidic rites and pagan
sites are celebrated as epitomising the spirit of pre-Christian Britain, as con-
taining alternative origins of a national spirit in contrast to ‘official’ Christian
and over-rationalist constructions of national identity” (Edensor, 2002, p. 4).
For neo-Druids, celebration of their faith and identity is tied to sacred sites
such as Avebury, Calanais and Carnac. Through membership in organisations
such as the British Druid Order, the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (obod),
and Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship, many modern druids support ar-
chaeological efforts to expand academic knowledge about ancient druid or-
ders, Celtic sites and pre-Christian religious practices in the British Isles and
other parts of the Celtic fringe of Europe, especially Brittany (see Figure 7.2).
Anthropologist Bettina Arnold has rather controversially suggested that the
“appropriation of ‘Celtic’ symbolic capital by neo-pagan sects” is comparable
to the geopolitical abuse of pseudoarchaeology conducted by the Nazis in in-
terwar Germany (Arnold, 2006, p. 169).13 Although such claims are extreme,
particularly given that many archaeologists have lauded Neo-Pagans for their
positive efforts to preserve the integrity of sites against damage done by hap-
less tourists and “hippy” revellers (Cresswell, 1996), the sacral attachment of
12 It should be stated that “Celticity” is a rather amorphous category, as Bowman (1996) has
identified in her work on the so-called “cardiac Celts”, allowing for nearly anything and
everything to be associated with it.
13 Arnold does not in fact equate the two; instead, her argument seeks to establish a parallel
in the ways in which archaeology, when combined with elements of myth and Romanti-
cism, can serve in the construction of national identity in varied instances.
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Of Gods and Men 139
Figure 7.2 A dolmen in the Kermario alignment, Brittany

Source: author’s collection
Neo-Pagans to such sites is undeniable. By contextualising pagan geographies

as symbolic of the nation (whether it be English, Breton or Irish), some Celtic
nationalists have even gone as far as to construct a geopolitical allegory pitting
“Gaeldom” (read the Celtic belt) against “Rome” (read the European Union /
the Mediterranean Basin / globalisation), essentialising the national difference
between the Celtic nations and their continental “Others” (Arnold, 2006). This
theme is frequently played out in the public sphere, from “national” monu-
ments to anti-Roman heroes such as Vercingetorix, Ambiorix and Boudicca
(Arnold, 2006) to popular culture such as the comic The Adventures of Asterix
and the television series Game of Thrones (2011–) and Britannia (2018–).14
14 Ironically, the Roman occupation of Britannia pitted pagan against pagan; however,
through historical legerdemain, Neo-Pagans in the British Isles are able to drape Ancient
Rome in an anachronistic mantle of Christendom due to the transformation of religion
within the empire after Constantine. Interestingly, the French comic book The Adventures
of Asterix (1959–2010) provides a pop-culture corollary, with paganism (via the Gaulish
druid Getafix) serving as a marker of anti-imperial puissance and locally rooted “national”
identity against the invading Romans. In hbo’s Game of Thrones series (and its literary
source material A Song of Ice and Fire), the nature-worshipping First Men represent the
Celts, and the Andals that followed from the mainland centuries later brought a new re-
ligion vaguely reminiscent of medieval Catholicism, thus situating them as a sort of al-
legory of the (pagan) Romans and (Christianised) Saxons.
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140 Saunders
The tethers between land, blood and nation manifest themselves with even
greater power in the discursive constructions and identity politics of Germanic
variants of Neo-Paganism. In his ground-breaking work, Mattias Gardell (2003)
argues that Germanic Neo-Paganism, more so than any other form of mep,
forces its adherents to address ethnicity and questions of nationality before ac-
cepting a path toward their spirituality, given that Germanic Neo-Pagans align
into three camps: universalist, blood-linked or blood-tied. As Stefanie von
Schnurbein (2014) points out, until the 1980s, Germanic Neo-Paganism was al-
most exclusively associated with right-wing ethnonationalism (although in the
intervening period there have been a number of troths and Neo-Pagan organ-
isations that have explicitly rejected right-wing politics; see, e.g., Amster, 2015
and von Schnurbein, 2016). Like its Celtic parallels, these belief systems can
be divided along reconstructionist and neo-faith lines. The two most popular
strains in Germanic Neo-Paganism are revival movements that make claims
to honouring historical practices of the “ancestors”: Ásatrú and Wotanism. Al-
though both are sometimes collectively referred to as Odinism, Heathenism
or Heathenry, Ásatrú (a legally recognised religion in Iceland) is based on Old
Norse religious practices recorded in the Eddur (singular: Edda) and the Norse
sagas. The faith reveres the pantheon of Odin, Thor and other Æsir and is af-
filiated with the historic geography of Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland, as
well as the constituent Nordic peoples associated with these territories. How-
ever, under the direction of Jörmundur Ingi Hansen and his successor Hilmar
Örn Hilmarsson, the leader of Iceland’s Ásatrúarfélagið (Ásatrú Association)
and perhaps the world’s best-known representative of Norse Paganism, Ice-
landic Ásatrú has taken on a decidedly universalist orientation freed of jus
sanguinis and committed to openness and inclusion, including being the first
faith-based organisation to ordain same-sex marriages in Iceland (Hilmarsson,
2015). Since becoming the chief goði of the organisation, Hilmar has moved
the Ásatrúarfélagið from simply being a “recognised” religious entity in Ice-
land to one that functions as a national institution that has pushed the country
toward the future while showing reverence for the past. The Ásatrúarfélagið
represents a distinctly Icelandic way of being, specifically by bringing together
the Volkgeist, spiritualised respect for the land and a “northern” orientation of
egalitarianism and Gemeinschaft. This was on display in March 2015, when Hil-
mar blessed a new fleet of the new Icelandic airline wow (with aircraft named
after Norse gods such as Freyja and Óðinn) in the presence of Dorrit Mous-
saieff, the first lady of Iceland, thus linking the pagan and the national with the
technological (Mogensen, 2015).
Continental in scope, Wotanism draws inspiration from the same pantheon
and shares much of its cultural heritage, but it is linked to central Europe’s
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Of Gods and Men 141
Teutonic peoples (Goths, Vandals, Saxons and so on), who were Christianised
earlier than their North Germanic counterparts (Theodism is a US-based sub-
set focused more specifically on reconstructed Anglo-Saxon worship). Vari-
ants of reconstructed Germanic paganism have found fertile ground around
the globe from Argentina to South Africa, although in each locale these belief
systems tend to manifest a peculiar geopolitical-ideological orientation that
links them to the northern tier of Europe (see Saunders, 2013). The tradition
of Armanism or Ariosophy has also come to characterise some streams of Ger-
manic Neo-Paganism, being revived by right-wing radicals in central Europe as
well as parts of Russia and the former Soviet Union. As the esotericism scholar
Egil Asprem (2008) has argued, communities operating under the moniker of
Odinism/Wotanism (as opposed to Ásatrú) tend to be more highly politicised
and espouse certain ideas borrowed from the Ariosophic tradition. Since the
Second World War, a number of small neo-völkisch cults have also joined the
larger ecosystem of neo-Germanic paganism, advancing certain aspects of
Nazi-era revivalist paganism and conspiratorial geopolitical narratives (see
Goodrick-Clarke, 2002).
Although these strains of Germanic Neo-Paganism display intense levels
of diversity, the “Nordic myth” serves as an undeniable toggle for each path
(von Schnurbein, 2013). Consequently, whether one speaks of universalist
postmodern Ásatrú or latter-day versions of Ariosophy, the importance of
septentrional Europe, from its associated deities to unique geography to its
“privileged place” in human history, permeates the discourse.15 Nationalism
and Germanic Neo-Paganism continue to go hand in hand, even as the racial
extremism of previous decades wanes. Looking to popular culture as a guide
for understanding this relationship between the “imaginated bonds” (Scherer,
2007) between nation and paganism, there is no shortage of data to back up
this assertion. Pagan themes permeate much of the Nordic metal and Neofolk
scenes (Granholm, 2011; von Schnurbein, 2014), as well as being taken up by
Teutonic-pagan enthusiasts farther afield, including the Baltics, the UK and
the US (see Copsey and Richardson, 2015; Strmiska, 2005b). Pagan sensibilities,
often manifested through the prism of the construed “Vikings” or “pagan an-
cestors”, serve as a foundation for much of the lyrical content of bands such as
Heidevolk, Månegarm and Skálmöld, and early medieval (read pre-Christian)
instruments and melodies are employed to create geopolitical soundscapes
(Dodds, 2005) that evoke primordial national sentiment or, in some cases,
15 One pertinent example is National Museum of Denmark’s (http://natmus.dk/) webpage

on Asatro, which links the contemporary practice of “the old way” (Forn Siðr) to national
identity, and specifically the lifeways of the Vikings.
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142 Saunders
ressentiment (against Christianity, modernity, the loss of mediaeval Gemein-

schaft and so on).
As one moves eastward to the Baltic Rim, the political connections between
the nation and paganism become stronger. For many in the Baltic states of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the neo- affix to pagan practice seems out of
place because many practitioners and some scholars argue that there is an un-
broken, although certainly disrupted, line between the practices of the pagan
past and contemporary mores (Saltanavičiūtė, 2006; Strmiska, 2005a) (perhaps
only rivalled in Europe by Iceland and the Sami of northern Scandinavia and
the Kola Peninsula; see McIntosh, 2007–2008 and Loeffler, 2015, respectively).16
In those areas where Eastern Orthodoxy held sway, pagans never experienced
the “burning times” associated with medieval Catholicism or later bouts of
Protestant zealotry. Under the umbrella of “folk religion” or “dual faith”, pagan-
ism continued up through modernity. In the eastern Baltic Rim, which was
only Christianised by force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, modern
Pagans can trace an unbroken line of belief and practice back millennia. Many
modern Finns and Estonians, who share the same ethnogenesis, have sought
to revive paganism in recent times. For Finns, the national revival in the wake
of independence from Russia saw increasing interest in reconstructed Neo-
Paganism (Suomenusko). Estonian paganism, often called Maausk “native
faith” or Taarausk “Taara faith”, requires less in the way of reconstruction be-
cause the Estonians have continued to revere sacred groves, propitiate springs,
take pilgrimages to sinkholes, practise “natural magic” and venerate local
deities despite the state’s imposition of Catholicism, Lutheranism and finally
atheism from ad 1300 onward. In the Russian Federation, the Finno-Permic
cousins of the Baltic Finns are also returning to their traditional faiths – from
the Mari’s politicised embrace of Oshmari-Chimari “white Mari – pure Mari”
to the Mordvins’ resurgent animistic practices to the Udmurt revivalist faith,
Vos “prayer” – all of which are being used by civic groups as cultural bulwarks
against further Russification while increasingly functioning as a form of “po-
litical Paganism” (Knorre, 2013, p. 262).
Returning to the Baltic Rim, one finds examples of what are perhaps some of
the most vibrant trends in politicised Neo-Paganism: Romuva/Ramuva in Lithu-
ania and Dievturība “Keepers of the Gods” in Latvia. The forced Christianisation
of the Baltic peoples, Europe’s last pagans, was characterised by extreme vio-
lence, thus resulting in widespread resentment toward the Church and the per-
severance of certain elements of pagan worship into the seventeenth century
16 As Wiench (2013) argues, this may have as much to do with the social constructivism of
cultural elites as with any “real” historical truth.
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Of Gods and Men 143
as a form of passive resistance (see Strmiska, 2003). This is particularly evident

in the previously mentioned Lāčplēsis, Latvia’s national epic, which depicts a
half-human warrior that defends his people from the Christian invaders, as
well as poetry, journals and other forms of high and popular culture in the
post-independence period (1921–1940).17 The imprisonment and execution of
many leaders of Neo-Pagan movements by the Soviet authorities in the wake
of annexation only deepened the link between (national) politics and (pa-
gan) faith (see Ozoliņš, 2013; Wiench, 2013). Paradoxically, later Soviet policies
placed Paganism in a positive light (compared to Catholicism), thus serving
as a catalyst for Lithuanian folk religion via an “increase in atheistic propa-
ganda [, which] played a significant role in the growing interest in alternative
religiosity and non-Christian forms of spirituality” (Rudling, 2017, p. 90). Lithu-
anian and Latvian native faith share a number of commonalities, such as key
holidays venerating seasonal changes, the centrality of folk songs in sculpting
religious identity (see Strmiska, 2005b) and the shared gods Perkūnas/Pērkons,
Laima and Dievas/Dieva, among others. In post-Soviet Latvia and Lithuania,
the resurgence of pre-Christian practice is supportive of other forms of natio
nal revival (including singing and tourism clubs), thus situating pagan belief as
an overt expression of national identity. Rituals and celebrations, once (thinly)
veiled by Christianity, are now taking on a pagan patina, chief among these
being Jāņi (Midsummer’s Eve), ostensibly in honour of John the Baptist, but
which venerates fertility through fire, food and adornment with wreaths, and
lacks any coherence with Christian practice (Ščerbinskis, 2006).
Dievturība, while preserving attributes of paganism from the medieval pe-
riod, can be rightly considered a form of Neo-Paganism because it incorporates
new beliefs such as a pantheistic triune godhead and, like Scandinavian and
Finnish Neo-Paganisms, it derives from reinterpretation of poetic epics; name-
ly, the dainas (see Tupesis, 1987). The movement’s founder, Ernests Brastiņš
(1892–1942), linked pagan ideals and national myths with the ultimate goal
of the “Latvianisation” of Latvia (Misāne and Priedīte, 1997, p. 163). Romuva,
which takes its name from the Old Prussian term for “sacred place”, is argu-
ably the most geographically centred of the meps. As Strmiska and Dundzila
(2005) have pointed out, Romuva is recognised as a particularly salient belief
system for expatriate Lithuanians, especially the young, because they seek to
immerse themselves in “Lithuanianness”, while Delis (2006) has argued the
17 A paradigmatic example is Vilis Plūdons’ poem “Kauja Pie Saules” (The Battle of Saule,
1928), which recounts the 1236 defeat of the Christian Livonian Brothers of the Sword by
the pagan Samogitians, calling out to the thunder-god Perkon and revelling in the sight of
Christian bones on the battleground.
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144 Saunders
same about Lithuanians in the homeland. Curiously paralleling the country’s

geopolitical outreach (i.e., offsetting trends toward neo-authoritarianism in
Eurasia), Lithuania has emerged as the geographic focal point for contempo-
rary pan-European pagan revivalism, hosting the inaugural World Congress of
Ethnic Religions conference in 1998 and serving as the headquarters for the
now-defunct organisation. Lithuania’s foreign ministry, which manages the
country’s national image abroad, also accentuates the country’s “paganness” in
its efforts to differentiate Lithuania from its neighbours.
Although the prevalence of native forms of Neo-Paganism remains low in
east-central Europe, Poland and Hungary present the most conclusive evi-
dence of the use of Neo-Paganism by nationalist elites. In these countries,
native faith movements are direct outgrowths of national-intellectual move-
ments. In Poland, the anti-Catholic nationalist movement Zadruga emerged
in the 1930s, led by Jan Stachniuk (1905–1963). The group espoused radical
ethnocentrism, promoted a powerful myth of Polish superiority and utilised
a logo (the toporzeł) reminiscent of the Italian fasces (Pankowski, 2010). To-
day, supporters of the movement remain mostly confined to rarefied intellec-
tual and artistic circles.18 Hungary is a bit of a latecomer to the party, with a
variety of native-faith groups emerging in the 1990s, including the Commu-
nity of the Hungarian Religion, the Ancient Hungarian Church, and Yotengrit
among other Neo-Pagan and Neo-Shamanist groups. These groups all tend to
be highly nationalist in orientation, employing dubious linguistic theories and
combining unprovable creation myths into a farrago of Magyar supremacism
(Szilárdi, 2013).19
The embrace of native faiths has also occurred among the East Slavic peo-
ples since the dissolution of the ussr in 1991. Russian Rodnovery and Ukrai-
nian Ridnovira are increasingly attractive to those seeking to reembrace lost
cultural traditions and build links of community in societies that have been
rent asunder by the iniquities of Soviet rule. In Russia, nascent forms of Neo-
Paganism took many of their popular rituals and beliefs from Hinduism (or
its predecessor Vedism), which many Neo-Pagan Russians believe is the last
uncorrupted form of the original Indo-European religion; however, in recent
18 Polish native faith groups operating under the banner of Rodzimowierstwo (the Polish
term for Rodnovery) have been growing in number since the late 1980s. However, many
are solitary practitioners or belong to loosely affiliated groups and do not tend to strongly
embrace nationalistic orientations (see Simpson, 2013).
19 Not surprisingly, given the Czechs’ tendency to embrace influences from around Europe
and reject overt nationalism, mep in the country ranges widely from Wicca and German-
ic traditions, with only a few adherents following reconstructed Slavic paths (Dostálová,
2013).
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Of Gods and Men 145
decades, adherents of Rodnovery have increasingly sought to construct a more

indigenous Neo-Pagan faith system reflecting a geopolitical orientation that
eschews “foreign” influences. Prevalent nationalist narratives in Russian Neo-
Paganism reject the imposition of Orthodox Christianity in 988 as a cata-
clysm that subjected the Slavs to a millennium of external domination (i.e.,
Byzantine, “Jewish”, Western and so on), and which can only be undone by a
“national restoration” paired with a revival of a genuine “national faith” (Aita-
murto, 2016, p. 78). As such, Neo-Pagan publications and theories have served
the interests of both Russian ultranationalists and anti-Semitic political move-
ments. In the late Soviet period, Neo-Paganism was most closely allied with the
racist, anti-Semitic Pamyat party. However, in the mid-1990s, a significant por-
tion of the Neo-Pagan community allied itself with the rebranded Communist
Party of the Russian Federation, reflecting shared rejection of globalisation,
neoliberalism and a perceived “Jewish” control of Russia and its interests, as
well as an imperial-geopolitical orientation toward recovering territory “lost”
in 1991. Many Neo-Pagan groups have gravitated to extreme Russian natio
nalism and xenophobia in recent years (see Shnirelman, 2013). In 2004, the
Russian Supreme Court upheld an Omsk court’s decision to ban the Omsk Ing
linist Church, a mep that blends Hinduism and variants of Slavic paganism,
for “spreading white supremacist ideas” and “encouraging inter-ethnic hatred”
based on the teachings of Slavic Aryan Vedas.20 Russia has also seen the rise
of anti-Semitic Ariosophic cults, particularly the Church of Nav, which rejects
the “primitivism” of peasant beliefs in gods of thunder (Perun), fire (Svarog)
and the sun (Dazhbog), opting instead for a racial religion wherein paganism
serves “more as a national philosophy than as a religious practice” (Laruelle,
2009, p. 40). Admittedly, the now-defunct Church of Nav represented a fairly
marginal position among Neo-Pagans in the Russian Federation; however, cer-
tain streams of thought associated with the group are prevalent among con-
temporary adherents of Rodnovery, particularly the importance of “blood, soil
and spirit” in Neo-Pagan identity discourse, as well as practitioners’ strident ef-
forts to combat what they see as the debilitating influence of American-global
culture on Russian kul′tura (Aitamurto, 2016).
In neighbouring Ukraine, contemporary Neo-Paganism tends to serve an en-
tirely different role; rather than glorifying the commonality of the East Slavic
ethnos, Ridnovira or Yazychnystvo has a decidedly anti-Russian, post-colonial
20 Lidia Okhimenko, the attorney representing the group, defended their teachings, s tating:
“Inglinist doctrine is not based on white supremacy. All it does is to encourage every na-
tionality to preserve its indigenous culture, traditions, and basic faith” (quoted in Asia
News, 2004).
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146 Saunders
bent (Ivakhiv, 2005a, 2005b).21 Like the Baltic neo-faiths, it serves the interests
of reviving national identity, despite the fact that some Ukrainian Neo-Pagans
condemn the degenerating effects of the “Judeo-Christian yoke” as loudly as
their Russian counterparts. One commentator suggests that the relationship
between native faith and ethnic identity is that “many people confuse pa-
ganism with national identity and call for a return to paganism in order to
discover this lost native religion and to deny ‘foreign’ religion” (Proshak, 2006,
p. 146). As Mariya Lesiv (2009, 2013) has argued, monotheists and polytheists
in Ukraine are in open and sustained debate about which form of spiritual-
ity best represents the “uniqueness” of Ukrainian national identity, with Neo-
Pagans making the claim that continued observance of Eastern Orthodoxy
chains their country to Russia, a theme that has gained some ground since the
annexation of Crimea and Russia’s adventurism in the Donbass.22 Oleksandr
Vavryk (2014), the leader of the Rinovira Union, argues that Russian aggression
is sparking interest in Ukrainian native faith as people seek ways to further
distance themselves from neo-Soviet sentiment and the hoary “Little Russian”
identity cul-de-sac. Vavryk was instrumental in placing a statue of Perun on
Kiev’s Volodymyr Hill (see Figure 7.3). This pagan pilgrimage site is within
metres of a national monument proclaiming that Kievan Rus was established
upon the hillock in the tenth century. This assemblage of national and spiri-
tual genius loci provides a dramatic example of Neo-Pagans understanding the
uses of religious-geographic symbols in the postmodern era (see Saunders,
2013).23
21 It should be noted that some communities have continued to stress links with other Sla
vic Neo-Pagans, epitomised by Ukrainian participation in the annual gathering of native
faith groups (veche); however, even in this Pan-Slavic climate, issues of Ukrainian distinc-
tion from Russia remains a thorny issue (see Aitamurto, 2016).
22 The now-defunct Svarog Battalion exemplifies the paradoxes of nationalisation of Neo-
Paganism in the conflict. Named after the Slavic fire god and celestial blacksmith (akin to
Hephaestus), the pan-Slavic, anti-Ukrainian government, all-pagan militia fought on the
side of the military forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic until its leader was arrested by
the dpr (see Morin, 2015).
23 Like Lithuania, Ukraine’s tourism industry has even recognised the value of showcasing
pagan traditions, such as the Midsummer (Ivan Kupala) fire and fertility rituals of western
Ukraine, which have been incorporated into the branding of the country in recent years.
Vavryk personifies this trend; in addition to his duties as a spiritual leader, he also runs
the Cult Ra restaurant near Volodomyr Hill, which serves “pagan-inspired” natural cuisine
and houses a pagan souvenir shop and book store that also serves as a conference space
for topics related to Ukrainian national identity and alternative spirituality.
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Of Gods and Men 147
Figure 7.3 Statue of Perun in Volodymyr Park, Kyiv, Ukraine

Source: author’s collection
3 Northern Myths, (Post-)Modern Identities: Looking Forward,

Looking Back
As in politics, there is a strong left/right dichotomy among Neo-Pagan groups

across the continent. However, as Europe grapples with its greatest refugee
crisis since the Second World War, a virulent backlash against “foreign influ-
ences” has already begun across the north of Europe, which looks set to be the
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148 Saunders
ultimate destination for many would-be asylum seekers. Given the tendencies
of nationalist elites and propagandists to employ the toolkits of Neo-Paganism
to their own ends over the past two centuries, it is not unreasonable to expect
to see a rise in the use of the themes and symbols of “native faith” to be ar-
rayed in the ongoing discursive war against immigration, multiculturalism and
globalism in Europe. A paradigmatic manifestation of this trend is ideological
fluidity of Italy’s Lega Nord, a Celticist separatist party that stresses a “dubious
rediscovered paganism” (Albertazzi, 2006, p. 21) as part of its platform,24 given
that it has recently shifted from its previous anti-Mezzogiorno rhetoric toward
a national platform against immigration (resulting in winning a plurality in
the 2018 parliamentary elections). In France, there are already strong links be-
tween Neo-Paganism and extreme nationalism, mostly dramatically manifes
ted by the Alain de Benoist-inspired Nouvelle Droite movement (see François,
2014). Elsewhere on the continent (and farther afield), identitarian movements
are co-opting key aspects of Neo-Pagan identity-constructions, symbols and
themes to advance their own anti-Islamic, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic
worldviews, not least of all in Ukraine, where another sort of crisis is underway,
while casual identitarianism is on the rise via popular culture, whether in the
form of Neofolk music of bands such as Allerseelen or the pagan-lite Brexiteer-
ing of the TV series Britannia.
In cyberspace, this tendency is most dramatic with social networking sites
dedicated to Heathen, Ásatrú and other northern European native faiths be-
coming increasingly dominated by nationalist / anti-immigrant discourse, of-
ten resulting in rigid policing on the part of the participants and moderators
alike. That stated, many Neo-Pagans – in their everyday practices and larger
engagement with the socio-political realm – are actively opposed to their be-
liefs and traditions being affixed to the narrow agendas of nationalists. The
aforementioned allsherjargoði of Iceland’s Ásatrú Association, Hilmar Örn Hil-
marsson, is an excellent case in point because he has very publicly taken on the
“loud voices” of far-right Heathens in the US and elsewhere that criticise the
Ásatrúarfélagið in general and him in particular for an open, non-ethnic, polit-
ically progressive stance on issues such as ethnically delinked membership in
the organisation, same-sex marriage and others. Hilmar’s recent row with reac-
tionary Heathens reflects the polysemy of Neo-Paganism in the contemporary
era, particularly as it relates to nationalism. As Jennifer Snook (2015) has con-
vincingly argued, the patina of Neo-Paganism is increasingly used (and abused)
by American nationalists as a mechanism for advancing racist, anti-modern
24 The group’s symbol is the “sun of the Alps”, an image that meant to embody the spirit of
Padanians (northern and purportedly non-Latinate Italians), a return to ancient values
and mystical renewal based on a kind of Celtic sub-conscious (Albertazzi, 2006, p. 31).
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Of Gods and Men 149
and anti-globalist political orientations often aligning Neo-Paganism with con-

servative Christian morality, a sentiment recently echoed by Hilmar Örn Hil-
marsson (IM, 2015).
Nonetheless, the seeming ease with which elements of Neo-Paganism are
operationalised by nationalist elites in the contemporary era demonstrates a
clear pattern of continuity related to the manipulation of myth for practical
ends. A particularly relevant example occurred in the recent Charlottesville
(Virginia) protests against the removal of the Confederate General Robert E.
Lee monument; alt-right marchers employed a variety of pagan symbols from
the Schwarze Sonne (black sun) of Wewelsburg to Roman fasces to the lambda
(λ) of the Identitarian Movement, as well as a wide variety of altered swastikas.
From the US to Wales to Germany to Estonia, there has long been a tendency
among (neo-)nationalist elites to raid the pagan quiver for useful objects, both
sharp and blunt. The fluidity of Neo-Pagan beliefs and practices, devoid of
many of the hierarchical and liturgical structures associated with other “world
religions”, perhaps lends itself to such utilisation. However, even more so, the
sacralisation of place and space, as well as connection of European “native
faiths” to certain peoples, makes it almost inevitable that “authentic faith” will
continue to be yoked to the invention of tradition moving forward.
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Part 3
Travelling Ideas and Artistic Expressions
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Chapter 8
Heirs of Lönnrot: From Longfellow to Tolkien

Tom Shippey
Nation-formation in nineteenth-century Europe was to a great if undetermin-

able extent powered by medievalism, in particular by philological medieval-
ism: the urge to define a nation by language, and to show the language (and by
extension the nation) as having existed since time immemorial. A major part
of this process – along with the creation of dictionaries, historical grammars,
collections of folklore and ballads – was the search for a national epic. As Joep
Leerssen puts it in his ground-breaking study National Thought in Europe, “the
notion became widespread that in order to be a nation, one had to show both
a separate, independent language and a foundational epic” (2006, p. 198). Some
“foundational epics” were readily discovered, or re-discovered, and accepted as
authentic: Das Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) for Germany (1807)
and La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland) for France (1836). Where no
such work was immediately available, it might be searched for, as in the case
of the “fox-hunt” for the much-desired Flemish work thought (or hoped) to lie
behind the (regrettably, in the eyes of some) French-language Roman de Re
nart (Reynard the Fox; see Leerssen, 2013), or the missing work might simply be
invented, as with the Frisian Oera Linda-Boek (The Oera Linda Book; Jensma,
2004). In the case of the Welsh Triads, invented material was added to an exist-
ing corpus by “Iolo Morganwg” (Constantine, 2008).
It might be said, taking advantage of an English-language pun, that the
activity of “forging the nation” – “forging” here meaning “creating something
new from old materials” – overlapped with the “forgery of national epics”, with
“forgery” now meaning “creating a pretended antiquity with deliberate inten-
tion to deceive”. Some cases were and are still in dispute, beginning with James
Macpherson’s eighteenth-century “Ossian” fragments (Leerssen, 2004; Hall,
2007) but also including de la Villemarqué’s Breton ballads, the Barzaz Breiz
(Ballads of Brittany; Laurent, 1989), and the Old Russian Slovo o polku Igoreve
(The Tale of Igor’s Campaign), whose one manuscript disappeared in 1812, and
whose authenticity has been recently challenged (Keenan, 2003), without on
the whole changing the prevailing opinion. Each separate national or sub-
national epic, chronicle or ballad collection has a different history, with differ-
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160 Shippey
There can nevertheless be no question that the most successful act of “forg-
ing”, in the sense of “creating something new from old materials”, was the body
of Finnish poems collected by Elias Lönnrot and “forged” by him into the epic
Kalevala (first publication 1835).1 It has been said that the modern nation of
Finland would not exist without the boost given to the Finnish language, and
Finnish national sentiment, by Lönnrot’s poem (for its continuing influence,
see Battarbee, 2007). To quote Leerssen again, who sees a model for Lönnrot’s
work in the Narodne srpske pjesme (Serbian Folk Songs) collected by Vuk
Karadžić (first edition, 1814–1815), “The view of such oral balladry as being ‘epic
in an embryonic stage’ raised its literary prestige, and matched the aspiration
of the people in question as being ‘a nation in an embryonic stage’” (Leerssen,
2006, p. 198).
In this ferment of scholarly and popular activity, there was one case in par-
ticular of a nation that, if not at the “embryonic” stage, was still in the process
of gestation: the United States. In the nineteenth century, the US had a par-
ticular interest in creating a sense of national identity, as indeed it still does,
for obvious reasons: it had a population whose ethnic diversity was growing,
and it was a country whose frontiers were not fixed, but also a country with a
very strong sense of its exceptional status and its manifest destiny. For anyone
wishing to root the country’s sense of identity in ancient times, the problem
was that the US had no ancient times to draw attention to. Although it could
hardly be said that it was impossible for Americans to “forge” an epic, in either
sense of the verb, because they did just that in The Book of Mormon (1830),
nevertheless its claims were (and are still) only accepted by a small sub-group
of Americans, the members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
The problem was nevertheless identified and addressed in a work that very
clearly drew on a European model, but was nevertheless adapted to non-Eu-
ropean circumstances. The work in question is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s
The Song of Hiawatha (1855). However, before discussing this potentially sur-
prising claim that the Longfellow work might be viewed as a “foundational
epic”, I would like to demonstrate the long-term effect of Hiawatha on national
culture by mentioning two much later works that have never attracted schol-
arly attention.
One is City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder (1948), a novel by Her-
man Wouk. Wouk had one major literary success with The Caine Mutiny (1951),
a war novel that was made into a film in 1954. Other than that achievement,
1 For the question of its authenticity, see Antonnen (2015). There is no question here of “delib-
erate intention to deceive” because Lönnrot kept meticulous accounts of his own recording
and creative procedures.
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Heirs of Lönnrot 161
he has mostly been forgotten. City Boy is, however, an excellent book in what
would now be identified as belonging to the “young adult” category. It is a kind
of answer to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884) The preferred self-image for
American children was – and remains – outdoor types, who fish and swim in
rivers, walk in the woods and gather huckleberries, but urbanisation and the
internal combustion engine subverted that reality many decades ago. Accor
dingly, Wouk’s young hero, Herbie Bookbinder, is a “city boy” from a Jewish
family living in New York. His family, however, follows what was the custom
in the days before air conditioning, of sending children away from the urban
summer heat to organised camps out in the countryside.
Little Herbie duly turns up at Grand Central Station, along with thousands
of other children, and has to look for the sign identifying his camp, which is
called Camp Manitou.
On all sides they could see banners: Camp Hiawatha, red and blue; Camp
Algonquin, green and white; Camp Penobscot, green and gray; Camp Iro-
quois, blue and gold; Camp Pueblo, Camp Wigwam, Camp Totem, Camp
Tomahawk, Camp Nokomis, Camp Tepee, and so on in fifty shapes and
a hundred colors. If these flags suggested a renascence of the race of the
American Indian at a tremendous war council, the huddles under them
did not. In fact, nothing less resembling the noble naked redskin could
have been imagined than these boiling knots of perspiring, peevish city
children…2
wouk, 1948, chapter 11
The whole ethos, then, is, to use an American term, completely “phony”, but it
takes little Herbie in. He is very glad to be going to somewhere with the magic
name Camp Manitou, rather than to somewhere dull like the occasional and
anomalous Camp Happiness.
At about the same time, Kurt Vonnegut was writing his first novel, Player
Piano (1952). Its hero is not a small boy, but a senior executive of the Ilium
Company, although like Herbie he too is sent off to camp at “The Meadows”, as
a kind of “bonding exercise” for the conglomerate’s many managers. Its ethos is
also utterly “phony”. The climax of the opening ceremony is once again Native
American in its symbolism. An actor in bronze paint and a feathered bonnet
comes on to represent the Spirit of the Meadows and to declare:
2 With popular and much-reprinted works, page references are rarely helpful. Here and with
Player Piano below, I give references by chapter, and, in the cases of Longfellow and Kirby, by
canto.
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162 Shippey
My people were proud and honest people. My people worked hard,

played hard, fought hard, until it was time to go to the Happy Hunting
Ground…. Now our braves are gone, our strong young men – gone from
this island, which belonged to my people, lo, these many moons ago….
Now other young men come. But the spirit of my people lives on, the
Spirit of the Meadows.
vonnegut, 1952, chapter 21
Having said all that, and a good deal more, the actor calls on all the budding
executives to take a kind of oath of allegiance, one of obedience and company
loyalty. Vonnegut’s satire is much more savage than Wouk’s – as the quotation
above indicates, the scene continually dwells on the fact that the Native Amer-
icans are no longer there – but both works are saying the same thing: Native
American tradition has been appropriated by their supplanters in the attempt
(unsuccessful, both authors suggest) to graft it onto a desired self-image.
The question arises how this situation came about, and part of the answer
must lie in The Song of Hiawatha. In literary terms, this is a rather odd case.
Almost all Americans seem to know of the work, but few have read it, save per-
haps for excerpts read in school. It has been listed as one of the most popular
poems in English, but it has also often been parodied. There are other poems
by Longfellow that every American knows, or knows of, and he was probably
the most popular poet of his age, but latterly he has attracted little scholarly
attention. It might be said that few if any writers have suffered a greater fall in
academic esteem. Indeed, the Cambridge critic I.A. Richards wrote long ago
that “There are few things worse than Hiawatha”, though he admitted grudg-
ingly that the poem had achieved its own immortality.3 One might explain the
contradiction in Richards’s judgement by accepting the literary opinion, but
pointing out that the “immortality” of Hiawatha derives from its effect on na-
tional culture. It is probable that Hiawatha, at whatever remove, lies behind
the embarrassing scenes in the novels of Wouk and Vonnegut, and the real-life
scenes that those novels satirise.
Longfellow’s career as a whole demonstrates the way in which major Euro-
pean intellectual movements of the nineteenth century, both literary and cul-
tural, were imported into the US. He was born in 1807. At the age of eighteen,
Bowdoin College in Maine offered to make him a professor of modern languag-
es, but because at that age he did not know any such languages they awarded
him a three-year sabbatical to enable him to travel to Europe in preparation
for taking up his post. After returning to teach at Bowdoin for several years, he
3 Quoted in Arvin (1962, p. 154).
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was then offered a professorship at Harvard, which also gave him a sabbatical,
this time for eighteen months, in 1835–1836. Longfellow certainly spent his sab-
baticals profitably, learning French, German, Italian, Swedish and Danish. He
also integrated himself rapidly into the European learned community. In 1838
he became only the second American scholar to comment on Beowulf and the
first to exhibit any real understanding of it.4 He was well aware of the redis-
covery of Old English and Old Norse that was taking place, and later on would
write a lengthy poem versifying twenty-two scenes from “The Saga of Saint
Olaf”. Many years later Kipling would remember Longfellow’s archaising po-
ems in one of his most enigmatic stories, “The Finest Story in the World” (1893),
and claim for them the ability to tap into the deepest ancestral memories.
Nevertheless, like all American writers at that time, Longfellow needed to
rescue himself from the charge of Eurocentricity. In 1854 he read Lönnrot’s Ka
levala in the German translation of Franz Anton Schiefner (1852) and decided
to use it as a model for his own long poem.5 In brief, he borrowed his style and
metre, and drew his inspiration overall, from Schiefner’s Kalevala, while find-
ing his narrative substance – in the absence of any suitable ancient poem –
from a collection of Ojibway, or Chippewa, legends collected by Henry Rowe
Schoolcraft in Algic Researches (1839). Algic was Schoolcraft’s own neologism,
a portmanteau compound of Algonquin and Atlantic (Schoolcraft, 1999, p. xi).
The Song of Hiawatha was published in 1855, and it enjoyed immediate po
pularity. It sold 100,000 copies within two years. Indeed it was so successful that
Longfellow could afford to resign his Harvard chair to become a full-time poet.
The poem was not, however, very well reviewed, with the two main accusa-
tions being that he was just versifying “silly legends of the savage aborigines
[i.e., Schoolcraft]”, and that his work was “only an imitation [of the Kalevala]
not a creation”.6 Tolkien, incidentally, whom I shall come to later, wrote Hi
awatha off as “a mild and gentle bowdlerising of the Kalevala” by “a gentle mild
and rather dull American don” (Tolkien, 2010, p. 252).
Nowadays, the complaint is more likely to be not that the poem is plagia-
rised but that it is an “ethnocentric armchair fantasy” (Trachtenberg, 2004,
p. 58), while its metre has been relentlessly parodied, along with the device
– taken from the Kalevala – of constant repetition-with-variation. Here is a
parody of Hiawatha making mittens:
4 In a long review of works on Anglo-Saxon, Longfellow (1838). Excerpts from his comments on
and translation of Beowulf may be found in Shippey and Haarder (1998, pp. 223–227).
5 Longfellow’s annotated copy of Schiefner survives at Longfellow House in Cambridge, MA;
see Moyne and Mustanoja (1953).
6 Both quoted by Trachtenberg (2004, p. 53). Schulz (2007, p. 33) cites another and more
accusatory comment from 1855.
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164 Shippey
When he killed the Mudjokivis,

Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside;
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That’s why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.7
Lewis Carroll, no less, wrote a parody of Hiawatha taking photos.8

None of this had any effect. The poem grew ever more popular. By the end
of the century it had been translated into many languages, including Latin,
Hebrew, Yiddish, Flemish and even Ojibway. Nor did this level of activity de-
cline. There were as many new translations published between 1975 and 1985
as between 1855 and 1865 (see Lockard, 2000, pp. 121–122). By 1900 an Ojibway
chief believed he had told the legends personally to Longfellow, and he met his
daughters in Boston to say so.
Ladies also took to reciting the poem in Native American costume, which
may well have been more revealing than the full Victorian panoply of crinolines
and camisoles. In fact, the poem actually includes a nude scene for Minnehaha,
though there is no record of any lady imitating it. There was an outdoor produc-
tion at Philadelphia Zoo, the poem was taught to Native American c hildren,
Native American students staged annual readings at Carnegie Hall for some
thirty years from 1881, there were railway excursions to Gitche Gumee and Long-
fellow’s daughters were initiated into the Ojibway tribe. Performances were re-
garded as a kind of Oberammergau, with the poem turned into a “passion play”
complete with slides, music and dance. Rodman Wannamaker made two mo
vies of it, which must have been difficult in the silent era. In short, Hiawatha was
a smash hit.9 There are reasons for finding this rather surprising.
One modern problem with evaluating Hiawatha is that it runs into the most
powerful of modern “imaginaries”, an “imaginary” (as I use the word here) be-
ing a collective cultural image of a particular period, such as the Middle Ages.
7 It comes from Livingston (1971, p. 61), quoted online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_

Song_of_Hiawatha (last consulted: 25 May 2015).
8 Carroll (1911, pp. 66–77). The poem (“Hiawatha’s Photographing”) was first published in 1857.
9 The craze for Hiawatha is detailed in Trachtenberg (2004), especially pp. 52–94.
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These are often wildly eclectic and have no chronology. The particular imagi-
nary to which I refer is the Wild West, with its familiar gunfighters, sheriffs,
Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, wagon trains, the US cavalry and, of course,
“cowboys and Indians”. Moreover, in this imaginary, until very recently, the rule
was that the “Indians” always lose.
In 1855 the actual situation, not to mention the fictional one, must have
looked very different. The truth is that in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury there were as yet no cowboys driving great herds across the plains, and the
Native Americans of the great prairies were still offering successful opposition
to the white settlers. They were better mounted, better armed, better trained
and better led, and they knew the country. In 1840 an army of Comanches,
some thousand braves in all, angered by a treacherous American breach of a
truce, raided deep into Texas, causing devastation all the way to the coast, and
the complete destruction of the port of Linnville. During the Civil War, with
the Texas Rangers away fighting the Yankees, the settlement frontier in the
southwest was pushed back hundreds of miles.10 In 1876 Crazy Horse wiped
out Custer’s cavalry at Little Bighorn, in the northwest, and the massacres of
Wounded Knee and Sand Creek were still further in the future, as far as Long-
fellow was concerned. In such circumstances it might be thought that the 1855
appetite for tales of Native Americans was far from predictable.
How, then, did Longfellow succeed in creating his own audience? To answer
this, it is necessary to recall the substance of the poem. It is divided into twenty-
two cantos, reflecting the fifty-canto structure of the 1849 second edition of the
Kalevala used by Schiefner. The first four deal with Hiawatha’s conception, and
his fight and eventual reconciliation with his father Mudjekeewis, the North
Wind. In the main body of the work, Hiawatha acts as a culture-hero, bring-
ing to the Native Americans significant gifts: the cultivation of maize, the con-
struction of canoes, the art of picture writing and the skills of healing. He also
woos and wins the Dacotah maiden Minnehaha, and he has adventures with
his friends Chibiabos the musician and the formidably strong Kwasind. He de-
feats the magician Megissogwon and hunts down the trickster Pau-puk-keewis.
The mood of the poem grows darker as Hiawatha loses Chibiabos, then
Kwasind and finally Minnehaha to famine and fever. Ghosts enter his wigwam,
devouring his food, but bringing him good advice, to the effect that he should
not load the dead down with grave-goods, which only hinder them on their
journey to the other world. All that need be done is to have fires lit on the
graves for four days after burial. In the last two cantos, Iagoo, the boaster and
10 Several books have tried to correct the accepted “imaginary”, notably Hämäläinen (2008).
The author, perhaps significantly, is Finnish.
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storyteller, reveals his vision of the ocean, the great canoe that comes across
it and the strange white men inside it. No one believes him, except Hiawatha,
who confirms the vision. In the last stanza Hiawatha meets the Black-Robe
chief (i.e., a Jesuit priest), welcomes his message and then leaves in his canoe,
sailing west into the sunset:
Thus departed Hiawatha,

Hiawatha the Beloved.
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the North-west wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the kingdom of Ponemah,
To the land of the Hereafter!
canto 22
Again, one notes here the pattern of continual and cumulative repetition of
grammatical structures.
The main themes of the poem can readily be recognised. It creates above all
a peaceful image. The poem includes no reference to scalps and scalping, un-
like previous representations of Native American life, even sympathetic ones
such as those of Fenimore Cooper, which depict the act and discuss the eth-
ics. Was the taking of scalps to be regarded as any worse than the European
obsession with tokens such as flags and banners? Most people felt that it was
indeed worse, and it duly became the first Native American practice that any-
one thought of, followed closely by torture at the stake (which, of course, Eu-
ropeans also practised). Another word significantly missing from Hiawatha is
horse. It was the buffalo-hunting “horse Indians” of the prairies that were the
threat to Anglo-American settlers west of the Mississippi in 1855, but Longfel-
low makes it plain that he is writing about the “woods Indians” of the north
and east, with their canoes and maize fields.
Although the poem also presents charming images of Hiawatha making
friends with and being helped by the squirrel and the woodpecker, it is prima
rily a work of self-exculpation. At the opening the Great Spirit, Gitche Manito,
calls all the tribes together (twelve of them are listed) and announces that they
have been given lands and streams, with beasts and fish to hunt, and declares
himself to be weary of their wars and their self-destructive discord. He will send
them a prophet; if they listen to him they will prosper, and, if they fail to do so,
they will “fade away and perish”. It was time to wash off the war paint, bury the
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warclubs and smoke the pipe of peace together. This they do. As Trachtenberg
notes, in the many dramatic outdoor re-enactments of Hiawatha, the first act
was often for the enactors to do just that: appear wearing war paint, receive the
message of peace and rush into a lake nearby to wash the paint off and return
to smoke the peace-pipe. However, the underlying point of the poem is that
ultimately the tribes do not obey the word, or hear the prophet Hiawatha, and
so their extinction is on their own heads. The result was that “Longfellow’s be-
lieving readers [could] continue on, conscience fortified, into the continuum
of a bland and perfected American history” (Lockard, 2000, p. 112).
The whole poem, then, is from the start seen as valedictory, as if inscribed
on a tombstone, as can be seen in the final passage of the Prologue:11
Ye who love the haunts of nature…

Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature…
Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
Through the green lanes of the country,
Where the tangled barberry-bushes
Hang their tufts of crimson berries
Over stone walls gray with mosses,
Pause by some neglected graveyard,
For a while to muse, and ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Written with little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, but each letter
Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the Hereafter:
Stay and read this rude inscription.
Read this Song of Hiawatha!
One may note the references to the “neglected graveyard” and the “half-effaced
inscription”. These make it clear from the outset that the world of Hiawatha
has passed, as with the brave young men remembered by the phony actor in
Kurt Vonnegut’s embarrassing scene of corporate bonding. However, before it
expires, Hiawatha’s own people at least welcome the speech of the Black-Robe
priest sent to bring them salvation. They reply, gratefully if noncommittally:
11 Quoted here from http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=62 (last consult-

ed: 27 June 2018).
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168 Shippey
We have listened to your message,

We have heard your words of wisdom,
We will think on what you tell us.
It is well for us, O brothers,
That you come so far to see us!
canto 22
In short, Longfellow created an image of Native Americans that reconciled

several contradictions. They were warlike, but not threatening. They could be-
come peaceful, but had too often rejected the message of peace. They had an
attractive culture of their own, but the superiority of Christian culture was not
challenged. It was this mixture of appeal and tacit inferiority that was so r eadily
received by the general American public and was grafted onto the American
self-image, to be played on by the “city boy” Herbie’s Camp Manitou and all the
other camp-designers. The composite image furthermore served the important
function of soothing a fitfully guilty national conscience.
In what other ways was Longfellow’s work original? In particular, what
should one make of the repeated assertions that the poem was a mere pastiche
of Lönnrot, or a rendering of Schoolcraft? As regards the latter criticism, it
should be noted that about half the twenty-two cantos have some evident con-
nection with one or other of the more than forty tales and legends collected by
Schoolcraft, although Longfellow made changes, such as importing the name
of Hiawatha from non-Ojibway legend; he did not care for Schoolcraft’s name
Manabozho.
Also noteworthy, however, is the fact that by 1839 Schoolcraft himself was
very aware of the intellectual movements in Europe, fostered above all by Ja-
cob Grimm, in linguistics, literature, folklore and national culture. He claimed
that in the past tales such as the ones he collected had been neglected because
“Comparative philology was unknown, and the spirit of critical and historical
acumen … still slumbered under the intellectual darkness which spellbound
the human mind after the overthrow of Greece and Rome” (Schoolcraft, 1999,
p. xxviii). This gave his collection a strong intellectual motive. Unfortunately,
one has to concede that Schoolcraft, although knowledgeable – his wife was
the granddaughter of an Ojibway chief – was just a rather feeble storyteller. He
needed a Wilhelm Grimm to breathe new life into his narratives.
Returning to the former criticism – of being a mere pastiche of Lönnrot – it
is likely that what first attracted Longfellow to the Kalevala was the setting:
the lakes and forests, the mild animism and the comparative alienness of a
mythological system very distinct from Classical models, or Norse ones for that
matter. In his notes, Longfellow calls his poem “this Indian Edda” (1995, p. 161)
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but, as Katja Schulz has pointed out (2007, pp. 30–32), during this period the
word Edda was used widely but vaguely. Schulz also points out that Longfellow,
like Schoolcraft, was well aware of the rediscovery of Old Norse.12 Although
there is no sign of influence from either the Prose Edda or Poetic Edda in Hi
awatha, Longfellow’s use of the word does testify to the power of emulation.
The great success of poems and tales from Norse myth, in both the learned and
the popular world, had at least shown what might be done with materials long
unknown.
Meanwhile, the Kalevala also supplied Longfellow with a vital precedent
and way of working. It showed that a “foundational epic” could be patched
together, or “forged”, from scattered materials, thereby creating a cultural im-
age that may not have been native to Longfellow’s English-speaking contem-
poraries but was native to the soil. As such, it was culturally neutral and thus
ready for assimilation by the non-Anglo immigrants pouring into America in
the mid-nineteenth century from all over Europe – people such as little Herbie
Bookbinder, the Jewish kid from the Bronx. They were encouraged to break
their ties with their home countries, largely by speaking only English, but bar-
riers of class and politics stood in the way of establishing ties with the old
English homeland. Native American tradition, suitably neutralised, was an ac-
ceptable replacement.
The plausibility of what has been suggested above, with reference to Long-
fellow and Lönnrot, is reinforced by parallel cases of inspiration and imitation
in eastern Europe. The most obvious case of Kalevala emulation is the Esto-
nian epic Kalevipoeg, written by Friedrich Kreutzwald and published from 1857
to 1861. It was followed, perhaps with an added element of competition, by the
Latvian epic Lāčplēsis, written by Andrejs Pumpurs from 1872 to 1887.
In the case of Kreutzwald, the similarity with Longfellow is fairly close, at
least initially. Longfellow derived the idea of Hiawatha from reading Franz
Anton Schiefner’s translation of the Kalevala, and Schiefner contributed an
introduction to Kreutzwald’s collection of Estonian fairy tales in 1866. Kreutz-
wald had in fact been collecting such tales as early as 1838, when he wrote an
article about them, and his Kalevipoeg seems to have the same double source
of inspiration as Longfellow’s poem: on the one hand, a desire to emulate the
Kalevala, and, on the other, a search for native material, preferably but not ne
cessarily poetic in form, that could be worked up. As David Gay has explained
12 I am grateful to Katja Schulz for sending me a copy of this work. She concludes, in brief,
that Longfellow was probably appropriating the prestige of Norse myth and legend, by
then relatively familiar and acceptable to his predominantly white English-speaking
audience.
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170 Shippey
(2007), the first sign of interest in the Baltic materials that would inspire Lönn
rot, Kreutzwald and Pumpurs was Christfrid Ganander’s Mythologia Fennica
(Finnish Mythology, 1789), an attempt to collect a new mythology for the area.
This first survey was heavily reinforced by the example of Grimm, in particu-
lar by the philological conviction underpinning Deutsche Mythologie (German
Mythology, first edition, 1835) that extinct mythologies could be reconstructed
from modern folk materials. To quote David Gay:
Because Grimm relied so heavily on sources from modern folk traditions,

his work served the Estonians well, for they, like the Germanic-speaking
peoples, had an extensive folklore that could be used to recover an an-
cient Estonian mythology, one that reflected the Estonian nation as a pa-
gan Finno-Ugrian nation rather than the Lutheran and Russian Orthodox
European people that they are. The key assumption the Estonians made,
then, based on their reading of Grimm, was that through careful sifting
of their folk tradition the ancient Estonian mythology and religion could
be recovered, even though the materials had been collected from an Es-
tonian peasantry that had been Christian for centuries.
gay, 2007, pp. 347–348
This led first of all to the collection of folktales, and – again much influenced
by the Kalevala – to Kreutzwald and A.H. Neus’s Mythische und magische Lie
der der Ehsten (Mythical and Magical Songs of the Estonians) of 1854. I am
unable to comment in detail on how Kalevipoeg relates to these folktales and
folksongs, but one can see a determination, similar to that of Longfellow, to
“forge” what is required out of such materials as come to hand, bolstered (as
with Schoolcraft) by a deep confidence that the new light of comparative phi-
lology provided such enterprises with a sound theoretical grounding.
As for Pumpurs’s sources, they clearly included some version of the fairy
tale “The Bear’s Son” – bears’ sons are often distinguished by their hairy ears,
as is Pumpurs’s hero Lāčplēsis.13 It seems likely that in this case a literary epic
owed some of its material to folktales, which initially began to be collected
in Latvia starting in the 1850s, as well as in Estonia by Baltic German scholars
such as August Bielenstein.14
There are, however, significant differences of personal and national back-
ground between Longfellow on the one hand, and Kreutzwald and Pumpurs
13 Some two hundred versions of this very widely distributed folktale were collected by Pan-
zer (1910). Which ones may have been available to Pumpurs is not known.
14 See http://www.lfk.lv/pasakas/en/peteris-smits (last consulted: 24 April 2016).
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on the other. Longfellow was a child of “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” New

Englanders, who were a dominant or even privileged class – very privileged
indeed, if one recalls those extensive overseas sabbaticals starting at age eigh-
teen! Kreutzwald, by contrast, was a child of serfs, and a serf himself until age
twelve. Pumpurs owed such education as he had to the good will of a clergy-
man from the dominant German minority in Latvia. Both writers, Kreutzwald
and Pumpurs, were citizens of the Russian Empire, trying, like other groups
across Europe, to create an ethno-linguistic independence. Their efforts in this
direction made Lönnrot and Pumpurs national heroes. Kalevala Day is still ce
lebrated in Finland on the anniversary of its first publication, as is Lāčplēsis
Day in Latvia, which also celebrates Latvia’s brief period of independence from
1919 to 1941.
My last example of Kalevala emulation is one that increasingly more has
been learned about in recent years, and one that I can comment on with more
personal knowledge. It is the case of J.R.R. Tolkien: someone even more deep-
ly and personally affected than Longfellow or Schoolcraft by what has been
called the “Grimmian revolution” in philology. It has been known for a long
time that Tolkien was very much affected by the Kalevala, and from an early
date. The poem is mentioned in the very first of his letters to have been pub-
lished, written to his fiancée Edith in October 1914. He reports that he had met
someone called Earp:
…and introduced him (to his great delight) to the Kalevala, the Finnish
ballads…. Amongst other work I am trying to turn one of the stories –
which is really a very great story and most tragic – into a short story some-
what on the lines of [William] Morris’ romances with chunks of poetry
in between.
tolkien, 1981, p. 7
It was soon also realised that the story Tolkien tried to retell – as far as is
known, the first story that he ever tried to write – was the story of Kullervo, as
told in runos 31–36 of the Kalevala (see Carpenter, 1977, p. 73). Tolkien wrote
in another letter, thirty years later, that he regarded that story as “the original
germ of the Silmarillion” (Tolkien, 1981, p. 87), and so, by extension, the whole
of Tolkien’s invented mythology.
It is very clear that the story of Kullervo fairly soon became Tolkien’s tale of
Túrin, one of the three “Great Tales” of the Silmarillion (Carpenter, 1977, p. 96).
The “Tale of Túrin”, in its many versions, most influentially Chapter 21 of the
1977 Silmarillion, follows the general outline of the Kullervo story: a child or-
phaned, or separated from his parents, who becomes a kind of wild man, and
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172 Shippey
by a series of tragic coincidences – if they are indeed coincidences, because

in Tolkien’s mythology they were not – falls in love with and unwittingly com-
mits incest with his sister. When she realises this, she commits suicide and he
too falls on his own sword. In both the Finnish original and Tolkien’s adapta-
tion, the hero Kullervo / Túrin asks his sword if it is prepared to kill him, and
it replies (in W.F. Kirby’s 1907 translation of the Kalevala, which Tolkien was
reading in 1911):
Wherefore at thy heart’s desire,

Should I not thy flesh devour,
And drink up thy blood so evil?
I who guiltless flesh have eaten,
Drank the blood of those who sinned not?
canto 36, lines 330–334
As noted below, Tolkien made many changes to the story of Túrin, which he
wrote and rewrote many times, but all versions contain this climactic scene,
which was essential to his conception of the story.15
All this has been known for a long time, but curiously enough that first
version, written in 1914, was not published until 2010. By then, half a dozen
versions of the story had appeared in print, starting with Chapter 21 of the
published Silmarillion (1977), continuing with a longer but incomplete version
in Unfinished Tales (1980), and then appearing in several volumes of “The His-
tory of Middle-Earth”. In 2007, Christopher Tolkien assembled scattered ver-
sions and manuscripts to produce a full book-length version published as The
Children of Húrin. Tolkien’s relationship with the Kalevala has a very tangled
history, and an even more tangled bibliography.
The important thing, however, is to ask what gave Tolkien his continuing
inspiration, and here the original version as published in 2010, along with two
versions of a paper Tolkien gave on the Kalevala, probably for the first time
also in 1914, are quite informative. I have suggested elsewhere that a concealed
motive for Tolkien picking out the tale of Kullervo was personal (Shippey, 2004,
pp. 156–157): Tolkien lost his father at age two and his mother at age twelve,
after which he lived in a succession of boarding-houses. In his 1914 story he
rewrote long sections of the Kalevala in the same metre, but four lines he kept
almost verbatim from Kirby’s Kalevala translation were these:
15 See for instance the summary version, dated approximately 1914, printed in Tolkien (2010,
p. 231, 2015, p. 40), and the fuller scene in Tolkien (1977, p. 225); repeated in Tolkien (2007,
p. 256).
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I was small, and lost my father,

I was weak, and lost my mother,
Dead is father, dead is mother,
All my mighty race has perished.16
canto 34, lines 77–80
Along with this personal motive, there was something like a national one.
Many years later Tolkien wrote in another letter:
Once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had it in mind to
make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large
and cosmogonic [myth] to the level of romantic fairy-story … which I
could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.
tolkien, 1981, p. 144
He never actually used the phrase sometimes attributed to him, “a mythology

for England”, but that was what he meant. This enterprise, however, ran into
several difficulties.
One was that Tolkien had very little to work with. Writing about the mytho
logy of the Kalevala, way back in 1914, he wrote, “I would that we had more of it
left – something of the same sort that belonged to the English” (Tolkien, 2010,
p. 265). However, that was the problem. There is almost no trace of an English
pre-Christian mythology. Even when the era of collecting folktales was in full
force, England’s haul was very poor: Joseph Jacobs’s 1890 and 1894 collections
have little in them that is characteristic or exceptional, apart from “Jack the
Giant-Killer”, in itself not a very complex story. If it was not a “land without
folklore”, it was (see Roper, 2012, p. 253), “the land that lacked folklorists”. Mean-
while, Beowulf (first edited 1815), the “English National Epic”, was a complete
failure in terms of a nationalist agenda. It never mentions England, or the Eng-
lish, and there are only passing references to two heroes that might be thought
of as English (Offa and Hengest), and each of these cases presents difficulties
of definition.
Furthermore, although the English had, and still have, a strong sense of
identity, this still remains without official support or recognition from the
government and educated classes of (as it now is) the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Scottish and Welsh identity is fostered,
16 Tolkien (2010, p. 231) repeats the words exactly, apart from omission of the third line
quoted.
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174 Shippey
but E
nglish identity is seen as potentially divisive.17 Tolkien consequently, self-
identifying much more strongly as English than “British”, did not even like the
word nation. (He used country instead.) Nor did he like the term national epic,
even if it referred to the Kalevala. As he wrote in 1914:
One repeatedly hears the “Land of Heroes” described as the “national

Finnish Epic”: as if a nation besides if possible a national bank, theatre
and government ought also automatically to possess a national epic. Fin-
land does not. The Kalevala certainly is not one.
tolkien, 2010, p. 247
The evidence certainly seems to be against Tolkien here,18 but there is an indi-
cation of what he was thinking in his description of the Kalevala, in the earlier
extract quoted above, as “the Finnish ballads”. In Tolkien’s time, in English, bal
lad was a term of art, used by philologists to translate the German term Lied.
These Lieder or ballads, according to the theory propounded above all by Karl
Lachmann (and generally known as the Liedertheorie), were the raw materials
for the epic.19 By describing the Kalevala as “Finnish ballads”, Tolkien indicated
that he thought the poem came from a time before the creation of epics, and
before the formation of nations. It was, to use Leerssen’s phrase, exactly “epic
in an embryonic stage”.
Tolkien indeed thought that the Kalevala would lose its greatest attraction
if it were to become an epic. It would lose its “rich profusion and luxuriance”
and its contact with the “body of myths” that represented the “very primitive
undergrowth that the literature of Europe has on the whole been cutting away
and reducing for centuries with different and earlier completeness in different
peoples” (Tolkien, 2010, p. 248). Just because the Kalevala was pre-epic, proto-
epic, it was still in touch with myth. Moreover, that last remark about “different
17 The issue is politically vexed and subject to change. At present there is an asymmetry in
that the UK government has devolved powers (for instance) to Scotland, so that English
members of parliament cannot vote on certain issues affecting Scotland. However, this is
not reciprocal. Scottish members of parliament can still vote on and even determine is-
sues affecting only England. Behind this known asymmetry (the “West Lothian question”)
lie cultural uncertainties symbolised by flags, anthems and so on. The matter became
briefly acute in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, and the 2015 general elec-
tion, when a Labour MP, Emily Thornberry, was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet
after mocking a display of the English flag.
18 See once more Battarbee (2007). On page 85, Battarbee sums up his argument with the
claim that Lönnrot’s “crucial achievement” was the creation by collation of “the ‘Finnish
national epic’, the Kalevala”.
19 See Shippey (2000, pp. 233–235).
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completeness in different peoples” again gives a hint as to why Tolkien found

the Kalevala inspirational. It provided an element no longer present in English
because in England that “cutting away” of native myth and tradition was al-
most complete. In Tolkien’s view, ever since 1066 English native tradition had
been all but completely terminated, replaced by imports – such as the legend
of King Arthur, initially Welsh rather than English, a distinction that Tolkien
never forgot.20
One way of putting this would be to say that in Tolkien’s mind the situation
of diglossia – an official language and a peasant language – which to Lönnrot
had existed for Swedish and Finnish, or Russian and Finnish, was for English
some five to eight centuries in the past. A major difference was that in England
there had been a native literary tradition and literary language, still further in
the past, that had died out completely in the era of diglossia. Tolkien spent a
great deal of effort trying to reconstruct it; for instance, by writing many thou-
sands of lines in the old alliterative verse and metre.
To sum up: in seeking to create a national mythology, Tolkien’s first prob-
lem was that he did not have a “nation”. Nor, unlike other sub-national groups,
did he have the stimulus or provocation of reacting against oppression. The
English were no longer oppressed; in Tolkien’s youth they were indeed both
globally and linguistically dominant. Did any of them want a mythology? Were
they aware of what Tolkien thought they had lost? Furthermore, and once
again, in his efforts at reconstruction Tolkien had remarkably little to work
with. No “Mythic and Magic Songs”, unlike Kreutzwald; no Mythologica Anglica
to match the Mythologica Fennica; no runos, unlike Lönnrot; and not much in
the way of Hausmärchen (Household Tales), unlike the Grimms.
Tolkien responded by doing what he could with scraps and suggestions
from Old and Middle English literature, and also, like Grimm, by borrowing as
much as he decently could from Old Norse, as a cognate language. Finally, his
response involved trying to transplant as much as he could from the Kalevala.
It is likely that he took at least some notice of earlier attempts to stitch together
the fragments of native folktale in works such as Thomas Wright’s essay “On the
National Fairy Mythology of England” (1834), repeated in sterner guise in Edwin
Hartland’s The Science of Fairy-Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology (London,
1914). Indeed, in 1914 Tolkien added, perhaps having just read Hartland: “my de-
sire [to study the Kalevala] is not due to one very dreadful and fatal motive; it is
not adulterated with science; it is clear of all suspicion of anthropology” (Tol
kien, 2010, p. 265). He accordingly abjured both anthropology and comparative
20 His eventual resolution of the national question appears in The Fall of Arthur (2013), an
incomplete Arthurian poem edited by Christopher Tolkien.
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176 Shippey
mythology. He did not want to write a connected epic. He wanted to create a

compendium, which would betray – as he thought all really interesting ancient
works did – the marks of different times and different hands.
It has to be said that, compared with Lönnrot, Kreutzwald, Pumpurs and in-
deed Longfellow, Tolkien was an utter failure when it came to creating national
sentiment or national identity. He has instead been one of the most univer-
sally read authors of the twentieth century. A similar irony is discernible with
respect to the Grimms, whose motives were even more strongly nationalistic;
yet through their Hausmärchen they became among the most universally read
authors of the nineteenth century. In this area intention and result have often
been at variance, and perhaps that is for the best. I would conclude by saying
that, although the motive for creating many national epics and national my-
thologies has often been nationalistic, true success has often emerged once
that motive has faded away, and strident nationalism has morphed into be-
nevolent patriotism, regionalism even, or – as in the case of Hiawatha – once it
has become no more than a minor strand in national identity.
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Chapter 9
Kalevala in International Masks: A Japanese Aino

and Kalevala dell’Arte
Kendra Willson
Since the publication of Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala (in the “old” 1835 and the
now-classic “new” 1849 versions), the Finnish “national epic” has functioned as
a central symbol of Finnish national identity (Piela, Knuuttila and Laaksonen,
2008, p. vii), a canonical instantiation of the international genre of national ep-
ics, and a model for other epics (Honko, 1987; Willson, 2012, pp. 154–155). Much
of the symbolic strength of the Kalevala as a national symbol comes from the
ways in which it appeals to both native and international impulses (Anttonen,
2009; Aarnipuu, 2012, pp. 90–91). The language and materials in it stem from
Finnish and Karelian folk tradition, but the overall concept of the long written
epic is modelled on Homer and Virgil, and the epic as a literary achievement
positions Finland as a “civilised” European country.
Stories from Finnish mythology and folklore, largely mediated through the
versions presented in Lönnrot’s Kalevala, have been interpreted in a wide va-
riety of media, including music, stage, film, visual arts and graphic novels. The
adaptation of stories found in the Kalevala to international genres has also
been part of the project of establishing Finland as a modern European nation.
Aleksi Gallen-Kallela’s iconic visual renditions of Kalevala myths are Finnish
national symbols in their own right, and they are central to shaping the per-
ception of many Kalevala stories in the modern imagination (Wahlroos, 2009).
Hundreds of other artists have also engaged with these subjects (Knuuttila,
2009, p. 39). The Finnish “national composer” Jean Sibelius composed numer-
ous pieces inspired by Kalevala1 mythology (Aho, 2008; 2014, pp. 585–589),
1 In this chapter I use the term Kalevala as shorthand both for the material presented in Lönn
rot’s Kalevala (both versions) and the folk poetry on which his epic is based. I do this because
Lönnrot’s showcase is the main vehicle through which these materials have become known
to Finnish and international audiences, and it is the form in which the artists that adapt
these stories to the stage are likely to encounter them first, although they may subsequently
study the background and draw on other folk poetry in Kalevala metre. This metre, tro-
chaic tetrameter with some restrictions on the mapping among word stress, syllable length
and metrical position (Leino, 1986, 129–142, 2002, pp. 160–162), was the predominant me-
tre for most genre of folk poetry across the Finnic region, likely dating to Late Proto-Finnic

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180 Willson
and many other composers have produced pieces on Kalevalaic themes (Aho,
2009).
Although theatrical institutions have been important in shaping national
identities and national solidarity, theatrical genres are also international. Mo
dern European theatre came to Finland in the nineteenth century with Swe
dish, German and Russian troupes and artists (Wilmer and Koski, 2006, p. 19).
A building for a Swedish-language theatre was built in Turku in 1817. A the-
atre building designed by Carl Ludvig Engel, who planned the city of Helsinki,
was constructed in Helsinki in 1827. The first play written in Finnish is said
to be Pietari Hännikäinen’s Silmänkääntäjä (The Magician), published in 1845
and first performed by amateurs. Professional theatres in Swedish and Finn-
ish were developed starting in the mid-nineteenth century in connection with
nationalist movements, and the Finnish Theatre, which later became the Na-
tional Theatre, was founded in 1872 (Wilmer and Koski, 2006, pp. 19–22, 24).
Numerous stage plays and operas have been based on Kalevala myths (Knuut
tila, 2009, p. 39), the first opera being Die Kalewainen in Pochjola (The Men of
Kaleva in the Northland, 1890–1891) by Karl Müller-Berghaus (Aho, 2009, p. 47).
Aleksis Kivi’s play Kullervo (1860), one of the first and best-known stage ver-
sions of Kalevala myths, and one of the first published plays in Finnish, was
produced in the National Theatre in 1885; three scenes from it were performed
in a celebration of Lönnrot’s eightieth birthday in 1882 (Wilmer and Koski,
2006, p. 25). Despite an initial mixed response, the play quickly became a na-
tional symbol and classic, not least because it presented a Kalevala story in the
form of a Classical tragedy. Sallamaa and Aho (2008) point out the models in
great Western literature for Kivi’s treatment of the motif: “The topic was na-
tional, but it was to be treated according to the models of Classical tragedy, Ar-
istotelian poetics and on the other hand modern literature, first and foremost
Shakespeare’s Hamlet”2. The Kullervo story has also been adapted into operas
by Armos Launis and Aulis Sallinen, as well as Sibelius’ dramatic choral sym-
phony Kullervo; at the time of this writing (2015), Sibelius’ Kullervo is in pro-
duction as a ballet by Tero Saarinen at the Finnish National Opera.
As Hurme (2013) points out, innumerable further possibilities for stage
productions inspired by Kalevala themes remain to be explored. Since the
1970s there has been a renewed interest in adapting Kalevala stories for the
stage. Knuuttila (2009, p. 39) traces the modern boom to the Hungarian Thalia
company’s production adapted by Karoly Kazimir, which had a guest run in
probably early in the first millennium AD (Leino, 1986, pp. 140–142). Kalevala is italicised when
it refers to Lönnrot’s work but not when used in reference to Finnish folk poetry more generally.
2 Translations of quotations are by the author unless otherwise noted.
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Kalevala in International Masks 181
Helsinki in 1970 – a foreign perspective that awakened Finns to theatrical pos-

sibilities in the material. Productions represent many different genres, from
rock musicals to puppet shows (Kalevala nykynäyttämöllä).
This chapter discusses two theatrical productions from Finland that com-
bine mythic materials found in the Kalevala with traditional theatre forms
from other parts of the world – that have their own strict languages, arche-
types and traditions from other parts of the world – Italy and Japan. Interna-
tional artists active in Finland and Finns with international training blend the
thematic elements of the Finnish myths and of the other traditions, finding
resonances that enrich both. These syntheses highlight different aspects of Ka-
levala material and explore the possibilities of the theatrical genres. They also
project a modern multicultural identity for Finland – arguably a contemporary
successor to the nineteenth-century quest for nationhood – as well as for its
international artists.
Both these productions combine Kalevala material with traditional genres
that involve masks. The commedia dell’arte production by Teatteri Metamor-
foosi (Metamorphosis Theatre), Kalevala dell’Arte, used leather masks created
by the actors with the help of Italian mask-maker Stefano Perocco di Meduna
(Eloranta, 2014, p. 626). Aki Suzuki Spirits’ Noh and Kabuki-influenced Aino –
Kalevala (Planet Earth no. 3) did not make use of physical masks, but the actors’
faces were frequently mask-like, with stiff expressions and stylised makeup.
Masks have a transformative function and are strongly associated with sha-
manistic practices in many cultures. In this way, they resonate with the sha-
manistic elements of early Finnic religions preserved in some of the poetry
included in the Kalevala (Pentikäinen, 1989, pp. 177–199).
In contemporary theatre, mask theatre has emerged especially following
the school of Jacques Lecoq, who developed methods for physical theatre that
draw on diverse influences from around the world (Lecoq, 1996). Mask work in
the Lecoq tradition has been part of theatrical pedagogy at the Finnish Theatre
School (later the Helsinki Theatre Academy, now part of the University of the
Arts) since it was introduced in 1964 by director Elina Lehtikunnas (Kumpu-
lainen, 2011, pp. 219–227). Carlo Boso notes that masks make characters more
general and archetypal: “The mask makes the character more general, some-
one who represents nearly all the world’s soldiers or merchants and appeals
to a wider group” (Carlo Boso, quoted in Vuori, 2007). Mask theatre appeals to
the universal, but does so in ways that are coded through culturally specific
convention.
Commedia dell’arte and Noh are both canonised mask theatre forms that de-
veloped in the sixteenth century. Diana Devlin (1989) says that, whereas (p. 58)
the commedia character types stem from caricature, “Noh masks symbolise
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182 Willson
the essential traits of a role” (p. 61), reflecting a Japanese “emphasis on ritual,
ceremony, symbolism, economy and discipline” (p. 59). Carlo Boso notes that
both Noh and commedia dell’arte have a formalised language from a particular
tradition. However, in his view, the “codes” of commedia may be more acces-
sible (at least to a western audience):
Commedia can be compared to Japanese Noh theater; both contain many

cultural codes. If, however, you do not even know the Japanese language,
you can only understand a fraction of the codes of Noh theater. Deep-
er meanings require familiarity with culture, history, even religion. The
codes in commedia dell’arte, however, are significantly more general.
The majority of them can be understood even without knowledge of the
language.
carlo boso, cited in vuori, 2007
This difference is reflected in ways in which the Japanese-influenced Kalevala

performance emerges as more abstract than the commedia dell’arte version.
However, Aki Suzuki Spirits’ production freely combined elements of tradi-
tional and modern, Japanese and western theatre modes, making the perfor-
mance more accessible to a western audience.
1 Aki Suzuki Spirits: Aino – Kalevala – Planet Earth No. 3
Aki Suzuki studied traditional dance, classical ballet, jazz dance, modern dance
and Butoh dance in Japan. She emigrated to Finland in 2000 through the Japan
Foundation Dispatch Person program, and she developed her own dance style
combining Japanese folk and traditional dance with Noh and Kabuki theatre.
In 2010, she founded the dance group Aki Suzuki Spirits. Aino – Kalevala pre-
miered in 2013 at the Annantalo municipal cultural centre in Helsinki and was
performed at another Helsinki cultural centre, Stoa, in 2014.
The story of Aino appears in runos 3–5 of the 1849 edition of the Kale
vala; the young man Joukahainen loses a singing competition to the ancient
Väinämöinen. In order to save his own life, Joukahainen promises Väinämöin-
en his sister Aino’s hand in marriage. Aino’s mother is pleased with the match
to a powerful sage, but Aino refuses to marry an old man. Rather than subject
herself to this fate, Aino drowns herself – or transforms herself into a fish. She
later returns as a salmon to taunt Väinämöinen. The name Aino, meaning “one
and only”, was invented by Lönnrot, and was not in use as a personal name
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in Finland until after the publication of the Kalevala (Vilkuna, 2005, p. 35 sv.
Aino). In the source poems, the girl is referred to as aino tytti “only daughter”.3
Aino – Kalevala presents the story of Aino within a frame story of The Monk’s
Dream, a type of Mugen Noh: a Noh story that comprises a dream or illusion.
An old woman approaches a monk and begins to tell a story. She is the spirit of
Aino and will appear in his dream and continue her story. The Aino story reso-
nates with the Noh tradition in presenting a young woman that drowns herself
over a marital dilemma (Brown, 2001, p. 91). The costumes in Aino – Kalevala
combine Japanese and Western influences, with both kimonos and echoes of
Finnish peasant dress. Much of the movement language comes directly from
Japanese formal traditions. Tossavainen (2013) identifies Noh and Butoh ele-
ments. The deliberate, stylised movement gives the piece a slow, meditative
tempo. In some ways, this can be compared to the style of Kalevala poetry – the
use of incremental repetition and lexical variation within the strongly rhyth-
mical Kalevala metre creates an abstract tapestry of words and draws out the
action. The Japanese–Finnish fusion is also reflected in the musical score, an
arrangement of a Karelian folksong by Yuko Tadeka, Ljuuli ljuuli, resembles
Japanese pop music.
In Aino – Kalevala, Väinämöinen appears as a warrior-sage. The formal
movement of the language highlights the nature of the poetic duel between
Väinämöinen and Joukahainen as a form of stylised combat. Tossavainen
(2013) describes Väinämöinen’s dance as containing “Kabuki mie poses, crossed
eyes and all”. Tossavainen (2013) sees the production as seeking catharsis, a
purifying effect. The show ends with an epilogue in which Aino is reborn in
modern times. Tossavainen (2013) interprets this as a message of forgiveness,
which is “not at all a bad addition to the Kalevala”. At the same time, the pro-
duction is eclectic in its influences; in one somewhat incongruous number, the
characters introduce themselves in Broadway musical style. The production’s
Facebook event challenged the audience, “Are you traditional enough?̈” (“Aki
Suzuki Spirits: Aino – Kalevala”).
Aino – Kalevala presents an original interpretation of the Aino story that
draws on Japanese theatre and dance as well as other traditions. It can also
be read as the Japanese-born artist’s relationship to the canonical icon of
Finnish identity. Suzuki boldly blends elements from different traditions and
frames the Aino story in her own way. Apart from the US-trained Japanese
actress Yuko Takeda, who has resided in Finland since 2009 (Takeda), the other
3 See DuBois (1995, pp. 263–273) on Lönnrot’s adaptation of the source poems, inter alia,
changing suicide by drowning into escape to the natural world (p. 271).
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184 Willson
artists involved in the production were Finns. Aino – Kalevala emphasises the
mystic side of Kalevala, supernatural transformation, as well as the pathos of
the young woman promised in an unwelcome arranged marriage. It uses the
story to build a bridge between Japan and Finland – both rapidly modernised
countries where people seek ways to keep traditional culture relevant in a
postmodern world. This quirky production seeks connections in ancient tradi-
tions, but the resulting synthesis is distinctly modern.
2 Kalevala dell’Arte
The Kalevala dell’Arte project began in 2005 as a collaboration between Da-

vide Giovanzana and Soile Mäkelä, who in the same year founded Teatteri
Metamorfoosi: a theatre company devoted to bringing mask theatre to Fin-
land, which, in addition to productions, offers schooling in mask theatre and
mask-making and produces masks. The show premiered in 2007 at the Koko
theatre in Helsinki, and performances continued in tours and various venues
(with some cast changes) until 2012 (Eloranta, 2014, pp. 617–618).
The commedia dell’arte form is traced to sixteenth-century Italy, and it is
the only canonised theatrical form in the European tradition. It is believed to
be the first European genre that allowed women to appear on stage; generally,
male actors wore masks, unlike their female counterparts. The characters usu-
ally represented archetypes, and the plots were based on folk tales and ancient
comedies. Driving themes were often the conflict between the younger genera-
tion’s desire for love and the older characters’ lust for power and money. Lines
were improvised within the schema of the plot, and the tradition was mainly
transmitted orally. Although commedia had a strong influence on later theatre
(such as the plays of Molière), the commedia dell’arte tradition ended in the
eighteenth century. However, Jacques Lecoq revived or reinvented it in the
mid-twentieth century, based on old drawings and descriptions, and adapted
it for modern audiences as part of a practice of physical theatre influenced
by, among other things, Japanese traditions (Lecoq, 1996, pp. 141–142). Modern
commedia as presented by Teatteri Metamorfoosi is based on the Lecoq school.
Giovanzana (2009) describes the challenge of finding commonalities be-
tween Kalevala and commedia dell’arte, which seemed to him at first to be “two
different worlds without any similarity” (Giovanzana, 2009, p. 11). Whereas com
media is irreverent and bawdy, focused on bodily needs and social class differ-
ences, Giovanzana perceived the Kalevala as having a lofty, mythical tone. Upon
further study, however, he learned of the bawdy and earthy folk poems also
collected by Lönnrot (Giovanzana, 2009, p. 17) and began to discern different
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Figure 9.1 Johanna MacDonald as Louhi and Soile Mäkelä as the slave in Kalevala dell’Arte
layers and traces of different genres within Lönnrot’s Kalevala. Whereas the
Kalevala is driven by linguistic variation and metre, the language of comme
dia is primarily physical. The methods of storytelling are very different. The
Kalevala as compiled by Lönnrot has an episodic rhythm and events unfold
in an unhasty “epic” manner without suspense (compare Auerbach’s [1946,
pp. 7–30] analysis of the narrative functions of delay in Homer’s Odyssey). Rep-
etition and lexical variation are central to the poetic technique of Kalevalaic
poetry. The action of epic stories may also be delayed through insertion of ad-
ditional materials from other poetic genres – such as charms, ritual poetry or
lyric poetry – that Lönnrot included in the middle of narrative sequences in
order to create a full-length epic (a practice also picked up by some oral poets;
see Tarkka, 2015). Commedia, by contrast, has a dramatic structure building to
a central climax and turning point (Giovanzana, 2009, p. 18).
However, Giovanzana and Mäkelä found points of commonality between
the Kalevala and commedia in the use of archetypal characters, as discussed
below. They also noticed that the dramaturgy of runo 15, in which Lemminkäin-
en’s mother assembles the parts of her dismembered son and brings him back
to life, contains a healing ritual, which showed an affinity to fertility rituals
represented by commedia performance in a carnival setting (Giovanzana,
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186 Willson
2009, pp. 14–17). In addition, they learned in their research that some of the
characteristics noted above do not reflect Finnish folk poetry so much as Lönn
rot’s selection and presentation in the “national epic” (Apo, 2004, p. 292) and,
likely, the reverent attitude toward the Kalevala as national symbol. For Kale
vala dell’Arte, they thus selected stories from the Kalevala that lent themselves
to dramatic treatment (Giovanzana, 2009, p. 19), and they aimed to oscillate
between a “dynamic and explosive theatrical style” from commedia and a more
“poetic and hypnotic” Kalevalaic world with “lyrical and elegiac qualities”
(Giovanzana, 2009, p. 18).
The figures in the Kalevala material were associated with archetypes from
the commedia dell’arte tradition; the witch Louhi was given some characteris-
tics of the commedia figure Strega, also a witch. This is an exceptional female
character in that she wears a mask (Eloranta, 2014, p. 623). However, the char-
acter of Louhi has a higher status than the traditional Strega, and the fusion of
these two led to an original new persona. Along similar lines, Väinämöinen, the
sage, became Pantalone, the lecherous old man (Eloranta, 2014, p. 623). This
equation draws on an element present in the source, namely his lusting after
the young Aino (see H. Mäkelä, 2013). However, at the same time, this inter
pretation lowers Väinämöinen’s status, making him more laughable. The smith
Ilmarinen became Il Capitano, a proud soldier and a braggart (Eloranta, 2014,
p. 624). The roles of the young lovers were occupied by Lemminkäinen and
by Louhi’s daughter, in this production called Kanerva (Eloranta, 2014, p. 623).
Because the interplay between characters of different social status, especially
masters and servants, is central to commedia dell’arte, Kalevala dell’Arte added
servant characters for each family. (Eloranta, 2014, p. 622) Figure 9.1 shows Jo-
hanna MacDonald as Louhi with Soile Mäkelä as the slave.
The dramaturgy for Kalevala dell’Arte, which combines a number of stories
known from the 1849 Kalevala, was developed without a script using “devising”
methods of ensemble development (Eloranta, 2014, p. 621). Devising is a the-
atrical technique developed in the 1960s as a way of democratising theatrical
production; rather than working from a pre-written text, a production is de-
veloped collectively by the company through an iterative process of bringing
in new material and selecting from that material. The director’s primary role
is to define the process by which the production will be developed. That pro-
cess in turn shapes the form of the final production (Oddey, 1994). The actors
improvised innumerable scenarios based on Kalevala stories, and the direc-
tors gradually streamlined the dramaturgy (Eloranta, 2014, p. 621). Preparation
for the production also involved workshops on Finnish shamanism (Eloranta,
2014, p. 619), and masks aided in effecting transformations.
Both commedia dell’arte and the folk poetry on which the Kalevala is based
are oral traditions; commedia plays are not scripted, but improvised in each
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performance following a schematic plot outline, a type of composition in per-

formance. An analogy can be drawn between the use in commedia of lazzi:
personal “tics” or short verbal/physical routines that become part of a charac-
ter’s repertoire and can be inserted into the play spontaneously at any point
(even if not directly relevant to the progression of the story), and the formu-
lae that characterise oral verse and facilitate composition in performance.4
Giovanzana (2014) has described Kalevala dell’Arte as a re-oralisation of the
Kalevala material; the dialogue is improvised and each actor speaks his or
her own dialect. In Kalevala dell’Arte, Canadian actress Johanna MacDonald in
the role of Louhi spoke in her native English, with passages in what Eloranta
(2014, pp. 623–624) describes as Shakespearian iambic pentameter. The blank
verse metre has been claimed to be “natural” to the rhythms of English and
is culturally embedded, widely recognised and associated with centuries-old
cultural heritage, not unlike the Kalevala metre in Finnish. At the same time,
this connotation connects the production with an English “high art” tradition
– as well as with the “global” language English, increasingly present in all areas
of cultural life in Finland.
When compared to the previous case study, Kalevala dell’Arte brought out
the social, irreverent side of the Kalevala stories, emphasising issues of status
and lust – the human side, in contrast to the more spiritual Noh-inspired Aino –
Kalevala.
3 Conclusion
Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala combines many different genres of oral poetry: mythic
and heroic epic, lyric, ritual and charms. It ranges from comic to tragic, from
concrete to abstract, from the creation of the world to everyday life. Theatrical
productions will resonate with different aspects of this showcase. Composer
Einojuhani Rautavaara has stated, as paraphrased by Aho (2014, p. 601), that
the Kalevala
does have something that constitutes the core of Finland’s national cul-
ture. Anyone seeking to get to grips with this must always do so in a new
creative way. “But it may put up a tremendous opposition, because there
is a tremendous volume of baggage, junk attached to tradition. It is abso-
lutely buried in rubbish.”
4 See, for instance, Harvilahti (1992) on fixed elements and variation in Finnic epic poetry.
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188 Willson
One way of finding a fresh approach is to come to Kalevala materials as an

outsider to Finnish nationalism, and to put them in dialogue and negotiation
with other traditions that have their own “baggage”.
Both the productions discussed here simultaneously respect and subvert
both the Kalevalaic materials as well as the respective theatrical traditions;
the fusion of old things from different places produces something new. It con-
veys the spirit of both traditions and flexibility as a tool set and an artistic vo-
cabulary. The Kalevala as an export ware (see Aarnipuu, 2012) comes home
when immigrants express their own relationship to Kalevala myths and to the
Kalevala as an artefact and symbol. This implicitly entails simultaneously an
original take on and a contribution to Finnishness, while also defining a rela-
tionship to the traditions of their countries of origin. To judge from Eloranta’s
(2014) account, the Finnish artists involved also discovered new sides to Finn-
ish folk tradition, the backgrounds of the Kalevala, as well as new ways of inte-
grating the foreign theatrical traditions that the productions drew on into the
Finnish context.
The productions discussed here were initiated by skilled migrants from
“prestige” countries working in close collaboration with Finnish artists. How-
ever, engagement with Kalevala themes has also been part of an integration
program for a broader group of immigrants; Westerling (2009) and Westerling
and Karvinen-Niinikoski (2010) report on a Kalevala-themed multicultural
theatre project in Helsinki in 2005 and 2006. They found that engaging with
the Finnish national epic helped promote integration, visibility and empower-
ment, expanding immigrants’ contacts with Finns, demonstrating their inter-
est in participating in Finnish culture and promoting the idea that they could
bring something to it – both among the immigrants and the native population.
Through the endless number of possible reinterpretations, this national sym-
bol becomes a vehicle for integration; new potentials are continuously discov-
ered in these old stories now that Finnish national identity is adjusting to an
increasingly multicultural and globalising reality.
References
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Chapter 10
The Quest of Gangleri: Theosophy and Old Norse

Mythology in Iceland
Simon Halink
In her magnum opus The Secret Doctrine (1888), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
(1831–1891), one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, claims to unveil the
ultimate synthesis of science, religion and philosophy based on ancient Hindu
wisdom and occult Tibetan manuscripts. She maintains that metaphysical truth
is not restricted to one specific religious tradition, but can be found in ancient
traditions and mythologies around the world. The “secret doctrine” had been
revealed by wisdom masters throughout the ages, and some of these prophets
achieved such supernatural qualities that they were eventually deified and en-
capsulated in elaborate mythologies. Odin (Old Norse: Óðinn1), who brought
his people the wisdom of the runes, is interpreted as one of these initiated
masters:
These personages [the “Thirty-Five Buddhas of Confession”], however,

though called in the Northern Buddhist religion “Buddhas”, may just
as well be called Rishis, or Avatars, etc., as they are “Buddhas who have
preceded Sakyamuni [the historical founder of Buddhism]” only for the
northern followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Ma-
hatmas, or Buddhas, are a universal and common property: they are his-
torical sages – at any rate, for all the Occultists who believe in such a
hierarchy of Sages, the existence of which has been proved to them by
the learned ones of the Fraternity… The day when much, if not all, of that
which is given here from the archaic records, will be found correct, is not
far distant. Then the modern symbologists will acquire the certitude that
1 Note on the text: for the sake of authenticity, I have decided not to anglicise the spelling of
Icelandic words and names mentioned in this article (e.g., Althing instead of Alþingi) but to
keep to the original Icelandic orthography, except when the standardised English versions
are in very common use (e.g., Odin, Asgard and Midgard). The letter Þ þ is pronounced th
as in thought, Đ ð is pronounced th as in weather and Æ æ is pronounced i as in kind. All
translations in this essay are my own, unless otherwise indicated. Because most Icelandic last
names are patronyms, rather than family names, I refer to Icelanders by their first names, as
is the custom in Icelandic.

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The Quest of Gangleri 193
even Odin, or the god Woden, the highest god in the German and Scandi-
navian mythology, is one of these thirty-five Buddhas; one of the earliest
indeed, for the continent to which he and his race belonged, is also one
of the earliest. So early, in truth, that in the days when tropical nature
was to be found, where now lie eternal unthawing snows, one could cross
almost by dry land from Norway via Iceland and Greenland, to the lands
that at present surround Hudson’s Bay.
blavatsky, 1888, p. 380
Blavatsky’s historical Odin was not merely a “remarkable human being”, but
an enlightened Buddha, who appeared in northern Europe in a time before
time, when it was warm and when the Northern Hemisphere was not yet di-
vided by the Atlantic Ocean. Because of this, the spiritual founding father of
Europe could easily be associated with mythical lost continents, such as Atlan-
tis, Hyperborea and Thule, which play an important part in the Theosophical
worldview.
Blavatsky was not the first Westerner to identify the supreme deity of the
Old Norse pantheon as an actual historical bringer of wisdom.2 She borrows
many of her ideas on Germanic mythology from the German writer and theo-
logian Wilhelm Wägner (1800–1886), whom she regularly refers to. The Scot-
tish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) already maintained in his seminal
work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) that the histori-
cal figure of Odin had been “a First Teacher and Captain” of the north, and that
“every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin” (Carlyle, 1841, pp. 39, 54–55).
By the time these metaphysical interpretations of Eddic mythology were
taking root in the nineteenth century, the myths had already been emanci-
pated to a large extent and elevated to the status of national heritage in Ice-
land and other Scandinavian countries. They were no longer considered the
remnants of a pre-Christian spiritual darkness, dissolved by Christianity, or
thought of as distorted pieces of naive and primitive historiography, as the so-
called “anti-Eddists” of the Enlightenment tended to do (Böldl, 2000, p. 113). In
the first half of the nineteenth century, the Icelandic philologist Finnur Mag-
nússon (1781–1847) contributed to the Eddas’ emancipation by placing them
in the great organic structure of a Eurasian myth-tree, in which they were no
longer inferior to, but on equal grounds with the more prestigious mythologi-
cal systems of the ancient Greeks and the Indian subcontinent (Halink, 2015).
This scholarly emancipation rendered the Eddic myths a beloved subject for
2 This euhemeristic interpretation of Odin can already be found in medieval sources, notably
in the prologue to the Prose Edda and in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla.
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194 Halink
Romantic poets and nationalists, who discerned in these mysterious stanzas

the promise of a cultural rejuvenation of the north.3 They served, to a certain
extent, as a benchmark for national and Nordic authenticity.
In this chapter, I move beyond the philological and literary implications
of this national discourse on Old Norse mythology and instead focus on the
Icelandic adaptation of Theosophy – and its Oriental doctrines – through
the use of Eddic concepts and narratives. What was the “spiritual function” of
the ancestral myths in Icelandic renditions of Theosophy, and what does their
re-fashioning in this new metaphysical discourse indicate about the changing
role of mythology in the worldview of Icelanders influenced by Theosophy?
Below, I focus on the writings of the translator and poet Sigurður Kristófer
Pétursson (1882–1925), as well as the artwork of the renowned sculptor Einar
Jónsson (1874–1954), who applied a mythological symbolic language to express
his mystical ideas in sculpture. I argue that their cultivation of Eddic themes
could serve both as a means to indigenise foreign, exotic Theosophical con-
cepts and to emancipate the pagan history and heritage of their own nation.
1 “We Are Gangleris and So Are All Men”
The Theosophical Society was formally established in New York in 1875 by He
lena Blavatsky and her fellow Theosophists. It was a new religious paradigm,
based on Oriental philosophies, and opened innovative ways for Westerners to
internalise non-Christian belief systems, both exotic (Hinduism, Buddhism)
and native, pre-Christian ones. Up until the very end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the Eddas could be celebrated as national heritage, or presented as “dis-
guised history” and even as “disguised science” (Halink, 2015), but not as a fully
fledged system of religious thought, or a “national Old Testament” (Lundgreen-
Nielsen, 1994, p. 62), equal to the Hebrew one. Even N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–
1872) – who was himself a Lutheran priest – had to constantly re-emphasise
that he was not proposing a return to paganism in his writings, fearing that he
might be reprimanded for his heathen tendencies (Lundgreen-Nielsen, 1994).
However, around the turn of the century, things had changed; New artistic and
literary currents such as Symbolism had kindled a lively interest in the symbol-
ic language of myth, and more intimate contacts with non-Christian cultures
increased the West’s fascination with the primordial nature of its own spiritual
heritage (Chase, 2000).
3 See, for instance, Gylfi Gunnlaugsson’s contribution to this volume.
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The north is essential in Blavatsky’s conception of anthropogenesis. She

claimed that mankind had evolved through a sequence of five “rootraces”,
the first one of which evolved millions of years ago and was entirely ethereal.
The second rootrace, which first acquired physical qualities, lived in Hyper-
borea. These Hyperboreans were, however, still pure beings and immanently
more advanced than the later rootraces. The fifth rootrace, the Aryan race, is
also associated with the north, and it is juxtaposed with the more animalised,
debased non-Aryan races.4 According to Blavatsky, it is the task of the Aryans
to elevate mankind from the prison of materialism and lead it back to the more
ethereal planes, into the sixth and seventh rootraces of the future. For The-
osophists, this spiritual evolution toward a lost state of perfection is expressed
in Nordic mythology, where Thor’s magic hammer Mjölnir – presented as a
swastika – symbolises the Aryans’ battle against the “pre-cosmic Titanic Forces”
that stand in the way between mankind and its ethereal homeland (Blavatsky,
1888, p. 88). The story of Ragnarök and the appearance of a new and purified
world after the destruction is interpreted as a “poetic allegory”, anticipating the
arrival of the perfected seventh rootrace after Mjölnir has completed its mis-
sion (Blavatsky, 1888, p. 89). The lure of this Theosophical outlook was consid-
erable and allowed Europeans to combine their infatuations with the mystical
Orient with national pride and common notions of racial supremacy. It also
constituted an incentive for Scandinavians to reconsider their pre-Christian
heritage and to approach the Eddas from a more metaphysical perspective.5
In 1912, Icelandic Theosophists founded the first Icelandic “branch”, and
in 1921 the Icelandic department of the Theosophical Society – Íslandsdeild
Guðspekifélagsins – was established. An Icelandic periodical dedicated to the
promotion of Theosophy – or guðspeki in Icelandic – has been published since
1926. Icelandic Theosophists were inspired by Blavatsky’s interpretation of
their pre-Christian heritage and actively indigenised her exotic worldviews by
enveloping them in the language of the Eddas, with which all Icelanders were
familiar. They named their periodical Gangleri, “Wanderer”, which is a refer-
ence to the Swedish king Gylfi, who – in Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning (The
Beguiling of Gylfi) – receives teachings directly from Odin himself, manifested
in the form of three men called Hár “High”, Jafnhár “Just-As-High” and Þriðji
4 Blavatsky’s racial discourse, which inspired much of the völkisch esotericism in Germany
and Austria, is too complex and paradoxical to be fully explained here. Although the term
Aryan, which up to that point had only been applied in the context of Indo-European stu
dies, acquired a normative and metaphysical quality in the Secret Doctrine, Theosophy also
emphasises that all humans essentially belong to the same race. See Goodrick-Clarke (2008,
pp. 211–228).
5 For a more contemporary Theosophical reading of the Eddas, see Titchenell (1985).
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196 Halink
Figure 10.1 King Gylfi addresses “High”, “Just-As-High” and “Third”

Illustration from an eighteenth-century Icelandic
manuscript (sám 66)
“Third”. In the introduction to the first issue of the journal, the editor explains
why this Eddic name was chosen (see Figure 10.1):
And the story is recollected here, so it will touch both of us, you, more
profoundly than can be discerned. Gangleri’s story is the story of both of
us. We have put on a wanderer’s cloak and gone from the king’s court to
seek education. We are Gangleris and so are all men.
kristinsson, 1926, pp. 3–4
Thus, Snorri’s account of the Swedish king is endowed with universal signifi-
cance and refashioned as a metaphysical message for every “pilgrim” or “seeker”
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of truth: an important trope in Theosophical writings. Just as Odin appears to

Gylfi in the form of a triad, so too does knowledge of the divine come in three
different guises; namely, science, philosophy and religion. Those that seek to
integrate and unify these three “altars” of truth are Theosophists in the true
sense of the word (Kristinsson, 1926, 4–5). The emphasis on Eddic motifs in
Icelandic Theosophy can be interpreted as an attempt to accommodate and
embed foreign concepts, inspired by Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, in the
Icelandic mind. Before Icelanders could ever be ready to embrace Theoso-
phy, however, its central concepts had to be de-exoticised through association
with the familiar – but non-Christian – world of Old Norse–Icelandic culture.6
In a way, this process of de-exoticisation is the mirror image of what Snorri
Sturluson and Finnur Magnússon were striving for when they embedded Old
Norse mythology in popular international discourses: Trojan myth and Indo-
European philology, respectively (Halink, 2015). They attempted to emancipate
and enhance their cultural heritage – and their cultural capital – in this way,
whereas Icelandic Theosophists also cultivated their national heritage in order
to naturalise exotic concepts and ideas.
2 “The Hávamál of India”
In Iceland, the task of harmonising Ásatrú (Faith of the Æsir7) and the wis-
dom traditions of the Far East was taken on by Sigurður Kristófer Pétursson,
who was a respected self-taught translator, language expert and poet. He was
also one of Iceland’s most prominent Theosophists and authored several
works on the subject, in which he sought to synthesise Christianity, spiritism
and the world’s mythological and religious systems (Kristinsson, 1925; Stefáns-
son, 1983). In 1924, he published the first Icelandic translation of the Bhagavad
Gita, under the revealing title Hávamál Indíalands (The Hávamál of India).
6 This tendency to indigenise Theosophical ideas has persevered, as can be deduced from the
name of the Theosophical publishing house Hliðskjálf – Odin’s high seat in Asgard, from
where he can oversee all worlds – and from the title of the digital newsletter of the Icelandic
Theosophical Society, Mundilfari: the father of the Sun and Moon. See also the official web-
site of the Icelandic Theosophical Society: www.gudspekifelagid.is (last consulted: 3 Septem-
ber 2015).
7 The neologism Asatro “faith of the Æsir” first appeared in Edvard Grieg’s uncompleted opera
Olav Trygvason, composed in the 1870s and 1880s. This work, in which the new term refers to
the religion of King Olav’s pagan enemies, was not published until 1889. The Icelandic form
Ása trú, or Ásatrú – variations of which are currently used by neopagan groups around the
world to designate their interpretations of Germanic paganism – was first mentioned almost
en passant in an article dealing with the poetry and worldview (“the ancient ásatrú”) of the
poet-warrior Egill Skallagrímsson, printed in the journal Fjallkonan (7 January 1885, 2–3).
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198 Halink
This spiritual equation of the Gita and the “Sayings of the High One” from the
Poetic Edda makes sense if one considers Odin – the “High One” – as an avatar,
an incarnation of the supreme Being, just like Lord Krishna. Like the Bhagavad
Gita – in which the charioteer Krishna imparts spiritual instructions to Prince
Arjuna – Hávamál consists of a collection of profound (and less profound) in-
sights and instructions on how to live an honourable life, taken directly from
the mouth of the incarnated “High One” himself. In Sigurður’s mind, the two
texts contained the same noble message, which transcended time and culture
(Pétursson, 1924). This implied that the songs of the Poetic Edda were in es-
sence no less profound and holy than the sacred writings of the East.
Sigurður’s most extensive writing on the Theosophical value of Ásatrú,
Fornguðspeki í Ásatrúnni (Ancient Theosophy in Ásatrú) appeared in 1922,
two years before his translation of the Bhagavad Gita.8 In this long essay, he
expands on the similarities between the faith of “our forefathers” and the wis-
dom of Hinduism. The historical origin of the Eddic poems may have been the
subject of much philological debate, but the origin of Ásatrú itself – the reli-
gious worldview that Sigurður believes gave rise to the poems – remained even
more elusive. Sigurður considers it very likely that the religion originally hailed
from the East – here he shares the traditional view of euhemerists9 such as
Snorri Sturluson that the term Æsir is connected to Asia – and that, in its very
kernel, Ásatrú may have preserved some of its original Eastern wisdom (Pé-
tursson, 1983a, p. 84). The exploration of Old Norse Theosophy is by no means
an academic undertaking, he claims, and none of the similarities with other
mythologies will be dissected in a scholarly manner. Some of these similari-
ties are obvious, such as the primeval cow Auðumbla from Snorri Sturluson’s
Gylfaginning (chapters 7–8) and the sacred cow – called Kamadhuk – in Hin-
duism. Odin and his mysterious brothers Vili and Vé, who created the world
from the giant Ýmir’s body, are interpreted as a divine triad, representing the
three qualities of God: divine wisdom (Odin), omnipotence (Vili) and divine
love (Vé; Pétursson, 1983a, p. 85).10 According to Sigurður, the name Ýmir itself
8 This essay, an offprint from the journal Óðin, was later reprinted in two parts in the Theo-
sophical journal Gangleri, 57(1–2), pp. 84–96 (1983: 1) and pp. 50–62 (1983: 2), respectively.
It is this reprint in Gangleri that I refer to in the references.
9 Euhemerism is the interpretation of myth as reflection of historical events, and the gods
as deified versions of historical persons. This method of rational interpretation is named
after the Greek mythographer Euhemerus (fourth century bc), who first explained the
origin of myth in this fashion at the court of King Cassander of Macedon.
10 Also in Gylfaginning, the “High One” answering Gylfi’s questions (Odin) is presented as a
trinity. Sigurður does not believe that this should be attributed to Christian influence, and
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provides essential clues about the nature of the created universe because it re-
fers to the initial stir or motion – associated with the syllable Om in Hinduism,
and the Logos of Christianity – from which all matter originated. This initial
unity, represented by the frost-jötunn11 Ýmir, was murdered by Odin and his
brothers, and shattered into many pieces from which all things were made.
The very sound of the name Ýmir may indicate a primeval connection with
the sacred syllable Om, Sigurður argues. On the basis of this identification, he
is convinced that there was nothing else – that is: Ginnungagap (the gaping
abyss) – before Ýmir, and that Völuspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy), in which cre-
ation begins with Ýmir, is more accurate than Snorri’s later account in Gylfagin-
ning, in which other beings already existed before the jötunn.
The division of the universe into three worlds, or planes to use the more cor-
rect Theosophical term, can be found in both Old Norse – Asgard, Midgard and
Utgard – and Hindu cosmology. The compound Sanskrit-Tibetan term for the
highest of these planes, Devachan, was introduced by Blavatsky in the Secret
Doctrine and literally means “dwelling of the gods”. Sigurður points out that
this is the exact same meaning of the term Asgard, which can be translated as
the “enclosure” – or simply “place” – of the Æsir (Pétursson, 1983a, p. 92). Ac-
cording to Theosophists, it is from this ethereal plane that the soul descends
to take material form and undergo physical life, with the aim to evolve and to
learn the lessons that can only be learned in an earthly body. This journey of
the soul is the subject of many myths, and Sigurður demonstrates this through
an elaborate analysis of Thor’s (Old Norse: Þórr) journey to the court of the jö-
tunn Útgarða-Loki, where the Thunderer takes part in several contests (Gylfa
ginning, chapters 44–47). According to Sigurður, Thor – who descends from the
highest plane to do battle with jötnar on the physical plane Utgard (Útgarðr) –
symbolises the human soul, which is divine in its essence. His human travel
companions, the girl Röskva and the boy Þjálfi, are interpreted as metaphors
for physicality/emotions and vitality, respectively. Loki, the mischievous shape-
shifter that accompanies Thor on many a journey, would then symbolise the
earthly body, which is already “conceived” the moment a soul decides to de-
scend from Asgard. According to Sigurður, this explains why Loki lives with the
gods on the highest plane, despite his inferiority (Pétursson, 1983b, pp. 52–53);
he represents man’s most basic instincts, animal behaviour, and therefore it is
he quotes the influential philologist Sigurður Nordal (1886–1974) to make his case (Péturs-
son, 1983a, p. 86).
11 The jötnar (singular: jötunn) of Old Norse mythology are difficult to classify, and the Eng-
lish term giant does not fully cover the contents of this ambiguous concept. Therefore,
I use the original Icelandic term.
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200 Halink
he that agrees to take part in the first contest at Útgarða-Loki’s court, which is
an eating contest. Consuming food meets one’s most basic and material needs.
After all three travel companions have taken part in various contests –
which they all mysteriously lose to members of Útgarða-Loki’s household – it is
Thor’s turn. This means, according to Sigurður, that now the soul itself is about
to be tested. The god, who was famous for his consumption of alcohol, does
not manage to accomplish the seemingly simple task of emptying the drinking
horn that is handed to him, and thus loses the drinking contest. When asked
to lift Útgarða-Loki’s cat, he only manages to make the animal lift one paw.
Because the jötnar are beginning to lose faith in Thor, they propose a wrestling
contest between him and an old lady named Elli. However, even this appears
too much for the raging giant-slayer, and Thor loses again. It is only later that
he discovers that he has been fooled: the drinking horn was secretly connected
to the sea – from which Thor had drunk so much that the sea level dropped
dramatically – and the cat he tried to lift was in fact the great serpent Jörmun-
gandr, who encircles all of Midgard. Finally, the old woman named Elli – which
means “old age” – had in fact been old age and impermanence personified,
which nobody – not even a god – could ever defeat. These tribulations of the
soul (Thor) in the physical world are seen by Sigurður as proof of the great
spiritual insight of “our forefathers” and interpreted as expressions of ancient
theosophy in the north. The fact that Elli did not manage to throw Thor on
the floor immediately indicates that this particular soul was so spiritually ad-
vanced that it could even defy – if not defeat – the most undefeatable force
on Earth, which is death (Pétursson, 1983b, p. 59). The fierce serpent, which
Sigurður considers a metaphor for limitation – the cause of all suffering, but
also necessary for the soul to learn important lessons in the world12 – is be-
lieved to be invincible, and the fact that Thor managed to make him lift one
paw indicates that even absolute limitations can be subverted by man’s divine
soul. Sigurður maintains that, although he felt like a loser, Thor had actually
accomplished some remarkable feats without realising it.
Finally, the drinking horn that cannot be emptied is interpreted by Sig-
urður as an indication that the Old Norse actually believed in the law of
karma and reincarnation, just like the Hindus and Buddhists. It is in this
12 Sigurður points out that the serpent, although thought of in negative terms in Christian-
ity and Ásatrú, was a symbol of wisdom in many ancient civilisations (Pétursson, 1983b,
pp. 55–59). The official logo of the Theosophical Society also contains a serpent, encir-
cling the central symbol by biting its own tail, just like Jörmungandr.
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present life that one has to empty the “cup of destiny” (örlagabikarinn),
the contents of which extend to the wide ocean of the past, which remains
hidden. Sigurður argues that the forefathers did not believe in an infinite
cycle of rebirths, but that it took between one to three lives – depending
on the ethical development of the soul – to empty the cup of accumulated
karma (Pétursson, 1983b, p. 54). He provides his readers with several other
instances of presumed reincarnation in Old Norse–Icelandic literature, and
he interprets Völuspá’s account of a new world after Ragnarök in the context
of a cyclical worldview, in which death and destruction are never as final as
they may seem (Pétursson, 1983b, p. 60). As a Theosophist, Sigurður believed
that all religious systems contain veiled expressions of the universal “secret
doctrine”. Christianity is therefore invoked to provide mystical parallels and
remarkable conceptual similarities – such as the one between Om, Ýmir
and the Logos – in order to strengthen this Theosophical message. However,
when it comes to the understanding of death, Sigurður claims that “our fore-
fathers” were actually more advanced than their Christian descendants, who
had lost all understanding of reincarnation and the cyclical regeneration of
the universe (Pétursson, 1983b, p. 60).
Despite this philosophical advantage of Ásatrú over Christianity, Sigurður
was no heathen in the way later Icelanders would claim to be heathens, and
nowhere does he call for a return to the old faith. Although Odin, the enlight-
ened teacher that brought the esoteric wisdom of the runes (rúnaspeki) to the
north, had had a profound influence on Nordic life and the spiritual develop-
ment of the forefathers, Sigurður acknowledges that the wisdom school he
founded is now a thing of the past. Odin’s enlightenment is associated with
a tree (Vingameiðr, “Swaying Tree”), from which he hung for nine nights in
order to sacrifice his lower self to his higher, divine self (Hávamál, stanzas
138–139). Similarly, the enlightenment of the Buddha and that of Christ are
also associated with trees: the Bodhi Tree and the Holy Cross, respectively.
However, whereas the Bodhi Tree and the Cross are still worshipped by mil-
lions of people every day, Odin’s tree has been uprooted in its entirety, and
every “twig and every leaf has lost all its life, its fragrance and colour” (Péturs-
son, 1983b, p. 62). This is not something to be mourned because the Christian
faith is not inferior to the old religion. However, Sigurður urges his readers to
consider the spiritual value of Ásatrú from a Theosophical perspective, and its
great importance to their forefathers; in Vingameiðr’s shadow, “many of our
ancestors have flowed into the blood essence of those divine “brothers”, Odin,
Vili and Vé – and have grown in wisdom, bravery and manliness” (Pétursson,
1983b, p. 62).
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202 Halink
3 Living Basalt
The universalist approach to Old Norse myth, as proposed by Theosophists

such as Sigurður, provided writers and artists with a new spiritual paradigm
for cultivating Eddic material. Among the most prolific Icelandic artists of this
period was undoubtedly the sculptor Einar Jónsson, who is best known for
his epic and highly symbolic statues, in which his religious and spiritual ideas
found dramatic expression. He was not only Iceland’s very first sculptor (Finn-
bogason, 1982, p. 3),13 he was also the first Icelandic artist to reject classical na
turalism and to embrace new, more symbolic and experimental forms of artistic
expression. In the early twentieth century, when Einar was finding his personal
style as a sculptor, Reykjavík was rapidly expanding and in need of rootedness
in an ancient, national past, solidified in monuments for the city’s growing
public space. Due to Einar’s position as Iceland’s only sculptor, the task of cre-
ating a visual identity for Reykjavík and the entire nation was largely given to
him, and the popular image of Iceland’s heroic past is still largely determined
by his iconic statues. However, Einar’s unorthodox views and interpretations
of Icelandic history did not always resonate with the more traditional tastes of
the urban elite that commissioned the works, and this led to fierce debates on
the national significance of Iceland’s first inhabitants and their heathen gods.
Between 1896 and 1899, Einar studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine
Arts in Copenhagen. One of his teachers, the Danish-Norwegian sculptor
Stephan Sinding (1846–1922), taught Einar how to work with marble and in-
stilled in him a fascination for mythological themes and Symbolism. Sinding re-
sorted to Eddic myth for his statue Valkyrie (Copenhagen, 1908) and expressed
his spiritual affiliation with Moder Jord (Mother Earth) in a statue group exhi
bited in the courtyard of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum in Copenha-
gen (1900). Einar then received a grant from the Icelandic Parliament to study
in Rome for two years (1902–1903), and it is there that he developed his own
style as an artist, after renouncing Classical aesthetics and naturalism altoge
ther (Auðuns, 1982, pp. 31–32). Under the influence of Theosophy (Kvaran, 1987,
pp. 141–148), esotericism and mysticism, Jugendstil and – primarily G erman –
Symbolism, he set off to develop his own symbolic language, in which the Old
Norse gods would play a very different role than the classicised Æsir of previ-
ous generations. After having travelled through Europe, Einar returned to Co-
penhagen and became influenced by an avantgarde artists’ collective known
as De frie Billedhuggere “The Free Sculptors”, who rebelled against any form of
13 Even though the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1797–1838) was celebrated as a “son
of Iceland” – his father was Icelandic – he can hardly be considered an Icelandic sculptor.
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censorship and were inspired by Auguste Rodin and the Nietzschean concept
of individual originality (Nielsen, 1996).
Throughout his entire career, Einar nonetheless drew his inspiration from
the Icelandic landscape, which he experienced as animated and filled with
emotion. The Romantic pantheism of his childhood persevered, and – inspired
by folktales about supernatural beings and trolls turning into stone – he ex-
pressed his experience of the Sublime in paintings and sculptures of geologi-
cal persons, higher beings composed entirely of the typical black basalt pillars
that make up many of Iceland’s rock faces and coastlines: very robust and very
ethereal at the same time. These pillars constitute a recurrent theme in Ei
nar’s paintings and sculptures, and form supernatural cathedrals or thrones, or
make up the face of a woman. The Icelandic pantheism of works such as these,
rooted in the “organicism of the Romantics”, can be seen as a means of natural-
ising the nation (Zimmer, 1998, p. 645; Halink, 2014) and of elevating the idea
of natural Icelandicness to a more ethereal plane.
Einar never promoted the actual reconstruction of Old Norse paganism, and
for him the metaphysical value of the Eddas primarily lies in its function as a
symbolic language, through which he could express his abstract religious and
artistic views – which were themselves not Eddic or Old Norse in origin – in
a more visual fashion, as one could expect from a sculptor. Although he did
not consider himself one of the happy few that managed to hold on to the
“Paradise of their childhood belief” all their lives (Jónsson, 1983, p. 247), the
natural mysticism of his youth remained with him and characterises his entire
oeuvre. Einar became deeply inspired by the Christian mysticism of the Swe
dish revelator Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1771), who opened his eyes to the
more profound and unorthodox message of the Christian faith (Daníelsdót-
tir, 2011). Einar came to despise the superficial and literal interpretation of the
Bible by mainstream Christianity, and he clarified the two opposing strands of
Christianity – the “letter” versus the “spirit” – by using an image from pagan-
ism; namely, that of Baldur’s death by the hand of his blind and misled brother
Höður (Jónsson, 1983, p. 317).14 This may seem paradoxical at first, but it made
perfect sense to Einar, to whom the story of Baldur and Höður was simply the
Nordic equivalent of that of Cain and Abel; in both narratives, the enemies
were not enemies from the start, but brothers. Moreover, in both stories, the
pure and the good – spirit, mysticism – is murdered by its brother – literalism,
14 The story of Baldur’s death can be found in Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning and in Völu
spá; blind Höður was tricked by Loki into shooting his brother with an arrow made of
mistletoe: the only object in the world that did not take an oath never to harm Baldur.
After Baldur’s death is avenged, the brothers reside in the underworld together.
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204 Halink
dogma – turned malicious, who remains triumphant in the present world.15

Apart from this reference to the myth of Baldur, the Eddas play no significant
role in Einar’s personal writings. However, in his more intimate sculptures and
designs, mythological themes are abundant.
When Einar returned to Iceland, he made an arrangement with the Icelan-
dic Parliament to the effect that he would donate all his work to the coun-
try, and that the Parliament would provide him with a house and studio in
return. The monumental building that Einar co-designed for himself, in which
he lived and worked, eventually became Iceland’s very first public museum in
1923. By this time, the Romantic image of the heroic Viking past had become
so mainstream and even banal (Billig, 1995) that it was no longer necessary
to convince anyone of the self-evident grandeur and greatness of the island’s
Golden Age. The legacy of Romantic nationalism had become a cliché, “un-
obtrusively, unremarkably present in the ambient background noise of the
contemporary nation …’s public sphere” (Leerssen, 2014, p. 30). Einar’s public
statues, commissioned by various societies and associations, offer heroic de-
pictions of national heroes, both old and new, and can be found throughout
downtown Reykjavík at key locations in the city’s topography. These sculp-
tures were often recycled in other media – such as postcards and stamps – and
would thus come to determine the visual representation of Iceland’s heroic
national self-image.
The most iconic of Einar’s historical works is his statue of Iceland’s first
settler from Norway, Ingólfur Arnarson, who settled in what is now Reykjavík
around ad 874. The statue portrays Ingólfur standing, leaning on a halberd
with his left arm, and on a shield, standing upright against a dragon-headed
object, with his right arm. The stylised dragon-headed object represents Ing
ólfur’s high-seat pillar, thrown overboard in order to let the gods wash them
ashore at the place they wanted the devout Viking to settle.16 The prominence
of this object in Einar’s composition already indicates that, in the sculptor’s
imagination, it had become more than merely a high-seat pillar; it had ac-
quired multiple layers of symbolic significance, linked to notions of destiny
and the divine will behind Iceland’s settlement. In order to emphasise this su-
pernatural function of the pillar, Einar adorned it with themes and characters
from the Eddas. Odin can be seen, holding a small round shield and wearing
15 However, in the Eddas, Höður – who was not himself evil, but who was easily misled by
Loki because he was blind – is cured from his blindness by Baldur when they return from
the underworld and “spirit” is victorious after all.
16 It took Ingólfur’s slaves approximately three years to find the pillars, according to the
Icelandic Landnámabók (Book of Settlements) from the twelfth century.
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Figure 10.2 A photo of Einar Jónsson’s now destroyed relief Flight of the Gods to Iceland’s
Mountains from 1907
Courtesy of the Einar Jónsson Museum
a helmet, while his two ravens accompany him on his shoulders. Their spread
wings give the impression that Odin is a winged, angelic being himself. The
world-tree Yggdrasil is also depicted, underscoring the organic, pagan charac-
ter of the nation’s very beginning.
The statue committee was not exactly thrilled by these pagan overtones of
the work, and even more unsettling than the Nietzschean motto of the statue
(Lead Thyself) was in their eyes one of the bas-reliefs the sculptor had in mind
for the monument. All that remains of Einar’s design for this piece is a photo
of the plaster, which was itself destroyed. It is entitled Flótti guðanna til Íslands
fjalla (Flight of the Gods to Iceland’s Mountains), and it depicts a multitude of
manlike gods landing on Iceland’s shore, seemingly fleeing from a large open
hand, standing upright on the horizon, with an open-armed man – reminis-
cent of the crucified Christ – in its palm (see Figure 10.2).17
The sculptor clarified this mysterious scene as follows:
The gods come speeding on a cloud through the air, and far in the east they
see in the rosy dawn the symbol of Christianity, the great hand of God.
In God’s hand is Christ, who willingly extends his arms (not nailed). The
gods flee, not in fear, but because their day is past. They hasten towards
the land of sunset, “Iceland” – and tread their final walk on their white
feet, from the mountains of Iceland into the fiery red of the setting sun.
kristjánsson, 1948, pp. 173–174; transl. by anna yates in gottskálksdóttir,
2011, pp. 216–217
17 I would like to thank the Einar Jónsson Museum for providing me with the photos of
Einar’s works, and for granting me the permission to use them in this chapter.
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206 Halink
Einar wrote this clarification of the piece after it had been criticised by the
statue committee, which was concerned about the sculptor’s “pagan” interpre-
tation of Iceland’s settlement (landnám). Its members argued that he distorted
history by turning the settlement into a pagan undertaking, and that it was cer-
tainly not Christianity – but political oppression – the first settlers were flee-
ing from. Furthermore, they were not fleeing from a Christian land, because
paganism would persevere in Norway for at least another century after Ingólf
ur’s departure. The committee decided that, in due time, the bas-relief could
be added to the monument, on the condition that Einar would re-arrange the
scene in accordance with the historical account of the twelfth-century Land-
námabók (Book of Settlements; Kristjánsson, 1948, p. 173). However, as in re-
ligious matters, Einar was not a man of the “letter” but rather of the “spirit”
when it came to interpreting the deeper message of both the Bible and Land-
námabók. He did not aspire to historical correctness (the “letter”), but rather
to a more spiritual interpretation of Ingólfur’s landnám through allegorical
images. The entrance of the gods, as envisioned by Einar, is a sublimated re-
rendering of the landnám trope that is so dominant in Iceland’s historical nar-
rative, and it lends deeper, metaphysical significance to Ingólfur’s “mission” to
Iceland. His departure from Norway could be understood in teleological terms,
as a project ordained by divine provenance itself, intended to salvage that
which is authentically Nordic – or “North Germanic” – for future generations.
Although Einar recognises that the gods eventually met their historical end,
the description of Iceland as the “land of sunset” suggests that the presence of
the gods occurs beyond time, and still animates the Icelandic landscape, pro-
viding it with the pantheistic quality that characterises Einar’s paintings and
sculptures of “living basalt”. The gods may be a thing of the past, but they are
also primordial, and they constitute (in Einar’s view) the very reason why Ice-
land’s mountainscapes are not only physical, but also ethereal, metaphysical
spaces. Einar did not blame Christianity an sich for the decline of the Æsir; in
consonance with his mystical worldview, the sculptor was decidedly positive
about Christ’s voluntary sacrifice for mankind. Rather, the age of heathenism
had simply come to a natural end when the new faith appeared, and the gods
had to make way for the spirit of a new, Christian age. Eventually, the statue
was unveiled on Arnarhóll (Arnar Hill) in 1924, without any motto or bas-relief.
4 An Inner Asgard
Compared to Einar’s commissioned works, intended for the public sphere, the
more personal works he created on his own accord are more intimate, and of a
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mystical nature. Without the opinion of any committee to worry about, Einar
was free to express his worldview in images inspired by Old Norse mythology.
Especially in the later part of his life, the sculptor gravitated increasingly to-
ward spirituality and mysticism (Daníelsdóttir, 2011). His cultivation of Eddic
themes is more explicit in his private works, and generally serves to convey
more profound and existential messages than for instance the heathen refer-
ences in his statue of Ingólfur Arnarson.18 As demonstrated above, Einar was
by no means an advocate of pre-Christian paganism, and he used Eddic mo-
tifs first and foremost as a figurative language, which enabled him to express
profound ideas and experiences that are in themselves not directly linked to
Old Norse mythology; a very abstract and foreign concept like karma, which
is a central principle in Theosophy, is personified by Skuld (Fate) – the Eddic
goddess of destiny and one of the three Norns19 – in Einar’s sculpture of the
same name. The idea for this work first appears in drafts from 1900, but it was
not until 1927, after Einar’s final return to Iceland, that the sculpture reached
its completion (see Figure 10.3). The work centres around a young man, seated
on the back of a collapsed horse that can no longer continue its journey. Be-
tween the horse’s front legs lies the lifeless body of another man, whose death
resulted from the horseman’s relentless race toward the future. The horseman
wants to continue his journey forward, but the fallen horse is struggling to get
up, and the reins are no longer in his hands, but in those of an eerie, ghostly
figure whose face is shrouded, sitting behind him and whispering in his ear.
Karma has caught up with the rider, and now Skuld prevents him from mo
ving on, telling him the debt he has to pay for his immoral deed. The horseman
is stuck in the moment, fettered by the forces of karma, and his will to move
forward is frustrated by his loss of control over the horse. In this work, Einar
professes his belief in a moral universe, governed by the laws of cause and con-
sequence, and in the influence of man’s past deeds on current condition. The
idea of divine justice is by no means a Theosophical invention, and it forms
the basic principle of Christian moral philosophy. However, Einar’s treatment
of this principle detaches it from the Christian and Oriental cultural context
in which it usually occurs and connects it in a very dramatic fashion to the Old
Norse character of Skuld. Not only did Einar thus transform something highly
abstract and intellectual into something tangible, intimate and experiential,
18 Einar’s predilection for the myths is not only testified by his completed artworks, but also
by his many sketches, which are preserved in his notebooks and which can be accessed
on the official website of the Einar Jónsson Museum in Reykjavík: http://www.lej.is/ (last
consulted: 22 February 2016).
19 Female deities that were believed to determine the fate of gods and men.
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208 Halink
Figure 10.3 Einar Jónsson, Skuld (1927)

he also managed to indigenise the concept of karma through the cultivation

of Eddic mythology.
A more dynamic interplay of multiple symbolic languages and metaphysi-
cal ideas can be found in the sculpture Fæðing Psyche (The Birth of Psyche),
which Einar completed in 1918 (Figure 10.4). The work does not immediately
strike the viewer as particularly indebted to Old Norse myths, and its title also
suggests a stronger link with Greek mythology.
It shows the creation of the human soul (Psyche), who is chiselled from the
rock by a sculptor whose face is shrouded – like that of Skuld in the previous
sculpture – and who represents Earth, or the creative principle of the divine.
From all sides, a female figure emerging from the rock is animated by anthro-
pomorphous allegories of the natural forces air, water and fire, the last one
appearing in the shape of an angel, tenderly kissing Psyche’s forehead. Man-
kind’s dependence on – and origin from – nature is emphasised, as in many
of Einar’s other works. However, the most profound message encrypted in this
sculpture lies not in its separate components, but rather in its composition as
a whole. When observed from a distance, the four panels together form the
sign of a solar cross, or a cross inside a circle, which seems to be turning like a
wheel due to the suggested movement of the clouds in the top and the waves
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Figure 10.4 Einar Jónsson, The Birth of Psyche (1918)

at the bottom of the sculpture. In Theosophical writings, the symbol of the

solar cross, closely related to the swastika, was associated with Thor’s hammer
Mjölnir, and it was considered the ultimate symbol of creation and the mission
of the Aryans (Blavatsky, 1888, p. 88). This identification of Mjölnir with the
principle of creation is further amplified by the actual hammer in the hand of
the shrouded sculptor, with which the human soul is chiselled into existence.
In one of his notes on this work, Einar explains how the stylised solar cross is
the symbol of all fiery origin; not only of the human soul, but of the material
universe as a whole. In this shape, Einar believed he had found the key to un-
derstanding the relationship between matter and spirit because it symbolises
the “birth of the material as housing for the spirit and its development toward
exalted worlds, the birth of the spirit into the material”.20 Fæðing Psyche forms
20 Taken from Einar’s unpublished notes, quoted on the website of the Einar Jónsson Mu-
seum: http://www.lej.is/news/4/57/Fading-Psyche-1915–1918/d,nodate/ (last consulted: 22
February 2016).
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210 Halink
Einar’s artistic interpretation of a philosophical idea, in which a symbol from

Old Norse mythology acquired universal and metaphysical significance, reach-
ing far beyond the usual ideological significations of Thor’s hammer as a po-
litical symbol (Zernack, 2011, pp. 163–176). In this and many other works, Einar
introduces the viewer to a symbolic universe in which landscape, folklore,
history and complex Theosophical concepts are merged. In that respect, his
works are comparable to the symbolic artwork of the English poet and painter
William Blake (1757–1827).
However, the Eddic stories did not only serve to convey metaphysical grand
narratives and Theosophical ideas; especially in his later years, Einar’s ap-
proach to the old gods became more intimate and entangled with his own ex-
perience of coming of age. In 1939 and 1940, he worked on a sculpture entitled
Elli og Þór (Elli and Thor), which takes up the same Eddic theme of Thor’s or-
deal at Útgarða-Loki’s court as analysed by Sigurður Kristófer Pétursson (see
Figure 10.5). However, Einar’s – much later – interpretation possesses little of
the metaphysical complexity of Sigurður’s discourse, or of the symbolic intri-
cacy of Fæðing Psyche. The work shows the mighty god wrestling intimately
Figure 10.5 Einar Jónsson, Thor and Elli (1940)

Photo by the author
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with Old Age (Elli), presented as an old woman with closed eyes, leaning over
the seemingly helpless god like a heavy mountain.
Although the scene depicts a struggle, there is no air of aggression, and over-
all the interaction between Thor and Elli looks more like an embrace than any-
thing else. It is tempting to interpret this as the sculptor’s – who was now far
into his sixties – own attempt to come to terms with death and old age, rather
than fighting it. The mountain underneath Elli’s body is unmistakably an Ice-
landic mountain, consisting largely of characteristic black sand slopes. How-
ever, the mountain is primarily made up of people: standing figures, emerging
from the sand slopes, who are all hidden under Elli’s pithless body and sub-
jected to the same laws of death and decay that Thor tries to overcome. The
resignation expressed in this composition is of great psychological depth. It
marks a level of internalisation that Old Norse myth had never reached before
in Icelandic art. Rather than applying the myths in order to cultivate national
identity or any other form of ideological consciousness, they are represented
here first and foremost as a set of indigenous symbols, through which uni-
versal truths and experiences can be expressed. In his private creations, the
grand themes of national heroism and Romantic historicism – which figure so
prominently in his public works – are virtually absent. Ásatrú was, in Einar’s
Theosophy, a local expression of both cosmic wisdom and the universal condi-
tion humaine.
References
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Daníelsdóttir, O.B. (2011), Einar Jónsson og guðspeki (unpublished master’s thesis:

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Part 4
Beyond the Nation?
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Chapter 11
Crossing the Borders: Loki and the Decline of

the Nation State
Katja Schulz
The Old Norse mythic world is principally inhabited by two groups of anthro-
pomorphic beings: the gods on the one hand, and the giants on the other. If
one takes the mythological narratives as a whole, the lion’s share deals with
interactions between these two focal groups of the Old Norse mythical world.
These narratives, handed down to posterity in two Icelandic texts from the
thirteenth century that go under the term Edda (the Poetic Edda and the Snor-
ra Edda),1 tell about numerous peaceful interactions such as Ægir’s feast, when
the sea giant brews ale and feasts with the gods.2 They describe how Óðinn
visits Vafþrúðnir for a contest in mythological knowledge (in Vafþrúðnismál)
and can tell of intermarriages between gods and giantesses, such as the one be-
tween Niǫrðr and Skaði according to Gylfaginning, Chapter 23. In most cases,
the gods are the ones that benefit from these interactions; they gain knowledge
about primeval matters, genealogies and mythical facts, and they acquire intel-
lectual gifts such as the mead of poetry or counsel, as when Odin drinks from
the well of Mímir, or when they make a contract with a giant to build the for-
tification of Ásgarðr. The giants often lose out; they are fraudulently defeated,
never allowed to marry a goddess (which is a constant desire of male giants),
and all in all the relationship between gods and giants is characterised by nega-
tive reciprocity.3 Nevertheless, peaceful interactions between the two groups
1 References to Snorra Edda are given to the chapters following Anthony Faulkesʼ edition of
Snorri Sturluson: Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning (second edition, 2005), and Snorri Sturlu-
son: Edda. Skáldskaparmál. Volume 1: Introduction, Text and Notes (1998), both London, Vi-
king Society for Northern Research. The Eddic poems are mentioned as edited in Edda. Die
Lieder des Codex regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern: I. Text, edited by Gustav Neckel, fourth
revised edition by Hans Kuhn (Heidelberg, 1962).
2 This myth is told in Skáldskaparmál 33 and in the frame narrative of Lokasenna. In both ver-
sions of the story there is no enmity between the gods and giants, but only between Loki and
all others present.
3 For this kind of intergroup relationship, compare Clunies Ross (1994, pp. 103–143). See also
Schulz (2004, pp. 65–84).

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218 Schulz
are frequently described and bear witness to a wide range of social interaction
between the gods and giants.
Only when it comes to Ragnarǫk, the fate of the gods, is the manifold nature
of social intercourse between gods and giants finally resolved into a simple op-
position; they confront each other on the battlefield and destroy one another,
just as the rest of the world is submerged in the sea. Thus, at Ragnarǫk, one
ends up with the following groups in opposition to each other:
Gods (Æsir and Vanir) Giants

Dwarves and elves Monsters (Midgard serpent, Fenrir)
Human beings (einherjar) Loki
Valkyries
Thus, one finds both a complex design of mythic society with a broad variety
of social interaction on the one hand and a reduced complexity as regards the
whole of the mythic population on the other hand. The fluctuation between
these two poles seems to characterise the rendition of Old Norse myth over the
long term, both in different phases of myth and in different modes of repre-
sentation. In this chapter, I analyse several modern examples to prove this hy-
pothesis and to demonstrate how these myths have been applied to construct
identities beyond traditional nationhood.
In what follows, the term myth refers to stories about gods and heroes (cf.
Jan de Vries’ definition, 1961, p. ix). I assume, following the German philoso-
pher Hans Blumenberg, that myth is only accessible in the form of its various
receptions and that it is futile to search for something like a proto-myth (Blu-
menberg, 1979, p. 299). As a natural consequence, the myths handed down in
Snorra Edda or the Poetic Edda must be considered “myth” in the same way as
the reworkings of a Richard Wagner, a Grundtvig or a Villy Sørensen. The very
fact that this Old Norse material is recycled confirms its mythic quality.
One early example may illustrate the pendulation between a complex,
multifarious conception of the mythic world and a simplifying reduction of
complexity, resolving into simple oppositions. Snorra Edda, probably the most
influential medieval source of Old Norse myth, was composed around 1225 by
Snorri Sturluson (1178/79–1241) as a poetological handbook to enable Icelandic
poets and readers to grasp the meaning behind the many kennings that were
an integral element of Old Norse poetry. A kenning is a two- (or more-) part
phrase that describes an object by means of circumlocutions, frequently al-
luding to a mythic event or expressing a family relationship. For example, in
what may be the oldest skaldic poem, the ninth-century Ragnarsdrápa (Rag-
nar’s Poem) by Bragi Boddason the old (inn gamli), Þórr is called haussprengir
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Crossing the Borders 219
Hrungnis “smasher of the skull [of the giant] Hrungnir” (stanza 17; Jónsson,
1908, p. 4). This kenning is exemplary as a kenning for Þórr in its explicitly
antagonistic attitude toward giants; indeed, most kennings for Þórr refer to
the god’s battles with giants and giantesses (cf. Meissner, 1921, pp. 254–255).
This particular kenning refers to a myth known from the ninth-century skal-
dic poem Haustlǫng (Autumn-Long) by Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (ór Hvini: Jónsson,
1908, pp. 14–18), which tells about a battle between Þórr and Hrungnir, with a
strong focus on the antagonism between gods and giants at a denotative level
(as expressed by the kennings and heiti). Taken as a whole, the kennings for gi-
ants generally stress two aspects. First, giants belong to a particular clan, which
is implicitly distinguished from those of the “civilised world”. Thus, a giantess
may be called the “wife of a giant”, the “mother of a giant”, the “daughter of a
giant” and so on; a giant is correspondingly the “offspring of giants”, the “lover
of a giantess” and so on. Second, the kennings express the giants’ association
with the primitive, stony wilderness, calling them “mountain dwellers”, “resi-
dents of the lava”, “rock-people” or “disgraceful men of the place of wolves” (cf.
Meissner, 1921, pp. 256–259 [giants] and pp. 398–399 [giantesses]). Both types
of kennings denote giants as belonging to the “Other”.
What Snorri does in relating the background of the kennings is to “recharge”
the mythic oppositions latent in the kennings with complexity. To return to
the example of the skull-smasher: in Skáldskaparmál (The Language of Poetry,
Chapter 17) Snorri renders the (or at least one) story of the conflict between
the giant Hrungnir and the gods as a lengthy episode of a rather human inter-
action, involving a great boast and too much alcohol on the giant’s part.4 The
simplifying binary opposition between a vicious giant slain by a heroic god
expands into an account that shows awareness of the depths of the (human)
soul and the intricacies of life, judging misbehaviour mildly, rather than allow-
ing the conflict to escalate and unleash Ragnarǫk.
Later interpreters of Old Norse mythology frequently take up the dualistic
worldview prevailing at Ragnarǫk and apply the god/giant antagonism to their
own present age. They generally associate themselves or their own party with
the Æsir, thereby defining themselves as the dominant in-group (“We”, the
Self). Conversely, one or more out-groups (“Them”, the Other) are constructed
4 According to Snorri, Hrungnir and Óðinn initially dispute whose horse is swifter. In the rac-
ing duel, Hrungir dashes into Ásgarðr, where the Æsir invite him to drink ale with them. He
becomes drunk and boasts that he is going to transport Valhöll (Valhalla) to the land of the
giants, kill all the gods, and take Freyia and Sif home as his wives. At this point the Æsir be-
come fed up with him, call upon Þórr, and a duel between Hrungnir and the god of thunder
is arranged in Jötunheimr (Giantland). Hrungnir is duped by the Æsir and falls when Þórr’s
hammer Mjöllnir smashes his skull (cf. Snorri Sturluson, 1987, pp. 77–79).
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220 Schulz
by stigmatising a real or imagined difference to “Us”,5 then associating this dif-

ference with the giants. The common denominator for the constitution of a
group in this way may be almost anything; groups may have an ethnic or na-
tional orientation or define themselves by a religious orientation (like the pre
sent Germanic Pagan communities) or as belonging to a special (sub)culture
such as the heavy-metal scene. In many cases, there is an overlay of two or
more of these categories, as when black metal scenes advocate ethnic pagan-
ism, often coupled with nationalism (to name but a few examples).
The topic of this anthology is the nationalisation of mythologies. Probably
one of the best-known and most enduring disseminators of Old Norse mytho
logy in a national context and to nationalistic ends is the Danish pastor, author
and philosopher Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872), whose phi-
losophy in fact gave rise to a new form of nationalism in the second half of
the nineteenth century. In his mythological compendium Nordens Mythologi
(Northern Mythology, second edition, 1832), which serves as a kind of theoreti-
cal superstructure or programmatical treatise, he explains his allegorisation
of the myths in the service of the Danish nation. There he asks the Danes to
take note that “in the long run our forebears ascribed to the giants all they
considered not to be Nordic in origin” (Grundtvig, 1907, p. 539).6 This shows
quite clearly how Grundtvig interprets the giants in the mythological texts
as an equivalent to what modern social psychology would identify as an out-
group, and what he presents as a negation of identity – “not Nordic in origin”.
He does not become very specific as to what these “non-northern” character-
istics consist of, but stigmatises them rather roughly as “all this overbearing
arrogance, defiance and heartless severity that at all times characterises the gi-
ants or those natures of brute force” (Grundtvig, 1907, p. 538). The continuation
of the passage cited here reveals however that Grundtvig is aware of a lack of
agreement with his source, Snorri’s Gylfaginning, because he explicitly states
the oddity of the fact that Snorri lets the gods descend from precisely the loath-
some and ugly giants. Grundtvig expressly lays his finger upon the difference
between the complex rendition of the myth in Snorra Edda and the reduced
5 The terms in-group and out-group go back to William Graham Sumner’s classic study Folk-
ways (1907) and have been adopted by social psychology. Sumner defines the “we-group,
or in-group” as individuals “in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to
each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except
so far as agreements have modified it” (Sumner, 1907, p. 12). The demarcation between the
we-group and the other-group is constructed and maintained through “symbolic markers
(boundaries) such as narratives, creeds, rituals, and social practices” (cf. MacCallion, 2007).
6 All translations in this chapter are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
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complexity of his own approach to the mythic world, and he considers them
incompatible.
There are numerous examples of this allegorising use of Eddic myth in
Grundtvig’s œuvre; one early example is his Thryms Kvide eller Hammervisen
(Þrym’s Poem or the Song of the Hammer, 1815), a free adaptation of the hu-
morous Eddic poem Þrymskviða (Þrym’s Poem). Here Grundtvig allegorically
interprets the myth of Þórr’s recovery of his hammer, linking the myth expli
citly to the Union of Kalmar (1397–1523). The Swedes figure as giants, Þrymr is
equated with Swedish King Magnus Eriksson the Caresser (smek) and Queen
Margarethe with Þórr in Freija’s clothes (Grundtvig, 1905, p. 138). Implicitly,
however, this allegorical interpretation of Þrymskviða alludes to the Treaty of
Kiel from 1814 (when, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark lost Nor-
way to Sweden) and characterises the Swedes as arrogant, defiant and heart-
less giants.
In later years and against the background of the conflict between Denmark
and Germany culminating in the First and Second Schleswig War (1848–1851
and 1864, respectively), Grundtvig frequently applies the mythic opposition
between Æsir and giants to the political enmity between the neighbour-
ing countries Denmark and Germany. A closer look at some of his Taler paa
Marielyst Højskole (Speeches at Marielyst High School) further elucidates how
Grundtvig develops and elaborates the notion of two antagonistic groups, and
why he associates the Germans with the giants. The description below sounds
like an elaboration of the passage from Nordens Mythologi cited above. In the
speech he delivered on 4 November 1861, the contrast is already established in
a few sentences:
Denmark, our beloved fatherland, is one of the smallest but also one of
the oldest kingdoms in the whole world and has been the happiest of
them all, even though it always had the great misfortune to border on
Germany. The little Danish people is so gentle, so calm and so peaceful as
a people can be in this world, but nobody can live in peace longer than
his neighbour permits. Our southern neighbour, the German, exactly
like the old Romans, does not want peace because he is one of the most
pugnacious and power-hungry people in the whole world and so quarrel-
some that it has become a saying in Danish “to be as wroth as a German”.
grundtvig, 1956, pp. 55–56
According to Grundtvig, Denmark is “one of the smallest but also one of the
oldest kingdoms in the world”, and it is happy, kind, calm and peaceful, whereas
Germany, in contrast, is large, quarrelsome and power-hungry. Both n ational
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222 Schulz
characterisations are substantiated by the languages of both countries; just

like Denmark’s regular and harmonious landscape, the Danish mother tongue
is also sweet, harmonious and soft. Germany, in contrast, is portrayed as a very
large and mountainous land with impressive peaks (but no coastal region,
at least according to Grundtvig), the inhabitants of which naturally speak in
harsh, intricate and overblown tones. Thus, Grundtvig draws a clear demarca-
tion between the peaceful little Danish motherland and its large and a ggressive
neighbour to the south (a demarcation far clearer in theory than in political re-
ality and in terms of language and national status in the duchies of Schleswig
and Holstein).
However, Grundtvig does not content himself with merely establishing
the opposition between the two countries. He makes an effort to imbue this
national antagonism with a symbolic dimension by illustrating it with – or
rather, in his own view, deriving it from – Old Norse myth, thus drawing on
the increased authority any myth may bestow upon the concerns of a group
that is united in accepting this particular mythology as a primordial expres-
sion of its own prehistory. To this end, Grundtvig takes the allegory of the op-
position between the Æsir and giants and states (in a later speech, taking up
once again the noxious German influence on Danish education): “if Danes and
people of the high north think in a natural way, it will become obvious that
Danish and German are just as irreconcilable as fire and water or as Æsir and
giants” (Grundtvig, 1956, p. 75). He thus interprets history in the light of Old
Norse mythology, which he understands as a kind of condensed expression of
the specific Danish or northern national or folk spirit. In his triumphant excla-
mation of 1851 in the poem Skjaldelivet i Danmark (Poetic Life in Denmark),
he again draws upon this opposing identification of Danes and Germans with
Æsir and giants, respectively, when he recounts how the brute German frost-gi-
ants learned the lesson of Mjöllnir-Denmark’s superior strength in the Battle of
Fredericia, when the Danish forces resisted the German siege and succeeded
in driving back their forces in the First Schleswig War (Grundtvig, 1851, p. 524).
Grundtvig’s endeavour to establish reference to Old Norse myth as a more
widespread poetic language particularly suited to the Danish Volksgeist, or na-
tional character, was far too intricate to call forth imitation by other poets to
any significant degree. Where it nonetheless did leave a mark was on the rather
propagandistic publications emanating from the so-called mythological folk
high-school in Northern Schleswig (or South Jutland), where, in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, Grundtvig’s historical-poetic use of Old
Norse myth was taken up by people such as the director of Ronshøved High
School, Aage Møller (1885–1978). Under the impression of the traumatic ex-
perience of the Second World War, he cites in his book Nordiske myter (Nordic
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Myths) from 1947 the Germans as “an example of how the giants can seize
power. In our days, this people is in every respect characterised by the way of
thinking and feeling of giants. Their entire behaviour is characterised by giant-
ness” (Møller, 1947, p. 41). Møller illustrates this point by referring to border dis-
putes between Germany and Denmark that threaten the Danish nation state.
The Second World War nonetheless changed the political map in many re-
spects, and after 1945 the global political constellation evolved into a bipolar
situation, in which the world was divided into two clearly opposed blocs, “Us”
and the “Other” – depending, of course, on where the narrator or observer
stood. This bipolar or dualistic view of society is, for example, expressed by the
early Marvel Comics’ Mighty Thor,7 beginning in the early 1960s. Here, Þórr/
Thor becomes an American superhero, and as such he plays his customary role
as protector and defender of mankind, depicted as a bulwark against the Soviet
Union as well as a combatant on the side of the US in Vietnam.
The atomic bombs dropped by the United States on the cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in August 1945 showed that modern warfare could potentially
destroy the entire world, or at least extinguish the entire human race, and that
in the long term peace could only be realised by overcoming polarised world-
views. To think of war in positive terms as a cathartic event had become vir-
tually impossible; following the student revolts and the peace movement of
the late 1960s, at any rate, there was a growing recognition of the fact that the
policy of deterrence and an escalation of the arms race was no way to save the
world, but could only lead to a nuclear Ragnarǫk. The necessity of replacing a
dichotomous world view by a more integrated one became still more obvious
with a growing insight into the global ecological interdependences, placed on
the agenda by ecological groups.
The altered political situation – seen as the referential framework of fiction –
opened the way for a different perspective on the social world of Old Norse
myth. From the 1970s onward, literary and artistic works take a different ap-
proach to the oppositions found in Old Norse myth and set about deconstruc
ting them. (It is perhaps no coincidence that this reconsideration occurred in
the time when anthropological structuralism was beginning to analyse myth
in general as based on pairs of binary oppositions). In Scandinavia, an increa
sing number of retellings attempted to overcome the rigid pattern of inclusion
versus exclusion as attested in Grundtvig’s mythological dualism. Here, as a
means of advocating a more nuanced understanding of society as a whole, the
god Loki comes into play.
7 From August 1962 until February 1966 in the science fiction series Journey into Mystery. In
issue #126 (March 1966) the series was retitled Thor.
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224 Schulz
Loki is one of the most multifaceted and ambivalent characters in Old Norse
myth. In Gylfaginning (Chapter 33), Snorri introduces him as follows:
That one is also reckoned among the Æsir whom some call the Æsir’s
calumniator and originator of deceits and the disgrace of all gods and
men. His name is Loki or Lopt, son of the giant Farbauti. Laufey or Nal
is his mother. Byleist and Helblindi are his brothers. Loki is pleasing and
handsome in appearance, evil in character, very capricious in behaviour.
He possessed to a greater degree than others the kind of learning that is
called cunning, and tricks for every purpose. He was always getting the
Æsir into a complete fix and often got them out of it by trickery.
snorri sturluson, 1987, p. 26
According to this passage, Loki’s father is a giant, whereas his mother was prob-
ably a goddess (cf. Meulengracht Sørensen, 1977, pp. 763f.; Clunies Ross, 1994,
p. 64). This constellation breaks a taboo in the social world of Old Norse myth,
which strongly prohibits relations between a male giant and a goddess (Clunies
Ross, 1994, pp. 93–127). Loki seems to be the offspring of the only exception to
this rule. Perhaps this is the reason for Snorri’s wording that Loki “is reckoned
among the Æsir”, indicating that being an Áss (a god) is rather a question of at-
tribution than of descent.8 Loki’s allegiance to the gods is further strengthened
by his blood-brotherhood with Odin, attested in the Eddic poem Lokasenna
(stanza 9). Although Loki’s role and position in Old Norse myth (taken as a
whole) is subject to multifarious and highly divergent interpretations,9 the de-
cisive feature for the post-medieval reception of the god is the great variety of
individual myths at its disposal; Loki acts as a helper of the gods when he pro-
vides the gods with their most precious objects, such as Þórr’s hammer Mjöll-
nir and Oðinn’s spear Gungnir, or when he assists Þórr with the recovery of his
hammer from the giant Þrymr. He provokes problems that he subsequently
resolves, as when he helps the giant Þiazi abduct the goddess Iðunn, or when
he talks the other gods into the contract with the giant builder, promising the
8 According to Old Norse myth, the giants were the first anthropomorphic beings, as is known
from Vafþrúðnismál 29–33, and Snorri (in Gylfaginning, Chapter 6) regards Oðinn and his
brothers as descendants of the giants (the Eddic poem Völuspá may suggest this). The Eddic
poem Hymiskviða (Hymir’s Poem) ascribes both father and mother from among the giants
to an individual god, such as Týr. Thus, the difference between gods and giants cannot have
been of an essential character (cf. Schulz, 2004, pp. 65–72).
9 For an overview, see Schjødt (1981) and Ármann Jakobsson (2009). This manifold character
is further augmented when one takes into consideration the names Lóðurr, Logi or Loptr as
other names of the same god Loki.
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sun, the moon and the goddess Freyja as a reward for building Ásgarðr. In both
cases, Loki is the one that saves the day, by bringing Iðunn back and by pre-
venting the giant builder from finishing his work in time, so that he loses his
claim to any reward. Loki is unequivocally evil when it comes to his part in
the murder of Baldr and in Ragnarǫk, the downfall of the gods, when he takes
sides with the giants and the monsters – his children, the wolf Fenrir and the
Midgard serpent – against the Æsir. Even these few examples show the wide
spectrum of notions and functions that can be associated with this god. Loki
may represent the ultimate evil, a Mephisto-like trickster, or a border-crosser
and mediator between gods and giants.
It is the last-mentioned facet of his nature that becomes increasingly attrac-
tive in the second half of the twentieth century, concomitant with a growing
awareness of common dangers and globally shared interests. Associated with
both giants – through his paternal descent – and with gods, Loki transcends
the boundaries between these groups and proves able to convey a more com-
plex and varied idea of their respective points of view. When the need arises
to show that even in times of the Cold War the people on the other side of the
Iron Curtain have the same desire for peace and a safe environment, a border-
crosser may become a much sought-after figure.
The most popular example of such a reinterpretation of mythic history is
the novel Ragnarok, published in 1982 by the Danish author and philosopher
Villy Sørensen (1929–2001).10 The novel was written in the context of a possible
Ragnarǫk that destroys the whole world – a nuclear catastrophe, as one can
already conclude from the title illustration, which depicts a mushroom cloud
(see Figure 11.1).
Sørensen depicts a mythic society characterised by an apparent dualism
between gods and giants. Closer examination, however, reveals that in the en-
tire story there is not a single example of aggression on the part of the giants.
Rather, the reputed antagonism serves the purpose of masking the fact that the
community of the gods is far from being a uniform block. Quite to the contrary,
there is a division into two factions: those that preach war and aggression (the
gods of war) and those that preach peace (the gods of love). In the novel, Odin
does what rulers often do to distract attention from internal political tensions;
he focuses on a common external adversary, exploiting the alleged antagonism
of gods and giants, to secure unity among the gods. He thus demonstrates at
the level of mythical narrative how complex domestic affairs are handled by
reducing the scope of action to taking sides in a binary opposition between
“Us” and the “Other”, thus displacing the conflict to the external frontier of his
10 The novel was translated into English under the title The Downfall of the Gods, published
by the University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, 1989).
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226 Schulz
Figure 11.1 Andy Li Jørgensen’s cover illustration for Villy Sørensen’s Ragnarok.
En gudefortælling (Aarhus: Centrum, 1982)
realm. Time and again he emphasises to his fellow gods that “the most impor-
tant thing is unanimity among the gods” and “the most important thing is that
the gods stand together” (Sørensen, 1982, pp. 19, 42). In his anxiety to maintain
his own authority over the gods and to close their ranks, Odin automatically
reminds a (politically informed) reader of the late twentieth century of the
dictators of the dwindling Soviet Union or East Germany; Asgard seems like a
society under surveillance, where Odin makes Hugin and Munin spy on every-
body, forbids the other gods to leave the country, and keeps the information he
gains from his watchtower Lidskjalf for himself. “He [Odin] knows that he loses
the authority over gods and humans as soon as there is no war” (Sørensen,
1982, p. 101). This is the diagnosis Loke clear-sightedly confides to Balder; if
Odin resembles a twentieth-century dictator, Loke resembles a double agent.
In Sørensen’s Ragnarok he is the border-crosser par excellence. He is placed at
the very heart of the community of gods and is at the same time unmistakably
distinguished from them as belonging to the Other. This already becomes clear
when Loke is mentioned for the first time, in the context of the description of
the gods’ assembly. First, the other gods are introduced and characterised, and
then their seating arrangement in the assembly is described:
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[opposite Njörðr and Baldr], at Odin’s side sat Týr – and Loke. Loke was
neither an Áss nor a Vane and neither light nor dark, – he was of giant ori-
gin and that was still perceivable, even if so much time has passed since
he crossed the divide to the gods that nobody could remember, except
Odin himself, of course. Whereas the gods normally regarded the giants
as much more stupid than themselves, they could hardly rival Loke. He
had capabilities they lacked, but which some giants had: shape-shifting
and turning himself into various animals, yes, he could even transform
others, and the other gods were a little afraid of him. But the gods made
use of Loke’s shape-shifter qualities and sometimes sent him to the giants
to spy on them in the shape of a bird – some of them had a suspicion
that the giants used him in just the same way. Perhaps Loke did not feel
really accepted among the gods because he was half-giant, and perhaps
this was the reason why he so frequently teased and mocked them. But it
may as well be the other way around: that they became fed up with him
because he teased and mocked them so frequently.
sørensen, 1982, pp. 14–15
In contrast to former renditions of Old Norse myth, the intermediate position

Loke occupies in Sørensen’s story has no unfavourable connotations. Quite
to the contrary: it enables him to take a more comprehensive view of global
problems. Just because Loke is an outsider, he is able to recognise the facti-
tious or artificial character of the opposition between gods and giants. As a
representative of the so-called Scandinavian “third standpoint” (in the 1970s a
much-discussed attitude toward the bipolar global situation in the Cold War),
he attempts to stage a revolt from the centre.11 To this end, Loke tries to form an
alliance with Balder, the only one among the gods who, ridden by nightmares,
is able to understand the political dilemma in which Asgardian politics are
mired; an enduring peace can only be obtained against Odin’s will, by means
of a revolution. That is exactly what Loke asks Balder to do: he should usurp
Odin’s throne and make peace with the giants. Balder is tormented by doubts –
a Classical theodicy: “If Odin knew that this would be the end why did he not
do anything to avoid it? Why did he simply let the wolf grow and become an
increasing danger? But if he didn’t know … then Odin did not know everything,
and what kind of god would he be then?” (Sørensen, 1982, pp. 50–51).
11 Oprør fra midten (Revolt from the Centre) is the title of an essay book Sørensen published
in 1978 together with the physicist Niels I. Meyer and the politician K. Helveg Petersen,
in which he analysed society and proposed a utopian social ideal, and which became a
tremendous success.
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228 Schulz
Even though Loke fails to incite Balder to usurp Odin’s throne and make
peace with the giants, his endeavour to deconstruct the dualism is partially
successful; the goddess Ydun, for instance, returns from her kidnapping by
the giant Tjasse (the responsibility for which is open to question, and may be
Loke’s) “many years older and wiser”, and she can tell of no harm inflicted upon
her in Giantland. Likewise, the god Freyr, who climbs Odin’s watchtower Lid
skjalf without authorisation, realises that the giants are “a kind of – neither hu-
mans nor gods, of course, but still …”. (Sørensen, 1982, p. 61). The story ends, as
handed down in the Eddic poem Skírnismál as well as in Snorri’s Gylfaginning
(Chapter 37), with Freyr’s falling in love with the giantess Gerðr. Whereas in the
medieval text it is Freyr’s servant and friend Skírnir that travels to the land of
the giants to woo Gerðr, in Sørensen’s retelling Loke is the go-between that ne-
gotiates Freyr’s wooing in Giantland. This is one of the rather few examples of
a deviation from the medieval sources in the novel, and it confirms that Loke’s
role is in fact conceptualised as that of a mediator. On the whole, it is striking
how the message of Sørensen’s text differs from the medieval sources as well
as from Grundtvig’s mythological compendium, not really on account of the
“mythic facts” or the plot it narrates, but on account of an altered point of view,
rooted in a radically altered interpretative framework.
The interpretative tradition Sørensen deconstructs and rejects is – once
again – the dualistic view of Old Norse myth as adopted by N.F.S. Grundtvig. He
explicitly rejects viewing mythic society as merely representing an opposition
between good and evil, rather reading the myths as reflections of conflicts in
the human psyche, mapping complex (socio-) psychological relations onto the
mythical account (Sørensen, 1983). His mouthpiece is Loke, who – as Sørensen
expresses in the words from Søren Kierkegaard’s Hverken – eller (Neither – Nor)
– “continuously militates against over-simplification and who is willing to take
the risk of ambiguity upon himself” (Behrendt, 1983).
Sørensen earned a fusillade of protests from folk high-school teachers that
thought his adaptation contradicted the essence of Old Norse myth; Thor’s
predisposition to solve problems by violence and Odin’s opaque policy were
as incompatible with those gods’ positive values in their Grundtvigian view
of mythology as were the giants in their role as peaceful inhabitants of a de-
veloping country and (most of all) Loke’s role as a peacemaker.12 Ragnarok
provoked a debate in the Danish newspapers Weekendavisen Berlingske Aften
12 Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen called attention to the fact that for Grundtvig Loke did by
no means “signify Evil, but rather an amalgam of those qualities possessed by human
beings who find themselves torn between the Divine and the Daemonic: Teasing wit and
intelligence” (Lundgreen-Nielsen, 1994, p. 66).
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and Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten and in the periodical of the folk high-school

movement, Højskolebladet: this debate developed over several months in
1983 and discussed the legitimacy of Sørensen’s reinterpretation of Old Norse
myth.13 In this debate it became evident how to this day a dualistic view and a
more complex comprehension of a mythological system coexist side by side,
in one and the same country.
Even if Ragnarok provoked vehement protest in Denmark, it seems that the
growing consciousness of international interdependences with regard to the
consequences of global warfare, but also to environmental pollution, global
economies and the living conditions in so-called developing countries, paved
the way for adaptations advocating a more complex view of mythological soci-
eties such as that of the Æsir. This is confirmed by the fact that Villy Sørensen’s
Ragnarok may be the most popular example of this kind of reinterpretation of
Old Norse mythology, but by no means the only one. Other examples are Peder
W. Capellen’s play Lòke (1972) in Norway, Elisabet Kågerman’s novel I skuggan
av Ragnarök (In the Shadow of Ragnarök) from 1981 and Helena M. Henschen’s
pictorial novel Stormtid, Vargtid (Wind-Age, Wolf-Age) from 1985 in Sweden. All
these books assign to Loki a crucial role in overcoming the gulf between two op-
posing sides. Thus, Loki’s career in Scandinavian literature from the 1970s onward
may indicate a growing awareness of the artificial character of borders, and the
dubious nature of national interest as the guiding principle of political action.
References
Ægidius, J.P. (1992): Bragesnak. Volume 2: Den mytologiske tradition i dansk folkeo-
plysning i det tyvende århundrede (1910–1985). Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag.
Behrendt, F. (1983). Frihed for Loke. Weekendavisen Berlingske aften, 14–20 January
1983.
Blumenberg, H. (1979). Arbeit am Mythos. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Cappelen, P.W. (1972). Lòke. Oslo: Gyldendal.
Clunies Ross, M. (1994). Prolonged Echoes. Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Soci-
ety. Volume 1: The Myths. Odense: Odense University Press.
Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1851). Skjaldelivet i Danmark. Danskeren 4, 513–528.
Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1905 [1815]). Thryms Kvide eller Hammervisen. In Begtrup, H. (ed.),
Nik. Fred. Sev. Grundtvigs Udvalgte Skrifter (volume 3, pp. 121–142). Copenhagen:
Gyldendalske Boghandel.
13 A number of the articles contributing to the discussion are listed in Ægidius (1992, p. 262,
note 161).
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Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1907 [1832]). Nordens Mythologi 1832. In Begtrup, H. (ed.), Nik. Fred.
Sev. Grundtvigs Udvalgte Skrifter (volume 5, pp. 376–767). Copenhagen: Gyldendal-
ske Boghandel.
Grundtvig, N.F.S. (1956). Taler paa Marielyst Højskole 1856–1871 (ed. S. Johansen).
Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Henschen, H.M. (1985). Stormtid – Vargtid. En nordisk gudasaga. Bromma: Manner-
heim & Mannerheim.
Jakobsson, Á. (2009): Loki og jötnarnir. In various authors, Greppaminni: Rit til heiðurs
Vésteini Ólafssyni sjötugum (pp. 31–41). Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag.
Jónsson, F. (ed., 1908). Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. Volume 1: Rettet tekst med
tolkning. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Kågerman, E. (1981): I skuggan av Ragnarök. Gothenburg: Zindermans.
of Edda and Saga (pp. 41–67). Enfield Lock, UK: Hisarlik.
MacCallion, M.J. (2007). In-Groups and Out-Groups. In Ritzer, G. (ed.), Blackwell Ency-
clopedia of Sociology (volume 5, pp. 2338–2339). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Meissner, R. (1921). Die Kenningar der Skalden. Bonn: Kurt Schröder.
Meulengracht Sørensen, P. (1977). Starkaðr, Loki og Egill Skallagrímsson. In Pétursson,
E.G. (ed.), Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. júlí 1977 (volume 2, pp.
759–768). Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar.
Meyer, N.I., Helveg Petersen, K., and Sørensen, V. (1978). Oprør fra midten. Copenhagen:
Gyldendal.
Møller, A. (1947). Nordiske Myter. Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag.
Schjødt, J.P. (1981). Om Loke endnu en gang. Arkiv för nordisk literatur 97, 49–86.
Schulz, K. (2004). Riesen. Von Wissenshütern und Wildnisbewohnern in Edda und Saga.
Heidelberg: Winter.
Snorri, Sturluson (1987). Edda. Translated from the Icelandic and Introduced by Anthony
Faulkes. London: Dent.
Sørensen, V. (1982). Ragnarok. En gudefortælling. Aarhus: Centrum.
Sørensen, V. (1983). Myterne, Grundtvig og grundtvigianerne. Morgenavisen Jyllands-
Posten, 14 January 1983.
Sumner, W.G. (1907). Folkways. Boston: Ginn and Company.
Vries, J. de (1961). Forschungsgeschichte der Mythologie. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber.
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Chapter 12
Apocalypse Now: Norse Gods and the End of

the Nation
Carline Tromp
Each generation gets the myths it deserves. Like most ancient literature, Old
Norse myths and sagas have been told and retold, edited, interpreted and trans-
formed throughout the ages. Artists, writers, historians, politicians and the en-
tertainment industry all have made use of this material in their own way and
with their own widely differing agendas. Indeed, the American scholar Bruce
Lincoln has called myth “ideology in narrative form” (Lincoln, 1999, p. xii), and
clearly its abstract and pliable nature makes it possible to use the same myths
to legitimise different ideas and ideologies.
As has been noted elsewhere in this book, Old Norse myths and sagas have
been actively used to construct national identities, or, in the words of Bene-
dict Anderson (1983), to help shape “imagined communities” through shared
traditions, symbols and stories. Norwegian nation-builders in the 1800s, for
example, used Snorri Sturluson’s sagas of kings (Heimskringla) to strengthen
the idea of Norway as an independent nation with long roots (see Jørgensen,
2008), whereas today the sagas are often read as proof that egalitarian and
democratic principles are deeply ingrained in Norway’s national character
(see, e.g., Titlestad, 2013). Although the heyday of nation-building is over, the
medieval literature cultivated for this purpose still holds much value for the
Nordic nations, as can be seen, for instance, from the 2014 edition of the family
sagas by the Icelandic publisher Sagaforlag, published in Norwegian, Swedish,
Danish and Icelandic, with written introductions by these countries’ respec-
tive heads of state.
At the same time, these myths and sagas have been used in different,
sometimes radically opposing ways in various forms of literature. In several
recent works, authors have used various elements from Old Norse literature
to say something about a world in which national and cultural identities are
changing rapidly, and to comment, criticise or even de-construct the concept
of the nation. In this chapter, I take a closer look at several of these literary
works, in which the past (sometimes quite literally) collides with the present,
and in which mythical motifs are connected to modern phenomena such as

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232 Tromp
immigration policies, nationalism and political radicalisation. It will become

clear that Old Norse material is still being used in varying contexts, from cau-
tionary tales about the dangers of nationalism to politically flammable visions
of an idealised Nordic past. What these works have in common is the idea that
myths, or elements from myths, can be used to shed light on today’s society,
and perhaps even stake out a course for the future. These visions are not neces-
sarily hopeful. In this respect, it is interesting to note that one Old Norse nar-
rative in particular appears to be more popular than all the others: the story of
Ragnarök, the end of the world as we know it.
However, before setting off to the world’s end, I will provide some context
for the works discussed by briefly introducing some of the uses of Old Norse
material in literature, popular culture and political rhetoric after the Second
World War. The main focus of this chapter is on Norway, although other Nordic
and international perspectives are included as well.
1 Washing Off the Stain
The reputation of Old Norse cultural heritage suffered a severe blow after Nazi
Germany’s chief ideologists twisted it to fit their ideological agenda, in what
historian Terje Emberland has called “the occupation of history”.1 Even though
their interpretation of runes, artefacts and texts as witnesses of a lost and pure
Germanic culture was questionable at best, it proved hard to wash off the Nazi
stain after the Second World War. For many, the material, although a fami
liar and important part of cultural history, felt tainted or even dangerous. The
writer Erling Kittelsen, who has drawn much inspiration from Old Norse myth,
described in an interview how he struggled with the material in the 1970s:
“I thought that perhaps there would be some kind of hellish metaphysical stuff
there, perhaps I am trapped by it, perhaps I am an evil person” (Oterholm and
Enge, 2003). A heroic effort to “set free” the Old Norse material was undertaken
by author Tor Åge Bringsværd through the popular series of children’s books
Vår gamle gudelære (Our Ancient Mythology, 1985–1995, twelve volumes). In a
lecture delivered at the Historical Museum (Historiska museet) in Stockholm,
Bringsværd stated that the extreme right had stolen some of the core symbols
(kjernesymboler) from society, and he appealed to all, especially young people,
to “take back” history and mythology (Bringsværd, 1996).
1 In 2014, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History in Oslo celebrated the bicentenary of the
constitution with an exhibition. Emberland curated a section about the Nazi appropriation
of Norse myth called Minus fem: Okkupasjonen av historien (Minus Five: The Occupation of
History).
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Norse Gods and the End of the Nation 233
For others, the taboo status of Old Norse symbols and narratives was exactly
what made them so attractive. In the heavy metal movement of the late 1980s,
building upon a long rock and roll tradition of irreverence, bands incorporated
gruesome and blasphemous rhetoric into their lyrics. The Swedish band Ba-
thory added elements from Old Norse myth and a Romantic idea of Scandi-
navian nature. This laid the groundwork for the genre known as black metal,
which had its heyday in Norway in the 1990s (see Moynihan and Søderlind,
2003). Black metal musicians waged war on Christianity and political correct-
ness in lyrics about bloody war, Norse gods and the Viking spirit. Many of them
claimed to be Satanists, and some invoked the heathen gods of old.
The Norwegian black metal scene became enshrouded in its own myth,
fuelled by a number of crimes committed by people in or associated with the
scene. In 1992 and 1993, several churches in Norway were set on fire, and in 1993
Mayhem guitarist Øystein “Euronymus” Aarseth was killed by band member
Varg Vikernes. Vikernes, who was convicted of both murder and arson, became
one of the most visible and extreme faces of black metal. He has fashioned
himself as both an “Odinist” and “Pagan”, and later referred to his ideology as
“Ôðalism”, an idiosyncratic belief system rooted in a nationalism “based on
race”.2 No doubt due to the eponymity of figures such as Vikernes, and the exis-
tence of openly neo-Nazi black metal bands, the genre has often been accused
of being connected to far-right ideologies. Although this claim holds true for
certain individuals, it cannot be applied to the genre at large. Søderlind and
Moynihan (2003) point to certain meeting points and similarities in rhetoric,
but do not find a real ideological connection. Although black metal artists
flirted with fascist aesthetics, apocalyptic totalitarianism and violence, many
of them did not identify with a political ideology. Håvard Rem (2010) claims
that the fascination for Old Norse culture in the scene was essentially due to
its taboo status, a strong opposition to Christianity, as well as opposition to
leftist intellectuals (the “generation of ’68”) that dominated N
orwegian public
debate (Rem, 2010, pp. 172–179). Rem’s portrayal of the black metal scene has
been criticised by several people connected to the scene, but his book holds
some interesting theories, which I return to below.
Meanwhile, extreme right-wing movements continued to use Old Norse
symbols as identity markers. A striking example is the German clothing brand
Thor Steinar, which uses Norse names, runic symbols and Viking imagery, and
is well known internationally as neo-Nazi gear. This use of Old Norse has been
more common outside of Scandinavia (see, e.g., Mathias Gardell’s fascinating
study [2013] about Norse-inspired religious and political fringe groups in the
2 For further explanation, see Vikernes’ own website: https://thuleanperspective

.com/2013/07/31/why-odalism/ (last consulted: 7 March 2016).
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234 Tromp
United States). However, early in 2016, a movement called Odins soldater (Sol-
diers of Odin) turned up first in Finland, then in Norway, claiming to patrol the
streets to protect citizens.3 The Finnish movement has ties to neo-Nazi groups,
whereas the Norwegian counterpart (which has shown little activity after 2017)
has described itself primarily as critical of immigration. In Sweden, the Na-
tional Socialist Nordiska Motstandsrörelsen (Nordic Resistance Movement) fea-
tures a T-rune (tiwaz) on its flags, which have been waved in cities throughout
Scandinavia in the last couple of years.4 The use of the Old Norse is, of course,
by no means limited to the far right. Both Gardell (2003) and Stephanie von
Schnurbein’s study of neo-paganism (Norse Revival, 2016) show a large and com-
plex landscape in which religious beliefs and cultural traditions intersect with
political views from the far right to the far left and Green part of the spectrum.
2 Postmodern Vikings
In recent years, there has been a more ideologically neutral invasion of Vikings
into the global entertainment industry. Films such as the Thor series (Kenneth
Branagh, 2011, 2013, 2017, forthcoming), Pathfinder (Marcus Nispel, 2007) and
Hammer of the Gods (Farren Blackburn, 2013), as well as Nordic productions
such as Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009) and Ragnarok (Mikkel
Brænne Sandemose, 2013) and the popular television series Vikings (hbo,
2013–present) all use mythological tropes or are set in the Viking Age, which
they present with varying accuracy. To this one can add computer games with
titles such as War of the Vikings, Viking: Battle for Asgard, Jotun and The Banner
Saga, as well as theatre plays, operas, TV shows and comic book series inspired
by Old Norse heritage. Both in the Nordic countries and beyond, fiction in-
spired by Old Norse literature is blooming, not least in children’s and young
adult fiction.5 Translations, re-writings and popular editions steadily continue
to appear,6 as do historical novels.
3 “Vil patruljere i Kristiansand”: Fædrelandsvennen, 25 January 2016.

4 “Nazis Demonstrated in Stockholm”: http://expo.se/2016/nazister-demonstrerade-i-stock-
holm_7178.html (last consulted: 8 March 2016).
5 Norwegian examples include Kristine Tofte’s Song for Eirabu series, Siri Pettersen: Odinsbarn
(Odin’s Child, 2013), Tone Almhjell: Vindeltorn (The Twistrose Key, 2013), Tonje Tornes: Hulder
(2013) and Marin Fyrileiv: Bergtatt (Bewitched, 2013). See also Lassen’s (2009) study on Old
Norse myth in Danish books and TV series for children.
6 In Norway alone, new editions aimed at a general audience have appeared from 2014 to 2016
of the Poetic Edda, Snorri Sturluson’s sagas of kings, the medieval Icelandic manuscript Flat-
eyjarbók (The Flatey Book) and collected family sagas. To this can be added a number of
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A number of contemporary authors use Old Norse mythological elements

in works that mainly deal with their own time. Following the definition for-
mulated by John J. White, these might be described as mythological novels,
meaning “first, that the mythological parallel is suggested as an analogy to the
contemporary world in which the main events of the novel occur; and second,
that the parallel is an extended one and could be described as a motif” (White,
1971, p. 7). This is done in various ways. The British novelist A.S. Byatt juxta-
poses episodes from myth and contemporary realism in Ragnarok – The End
of the Gods (2012), in which a young girl growing up during the Second World
War finds a collection of Norse myths. Here, the novel presents a “world of
mythology” (White, 1971, p. 53) that does not directly “touch” contemporary
life but influences it nonetheless. In other cases, mythological elements can
be used as a structuring device, as in the Norwegian Agnes Ravatn’s psycho-
logical thriller Fugletribunalet (The Bird Tribunal, 2013), in which the myth of
Baldr’s death is a recurring motif. The references can also be more subtle, as
in Erling Kittelsen’s trilogy of plays På himmelen (In the Sky, 2000), Fortell det
ikke (Don’t Tell It, 2009) and Soveren (The Sleeper, 2013), in which three female
figures reminiscent of the Norns turn up while topics such as environmental
crisis and destructive capitalism are being discussed. Kittelsen has also written
a number of “dialogues” with Eddic poetry, the latest of which is Fredsslutning
(Peace Settlement, 2016).
There is also another type of Old Norse mythological novel that does not
quite fit into White’s classification. In these novels, the borders between myth
and contemporary reality become unclear, and the mythological references
come alive, as it were. An interesting early example is Svava Jakobsdóttir’s Ice-
landic novel Gunnlaðar saga (The Saga of Gunnlöð) from 1989. In the novel, a
rebellious teenage girl is overcome by visions in which she finds herself sha
ring the experiences of a priestess called Gunnlöð, a figure known from Ed-
dic poetry. The novel is narrated by the girl’s mother, and her thoughts, their
conversation and both women’s dreams and visions float seamlessly into each
other, leaving for the reader to decide what is real and what is not. While Sva-
va describes a mental collision of worlds, it becomes physical in a number of
more recent stories about Norse gods visiting modern-day society. This motif
recent nonfiction books about Viking and medieval subjects; among others, Saga Bok’s series
Sagakongene (Saga Kings) and Sagaenes verden (The World of the Sagas), Øystein Mortens
Jakten på Olav den Hellige (In Search of Saint Olav, 2013) and Jakten på Olav Tryggvason (In
Search of Olaf Trygvasson, 2015). Also worth mentioning is the Icelandic philologist Berg
sveinn Birgisson, who has written a nonfiction book about the Viking chieftain Geirmund
Heljarskinn (Den svarte vikingen “The Black Viking”, 2013), as well as a brand new “saga” about
him (Sogaen om Geirmund Heljarskinn “The Saga of Geirmund Heljarskinn”, 2016).
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is found in works by authors such as Janne Teller, Søren Lyngbye, Neil Gaiman
and Cornelius Jakhelln. I return to this below.
3 Postnational Storytelling
In a 1936 essay, Walter Benjamin cited the German saying Wann jemand eine
Reise tut, kann er was erzählen: “When a traveller gets home, he will have some-
thing to talk about”. Benjamin used it to draw up a distinction between two
kinds of storytellers: “[P]eople imagine the storyteller as someone who has
come from afar. But they enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at
home, making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions”
(Benjamin, 2006, p. 363). Although these categories were already overlapping
when Benjamin wrote this, today it would be difficult to find someone that
falls into only one of them. In the West, the category of “traveller” has grown to
include almost everyone, whereas locals staying at home will find themselves
confronted with different cultures and traditions whether they wants it or not.
Here and there are no longer clear concepts, Per Thomas Andersen argues in
a study of migration and literature (Andersen, 2013, p. 18). In light of this, it
might not be altogether surprising to find that myth, strongly connected to the
soil of home, now turns up in stories that are all about movement, migration
and cultural meetings.
Several literary theorists, mostly coming from the field of postcolonial stud-
ies, have argued that migration is a core theme in today’s literature. In his in-
fluential 1994 book The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha identified a “new
world literature”, the main themes of which concern “migrants, the colonised,
or political refugees” and “border and frontier conditions” (Bhabha, 2006,
p. 17). The Danish scholar Søren Frank has gone further and stated that the mi-
grant has been the main character of twentieth-century literature as a whole
(Andersen, 2013). At the same time, ideas about the nation are changing. Elisa-
beth Oxfeldt writes that “we live in a globalised, multicultural society, where
it becomes unnatural to think inside of traditional, national frameworks, but
also unnatural to completely bypass them” (Oxfeldt, 2012, p. 18). She argues
that one can now speak of postnational novels, which criticise or question the
idea of the nation rather than strengthening national self-images. In his essay
“DissemiNation”, Bhabha draws on the ideas of Benedict Anderson when argu-
ing that nations essentially are produced as narrations. There is, however, a
deep split between two types of narration; on the one hand, nations function
as “imagined communities” as Anderson has identified them, through linear,
consistent, pedagogical storylines, in which “the people” are a homogeneous
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mass, moving forward in time. On the other hand, there is actual, performative
time in which actual people live, in which each expression adds to and changes
the national narrative. In this split position, the process he calls “writing the
nation” takes place, and it is here that possibilities arise for outsiders and mi-
norities to produce counter-narratives (Bhabha, 2004, pp. 209–212).
In the remaining section of this chapter, I take a closer look at three books
in which Old Norse myth is used to draw up just such counter-narratives in
connection to migration. In Danish Janne Teller’s debut novel Odins ø (Odin’s
Isle, 1999), a strange little man called Odin arrives in a fictional country that re-
sembles Denmark. In Gudenes fall (The Fall of the Gods) from 2007, the debut
novel of Norwegian poet and musician Cornelius Jakhelln, the Norse gods seek
revenge a thousand years after they were forced into exile due to the arrival of
Christianity in the north. In 2011, the same Jakhelln published a largely auto-
biographical prose collection called Raseri (Rage, 2011), in which he traces his
own “radicalisation process”, where rage and fear about Muslim immigration is
connected to an obsession with Old Norse culture.
4 Odin as Asylum Seeker: Odins ø and the Threat of Nationalism
In both Odins ø and Gudenes fall, myth literally comes crashing into people’s
lives.7 Teller and Jakhelln draw up worlds in which gods and other mythical
creatures exist in and/or beside modern Nordic societies. In Odins ø, Odin turns
up on an island in the strait between Sydnorden (South-North) and Nordnor-
den (North-North), which resemble Denmark and Sweden/Norway. In Gudenes
fall, one encounters a disturbing vision of Norway’s future; immigrants have
flooded Oslo, which is re-named Akesh Mekka Grandiosa (a sarcastic sneer to
both Muslims and Norwegians: Grandiosa is the name of a hugely popular Nor-
wegian brand of frozen pizza), and the masses indulge in torture TV shows
(Jakhelln, 2007, p. 176). Both novels take place on the verge of the year 2000 and
use elements from Old Norse myths about the end of the world as a narrative
framework.
Janne Teller’s Sydnorden is a small, well-organised Nordic kingdom. Apart
from several religious sects announcing Doomsday, things are peaceful. The
wars with their neighbour to the north are a thing of the past, and the country
prides itself on being open and tolerant. One day, a man named Odin falls out
7 In this and the following subsection, the analysis builds on the author’s article “Odin i
tusenårskrise. Norrøn mytologi og nordisk identitet i Janne Tellers Odins ø og Cornelius
Jakhellns Gudenes fall”, Norsk Litteraturvitenskapelig Tidsskrift 18(1) (2015), pp. 16–33.
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of the sky onto a small island that seems untouched by modernity. In freezing
weather, he tries to walk to the mainland to find a veterinarian for his injured
horse. Frozen stiff, he is found by the busy banker Sigbrit Holland, who delivers
him to a hospital. It appears that no one in Sydnorden has heard of the island
Odin came from. Authorities decide he must be an illegal immigrant “from the
south”, but, because the old man seems confused and lacks ID papers, he is
locked up in a psychiatric ward. Holland, however, takes his story to the media,
and soon everyone wants a piece of Odin: religious groups (Christian, Jewish
and Muslim) see him as their Messiah, who has come to save his people before
Judgement Day. Politicians and bureaucrats use him as a pawn in the territorial
conflict that soon arises about the mysterious island.
National borders, histories and self-images are an important theme
throughout Odins ø, and it can well be read as what Elisabeth Oxfeldt has
called a postnational novel, which is “critical of national citizens, but even
more critical of modern, positivist notions of time, rationality and the view
of history” (Oxfeldt, 2012, p. 17). Published in 1999, it was also a contribution
to a heated debate about national identity, immigration and EU membership
that was going on in Denmark at the time. In a doctoral dissertation about
several other Danish novels from this time period, Clare Thomson observed
an “ironic national f eeling” (Thomson, 2003, p. 3) and a sense of self-reflection
about national identity that was prevalent both in the public debate and in
literary texts. This also applies to Odins ø; Teller takes a clear stance against
nationalism and xenophobia, using Odin’s outsider perspective to show that
the concepts people live by are arbitrary and outdated; for example when dip-
lomats try to explain to Odin what a “nation” is:
“A nation is a country, and a country is the definition of a territory under a

leadership, usually characterized by the same language, the same culture,
the same ethnic origins and the same religion”.
“Only it is not necessary to have the same religion”, a delegate said.
“You don’t have to have the same language either”, said another, and yet
another was nodding vigorously and added: “A nation can also consist of
more than one culture and more than one ethnic group”.
“Because of immigration, most nations today contain people from many
different ethnicities”, said a fourth one.
teller, 1999, p. 79
The territorial dispute about the small island quickly escalates and threatens
to turn into a war. The friendly tone between Sydnorden and Nordnorden har
dens and old wounds are opened, bringing to mind Freud’s explanation of
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feuds between peoples as instrumental to keep them together: “It is always

possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as
there are other people left to receive the manifestation of their aggressiveness”
(Bhabha, 2004, p. 214). The philosopher Jürgen Habermas, writing about the
consequences of globalisation for the nation, has observed several tendencies
in Western societies, one of which he calls a “hardening of the national iden-
tity” (Habermas, 2001, p. 72): a rise in nationalism and xenophobia, combined
with political fragmentation and a decrease in solidarity. This mechanism can
be seen clearly in the society described in Odins ø. The novel can well be read as
a cautionary tale to show that the real threat to society does not come from for-
eigners, but from nationalism, lack of historical awareness, a growing distance
and distrust between people, and their ensuing vulnerability to radicalisation.
However, what exactly is Odin’s role in all this? The mythical universe he
must have fallen from remains “behind the curtain”; the only glimpse is a cryp-
tic message about Odin being on his way to deliver bad news. Katja Schulz
(2011) has pointed out that the “Gods on Earth” topos is well known from fanta-
sy literature; old, half-forgotten deities walk the earth, unrecognised and with
no understanding of the society they are in. Typically, they share few traits
with the mythical figures on which they are based, and they have lost their
divine authority. Schulz finds a similar motif in Søren Lyngbye’s Frejas tårer
(Freya’s Tears, 2001) and Andrea Fisker’s Lokes høj (Loki’s Hill, 2005) and argues
that the gods in these novels no longer represent a specific Nordic or religious
identity. They have become rootless, postmodern figures. This would put Odins
ø into the sphere of popular entertainment in which cultural symbols are
thrown into a giant melting pot: comics in which Vikings fight King Kong and
computer games in which Thor encounters monsters from Greek mythology.
This fits well with the fact that Odin is described several times as “foreign”,
a stranger, rather than a Nordic archetype. More than anything else, Teller’s
Odin resembles an asylum seeker arriving in a Western country.
However, I do not think one should entirely discard the connection between
the story told in Odins ø and the attributes and functions of the mythical Odin.
It is not a coincidence that it is a man bearing the name of the All-Father, the
god of war and knowledge that wandered the universe trying to gain insight
in both present, past and future, who visits Sydnorden at this time of strain.
This can be gathered from the effect of Odin’s arrival; the national narrative,
represented in the novel by archives, libraries and official records, immediately
starts to crack and peel. Odin does not have to act; by simply turning up, he
changes the story at the heart of the nation by not fitting in, prompting ques-
tions nobody can answer. Both Odin and the strange island on which he ar-
rived resist rational explanations; they exist but are invisible in people’s minds.
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240 Tromp
In the novel, this is connected to the writing of history; the oldest source on
Sydnorden’s history dates from 1203. Following the parallels between Denmark
and Sydnorden into the past, this would mean that the Viking Age, in fact the
whole pre-Christian era, has not been recorded at all. Everything that is not
written down has simply been wiped off the mental map and forgotten, lost in
a powerful national narrative. From this perspective, the book can be seen as a
counter-narrative to self-satisfied national history.
Teller uses the Eddic poem Völuspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy) as a framework,
starting each of the thirteen chapters with a poem paraphrasing a part of it. Bit
by bit, the poems start to intertwine with the main plot as both narratives pre-
pare for a devastating war: Ragnarök in the poem, and Doomsday/war in the
novel. Myth also leaks into the story through other channels: Names, symbols
and Eddic imagery appear in dreams and riddles. However, like the mysterious
island that cannot be explained by either science, history books, oral tradition
or visions, no one seems to be able to discover the whole truth about Odin.
The person that comes closest – the unlucky diplomat Lennart Torstensson,
who has feverish dreams reminiscent of dream sequences in saga literature –
dies before he can tell anyone. At the end of the book, war is nonetheless
avoided, and Odin travels back to wherever it is he came from. Teller offers no
real closure for Sydnorden, however: while the main characters all leave in dif-
ferent directions, some of them literally sailing off the map, the country is left
in turmoil and confusion.
5 Odin as Angry White Man: Gudenes Fall and Black Metal
The Norwegian poet Cornelius Jakhelln has long shown a keen interest in Old
Norse culture; in poem collections such as Yggdraliv (2004), Norse mythologi-
cal elements are cross-cut with references to philosophy, the natural sciences
and urban life in European capitals. In his award-winning debut novel Gudenes
fall from 2007, the gods have been chased off (or retreated voluntarily; the ac-
count is ambiguous on this part) to an underground existence after Christian-
ity (officially) came to the north in the year 1000. Unlike in Odins ø, Jakhelln’s
Odin remembers exactly who he is and what he used to be. From his exile, he
still has a full overview of the Upperworld. The world seen through his eyes is
a terrible place, in which mankind does its best to annihilate both itself and
planet Earth. Seen from Odin’s perspective (he is the main narrator), Gudenes
fall is basically a revenge story: a typical counter-narrative. However, the no
vel is full of irony, contradictions and clever traps laid out by the author. The
book was widely praised for its creativity and humour, and was read mostly as
a satirical re-boot of Eddic myth. However, it also voices an interesting scope
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of ideas about nation, culture and identity; Odin has lost his land, his people
and his influence, and he harbours a deep resentment toward the Christian
“colonisers”.
In this, Gudenes fall resembles Neil Gaiman’s influential fantasy novel Ame
rican Gods (2001), in which the main idea is that gods die if people stop belie
ving in them. In Gaiman’s novel, Odin and the trickster Loki, tired of their
struggle to survive on the fringes, create a scheme to set off a bloody war that
they will be able to feed off. Jakhelln’s Odin also wants war, and war he gets.
The novel’s chronology is deliberately confusing; a prologue set to 1100 e.F. (“af-
ter the Fall”, meaning the year 2100) foretells that the gods have won and rule
the world once more. The novel does end in all-out war in the year 999 e.F
(1999), although a series of strange plot twists results in the fact that it is not
gods and humans that meet on the battlefield, but gods and genetically engi-
neered human-robot-hybrids.
An example of Jakhelln’s sardonic humour is that he lets Odin complain
about the fact that only weird and marginal groups such as neo-pagans and
black metal bands still know who he is. Jakhelln is well acquainted with black
metal; although he is too young to have been part of the original scene in the
1990s, he is a musician and songwriter in several contemporary bands. Odin’s
rants echo popular tropes from (Norwegian) black metal. As Stephanie von
Schnurbein notes:
Like the book itself, this musical genre, and the subculture surrounding
it, combines an apocalyptic aesthetic, a fascination with war and war-
rior ethics, a misanthropic and misogynistic attitude, and the rejection of
modern capitalist society with an interest for an ancient mythic heritage
and its revival.
von schnurbein, 2016, p. 334
In the aptly titled non-fiction book Innfødte skrik (Native Screams, 2010), the
poet and journalist Håvard Rem describes the black metal scene as a counter-
culture of young men that did not feel at home in the rather boring, Protes-
tant and social-democratic Norway of the 1990s. The political scientist Terje
Tvedt has pointed out that Norway’s self-image as a nation in this period was
all about goodness: a stable, peace-keeping force in the world (Tvedt, 2002).
“It is typically Norwegian to be good”, Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland
famously said in 1992.8 As Tvedt and others have pointed out, the predominant
8 Although Brundtland’s quote referred to Norwegian triumphs in sports and international

trade, it has often been read as an epitome of the smug and self-satisfied Norway of the 1990s
(see Tvedt, 2002).
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line of thinking promoted by academics and left-wing politicians, based on

tolerance, equality and multiculturalism, also meant that national pride be-
came somewhat of a taboo (Witoszek, 2009). Rem understands black metal
as a rebellion against the ideological mainstream; these young men resented
the idea of Western man being guilty of the wrongs in the world (white man as
oppressor, coloniser and rapist), which was being baked into the new national
narrative. They turned it around, developing a view of white Nordic man not
as oppressor, but as oppressed. Rem notes a striking resemblance between the
way indigenous peoples in Latin America talked about their colonisers, and
the way individuals in the black metal scene described the coming of Christi-
anity to the north (Rem, 2010, pp. 180–182).
In an alternative music scene built heavily on provocation and image-
building, it would be unwise to draw a direct line between lyrics and artistic
expressions, and political beliefs. It can be drawn into question how many that
were part of the scene in fact shared the ideology presented by Rem, and to
what extent. However, the narrative he draws up is easy to spot in lyrics and
imagery. Black metal lyrics often revolve around the idea of a lost Golden Age,
which is contrasted to a corrupted present. Battles between Norse men and
intruders are an important motif, and one can find the idea that a devastating
but cleansing war is approaching. This apocalyptic kind of worldview is one
of the things that black metal fans and extreme rightists share (Søderlind and
Moynihan, 2003, p. 376). It can be seen as a form of millenarianism: the idea,
found in several religions but also in ideologies such as Fascism and Nazism,
that a new world order is approaching (Emberland, 2003).
In Gudenes fall, this mode of thinking is given centre stage, and it is mocked
at the same time. Odin yearns for a war: “Menksenes endtaim. De fainel føkking
æpåkkalips” (Jakhelln, 2007, p. 173). His story about the fall and the following
uprising of the gods is a rather literal version of the narrative Rem describes:
the oppressor taking the role of oppressed, then striking back. However, Odin
is no glorious figure. He is filled with apathy and rage, self-pity and shame,
melancholy and arrogance. He wistfully daydreams about the “Golden Age”
while listening to Wagner and smoking cigars. “I want my global empire and
my Norse colonies back”, he whines (Jakhelln, 2007, p. 75). His wife Frigg puts
it differently: “Thus, the virile, vital god she once loved had been reduced to
a mumbling and bitter old sod who didn’t even bother to wash on Saturdays”
(Jakhelln, 2007, p. 143). One could say that Odin shows symptoms of what the
literary scholar Paul Gilroy has called postcolonial melancholia: a sickly state
of apathy and mourning over an idealised, colonial past. In his 2005 book
by the same name, Gilroy used the term to diagnose Great Britain as stuck
in a national state of melancholia. A yearning for a simpler, grander past was
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accompanied by the rise of nationalism, racism and xenophobia.9 Odin’s

cultural pessimism, the idea that humankind is not moving forward, but de-
generating, combined with a Romantic view of pre-modern society, may not
be unique to the political right, but is nevertheless expressed and capitalised
upon primarily by right-wing populist movements. Odin’s general misanthropy
and belief in artistic genius reminds one most strongly of the intellectuals of
the “New Right” (see von Schnurbein, 2016).
Odin shakes off his apathy and wages war: a postcolonial revenge plot if
ever there was one. However, Jakhelln manages to pull the rug out from un-
der his own character, presenting a different story. Odin, as could be expected
from a god known for disguises, lies and manipulation skills, is soon revealed
to be an untrustworthy narrator. Other narrators come in, and their stories do
not match. At the same time, Odin’s perception of human society is filtered
through a kind of “Virtual Reality” machine, and it appears to be distorted by
speculative media logic. The language in the novel is a hyper-hybrid of dialects,
slang, quotes (sometimes clear, sometimes garbled) from literature, philoso-
phy and music, creating a polyphonic, jumbled whole in which all narrative
unity and authority is lost. Subplots and digressions disturb the main storyline.
It even has its own counter-narrative: the dwarf Regin, also sick of humanity,
tries to engineer a better type of human being using robotics. These creatures,
ultimately, are the ones to fight the gods in the battle Odin has prepared, as the
population of the Nordic countries by then has been eaten and shat out again
by a giant wolf-hybrid (!). Instead of culminating in Ragnarok, then, the novel
ends in a myriad of fragments and storylines that divert and oppose each other
rather than coming together; to quote Clare Thompson again, a form of “narra-
tive entropy” (Thomson, 2003, p. 321). The post-national novel, Thompson also
writes, is typical in that it resists endings:
In one sense, the hypertelic moment – beyond the end – will never be
broached, for the telos (the end of history, the end of the novel) is always
in the future for as long as the “text” (of history, of the novel) is read; in
another sense, in retrospectively analysing the “end” of history, the na-
tion, and so on, we have always already reached the hypertelic moment.
thomson, 2003, p. 322
9 These sentiments were all operationalised in the ukip’s Brexit campaign, and are indeed
key elements of the rhetoric applied by the new right-wing populist movements of the West,
from Donald Trump’s “America First” to Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France and Geert
Wilder’s Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands.
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244 Tromp
Throughout Gudenes fall, a slumbering awareness of living in end times is

near; there is talk about a pending Apocalypse, wars, famines, plagues and the
climate crisis. At the same time, the nation as a meaningful concept has failed.
In a conversation between Odin and the Norns, the mythical creatures that de-
cide man’s fate, the Norns talk about groups that are too big to make it possible
for all to know each other, too complex to have unifying stories. The wording is
reminiscent of Benedict Anderson’s influential description of the nation as an
imagined community: “It is imagined because the members of even the small-
est nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even
hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”
(Anderson, 1983, p. 5). In Gudenes fall, even this image is gone; the possibility
for a unifying narrative, or even a counter-narrative, has been given up. Instead
it all ends, literally, in a ton of shit.
6 Beyond Fiction: Raseri and Extremist Myth Making
On 22 July 2011, at 3.25 pm, a car bomb went off in front of a high-rise building
in Oslo’s city centre: the office of Norway’s prime minister. Witnesses saw an
armed man in a police uniform driving away from the scene. A few hours later,
the man, Anders Behring Breivik, managed to reach the small island of Utøya,
where a summer camp for youth members of the Norwegian Labour Party
(Arbeiderpartiet) was taking place. He killed sixty-nine of them, in addition
to the eight people that died in Oslo. Breivik was carrying a rifle in which he
had engraved the name Gungne in runes: the name of Odin’s spear. His gun he
dubbed Mjölnir, after Thor’s hammer.10 The 1,500-page “manifesto” that Breivik
made public does not refer much to Old Norse culture, but it does contain sev-
eral passages begrudging the lack of nationalism and “cultural self-confidence”
in western European countries, and the “national/cultural suicide” committed
by these societies. It also contains a question-and-answer-sequence in which
Breivik says he identifies strongly with this “Norse/Odinist” cultural back-
ground, although he considers himself a Christian (Breivik, 2011, p. 1360). Later,
in November 2015, Breivik sent letters from prison to the mass media in which
he retracted the latter identity and declared himself an “Odinist”.11
10 “Breivik drepte med ‘Tors hammer’ og ‘Odins spyd’”, Dagbladet, 4 May 2012. A detailed de-
scription of Breivik’s weapons was provided by the Norwegian crime police (Kripos) during
his trial in May 2012 and published in several Norwegian and international media outlets.
11 “Breivik: – Jeg er ikke kristen”, Vårt Land, 15 November 2015.
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The terrorist attack in Norway on 22 July 2011 has, of course, nothing to do

with Old Norse myth. It was a horrible act of violence that cannot be explained
without taking into account the Norwegian political system and the country’s
recent history, as well as political extremism, conspiracy theories and the per-
petrator’s background and mental state. Experts and analysts have expressed
varying views on these aspects, and it will probably never be fully understood
why this atrocious crime was committed. Still, the ideas Breivik presented
about his culture and identity did not evolve in a vacuum, and there are rea-
sons to mention his name in this chapter.
A week after the attacks, Cornelius Jakhelln, the author of Gudenes fall,
wrote an essay in the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet in which he ad-
dressed the “ticking time bombs” out there that might share Breivik’s ideas.
While unequivocally condemning the attack, Jakhelln confessed to under-
standing many of the terrorist’s feelings: “What was once a homogeneous peo-
ple has become manifold in character. This development is irreversible. The
Norway of our ancestors is forever gone. Therein lies a deep loss, but also great
possibilities that can be hard for some of us to see”, he wrote (Jakhelln, 2011a).
The essay is integrally taken up in his book Raseri, which was published later
that year. It might be described as a collage; published and unpublished texts
from 1999 to 2011 are collated together with a running commentary. It makes
for a chaotic read, full of digressions, repetitions and discussions between the
older and the younger Jakhelln and his militant alter ego “Sturmgeist”. Jakhel-
ln has a tendency to contradict himself and put layer upon layer with irony
and provocations, which sometimes makes him hard to follow. In the book’s
preface, however, Jakhelln states that he tries to understand his own rage and
map out his “radicalisation process”. However, as Giuliano d’Amico has pointed
out, the book contains many elements of “performative autobiography” (2015,
p. 312), in which the construction of an artistic persona is key.
In the book, Jakhelln describes Gudenes fall as a “fictitious cousin” to Ra-
seri (2011b, 24), and the books indeed have a lot in common. However, there
are some important differences. In Gudenes fall, Odin is presented both as an
angry white man and a parody of an angry white man. He feels marginalised
and downtrodden, he is angry and raging, but also sad, ashamed and afraid.
More than anything, he wants violent revenge. From research on known right-
wing terrorists, it is known that these kinds of feelings, brewing up a vicious
cocktail of hate combined with the feeling of having to act, are common (see
Skoglund, 2014). Odin may well be described as a “ticking time bomb”. How-
ever, whereas Gudenes fall is a sharp satire, things are more complicated in
Raseri. This is already indicated at the start; the book has two prologues, one
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246 Tromp
signed “Cornelius”, the other one “Sturmgeist”: a pseudonym and stage name
Jakhelln has used for years. Sturmgeist presents himself as a fanatic that feels
a connection to school shooters and terrorists. Cornelius claims that he wants
to find out why he has this fanatic streak and what it means: “Why am I so
often angry? Could the anger have led me away from reason and into barbary?
Could rage have led me, a young Nordic man with a philosophical education,
into a process of radicalisation with murder or suicide as a result?” he wonders
(Jakhelln, 2011b, p. 23). The final part of the sentence is crucial; Jakhelln strong-
ly distances himself from violence, choosing instead to let his rage run free in
art. Like in black metal, the flirtation with totalitarian aesthetics and violence
is very much a conscious aesthetic choice. Jakhelln styles himself as an “angry
white man” as well as an avantgarde artist, thus becoming “a prophet of Nordic
art-religion” (von Schnurbein, 2016, p. 336).
In a central part of the book, Sturmgeist describes a process reminiscent of
the protest narrative drawn up by Håvard Rem (Jakhelln also mentions Rem’s
book and says he recognises much of himself in it [2011b, p. 102]). He describes
how, when he was a young man growing up in peaceful, social-democratic
Norway, “heavy words such as fatherland, defence and national sovereignty did
not elicit any reaction other than a shrug” (Jakhelln, 2011b, p. 141). Jakhelln
identified with the left, but he also found left-wing politicians patronising and
arrogant. An outsider since early childhood, he was drawn to all sorts of ma-
ginalised groups, even flirting with Islam for a while because it was frowned
upon in his Christian hometown. In black metal, he found an outlet for his
rage, as well as ideas about heathen warrior culture that he found to be both
frightening and strangely comforting. In the essay “The Viking Virus” from 2005,
Jakhelln traces his growing obsession with Old Norse culture and what he calls
“ethnic fury” back to when he was living in an ethically mixed neighbourhood
in Paris in the early 2000s. Part of an ethnic minority for the first time in his life,
Jakhelln felt threatened by aggressive young men of North African and Arabic
descent. Yet, at the same time, it appeared to him that they had something he
lacked: a culture that they were proud of and identified with, an “ethnic self-
consciousness” (Jakhelln, 2011b, p. 57). As a result, and partly to his own dismay,
he began to identify heavily with his own Germanic/Norse background, the
best-known expression of which, he decided, was the Viking. A perfect anti-
dote to fear, shame and inferiority, the figure of the Viking invokes strength,
courage and a strong awareness of family, comrades and fatherland. It is inter-
esting to note that Jakhelln explicitly draws upon the stereotype of the Viking,
as it has been marketed internationally and in popular culture (see Gremaud,
2010, on Viking imagery in national branding), while at the same time connect-
ing it to a deep, authentic feeling of belonging. Jakhelln claims that stories,
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symbols and values, which he calls “memes”,12 are transmitted through culture
like a virus: “I believe most ethnic Norwegians are infested with Viking memes,
whether they want to confess to this or not” (Jakhelln, 2011b, p. 54). Although
he renounces race theory, he does make a case for a cultural identity based on
ethnicity, using terms such as “cultural genes” (kulturgen) and stating that the
“myth of the eternal Norwegian” lives “in his body” (Jakhelln, 2011b, p. 50).
In the running commentary in Raseri, Jakhelln stresses several times that
he has left much of this line of thinking behind him since 2005. In the book’s
concluding chapter, he describes his current motivation for writing about con-
troversial themes as a wish to shake up the conformism in Norwegian public
debate. At the same time, he states that the Breivik attack makes him want
to take political action: “I want to be a part of building the country” (å bygge
landet: Jakhelln, 2011b, p. 305). This is a kind of ambiguous statement, in which
irony again lurks in the background; å bygge landet is a set phrase in Norwe-
gian, coined by the same Labour party that Jakhelln claims to hate. This is char-
acteristic for the author and the book as a whole, which was met with strong
criticism by several Norwegian literary critics.13
Raseri is a deeply personal project – Jakhelln’s ideological analyses are con-
flated with autobiographical details, especially about being bullied as a child –
but it also has larger aims. In the preface, Jakhelln stresses the need to research
why young men are drawn to extreme thoughts. This seems even more urgent
today. The voice of the angry white man is heard ever louder in public debate,
on blogs and in online comment sections. One witnesses the growth of move-
ments like “identitarianism”, which rejects (post)modern society and multi-
culturalism, combining a call to national/ethnic pride with environmentalism
and a Romantic view of the past, and “alt-right”, which has moulded far-right
ideology into an internet subculture (Bjørkelo, 2014; Tromp, 2018). Although
these extremist ideas are a far cry from the playful way in which the novels
studied in this chapter use the Old Norse material, they do have something in
common: the idea of living in the end times, a pending Ragnarök.
7 Conclusion: A Mythical Intervention
What does it mean that Old Norse gods and Viking images turn up in contem-
porary literature about nations, migration and culture clashes? What do these
12 The term meme was originally coined in Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene (1976),
in which it is used to describe how cultural ideas, behaviours and symbols are spread
between people within a culture.
13 See for example, Tom Egil Hverven, "Sinte menn", “Klassekampen”, 23 May 2012.
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248 Tromp
narratives and symbols mean today? Obviously, there is no single answer to

this. As I showed at the beginning of this chapter, Viking and Old Norse ima
gery tends to show up in widely varying contexts; as a motif in popular enter-
tainment, a source of inspiration for religious, ideological and political groups
of all kinds and as a reference point in several nations’ cultural history. In this
chapter, I took a closer look at a specific type of use in contemporary literature,
in which Old Norse mythological elements are used to comment on, or criti-
cise, modern Nordic nations. The three works singled out in this chapter do
not, of course, give a complete picture – much more, for example, could have
been said about the work of Erling Kittelsen, who uses mythological motifs
and figures to construct a complex counter-narrative to superficial entertain-
ment and neoliberal thinking – but I do believe they represent a certain poig
nant way of using myth to make sense of postmodern, late capitalist society.
What the three works share is first and foremost an urgent sense of chaos
and impending collapse. The societies portrayed in these texts are over-
complex, packed with people, opinions and voices, all connected through glo
bal flows of technology, media, money and migration; they are, in the words of
the social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen, overheated. An overheated
world is a world of intensified tensions and frictions, Eriksen writes, resulting
from a globalisation that has dramatically increased people’s possibilities to
travel and migrate, unravelling the map of “cultural islands” that was the world
of yesterday (Eriksen, 2012). In the overheated world of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries, one experiences several intertwined global crises:
economically, environmentally as well as an identity crisis. “In this kind of
world, we are all strangers in a strange land”, Eriksen concludes (Eriksen, 2012,
p. 22).
These crises, then, form the backdrop for a mythical intervention. Janne
Teller’s Sydnorden is described as a little country interwoven in a global finan-
cial and technological web; people are concerned about the stock markets,
rising immigration and unemployment rates. At the same time, they are con-
cerned about their image in the world, and they want to be seen as good and
tolerant. Tensions between groups, however, are growing, and when the ele-
ment of chaos – Odin – comes in, anxiety and rage soon rise to the surface.
The feeling of impending doom is stressed by the presence of several religious
groups predicting the end of the world in the year 2000. Cornelius Jakhelln
also uses millennial symbolism in Gudenes fall; the long-awaited revenge of
the gods takes place in 1999. Human society, as described by Odin and seen
through a number of possibly distorting media devices, has taken a turn for the
worse. He sees war, illnesses, greedy capitalism, ecological destruction, borders
and wars all around, as well as technological development that only serves to
increase the distance between people who no longer know their history and
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their culture. The only solution he sees is total annihilation. The genre-hybrid
Raseri lacks the playful plot-making that characterises these novels. Instead, it
shows the thought processes and inner struggle of a young man that believes
that the world is about to come to an end; if not literally, at least culturally.
The greatest threats to his culture’s survival, as well as his own, he feels, are the
combined forces of mass migration, helped by lax immigration laws and the
loss of cultural memory and pride in the north.
Odin’s role in the two novels is closely connected to his mythical pow-
ers; he is an instigator, a force of chaos, either passively (Odins ø) or actively
(Gudenes fall). However, Odin is also the god of knowledge, forever looking
to gain insight into the future, present and past. In Odins ø, his arrival is the
starting point for a quest for knowledge, undertaken by Odin and his various
helpers. It samples various kinds of knowledge: the official kind, written down
in history books and archives, and other kinds, which have to do with oral tra-
dition and memory, and which appear to be rapidly fading. In Gudenes fall,
Odin still has the power to oversee all worlds and follow what is happening
through a media device (not unlike the way people watch news from all over
the world through live streams and social media). He, too, draws on old and
new knowledge, predictions and visions. However, in the end, he lacks over-
view and clear answers because his revenge plot is muddled by other chaos
forces and storylines. The two novels call into existence a mythical time-space
beyond this world, from which Odin comes barging in. In Odins ø, this space
is never shown or talked about, which of course opens the possibility that
the little man appearing on a strange island is not an actual, mythical god,
but something else entirely. In Gudenes fall, the story largely takes place in
Odin’s Underworld, which is described as a physical space under the human
world, in a model not unlike the one described in Old Norse mythology itself,
with a Netherworld that is the domain of the dead and those connected with
them.
The idea of an Underworld in which the old gods live calls to mind Freud’s
description of surmounted beliefs and ideas: the things our forefathers believed
in, which still exist in people and show up in times of crisis and confusion.
However, as the stories analysed in this chapter seem to indicate, these well-
known ideas can turn into something threatening and confusing if they are no
longer recognised for what they are. Bhabha, building on Freud, describes the
“Other” as something within people, within the nation: “It becomes a question
of otherness of the people-as-one” (2004, p. 216). To quote from my own study
of Gudenes fall and Odins ø: “Odin arrived because the nation’s understanding
of itself is on its way to collapse inwards. The border between Us and the Oth-
ers is not only situated in space, but also in time: Our own past has become
foreign, and it can no longer help us in a frightening present” (Tromp, 2015, p. 32).
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250 Tromp
Odin is both a narrative device to show the impossibility of the national pro
ject and represents the kind of cultural roots that seem lost, not least of all
because of the great nation-building projects, as Odins ø shows.
A scenario for what might happen when old ideas and stories become foreign
can be read from Raseri. The author, like the people described in the two novels,
is lost and seeking something to hold onto. He feels abandoned by a nation that
has not put value in its own cultural heritage and that has made national pride
a taboo. Looking for his identity, he, too, refers to something “underneath”, un-
derlying and pushed away. Using a strange mixture of biological terms and liter-
ary theory, he refers to “memes” and cultural ideas that are present in his body,
a “virus” of sorts. Norse gods and the imagined Viking present in him become
a force that helps the author find strength and courage in himself, but at the
same time these ideas bother him. Struggling to come to terms with his feelings
regarding cultural identity, Jakhelln displays both a strong belief in the power
of Old Norse cultural symbols to mend and strengthen the nation once again,
but also – through research into fascist and Nazi ideologies as well as his own
travels into extremist thought – an awareness of the nightmarish consequences
of the abuse of these symbols. Still, as an artist, his vision for the future is a “re-
building of Old Norse culture, in some form or other” (Jakhelln, 2011b, p. 301).
At a time when the concept of cultural identity, perhaps more than ever,
feels fluid and ever-changing, it becomes important to some to find something
to hold onto. This might well explain the popularity of Old Norse myth in con-
temporary tales of migration, identity and politics, which echo a more pro-
found crisis of culture, reflected in the growth of far-right movements. As an
“ideology in narrative form”, it was perhaps naive to envision a future in which
Old Norse myth could be freed entirely from the shackles of far-right politi-
cal appropriation. However, today’s manifold and varying tales based on old
myths and old gods show that the material is resilient and lives on in collective
memory: not as monolithic history carved in stone, but rather as molten lava,
impossible to confine to one particular place. Ironically, the same narratives
that are used by some to invoke a long-lost and mostly imagined past are be-
ing spread to all the corners of the world, where they will be translated, trans-
formed and re-written in an endless variety of new forms, and give birth to new
stories. Who knows what tomorrow’s Old Norse myth will look like?
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Index of Names and Subjects
Abildgaard, Nicolai Abraham 52 Baden, Gustav Ludvig 50, 61–65

aesthetics 18, 51–57, 80, 202, 241 Baden, Jacob 62
See also Neoclassicism; sublime, sublimity Baden, Torkel 50, 61–65
Africa, Africans 17, 34, 37, 39–40 Baldur (Baldr, Balder) 52, 203–204, 225,
Aino 181–184, 186–187 226–228, 235
All-Father See Odin ballet 180
Ambiorix 139 Baltic states See Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania
America See United States of America; banal nationalism See Billig, Michael
Vínland baptism 89, 90–92, 98, 102, 107
American Gods (novel) See Gaiman, Neil Barrow, John 34–39, 46
Andersen, Hans Christian 65, 132 Barsaz Breiz (‘Ballads of Brittany’) 159
Andersen, Per Thomas 236 Barthes, Roland 3, 133
Anderson, Benedict 135, 231, 236, 244 Benjamin, Walter 236
Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxonism 22, Beowulf 28, 88, 163, 173
27–29, 34, 42, 88–89, 133, 141, Bhabha, Homi K. 236–237, 239, 249
163, 171 Bhagavad Gita 197–198
antagonism See dualism Billig, Michael 204
anti-Eddists 63–64, 193 black metal See metal
antisemitism 23–24, 133, 145, 148 Blake, William 210
See also Judaism Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 133, 192–195,
Apollo 83–84 199, 209
archetypes, archetypal 181, 184–186, 239 See also Theosophy
Ariosophy 129–130, 133, 136–137, 141, 145 Blumenberg, Hans 4, 218
Arnarson, Ingólfur 44, 204–207 Bonaparte, Napoleon 20, 54, 67, 105, 129, 221
See also settlement of Iceland Book of Mormon, The 160
Arthur, King 107, 109, 175 Boudicca 139
Arctic 34–35, 46 Bragi in gamli (Boddason) 219–220
See also Greenland Breivik, Anders Behring 244–245, 247
Art Nouveau See Jugendstil Brexit 148, 243n
Aristotle 15–16, 180 Britain (Great Britain) See England; Scotland;
Aryan(s) 24, 26, 136, 145, 195, 209 Wales
See also Ariosophy; Indo-European theory Britannia (tv series) 139, 148
Ásamál 76 Brittany 138–139, 159
Asatru (Ása trú, Asatro, Ásatrú) 2, 132, Broca, Paul 23
136–137, 140–141, 148, 197–201, 211 Brun, Johannes Nordahl 53
See also Æsir Buddha, Buddhism 127, 133, 192–193, 194,
Asgard (Ásgarðr) 81, 197n6, 199, 217, 219n, 197, 200, 201
225, 226–227 Burke, Edmund 51
Asia, Asian theory See euhemerism Burke, Peter 54
Asterix, The Adventures of 139 Burton, Richard Francis 34–40, 41, 46
asylum seekers 147–148, 236–239 Byatt, A.S. 235
Atlantis 193 Byron, George Gordon (Lord) 41, 79, 81n
atomic bomb See nuclear threat
Atterbom, Per Daniel Amadeus 58–59, 73 Caesar, C. Iulius 16, 102
Auðumbla (Auðhumla, Auðumla) 192, 198 Cain and Abel 203–204
avatar 198 Canada 14, 15, 137
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254 Index of Names and Subjects
capitalism 130, 135, 235, 241, 248 dróttkvæði See skaldic poetry

Carlyle, Thomas 28, 193 Druid, Druidry 130, 135–139
Carroll, Lewis 164 dualism, antagonism 4, 219–220, 223, 225,
Celticism, Celtic identity 127, 129, 130, 132, 228–229
134, 136–139, 140, 148 dwarves 122, 218, 243
See also Druid Druidry
Celts 5, 16, 18, 23, 24, 26–29, 36, 43, 51 Eddic poems, Eddic poetry See Poetic Edda
Chanson de Roland, La 95, 159 Edda, Edd(a)ic See Prose Edda; Poetic Edda
Charlemagne 93–98, 100, 102, 104, 107 Edda Islandorum 73
Christianity 3, 7, 39, 50, 58, 74, 80–81, 82, Eddukvæði See Poetic Edda
87–90, 92, 127, 129, 131–133, 138, 141–146, Edwards, William Frederic 23
168, 193, 197, 201, 203, 205–206, 233, Elli 200, 210–211
237, 242 elves (fairies) 131, 218
See also baptism; Protestantism England 14, 17, 19–20, 22–23, 27–29, 34,
Classical culture See Greek mythology 42, 47, 79, 81, 88, 100, 115, 127, 130–131,
(Graeco-Roman); Romans, Roman 138–139, 148, 163, 187, 242–243
culture; English folklore 173–174
Neoclassicism See also Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxonism
climate crisis 244 Enlightenment 22, 34, 64–65, 130, 193
climate theory 15–18 environmentalism 130, 223, 229, 235, 244,
Cold War 135, 225–227 247, 248
Collin, Jonas 65–66, 67 Eskimo See Inuit
colonialism 22, 27, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 116, 124, Estonia 20, 129, 130, 133, 142, 149, 169–170
133, 145, 236, 241, 242, 243 See also Kalevipoeg
commedia dell’arte 181–182, 184–187 ethnotypes 14n3, 30
comics, comic books 139, 223, 234, 239 eugenics 24
Communism 145 euhemerism 193n, 198
comparative mythology 19, 26, 81, 175–176 Euhemerus 198n9
See also Grimm, Jacob Eurocentrism 137–138, 163
complexity, reduced complexity 218, European Union 139, 238
220–221 See also Brexit
computer games 234, 239 evolution theory See Darwinism
counterculture 241–242 exclusivism 82, 84
cultural memory 249, 123 Explore the North (festival) 7
Darwin, Charles 24 fairy tales 106, 107, 169–170, 173, 175

Darwinism 23–24 family sagas See Sagas of Icelanders
degeneration 43 Fascism 233, 242, 250
Deniker, Joseph 24 See also National Socialism; Neo-Nazism
Denmark, Danes 3, 19, 21n, 27, 28–29, 50–55, Finland, Finns 6, 20, 26, 45, 55, 53, 73, 135,
60–68, 73, 79, 92, 96, 99n, 100, 116, 136n10, 142, 143, 160, 165n, 171–172, 174,
220–223, 225–229, 237–240 175, 179–188, 234
Danes in Iceland 37, 43–45 Finnish folk poetry 180n, 186
Deutsche Mythologie (book) See Grimm, Jacob See also Kalevala; Mythologia Fennica
Devachan 199 Finno-Ugric 129, 137, 142, 170
devising 186 folk high school (Folkehøjskole) 222, 228
Dievturība 137, 142–143 folklore, study of 29, 81, 106, 107, 132, 159,
Drekar og smáfuglar (‘Dragons and Small 168, 170, 173, 179, 210
Birds’) See Sigurðsson, Ólafur Jóhann forging, forgery 159–160
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fornyrðislag 77, 82 Götiska Förbundet (‘Geatish Society’) 27,

Fosite (Forseti), Fositesland 90, 98, 107 50, 55–58, 61, 64–65, 67
foundational epics 159, 160, 169 Grant, Madison 24
France, French 14, 17, 20, 21, 22–23, 24, 28, Gräter, Friedrich David 61
60, 79, 96, 98, 101, 139n, 148, 159, 243n Gray, Thomas 51
French Revolution 129, 131 Greek mythology (Graeco-Roman) 1–2, 20,
Franks, Frankish 7, 20, 23, 28, 88–89, 92–94, 33, 42, 50, 51, 55, 59, 61, 63, 64–66, 76,
98–100, 108 80, 82–84, 130, 132, 193, 198n9,
See also Charlemagne; Martel, Charles 208, 239
Franzén, Franz Michael 53 See also Apollo; Neoclassicism; Zeus
Frazer, James George See Golden Bough, The Greenland, Greenlanders 33, 34, 38, 39, 193,
Freud, Sigmund 120, 238–239, 249 140
Freund, Hermann Ernst 2, 65–66 See also Inuit
Frey (journal) 79 Grieg, Edvard 197n7
Freyja (Freya, Freyia, Freja) 33n, 83–84, 140, Grimm, Jacob 3, 19–20, 21, 27, 50, 54, 105, 132,
219n, 221, 225, 239 168, 170, 171, 175, 176
Freyr (Frey) 228 Grimm, Wilhelm 19, 132, 168, 175
Friesland, Frisia, Frisians 6–8, 87–109 Gröndal, Benedikt Sveinbjarnarson 33–34,
Frisian movement 6–7, 105–109 74, 77, 78n, 81–84
Frigg (Frigga) 56, 242 Grundtvig, N.F.S. 3, 60, 62, 66, 67, 73, 194,
Frithiofs Saga See Tegnér, Esaias 218, 220–223, 228
Gungne (Gungnir) 224, 244
Gaiman, Neil 236, 241 Gunnlaugsson, Gylfi viii, 2, 73–86
Gallen-Kallela, Akseli 179 Günther, Hans F.K. 24
Galton, Francis 24 Gustaf iii, King 53
Game of Thrones See Martin, George R.R. Gylfi, King See Gylfaginning
Ganander, Cristfried See Mythologia Fennica Gylfaginning (‘Tricking of Gylfi’) 83, 90,
Gangleri 195–197 195–197, 198, 199, 203n, 217, 220,
Gangleri (journal) 195, 198–201 224, 228
Gay, David 169–170
Geatish Society See Götiska Förbundet Halbertsma, Justus 105–106
Geijer, Erik Gustaf 50, 55–61, 62, 66, 67 Halink, Simon viii, 1–10, 54n, 63, 132, 192–213
Germania (book) See Tacitus, P. Cornelius Hallgrímsson, Jónas 78
Germanic reconstructionism 133, 136, 137, Hämäläinen, Pekka 165n
140–142 Hartland, Edwin 175
Germany 2, 17, 19, 20–21, 24–26, 27–28, 50, Haustlöng, Haustlǫng (‘Autumn-Long’) 219
61, 67, 129, 130, 138, 159, 195n4, 226, 232 Hávamál (‘Sayings of the High One’) 197–
Grundtvig’s image of 3–4, 221–223 198, 201
Gerstenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm von 52 heathens, heathenry See Neo-Paganism
Gerven, Tim van viii, 5, 49–70 heavy metal See metal
Geysir 36, 39 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1, 79, 80–81
giants See jötunn, jötnar Heimskringla (‘Circle of the World’) 193n,
Gimlé (Gimli) 121, 124 231
glaciers 36 heiti 74–75, 76, 78, 219
Gobineau, Arthur de 23–24, 132–133 Hekla, Mount 36, 41
Goddess worship 127, 135, 137, 138 Helgoland, Heligoland 89
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 19, 132 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 2, 132
Golden Bough, The 133 Hiawatha 160, 161, 162, 163–169, 176
Gondebald 98, 102 Hilmarsson, Hilmar Örn 140, 148–149
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Hinduism 192, 194, 197, 198–199, 200, Jónsson Gröndal, Benedikt 77

See also Karma; Om (syllable); Jörmungandr, Jǫrmungandr See Midgard
reincarnation serpent
Hliðskjálf (Lidskjalf) 197n6, 226, 228 jötunn, jötnar 4, 119, 98–200, 217–225,
Hobsbawm, Eric 135 227–228, 234
Höður (Höðr) 203–204 Joukahainen 182–183
Holland See Netherlands Judaism (Jews, Jewish) 39, 50, 127, 130n5,
Homer, Homeric 18–19, 42, 77–78, 82, 179, 145, 161, 169, 238
185 See also antisemitism
Høyer, C.F. 64 Jugendstil 202
Hrungnir 218–219 Jupiter 2
Hughes, Edward 22n
Huizinga, Johan 4, 6 Kabuki 181, 182, 183
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 22 Kalevala 5–6, 29, 132, 160, 163, 165, 168–176,
Hyperborea 58, 136, 193, 195 179–188
Kalevipoeg 169–170
Iceland 1, 18, 27, 33–48, 60, 62, 63, 73–86, 132, Kalma, Douwe 108
192–213, 218, 235 Kalmar Union 221
Ásatrú in 140, 142, 148 Karadžić, Vuk 160
contemporary literature of 115–126 Karelian folklore 179, 183
See also occupation (of Iceland); Sagas of karma 200–201, 207–209
the Icelanders; settlement of Iceland Karlamagnús saga (‘Saga of
Icelandic sagas See Sagas of Icelanders Charlemagne’) 97
identitarianism 128, 130, 148–149 kennings (kenningar) 75–76, 78, 218–219
Iduna (journal) 55, 56, 58, 60 kings’ sagas See Heimskringla
Iðunn (Iduna, Ydun) 84, 224–225, 228 Kipling, Rudyard 163
Iliad See Homer, Homeric Kirby, W.F. 172–173
Ilmarinen 186 Kivi, Aleksis 180
imaginaries 164–165 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 52, 77
imagined communities See Anderson, Knottnerus, Otto S. ix, 87–114
Benedict Koop, Andreas Ludvig 66
imagology 13–14 Kreutzwald, Friedrich 169–171, 175, 176
Inuit 33, 39, 46 Krishna 198
invention of tradition 135 Kullervo 171–172
Indians See Native Americans
Indo-European theory 19, 24, 26, 127n2, 134, Lachmann, Karl 19, 174
144, 195n4, 197 Lāčplēsis 143, 169, 170–171
See also Aryan(s) Lagerbring, Lars 53
in-group versus out-group 219–220 landnám See settlement of Iceland
Ireland, Irish 27, 28, 36, 39, 130, 131, 133, 138 land spirits (landvættir) 121, 123
Islam, Muslims 39, 127, 148, 237, 238, 246 Lapouge, Georges Vacher de 24
Ísleifsson, Sumarliði R. viii–ix, 33–48 Larsson, Carl 133–134
Íslendingasögur See Sagas of Icelanders Latin See Romans, Roman culture
Latvia 129, 133, 142–143, 169–171
Jacobs, Joseph 173 See also Lāčplēsis
Jakhelln, Cornelius 236, 237, 240–250 lgbt 135
Jakobsdóttir, Svava 235 Lecoq, Jacques 181, 184
Japanese theatre 181–184, 187 Leerssen, Joep ix, 8, 13–32, 55, 159, 160, 174,
Jóhannes úr Kötlum 116–121, 123, 124–125 204
Jónsson, Einar 194, 202–211 Lemminkäinen 132, 185, 186
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Leopold, Carl Gustaf af 53 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat de 17–

Lex Frisionum (‘Law Code of the 18, 19
Frisians’) 88, 89, 93 Morganwg, Iolo 130, 159
Liedertheorie 174 Morris, William 29, 171
Liljegren, Johan Gustaf 64–65 Müller, Friedrich Max 19, 26–27
Lincoln, Bruce 4, 231 Munch, P.A. 68
Ling, Pehr Henrik 50, 58–63, 66–67 Mundilfari 197n6
List, Guido von 133 music 17–18, 37, 128, 148, 164, 179, 181, 183
Lithuania 131, 133, 142–144, 146n23 See also Grieg, Edvard; metal (music);
Lockard, Joe 164, 167 neofolk; opera; Sibelius, Jean; Wagner,
logos 199, 201 Richard
Loki (Loke) 3, 4, 6, 199–200, 203n, 217n2, 218, Muslims See Islam
223–229, 239, 241 mysticism 133, 148n, 184, 194, 201, 202,
Lokasenna 217n2, 224 203–204, 206–207
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 5, 160, 162, Mythologia Fennica 20, 170, 175
163–169, 170, 171, 176 mythopoiesis 132
See also Hiawatha
Lönnrot, Elias See Kalevala Napoleonic Wars See Bonaparte, Napoleon
Louhi 185–187 narrative templates 3, 4
Lund, J.L. 66 national epic 3, 6, 143, 159, 173–174, 176, 179,
Lutheranism See Protestantism 186, 188
Luther, Martin 17 National Socialism 21, 24, 108, 129, 133, 136,
138, 141, 232, 235, 242, 250
Maausk (Taarausk) 130, 137, 142 See also Fascism; Neo-Nazism
See also Estonia Native Americans 160–169, 176
Macpherson, James See Ossian nativism 27, 133
Magnússon, Finnur (Finn Magnu[s]sen) 50, naturalism 202
54–55, 60, 61–67, 82, 193, 197 Nazism See National Socialism
Mallet, Paul-Henri 42, 51–52 Neijmann, Daisy L. ix, 115–126
Mari 142 Neoclassicism 2, 51, 52, 55, 57, 65, 66
Martel, Charles 87, 88, 94n1, 95 Neo-Fascism See Neo-Nazism
Martin, George R.R. 15, 21, 29, 139 neofolk 128, 141, 148
Marvel Comics 223 Neo-Nazism 233–234
medievalim 19–20, 159, 231 Neo-Paganism 127–149, 201, 220, 233–234,
Midgard (Miðgarðr) 199, 200 241
Midgard serpent (Miðgarðsormr, Netherlands, Dutch 4–5, 6–7, 14, 88, 95–96,
Jörmungandr, Jǫrmungandr) 200, 99, 101–103, 105, 106–107, 109, 243n
218, 225 Neus, A.H. See Kreutzwald, Friedrich
Midsummer (St John’s Day) 143, 146n23 New Age 134
Midwinter 133–134 Nibelungenlied, Das 93, 159
Mighty Thor (comic) 223, 234 Nietzsche, Friedrich 203, 205
Miles, Pliny 34, 40–42, 44–46 Nijdam, Han ix–x, 7, 87–114
Milton, John 77 Njáls saga 45
Mjölnir (Mjöllnir, Mjǫllnir) 195, 209–210, Noh 181–184, 187
219n, 221–222, 224, 244 Nordal, Sigurður 198n3–199n1
memory (collective, cultural) 27, 121, 123, nordicity 5–7, 15, 19–20, 29
124, 249, 250 Norns (norn, nornir) 207–208, 235, 244
metal (music) 29, 141, 220, 233, 241–242 Northern Ireland 173
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 184 north/south opposition 4, 7, 13–19, 29
Møller, Aage 222–223 northernness See nordicity
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Norway, Norwegians 38, 39, 40, 53–54, 118–119, 121, 169, 193, 197–198, 217–218,
67–68, 73, 81, 193, 202, 204, 206, 221, 229, 224n8, 228, 234n6, 235, 240
231–250 See also Hávamál; Lokasenna; Völuspá;
Norway attacks See Breivik, Anders Behring Þrymskviða
nuclear threat 223, 225 Poland 131, 144
polytheism 134, 146
occupation (of Iceland) 115–125 See also Neo-Paganism
Odin (Óðin, Óðinn, Wotan, Wodan, Woden, Pope, Alexander 77
All-Father) 2, 19, 27, 53, 56, 57, 65, 83, populism 148, 243
107, 119–120, 140, 192–193, 195–199, 201, postcolonialism See colonialism
204–205, 217, 219n, 224, 225–228, 234, postmodernism, postmodernity 5–6, 128,
237–245, 248–250 130, 135, 141, 146, 184, 239
Odinism (Wotanism) 137, 140–141, 233, 244 primitivism 20, 34, 45, 77, 145
Odins soldater 234 postnational literature 136, 238
Óður (Óðr, Óð, Od, Odr) 83–84 Protestantism 17, 106, 131, 133, 142, 170, 171,
Odyssey See Homer, Homeric 194, 241
Oehlenschläger, Adam 55, 66, 67, 73 See also Reformation (Protestant)
Oera Linda-Boek 159 Prose Edda (Snorra Edda) 60, 73, 74–75, 83,
Olaf, Saint 163, 235n 90, 169, 193n, 217, 218, 220–221
Ólafsson, Eggert 76–77 See also Gylfaginning; Skáldskaparmál;
Ólafsson, Jón (of the Svefneyjar islands) 77 Sturluson, Snorri
Ólafsson, Magnús 75–77 Psyche 208–210
Olympus, Olympians See Greek mythology psychology 120, 220, 228, 238–239, 249
Om (syllable) 199, 201 Völkerpsychologie (ethnic
opera 17–18, 132, 180, 197n7, 234 psychology) 25
See also Wagner, Richard Pumpurs, Andreis 132, 169, 170–171, 176
oral traditions 106, 160, 184, 185, 186–187,
240, 249 race, racism 13, 21–27, 29–30, 33–34, 39,
organicism 26, 123–125, 193, 203, 205 45–46, 129, 132–133, 135, 141–142, 145,
Oslund, Karen 35 148–149, 195, 243
Ossian 2, 18–19, 20, 51–52, 77, 159 Radboud See Redbad
Oswald, Elizabeth Jane 34, 40–47 Ragnarök (Ragnarökr, Ragnarǫk) 1, 66, 84,
Oxenstierna, Johan Gabriel 53 117–119, 195, 201, 218–219, 223, 225–229,
Oxfeldt, Elisabeth 236, 238 232, 234, 235, 240, 243, 247
Ragnarsdrápa (‘Ragnar’s Poem’) 218–219
painting 44, 52, 55–60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 203, Raimbault 96–98
206, 210 Rask, Rasmus 19, 60, 67
pan-Scandinavianism See Scandinavism reconstructionism See Neo-Paganism
pantheism 143, 203, 206 Redbad 7, 87–109
Paradise Lost 77 Redbad (movie) 109
Percy, Thomas 19, 42, 51 refugees See asylum seekers
Pétursson, Sigurður Kristófer 194, 197–202, reincarnation 200–201
210 Resen, Peder H. 73n
philology 3, 5, 13, 19–21, 24–26, 29–30, 50, 61, Retzius, Anders 23, 24
62, 63, 96, 159, 168, 170–171, 174, 193–194, Reformation (Protestant) 17, 102, 106
197, 198 Richards, I.A. 162
See also Indo-European theory Ridnovira 137, 144–146
Pinkerton, John 36 rímur 75–76, 78, 84
Poetic Edda (Eddukvæði), Eddic poetry 4, Ring des Nibelungen, Der See Wagner, Richard
42, 51–54, 60, 63, 74, 76–78, 82–83, Rodin, Auguste 203
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Rodnovery 136, 137, 144–145 Shippey, Tom x, 3, 5, 7, 159–178

Romans, Roman culture 16–17, 20, 26, 27, 28, Sibelius, Jean 179–180
42–43, 50–51, 63, 76, 80, 83–84, 95, 102, Sigurd (Sigurður, Siegfried) the Dragon-
129, 137, 139, 149, 221 Slayer 75, 121–122, 124, 132
Romuva 137, 142, 143–144 Sigurðsson, Ólafur Jóhann 116, 121–125
Roper, Jonathan 173 Silmarillion, The 171–172
Rosenberg, Alfred 133 Sinding, Stephan 202
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 77 skaldic poetry (dróttkvæði) 74–76, 83,
Rautavaara, Einojuhani 187 218–219
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and See also heiti; kennings (kenningar)
Letters 77 Skáldskaparmál (‘Language of Poetry’)
Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries 81 121–122, 217n1–2, 219
Runeberg, Johan Ludvig 73 Skallagrímsson, Egill 197n7
runes 75, 82n, 133, 192, 201, 232, 233–234, 244 Skræling (skrælingi, skrælingjar) 33–34,
Russia 15, 53, 54, 127n2, 129, 131, 133, 136, 141, 39, 46
142, 144–146, 159, 170, 171, 175, 180, 192 Scandinavian Society (Copenhagen) 2
See also Soviet Union Skuld See Norns
Slovo o polku Igoreve (‘The Tale of Igor’s
Saga, goddess (Sága) 81 Campaign’) 159
Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur) 42, Smith, Anthony 130n5
45, 50–51, 53, 85, 117–118, 140, 197n2, 231, snake See serpent (symbol)
234n6 Sneedorff, Frederik 53, 67
Saga of the Volsungs See Völsunga saga Snorra Edda See Prose Edda
Sanskrit 19, 199 Social Darwinism See Darwinism
Satan, Satanism 90–92, 233 Social Democracy 231, 241–242, 246
Saunders, Robert A. x, 6, 127–155 Socialism 117, 130
Saxo Grammaticus 27, 51, 52 Sørensen, Villy 218, 225–229
Saxonism See Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxonism Soviet Union 117, 121, 129, 141, 143–146,
Scandinavism (Scandinavianism, pan- 223, 226
Scandinavianism) 5, 49–51, 54, See also Russia
67–68, 79 south See north/south opposition
Schiefner, Franz Anton 163, 165, 169 South America (Latin America) 137n, 242
Schleswig (Slesvig) Wars 21n, 221–222 Spanish Civil War 117
Schnurbein, Stefanie von 140, 234, 241 Staël, Germaine de 18–19
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe 163, 168–169, 170, St John’s Day See Midsummer
171 structuralism 223
Schulz, Katja x, 6, 169, 217–230, 239 student revolts 223, 134n8, 135, 233
Scotland 18, 27, 28, 36, 38, 40, 45, 79, 138, Sturluson, Snorri 67, 74–75, 118, 120, 121–122,
173–174, 193 124, 193n, 195–197, 198–199, 203n,
Scott, Walter 22, 41 217–218, 219, 220–221, 224, 228, 231,
sculpture 2, 65–66, 194, 202–211 234n6
Second World War 5, 6, 108, 115–125, 141, 147, See also Gylfaginning; Heimskringla; Prose
222–223, 232, 235 Edda; Skáldskaparmál
Secret Doctrine, The See Theosophy; Blavatsky, sublime, sublimity 1, 4, 18–19, 35–36, 41, 46,
Helena 49, 51, 203
serpent (symbol) 1, 200, 218, 225 Suhm, Peter Frederik 19, 53
settlement of Iceland 27, 43–44, 77, 82–83, Sumner, William Graham 220n5
204–206 Suomenusko 137, 142, 143,
Shakespeare, William 28, 80–81, 180, 187 See also Finland, Finns
shamanism 144, 181, 186 swastika 149, 195, 209
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Sweden, Swedish 23, 27, 38, 53–61, 64–65, United States of America 14–15, 22, 24, 34,
66–67, 73, 79, 82n, 100, 133–134, 175, 180, 40, 42, 122, 127, 128, 135, 136, 137, 145,
195–196, 203, 221, 229, 231, 233, 234, 237 148–149, 160–169, 170–171, 176, 223,
See also Götiska Förbundet (‘Geatish 233–234, 241, 243n
Society’) See also Native Americans; Vínland
Swedenborg, Emanuel 203 universalism 63–64, 127, 140, 141, 202
Symbolism 194, 202 Utgard (Útgarðr, Útgarðar) 199
Útgarða-Loki 199–201, 210–211
Taarausk See Maausk utilitarianism 34, 46
Tacitus, P. Cornelius 16–17, 27, 102
Tegnér, Esaias 66, 73 Väinämöinen 182–183, 186
Teller, Janne 236, 237–240, 248 Valhalla (Walhalla, Valhöll) 92, 119, 219n
Tennyson, Alfred 28–29 See also Asgard
Teutons, Teutonic 3–4, 29, 39, 129, 140–141 valkyrie, valkyries 57, 118, 202, 218
See also Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxonism Vavryk, Oleksandr 146
theatre 53, 109, 132, 174, 179–188, 234 Vé See Vili and Vé
Theodism 137, 141 Vedas 145
Theosophy 133, 192–202, 207–210, 211 See also Hinduism
Thomsen, Grímur 1–2, 74, 78n, 79–81, Vedism 137, 144
84–85 Venus 83
Thor (Tor, Þór, Þórr, Donner) 19, 56, 84, 140, Vercingetorix 139
195, 199–201, 209–211, 218–219, 221, 223, Verndarenglarnir (‘The Guardian Angels’)
228, 234, 239, 244 See Jóhannes úr Kötlum
Thorarensen, Bjarni 78 Victorian culture 3, 22n, 28, 164
Thorild, Thomas 53 Vietnam War 223
Thor’s hammer See Mjölnir Vikernes, Varg 233
Thorvaldsen, Bertel 66, 202n Viking, Vikings 3, 6, 29, 41–43, 45–46, 51, 62,
Thrymr, Thrym See Þrymskviða 93, 141, 204–206, 233, 234, 235n, 239,
Thule 35, 193, 233n 240, 246–248, 250
Thule-Gesellschaft 133 Vikings (tv series) 234
Tibet 192, 199 Vili and Vé 198
Tolkien, Christopher 172, 175n Vínland (Vinland) 33, 42
Tolkien, J.R.R. 5, 7, 15, 21, 29, 163, 171–176 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 42, 179
Trachtenberg, Alan 167 visual arts See painting; sculpture
traditionalism (radical) 128, 130, 135–136 volcanoes 36, 41
traditions, invention of 135 völkisch nationalism 21, 24, 129, 133, 139, 141,
trauma 119–120, 121, 123–125, 222–223 195n4
Treaty of Kiel 221 Völsunga saga (‘Saga of the Volsungs’) 75,
trolls 4, 118, 122, 203 121–122, 124, 132
Tromp, Carline x–xi, 6, 231–252 Völuspá (‘Prophecy of the Seeress’) 199, 201,
Trump, Donald 243n 203n, 224n8, 240, 118–119
Turner, Sharon 22 Vonnegut, Karl 161–162, 167
Tryggvason, Olaf, King 67, 197n7, 235n Vries, Jan de 218
Udmurt 142 Wagner, Richard 4, 24, 132, 218, 242

Ukraine 131, 144, 145–147, 148 Wägner, Wilhelm 193
Union of Kalmar See Kalmar Union Wales, Welsh 26, 27, 28, 36, 129, 130, 138, 149,
United Kingdom See England; Northern 159, 173, 175
Ireland; Scotland; Wales Wannamaker, Rodman 164
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Wawn, Andrew 3, 29 Wright, Thomas 175

Welhaven, Johan Sebastian 73, 81 Wulfram, Saint 89, 90–92, 98, 102, 106
Wertsch, James V. 4
Wicca 127, 130, 136–138, 144n19 Xenophobia 24, 145, 238–239, 234, 243
Widukind 92–93, 94, 100
Wiedewelt, Johannes 52 Yggdrasil 1, 201, 205
wild hunt 81, 107 Ymir (Ýmir) 198–199, 201
Williams, Edward See Morganwg, Iolo Younger Edda See Prose Edda
Willibrord, Saint 89–90, 94, 98,
106, 108 Zadruga 137, 144
Willson, Kendra xi, 6, 179–191 Zeus 2
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 55, 77
witchcraft 118, 134 Þiazi (Þjazi, Thiazi, Thjazi, Thiassi) 224
See also Wicca Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (ór Hvini) See Haustlöng
Wotan (Woden, Wodan) See Odin Þór, Þórr See Thor
world-tree See Yggdrasil Þrymskviða (‘Þrymr’s Poem’) 221, 224
World War ii See Second World War
Worm, Ole 75–76 Æsir 1–2, 119, 121, 132, 140, 197–199, 202, 206,
Wouk, Herman 160–161, 162 218–219, 221–222, 224–225, 229
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Northern Myths, Modern Identities

Simon Halink - 978-90-04-39843-6

Joep Leerssen (University of Amsterdam)

John Breuilly – Katharine Ellis – Ina Ferris

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ncc

Simon Halink - 978-90-04-39843-6

Simon Halink - 978-90-04-39843-6

The Royal Netherlands Academy

The Study Platform on

The Groningen Research Institute

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Halink, Simon, editor.

Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Simon Halink - 978-90-04-39843-6

List of Figures and Tables vii

Northern Myths, Modern Identities: An Introduction 1

1 The North: A Cultural Stereotype between Metaphor and Racial

2 Within or Outside Europe? Modernists and Anti-modernists Visiting

3 Is Nordic Mythology Nordic or National, or Both? Competing National

4 Norse Myths, Nordic Identities: The Divergent Case of Icelandic

5 Redbad, the Once and Future King of the Frisians 87

6 Norse Mythology in Icelandic Fiction about the Second World

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7 Of Gods and Men: Uses and Abuses of Neo-Paganism by Nationalist

8 Heirs of Lönnrot: From Longfellow to Tolkien 159

9 Kalevala in International Masks: A Japanese Aino and Kalevala

10 The Quest of Gangleri: Theosophy and Old Norse Mythology in

12 Apocalypse Now: Norse Gods and the End of the Nation 231

Index of Names and Subjects 253

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7.1 Representative examples of “nationalist” Neo-Paganism 130

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Tim van Gerven

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Otto Samuel Knottnerus

Han ( J.A.) Nijdam

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(Scandinavian) literature. On this subject, she has published several articles in

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But what is humor, if not Ragnarök’s swallowing up of the gods, them-

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Myth confers “rightness” on a course of action by extending it to an other-

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About This Volume

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Simon Halink - 978-90-04-39843-6

Ægidius, J.P. (1985). Bragesnak. Nordiske myter og mytefortælling i danske tradition.

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The North: A Cultural Stereotype between

1 The Image of the North

Imagology, a specialised area in comparative literature that critically studies

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a general trend to oppose northern and southern characters.2 Indeed, it is a

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O Canada! Our home and native land!

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:10.1163/9789004398436_003 Simon Halink - 978-90-04-39843-6

Germania, rediscovered in the fifteenth century after centuries of oblivion, fa

hilosemitism during the Romantic decades). Racial purism and xenophobia

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ublished in 1882. Oswald was a well-educated middle-class woman and had

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:10.1163/9789004398436_005 Simon Halink - 978-90-04-39843-6