Atlakvioa and Voluspa

Atlakvioa = heroic poem

 The Poem of Atli
o One of the oldest lays contained in The Poetic Edda
o Named after Atli, based on the historical figure of Attila the Hun
o But revolves around ‘heroic’ deeds of his wife Guorun (Gudrun) and her
brothers Gunnar and Hohni
 Brutal tale of vengeance and betrayal = heroic ethos of pre-Christian Scandinavia
 Retold in Eddic poem Atlamal (The Greenlandic Lay of Atli) and the prose Volusunga
Saga (The Saga of the Volsungs
 Composed around Norway c.900
 ‘Atta of the Hun’ = figure Atli
o About his marriage and how his wife meant to kill him

Voluspa = mythological poem from The Poetic Edda

 Preserved in the 13th century Icelandic manuscript = Codex Regius
 ‘The Seeress’s Prophecy’
o One of the most important literary sources of Norse mythology
 Highly allusive poem
 Narrated by a volva (seeress)
o Addressing the God Ooinn (Odin), describes the history of the world from its
creation to its inevitable destruction and subsequent rebirth
 Read alongside Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning
o Found in 13th century Prose Edda
o Prose compendium of Norse Mythology is more accessible
o But writing within a markedly Christian context = so treatment of the same
subject matter was informed by Christian teaching

Snorri’s Edda
 Handbook on poetry 1220
o Including Gylfaginning = based on 6/7 of the Eddic poems
 Considered Voluspa the most important source of knowledge regarding ancient
times
o Because of the chronological scope of the poem and its cosmic time span (3)

1. To what extent does Atlakvioa celebrate the triumph of duty over emotional ties?

Duty over emotional ties

 Embodies the heroic/warrior values
o Contempt for death
o Willingness to die
o Reputation/duty e.g., Battle of Maldon = must fight to death to avenger
leader B.
o honour
 Culture of vengeance as a duty not as an (emotional) indulgence
  E.g., strong emphasis on Kinship, and the duty towards one’s kin
o Esp. in relation with vengeance
o Battle of Maldon = esp. as his Uncle…
 E.g., duty over emotion as a King/Leader
o The poet intervenes, makes a moral judgement on the characters
o “he behaved as a king should”
o He set his honour above common sense, the welfare as his people who will
now be ruled by someone else and against his own well-being
 Duty is a matter of honour = must preserve status as leader

E.g., Duty in the form of vengeance and the nature of it

 Not an emotional indulgence but a duty even if it is contrary to emotions
o Have to take vengeance on loved ones because duty to kinship supersedes
 Old Testament/Hebrew
o Vengeance = religious act, divine
o Allusions to bibles e.g., Psalms about the Israelites and their lament at being
held captive, eventual return to J.
 Cursing their enemies
o “blessed are they that take your little ones and dash them against the rocks”
o Biblical view of vengeance, God will
o Unacceptable to modern sensibility

Gudrun’s revenge
 Does she hate her husband?
o Didn’t want to marry him in the first place
 Why does she kill him?
o Not because she hated him
o She remembers the loving embraces in the view of the courtiers
 She kills her own sons
o The worst thing you could do in Norse culture was to kill father, then son,
then mother/daughters
 Duty to take vengeance for her brothers in her opinion to her duty to her
husbands/sons
o Wishes to take supreme vengeance = by wiping out his male line
o Has no other sons except hers
o No male line left
 Says she had to hold back tears = shows her emotion
o Doesn’t want to but feels need to take extreme vengeance
 Cannibalism
o Parallels with Shjakespeare’s Titus Adromedus
o Ultimate shame to eat your own children

E.g., Duty of women to marry

 Theme of mistreatment of women
o As mere objects of exchange between kin-groups
 o Creatures whose feelings need by little regarded in the quest for political
advantage through the forgins of alliances
 Her multiple marriages illustrate this

2. How successfully does the poet blend horror and heroism in Atlakvioa?

This poem and Norse literature allows you to look upon things that are clearly immoral and
still say “wow”

Heroic or horrific
 Ending
o “She had become/organised/managed/achieved the deaths of three
empires… before she died”
o Banord = blonde, radiant
 Double vision
o Separate from everything else
o Through lens of wider focus
 Another double focus
o Our own ethical judgement, modern and contemporary
o Effort to see things as the contemporary audience would see things,
understand heroic literature, its context
 Adjust our morals to see theirs but not by relinquishing ours
 Old Norse literature = what was the motivation for us
o Does not enter the minds of the characters presented
o Statement after statement = what they did/what they said, revealing their
motives

Violence inciting horror

 Gudrun’s terrible vengeance on her husband and the violence of it
o Offers him a drink and provides snacks
o Reveals what they are eating
o Gudrun has butchered their children and Atli has eaten them
 Murder of her own children and forcing their father to take back into himself the
sons who are flesh of his flesh
o Vivid sign of her rejection of the lineage into which she has been
incorporated
 In weightiest old Norse tradition (previous story about death of Gudrun’s first
husband)
o Huttormr (youngest brother_ slays him whilst in bed with Gudrun
o Wakes to find herself bathed in her husband’s blood
o She’s so traumatised that at first she cannot even weep

Love of weapons = shows preoccupation with violence (to maintain status)

 Stanzas 4 and 7
o Gurron offers them finely made weapons = valuable
o He wants to appear as generous!
  Why do they love weapons?
o Symbol of aristocratic status
o Trustworthy

Masculinity = importance of demonstrating heroic values and the horrific implications of it

 This is horrific in the sense that the supposed lack of heroic potential leads to the
devaluation of a person
 Masculinity matters = not showing conventions of courage and steadfastness
 People of … try to trick … into giving him a heart that does not belong to his brother
o Kill a random person = realises not the heart of his brother but
o Description of heart as soft, wimpish
o Insists that is not the real heart = erg or erh
o Occurs in Battle of Maldon as well = Anglo-Saxon have same conventional
values
 Kills a random person = to give heart to brother so he’d reveal location of treasure
o Complete dehumanisation of men who are not courageous – disregard for
their life
o With its connotated misogyny = because they are like women

Behaviour in order to remain heroic as shocking?

 Idea that feeling of obligation to maintain their honour leads to submit themselves in
horrific situations
 Gunnar taken prisoner both threatened with torture if they do not disclose location
of the gold that he wants
o Gunnar says that he won’t unless they bring the heart of his brother’s heart
o Condemns his brother to death?!
 He trusts himself not to break under torture
o Knows he can do it
o If his brother is dead = then the secret remains with himself only, can meet
his own death that the location of the treasure has not been revealed
 The brother laughs as they rip his heart out
o Laughter in Old Norse = is not a sign of amusement but a sing of hostility and
resentment

3. What impression do we form of Guorun in Atlakvioa? What comparisons might be

drawn with other heroic women encountered in the module so far?

Women in Old Norse Poetry

 Lanqueur’s work on the one-sex model of sexual difference in Europe (518)
 Carol Clover
o A “one gender model with a vengeance” operated in the Norse world
 The one-gender model posited for saga literature = limited sway (524)
o ‘femaleness’ = represented by the olva and the valkyria embodies knowledge
of fate and power over life respectively
o Primal identifications that separate female from male in an essential way
  Old Norse literature a woman could assume the social powers of a man
o Be praised for her vigour and assertiveness (519)
o Men lose their ‘maleness’ thorough humiliation
 The performance of males is monitored not just by competitive males but by women
 BUT Women did not take an active part in the physical violence accompanying feuds
o Active in motivating and judging its outcome
o To ensure that the prowess of their men was noised about
o This is what makes Gudrun notable because she takes physical violence into
her own hands

Heroines
 Heroines of Icelandic family sagas = begaviour and dialogue set them apart
 Codex Regius = Contains female figures of interest
o The volva, or seeress = sought out by the God Odinn to reveal detailed
information about the history of the cosmos
o Goddesses involved in counsel, strategic discussion, and warnings
o Valkyries flirting with heroes and warding off malevolent underwear ogresses
o The uncompromising heroine Brynhildr = driven by treacherous deceit to
prefer the death of the man she loved to life, his and hers
o The murderous wife and mother Gudrun = drawn through three tragic
marriages and steeped so deep in vengeance that it is the depletion of son-
avengers that eventually quiets her voice rather than any satisfaction in
retaliatory atonement

Women as powerful
 The gods suspect the females in the midst of having an unsettling power, the
foreknowledge of everyone’s fates
 Women’s desire for self-determination especially in sexual relations
 Brynhildr and Gudrun’s extraordinary testimonies
o Presence as powerful and uncompromising women
 Bryndr’s soliloquy in response to a giantess who accosts her on her journey to the
world of the dead, accusing her of visiting another woman’s husband
o Helreio Brynhildar 13
o “I had slept in Sigurdr’s arms… they had deceived me in the taking of a
husband”
 Grief caused for Sigurdr’s Wife, Gudrun = beyond measure
o From estimating herself higher than the Valkyries now feels as little as a leaf
o Marriage arranged against wife’s will = doesn’t bode well

Women – overlooked/underestimated
 In most mythological poems women are silent
o Unless e.g., in Voluspa = feminie voice of omniscience is specifically
summoned to recitation

The story of Gudrun – synopsis

 Gudrun’s family plots new marriage to Atli (the Hun) = Brynhildr’s brother
 o Who resents the family’s treatment of his sister
 Atli and Gudrun have two sons
 Brothers fight and are captured
o Gunnarr refuses to reveal whearabouts of the treasure
o Hogni is killed (“laughed as they cut to his heart”
o Gunnarr also is killed
 Gudrun has taken terrible vengeance on her husband
o Offers him a drink and provides snaks
o Reveals what they are eating
o Gudrun has butchered their children and Atli has eaten them
 Possible to look at poem in complete isolation, to appreciate it as a story in itself
 Part of a bigger story about her previous husband (the dragon slayer mentioned in
Beowulf) and her brothers

Gudrun as passive/objectified
 Theme of mistreatment of women
o As mere objects of exchange between kin-groups
o Creatures whose feelings need by little regarded in the quest for political
advantage through the forgins of alliances
 Her multiple marriages illustrate this
 Snorri’s Edda
o Lack of interest in female deities in Snorri’s Edda

Gudrun as powerful
 Murder of her own children and forcing their father to take back into himself the
sons who are flesh of his flesh
o Vivid sign of her rejection of the lineage into which she has been
incorporated
 This is what makes Gudrun notable because she takes physical violence into her own
hands
 Gudrun’s revenge
 And yet… wild factor
o Woman alone, no man to do deed for her = decides to do it herself
o Women incite male relatives to do it
o Can’t ask her sons to kill their father = unthinkable

4. In what ways do the poets of Atlakvioa and Voluspa emphasise the tragic
consequences of oath-breaking and kin-slaying?

Oath-breaking - Atlakvioa
 The story before = Brynhildr is deceived into breaking her oath
o Sigurdr is disguised as Gunnarr

Oath-breaking – Vouspa
Kin-slaying – Atlakvioa
 Ranked in order of the most immoral to the least in Norse literature
 E.g., Gudrun kills her own sons
o The worst thing you could do in Norse culture was to kill father, then son,
then mother/daughters
 Link to previous question = duty to another can supersede

 Gunnar taken prisoner both threatened with torture if they do not disclose location
of the gold that he wants
o Gunnar says that he won’t unless they bring the heart of his brother’s heart
o Condemns his brother to death?!

Kin-slaying – Volupsa

5. What are the most important events in the cosmic scheme of Voluspa and what is
their significance?

Cosmic scheme of Voluspa

 Snorri’s Edda
o Considered Voluspa the most important source of knowledge regarding
ancient times = because of the chronological scope of the poem and its
cosmic time span (3)
 Voluspa = prominent position at beginning of Codex Regius
o Serves as kind of prologue to the collection of poems
o Cosmic chronology = could explain position of Voluspa at beginning of
manuscript as opens with an account of the beginning of the world and ends
with prophecies of its destruction
 Key text for describing the chronology and fate of the pagan cosmos

The Volva
 The first voice is the ancient prophetess of volva asking for silence when delivering
her prophecy
 1st strophe
o Addresses the audience asking for silence
 2 strophe
nd

o The speaker, a female, presents her credentials and declares that what she
remembers stretches far back (29)
o Spoken in present tense
o But address must have been made at moment in past
o ‘Ar var alda’ (young were the years) = in Eddic poetry Ar Var is formula which
refers to a distant past and ar is connected with what in Latin is said to
happen in illo tempore
 The Volva occasionally address the audience directly and refers to herself
o E.g., R29-30 = mentions a meeting with Odin that took place In her past
 Alternation in narrative between past tense and references to the present
monologue
Events of the cosmic scheme
 Divided into 4 phases
a. Creation
b. Events following upon creation and leading to Ragnarok
c. Ragnarok itself
d. A new beginning
 First and last phases are similar but not identical
 A new beginning (27)
o An indication that a final/lasting world parrel to a biblical paradise is being
envisaged
o Or an indication that a new story is beginning, another cycle in an endless
row of cycles
 There is some progress in the history of the universe, but only within the cycle we
form part of
 How far does the story reach? (28)
o According to the Codex Regius and Hauksbok the memory of knowledge of
the volva reaches back to the time of Ymir, primeval giant
 The beginning and the end of the poem raise questions about what existed before
and after the events described
o But the poem still tells a rounded story

E.g., Ragnarok
 What happens after Ragnarok?
o Second generation of gods return to a rejuvenated physical world
o They do not come to judge but to resume innocent games of their forefathers
 Ragnarok is an event lying in the future, but the poem gives the impression that it is
imminent (31)
 Bjorn at Skarosa (13)
o Commentary in 1644 or 1646
o Argues that ragnarok is an analogue to the burning of Troy or the burning of
the world on Judgement Day

Surtr
 Strophe 52 = pictures the world’s destruction through fire
o Central strophe in the ragnarok sequence of events
o Describes how Surtr advances and impending encounter with Freyr – the
fertility god of beast and soil
 Surtr as the gods’ ultimate antagonist
o Prominent role in bringing about world cataclysm
 Dronke = “a folk-legendary fire-demon and giant” (120)
 Palsson = “a fire giant”
 He became associated with volcanic phenomena in medieval Iceland?
 Surtalogi (‘flame of Surtr’) (121)
 Idea of ‘black fire’ occurs with some frequency in medieval Christian speculations
about the afterlife (122)
The Importance of Time
 The concept of time is relevant to all studies of Voluspa
o Past, present, and future = a constitutive element of the poem as a narrative
 The poem is an entity existing in time
o Some idea about its place in history is a precondition of any attempt at its
interpretation
 However, no fixed point in time determined
o Instead the poem can be compared with an organism developing throughout
time
 Such a story challenges the imagination: it forces us to fill the many gaps in the
picture… (26)
o Possible to be simply overwhelmed, filled with awe and ‘fear and pity’
(Aristotle)

6. How sympathetically are the Aesir (the Gods) portrayed in Voluspa and what is their
significance?

The Aesir – Odinn

 Odinn = ‘the furious one’
o Sometimes called the ‘All-father’
 Leader of the gods/Aesir
 One-eyed, beared, old
 Attribute = spear called Gungir
 War-god but unlike Freyr, he’s more of a strategist than a fighter e.g., teaching his
chosen heroes effective battle formations
o Stirs conflict to see who is worthy to enter his great hall, Valhalla and join the
Einherjar, the warriors who will fight with the gods at ragnarok
 Patron of Kings
o Heroic literature composed for the social elite = Odin figures in it largely as
the ancestor of Kings and the patron of heroes

The Aesir – others

 Baldr
o Best and brightest of the gods; radiates light
o Blond eyelashes
o Dies young, will return after ragnarok
o Hall: Breioablikr
o Married to Nanna, who goes to Hell with him
 Loki
o Son of a goddess and a giant
o Good-looking but nasty in tempermanet and variable in behaviour
o Exceptionally cunning
o Sexuality is polymorphous
o Married to Sgyn = has two sons (Nari and Narfi)
o Father of cosmic monsters
  Valkyries = supernatural women who dwell in Valholl
o ‘Choosers of the Slain’
o Brynhildr punished for disobeying orders and giving victory to
younger/handsomer man

The ‘Mighty One’ of Hauksbok

 Introduction of new strophe into one version of Voluspa?
 Sudden appearance of powerful figure = unexpected and unprepared for (35)
o Entirely new element = a diety more powerful than those previously
presented coming from an undefined and abstract ‘above’ into a reborn
world
 Modelled upon the image of the Christian God?
 Ursula Dronke (36)
o Refers to the strophe as a ‘Christian’ ‘insertion’
 The ‘inn riki’ (the ‘mighty one’ appears = out of touch with the other parts of the
poem
o Is a late attempt to mediate between the pagan world view of the poem and
the Christian world view
o E.g., Chp.3 of Gylfaginning

Arni Magnusson
 Argues that the authors of the poems did not believe that the poems originated with
the Aesir (19)
o Even though they composed them as if they were direct speech of the Aesir
 Heathen gods speak in first person
 Suggests that the poems composed in first person are examples of prosop<op>oeia
(personification)
 The poems were composed by heather worshippers in honour of their gods and not
by the gods – or the Asian – themselves
 Eddic poems actually date from different periods

7. Voluspa is thought to have been composed sometime around the formal

Christianisation of Iceland in the year 1000. What affinities, if any, does Voluspa share
with the Christian subject matter? How might this impact our reading of the poem?

CONTEXT
 Anglo-Saxons exterminated heathen past
o Everything explicit removed
o But bits overlooked
o Can be seen that they’ve changed
 Worked hard to reject pre-Christian heritage
o High moral purpose
o Ecclesiastical
 Old Norse people became Christian c.1000

 Is it old enough for a pre-Christian or non-Christian interpretation to exist?

 o Formed by a heathen ideology
 Does it present genuinely pagan concept or is their Christain influence?
 Source criticism only began with the work of Arni Magnusson
 Search for parallels to Nordic mythology and religious practices in the folklore of the
local Germanic regions
 Jacob Grimm (19)
o Convinced that texts with explicit Christian ideology represented a phase in
which the originally ‘pure’ antiquity of the North had been ‘polluted’ by
foreign ideas

Conclusion
 There are a few elements that may have been accepted by medieval Christians as
historically true or probable
o The golden age
o The tree Yggdrasill and the well beneath is
o The war between the Aesir and the Vanir
o The slaying of Baldr
 Larger number have been dismissed as fabulae = because they defy the laws of
nature in some way
 Few myths which directly contradict Christian belief
 Seems unlikely that these would be invented or used by Christians
 However, the whole point of the confrontation between Odinn and the volva seems
to be that she is compelled to tell the truth
o Inclined to regard these details as genuinely pre-Christian

Possibilities
1. Historically true (Historia)
2. Stories which cannot be true because they are against nature (fabula)
3. Stories which contradict Christian Scripture or belief
4. Stories based on Christian material which has been misunderstood or distorted

Contradiction of Christian teaching

1. Remembers 9 worlds into which the dead die successively regardless of behaviour in
this life
2. Burr’s sons make or shape the world
3. The gods name night and her children (morning, midday, afternoon, and evening)
4. …
5. Statemntes that three norns ordained the lives of men

Distortions of Christian belief (echoes Christian scripture)

1. Oath-breakers, murderers, and seducers of other men’s wives are pubished in
Voluspa (strophe 39)
2. Vivid images (Strophe 48) of the dwarfs groaning outside their walls of stone is
reminiscent of the terror of the powerful on Doomsday
3. If we accept the coming of inn riki in strophe 65 as a genuine part of the poem ,..
good people rewarded with eternal happiness
4. …
Independent from Christianity
 Contains a powerful expression of ideas and emotions derived from pre-Christian
Northern religion (34)
o Not an attempt to create any kind of heathen theology
o Not a theoretical or discursive poem, not trying to preach anything
 At most it reflects a fear that may be of a religious nature and some kind of hope
that destruction will not be final
 Idea of Ragnarök older than advent of Christianity in Scandiavia?
 Spoken by a pagan seeress
o Alleged pre-Christian lips
o Tells of ancient things long gone and the fate which awaits the pagan gods as
the world is consumed by fire and replaced by a new one which has no place
for them

Affinity with Christian subject matter

 Christian audiences in 13th century
o Allegorical interpretations
 Affinity with Christian thought?
o A contemplation of a beginning and a terrifying end of the world
o Historical attitude to existence
 Strophe R61 = description of a Christian paradise?
o No reason to believe that ‘dyggvar drottir’ (good people) = refers to reborn
individuals rather than to a new and virtuous race of humankind
o ‘um aldrdaga’ does not mean ‘for eternity’ but simply ‘during a lifetime’
 The Christian parallel is easily established by Christians (35)
o But wouldn’t have any such connotations in the minds of the original
audience of the poet?

Final Section
 Final section reflects a mixture of old and new?
o Pagan ideas intermingled with undigested fragments picked up from the
sermons of missionaries
 Appearance of the ‘Mighty One’
o Modelled upon the image of the Christian God?
 Ursula Dronke (36)
o Refers to the strophe as a ‘Christian’ ‘insertion’
 The ‘inn riki’ (the ‘mighty one’ appears = out of touch with the other parts of the
poem
o Is a late attempt to mediate between the pagan world view of the poem and
the Christian world view
o E.g., Chp.3 of Gylfaginning
 Some descriptions were reminiscent of medieval Christian imagery
 Karl Weinhold – expressed misgivings about the alleged all-pagan background (114)
o Scenery of Nastrond (st.38), the decline of morals which preludes ragnarok
(st.45), and the image of the Judge coming from above (st.65)