Books by Declan Taggart
In this book, I trace some of the changes and variety that occurred in the Old Norse mythology of... more In this book, I trace some of the changes and variety that occurred in the Old Norse mythology of Thor. I examine the most common modern representations of Thor, such as images of him wreathed in lightning and battling against monsters and giants, and examine the evidence for such imagery within Iron Age and early medieval sources. I also look at the god's lesser known traits, including a possible connection to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Iceland and the possibility that Thor’s worshippers believed they would encounter him in an afterlife.
This geographically and chronologically far-reaching study considers the earliest sources in which Thor appears, incorporating evidence from the Viking colonies of the British Isles and in Scandinavian folklore. In doing so, it provokes a questioning of the fundamental popular and scholarly beliefs about Thor for the first time since the Victorian era, most importantly the notion of Thor as a god of thunder.
How Thor Lost his Thunder challenges modern scholarship’s understanding of the god and of the northern pantheon as a whole and is ideal for scholars and students of mythology, and the history and religion of medieval Scandinavia.
A preview is available at https://tinyurl.com/y9cexhor
Publisher's website: https://tinyurl.com/yb4gnh7p
Papers by Declan Taggart
Gripla, 2023
The religious semantics of Old Norse siðr have been heavily scrutinized by scholars over the last... more The religious semantics of Old Norse siðr have been heavily scrutinized by scholars over the last fifteen years, yet its moral dimensions have almost not been considered at all. In this, research on siðr may reflect the lack of attention paid in general to the morality of worshippers of Old Norse gods, beyond considerations of honour and masculinity. With this article, I aim to fill this gap in scholarship and to assess whether siðr’s moral semantics developed with the Christianization of the North or pre-existed it.
To begin, I survey the earliest surviving instances of siðr and distinguish a range of denotations from their uses, from “religious praxis” to “individual practice” to “moral”. The last of these senses first clearly appears in Harmsól in the twelfth century, although moral dimensions do arise earlier. Despite the dearth of earlier attestation, it is proposed on the basis of those moral dimensions in earlier usage and the term’s geographical spread (as well as its etymological derivation) that siðr “moral” was popular and relevant during the Viking Age.
The article concludes by briefly considering the relationship between morality and religion in the context of siðr, chiefly through the prism of legal change. Christian siðr may be inflexible already in the late Viking Age; however, siðr associated with Old Norse gods may also be less accommodating than is sometimes assumed, given how deeply embedded Old Norse religion was in the lives of its adherents and its possible legal and administrative connections. Siðr may not have meant “moral” for any Old Norse speaker in the same way as moral does for a speaker of modern English, and the evidence is too provisional to promote its use as an emic term for a Viking Age code of conduct. Nevertheless, siðr is the extant word that most captures that concept.
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Fræðimenn hafa á síðustu fimmtán árum mikið rýnt í trúarlega merkingarfræði fornnorræna orðsins siðr, en siðferðileg vídd þess hefur nánast ekki hlotið neina umfjöllun. Mögulega stafar það af því að fræðimenn hafa almennt ekki beint athygli sinni að siðferði þeirra sem dýrkuðu norræna guði, nema í tengslum við heiður eða karlmennsku. Markmið mitt er að takast á við þetta og meta hvort siðferðileg merkingarfræði orðsins siðr hafi þróast með kristnitöku eða verið til áður.
Í greininni eru greind merkingarsvið elstu dæma um orðið siðr, og þau tengd við trúarbrögð, einstaklinga eða siðferði. Síðastnefnda merkingin kemur fyrst glögglega fyrir í kvæðinu Harmsól á tólftu öld, þó að siðferðisvíddir komi upp fyrr. Á grundvelli þessara siðferðisvídda, landfræðilegrar útbreiðslu hugtaksins og orðsifjafræði, legg ég til að siðr í merkingunni „siðferði“ hafi verið viðtekið og jafnvel vinsælt á víkingaöld.
Greininni lýkur með því að skoða samband siðferðis og trúar í samhengi við orðið siðr og lagabreytingar. Vera má að kristinn siðr hafi mótast seint á víkingaöld en siðr tengdur norrænum guðum kann að hafa verið minna sveigjanlegur en stundum er gert ráð fyrir, í ljósi þess hve stórt hlutverk trúarhugmyndir léku í daglegu lífi fólks til viðbótar við áhrif þeirra í lagalegu og stjórnsýslulegu samhengi. Ef til vill merkti hugtakið siðr ekki „siðferði“ í fornnorrænu á sama hátt og moral í huga þeirra sem tala nútímaensku (eða siðferði í nútímaíslensku), og sönnunargögnin gætu verið of ósamfelld til að styðja við tilgátuna um almenna notkun hugtaksins fyrir siðareglur. Þrátt fyrir það er siðr það varðveitta orð sem einna helst fangar nútímahugtakið siðferði.
Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift, 2022
On those rare occasions when Old Norse religion and morality are set alongside one another, the n... more On those rare occasions when Old Norse religion and morality are set alongside one another, the notion of a non-Christian morality is typically dismissed or Old Norse religion is viewed as actively holding back moral progress. I seek to challenge that rough consensus by examining lausavísa 19 by Egill Skallagrímsson, a short poem that seems to directly link gods with punishing certain forms of conduct. I approach the text with three research questions in mind: 1) Were the gods perceived as being aware of and concerned with human actions? 2) What types of transgressions do they seem to care about? 3) What is their perceived efficacy? Through this process, I seek to improve the modern understanding of the extent to which Old Norse deities were perceived as sympathetic to particular moralities and responsive to abuses against their followers.
RESUME: I de sjaeldne tilfaelde, hvor forskere sammenstiller norrøn religion og moral, bliver begrebet om en ikke-kristen moral typisk afvist, eller også anføres det, at norrøn religion aktivt modvirkede moralske fremskridt. Jeg argumenterer imod denne konsensus, idet jeg undersøger lausavísa 19 af Egill Skallagrímsson, et kort digt, som synes direkte at forbinde guder med straf for bestemte typer adfaerd. Jeg tilgår teksten på baggrund af tre forskningsspørgsmål: 1) Blev guderne opfattet som vaerende opmaerksomme på og optagede af menneskers handlinger? 2) Hvilke typer overtraedelser forekommer de at vaere opmaerksomme på? 3) Er der en opfattelse af, at guderne handler imod sådanne overtraedelser? Igennem denne analyse søger jeg at forbedre den moderne forståelse af, i hvor høj grad norrøne guder af deres dyrkere blev opfattet som vaerende sympatisk indstillede overfor bestemte typer moralsk opførsel, og hvorvidt de reagerede på deres dyrkeres overtraedelser.
The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 2022
A major issue with studies of morality in Iceland that concentrate on
the period before the land’... more A major issue with studies of morality in Iceland that concentrate on
the period before the land’s official conversion to Christianity is that
they are almost entirely based on the analysis of sagas, in particular the
Íslendingasögur. When scholars of morality do turn to another text, it is to the poem Hávamál, sections of which are commonly cited as among the oldest verses of the Poetic Edda. To overcome the problems created by this shallow pool of materials, further sources must be added, above all those with a claim to being contemporary—even if they must be approached carefully. Consequently this article investigates the poetry attributed to the pre-conversion skald Egill Skallagrímsson, principally his Arinbjarnarkviða, Hǫfuðlausn, and Sonatorrek. It begins by isolating the key moral values Egill espouses in familiar spheres like interpersonal conflict and gift exchange before teasing out some of the implications for
Egill’s worldview, how he believes individuals in society should relate to
one another, and the kind of system(s) that, explicitly or implicitly, he
discerns underpinning social order.
Early Medieval Europe, 2022
Many of the rites described by Ibn Faḍlān in his account of a Rūs funeral remain obscure. Rather ... more Many of the rites described by Ibn Faḍlān in his account of a Rūs funeral remain obscure. Rather than attempting to further puzzle out the symbolic content of these funerary practices, this article uses signalling theory to examine their role in group dynamics. Signalling theory examines the honesty of communications between individuals, focusing especially on how costly acts can represent the fitness and cooperative qualities of the communicator. Applying this theory to Ibn Faḍlān’s descriptions can help elucidate the funeral’s impact on in-group and out-group observers, the transmission of associated counter-intuitive beliefs and, more broadly, group fitness and prosociality.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2021
Theory of mind, the theory that humans attribute mental states to others, has become increasingly... more Theory of mind, the theory that humans attribute mental states to others, has become increasingly influential in the Cognitive Science of Religion in recent years, due to several papers which posit that supernatural agents, like gods, demons, and the dead, are accredited greater than normal knowledge and awareness. Using Old Norse mythology and literary accounts of Old Norse religion, supported by archaeological evidence, I examine the extent to which this modern perspective on religious theory of mind is reflected in religious traditions from the Viking Age. I focus especially on the extent to which superperception and superknowledge were attributed to Old Norse supernatural agents and the impact of this on expressions of religion; how the attribution of theory of mind varied with circumstances and the agents to which it was being attributed; and the extent to which features of religious theory of mind common in other societies were present in the historical North. On this basis, I also evaluate the usefulness of Old Norse historiography to Cognitive Science of Religion and vice versa.
Religions, 2019
In Old Norse mythology, gods like Freyja, Odin, and Thor are usually characterized as human-like ... more In Old Norse mythology, gods like Freyja, Odin, and Thor are usually characterized as human-like creatures: they walk and ride animals, eat, grow old, and even die. Was there more to conceptions of Old Norse gods than those anthropomorphic representations? This article presents evidence that the gods of early Scandinavia were sometimes thought of as superperceiving and able to act in ways that defied the limitations of a physical body. It engages with and challenges theological correctness, a prominent theory in the Cognitive Science of Religion, to elucidate the sources of Old Norse religion and the cognitive and contextual foundations of the representations of gods encountered there. Following an examination of the mechanisms through which Old Norse gods' superperception and disembodied action were narrativized and rationalized, the article concludes with a discussion of the consequences of non-anthropomorphic representations of the gods for understanding Scandinavian worshippers' everyday religious life.
Recent scholarship has indicated that the conception of the Old Norse god Þórr as a thunder god m... more Recent scholarship has indicated that the conception of the Old Norse god Þórr as a thunder god may have been unfamiliar to Viking Age and medieval Icelanders and even to some Scandinavians. This throws much of the mythological poetry concerning the deity into a new light, and, in this article, I focus on the consequences for the interpretation of images of shaking and fire in two poems, Lokasenna and Þrymskviða.
These images are compared with similar portrayals of natural calamities, also related to Þórr, in Hallmundarkviða and Haustlöng. The perspective suggested is that, in some contexts, poets and audiences associated quite conventional cosmological imagery of disruption with specific natural phenomena, including volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and that the turmoil in Hallmundarkviða, Lokasenna and Þrymskviða may attest to an extra-literary – if still weak – connection between Þórr and these other phenomena.
Thereafter, I analyse the textual function of this seam of cosmological imagery and conclude that its primary function is to advertise the strength of the supernatural being causing it, in keeping with the persistent characterisation of Þórr in terms of his physical power in Old Norse-Icelandic literary traditions. By drawing out the cultural and textual significances of these motifs, this article aims to demonstrate the competing demands of genre, characterisation, and environment in the composition of Old Norse myths centring on Þórr and to elucidate the extent to which these images mediate responses to the terrains of Iceland and Norway.
Describing the forging of existence was as difficult a task a millennium ago as it is today. Even... more Describing the forging of existence was as difficult a task a millennium ago as it is today. Even with the crutch of science, twenty-first century discourse is still reliant on negation and antithesis to circumscribe the concepts of pre- and non-existence, on terminology like a-spatial and no-thing.
For Völuspá, this is a fundamental psychological and artistic problem, and one that the poem attempts to evade through an imagery of crafting – with profound consequences for the conceptualization of cosmogony and of cosmology.
Miðgarðr is judged as any created object would be. It is a thing that naturally decays over time and which is intrinsically linked, in terms of its constitution and quality, to the calibre of its materials and workmanship. Hence, the entire history of the world necessarily crystallizes within the instant of its creation: Miðgarðr’s fate and its physical qualities are interdependent, being shaped together in a way that reflects the nature of this act. The same deed that creates the world consigns it to Ragnarök and its destruction.
This paper proposes that cosmogony and fate should therefore, whether as belief or literary metaphors, be approached with less fixity than is customary, taking into account that impressions of them almost definitely varied between poets and audiences and that the form of fate in particular may deviate from our received ideas.
Edited Volumes by Declan Taggart
The term ‘sacred’ is often used in relation to the pre-Christian religions of Iron Age and mediev... more The term ‘sacred’ is often used in relation to the pre-Christian religions of Iron Age and medieval Scandinavia. But what did sacred really mean? What made something sacred for people? Why was one particular person, place, act, or text perceived to hold a sacral quality, while others remained profane? And what impact did such sacrality have on wider society, culture, politics, and economics, both for contemporaries and for future generations?
This volume seeks to engage with such questions by drawing together essays from many of the pre-eminent scholars of Old Norse in order to reinterpret the concept of the sacred in the Viking Age North and to challenge pre-existing frameworks for understanding the sacred in this space and time. Including essays from Margaret Clunies Ross, Stephen Mitchell, John Lindow, and Judy Quinn, it is a treasury of commentary and information that ranges widely across theories and sources of evidence to present significant primary research and reconsiderations of existing scholarship. This edited collection is dedicated to Stefan Brink, an outstanding figure in the study of early Scandinavian language, society, and culture, and it takes as its inspiration the diversity, interdisciplinarity and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field of Old Norse studies.
CONTENTS
Introduction — OLOF SUNDQVIST, DECLAN TAGGART, AND IRENE GARCÍA LOSQUIÑO
Part I: Understanding Sacredness
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse? — MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS
Landscape – Sacred and Profane — JENS PETER SCHJØDT
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in: A Note on some Creative Tensions in the Landscape — MATS WIDGREN
Part II: Sacredness and Space
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-names, and Wetlands: Some Spatial and Archaeological Contexts from the Baltic Island of Öland — JAN-HENRIK FALLGREN
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia — TORUN ZACHRISSON
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland — PER VIKSTRAND
Stafgarþar Revisited — ANDERS ANDRÉN
Sacredness Lost: On the Variable Status of Churches in the Middle Ages — BERTIL NILSSON
Part III: The Sacred and the Text
Tradition and Ideology in Eddic Poetry — JOHN MCKINNELL
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition — CAROLYNE LARRINGTON
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða — JUDY QUINN
Part IV: Sacredness Across Contexts
From Legend to Myth? — JOHN LINDOW
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden — TARRIN WILLS
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections —ANNE-SOFIE GRÄSLUND
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods — BO GRÄSLUND
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters — TERRY GUNNELL
Part V: Afterlives of Sacredness
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead — ANDREAS NORDBERG
Place-names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition: Odinic Toponyms on Samsø — STEPHEN A. MITCHELL
Sacred Sites and Central Places: Experiences of Multidisciplinary Research Projects — CHARLOTTE FABECH AND ULF NÄSMAN
A Bibliography of Stefan Brink’s Publications, Compiled with Assistance from Per Vikstrand
Public Engagement by Declan Taggart
A note on the historical accuracy of the interactive fiction Choice of the Vikings, written to ac... more A note on the historical accuracy of the interactive fiction Choice of the Vikings, written to accompany the release of the game (Choice of Games, December 2022). It also includes some acknowledgements towards the end.
Warning: the document does spoil some of the plot of the game.
Itch.io, 2019
You are a seer. The god Odin is your latest customer.
Based on the choices you make about the e... more You are a seer. The god Odin is your latest customer.
Based on the choices you make about the events of his life, you will decide the way the world ends.
Can you avoid Ragnarok?
Does Odin deserve to?
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A game by Declan Taggart, made with Inky and based on Old Norse eddic poetry, especially Vǫluspá. It originated as a diary project for Unwinnable.com, a videogames and culture magazine (the diary starts here: http://tiny.cc/IF_diary1), and was produced as part of the research project 'Rethinking old gods' with funding from the Irish Research Council (GOIPD/2017/1171) .
Thanks to the Irish Research Council and to everyone who helped with its development, especially Irene García Losquiño, Oonagh Taggart, Victoria Koivisto-Kokko, Kristian Koivisto-Kokko and Megan Condis.
Thesis by Declan Taggart
The human memory is treacherous. Ideas can become forgotten, be misattributed and mutate. As a re... more The human memory is treacherous. Ideas can become forgotten, be misattributed and mutate. As a result, the mythologies of oral cultures change over time. Taking literature about Þórr as a case study, this thesis aims to understand the operations underpinning both this change and stability in Old Norse mythological representations. To do so, I adopt, develop and evaluate a methodology from the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), an amalgamation of disciplines including psychology, anthropology, neurobiology and zoology. I hope to contribute to the ongoing debate over the socio-cultural and cognitive roots of religion.
Many of the major sources of Old Norse religion are Christian documents, negotiating with a pagan heritage through the prisms of Biblical and classical religious traditions. After discussing the problems this creates for modern commentators examining diversity, I analyse two competing schools of thought in CSR, a context-focused model of transmission and a concept-focused model. Certain factors are distinguished as key to stability in oral transmission: culturally inculcated expectations regarding a concept, counterintuitive breaches of these expectations and the capacity of a concept to adapt to novel textual and extra-textual contexts.
In the following chapters, two major concepts now associated with Þórr are examined. Strength is shown to be integral to the deity’s mythological representation, but thunder and lightning, despite the breadth of sources considered, is not. According to the factors previously identified, therefore, thunder and lightning cannot offer a transmission advantage. However, a dichotomy between Icelandic and Scandinavian material is observed regarding the importance of thunder and lightning to Þórr’s characterization.
Þórr is demonstrated to be a very flexible supernatural concept. The pivotal quality of strength facilitates the formation of new associations with culturally salient concepts like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, whilst irrelevant associations are shed. Coalitions of strongly associated concepts act as narrative vessels for the deity’s survival, preserving conceptualizations about the god over successive authors’ iterations on a narrative and perhaps assisting in the stability of traditional poetry in oral transmission.
Workshop Contributions by Declan Taggart
Over the last twenty years, it has been widely shown that manifestations of pre-Christian Scandin... more Over the last twenty years, it has been widely shown that manifestations of pre-Christian Scandinavian religion varied over time and with social conditions, yet the mechanisms governing this variation have remained somewhat obscure. Over a similar time frame, a new field in the study of religion called cognitive science of religion has emerged from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, child psychology and neurobiology, which could elucidate change in pre-Christian religion from the perspective of its basis in ordinary human cognition.
I present a theoretical framework developed from an examination of current theories regarding the cognitive structures that enable and restrain the transmission of religious ideas. Applied to the mythology of Þórr, this framework has proven useful, clarifying the nature of his popularity and demonstrating the benefits of looking to newly developed cross-disciplinary resources. This paper then goes on to raise issues that remain with my approach.
The essence of this workshop contribution can be found in a more developed form in the Methodology section of my PhD thesis 'Understanding Diversity in Old Norse Religion taking Þórr as a Case Study'.
Conference Presentations and Invited Papers by Declan Taggart
International Medieval Congress, 2021
A connection between religion and morality is rarely made in texts that contemplate either of tho... more A connection between religion and morality is rarely made in texts that contemplate either of those aspects of Old Norse-Icelandic society. Recent scholarship has begun to challenge this rough consensus, and in this paper I would like to demonstrate the further steps that can be taken to document where Old Norse religion reflects or engenders moral norms. I will do that by examining that relationship in the context of the organizing regional and national institutions of early Iceland. Of particular interest is the þing, a type of assembly in which politics, law and religion were intertwined.
I will focus on the prosocial and antisocial behaviours that were promoted or discouraged in this period and where these bolstered the organizing structures of society; on how moralities might change when directed at out- and geographically distant groups; and on a theory known as costly signalling, considering its premise that (often personally expensive) religious actions demonstrate sincere commitment to a group and thereby trustworthiness.
By tracing the ways in which these links between religion and morality manifest in early Icelandic texts, I hope to add to our knowledge of those two phenomena and to invite further cross-disciplinary work on how institutions like the þing can be examined in relation to them.
Doing Things with Old Norse Myth, 2021
Life , death and human morality according to Old Norse mythology
In this paper, I assess two prop... more Life , death and human morality according to Old Norse mythology
In this paper, I assess two propositions found in previous scholarship in Old Norse studies and the Cognitive Science of Religion respectively: 1) that the afterlives of the majority of the worshippers of Old Norse gods were supposed to differ from those allotted to warriors and kings; 2) that promises of punishment and reward after death motivate prosocial or antisocial behaviours.
Proposition 1 is not straightforward: multiple afterlives are attested in Old Norse literature, not all of which are necessarily connected with deities. Moreover, we cannot be sure on the basis of those texts how a particular afterlife motivated behaviour, although a good starting point is provided by early poetry describing positive and negative afterlives, such as Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek and the anonymous Eiríksmál and Helgakviða Hundingsbana II. Adding a further wrinkle, negative afterworlds are often considered Christian impositions on Old Norse tradition. I will survey these possibilities and present a model of Old Norse afterlife beliefs to which my second proposition can be applied, aiming both to better understand the impact that afterlife concepts had on the everyday conduct of early Scandinavians and Icelanders and to challenge and modulate the arguments of cognitive scientists dealing with religion.
The results of this inquiry will deal with potential social, cultic and geographical variations in morality and how the allocation of afterlives could consolidate stratification in social organization.
18th International Saga Conference, 2022
Recent research in the Cognitive Science of Religion has argued that religious rituals consolidat... more Recent research in the Cognitive Science of Religion has argued that religious rituals consolidate cohesion within social groups. Chief among the postulated mechanisms for this process is costly signalling, the theory that rituals involving a cost to their performers increase the credibility of those undertaking them and signal their reliability to the rest of their group. In this paper, I survey archaeological and literary sources related to worship at Skedemosse and Gamla Uppsala. I look for evidence that supports or challenges the theory of costly signalling with the aim of enriching modern scholars’ understanding of the impact of these sites on related social structures.
My study of Gamla Uppsala mainly takes from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum and Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. Archaeological evidence is compared with these texts, and in some cases is my main source, such as for possible processions at the site. Regarding Skedemosse, the rich material culture of the area compensates for the lack of documentation. In both cases, the data speaks of dramatic communal rituals involving sacrifices of wealth and of people. Some of these sacrifices even seem to be performative double sacrifices, the public destruction of an object preceding its deposition.
Various forms of credibility building and costly signalling can therefore be isolated at these sites. In the former case, these are related to, for example, group action and the promotion of certain individuals’ prestige (even according them a supernatural quality); in the latter, they may be costly financially, in terms of time, and perhaps physically. Who benefits from them? To what extent? How does that affect social organization more broadly? Does Old Norse religion foster cooperation, consciously or otherwise? By responding to these questions, I hope to elucidate the relationship between pro-social behaviour, social structure and Old Norse religion as well as to test the robustness of the theory of costly signalling itself.
For all that researchers over the last sixty years have carefully highlighted the industry, intel... more For all that researchers over the last sixty years have carefully highlighted the industry, intellect and artistry of early Scandinavians and Icelanders, the word viking remains associated with activities like violence, theft and murder. To some onlookers, it has appeared impossible that the situation could be otherwise, given the dominance of paganism in contemporary society, while the majority of handbooks on Old Norse religion and culture do not consider a relationship between morality and religion at all.
In this talk, I will question that rough consensus and emphasize links between Old Norse religion, morality and social structure. My discussion will be split into two sections. The first will consider several episodes from mythological and legendary poetry, in particular from Skírnismál, which appear to reflect and build on contemporary moral norms. Here, I am chiefly interested in how far the gods are implicated in monitoring, rewarding and punishing human activity and the types of conduct with which the gods are believed to concern themselves.
In the second half of the seminar, I will examine how religious actions and images generate prosocial behaviours (i.e. conduct that benefits others, such as sharing, donating and co-operating). Key is a theory called costly signalling, which posits that (often personally expensive) religious acts demonstrate sincere commitment to a group and thereby trustworthiness. This theory will be applied to Old Norse funeral customs and afterlife beliefs to contemplate the impact of religious rituals and imagery on behaviour and, thereby, on solidarity within communities and dominant social hierarchies.
In Old Norse mythology, gods like Odin, Freyja and Thor walk, talk, eat and even die, just as hum... more In Old Norse mythology, gods like Odin, Freyja and Thor walk, talk, eat and even die, just as humans do. Was there more to them in the minds of their worshippers than that? My paper will discuss the possibility that a non-anthropomorphic understanding of the Old Norse gods was once widespread and the impact that this seems to have had on literary material related to their existence. After offering a stipulative definition of theology, I will examine prominent theories from the cognitive science of religion which propose that anthropomorphic portrayals of deities are more natural than non-anthropomorphic portrayals. I will then challenge these theories by referring to Old Norse runic texts, theonyms and mythological passages concerning Thor’s role as a protector god as well as comparative evidence from other religious traditions. Based on that argument, I will present a new way of considering theology, as a natural product of human engagement with the environment, and highlight a series of mythological concepts that may be elaborations and creative rationalisations of that natural engagement with the environment.
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Books by Declan Taggart
This geographically and chronologically far-reaching study considers the earliest sources in which Thor appears, incorporating evidence from the Viking colonies of the British Isles and in Scandinavian folklore. In doing so, it provokes a questioning of the fundamental popular and scholarly beliefs about Thor for the first time since the Victorian era, most importantly the notion of Thor as a god of thunder.
How Thor Lost his Thunder challenges modern scholarship’s understanding of the god and of the northern pantheon as a whole and is ideal for scholars and students of mythology, and the history and religion of medieval Scandinavia.
A preview is available at https://tinyurl.com/y9cexhor
Publisher's website: https://tinyurl.com/yb4gnh7p
Papers by Declan Taggart
To begin, I survey the earliest surviving instances of siðr and distinguish a range of denotations from their uses, from “religious praxis” to “individual practice” to “moral”. The last of these senses first clearly appears in Harmsól in the twelfth century, although moral dimensions do arise earlier. Despite the dearth of earlier attestation, it is proposed on the basis of those moral dimensions in earlier usage and the term’s geographical spread (as well as its etymological derivation) that siðr “moral” was popular and relevant during the Viking Age.
The article concludes by briefly considering the relationship between morality and religion in the context of siðr, chiefly through the prism of legal change. Christian siðr may be inflexible already in the late Viking Age; however, siðr associated with Old Norse gods may also be less accommodating than is sometimes assumed, given how deeply embedded Old Norse religion was in the lives of its adherents and its possible legal and administrative connections. Siðr may not have meant “moral” for any Old Norse speaker in the same way as moral does for a speaker of modern English, and the evidence is too provisional to promote its use as an emic term for a Viking Age code of conduct. Nevertheless, siðr is the extant word that most captures that concept.
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Fræðimenn hafa á síðustu fimmtán árum mikið rýnt í trúarlega merkingarfræði fornnorræna orðsins siðr, en siðferðileg vídd þess hefur nánast ekki hlotið neina umfjöllun. Mögulega stafar það af því að fræðimenn hafa almennt ekki beint athygli sinni að siðferði þeirra sem dýrkuðu norræna guði, nema í tengslum við heiður eða karlmennsku. Markmið mitt er að takast á við þetta og meta hvort siðferðileg merkingarfræði orðsins siðr hafi þróast með kristnitöku eða verið til áður.
Í greininni eru greind merkingarsvið elstu dæma um orðið siðr, og þau tengd við trúarbrögð, einstaklinga eða siðferði. Síðastnefnda merkingin kemur fyrst glögglega fyrir í kvæðinu Harmsól á tólftu öld, þó að siðferðisvíddir komi upp fyrr. Á grundvelli þessara siðferðisvídda, landfræðilegrar útbreiðslu hugtaksins og orðsifjafræði, legg ég til að siðr í merkingunni „siðferði“ hafi verið viðtekið og jafnvel vinsælt á víkingaöld.
Greininni lýkur með því að skoða samband siðferðis og trúar í samhengi við orðið siðr og lagabreytingar. Vera má að kristinn siðr hafi mótast seint á víkingaöld en siðr tengdur norrænum guðum kann að hafa verið minna sveigjanlegur en stundum er gert ráð fyrir, í ljósi þess hve stórt hlutverk trúarhugmyndir léku í daglegu lífi fólks til viðbótar við áhrif þeirra í lagalegu og stjórnsýslulegu samhengi. Ef til vill merkti hugtakið siðr ekki „siðferði“ í fornnorrænu á sama hátt og moral í huga þeirra sem tala nútímaensku (eða siðferði í nútímaíslensku), og sönnunargögnin gætu verið of ósamfelld til að styðja við tilgátuna um almenna notkun hugtaksins fyrir siðareglur. Þrátt fyrir það er siðr það varðveitta orð sem einna helst fangar nútímahugtakið siðferði.
RESUME: I de sjaeldne tilfaelde, hvor forskere sammenstiller norrøn religion og moral, bliver begrebet om en ikke-kristen moral typisk afvist, eller også anføres det, at norrøn religion aktivt modvirkede moralske fremskridt. Jeg argumenterer imod denne konsensus, idet jeg undersøger lausavísa 19 af Egill Skallagrímsson, et kort digt, som synes direkte at forbinde guder med straf for bestemte typer adfaerd. Jeg tilgår teksten på baggrund af tre forskningsspørgsmål: 1) Blev guderne opfattet som vaerende opmaerksomme på og optagede af menneskers handlinger? 2) Hvilke typer overtraedelser forekommer de at vaere opmaerksomme på? 3) Er der en opfattelse af, at guderne handler imod sådanne overtraedelser? Igennem denne analyse søger jeg at forbedre den moderne forståelse af, i hvor høj grad norrøne guder af deres dyrkere blev opfattet som vaerende sympatisk indstillede overfor bestemte typer moralsk opførsel, og hvorvidt de reagerede på deres dyrkeres overtraedelser.
the period before the land’s official conversion to Christianity is that
they are almost entirely based on the analysis of sagas, in particular the
Íslendingasögur. When scholars of morality do turn to another text, it is to the poem Hávamál, sections of which are commonly cited as among the oldest verses of the Poetic Edda. To overcome the problems created by this shallow pool of materials, further sources must be added, above all those with a claim to being contemporary—even if they must be approached carefully. Consequently this article investigates the poetry attributed to the pre-conversion skald Egill Skallagrímsson, principally his Arinbjarnarkviða, Hǫfuðlausn, and Sonatorrek. It begins by isolating the key moral values Egill espouses in familiar spheres like interpersonal conflict and gift exchange before teasing out some of the implications for
Egill’s worldview, how he believes individuals in society should relate to
one another, and the kind of system(s) that, explicitly or implicitly, he
discerns underpinning social order.
These images are compared with similar portrayals of natural calamities, also related to Þórr, in Hallmundarkviða and Haustlöng. The perspective suggested is that, in some contexts, poets and audiences associated quite conventional cosmological imagery of disruption with specific natural phenomena, including volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and that the turmoil in Hallmundarkviða, Lokasenna and Þrymskviða may attest to an extra-literary – if still weak – connection between Þórr and these other phenomena.
Thereafter, I analyse the textual function of this seam of cosmological imagery and conclude that its primary function is to advertise the strength of the supernatural being causing it, in keeping with the persistent characterisation of Þórr in terms of his physical power in Old Norse-Icelandic literary traditions. By drawing out the cultural and textual significances of these motifs, this article aims to demonstrate the competing demands of genre, characterisation, and environment in the composition of Old Norse myths centring on Þórr and to elucidate the extent to which these images mediate responses to the terrains of Iceland and Norway.
For Völuspá, this is a fundamental psychological and artistic problem, and one that the poem attempts to evade through an imagery of crafting – with profound consequences for the conceptualization of cosmogony and of cosmology.
Miðgarðr is judged as any created object would be. It is a thing that naturally decays over time and which is intrinsically linked, in terms of its constitution and quality, to the calibre of its materials and workmanship. Hence, the entire history of the world necessarily crystallizes within the instant of its creation: Miðgarðr’s fate and its physical qualities are interdependent, being shaped together in a way that reflects the nature of this act. The same deed that creates the world consigns it to Ragnarök and its destruction.
This paper proposes that cosmogony and fate should therefore, whether as belief or literary metaphors, be approached with less fixity than is customary, taking into account that impressions of them almost definitely varied between poets and audiences and that the form of fate in particular may deviate from our received ideas.
Edited Volumes by Declan Taggart
This volume seeks to engage with such questions by drawing together essays from many of the pre-eminent scholars of Old Norse in order to reinterpret the concept of the sacred in the Viking Age North and to challenge pre-existing frameworks for understanding the sacred in this space and time. Including essays from Margaret Clunies Ross, Stephen Mitchell, John Lindow, and Judy Quinn, it is a treasury of commentary and information that ranges widely across theories and sources of evidence to present significant primary research and reconsiderations of existing scholarship. This edited collection is dedicated to Stefan Brink, an outstanding figure in the study of early Scandinavian language, society, and culture, and it takes as its inspiration the diversity, interdisciplinarity and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field of Old Norse studies.
CONTENTS
Introduction — OLOF SUNDQVIST, DECLAN TAGGART, AND IRENE GARCÍA LOSQUIÑO
Part I: Understanding Sacredness
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse? — MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS
Landscape – Sacred and Profane — JENS PETER SCHJØDT
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in: A Note on some Creative Tensions in the Landscape — MATS WIDGREN
Part II: Sacredness and Space
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-names, and Wetlands: Some Spatial and Archaeological Contexts from the Baltic Island of Öland — JAN-HENRIK FALLGREN
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia — TORUN ZACHRISSON
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland — PER VIKSTRAND
Stafgarþar Revisited — ANDERS ANDRÉN
Sacredness Lost: On the Variable Status of Churches in the Middle Ages — BERTIL NILSSON
Part III: The Sacred and the Text
Tradition and Ideology in Eddic Poetry — JOHN MCKINNELL
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition — CAROLYNE LARRINGTON
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða — JUDY QUINN
Part IV: Sacredness Across Contexts
From Legend to Myth? — JOHN LINDOW
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden — TARRIN WILLS
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections —ANNE-SOFIE GRÄSLUND
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods — BO GRÄSLUND
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters — TERRY GUNNELL
Part V: Afterlives of Sacredness
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead — ANDREAS NORDBERG
Place-names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition: Odinic Toponyms on Samsø — STEPHEN A. MITCHELL
Sacred Sites and Central Places: Experiences of Multidisciplinary Research Projects — CHARLOTTE FABECH AND ULF NÄSMAN
A Bibliography of Stefan Brink’s Publications, Compiled with Assistance from Per Vikstrand
Public Engagement by Declan Taggart
Warning: the document does spoil some of the plot of the game.
Based on the choices you make about the events of his life, you will decide the way the world ends.
Can you avoid Ragnarok?
Does Odin deserve to?
---
A game by Declan Taggart, made with Inky and based on Old Norse eddic poetry, especially Vǫluspá. It originated as a diary project for Unwinnable.com, a videogames and culture magazine (the diary starts here: http://tiny.cc/IF_diary1), and was produced as part of the research project 'Rethinking old gods' with funding from the Irish Research Council (GOIPD/2017/1171) .
Thanks to the Irish Research Council and to everyone who helped with its development, especially Irene García Losquiño, Oonagh Taggart, Victoria Koivisto-Kokko, Kristian Koivisto-Kokko and Megan Condis.
Thesis by Declan Taggart
Many of the major sources of Old Norse religion are Christian documents, negotiating with a pagan heritage through the prisms of Biblical and classical religious traditions. After discussing the problems this creates for modern commentators examining diversity, I analyse two competing schools of thought in CSR, a context-focused model of transmission and a concept-focused model. Certain factors are distinguished as key to stability in oral transmission: culturally inculcated expectations regarding a concept, counterintuitive breaches of these expectations and the capacity of a concept to adapt to novel textual and extra-textual contexts.
In the following chapters, two major concepts now associated with Þórr are examined. Strength is shown to be integral to the deity’s mythological representation, but thunder and lightning, despite the breadth of sources considered, is not. According to the factors previously identified, therefore, thunder and lightning cannot offer a transmission advantage. However, a dichotomy between Icelandic and Scandinavian material is observed regarding the importance of thunder and lightning to Þórr’s characterization.
Þórr is demonstrated to be a very flexible supernatural concept. The pivotal quality of strength facilitates the formation of new associations with culturally salient concepts like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, whilst irrelevant associations are shed. Coalitions of strongly associated concepts act as narrative vessels for the deity’s survival, preserving conceptualizations about the god over successive authors’ iterations on a narrative and perhaps assisting in the stability of traditional poetry in oral transmission.
Workshop Contributions by Declan Taggart
I present a theoretical framework developed from an examination of current theories regarding the cognitive structures that enable and restrain the transmission of religious ideas. Applied to the mythology of Þórr, this framework has proven useful, clarifying the nature of his popularity and demonstrating the benefits of looking to newly developed cross-disciplinary resources. This paper then goes on to raise issues that remain with my approach.
The essence of this workshop contribution can be found in a more developed form in the Methodology section of my PhD thesis 'Understanding Diversity in Old Norse Religion taking Þórr as a Case Study'.
Conference Presentations and Invited Papers by Declan Taggart
I will focus on the prosocial and antisocial behaviours that were promoted or discouraged in this period and where these bolstered the organizing structures of society; on how moralities might change when directed at out- and geographically distant groups; and on a theory known as costly signalling, considering its premise that (often personally expensive) religious actions demonstrate sincere commitment to a group and thereby trustworthiness.
By tracing the ways in which these links between religion and morality manifest in early Icelandic texts, I hope to add to our knowledge of those two phenomena and to invite further cross-disciplinary work on how institutions like the þing can be examined in relation to them.
In this paper, I assess two propositions found in previous scholarship in Old Norse studies and the Cognitive Science of Religion respectively: 1) that the afterlives of the majority of the worshippers of Old Norse gods were supposed to differ from those allotted to warriors and kings; 2) that promises of punishment and reward after death motivate prosocial or antisocial behaviours.
Proposition 1 is not straightforward: multiple afterlives are attested in Old Norse literature, not all of which are necessarily connected with deities. Moreover, we cannot be sure on the basis of those texts how a particular afterlife motivated behaviour, although a good starting point is provided by early poetry describing positive and negative afterlives, such as Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek and the anonymous Eiríksmál and Helgakviða Hundingsbana II. Adding a further wrinkle, negative afterworlds are often considered Christian impositions on Old Norse tradition. I will survey these possibilities and present a model of Old Norse afterlife beliefs to which my second proposition can be applied, aiming both to better understand the impact that afterlife concepts had on the everyday conduct of early Scandinavians and Icelanders and to challenge and modulate the arguments of cognitive scientists dealing with religion.
The results of this inquiry will deal with potential social, cultic and geographical variations in morality and how the allocation of afterlives could consolidate stratification in social organization.
My study of Gamla Uppsala mainly takes from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum and Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. Archaeological evidence is compared with these texts, and in some cases is my main source, such as for possible processions at the site. Regarding Skedemosse, the rich material culture of the area compensates for the lack of documentation. In both cases, the data speaks of dramatic communal rituals involving sacrifices of wealth and of people. Some of these sacrifices even seem to be performative double sacrifices, the public destruction of an object preceding its deposition.
Various forms of credibility building and costly signalling can therefore be isolated at these sites. In the former case, these are related to, for example, group action and the promotion of certain individuals’ prestige (even according them a supernatural quality); in the latter, they may be costly financially, in terms of time, and perhaps physically. Who benefits from them? To what extent? How does that affect social organization more broadly? Does Old Norse religion foster cooperation, consciously or otherwise? By responding to these questions, I hope to elucidate the relationship between pro-social behaviour, social structure and Old Norse religion as well as to test the robustness of the theory of costly signalling itself.
In this talk, I will question that rough consensus and emphasize links between Old Norse religion, morality and social structure. My discussion will be split into two sections. The first will consider several episodes from mythological and legendary poetry, in particular from Skírnismál, which appear to reflect and build on contemporary moral norms. Here, I am chiefly interested in how far the gods are implicated in monitoring, rewarding and punishing human activity and the types of conduct with which the gods are believed to concern themselves.
In the second half of the seminar, I will examine how religious actions and images generate prosocial behaviours (i.e. conduct that benefits others, such as sharing, donating and co-operating). Key is a theory called costly signalling, which posits that (often personally expensive) religious acts demonstrate sincere commitment to a group and thereby trustworthiness. This theory will be applied to Old Norse funeral customs and afterlife beliefs to contemplate the impact of religious rituals and imagery on behaviour and, thereby, on solidarity within communities and dominant social hierarchies.
This geographically and chronologically far-reaching study considers the earliest sources in which Thor appears, incorporating evidence from the Viking colonies of the British Isles and in Scandinavian folklore. In doing so, it provokes a questioning of the fundamental popular and scholarly beliefs about Thor for the first time since the Victorian era, most importantly the notion of Thor as a god of thunder.
How Thor Lost his Thunder challenges modern scholarship’s understanding of the god and of the northern pantheon as a whole and is ideal for scholars and students of mythology, and the history and religion of medieval Scandinavia.
A preview is available at https://tinyurl.com/y9cexhor
Publisher's website: https://tinyurl.com/yb4gnh7p
To begin, I survey the earliest surviving instances of siðr and distinguish a range of denotations from their uses, from “religious praxis” to “individual practice” to “moral”. The last of these senses first clearly appears in Harmsól in the twelfth century, although moral dimensions do arise earlier. Despite the dearth of earlier attestation, it is proposed on the basis of those moral dimensions in earlier usage and the term’s geographical spread (as well as its etymological derivation) that siðr “moral” was popular and relevant during the Viking Age.
The article concludes by briefly considering the relationship between morality and religion in the context of siðr, chiefly through the prism of legal change. Christian siðr may be inflexible already in the late Viking Age; however, siðr associated with Old Norse gods may also be less accommodating than is sometimes assumed, given how deeply embedded Old Norse religion was in the lives of its adherents and its possible legal and administrative connections. Siðr may not have meant “moral” for any Old Norse speaker in the same way as moral does for a speaker of modern English, and the evidence is too provisional to promote its use as an emic term for a Viking Age code of conduct. Nevertheless, siðr is the extant word that most captures that concept.
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Fræðimenn hafa á síðustu fimmtán árum mikið rýnt í trúarlega merkingarfræði fornnorræna orðsins siðr, en siðferðileg vídd þess hefur nánast ekki hlotið neina umfjöllun. Mögulega stafar það af því að fræðimenn hafa almennt ekki beint athygli sinni að siðferði þeirra sem dýrkuðu norræna guði, nema í tengslum við heiður eða karlmennsku. Markmið mitt er að takast á við þetta og meta hvort siðferðileg merkingarfræði orðsins siðr hafi þróast með kristnitöku eða verið til áður.
Í greininni eru greind merkingarsvið elstu dæma um orðið siðr, og þau tengd við trúarbrögð, einstaklinga eða siðferði. Síðastnefnda merkingin kemur fyrst glögglega fyrir í kvæðinu Harmsól á tólftu öld, þó að siðferðisvíddir komi upp fyrr. Á grundvelli þessara siðferðisvídda, landfræðilegrar útbreiðslu hugtaksins og orðsifjafræði, legg ég til að siðr í merkingunni „siðferði“ hafi verið viðtekið og jafnvel vinsælt á víkingaöld.
Greininni lýkur með því að skoða samband siðferðis og trúar í samhengi við orðið siðr og lagabreytingar. Vera má að kristinn siðr hafi mótast seint á víkingaöld en siðr tengdur norrænum guðum kann að hafa verið minna sveigjanlegur en stundum er gert ráð fyrir, í ljósi þess hve stórt hlutverk trúarhugmyndir léku í daglegu lífi fólks til viðbótar við áhrif þeirra í lagalegu og stjórnsýslulegu samhengi. Ef til vill merkti hugtakið siðr ekki „siðferði“ í fornnorrænu á sama hátt og moral í huga þeirra sem tala nútímaensku (eða siðferði í nútímaíslensku), og sönnunargögnin gætu verið of ósamfelld til að styðja við tilgátuna um almenna notkun hugtaksins fyrir siðareglur. Þrátt fyrir það er siðr það varðveitta orð sem einna helst fangar nútímahugtakið siðferði.
RESUME: I de sjaeldne tilfaelde, hvor forskere sammenstiller norrøn religion og moral, bliver begrebet om en ikke-kristen moral typisk afvist, eller også anføres det, at norrøn religion aktivt modvirkede moralske fremskridt. Jeg argumenterer imod denne konsensus, idet jeg undersøger lausavísa 19 af Egill Skallagrímsson, et kort digt, som synes direkte at forbinde guder med straf for bestemte typer adfaerd. Jeg tilgår teksten på baggrund af tre forskningsspørgsmål: 1) Blev guderne opfattet som vaerende opmaerksomme på og optagede af menneskers handlinger? 2) Hvilke typer overtraedelser forekommer de at vaere opmaerksomme på? 3) Er der en opfattelse af, at guderne handler imod sådanne overtraedelser? Igennem denne analyse søger jeg at forbedre den moderne forståelse af, i hvor høj grad norrøne guder af deres dyrkere blev opfattet som vaerende sympatisk indstillede overfor bestemte typer moralsk opførsel, og hvorvidt de reagerede på deres dyrkeres overtraedelser.
the period before the land’s official conversion to Christianity is that
they are almost entirely based on the analysis of sagas, in particular the
Íslendingasögur. When scholars of morality do turn to another text, it is to the poem Hávamál, sections of which are commonly cited as among the oldest verses of the Poetic Edda. To overcome the problems created by this shallow pool of materials, further sources must be added, above all those with a claim to being contemporary—even if they must be approached carefully. Consequently this article investigates the poetry attributed to the pre-conversion skald Egill Skallagrímsson, principally his Arinbjarnarkviða, Hǫfuðlausn, and Sonatorrek. It begins by isolating the key moral values Egill espouses in familiar spheres like interpersonal conflict and gift exchange before teasing out some of the implications for
Egill’s worldview, how he believes individuals in society should relate to
one another, and the kind of system(s) that, explicitly or implicitly, he
discerns underpinning social order.
These images are compared with similar portrayals of natural calamities, also related to Þórr, in Hallmundarkviða and Haustlöng. The perspective suggested is that, in some contexts, poets and audiences associated quite conventional cosmological imagery of disruption with specific natural phenomena, including volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and that the turmoil in Hallmundarkviða, Lokasenna and Þrymskviða may attest to an extra-literary – if still weak – connection between Þórr and these other phenomena.
Thereafter, I analyse the textual function of this seam of cosmological imagery and conclude that its primary function is to advertise the strength of the supernatural being causing it, in keeping with the persistent characterisation of Þórr in terms of his physical power in Old Norse-Icelandic literary traditions. By drawing out the cultural and textual significances of these motifs, this article aims to demonstrate the competing demands of genre, characterisation, and environment in the composition of Old Norse myths centring on Þórr and to elucidate the extent to which these images mediate responses to the terrains of Iceland and Norway.
For Völuspá, this is a fundamental psychological and artistic problem, and one that the poem attempts to evade through an imagery of crafting – with profound consequences for the conceptualization of cosmogony and of cosmology.
Miðgarðr is judged as any created object would be. It is a thing that naturally decays over time and which is intrinsically linked, in terms of its constitution and quality, to the calibre of its materials and workmanship. Hence, the entire history of the world necessarily crystallizes within the instant of its creation: Miðgarðr’s fate and its physical qualities are interdependent, being shaped together in a way that reflects the nature of this act. The same deed that creates the world consigns it to Ragnarök and its destruction.
This paper proposes that cosmogony and fate should therefore, whether as belief or literary metaphors, be approached with less fixity than is customary, taking into account that impressions of them almost definitely varied between poets and audiences and that the form of fate in particular may deviate from our received ideas.
This volume seeks to engage with such questions by drawing together essays from many of the pre-eminent scholars of Old Norse in order to reinterpret the concept of the sacred in the Viking Age North and to challenge pre-existing frameworks for understanding the sacred in this space and time. Including essays from Margaret Clunies Ross, Stephen Mitchell, John Lindow, and Judy Quinn, it is a treasury of commentary and information that ranges widely across theories and sources of evidence to present significant primary research and reconsiderations of existing scholarship. This edited collection is dedicated to Stefan Brink, an outstanding figure in the study of early Scandinavian language, society, and culture, and it takes as its inspiration the diversity, interdisciplinarity and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field of Old Norse studies.
CONTENTS
Introduction — OLOF SUNDQVIST, DECLAN TAGGART, AND IRENE GARCÍA LOSQUIÑO
Part I: Understanding Sacredness
What Does heilagr Mean in Old Norse? — MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS
Landscape – Sacred and Profane — JENS PETER SCHJØDT
Sacred and Profane, Visual and Lived-in: A Note on some Creative Tensions in the Landscape — MATS WIDGREN
Part II: Sacredness and Space
Ritual Places, Sacral Place-names, and Wetlands: Some Spatial and Archaeological Contexts from the Baltic Island of Öland — JAN-HENRIK FALLGREN
Ritual Space and Territorial Boundaries in Scandinavia — TORUN ZACHRISSON
Karlevi: A Viking Age Harbour on Öland — PER VIKSTRAND
Stafgarþar Revisited — ANDERS ANDRÉN
Sacredness Lost: On the Variable Status of Churches in the Middle Ages — BERTIL NILSSON
Part III: The Sacred and the Text
Tradition and Ideology in Eddic Poetry — JOHN MCKINNELL
Sacred Hero, Holy Places: The Eddic Helgi-Tradition — CAROLYNE LARRINGTON
Fifth-Column Mother: Týr’s Parentage according to Hymiskviða — JUDY QUINN
Part IV: Sacredness Across Contexts
From Legend to Myth? — JOHN LINDOW
The Landscape of Thor Worship in Sweden — TARRIN WILLS
Conversion, Popular Religion, and Syncretism: Some Reflections —ANNE-SOFIE GRÄSLUND
Swine, Swedes, and Fertility Gods — BO GRÄSLUND
The Goddesses in the Dark Waters — TERRY GUNNELL
Part V: Afterlives of Sacredness
Valhǫll and the Swedish ‘Valhall’ Mountains of the Dead — ANDREAS NORDBERG
Place-names, Periphrasis, and Popular Tradition: Odinic Toponyms on Samsø — STEPHEN A. MITCHELL
Sacred Sites and Central Places: Experiences of Multidisciplinary Research Projects — CHARLOTTE FABECH AND ULF NÄSMAN
A Bibliography of Stefan Brink’s Publications, Compiled with Assistance from Per Vikstrand
Warning: the document does spoil some of the plot of the game.
Based on the choices you make about the events of his life, you will decide the way the world ends.
Can you avoid Ragnarok?
Does Odin deserve to?
---
A game by Declan Taggart, made with Inky and based on Old Norse eddic poetry, especially Vǫluspá. It originated as a diary project for Unwinnable.com, a videogames and culture magazine (the diary starts here: http://tiny.cc/IF_diary1), and was produced as part of the research project 'Rethinking old gods' with funding from the Irish Research Council (GOIPD/2017/1171) .
Thanks to the Irish Research Council and to everyone who helped with its development, especially Irene García Losquiño, Oonagh Taggart, Victoria Koivisto-Kokko, Kristian Koivisto-Kokko and Megan Condis.
Many of the major sources of Old Norse religion are Christian documents, negotiating with a pagan heritage through the prisms of Biblical and classical religious traditions. After discussing the problems this creates for modern commentators examining diversity, I analyse two competing schools of thought in CSR, a context-focused model of transmission and a concept-focused model. Certain factors are distinguished as key to stability in oral transmission: culturally inculcated expectations regarding a concept, counterintuitive breaches of these expectations and the capacity of a concept to adapt to novel textual and extra-textual contexts.
In the following chapters, two major concepts now associated with Þórr are examined. Strength is shown to be integral to the deity’s mythological representation, but thunder and lightning, despite the breadth of sources considered, is not. According to the factors previously identified, therefore, thunder and lightning cannot offer a transmission advantage. However, a dichotomy between Icelandic and Scandinavian material is observed regarding the importance of thunder and lightning to Þórr’s characterization.
Þórr is demonstrated to be a very flexible supernatural concept. The pivotal quality of strength facilitates the formation of new associations with culturally salient concepts like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, whilst irrelevant associations are shed. Coalitions of strongly associated concepts act as narrative vessels for the deity’s survival, preserving conceptualizations about the god over successive authors’ iterations on a narrative and perhaps assisting in the stability of traditional poetry in oral transmission.
I present a theoretical framework developed from an examination of current theories regarding the cognitive structures that enable and restrain the transmission of religious ideas. Applied to the mythology of Þórr, this framework has proven useful, clarifying the nature of his popularity and demonstrating the benefits of looking to newly developed cross-disciplinary resources. This paper then goes on to raise issues that remain with my approach.
The essence of this workshop contribution can be found in a more developed form in the Methodology section of my PhD thesis 'Understanding Diversity in Old Norse Religion taking Þórr as a Case Study'.
I will focus on the prosocial and antisocial behaviours that were promoted or discouraged in this period and where these bolstered the organizing structures of society; on how moralities might change when directed at out- and geographically distant groups; and on a theory known as costly signalling, considering its premise that (often personally expensive) religious actions demonstrate sincere commitment to a group and thereby trustworthiness.
By tracing the ways in which these links between religion and morality manifest in early Icelandic texts, I hope to add to our knowledge of those two phenomena and to invite further cross-disciplinary work on how institutions like the þing can be examined in relation to them.
In this paper, I assess two propositions found in previous scholarship in Old Norse studies and the Cognitive Science of Religion respectively: 1) that the afterlives of the majority of the worshippers of Old Norse gods were supposed to differ from those allotted to warriors and kings; 2) that promises of punishment and reward after death motivate prosocial or antisocial behaviours.
Proposition 1 is not straightforward: multiple afterlives are attested in Old Norse literature, not all of which are necessarily connected with deities. Moreover, we cannot be sure on the basis of those texts how a particular afterlife motivated behaviour, although a good starting point is provided by early poetry describing positive and negative afterlives, such as Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek and the anonymous Eiríksmál and Helgakviða Hundingsbana II. Adding a further wrinkle, negative afterworlds are often considered Christian impositions on Old Norse tradition. I will survey these possibilities and present a model of Old Norse afterlife beliefs to which my second proposition can be applied, aiming both to better understand the impact that afterlife concepts had on the everyday conduct of early Scandinavians and Icelanders and to challenge and modulate the arguments of cognitive scientists dealing with religion.
The results of this inquiry will deal with potential social, cultic and geographical variations in morality and how the allocation of afterlives could consolidate stratification in social organization.
My study of Gamla Uppsala mainly takes from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum and Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. Archaeological evidence is compared with these texts, and in some cases is my main source, such as for possible processions at the site. Regarding Skedemosse, the rich material culture of the area compensates for the lack of documentation. In both cases, the data speaks of dramatic communal rituals involving sacrifices of wealth and of people. Some of these sacrifices even seem to be performative double sacrifices, the public destruction of an object preceding its deposition.
Various forms of credibility building and costly signalling can therefore be isolated at these sites. In the former case, these are related to, for example, group action and the promotion of certain individuals’ prestige (even according them a supernatural quality); in the latter, they may be costly financially, in terms of time, and perhaps physically. Who benefits from them? To what extent? How does that affect social organization more broadly? Does Old Norse religion foster cooperation, consciously or otherwise? By responding to these questions, I hope to elucidate the relationship between pro-social behaviour, social structure and Old Norse religion as well as to test the robustness of the theory of costly signalling itself.
In this talk, I will question that rough consensus and emphasize links between Old Norse religion, morality and social structure. My discussion will be split into two sections. The first will consider several episodes from mythological and legendary poetry, in particular from Skírnismál, which appear to reflect and build on contemporary moral norms. Here, I am chiefly interested in how far the gods are implicated in monitoring, rewarding and punishing human activity and the types of conduct with which the gods are believed to concern themselves.
In the second half of the seminar, I will examine how religious actions and images generate prosocial behaviours (i.e. conduct that benefits others, such as sharing, donating and co-operating). Key is a theory called costly signalling, which posits that (often personally expensive) religious acts demonstrate sincere commitment to a group and thereby trustworthiness. This theory will be applied to Old Norse funeral customs and afterlife beliefs to contemplate the impact of religious rituals and imagery on behaviour and, thereby, on solidarity within communities and dominant social hierarchies.
The last section of my paper would concern itself with the potential existence of a theology of Thor, an area of Old Norse religion that has not been systematically investigated before. First I would discuss why Old Norse theology would be submerged in the historical record before proceeding to some of the ways in which we can trace a metaphysical strand of thought related to Thor