The Threat of Induced Desire in Skírnismál

RICHARD COLE The Threat of lnduced Desire in Skirnismal Tue matter of desire in the Old Norse poem Skfrnismal lies at the junction of myth, history, and politics. It is mythic because ofthe poem's content, which tells the tale of a giantess, Geror, threatened into sex with the god Freyr by his page Skirnir. 1 It is historie because the interpretation ofthe myth has normally been coloured by the historical setting that scholars choose for it. And it is political, if only because it illustrates the sexual exploitation of an oppressed population (the giants are nota well-favoured group in Old Norse myth). 2 Moreover, I interpret Sk{rnismal as having thoughtful answers to the questions ofwhatwe want, whywe want it, and whether ourwants can be reshaped. Those questions have implications for any politically minded person, interested in how ideology shapes the world. No surprise, then, that Stephen A. Mitchell is an authority on the poem. Much of Mitchell's research in cultural history investigates peoples, texts, or ways oflife found on the margins: AFinnish witch in Stockholm in 1489 who provided a cat-brain potion to rob a man of his potency,3 an Icelandic nun burnt at the stake in 1343, purportedly for signing a written pact with the devil,-+ a mysterious verse, found in a mostly devotional miscellany from Vadstena, about a traveller meeting a troll in the Mitchell, 'Skirnismdl and Nordic Charm Magic'; Mitchell, 'Fpr Sdrnis as Mythoiogical Model'; Mitchell, 'DgF 526 "Lokket med runer'~ Memory, and Magic~ pp. 209-10; Mitchell, 'Skirnismdl {Tue LayofSkirnir)'; Mitchell, '.Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Nordic Middle Ages'; Mitchell, Witchcraft arzd Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, pp. 52-551 66-72, p. 229 esp. n. 78, n. 82; Mitchell, 'Skirnir's Other Journey'. Texts of the Poetic Edda are cited from Edda, ed. by Neckel, rev. by Kuhn, by page and stanza. 2 Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, pp. 45-60; Cole, 'In Pursuit of an Æsirist Ideology', PP. 69-77; Simek, 'Lust, Sex and Domination~ pp. 244-46. 3 Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, p. 173; Mitchell, '.Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Non:lic Middle Ages~ pp. 23-25. 4 Mitchell, 'Heresy and Heterodoxy in Medieval Scandinavia', p. 44. 1 Richard Cole • ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of Medieval History at Aarhus Universitet. Myth, Ma9ic, and Memory in Early Scandinavian Narrative Cu/ture: Studies in Honour of Stephen A. Mitchell, ed. by Jurg Glauser and Pernille Hermann, in collaboration with Stefan Brink and Joseph Harris, AS 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 91-109 C BR.EPOLS ~ PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.AS-EB.5.121335 92 RICHARD COLE forest. 5 Mitchell has the instinct shared by the microhistorian and the novelist: he discovers personages or characters who find themselves on the sharp end ofhegemonies. 6 Geror is one such character. Before proceeding, it may be helpful to give some background on the poem itself, also known as Fpr Skfrnis. It is first attested in the Codex Regius, an Icelandic manuscript of c. 1270s (on its codicological context, see Rosli's chapter in the present work). Some studies take Sk{rnismal as a fairly straightforward source for Scandinavian paganism, albeit with a few Christian accretions, which to my mind would imply a dating for an early Sk{rnismal-like text in the 7oos-8oos. 7 Others prefer the later Viking Age as a time of composition, where paganism was under Christian influence (following their reasoning, I interpret that to be the 9oos). 8 Heinrichs locates the poem in a Christian milieu parodying paganism. 9 Abram has suggested the period of reactionary paganism under Earl Hakon in Norway (r. c. 970-95) - a prospect to which we shall retum. 10 An outlier locates the poem in Iceland during the 12oos. 11 Tue poem's plot goes like this: Freyr spies from afar the beautiful giantess Geror. He is so enamoured that he dispatches his messenger Skfmir to 'persuade' her to have sex with him. Skirnir begins with bids to buy Geror's love but then attempts to intimidate her into submission. Either she must submit or 5 Mitchell, 'On the Old Swedish Trollmote'. 6 Gramsci has a tendency to treat hegemony - the matrix of moral attitudes, aesthetic tastes, cultural movements, political decisions, and economic interests which maintain the status quo - as an essentially modem phenomenon, even identifying points where he considers that the technological backwardness of the Middle Ages would deform the formation of hegemony ( Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, pp. 219-23 ). However, a medieval hegemony has been found in Gramsci, even ifit tends towards a puerile caricature of'the Church' as an · intellectually domineering 'men in black' type of organization (Fulton, 'Religion and Politics in Gramsci', pp. 208-10 ). Defining the medieval hegemony must be the topic for another day, but I suspect its moral and cultural content are what is found summarized by Brian Patrick McGuire (Den levende middelalder, esp. pp. 34-121, 168-231, 246-58). For its likely economic and political content, see Rodney Hilton ( Class Conjlict and the Crisis of Feudalism, pp. 1-11, 41-48, 121-79, 205-21). 7 Philpotts, The Bider Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama, esp. pp. 15-17; Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, pp. 174-75. Most sceptical of Christian influence is Gunnell, The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia, p. 355 n. 9. Forerunners are surveyed by Fidjestøl, The Dating of Eddie Poetry, pp. 50-51, 61. 8 Steinsland, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi, pp. 112-16, 170-71. De Vries was uncharacteristically coy on this: Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 1 179-80. He admitted echoes ofDavid and Bathsheba while also endorsing the hieros gamos theory (Olsen, 1 'Fra gammelnorsk myte og kultus'), without making clear his dating. One wonders if this apparent indecision is a case of tension between de Vries's Nazi enthusiasm for 'the Germanic mists' and his survey of the literature. Fidjestøl clarifies: The Dating ofEddie Poetry, pp. 182-84. 9 Heinrichs, 'Der liebeskranke Freyr: pp. 31-33. 10 Abram, Myths of the Pagan North, pp. 127-49. 11 Bibire, 'Freyr and Ger<'Jr: pp. 20-21. THE THREAT OF INDUCED DESIRE IN SKfRNISMAL he will bewitch her with a string of magical curses. Geror proudly refuses, until she eventuallyyields as Skirnir's threats become increasingly horrific. Munr and Desiring-Machines Suetonius said of Emperor Caligula that he was fond of a certain adage: 'Tragicum illud subinde iactabat: "Oderint, dum metuant"' 12 (He often quoted the tragic poet [Accius], 'Let them hate me, so long as they fear me'). But Caligula's dedication to menacing everyone into submission did not stop him being hacked to death by his own soldiers and senators. This is because threats are a crude and unreliable way to establish control over people. A threat does not reach into the psyche of the person one has directed it against and change what they actually want. Coercion promotes the conformity of the coerced in resembling the desires of their oppressors: Yes, a person under threat may outwardly appear to have the same desires as the person threatening them. But inwardly the threatened party's desires have not been realigned at all. 13 A successful strategy of oppression must achieve this realignment. Threats may play their part, but unless the psychology of the victim is conditioned by more subtle means, then what has been achieved is not an enduring structure, in the way that patriarchy, the taxation-dependent state, 1-1- or capitalism are structures, but an ephemeral aet of violence. This phenomenon of coming to desire one's own oppression, servitude, and/ or abasement was identified as the key political problem by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Drawing on Spinoza and Reich, they summarized the problem thus: Even the most repressive and the most deadly forms of social reproduction are produced by desire within the organization that is the consequence of such production under various conditions that we must analyze. That is why the fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered: 'Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation ?' How can people possibly reach the point of shouting: 'More taxes! Less bread!'? 15 Suetonius, Lives af the Caesars, ed. by Rolfe, p. 452 (bk IV, ch. xxx). All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. R.osli's chapter in the present volume brings much clarity to this problem with reference to argumentum ad baculum. I am thinking here of the Danish skattestat, which is a calque from German Steuerstaat. The concept is less common in Anglophone parlance, e.g. Poulsen, 'Den Danske Konges Indtægter i Middelalderen'. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 31. Of interest to the Scandinavianist will be Deleuze and Guattari's neglected critique ofDumezil (pp. 387-89, 468-72) and uncharacteristically sober thoughts on runes (pp. 443-44). 93 94 RICHARD COLE To explain this problem, Deleuze and Guattari urged that we look away from a simple, two-partymodel defined bythe contrasting desires ofthe Oppressor and the Oppressed. Instead, theyintroduced the idea of'desiring-machines~ whose work was 'desiring-production'. 16 Desire begins with sources that the individual cannot perceive: the bowel that 'desires' peristalsis, the lungs that 'desire' to inflate and deflate. How far one can characterize these impulses as 'desires~ at the micro-level of Deleuze and Guattari's analysis, is perhaps questionable, but their model is sound when one begins to think about the various bodily systems that constitute an individual. Tue individual entertains a complex array of desires, from basic needs such as shelter to the warmth of human contact. Together, individuals comprise social units, whose collective interests produce still further desires: wealth, political order, etc. In faet, a Deleuzo-Guattarian view means abandoning the individual altogether, and picturing instead a sea of fluctuating desires: Desires shared across the boundaries of an individual ( what separates your desire for better weather from mine?), and internally contradictory desires (a person wants to feel their hand entwined in a lover's, but they simultaneously want to climb a mountain on their own in a country a thousand miles away). Skfrnismal cannot be said to reflect Deleuzo-Guattarian metaphysics entirely. Tue poem recognizes the individual as a meaningful social concept insofar as it is a conversation between three discrete characters, Freyr, Geror, and Skirnir. Yet all three characters seem curiously aware of the composite nature of their identities. Desire and its fruition, pleasure, are frequently discussed as something abstract and discernible from the self - something whieh can be possessed and transformed. Geror begins by cautioning Skirnir: 'Ånauo pola ec vil aldregi I at mannzcis munom' (I will never tolerate being threatened Iin accordance with the desires ofmen) .17 Skirnir frequently makes the distinction between the person and their desire: 'Tamsvendi ec pie drep, enn ec pie temia mun, I mær, at minom munom'. (I will strike you with the wand of taming, yet it is your desire I tame I girl, according to my desires) ; 18 'Heyri iQtnar, heyri hrimpursar, synir Suttunga, sialfir aslioar, hve ec fyrbyo, hve ec fyrirbanna manna glaum mani, manna nyt mani' (Hear me now, giants, hear me now frost-giants I you sons of Suttungr, the soldiers of the gods themselves how I forbid, how I deny the girl pleasure in men the girl use of men); 19 'mær, af pinom munom, Imær, at min om munom' ( Girl, from your desires, I girl, by my desires). 20 When Freyr asks the question whose reply leads to the closing of the poem, he separates himself and Skirnir from their desires in a way of which Deleuze and Guattari would have approved: I I I 16 Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, pp. 1-8. 17 18 19 2.0 Edda, p. 74, st. :2.4. Edda, p. 74, st. :2.6. Edda, p. 76, st. 34. Edda, p. 76, st. 35. I I I I THE THREAT OF INDUCED DESIRE IN SKfRNISMA.L 'Seglfo mer ],at, Scirnir, åor ],u veroir SQOli af mar I oc ],u stigir feti framarr: I hvat ],u årnaoir i iQtunheima I],ins eoa mins munar?' (Tel1 me, Skirnir, before you sling your saddle from your mount I and you take a single step forward I whatwas ityou won in the realm of giants I of yourdesires or mine?). 21 Tue word that keeps cropping up here is munr, which has been translated variously as 'will' or 'desire: 22 Larrington has pointed out that 'Munr is repeated eight times during the course of the poem, more frequently than any other semantically charged term, and its referents are carefully distinguished through use ofa possessive adjective: 23 She then goes on to interpret the word as something like a wish; that is to say, a particular end in itself. Perhaps, though, we ought to think of munr as designating something more akin to a desiring-machine; nota goal, but a process, a flux, a component of the psyche. Fittingly, one of the word's many meanings is 'mind: 24 Skimir's proposed method oftampering with Geror's munr is a device he refers to either as a 'tamsvQndr' (taming rod) or 'gambanteinn' (magic wand), apparently inscribed with runes. 25 Upon being struck with it, Geror will 'ganga, er pie gumna synir I sioan æva se' (go where the sons of men I will never see you again). 26 This is an obscure line, but Dronke and McK.innell have pointed out the striking similarity between Skirnir's weapon and the story ofRinda in the Gesta Danorum ( c. 1208), who is driven mad after being touch ed by Ooinn ( in the guise of a female doctor) with a piece of magically inscribed bark: 'Quam protinus cortice carminibus adnotato contingens lymphanti similem reddidit' 27 (At once he struck her with a piece ofbark with charms written upon it and made her as though one deranged). Tue parallel is arresting, though an important difference must be noted. In Saxo's story, Rinda's insanity does not impair her ability to withhold sexual consent. 6oinn still has to adopt a female alter-ego and then trick Rinda into letting herselfbe tied up. What follows is, as Mitchell observes, a rape that does not rely on magical inducements. 28 In the Gesta Danorum, a mentally frenzied woman can still say no to sex. Tue Sk(rnismal poet, on the other hand, concatenates libido and madness, for example, 'I>urs rist ec per oc J,riå stafi I ergi oc ceoi oc 6J,ola; I svå ec pat af rist, sem ec ],at a reist, I ef 21 Edda, p. 77, st. 40; Sandberg calls this a 'hierarchy of"desires"': Sandberg, 'Repetition in Old Norse Eddie Poetry~ pp. 200-201. 22 Simek, 'Lust, Sex and Domination~ p. 238; von See and others, Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, pp. 73-74; Sandberg, 'Repetition in Old Norse Eddie Poetry~ pp. 200-208. 23 Larrington, '"What Does Woman Want?"', p. 7. 24 Cleasby and Vigfusson, Icelandic-English Dictionary, pp. 438-39; MacKenzie, 'Vernacular Psychologies~ p. 39. 25 Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, pp. 52-53; de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 1, 319-20, 107. 26 Edda, p. 76, st. 26. 27 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Friis-Jensen, pp. 165-66, bk m, ch. 4.4; McKinnell, Meeting the Other, pp. 158-59; Dronke, 'Art and Tradition in Skirnismal', p. 251, pp. 267-68. 28 Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, p. 79. 95 96 RICHARD COLE goraz parfar pess' (I carve 'giant' on you, and three other runes: I perversity, lust, and unbearable delirium IAs I rub it off, so I carve it on Iif needs be). 29 The Threat versus lnduced Desire / The Threat of lnduced Desire We might reconsider the scholarly suggestion that Skirnir's threat is based on Geror in some way becoming de-sexualized or forced into an anhedonic state. For example, Bandlien ingeniouslyputs a putative threat ofindifference to sex in the context of Christian literature. Comparing the pursuit of St Agatha by Quintianus with that of Geror and Skirnir, he states that 'Qvincian does not succeed in turningAgatha's thoughts [towards sex] because she has the help of Christ. While Geror cannot live a full life without sexuality, Agatha seeks to do just that:-~ 0 Abram notes that 'Skirnir effectively forces Geror to enter into an unwanted sexual relationship by threatening to deny her any future satisfaction from or with men: 31 Harris points to Skirnir's threat, 'ver pu sem pistill'32 ( you will be like a thistle), observing that 'brittle dryness in autumn is the antithesis of the fluid suppleness of a nubile girl in the spring of life. A curse creates for the accursed a negative of the hoped-for world [ ... ] the inversion of all the hopes and expectations of fruitful womanhood:-n In this vein, a 1998 article by Mitchell first introduced Old Norse philologists to the concept of the 'anaphrodisiac charm: where of Sk{rnismdlhe wrote: 'Tue text is appropriately thought of as being concerned mainly with love and fertility but the resolution of the poem's central tension is achieved specifically by threatening Geror's reproductive capacitywith an anaphrodisiac imprecation. 34 Later, he writes that Skirnir 'in essence, us[es] an anaphrodisiac curse to achieve an aphrodisiac end: 35 In this latter formulation, we approach what I consider to be the true horror of the poem: the magic with which Skirnir threatens Geror is explicitly not going to sterilize her desires. It is going to corrupt them, intensify them, turn them into a curse: 'T6pi oc 6pi, tiQsull oc 6poli, I vaxi per tår meo trega!' (madness and moaning, tantalized and consumed with unbearable desire Iyour te ars grow with your grief!). 36 Tue depraved existence which Geror will lead once she is struck by Skirnir's magic has been reasonably seen as a torture in itself, but the real source of 29 Edda, p. 751 st. 36. 30 Bandlien, Strategies 31 32 33 34 35 36 of Passion, p. 140. Agatha saga would have made the story available in Old Norse from the late thirteenth century; see Wolf, Heilagra meyja sogur, p. :x:lvii. Abram, Myths of the Pagan North, p. 147. Edda, p. 75, st. 31. Harris, 'Cursing with the Thistle~ p. 31. Mitchell, 'Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Nordic Middle Ages', p. 26. Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, p. 53. Edda, p. 75, st. 29. THE THREAT OF INDUCED DESIRE IN SKIRNISMÅL Geror's suffering is that she would be made to desire what is happening to her. She would, in Deleuzo-Guattarian terms, end up shouting 'More taxes ! Less bread!: (In Skirnir's terms, she will end up shouting 'more goat's piss!:) 37 The semantie field of desire we have seen in the previously cited stanzas would otherwise be non sequitur in the context of making a threat. In the following stanzas, the threat ofinduced desire is made even more forcefully: Tramar gneypa pie scolo gerstan dag iQtna gQroom i: til hrimpursa hallar pu scalt hverian dag kranga kosta laus, kranga kosta VQn; grat at gamni scaltu i gogn hafa oc leioa meo tarom trega. 38 [Trolls will grope you all the wretched day in the farmsteads of giants; to the hall of frost-giants, every day you will walk belaboured, without choice walk belaboured, without hope of choiee. You will swap weeping for pleasure, and suffer grief with tears.] Meo pursi prihQfoooom pu scalt æ nara, eoa verlaus vera; pitt geo gripi, pie morn morni! ver pu sem pistill, sa er var prunginn i Qnn ofanveroa..\9 [With a three-headed giant you shall ever lead a mis~rable life or else be man-less; Your mind will be seized, your wasting will waste you ! You will be like a thistle crushed at the autumn harvest.] Hrimgrimnir heitir purs, er pie hafa scal fyr nagrindr neoan; par per vilmegir a vioar r6tom Building on my arguments when I delivered them in a conference paper in 2012, see Sandberg, 'Repetition in Old Norse Eddie Poetry~ pp. 145-46. Sandberg fruitfully tak.es the discussion into amore theoretical, more thoroughly Deleuzean dimension, while here I have tended towards a political-allegorical reading. Edda, p. 75, st. 30. Edda, p. 751 st. 31. 97 98 RICHARD COLE geita bland gefi ! CEori dryccio fa pu aldregi, mær, afpinom munom, mær, at minom munom. 40 [Hrimgrimnir is the name of the giant who'll take you down below the corpse gates, there slaves will, by the roots of the tree, give you goat's piss ! A finer drink you'll never get, girl, from your desires, girl, by my desires.] In relation to the goat urine, the last three lines are illuminating: 'A finer drink you'll never get, girl, from your desires, girl, by my desires: Some observe a binary opposition between urine and the pleasant meads and ales which would otherwise be the pleasure of a mistress of the house, 41 while a compelling contribution by Arkomani points out the use of goat urine as a remedy for epilepsy in the High Middle Ages. +2 But something very simple and distressing seems to have gone unnoticed - the punishment is not just drinking goat's piss, it is wanting to drink goat's piss. Skirnir makes it clear that this fate would be 'by your desires: Tue same is true of Geror taking her three-headed giant lover. If Skirnir performs the spell he threatens, she will feel erotic desire for this monstrous being. Skirnir points out explicitly that Geror's 'mind will be seized' (pitt geo gripi'). When Skirnir threatens insanity (e.g. t6pi, øoi) he is not only talking of hallucinations or other symptoms of mental illness, but rather of a state of mind where, amongst other degradations, Geror will take a giant lover and accept no other 'or else be man-less: This is why Skirnir stresses 'pitt geo gripi'. It is not that Skirnir will.abduct Geror, give her to a giant, and then deny her permission to run away and seek a more handsome lover. She will not want a more handsome lover. When we imagine the enchanted Geror having to kranga ( walk, belaboured) 43 to the 'hall of frost-giants' the implication of previous readings has been that she would be trudging reluctantly to a place she does not wish to be. In faet, with her munr remade, it follows that she would be determined in her journey. If every day she beats the same path to the hall, her encumbered gait must be explained by her deteriorating health, or the injuries she sustains at the hands ofher giantish abusers. But she will not be making the journey under duress per se. I I 40 Edda, p. 76, st. 35. 41 Harris, 'Eddie Poetry~ pp. 98-100; Larrington, "'What Does Woman Want?"~ p. 10. 42 Arkomani, 'Tue Best Drink a Girl Can Get: 43 More fully defined as 'gå besværligt og vaklende' ( walk belaboured and unsteady) by Sveinbjorn Egilsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquæ Linguæ Septentrionalis, p. 346. THE THREAT OF INDUCED DESIRE IN SKiRNISMAL However, in Skfrnismdl the munr is not the seat of consciousness. Skirnir will work his spell over some of the desiring-machines that whir away in Geror's psyche, but leave a shred ofher old personality. Gerorwill not be able to abandon herself to her newfound desires. Rather, part of her will remain conscious of how perverse they really are. As stanza 29 has it, she will feel 'lust' while at the same time weeping 'tears: Moreover, though her appetites will be ardent, she will never achieve complete sexual satisfaction. Skirnir will forbid her 'manna nyt',++ literally 'use of men' but widely interpreted to mean sexual gratification. 45 Indeed, Steinsland goes so far as to define munr as 'utilfredsstilt seksualbegjær' (unsatisfi.ed sexual desire). 46 Desire, lnduced and Authentic Mitchell illustrates that so-called 'love magic~ aften achieved by recourse to spells written in runes, had a rich history in medieval Scandinavia. 47 Saga literature and runic inscriptions alike indicate that magically induced lust was something like a delirium, fever, or sickness that could be put upon a woman by a malefactor. I will not reiterate Mitchell's survey but will add two examples that are illustrative. In Egils saga ( c. 1220s), the eponymous hero visits a farmer called I>orfinnr in eastern Norway. I>orfinnr's daughter, Helga, is described as kona sjuk (a poorlywoman).48 He says that his daughter "'hefir [ ... ]haft langan vanmått'~ ok pat var krQm mikil'; "'fekk han enga n6tt svefn ok var sem hamstoli væri"' (has [ ... ] lang been unwell, and it was a great wasting disease; she gat no sleep at night and it was as though her wits had been stolen). 49 I>orfinnr says that a certain b6ndason (farmer's son, though here perhaps peasant's son) has carved a runestave to cure Helga but that it has made her worse. Egill <liseovers a rune-inscribed whalebone in her bed, which seems to be a separate item from the b6ndason's_ supposed cure. One interpretation is that Egill is 'detecting and correcting a bungled attempt to work on her with 44 Edda, p. 76, st. 34. 45 Von See and others, Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, p. 130; Steinsland, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi, p. 108. 46 Steinsland, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi, p. 108. 47 Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, pp. 52-59. 48 Egils saga Skalla-Grimssonar, ed. by Sigurour Nordal, p. 229, ch. 72. 49 Egils saga Skalla-Grimssonar, ed. by Sigurour Nordal, p. 229, ch. 72. Uncommented upon with regards to Egill's runic knowledge is that he punningly quotes the Norwegian Rune Poem. Modcing his rival, Qlvir, he says 'Ql gervir nu fQlvan' {Beer now malces [hun] pale), Egils saga Skalla-Grfmssonar, ed. by Sigurour Nordal, p. 110, ch. 44. Tue rune poem has 'bol gQrvir mann folfuan' ( misfortune makes a man pale), 'Et gammel-norsk rune rim og nogle islandske rune-remser~ ed. by Kålund, p. 4, with silent emendations from Gordon, An lntroduction to Old Norse, p. 154. Here is not the avenue to discuss the implications for the dating of these texts. ' 99 100 RICHARD COLE manrunar "love runes": 50 Perhaps the man who produced the defective cure was also the guilty party. Tue logic underpinning this failed curse appears to rest on the theory that the state of extreme sexual desire and the delirium of the sickbed are proximal phenomena: A slight mistake in a runic inscription designed to bring about the former and you end up with the latter. Similar language of sickness and induced desire is found in the second example, from G{mgu-Hr6lfs saga (1300s). IngibjQrg and BjQrn enjoy a happy and loving marriage. A dwarf named MQndull tak.es a fancy to IngibjQrg, but she spurns his advances. Tue following horror ensues: Ingibjorg, kona Bjarnar, t6k krankleika nokkurn undarligan um vetrinn. Hun geroist oll blå sem hel, en sinnaoi um engan hlut, sem hun væri vitstola. Varo Birni mikil raun at pessu, pvi at hann unni henni mikit [ ... ] . Mondull var nu i garoi Bjamar ok rak i burtu alla hans heimamenn. Hann t6k Ingibjorgu ok lagoi i sæng hja ser hverja n6tt, Birni asjaanda, ok hafoi hun allt bliolæti vio hann, en mundi ekki til Bjarnar, b6nda sins.1>6tti nu Birni pungliga at fara, ok lioa nu sva pessar sjau nætrY [In the winter, IngibjQrg, BjQrn's wife, fell prey to a mysterious sickness. She turned entirely black as hell and seemed not to notice anything going on around her, as though her wits had been stolen. BjQrn was much aggrieved by this, for he loved her deeply [ ... ] . Now MQndull took possession ofBjQm's farm and sent away all his retainers. He took IngibjQrg and lay with her every night, while BjQrn looked on, and she showed him [MQndull] every kind ofloving softness, but showed no regard towards BjQrn, her husband. This seemed rather heavy for BjQrn to bear, and it went on for seven nights.] Tue MQndull-IngibjQrg dynamic has something in common with that of Skirnir-Geror. Enchantment is used in order to induce sexual desire towards creatures whose bodies render them deeply transgressive: a dwarf for IngibjQrg, various frost-giants for Geror. Common to the above section, Egils saga, and Skfrnismal is the understanding of extreme feminine desire as being close to illness. Indeed, lngibjQrg turns 'blackas hell: which is the traditional description of a corpse, particularly one about to be reanimated as a malevolent draugr. 52 This is fitting, as newly sired draugar normally comeback from the dead with induced desires transmitted from the draugrwho ended their human lives.53 But while the typical draugr suddenly desires to kill the living, IngibjQrg's draugr-ization leaves her erotically enthralled. Helga in Egils saga was said to be hamstolinn, lngibjQrg is vitstolinn, with both words meaning 'having ones wits stolen. We have already seen that Skirnir traffics in the language 50 Finlay, 'Pouring Oc!inn's Mead', p. 94. 51 Gpngu-Hrolfs saga, ed. by GuclniJ6nsson and Bjarni Vilhjalmsson, pp. 410-12. 52 ArmannJakobsson, 'Vampires and Watchmen~ p. 286, pp. 297-98. 53 ArmannJakobsson, 'Tue Fearless Vampire Kitlers~ p. 311. THE THREAT OF INDUCED DESIRE IN SKfRNISMAL of mental illness too: topi, øoi, and perhaps ergi, insofar as the state ofbeing argrI prg refers to a pathological desire to participate in sexual acts considered perverse, normally being the submissive partner, 54 and in Geror's case including urophilia, three-headed giant-sex, and possibly group sex. That Skirnir's curse is at home in a wider tradition of Scandinavian magic is also demonstrated by a peculiarly close verbal parallel in a runic stick from Bryggen, N B257, c. 1300-1350: [§] rist ek: bot:runar: rist: ek biabh:runar: eæin:fal ui},: aluom: tuiualt ui},: tro lom: },reualt: ui},: },(u) ... [§] ui}, enne: skø},o: skab: ualkyrriu: sua:at: eæi mehi: },o:at æ uili: læuis: kona: liui: },inu g ... [§] ek sender: },er: ekse a },er: ylhiar: erhi ok o},ola: a },er: rini : u},ole: auk: i(a)luns: mo},: sittu: aldri: sop }lu: aldr(i) ... [§] ant: mer: sem : sialpre : },er : beirist : rubus : rabus : e}, : arantabus : laus : abus : rosa : gaua ... 55 [§] Rist ek b6trunar, rist ek bjargrunar, 1rinfalt vio alfum, tvifalt vio trQllum, prffalt vio purs[um] ... [§] vio inni skoou skag-valkyrju [i.e. SkQgull],56 svat 1ri megi, p6tt æ vili, lævis kona, lifi pinu g[ran da], ... [§] ek sendi per, ekse a per, ylgjar ergi ok upola. A per hrini upoli ok jaluns [Le. jatuns] 57 m6o. Sittu aldri, sofpu aldri ... [§] ant mer sem sjalfri per. Beirist [ !] rubus rabus et arantabus laus abus rosa gaua ... [I carve runes of redemption, I carve runes of rescue, once against the elves, twice against the trolls, three times against the giants ... against the valkyrie SkQgull, so that the evil woman never will - even should she want to - harm your life ... I send you, I look upon you, a wolf's unbearable perversity. May unbearable wailing and the wrath ofa giant be upon you. You will never sit, you will never sleep ... love me as [you love] yourself. Beirist rubus rabus et arantabus laus abus rosa gava ... ] But Skimir's threatened spell is unlike its peers in that desire is induced towards a third party, not for the person who hasthemselves issued or commissioned the curse. This is puzzling. If Skirnir has the power to alter Geror's sexual inclinations, why not simply make her want Freyr? I would contend that the answer is in Skirnir's world view. So far, the way desire is discussed in Sk{rnismal has been shown to translate fairly well into Deleuzo-Guattarian terms. But alongside something like Deleuze and Guattari's fractal conception 54 Meulengracht Sørensen, Norrønt Nid, p. 22. N A322 is a fine example; see also Meulengracht Sørensen, 'Nic) and the Sacred~ pp. 78-79. SS Rundata 3.11 s. s. N 8257 M. S6 Liestøl, RunerJrå Bryggen, pp. 44-46. 57 Old Norwegian jatunn, standardized Old Norse jgtunn: Lozzi Gallo, 'On the Interpretation ofialuns'. Compare the meaning of jatunn on the Rok stone in Harris, 'Tue Rok Stone's iatun and Mythology ofDea&, pp. 483-93. Mitchell suggests the stick may be a wand, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, p. 54. 101 102 RICHARD COLE of desiring-machine, Skirnir appears to have a very non-Deleuzo-Guattarian idea: To him, some desires are more authentic than others.58 IfGeror is to have sex with his master, it must be out of a decision she takes ( this obviously not being the same thing as consent) rather than a desire that has been implanted from without. That is to say, it should not be because her munr has been remade through magic. This appears to be a principle that Skfrnir has adopted on his own because Freyr's only demand is that Geror be brought to him for sex. He never puts any conditions on how it should be done. If anything, one suspects he would be satisfied with Skirnir taking the direct route and using his gambanteinn/ tamsv9ndr to render Geror an enthusiastic lover. That Skfrnir is so keen on Geror having to make the terrible choice between rape ofthe body and rape of the mind is easily imputable to his sadism.59 But if it is not just the case that Skirnir values sadism over efficiency, it must be that he also lacks confidence in the authenticity of induced desires. Toere is a vague conception at play that if a woman has sex with someone while under the influence of magic, it is somehow not really the woman's doing - or, more precisely, it is not as much the woman's doing as sex without magic would be. This grey area is exemplified in G9ngu-Hr6lfs saga where on the one hand the narrative voice stresses that the draugr-IngibjQrg made love to MQndull with abandon ('hafoi hun allt bliolæti via hann'), but on the other hand her marriage to BjQrn is unharmed when she recovers. She fornicates rapturously with the dwarf, but BjQrn seems to accept blithely 'that was only the magic, not you: Returning to Skfrnismal, it is as though Skirnir subscribes to a twisted version of the doctrine of 'false consciousness: False consciousness was a term coined by Friedrich Engels to explain why the working classes apparently did not universally desire a communist revolution: 'Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consdousness. Tue real motives impelling him remain upknown to him; otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives: 60 (As an aside, we may note that there is nothing inherently communist about the idea. It has occurred under different guises to people of all political persuasions who worry that the majority are not seeing things their way, and has been revised many times since. ) 61 Germane to our theme, one commentator explains false consciousness in terms of'unhappy desires: 61 But Skfrnir can only ever be a 'Dark Engels': Engels viewed false consciousness as a spell to be broken. Skirnir is himself the man who weaves s8 s9 Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, pp. 96-99. More challenging: Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 167-69. On the notion of decision in this context, see Rosli's chapter in the present volume. 60 Engels, 'Engels to Mehring; p. 5111 Letter 227. 61 Rosen, On Volunta,y Servitude, pp. 54-100. 62 Meyerson, False Consciousness, pp. 71-1281 though cf. pp. 87-96 on the doubtfulness of'true wants'. THE THREAT OF INDUCED DESIRE IN SKfRNISMAL the spell, and knowing how the magic works has given him nagging doubts about the authenticity of induced desire. Geror's view of desire, on the other hand, does not make this distinction. lf she viewed magically induced desires as discrete from her self, then she would not be moved by Skirnir's threat. She could retort: 'Do your worst ! After your magic, I won't be me anyway'. By not making the distinction between authentic and inauthentic desires, she is doser to Deleuze and Guattari than she is to Skimir or Engels. Obviously, I would not suggest that she reached this point by reading French philosophers. Rather, as a woman forced to decide on the spur of the moment which traumatic ordeal she will undergo, she is unlikely to intellectualize desire, or to explain away counter-intuitively her 'real' and 'false' consciousness. Nonetheless, her choice is reasoned. It is not a foregone conclusion that she should choose to avoid the rurse and have sex with Freyr. She could have decided that, if Skirnir works his spell, she will at least experience a fraction of the pleasure that comes with realizing a sexual fantasy - even if full satisfaction is denied her. 63 It is a hideous thought, but part ofher would want sex with giants, goat's urine, etc., and part of her would get it. I understand her reasoning with recourse to an anecdote from the Jerusalem Talmud ( c. 200 CE) - obviously not a text that the Skirnismal poet could have known, but evocative nonetheless: xi;:i:;, .1tiqf n~io1 0Ji19 i'lQ~'l'Jf;lTR ir.ir ir '.Kl .i11~0~ .K'iJl ,~1w~:;i i1'9~!lf;l l? v:,1 Dl:Cl .i'l'~ i119-tt .')iof l? :q.v .K?l .'I'll?Jl'.9 .i't'? i111?.1$ -1~Qi' ':;17 n':;.iJ7 nIJ~ .K1:Jf;l'l:C iJ'~ ')io:;i~ ;', v1 iJ'~ N:7::lTR • '7~9'::>iJ Di'f ,,~ 1in7 i't~~f;l~l v;q:;i. iVf~~ 01-tt ',;::,.it 64 n'?;i'i?l .;, ::i1.v [And there is one who has not been raped who is judged to be fitting for Israel. Who is this? This is the one who began as a rape victim but consented in the end. Like the woman who came to Rebbe Yo]Janan. She said to him: 'I was raped: 'But was it not sweet to you in the end?: She said to him: 'And if someone dipped a finger in honey and put it into someone's mouth on the Day of Atonement, does he not suffer over it, although in the end it is sweet?: He saw she was right.] This is far from a feminist fable. As Ilan notes, 'the assumption that women enjoy being raped is common to both the rabbi and the woman and is taken for granted in her reply [ ... ] . Tue argument [ ... ] is clearly androcentric: 65 Nonetheless, the nameless woman in this excerpt thinks like Geror: All her desires are real, as are the pleasures that satisfied desires bring, but some are 63 On the dilliculty ofhow far desire can ever be satiated, see Deleuze and Guattari, A Ihousand Plateaus, pp. 171-72. Cf. the Lacanian view: Zizek, The Plague ofPantasies, pp. 52-54. 64 Ihe Jerusalem Talmud Ihird Order, ed. and trans. by Guggenheimer, pp. 191-921 Y. Sotah 4:5 19d. I have leant heavily on Guggenheimer's facing-page translation. 65 Dan, "'Stolen Water Is Sweet": pp. 209-21. 103 104 RICHARD COLE doser to her personhood than others. 66 She does not mak.e the small part of her that wants the taste ofhoney into something extraneous to herself, even while she prioritizes her other desires. Of course, the woman in the Jerusalem Talmud was not asked to choose her ordeal. Gerar, on the other hand, has the option to avoid having any part of herself enjoy her suffering. 'Ihat is a noble choice, but not an inevitable one. I would ask the reader whether they would wholeheartedly do the same? Conclusion: Myth, History, and Politics We began by noting the political nature of the entwined issues of ( 1) wanting what is degrading/ against our interests, and ( 2) the alteration of our desires by external parties. 'Ihat Sk{rnismal happens in other-worldly, mythological space has not hindered political readings of the poem. 67 But the transformation from mythology to politics has traditionally been enacted by locating the poem in a given historical context. Steinsland, for example, mak.es Geror into a symbol for the earth, and Skirnir into a symbol of the kongeideologi (royal ideology) allegedly propagated by Earl Hakon, which is supposed to bring prosperity. Skirnir's gambanteinn/ tamsvpndr thus become his sceptre, the apples and the rings he offers as a bribe become his orb and his royal anulus. 68 Tue reading is an elegant one, though in my view encumbered by the faet that a great part of Earl Hakon's message rested in him absolutely not being a king in the modernizing, Christianizing, European sense. Indeed, his insistence on retaining the humbler rank of jarl (earl) instead of the higher konungr (king) brings to mind the same sort of affectation seen in Colonel Gaddafi or Papa Doc Duvalier, that is, preferring a lower rank to that of the autocrat in order to embody an ideologically novel, populist regime. 69 Tue theory is revised attractively by Abram, who notes that the core of Skfrnismal 'seems to embody elements of the hyper-masculine religious persona that some of the other sources create for Hakon'. 70 Tue poem thus becomes tentatively connected to Hakon's short-lived experiment with 'state paganism: 71 I subscribe to Abram's view, but I do so quietly- not because I have any serious reservations with his theory. In faet I am positively disposed to it. However, it is the way of the world that ifa commentator attaches a particular historical setting to a text, then all those who reject that setting tend to view the commentator's readings as suspect, even if the arguments advanced are 66 On the desire for debasement as a fantasy versus desire for actualization, see Benjamin, 'Master and Slave~ pp. 296-97. I am grateful to Gauri Pathak for bringing this to my attention. 67 Rosli, Topographien der eddischen Mythen, pp. 99-107. 68 Edda, p. 731 sts 191 21; Steinsland, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi, pp. 130-68. 69 I am grateful to Richard North for the former of these comparisons. 70 Abram, Myths of the Pagan North, p. 148. 71 Abram, Myths of the Pagan North, pp. 127-49. THE THREAT OF INDUCED DESIRE IN SKiRNISMAL not dependent on the historical setting. In closing, then, I point to the timeless political elements we have seen in Skirnismal. With Skfmir at his side, Freyr has a tool at his disposal which is every despot's dream. Desire is the fundamental political problem: Can a petrolhead be made to want to take up cyding instead? Can a citizen of a mature welfare state be induced to desire privatized medical insurance? Skfmir's answer is that yes, these things can be done (although as it is achieved through magic, the message for our own world may be that, no, it cannot). However, Skfrnir is too elever- indeed, too cruel- for his own good. He decides not simply to induce desire for Freyr. Instead, he tak.es the astounding political conjuring of induced desire and uses it to effect the crudest of political methods: the threat. By the end of the poem, it seems as though Freyr has got what he wanted, and that Geror is subjugated. Yet one wonders if Freyr will in the end find himself in the same old rut as Caligula. According to Snorri, at RagnarQk the Muspellssynir ( Sons of Muspell) will form their armies and rise up against the gods after an eternity of oppression. These Muspellssynir consist mostly of giants, led by Loki. Freyr will die at the hands of the giant Surtr: 'Freyr hersk m6ti Surti ok veror haror samgangr aor Freyr fellr. Pat veror hans bani er hann missir pess hins g6oa sveros er hann gaf Skirni' (Freyr fights against Surtr and it is a hard dash before Freyr falls. It will be his death that he lacks the good sword which he gave Skirnir).72 And where will Geror be at the end of the world? Answering that question hangs on how long Freyr keeps her: for one night, or fora prolonged period of sexual slavery. 73 If she is still in captivity, she may not have much chance to rejoice at Freyr's comeuppance. If she is free, she might even be present to see her rapist cut down. One way or another, the giants avenge Geror. Larrington noted that 'for the male reader, alignment with Freyr and Skirnir is not di.fficult, but for the female reader this gendered reading position is more problematic:74 I agree, but identifyingwith Geror is also accessible for anyone on_ the sharp end of a hegemony. Read as a political allegQry, Geror's plight is parallel to those who find themselves subjugated by a hated leader (Freyr) accompanied by guileful propagandists (Skirnir). Put in Deleuze and Guattari's terms, for people in Geror-esque circumstances it is unavoidable that there will be political developments that they deplore: more ta.xes, less bread, etc. That is a situation which must have been faced by Jarl Hakon's pagan loyalists after their defeat by King Olafr Tryggvason in 995, or indeed by any number of political movements since who have found themselves subjected to an order they despise. Geror's choice is to reject the option of enjoying her subjugation, to keep a quiet resistance in her mind, and to wait for her day to come. In this, she is a heroine. She always has been. 72, Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 50. 73 Tue idea that it might be marriage in a conventional sense has been dispelled: Simek, 'Lust, Sex and Domination~ pp. 2.37-40. 74 Larrington, '~What Does Woman Want?"', p. 3. 105 106 RICHARD COLE Works Cited Primary Sources Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmiilern, ed. by Gustav Neckel, 5th edn rev. by Hans Kuhn (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983) Egils saga Skalla-Gr{mssonar, ed. by Sigurour Nordal, 1slenzk fornrit, 2 (Reykjavik: Hio islenzka fornritafelag, 1933) 'Et gammel-norsk rune rim og nogle islandske rune-remser: ed. by Kr. Kålund, in Småstykker 1-161 Samfund til Udgivelse af Gammel Nordisk Litteratur, 13 ( Copenhagen: S. L. 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