Talos

[kFoyauextlH]

Merry Christmas!















Added in 22 hours 35 minutes 13 seconds:
"
In the Gest's saga section of Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss, the dead King Raknar of Helluland comes to the court of King Olaf Tryggvason at Christmas and Gestr eventually destroys him and his 500 warriors in his mound in the far north; some scholars call him Rakni,[28][29] and there is some uncertainty in the manuscripts.[30]
"

Added in 45 minutes 27 seconds:
https://journal.fi/ethnolfenn/article/d ... 589/217349

"
A similar story is recounted in Bárðar saga chapter 18, where Bard’s son Gest is staying with King Olaf Tryggvason. On Christmas Eve, an imposing yet semi-decomposed figure in full armour, including a coat of mail, comes in, finds the hospitality lacking and before leaving offers his treasures to an-yone who can prove themselves brave enough. He is soon identified by King Olaf as King Raknar of Helluland, and Gest is promptly assigned the task of ransacking Raknar’s gravemound. Gest agrees on the condition that he is equipped by the king himself, which he agrees to: he is given a pair of magi-cians, a priest, “forty pair of iron shoes that were lined with down”, a short sword, a length of cloth to wrap himself in while in the mound and a candle.
On their journey, they encounter Raudgrani, as discussed above, and manage to cross a lava field thanks to the iron shoes.
Gest remarks on King Olaf’s foresight, which is often the trait of women, and this combined with the encasing textile approximates King Olaf to the fjölkynnig women while not discrediting him. The wrap protects Gest in the cave when he fights the zombie king, clearly indicating the length of cloth to be a cousin of the protective shirt.
The folklore motif of the protective shirt that is supplied by the mother occurs twice in the sagas of Snæfellsnes, aligning almost perfectly. Both Katla and Hildigunn lack the social capital, i.e. male relatives, to pursue their case and so they resort to magic as this is available to them. Similarly, King Olaf cannot provide any more protection to Gest than what he equips him with, and as expected every item, including the wrap, prove essential during the journey. The circumstances of the women and the king might be wildly differ-ent, yet their use of protective garments is eerily similar.
"

"
The day after Thorgunna’s death, Thorodd tries to burn the incredible wealth, but Thurid entices him until he relents and only a previously un-mentioned eiderdown (dýnur) and pillows (hœgendi) are burnt. Meanwhile, Thorgunna is to be transported to the church, but the coffin bearers are treat-ed poorly at a farm so she crawls out of her shroud, cooks for her men while being unabashedly naked and leaves once finished. The people at the farm are so shaken that they decide to treat the coffin bearers a lot better.
Back at Froda, a lot of weird things occur – there is an ominous doom-moon in the house, people are beaten, they die and then continue haunt-ing the farm, a seal appears in the fire pit, stares intently at Thorgunna’s be-longings and only Kjartan is able to bludgeon it back to the ground, Thorodd drowns with his crew, but they return every night to sit by the fire along with the previously deceased and there is a mysterious tail poking out of dried fish in the larder that pulls skin off people’s palms (IS 1 1999, 361–364). Finally, when Thurid gets sick, Kjartan consults Snorri Godi, who suggest burning the bed furnishings and they hold a court session for all the ghosts of the dead people, after which everything returns to as normal as possible after the un-necessary death of 18 people due to sartorial envy. This is quite a substantial death count even by the very relaxed standards of the genre.
The degree of unhealthy attachment Thurid had for these textiles is quite understandable, because the narrative paints a picture of this exquisitely ex-pensive set, although the story probably wouldn’t have been included in the saga if it weren’t as gory. The similarity of Thorgunna’s and Helga’s stories – their arrival, physical build, the significance of the sleeping quarters and the boys – is significant, although at the moment it remains unclear wheth-er similar narratives are found elsewhere in the Medieval Icelandic literature or in other contemporary corpora. Although Thorgunna’s involvement in the ensuing wave of deaths is not clear, she does know what is coming and ask-ing these incredible luxuries be destroyed is something that has the potential to go sour. However, the similarities and the inclusion of the textiles remain significant and underline women’s alignment to textiles when supernatural events occur, as well as the enormous and hardly fathomable value of luxury textiles in the medieval period.
Conclusion Clothing and textiles are sites of communication, and accordingly, cultural ideas and social norms are intertwined with clothing, which both reflects and reinforces said ideas and norms. The context in which clothing is used is of-ten overlooked, and closer inspection warrants plenty of fruitful insight and previously under-researched concepts.
This article has taken a novel approach to clothing research in the sagas by gathering all the existing clothing references into a database, which has allowed both for quantitative analysis of the 311 clothing references to gain an overview of the structure of the data, and knowledge from different fields to be combined for qualitative analysis.

The sagas of Snæfellsnes consist of four sagas of Icelanders that take place in the 10th and 11th centuries mainly on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in Iceland, yet the narratives themselves were probably written down in the 13th and 14th centuries. This gap is generally not detectable in the clothing references, al-though some traces exist, such as Raudgrani’s attire in Bárðar saga, which has Medieval construction elements (buttons) and knowledge of European per-ceptions of the depiction of enemies of the religion.
Textiles and clothing imagery served a variety of functions in the Snæfellsnes sagas, from simple identification based on a person’s clothing to having a proximity to magic, asserting dominance and signalling someone’s immediate demise. The assertion of dominance over one another and per-forming masculinity is a central theme in the sagas of Icelanders, with cloth-ing used in support of this end. In Eyrbyggja saga when Steinthor chooses to take sixty men plus a fancy red tunic to another man’s doorstep, this is not arbitrary but a blatant display of power. The same applies to Thord and his navy cape in Bjarnar saga as well as demeaning nicknames that function as a way of reminding people of their place in the hierarchy.
There are also times when masculinity is intentionally tampered with in instances of lying in dress. In Eyrbyggja saga Snorri Godi temporarily disguis-es his reputation by appearing in lowly clothing in order to gain the upper hand in the sharing of an inheritance, while in Viglundar saga Olof is forced to bluff using clothing and conduct to preserve her husband’s reputation and her own bodily autonomy. Conversely, the reputation of King Olaf Tryggvason does not suffer because of his prophetic procurement of provisions for Gest’s journey in Bárðar saga, probably because he is considered far above this scale.
A similar double standard can be observed in the attitudes towards elab-orate clothing. Björn and Thorleif Kimbi in Eyrbyggja saga and the merchants in Víglundar saga are welcome to dress in high fashion, while Thorgrim the El-egant is given a derogatory nickname due to him being born out of wedlock.
The hierarchical social structure is reflected more generally in textile-related names as these seem to be awarded mainly to people on the lower rungs of the ladder, such as the enslaved woman Skinbreeches or the racist depiction of a Sami man, Thorkel Skin-swathed in Bárðar saga.
Women hold less power than men in patriarchal societies and at least in the saga narratives, textiles seem to be a way for women to gain some agen-cy. An example of this is Thorgerd in Eyrbyggja saga, who has excavated her husband’s head and carries it under her cloak to elicit enough of a response from the men in the community to do something about his killing. Katla and Hildigunn in Eyrbyggja saga and Bárðar saga respectively use their knowledge of magic and freshly made garments in order to protect their sons from harm because they are left to their own devices.

Textile production was a female domain and this is reflected in the sagas.
However, the scenes involving textile production are simply used as a backdrop for things with a higher priority, i.e. men testosteroning. Women were also the ones who made possible the accumulation of wealth by Arnbjorn in Eyrbyggja saga, although their lengthy endeavour of textile production is so mundane and habitual to both the narrator and audience that it is rendered invisible.
Clothing and textiles as sites of communication are products of the soci-ety in which they are used and hence, as this article has demonstrated, tex-tile imagery is not an independent embellishment in the sagas of Snæfellsnes but rather an integral feature. Textiles’ proximity to certain themes and top-ics warrants more research with a larger selection of source texts and has the potential to further our understanding of the sagas and the context in which they were created.
"

"
Tunics (kyrtill), when they are mentioned in the Snæfellsnes sagas, seem to be precious more often than not: in Bjarnar saga, King Olaf bestows “a gold ring, a silken tunic trimmed with lace2, and a fine sword” (The Saga of Bjorn, 163) upon Thord in exchange for a single drápa. The tunic makes a few reap-pearances in the saga and is obviously an item of note. Bjorn exchanges gar-ters with the king by accident and it is said that Bjorn wore the silk garter all his life, even being buried with it (The Saga of Bjorn, 134). Curiously enough, the garter escapes attention until chapter 32, where Bjorn wears another pre-cious tunic (guðvefjarkyrtill). The attentive audience might realise that Bjorn’s time has come as the garter is mentioned again.
"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurta

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kyrtill

"
Identification Names reference textiles That clothes carry significant communicative value is evident in the Snæfellsnes sagas, where identification is at the forefront of the reference. This includes naming people after a certain garment as well as identifying a person based on their clothing.
Several characters, such as Thorgrim the Elegant (Þorgrím inn pruði) have received nicknames inspired by their clothing. Thorgrim the Elegant is a central character in Viglundar saga and is mentioned once in Bjarnar saga. In addition to Throgrim, Viglundar saga mentions Thorkel Skin-swathed (Þorkell skinnvefja) once. Eyrbyggja saga mentions Ragnar Shaggy Breeches’ sons (Ragnarssonar loõbrókar) and Hauk High Breeches (Hauk hábrók) once.
The bulk of the examples occur in Bárðar saga: Red-cloak the Strong (Rauðfeld inum sterka), his son Thorkel Raudfeldsson, an enslaved woman Skin-breeches (Skinnbrók), Thorkel Skin-swathed (Þorkell skinnvefja), Thórir Leath-erneck (Þórir léðrhals), Skeggi Skin-Björn’s son (Skeggi Skinna-Bjarnarson), as well as two women versed in magic, Hetta (i.e. a type of hood) and Kolla of Torfa with the nickname Skin-cap (Torfár-Kolla hét, en Skinnhúfa öðru nafn).
One of the most interesting is Thorkel Skin-swathed, who is said to have been brought up “north of Dumbshaf. It was difficult to come by homepsun cloth there, and the boy was swaddled in seal skins for warmth” (CSI 2, 436).
There are very few places in Scandinavia, where it would have been hard to find wool cloth, the most likely is the Arctic (i.e., north of Dumbshaf), where peo-ple would struggle to keep sheep. The backstory is followed by a particularly grotesque description of Thorkel’s appearance. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir 1 For recent discussions on the relations of historiography and fiction in the Icelandic sagas, see O’Connor (2017) and Würth (2005).

(2017: 336–337) has identified similar descriptions of the Sami people, and this is further corroborated by the lack of wool cloth.
Most of the people with clothing-themed nicknames are disadvantaged in the eyes of the society in one way or another. For example, Thorgrim the Elegant was born out of wedlock (ÍF XIV, 68) and is fostered by king Harald, who values him highly, so he becomes sæmiliga klæddr (ÍF XIV, 70; ’becom-ingly dressed’). However, he is ridiculed and seen as rising above his rightful place (ÍF XIV, 70), which could have similarities with Olaf Peacock (Ólafr Pái) in Laxdæla saga, who was also born out of wedlock but is given this nickname by his father (Laxdæla saga, 297).
Thorkel Skin-swathed seems to belong to an ethnic minority, while Red-cloak the Strong is descended from giants (ÍF XIII, 105). Skin-breeches is en-slaved and Hetta and Kolla of Torfa practice magic, which means that they are inhabiting liminal spaces in one way or another. Although Thorgrim the Elegant establishes himself in society, the nickname could possibly be an ev-er-present derogatory reminder of his lineage, because men of higher birth, such as Bjorn Asbrandsson and Thorleif Kimbi, are not mocked in the same way (as discussed below).
Supernatural beings Another category of identification, unrelated to naming, is when people be-come near-synonymous with their clothing. Here again, we can see liminal characters – Bard is considered a deity on the peninsula, and Odin and Thor need no introduction.
Most notably, Bard in Bárðar saga is almost one with his grey cowl (grá kufl): “He was usually clad in a grey cowl with a walrus-hide rope around him, and a cleft staff in his hand with a long and thick gaff” (CSI 2, 248; Han var svá optast búinn, at hann var í grám kufli ok svardreip um sik, klafarkerlingu í hendi ok í fjaðrbrodd langan ok digran. (ÍF XIII, 129)). The presence of the grey cowl is repeated a total of four times throughout the saga with the repetition lending the garment a ritual quality, as if Bard and the cowl are inextricably linked.
Bard is wearing the grey cowl when he rescues a fisherman called Ingjald from certain death at sea caused by the witchcraft of Hetta and enacted by a fisherman called Grim, who suddenly appears from an unexpected fog. Grim is one of the attested names of Odin (Orchard 1997, 189). Ingjald, who is close to death, lies in the bottom of his boat and drapes his fur cloak (skinnfeldur) over himself, calling on Bard, who soon arrives. Jane Roscoe (1992, 252–271) has interpreted similar episodes as forms of supernatural communication, which seems to be the case here too.

The number of concealing hoods is remarkable, as hetta, grimur and kufl are all hooded garments. Bard was considered a deity. People believing Grim to have been Thor (ÍF XIII, 127) combined with the magic of Hetta and Ing-jald’s cloak of communication make this intersection of clothing and the su-pernatural a motif that would certainly warrant further research using a wid-er circle of source texts.
Curiously enough, although Grim’s attire is not described, he is said to have had a red beard, something that matching descriptions of Thor from the fishing (Orchard 1997, 161–162). The red beard makes another appearance later in the saga, when Bard’s son Gest makes his journey to ransack mythi-cal King Raknar’s tomb in Helluland. Again, north of Dumbshaf, a man called Raudgrani (Rauðgrani, literally Redbeard) asks to join Gest on his journey. He has a single eye and “wore a blue-spotted cape with a hood, which buttoned all the way down to his feet” (CSI 2, 262; [H]ann hafði bláflekkótta skautheklu ok kneppta niðr í milli fóta sér (ÍF XIII, 163)). He is killed by the Christian priest onboard and is subsequently identified as Odin, despite Orchard (1997, 189) attributing a grey beard to Odin.
Odin’s clothing in this case is also consistent with his attire in a legendary saga, The Saga of Volsungs, where he makes an appearance in chapter 3 in “a blue spotted cloak” (author’s translation; flekkótta yfir sér (Völsunga saga 1943)) and in chapter 11 in “a hat and a blue cloak” (author’s translation; með síðan hött ok heklu blá (Völsunga saga 1943)) which would indicate that at least in the 14th century Odin was associated with wearing a blue hooded cloak that was most likely spotted.
This indicates that both sagas are informed by European trends, as pattern-ing was systematically used in the visual arts to depict “evil men, especially enemies of the Christian faith” (Mellinkoff 1993, 20). In addition, functional buttons only became common in European fashion around the 13th century (Kania 2010, 108), i.e. several centuries after the saga takes place, which also means that the garment description is anachronistic for the saga time but not for writing time.
Visual identification In the pre-industrial era, people had far fewer items of clothing than is custom-ary in the global North today. Accordingly, identifying somebody from a dis-tance based on their clothing is a recurring theme in the sagas of Snæfellsnes.
Eyrbyggja saga chapter 20 features the only woman wearing a navy hooded cape (blá skikkja), that is, Geirrid, who helps Thorarin, Arnkel and their twelve men to find Odd, who has been concealed by his mother Katla. Both Geirrid and Katla are said to be well-versed in magic (fjölkynnig) and the scene is rich in textile imagery. The men have made three futile attempts to find Odd when Katla is informed that fourteen people are approaching, plus “one in coloured clothing” (IS 1, 307; einn í lítklæðum (ÍF IV, 53).
It is remarkable that although the men have set off with the clear intention of killing, apparently not one of them has put on elaborate clothing. Dyeing was resource-heavy before the 19th century because natural dyes require several steps in addition to making the fabric itself and was thus only done on better garments. Katla immediately identifies this to be Geirrid, but still removes cushions (hægindi) from the dais and hides her son in there while replacing the furnishings. Katla senses a harder battle approaching and when Geirrid enters, she dramatically throws off her navy cape and encases Katla’s head in a sealskin bag (selbelg) after which she directs the men to Odd. The bagging possibly has wider significance, as in Völsunga saga (1943) chapter 40 Svan-hild’s gaze prevents horses from trampling her, but this is not the case when her head is enclosed in a bag. Katla suffers a similarly cruel death by stoning.
Thord Kolbeinsson is identified from a distance in Bjarnar saga chapter 11, as he also wears a navy cape (blá kápa) when riding to Bjorn’s farm. Bjorn’s mother Thordis, who is well aware of their relations, wisely says:
‘There is a man riding there,’ she said, ‘in a black cloak, looking very like Thord Kolbeinsson – it is him, too, and his business would be best left undone.’ ‘Not so,’ said Bjorn. […] Thordis said, ‘It will be seen that I’m not very easily swayed by talk. Bear in mind, Bjorn, that the more fairly Thord speaks, the more falsely he thinks, so don’t you trust him.’ (The Saga of Bjorn, 170–171) Beforehand, Oddny has also strongly advised against the invitation, but to no avail as she “is used in this relationship as a way of negotiating the sex-ually charged power relations between the two men” (Evans 2019, 57). The navy cape Thord is wearing while riding is not a direct sign of impending vi-olence as has been widely believed (Straubhaar 2005, 53), but rather Thord has power-dressed in order to assert dominance over Bjorn. In conjunction, Straubhaar also concludes that wearing certain items, carrying weapons and killings “may occur in quick succession with or without any causal relation-ships among them [and are] neither necessarily mutually exclusive nor mu-tually linked” (Straubhaar 2005, 65). The charged power struggle between Thord and Bjorn carries through Bjorn’s subsequent stay at Thord’s farm and through to chapter 32 where Thord finally kills Bjorn.
Another episode of visual identification in the Snæfellsnes sagas is in fact indicative of murderous intentions, but here it is interrupted thanks to the attire. In Eyrbyggja saga chapter 41, the Thorbrandssons are attacking Arn-bjorn when the Breidvikings “caught sight of someone in coloured clothing on top of the farmhouse roof at Bakki; they knew it was not Arnbjörn’s style of dress“ (IS 1, 343). The Breidvikings rush to back up Arnbjorn, although it is Snorri Godi who calls off the Thorbrandssons.
Positive identification by the elaborate clothing (skrúðklæði) not being Arn-bjorn’s style (var eigi búnaður Arnbjarnar) (ÍF IV, 114) has already been set up in chapter 40, upon the arrival of brothers Bjorn and Arnbjorn (ÍF IV, 106–107), where it is said that although Arnbjorn returned as a wealthy man, he was not one for show (engi áburðarmaður) in contrast to his more handsome brother who continued to wear European fashions and dress fancily (áburðarmaður mikill). However, as it is said that all the merchants who had returned, went to the thing in dyed clothing (í lítklæðum), the reader can rest assured that Arn-bjorn had an expensive set of clothing, although apparently he would never wear it while thatching his roof.
Lying in dress The ability to communicate meaning or read meaning into clothing raises the possibility of deceiving the audience on purpose. Power and who gets to wield it are central themes in the two scenes discussed below.
In Víglundar saga chapter 8 (ÍF vol XIV 1959, 76–78), Thorgrim the Elegant’s wife Olof executes a magnificently bold lying in dress manoeuvre by moving up the masculinity scale. The brothers Einarr and Jökull set out to rape Olof in order to humiliate Thorgrim. Similarly to Bjarnar saga, the woman is the one caught in the power play. The plan is thwarted by Olof’s good household management and quick wit. Firstly, the men’s door is locked every day after the men have left and thus the assailants cannot enter of their own accord.
Secondly, Olof drapes her mantle (möttul) over her maid and instead, enters the room in a navy cape (blá kápa) with a drawn sword. Her performance of masculinity is so assertive that the men are “somewhat afraid of him” (Vi-glund’s saga 2002, 236) and make their escape when Olof further bluffs say-ing Thorgrim is approaching with a large band of men.
The masculinity aspect has recently been analysed by Gareth Evans (2020, 59–75), but from a textiles point of view, it is astonishing that according to the narrative, the mere exchange of an outer garment plus the phallically bare sword are enough to radically change a person’s gender presentation, espe-cially as outer garments were generally quite basic and androgynous in their cut. Verifying the exact cut of möttuls and kápas has so far been impossible as to my knowledge no full garments with attached labels have been found.
In the other instance, the masculinity of the character is downplayed on purpose. In Eyrbyggja saga chapter 13, Snorri Godi wears the only black (svar-tr) garment in the Snæfellsnes sagas. Snorri travels to Norway with his foster brothers at the ripe old age of fourteen winters and gets fifty ounces of silver from his uncle Bork as travel money. Upon their return to Iceland the following year Thorleif Kimbi is a wonder to look at with the best horse he could afford and a splendid set of weapons, and of course “all his clothes were of the fin-est quality” (IS 1, 41; vǫnduð ǫll klæði (ÍF IV 1935, 293)). Whereas Snorri en-ters on a “fine black mare”, his old-fashioned saddle and modest undyed black cape (svart kápa) so underwhelming that he is thought to have dishonourably failed to manage his money during his travels, making him a laughing stock.
At the same time, Thorleif had spent almost all his money on the elaborate attire, something that is portrayed as an entirely valid choice.
In the winter, Snorri and Bork fall out further, although Snorri already has hard feelings for Bork because he killed Snorri’s father shortly before his birth.
The next chapter reveals that Snorri has outmanoeuvred his uncle because he sets a low price for Snorri’s half of their shared property believing Snorri has not got the means to buy him out (based on Snorri’s humble looks upon his return), thinking that he will get the property cheaply instead. However, Snor-ri has cleverly concealed his riches and within a matter of a few paragraphs Bork loses the farm, islands, home and wife.
Snorri’s fortune is cunningly revealed from under his foster father Thor-brand’s cloak (kápa). The purse (sjóð) contained 120 ounces of silver, half of which is still in Snorri’s possession after the incident.
Another cloak, this time a skikkja fills a similar purpose in Eyrbyggja saga chapter 27, where a woman called Thorgerd is frustrated by the lack of revenge taken after her husband’s murder and is advised to dig it up and show it to Arn-kel, who is responsible for taking revenge. Thorgerd duly remarks that “they were sparing her neither trouble nor misery” (IS 1, 316), but does it anyway.
She goes to visit Arnkel and surprises him by producing the head from under the cloak, saying: “Here is the head which would never have shirked action on your behalf if that had been needed” (IS 1, 316). The trouble and the misery pay off and her husband’s killing is prosecuted next spring.
The power dynamics of Icelandic society are often very complex and as is seen from the examples above, should be carefully considered in order to get results. It should always be born in mind that masculinity is king (for an elab-orate discussion on the topic, see Evans 2019). Snorri’s outfit upon his return deliberately sends false messages about his financial situation in order to gain the upper hand in the long run, while Olof employs hypermasculinity to good effect to protect her and her maids’ bodies as well as her husband’s reputa-tion. They both achieve their goals by knowingly altering their appearance to manipulate peoples’ perceptions of them. Thorgerd uses her cloak less for de-ception but rather to catch Arnkel by surprise and use the affect to elicit ac-tion. However, it is clear that both women have to align themselves with the masculine in order to have an impact.
Textiles of wealth All textiles were inherently valuable because everything was made by hand and the raw materials were generally grown locally, hence the investment of time and skill was considerable. In this light, things that were of foreign ori-gin were appreciated to an extent that will generally be unfathomable to the modern audience. This might be one of the reasons why luxury garments make up a considerable portion of the textiles in the sagas. I will demonstrate in the following section how the function of high-status clothing can be variable: it can be used for identification, to assert one’s masculinity or to protect the wearer by magic or proxy, as well as being a commodity in the gift economy.
In Eyrbygggja saga chapter 44 a man called Steinthor arrives at Snorri Go-di’s doorstep with sixty men in a conspicuous red tunic (í rauðum kyrtli), “a fine shield and helmet, and at his waist a splendidly ornamented sword” (IS 1, 347) that is described in detail, to seemingly deliver a payment for the life of one of the people Snorri had enslaved. The whole mission is clearly provoc-ative and insult is added to injury when one of the women comes in and re-marks that “Steinthór is not only a fine-looking warrior; he also spoke very well when delivering the slave payment” (IS 1, 347). There is a clear demon-stration of power in the size of the force and in the choice of weapons, words and outfit, although unfortunately for Steinthór, his elaborately ornamented sword is unfit for battle and needs frequent straightening. Looks do not win the battle and it ends in a truce.
Tunics (kyrtill), when they are mentioned in the Snæfellsnes sagas, seem to be precious more often than not: in Bjarnar saga, King Olaf bestows “a gold ring, a silken tunic trimmed with lace2, and a fine sword” (The Saga of Bjorn, 163) upon Thord in exchange for a single drápa. The tunic makes a few reap-pearances in the saga and is obviously an item of note. Bjorn exchanges gar-ters with the king by accident and it is said that Bjorn wore the silk garter all his life, even being buried with it (The Saga of Bjorn, 134). Curiously enough, the garter escapes attention until chapter 32, where Bjorn wears another pre-cious tunic (guðvefjarkyrtill). The attentive audience might realise that Bjorn’s time has come as the garter is mentioned again.
2 This is an unfortunate and anachronistic rendering of pellskyrtill hlaðbúinn, and is probably based on IED (1874, 269). Both ÍF III (1938, 127) and Falk (1919, 155) translate this as ribbon or border, probably referring to a tablet-woven embellishment, which was quite common in Viking Age and Medieval clothing.

Clothing gifts are not rare in the sagas of Snæfellsnes and elaborate items are recycled several times, as happens with one cloak that changes hands re-peatedly in Bjarnar saga without losing its value (“Bjorn gave Thorfinna a gold ring and the costly woven tunic which King Olaf had given to Thord Kolbeins-son, and which the king had given into Bjorn’s possession after the robbery on the Branno islands” (The Saga of Bjorn, 207)). In Bárðar saga chapter 12, Bard gives Thordis a beautiful set of women’s clothing in exchange for their son Gest. Gifting was a mechanism of maintaining the social order, and quite naturally textiles were incorporated into this.
Attitudes toward dressing expensively seem to be generally approving. In Bárðar saga, chapter 22, the Hjaltasons return to Iceland and attend the assem-bly “so well turned out [dressed] that men thought that the gods themselves had arrived” (CSI 2, 266). The accompanying verse mentions them wearing adorned helmets. This is very similar to the scene in Eyrbyggja saga, chapter 40 where the brothers Bjorn and Arnbjorn arrive at the thing in coloured cloth-ing (see above). However, this approval does not extend to Thorgrim the Ele-gant, whose style is the focal point of bullying that is probably motivated by his being born from an extramarital affair, as discussed above.
The wealth of the aforementioned Arnbjorn is actually very humble and domestic. In chapter 39 of Eyrbyggja saga, he boards a ship at the last moment carrying three hundred ells of homespun wool cloth (vaðmál), twelve piled coats (vararfeldir) and his food for the voyage on his back (ÍF IV, 105). The narrative suggests that Arnbjorn’s wealth is derived from this baggage. The vaðmál was locally priced at 24 ells for an ounce of silver (ÍF IV 1935, 25), hence the price of a roll of fabric would be 12.5 ounces of silver domestically. The vararfeldir were set by law at a cost two ounces (Jochens 1995, 155) and were therefore worth 24 ounces of silver domestically. Hence, Arnbjorn leaves Iceland with goods worth 36.5 ounces of silver and returns with considerable wealth.
Based on archaeological evidence, it is also plausible, even if a bit exagger-ated, that Arnbjorn carried all the cloth and the cloaks on his back. The legal vaðmál was two ells wide (98.4 cm). The fabric finds from the medieval peri-od generally have 8–12 ends and 4–10 picks per centimetre (Hayeur Smith 2015, 30–33) and the requisite yarn possibly 6500 metres per kilo (Andersson 1999, 9). If we presume that Arnbjorn had with him finer cloth (more picks and ends per centimetre), the vaðmál would have contained the whereabouts of 386 kilometres of yarn and would have weighed approximately 59 kilos.
All of the requisite wool would have been shorn, sorted, washed, combed, spun, warped, woven and finished by hand. Estimates for the time spent on these tasks are difficult to find, although it has been reported that weaving on a warp-weighted loom took place at 1–1.5 ells a day (Hoffmann 1964, 215–216), and that vaðmál would have taken the better part of a woman’s yearly labour to weave. According to Eva Andersson (1999, 9), preparing the fibres and spinning them takes more time than weaving, so it can be assumed that Arnbjorn is carrying a roll of cloth that is the fruit of three years’ worth of a single woman’s labour, although the tasks were distributed in the household3.
Luxury textiles serve an array of purposes in the Snæfellsnes sagas rang-ing from a straightforward display of economic power (and by proxy, mascu-linity) to reinforcing social relations, although luxury can also be carved out of domestically produced cloth because it could be bartered in Europe. This array of functions vividly exemplifies how integral clothing was to the social relations of the Viking and Middle Ages.
Spaces of aggression There are only a few depictions of textile production or the spaces for it. Not surprisingly, actual textile production is rarely mentioned, and even if it is, these descriptions do not include technological information.
Women had specialised workrooms (dyngja) where weaving took place. The three times the dyngja is mentioned in two sagas, it is only for male characters to walk in or out of. In Bjarnar saga, it is for Thord to flaunt Bjorn’s severed head and signature jewellery, while in Eyrbyggja saga, Snorri Godi has to stop his dead father-in-law from groping a young woman. In Víglundar saga, the sewing room (saumstofa) is the backdrop for Olof’s emergency performance of masculinity and a place for Ketilrid to weep.
Víglundar saga is the only saga to mention needlework in general terms (hannyrðir) and womanly arts (kvenligar listir), while Eyrbyggja saga mentions Katla spinning yarn using a distaff (rokkr) and weaving (vaðverk) in conjunc-tion with Thorgunna.
The daily life of the Medieval Icelandic farm was possibly too familiar to warrant any narrative attention, although women are still not centred in their own spaces. This further exemplifies how in a patriarchical society, women are secondary to men; even in their own spaces their reactions to men’s behaviour rather than women’s own feelings and agency are prioritised in the narratives.
"

[kFoyauextlH]

https://www.academia.edu/84790129/The_I ... _Discourse

https://www.journal-argos.org/article/d ... /4272/8371

"
aradigms and presents an argument for their theoretical reconsideration.
The obstinacy with which the particularity, and at the same time the incomparability,
of cultures is asserted in postcolonial discourse is astonishing. The implications of such
culturally relativistic obstinacy are grave. Contrary to the claim that Asian cultures should no
longer be described in terms of deficiency but should be taken seriously in their culture-specific
singularity, the postcolonial discourse moves straight towards a renewed confirmation of the
exclusivity of European intellectual history. The development of an intellectual terminology
remains Europe’s achievement. (Kollmar-Paulenz 2007: 17–18)1
Lamas and Shamans belongs to a series of papers (Kollmar-Paulenz 2007; 2008; 2012a, 2012b,
2012c; 2013; 2014; 2017) spanning a decade of Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz’s research on the
history of the emic discourse on two Mongolian religious traditions—Buddhism and Shamanism.
My commentary is therefore placed in the context of her other papers relating to the same topic.
This contextualisation crucially clarifies that “Lamas and Shamans” is neither a single paper nor
the final outcome of her works on the topic.

The paper presented in English translation in this special issue was published in German2 in the
collected volume Religion in Asien? (Schalk et al. 2013). In this work, scholars specialising in the
Asian history of religion(s) ask whether it is possible to prove that semantic and functional
equivalents of the term “religion” existed in pre-modern Asian history (Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 15;
2013: 162). This stance was to challenge the claim that before the colonial encounters between
the “West” and the “Rest,” the Asian cultures, albeit having produced a vast range of religious
texts, had not developed any term that could be translated as “religion” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2013:
2024: 7–9; 152–154). Approaching this problem, Kollmar-Paulenz noticed that first of all, the
claims that Asian languages had no term(s) corresponding to “religion” was often made by
authors who do not have the necessary philological competence and mostly work in the field of
European history of religions (2007: 2). She also observed that “the few religious studies works
that examine non-European analytical terminologies often lack historicization and
contextualisation” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 11, FN 20; 2013: 157, FN 20).
In tune with the German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history), Kollmar-Paulenz
advocated for research into the Mongolian and Tibetan intellectual traditions early in her works
on Mongolian religion(s) (2007: 16). She later called it “the most urgent methodological
desiderium of a study of religion that claims a global scope for its subject matter” (Kollmar-
Paulenz 2024: 10–11; 2013: 157). The philologically based methodology Kollmar-Paulenz
employed is theoretically anchored in the post-structural socio-linguistic theories that frame the
discursive study of religion(s) as it is practised nowadays.
Applying her profound knowledge of classical languages—Mongolian, Tibetan, and Sanskrit—
Kollmar-Paulenz conducted an in-depth philological analysis of a wide range of texts that cover
over four hundred years of Tibetan and Mongolian textual traditions. She first focused on the
umbrella terms (Oberbegriffe) which, by bundling together other concepts (practises, rituals,
ideas, concepts, and persons), differentiate and organise them in a distinct area of knowledge
(Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 7–8; 2013: 151). In the Mongolian language, she identifies two such
terms: nom and šasin. She explains that šasin is a borrowing from Sanskrit and historically refers
to teachings of the Buddha as introduced to the Mongols by the Tibetan monks, especially those
of the dGe lugs pa school (Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 15–16; 2013: 163). She also notes that the
meaning of šasin shows similarities with religio in the Christian Late Antiquity (Kollmar-Paulenz
2007: 16). Nom, in turn, is also a borrowing; it came into the Mongolian language, through
Sogdian, from Greek (Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 15–16; 2013: 163). Kollmar-Paulenz explains that
šasin and nom, first, translate Tibetan terms (Tib. bstan pa and chos), second, were used as self-
identification markers for Buddhism in Mongolia and, third, were applied in comparisons, as in
the oppositions “yellow religion” (Mn. sir-a šasin; i.e., Buddhism) and “black religion” (Mn. qar-a
šasin; i.e. Shamanism) (Kollmar-Paulenz)

Moving to terms that can also be translated as “religion” but etymologically refer to body-related
practises, Kollmar-Paulenz deconstructs the term mörgöl, which denotes the act of bowing (2024:
21–22; 2013: 171–172). She draws attention to the shift in meaning of Mongolian terms from the
religio-philosophical domain, as in šasin, to religio-pragmatic one, as in mörgöl. Discussing the
Mongolian term üjel—“view” or “views”—which denotes the act of seeing, she relates it to “the
actors and their performance, as well as their emotional and intellectual responses to seeing and
being seen” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2012c: 12). The “wrong views” (Mn. buruγu üjel) of the Mongolian
shamans, in turn, denotes polemics against religious outsiders and their non-Buddhist world-view
(Weltsicht) (Kollmar-Paulenz 2007: 13). Furthermore, Kollmar-Paulenz analyses the Buddhists’
inclusion-exclusion and derogatory terminology for naming shamans (2024: 18–22; 2013: 167–
171).
Embedding her research in Bourdieu’s field theory (Kollmar-Paulenz 2012c: 8), Kollmar-Paulenz
explores the missionary strategies of Buddhist monks in Mongolia between the 17th and 19th
centuries. Framed in this way, the history of Mongolian religion(s) appears interwoven with
questions of political power and social status. Investigating the history of the dissemination of
Buddhism in Mongolia, Kollmar-Paulenz points to its legislative implications reflected in the local
laws: the ban of animal sacrifices, the confiscation and burning of representations of ancestral
and shamans’ helping spirits (Mn. ongγod) (Kollmar-Paulenz 2012b: 240), the financial penalties
for employing shamans, and the orders permitting their public humiliation (Kollmar-Paulenz
2024: 13–14; 2013: 160). On the other hand, Kollmar-Paulenz discusses the gratifications for
those who memorised Buddhist mantras as well as other forms of economic competition
between the shamans and the lamas (2012a: 92–95). In addition, she touches upon the Qing
legislation, in which shamans and lamas were mentioned (2012a: 100; 2024: 22–23; 2013: 173).
All these aspects emphasise that shamanism did not develop in a legislative vacuum, and
Buddhism influenced the introduction of new laws in order to establish its position.
Against the backdrop of this in-depth socio-historical contextualisation, Kollmar-Paulenz’s focus
is not so much philological but rather historic-anthropological and is clearly predicated on the
analysis of specific practises that the Buddhists contested (2007: 18). Kollmar-Paulenz elaborates
on the emphasis put on the physical performance of religion in a separated paper, which relates
the history of Mongolian religion(s) to the discourse of the body, with added focus on gender
aspects (2012b). These approaches shift Mongolian shamanism away from its previous
“ahistorical” and rigid space of cosmology, mythology, and “ritualogy,” placing it instead in the
framework of intellectual-textual, political-economical, and body-related history. The theories
and methodology that Kollmar-Paulenz introduced and applied to the study of Mongolian
shamanism were innovative and much needed in the field of Tibetan and Mongolian studies.
From the outset of the project on Mongolian Buddhist intellectual tradition, Kollmar-Paulenz
stressed that her topic is related to the discourse of the Buddhist elites (2007: 18; 2024: 30–31;
2013: 184). Consequently, Mongolian shamanism, as deconstructed by Kollmar-Paulenz, is
bounded to the reality of the (dominant) texts and leaves the question of social “reality” open.

The voices “from below,” including those of the shamans, are absent outside of Buddhist-
Mongolian historiography. In these narratives, they merely fit into their historical role as the
conquered. In this respect, scholars who follow post-colonial premises might well have expressed
their critique of Kollmar-Paulenz’s studies. However, seemingly the most problematic concept
that emerged from Lamas and Shamans as well as from other papers on neighbouring topics is
the idea of the global history of religion(s), which, in Kollmar-Paulenz’s words, “challenges
European hegemony over analytical concept of ‘religion’” (2024: 32–33; 2013: 187).
Several scholars, who also follow the premises of a discursive and post-colonial study of
religion(s), have expressed their scepticism towards Kollmar-Paulenz’s studies. Adrian Hermann
criticises the search for equivalents of the term “religion” in non-Christian cultures and opts for
focusing on translations, where “meaning itself becomes a phenomenon under investigation”
(Hermann 2016: 107). In his opinion, a “focus on translingual practice makes it possible to
conceptualise equivalent signifiers for ‘religion’ in different languages without necessarily
grounding them in a shared signified ‘phenomenon’” (Hermann 2016: 107). Instead, Hermann
opts to focus on contradictions that can aid to build “hypothetical equivalents of ‘religion’”
(Hermann 2016: 111). On a more fundamental theoretical level, Frank Neubert points out two
aspects that, in his view, run contrary to the discursive approach to the study of religion(s): the
will to see and find a non-European equivalent of “religion” which, in turn, implicates the
existence of a “definable field” (abgrenzbarer Teilbereich) of religion (Neubert 2014: 183). Both
Neubert’s and Hermann’s remarks question the implied pre-existence of an object of
investigation, since such postulation would contradict a “pure” discursive approach (assuming
that such a pure approach exists).
Expressing their opinions on the “problem” of the emic term(s) for “religion,” Neubert and
Hermann both refer to Kollmar-Paulenz’s works. Neubert’s assessment of her approach as “not-
orthodox-enough” in terms of what “discursive” means or should mean, is seconded by
Hermann’s explicit critique of the search for one-to-one correspondence with the term “religion”
in non-European contexts and by his call for a narrow investigation into the translation processes
preceded by the establishment of hypothetical binaries. Regarding Hermann’s critique, such
hypothetical binaries—for example, religion-non-religion, religion-or-superstition, our-religion-
your-religion—are not to be found in the Mongolian context, because these hypothetical
equivalents are, once again, deeply rooted in the European history of religion(s). They can be
established only as the result of discourse and cannot be used as its premises, as Kollmar-Paulenz
showed in the paper concluding her work on the topic (Kollmar-Paulenz 2017). Regarding
Neubert’s point, the will to see “religion” in a particular language is necessary for one reason: to
mark the initial area of investigation. In other words, the emic terms serve to approximately mark
where to look for certain practises that formed religion(s) in non-European contexts. Hence, the
question is not whether there were “religion(s)” outside of Europe but rather whether they were
outside of textual tradition(s).

Hermann’s and Neubert’s stances have one thing in common: They are framed by a definition of
discourse that is rigidly tied to language. However, to quote Foucault, in the discourse analysis,
“words are as deliberately absent as things themselves” (Foucault 2002: 53). Consequently,
discourse analysis must be placed outside the language milieu. In Kollmar-Paulenz’s study, it
surely is. For her, the discursive approach to the global study of religion(s) is not a search for
term(s) that can be translated as “religion”; rather, it is the contestations of various practises
within the field marked by such terms. In my view, this is the crucial point of her works, which
surely can be extended to the programme of a global history of religion: to place a historical
discourse analysis outside the textual marker and outside of rigid frames of philology. Instead, as
Kollmar-Paulenz shows, the understanding of “religion” applied to emic contexts should be
framed as a history of body-related practises (2017: 244). Framed in such a way, “religion”
becomes a marker for image(s) animated by practises that stand outside of “religion”—perhaps
even outside of language itself.
As part of this Western discourse on “religion,” Kollmar-Paulenz argues that “shamanism” owes
its existence on a global scale to the hegemonic dominance of the European protestant model of
“religion” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2012a: 91). What she showed, however, was that shamanism in
Mongolia was also constructed—but on the Buddhist model instead. It was “Buddhism gone
wrong” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2012c: 12; 2024: 17–18; 2013: 166), emerging due to the contact of
Buddhists with the “religious others,” the shamans. Consequently, in the author’s words, “the
notion of ‘shamanism,’ however, exists not only in the Western anthropologist’s imagination, but
already existed in the imagination of Mongolian Buddhist intellectuals of the 17th to 19th
centuries” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2012: 16). Kollmar-Paulenz’s works and those of other scholars
published in Religion in Asien? show that
[…] contrary to the [dominant] thesis, Asian cultures did indeed identify,
sometimes in very specific ways, segments of culture that we would classify as
‘religion’ […] in situations where religious agents see themselves confronted with a
certain ‘Other’ with which they are competing. (Deeg/Freiberger/Kleine 2013: xviii–xix)
One outcome of Kollmar-Paulenz’s project on Mongolian shamanism was also my own work on
Buryat shamanism (Sobkowiak 2023), in which I focus on the micro-histories in Transbaikalia and
relate them to the Buryat-Buddhist and Russian elite-discourse. My work confirmed Kollmar-
Paulenz’s research, though it also showed that the reality of the Mongolian elite discourse is
perhaps too rigidly placed in the semantic unity (Bedeutungsgebundenheit) of the Mongolian
language (Kollmar-Paulenz 2007: 17). The unifying concept of “religion” thus sometimes runs
independently of the historical and geographical spaces. Notwithstanding these remarks, my
study showed that—through the power of dominant histories (for which I coined the term
“histonomy”)—Buryat shamanism was indeed “created” and emerged as a unified entity in 19th-
century Transbaikalia. It emerged in the process of partial “othering” of material objects,
practises, and people, on the one hand, and their appropriation in new historical circumstances, on the other. Surprisingly, it turned out that the shamans played a marginal role in this process
but eventually emerged as leaders of a full-fledged religion with its own history.
In my opinion, one of Kollmar-Paulenz’s crucial observations on the history of (Mongolian)
religion(s) concerns the emphasis on lack that underpinned the (Buddhist) perspective on their
religious “Others”: the lack of books, the lack of knowledge, the lack of religion and, consequently,
the lack of civilisation (Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 17–18; 2013: 166; 2014: 125), enhanced, in turn,
by the images of (non-Buddhist) “barbarity” of “people who eat and drink the flesh and blood of
living beings” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 12–13, FN 26; 2013: 159, FN 26). This image is ostensibly
familiar—the religion of the book(s) creates its non-religious others through the negative image
of “barbarous illiterates.” If the history of the colonial “Other(s)” can be expressed in terms of
lack and will, then the historical will to see non-European cultures in terms of a deficiency of
religion might perpetuate the will to see them deprived of religion in the future global world. If it
was so, the colonial will to see non-European cultures “through” religion turns nowadays into the
will to see the absence of religion in the future world animated, once again, by the achievements
of the “West.” However, as the Mongolian case proves, every loss of the previous familiarity of
objects and practises is preceded by the recognition of this familiarity in the first stance. The
“achievements” of the Western world might thus not necessarily be accepted elsewhere.
In most regions of the world, including Europe, religion has played, and still plays, a vital socio-
political role. Religion is a historical entity, so it cannot exist without or outside of history.
Consequently, the global study of religion(s) needs to study the images and practises that still
perpetuate socio-political power relations in European and non-European cultures. The studies
of the latter, however, should not rely on the imposition of apparently universal concepts; nor
should concepts created outside of European epistemological tradition be introspectively applied
to enrich the Western, already quite rich, world. While Hermann calls a decade of Kollmar-
Paulenz’s work a “fruitless and tautological search for the existence of equivalents” (Hermann
2016: 106), Wittgenstein reminds us, “Tautology leaves to reality the whole infinite logical space;
contradiction fills the whole logical space and leaves no point to reality” (Wittgenstein 1922: 98,
no 4.463). Indeed, the implicit tautology is what underlines the search for equivalents of the term
“religion” in cultures that developed their traditions independently from Christianity. Tautology
facilitates an image of intellectual, cultural, and even diachronic oneness, as Kollmar-Paulenz
illustrates in the last sentences of Lamas and Shamans (Kollmar-Paulenz 2024: 35–36; 2013: 191).
Framed in such a way, the study of religion(s) can very well drop its “s” and become an object of
global study in human epistemology seen as one.
"

Added in 1 day 16 hours 34 minutes 55 seconds:








Added in 33 minutes 48 seconds:

[kFoyauextlH]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Imeon

[kFoyauextlH]

https://norse-mythology.org/tales/why-odin-is-one-eyed/

"
Odin’s quest for wisdom is never-ending, and he is willing to pay any price, it seems, for the understanding of life’s mysteries that he craves more than anything else. On one occasion, he hanged himself, wounded himself with his spear, and fasted from food and drink for nine days and nights in order to discover the runes.

On another occasion, he ventured to Mimir’s Well – which is surely none other than the Well of Urd[1] – amongst the roots of the world-tree Yggdrasil. There dwelt Mimir, a shadowy being whose knowledge of all things was practically unparalleled among the inhabitants of the cosmos. He achieved this status largely by taking his water from the well, whose waters impart this cosmic knowledge.

When Odin arrived, he asked Mimir for a drink from the water. The well’s guardian, knowing the value of such a draught, refused unless the seeker offered an eye in return. Odin – whether straightaway or after anguished deliberation, we can only wonder – gouged out one of his eyes and dropped it into the well. Having made the necessary sacrifice, Mimir dipped his horn into the well and offered the now-one-eyed god a drink.[2][3]

An Interpretation

The most general and obvious message of this tale is that, for those who share Odin’s values, no sacrifice is too great for wisdom. The (unfortunately fragmentary) sources for our current knowledge of the pre-Christian mythology and religion of the Norse and other Germanic peoples are, however, silent on exactly what kind of wisdom Odin obtained in exchange for his eye. But we can hazard a guess.

The fact that Odin specifically sacrificed an eye is surely significant. In all ages, the eye has been “seen” as a poetic symbol for perception in general – consider the astonishing number of expressions, both in everyday usage and in the works of the great canonical poets, that use vision as a metaphor for perceiving and understanding something. Given that Odin’s eye was sacrificed in order to obtain an enhanced perception, it seems highly likely that his pledge of an eye symbolizes trading one mode of perception for another.

What mode of perception was exchanged for what other mode, then? The answer to this question lies in the character of Mimir. Mimir, whose name means “The Rememberer,” seems to have been the being who told the gods how to live in accordance with ancestral tradition, and with wisdom more generally.

In the tale of Odin’s discovery of the runes, Odin sacrificed what we might call his “lower self” to his “higher self.” Here, his relinquishment of an eye should surely be understood along similar lines: he exchanged a profane, everyday mode of perception, beleaguered with countless petty troubles, for a sacred mode of perception informed by divine, ancestral wisdom.

Looking for more great information on Norse mythology and religion? While this site provides the ultimate online introduction to the topic, my book The Viking Spirit provides the ultimate introduction to Norse mythology and religion period. I’ve also written a popular list of The 10 Best Norse Mythology Books, which you’ll probably find helpful in your pursuit.
"

https://www.norsemyth.org/2021/05/the-l ... t.html?m=1

https://wildhunt.org/2020/08/column-the ... right.html

"
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
The Left Eye of Odin (or Right)
Every so often, one of the college students in my Norse mythology classes raises a hand and asks, “Which eye did Odin give up to drink from Mimir’s well?”

Related questions include which side of Hel’s face is the corpse side, what the size measurements of Freyja’s cats are, and what the design specifications of Loki’s mistletoe missile are.

Odin, Sleipnir, Huginn, and Muninn by Gerhard Munthe (1849-1929)

My first, gut reaction to this type of question was to reply that mythology functions differently from fantasy.

Myth is vague where modern fantasy novels give page after page of specific details. Myth is elusive and allusive where tabletop role-playing games qualify and quantify every characteristic feature in overwhelming detail. Myth compresses action into stark imagery where video games expand conflict into endless hyperreal performances.

Students raised on Harry Potter, Dungeons & Dragons, and World of Warcraft may find mythology disappointingly diffuse. So many myths lack direct speech or dialogue in the modern sense. There is often no sense of the characters having inner lives, and motivations can range from totally banal to utterly incomprehensible.

In Norse mythology, physical descriptions of mythological figures are few. Some of the details we are sure we have read are actually akin to mass hallucinations, as in the widespread idea that Thor has a red beard in the Eddas. He does not.

The image of the red-bearded Viking Thor comes from the Icelandic sagas, historical and fantastic prose fiction composed two centuries and more after the nation’s public conversion to Christianity and written in imitation of new forms of literature filtering up from the Christian continent.

Red Thor appears in strikingly Christian contexts, as a threatening figure of the pagan past who seeks to flip new converts back to the Old Way. Any similarities to the red devil are purely non-coincidental.

Yet the meme of the red-bearded Eddic Thor has long been embedded into the writing of even the scholarly giants of Scandinavian studies, in their standard dictionaries and public publications.

Christian accretions and pagan cores

There seems to be something in the modern mind that craves specificity, that imposes concrete imagery onto textual traditions where that type of descriptive writing does not exist.

Or perhaps it’s not so much an issue of the modern mind but of the post-pagan, post-polytheistic perspective. Snorri Sturluson, thirteenth-century author or compiler of what we now call the Prose Edda, determinedly included or invented small descriptive details that are not present in the poetic sources he prosified.

The closer we get to the present, the more people seem to crave these sorts of details. From the retellings by William Morris in the nineteenth century to the transformations by J.R.R. Tolkien in the twentieth to the repackagings by Neil Gaiman in the twenty-first, the Snorrian impulse to muddle about with the texts and fill in the gaps seems irresistible.

So much of modern reading of ancient myth views it as literature, as something that sits on the same shelf as the fairy tale and the fantasy novel. There is indeed a hostility in some parts of academia and some branches of postmodern Ásatrú and Heathenry to viewing the surviving Norse myths as at all religious, condemning them instead as products of medieval Christian authors that present hopelessly muddled and willfully distorted versions of what may never have been pagan tales in the first place.

In a nutshell, the counterargument (of which I am a determined proponent) acknowledges the general scope of this criticism but counteroffers the mountain range of corroborating evidence and explicative theory from archaeology, linguistics, history of religions, and neighboring fields to argue that what Christian accretions have been sprinkled over the myths do not nullify the pagan mythological core at the heart of the surviving texts.

It is the very turning away from reading the myths as literature to reading them in the wider context of specifically religious texts of related world religions that leads to a better answer for those students asking about eyes and faces, cats and mistletoe.

India and Iceland

“Wodan,” wrote Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century, “id est furor.” Wodan is fury, as his Icelandic counterpart Odin is furious (etymologically speaking). There are many historical accounts and semi-historical saga descriptions of bloody sacrifices to the bloodthirsty god who is often connected to the causes, manifestations, and consequences of killing and war.

Yet the image of Odin as the wandering wizard endures, shaped into the Wanderer by Richard Wagner and morphed into Gandalf by J.R.R. Tolkien. How do we reconcile the furious figure who hovers over the battlefield with the wise walker along ancient paths?

Thousands of miles span the distance from India to Iceland, and thousands of years passed between the composition of the Mahābhārata and the transcription of the Norse myths, yet the parallels between the Vedic and Eddic mythologies have been known, studied, and disputed since Sir William Jones laid out the connections between Germanic, Indic, and other surprisingly related language groups in 1787 as the Indo-European theory was first formulated.

Jones was part of the British colonial administration in India, and his theories were filtered through the Romantic nationalism of the nineteenth century to provide theoretical, rhetorical, and propagandistic fodder for the Nazi horrors of the twentieth.

The old ideas of blond Aryan hordes riding out of the Caucasus to conquer the world have rightfully and righteously been dragged into the trash icon of academia’s shared desktop, but the fact of linguistic, cultural, ethical, mythical, and religious connections between members of the wider Indo-European family remain.

My copies of the ancient Sanskrit texts from India are covered by smudgy spiderwebs of my penciled notes, such as “cf. Hávamál,” “cf. Völuspá,” “blót,” and “reciprocal gifting.” On nearly every page of every text I’ve studied, there are amazing parallels to the Norse material, from outlines of myths shared by Indra and Thor to very specific healing spells that appear in ancient India as they do in medieval Germany.

These finds can be so exciting to someone as excitable as me on these subjects that, at one point while I was in divinity school, Prof. Wendy Doniger had to limit me to a set number of “ooh, this is just like that bit in Norse myth” exclamations in each class session.

It was one of these moments in class that enabled me to provide my own students with a deeper answer to their questions about Odin’s eyes and to find for myself a more meaningful understanding of the wide disparity between the war-inciter and the wanderer.

Cold feet

By the sixth book of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, the warring parties whose rivalry has consumed the preceding five books are finally ready to face off in their ultimate battle. In the last moments before the combat begins, the great and supremely macho hero Arjuna gets cold feet.

Looking across the battlefield, he sees that both armies are composed of his own “fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, companions, fathers-in-law, and friends.” Consumed with compassion and despair, he tells his chariot driver that he will not fight against his own family members, and he throws down his bow and arrows.

His chariot driver tells him that he is behaving in an unworthy manner and warns him against becoming klība, a Sanskrit term with a range of meanings focused on “unmanliness” that is similar to the Old Norse ergi. “Shake off this miserable weakness of heart and get up,” the driver admonishes the languishing hero.

When Arjuna continues to complain of his concerns, his chariot driver begins an enormously lengthy lecture not only on the responsibilities of the warrior, but on a host of increasingly esoteric religious teachings.

In fact, the chariot driver is the god Krishna, and the teachings he recites to Arjuna are the sacred text known as the Bhagavad Gītā (“Song of the Lord”).

After Krishna finishes one section of his lessons for Arjuna by declaring that there is “no end to [his] divine manifestations,” the hero responds:

You are just as you have described yourself, great lord; but I wish to see your majestic form, supreme person. Master, if you think I will be able to see it, then show me your imperishable self, lord of yoga.

Krishna agrees to reveal his forms to Arjuna “in their hundreds and thousands: diverse, divine, and of many colors and shapes.” He tells the reluctant warrior to observe “the whole universe with its mobile and immobile aspects concentrated within [his] body.”

Because this vision is too great for human eyes, he grants divine sight to Arjuna.

It’s all too much

The narrator describes Krishna’s “supreme, majestic form” as revealed at that moment.

With many mouths and eyes and numerous wonderful aspects, with multiple divine ornaments and raised divine weapons, it bore celestial garlands and robes and was anointed with divine perfumes, composed of all marvels, godly, infinite, and facing all directions. If the light of a thousand suns rising at once were to appear in the sky, it might resemble the splendor of that great soul. [Arjuna] saw the entire universe with its various divisions concentrated there in the body of the god of gods.

Arjuna bows his head and speaks mighty words in praise of Krishna’s great cosmic beauty, but he soon begins to testify to the great panic and enormous fear he feels when he sees Krishna’s “mouths like the fire of time” into which all the “heroes of the world of men” rush into “like the many rivers running into the sea,” to be crushed and devoured. As revealed to Arjuna, the “blazing mouths” of Krishna devour “all peoples, all worlds.”

Krishna reveals his cosmic form to Arjuna in an Indian illustration from the early 1900s

Krishna responds to Arjuna’s fear by declaring, “I am Time, the world destroyer, ripened, and here I am busy crushing the worlds.”

The hero again bows, praises Krishna, finally realizing that the chariot driver he has palled around with is actually the mightiest of all deities.

Arjuna apologizes for past familiarities and begs for an end to the overwhelming cosmic vision, asking Krishna to revert to a limited form that can be comprehended with normal human senses – to conform to the common image of the god as a young man with diadem, mace, and discus. “Change into your four-armed form, thousand-armed god of universal form!”

Krishna obliges, and the lesson continues.

Fury itself

I’m not saying that Krishna is a parallel of Odin, and I’m not placing an equal sign between the Krishnavite “Song of the Lord” and the Odinic “Sayings of the High One.”

At least as regards the larger question at hand in this particular article, I’m not as interested in the specificities of the god or the teachings being promulgated as I am in this notion of a cosmic divinity too immense to be comprehended – a “god of universal form” that must shrink down into a conventional form so that we humans of merely mortal perspicacity can conceive of it without our brains melting.

When Krishna takes his guise of a human charioteer, he is a comforting figure who guides and helps. When he is in his regular religious depiction as a four-armed anthropomorphic deity with traditional weapons, he remains comprehensible. It is only when he reveals his ultimate universal form that he becomes overwhelming and terrifying.

In this light, there is an insight into the figure of Odin and the contradictions of his portrayals. It’s quite easy to follow the shape of the above paragraph and apply it to the Norse god.

When Odin takes his guise of a human wanderer, he offers advice and shares wisdom. When he is in his regular religious depiction as the far-seeing anthropomorphic deity on the high seat above, he remains comprehensible.

The final step, however, is often missing. It is only when he reveals his ultimate abstract form as fury itself that Odin becomes overwhelming and terrifying.

The surviving Old Norse texts do not contain the detailed theological discussion that is so deeply woven through the Sanskrit sources, so we are left to formulate this form for ourselves. Since it’s not clearly portrayed in the texts we have, where do we find the greater, non-anthropomorphic form of Odin?

Odin is there

Again, the “Song of the Lord” gives a hint. Krishna makes clear to Arjuna that he is in all the world and that he abides in all beings. I believe that we can find Odin within ourselves, for better or worse.

He is the fury that stirs poet, artist, dancer, and musician as they enter into a deeply creative state in which they lose track of time and mundane situation. When the guitarist is so concentrated on improvising in the moment that she doesn’t afterward remember making any conscious musical decisions, Odin is there. When the painter is so immersed in the work that she doesn’t notice the night’s passing until the beeping of her morning alarm finds her still brushing away, Odin is there.

He is also the fury that stirs runner, boxer, gymnast, and baseball player as they find the zone where conscious thought gives way to inspired action. When the boxer senses that the moment has come and explodes into a flurry of blows from all angles that brings the knockout, yet doesn’t feel or realize that his own nose is already broken, Odin is there. When the baseball player perceives the ball as floating gently over the plate in slow motion and hears no sound within an internal quietude as he slams the ball out of the park, Odin is there.

The overtaking of the conscious mind is not always so beautiful. Odin is also there when the abuser sees red and hurts without control. He is there when the police officer succumbs to fear and hate and empties his weapon into the back of a child. He is there when the soldier sees a friend fall and his mind snaps free of anything that would restrain his indiscriminate revenge. This is the truly overwhelming and terrifying Odin.

What all of these experiences have in common is the feeling that something has entered the mind and overwhelmed everyday thought. Seeing red, entering the zone, getting lost in the creative moment – all have a sense of drunkenness about them, of intoxication.

The Norse myths capture this feeling by telling us that Odin lives on wine alone and shares out the mead of poetry that inspires the mind of the one who drinks it. The tenth-century Icelander Egill Skallagrímsson famously rails against the bloodthirsty Odin for taking the lives of his sons but thanks him for the gift of poetic skill that allows him to express his grief.

Gather around the table

But this is all too abstract and has too many different individual manifestations, from the passion of the painter to the rage of the killer. It is also far too terrifying. Who among us would be able to gaze into the eyes (or even one lone eye) of the power of unrestrained fury itself?

So we shrink Odin down into a form in which he is more comprehensible, more understandable, and more relatable.

Although his eye may flash with fury from time to time, the wanderer with his beard, hat, cloak, and walking stick is someone we can look forward to meeting. How wonderful would it be to sit by a forest brook and listen to the wise wizard share his wisdom?

Finally, there is a better answer I can give to my students when they ask about Odin’s eye.

The specifics are up to the storyteller and to the one who hears the story. Imagine the gods as the tales inspire you, but always remember that Odin is not the wanderer. He is not the regal figure on his high seat. These are forms that he takes so we can comprehend him or forms in which we conceive divine powers so we can engage with them.

Enjoy the myths, but remember that – as the philosopher Paul Ricœur wrote long ago – myths are made of symbols interacting in narrative form.

Both historically and in today’s world, reading myths literally leads to a fundamentalist mindset with all of its awful outcomes. If we instead agree to gather around the table and discuss what meanings may lie behind the myths, maybe we can have a conversation about leading better lives together.

Quotations from the Bhagavad Gītā are from Mahābhārata, Book Six: Bhīṣma, Volume One, translated by Alex Cherniak (New York University Press, 2008). An earlier version of this article appeared at The Wild Hunt.
Dr. Karl E. H. Seigfried at 12:08:00 PM
"

https://wytchofthenorth.wordpress.com/2 ... bout-odin/

"
Although I haven’t been asked this question in a while now, I remember a time several years back when it was a topic of raging controversy (second, perhaps, only to “What did Odin whisper to the dead Balder on His funeral bier?”), and I still see it resurface from time to time. Odin’s women, especially, seem to have firm and unshakable opinions on the matter. Freya Aswynn believes it to be His right eye, since the right eye is associated with the left side of the brain, meaning that He would have sacrificed linear, logical thinking for His more creative, mystical side. I have heard that Diana Paxson favors the left-eye argument, Odin’s left eye corresponding to His creative, mystical, spatially oriented side—meaning that this side is in Mimir’s Well, or the Well of Wyrd, where it continues to see on its owner’s behalf, using the vision into Wyrd thus gained to plot Odin’s long-term strategy to defeat the forces that will range against Himself and His kin at Ragnarok.

Both of these arguments have their respective merits, and therein lies the problem. In an attempt to shed some light on this burning issue, I have asked Odin Himself, and the reply I received was: “Which of My eyes did I sacrifice? Why, whichever one I damn please, of course.”

While He can be frustratingly cryptic much of the time, once in a while Odin chooses to cut through the bullshit and speak plainly. Believe it or not, this is one of those times.

In my own inner sight, as well as on occasions when He has been horsed for me and the image He wishes to project of Himself overlays the physical form of the horse, I have seen my Beloved with the left eye missing, the right eye missing, and with both eyes very much present and accounted for. These variations did not seem to be determined by whether I was interacting, at that moment, with a younger or older version of Odin, or with His pre-Well or post-Well self; instead, it was solely determined by how He wished to portray Himself at that time. This underscores a basic fact about Odin’s nature that many people seem to forget: He is not human. In our realm, He presents as a spirit, with varying degrees of ability to manifest in our physical plane depending on who is aiding Him and the energies He is able to draw upon.

In His own realm, and most of the other non-earthly realms, He has much greater agency as well as a certain physicality, but nothing in the non-earthly worlds is solid and fixed in the same sense as reality as we know it. This is the reason why, in the myth of Balder’s death, Balder could have been returned to life if only everyone living could have been made to agree that this should be the case. Even in the Otherworld version of Midgard, consensus reality is a fluid thing, open to being shaped by…well, by consensus. In Asgard, the realm of Odin, which lies at the very top of the World Tree, reality is very much Odin’s to shape and mold, not simply because He is King there, but because His is simply the most powerful, influential and creative mind present, and thus the most persuasive influence on the “consensus reality” that determines the shape of things. Reality is not quite Odin’s plaything there only because His influence is counterbalanced by that of the Norns, Whose responsibility it is to see that all of the worlds within the province of the Well and the Tree remain in a relative state of balance. However, the Norns don’t much care whether Odin decides that a table will be black or white on a particular day, whether He Himself manifests to His followers as a handsome young man or a grandfatherly older one, or whether His left eye, His right eye, or neither are missing. Perhaps He even appears to some people as entirely blind, thus generating one of His Heiti (or by-names), “Twice-Blind.”

Is it any wonder that a god Who has Grimnir (Masked One) among His many names would delight in being able to puzzle and confound people with this conundrum?

I have also heard the story of Odin’s sacrifice to Mimir’s Well interpreted in more symbolic terms, the gist of it being that He didn’t actually tear an Eye out of His head on this occasion—not literally, anyway; instead, He sacrificed half of His focus on the linear, logical, cognitive, left-brained world for enhanced vision and power in the world of dreams, magic and conceptual imagination. I like this version of the story. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think the myths are all to be interpreted symbolically, or that the gods Themselves are archetypes (perish the thought; why would I marry an archetype?). No, I like this interpretation because it is more honest than arguing in favor of either the left eye or the right eye with an equally symbolic reasoning as the basis. It is also more deeply rooted in Truth. After all, don’t all of us who come to this Work sacrifice some of our ability to function in the rational, linear world of day jobs and time clocks in favor or being able to converse with non-corporeal beings? Don’t all of us give up some of our interest in climbing the corporate ladder, keeping up with the Joneses, and staying conversant with the expectations of this world’s consensus reality in exchange for climbing the World Tree, speaking with spirits, and becoming conversant with the consensus reality of the Otherworlds? At some point in our respective journeys, even those of us who identify as god-slaves were offered a choice: the mundane world or the Otherworlds, humans or Them? I know what choice I made, and I suspect that many of you reading this now made the same one. Yet it is foolish to suppose that anyone—even Odin—could maintain equal competence in both worlds—the spiritual and the rational/temporal—at all times. The result of this, for many of us poor spirit workers, is that our grasp on the consensus reality of physical Midgard gradually wanes, to the extent that some of us find our ability to function in it becoming increasingly limited.

For Odin, however—being Odin–His focus simply…shifts, moving back and forth from the linear to the conceptual as need and choice dictates. This is why He is a god and we’re not. In short, it is “whichever Eye I damn please,” and in the end it doesn’t matter whether or not the sacrifice was an actual, physical one.

Knowing Him, though, I suspect that it was. Just for kicks (and for the fun of keeping us all wondering), if for no other reason.
"

"
winter.skadi
March 13, 2013 at 8:09 pm

LOL! I laughed at the answer you got from Him, as I have gotten, “Whichever one I want” followed by a wink, and a change up of which eye is missing. I have seen either or gone, both, and neither. So many masks. So not human. I have heard Freya and Diana’s arguments before, but I have never heard the symbolic one. That was interesting food for thought

Part of me wants to answer this. Part of me knows it doesn’t matter because this isn’t my riddle to answer, and it may be no ones… but it does at least get people reading about Them to try to seek an answer and *that* is a benefit in and of itself.

Beth
March 14, 2013 at 2:30 pm

Yes, exactly! The impression I get from Him is that He considers the “which Eye?” question a non-issue…but He does enjoy the speculation.

Soli
March 14, 2013 at 10:15 am

A few years ago a friend told me something I had never noticed myself. When I get into intense conversation, my left eye will drift half-closed. And when I had my first (unexpected, unplanned, and unwanted) horsing of Himself, it was my left eye which closed, presumably to make sure everyone present knew Who was there. So when I have acted in that capacity since, I’ve had an eyepatch around and cover the left eye.

But otherwise, yeah, the answer is not all that easy.
"

https://bavipower.com/blogs/norse-myth- ... -sacrifice