Loki the Slandered God? Selective Omission of Skaldic Citations in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Parkhouse
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Norse Mythology ◽  
And Function

Despite widespread acknowledgment of the complexity of Loki’s nature and function in Old Norse mythology, many critical approaches nonetheless begin from an implicit foundational assumption that he is in essence a negative and antagonistic figure. Conversely, some scholars have interpreted Loki as a culture hero, whilst it is widely agreed that aspects of his negative characterization developed under the influence of traditions about the Christian Devil. This chapter considers the extent to which the thirteenth-century Icelandic historian and mythographer Snorri Sturluson actively contributed in his Edda to the ‘demonization of Loki’ (John Lindow, Norse Mythology [2001], 303), through an analysis of the lists of kennings (poetic periphrases, quoted from older skaldic verse) which Snorri provides for major mythological entities.

Old Norse Mythology as Sacred Narrative

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-102
Author(s):  
John Lindow
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Deep Sea ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Norse Mythology

This chapter presents a case study of one myth that we have from pictorial sources in the Viking Age, from poems almost certainly composed in the Viking Age, and from thirteenth-century sources, namely the encounter between the god Þórr (Thor) and his cosmic enemy, the World serpent, a beast that encircles the earth, in the deep sea. In this myth, Þórr fishes up the serpent, and depending on the variant, Þórr may or may not kill the serpent. I present and analyze the texts in more or less chronological order, from the older skalds through the Eddic poem Hymiskviða, through Snorri Sturluson in Edda, and compare the texts to the rock carvings that portray the myth. I argue that the issue of the death or survival of the serpent is less important than the simple fact that Þórr had the serpent on his hook.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
John Lindow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Norse Mythology ◽  
Poetic Edda ◽  
The Middle Ages

The title, Old Norse Mythology recognizes the fact that the mythology in question is recorded almost exclusively in the manuscripts of Old Norse literary tradition—that is, in manuscripts primarily from thirteenth-century Iceland. Since Iceland had converted to Christianity in the year 1000CE, the scribes who recorded the myths were Christians, and the myths can hardly have been sacred in their eyes. Nevertheless, there were mythographers such as Snorri Sturluson, who composed Edda, a handbook of poetics that includes a synopsis of the mythology, and such as the anonymous redactor of what we now call the Poetic Edda, a collection of mythic and heroic poems, and myths are displaced into history in the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. This chapter discusses the progression from the oral mythology of the Viking Age (c. 800-1100) to the written mythology of the Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Gods and Giants in Old Norse Mythology

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
JÓN HNEFILL ADALSTEINSSON
Keyword(s):  
Old Norse ◽  
Norse Mythology

No abstract available

scholarly journals Self and other in critical international theory: assimilation, incommensurability and the paradox of critique

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
VASSILIOS PAIPAIS
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Critical Edge ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article is principally concerned with the way some sophisticated critical approaches in International Relations (IR) tend to compromise their critical edge in their engagement with the self/other problematique. Critical approaches that understand critique as total non-violence towards, or unreflective affirmation of, alterity risk falling back into precritical paths. That is, either a particularistic, assimilative universalism with pretensions of true universality or a radical incommensurability and the impossibility of communication with the other. This is what this article understands as the paradox of the politics of critique. Instead, what is more important than seeking a final overcoming or dismissal of the self/other opposition is to gain the insight that it is the perpetual striving to preserve the tension and ambivalence between self and other that rescues both critique's authority and function.

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