Weapons in Legal Rituals: Between Myth and Reality

This article seeks to explore the significance of weapons in legal rituals mentioned in sources, such as sagas and laws. Similarities in the phrasing of various types of sources give reason to believe that it is possible to determine certain uses of weapons in Viking Age legal rituals. Such rituals, which shared essential features with legal procedure, consisted of sequences of activities involving phrasing, objects, and gestures to mark a transition from one legal status to another, and they could also convey, and act as preservers of, legal meaning. Examples show that oaths were sworn on weapons, and that they conferred legal validity at the assembly (vápnatak). Old Norse mythology explained and legitimised key values in society, and through it everyday people found a template for how to use weapons in legal rituals. Rituals are however dynamic, and hence the ritual objects may change over time. In the Viking Age weapons were objects laden with meaning, and it was probably the introduction of Christianity that led to them being banned from further use in legal ritual.

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

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.

Þingeyrar Abbey in Northern Iceland: A Benedictine Powerhouse of Cultural Heritage

Þingeyrar Abbey was founded in 1133 and dissolved in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation (1550), to virtually disappear with time from the face of the earth. Although highly promising archeological excavations are under way, our material points of access to this important monastic foundation are still only a handful of medieval artifacts. However, throughout its medieval existence Þingeyrar Abbey was an inordinately large producer of Latin and Icelandic literature. We have the names of monastic authors, poets, translators, compilators, and scribes, who engaged creatively with such diverse subjects as Christian hagiography, contemporary history, and Norse mythology, skillfully amalgamating all of this into a coherent, imaginative whole. Thus, Þingeyrar Abbey has a prominent place in the creation and preservation of the Icelandic Eddas and Sagas that have shaped the Northern European cultural memory. Despite the dissolution of monastic libraries and wholesale destruction of Icelandic-Latin manuscripts through a mixture of Protestant zealotry and parchment reuse, philologists have been able to trace a number of surviving codices and fragments back to Þingeyrar Abbey. Ultimately, however, our primary points of access to the fascinating world of this remote Benedictine community remain immaterial, a vast corpus of medieval texts edited on the basis of manuscript copies at unknown degrees of separation from the lost originals.