Author of the Edda, but not the uncrowned king of Iceland - Nancy Marie Brown's biography of Snorri Sturluson

My Icelandic reading, the sagas and Eddas, led me to Nancy Marie Brown’s The Song of the Vikings (2012), her biography of Snorri Sturluson, author (by best guess) of Egil’s Saga, the prose Edda, and the chronicle of Norwegian kings Heimskringla, but it would also be true to say that Brown’s outstanding God of Wednesday blog led me to the Icelandic books.  What commitment to her subject – whether she is writing about her travels in Iceland, or the accuracies and inaccuracies of television Vikings, or most recently her attempts to row a small Viking ship, she is invariably interesting.  Actually, it is her good sense about exactly what is interesting that is so impressive, on the blog and in the book.

I admit that I do not find the posts on Icelandic horses, also the subject of one of her books, all that interesting, although I do enjoy the photographs.

Snorri Sturluson’s literary efforts make him the most important figure in Norse literature.  He not only wrote works of the highest significance but encouraged other writers and made copies of earlier texts.  The earliest surviving Icelandic manuscript has his writing on it, although it is a legal rather than literary document.  The books might make a reader suspect that Snorri was a monk or some kind of court historian.  In fact he was among the wealthiest men in Iceland, a chieftain and lawgiver.  For several years he schemed and fought to become what Brown calls “the uncrowned king of Iceland.”  He died hiding in his cellar, murdered by his rival’s thugs.  Snorri was like a Mafia boss.

Mobsters seem to have lost their taste for poetry.  Snorri was never much of a warrior – other people did his fighting – but he lived in a culture where writing and poetry were sources of prestige, or weapons.  Thus the prose Edda, a gift meant to win the support of an indifferent Norwegian king. 

But King Hakon didn’t acknowledge the poems Snorri composed for him – he may have declined to hear them.  The sixteen-year-old king didn’t like skaldic poetry.  He didn’t understand it.  Worse, it was old-fashioned.  (115)

Our greatest source of those wonderful Norse myths, the only source for a number of them, was the result of a political miscalculation by Snorri, the first of many.  “Hakon was the best-educated king Norway ever had,” so he wanted Latin and French.  Stories of the hot new thing in the early 13th century, King Arthur and his knights.  While Snorri was creating the conditions for the explosion of Icelandic literature, he was also inadvertently helping, in his attempt to become “uncrowned king,” to cause its downfall when Norway takes over Iceland and makes it a backwater, a source of cod and coarse wool, not poems and sagas.

Brown ends the book with a nice discussion of the long recovery of Icelandic literature beginning in the 17th century and really taking off among 19th century philologists, culminating with hit movies about cursed gold rings and Thor.  So a triumph, however tragic Snorri’s own life.

Brown’s book in progress is a history of the Vikings organized around the Lewis chessmen, an irresistible hook (click to see why).  I will clear some reading time for it in 2015 or so.

The friend of men gives the wolf a very great deal of corpse-beer. - Snorri Sturulson's Edda

Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, written early in the 13th century, should not be a book anyone reads any more, anyone who is not a linguist specializing in Norse languages.  It is a textbook, for pity’s sake.  Why would I read an eight hundred year old textbook.

The prose Edda is a textbook in Viking poetics.  The last third of the book, for example, is a praise song to the Norwegian king written in every available stanzaic form (“Here the first and third lines have two extra syllables at the beginning which characterize the form, and if they are subtracted then what remains is as dróttkvætt, and from the second and fourth lines…” 202-3).  In one sense a tour de force, in another pure tedium.

So that is not why I read the Edda.

The first two-thirds contain the bulk of Norse mythology.  Creation myths, the pantheon of gods and their adventures, early heroes.  Yggdrasil the world-tree and its adorable squirrel Ratatosk.  The creation of man by a cow:

Then spoke Gangleri: ‘What did the cow feed on?’

High said: ‘It licked the rime-stones, which were salty.  And the first day as it licked stones there came from the stones in the evening a man’s hair, the second day a man’s head, the third day a complete man was there.  (11)

Thor’s journey to the castle of Utgard-Loki is here, easily one of the greatest fantasy stories of all time, an old gnarled root of the current genre.  Thor in the giant’s glove, Thor drinking the sea, all of that good stuff.  I wonder how many young fans of the comic book hero have made their way back to this stuff.  The story of how the trickster god Loki had sex with a horse and gave birth to the eight-legged Sleipnir, greatest horse of all time, is also here.

The long middle section of the Edda turns to poetics, explicating the unique feature of Viking prosody, the kennings, the elaborate metaphorical substitutions that turn Icelandic poems into puzzles, as:

The bow-shaker generous with wealth knows how to prepare the wolves a feast.  The battle-keen lord lets the wolf’s kin rejoice in prey.  The friend of men gives the wolf a very great deal of corpse-beer.  (174)

All three lines say the same thing: “The king won the battle.”  But the Viking skalds say it better.  “Corpse-beer,” that’s great.  Snorri catalogues all of these poetic substitutions, for ships, the sea, gods, men (trees stand in for men), gold, everything.  The metaphors often require stories, so this section may need to be skimmed – it is awfully repetitive – but should not be skipped.

“What is the reason for gold being called otter-payment?” (99)  The answer to this question turns out to be the story of Siegfried and the Rhine-gold, the story of The Saga of the Volsungs, the Niebelungenlied, and Richard Wagner’s Ring operas, told by Snorri in a crisp six pages.  A couple pages later we learn “Why is gold called Kraki’s seed,” a story I also read in The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.  The author  of the later saga got his story from the Edda.

Nancy Marie Brown has written a book about Snorri, Song of the Vikings, that I perhaps should read.  I have been enjoying her blog, God of Wednesday, quite a lot.  It perhaps nudged me towards this Scandinavian run.  This post on the murder of Snorri was a good one.

I read the Anthony Faulkes translation of Snorri’s Edda, the 1987 Everyman paperback.

Reading Scandinavian literature - Iceland and Finland - Gapes the grisly earth-girdling serpent / when strides forth Thor to slay the worm.

While concentrating on Austrian literature last year, I concluded that I needed to know the work of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg better.  Then I started to think of other Norwegian and Swedish books I would like to read, then on to Denmark, and on like that, until I concluded that this would be the year of Scandinavian literature.

My Austrian project was a bit more thesis-driven, while this time I am more of a blank slate.  Just reading some books.

As usual, anyone who for some reason would like to read along on a particular book should speak up.  It can probably be done.  Scandinavian books are short.  I still want to stay close to my nineteenth century home, so nothing after World War I, please, although I have some arbitrary exceptions in mind and always make an exception for good poetry.

What has caught my eye?  I will tell you.  This will be in no way comprehensive, or even comprehensive-in-translation.  How could it be?  Please peruse the offerings of Norvik Press, publishers of Runar Schildt (1888-1925), “one of Finland's finest short-story writers” and “an observer of decadence in Helsinki,” or Elin Wägner, author of the “disrespectful and witty” Penwoman (1910), “the classic novel about the Swedish women's suffrage movement,” or Arne Garborg (1851-1924), “a writer who was left rootless and in conflict with himself, always searching.”  Who on earth are these people, and what is in their books?  Some interesting things, I suspect.  Maybe some of you already know.

I will proceed geographically.

Iceland

Medieval Icelandic literature is like nothing else.  The sagas are a mix of history and fiction, public and domestic life, violent yet often quite subtle, that is unique, or that was once unique, since they have had so many popular offshoots, most prominently The Lord of the Rings.  I am surprised I do not come across book bloggers reading them more often, but I am sure the Tolkien fans have good excuses and will get to them soon.

I have not read Njál’s Saga (late 13th century), so that one is most tempting, but I urge anyone curious to try Egil’s Saga, the life of a sociopathic poet, or Grettir’s Saga (c. 1320), the sad tale of the last of the monster-killers.  What strange books.  Or of course the Saga of the Völsungs, the source for Richard Wagner’s Ring operas.

The collection of ballads known as the Poetic Edda (12th century) and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (13th) are the primary sources for the Norse myths (Snorri may well have written Egil’s Saga too).  Fans of the recent movies featuring Thor will certainly want to read these (see post subtitle).

I have always loved mythological tales and have been reading versions of these stories since I was a child.  The Norse myths do not form as rich a literature as does Greek and Roman mythology – there is nothing as sophisticated as Homer or Ovid – but I have always found the stories to be as imaginatively rich.  Their use over the last 150 years or so tells me I am not alone.

Finland

The great Finnish mythological collection is a difficult case.  The Kalevala (1849) is the result of the efforts of  Elias Lönnrot, a country doctor who like the Grimm brothers collected folk songs and stories.  Rather than publish an anthology, though, he edited his collection into a coherent poetic epic, meaning that he wrote quite a bit of it and that the book is a hybrid of original and folk material.

Then again, so is The Prose Edda; so is The Odyssey; so is Genesis.  The difference is that The Kalevala is a recent hybrid.  I read a version of it many years ago, and would probably enjoy it a lot now.  My understanding is that the old public domain translations stink.

The one old Finnish novel I have in mind is Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers (1870), about irresponsible agricultural practices, or something like that.  Again, the newer translation sounds necessary.

I have been enjoying Tove Jansson’s books a lot, but I want to save comment on her.  I guess I should save Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish literature, too, until tomorrow.  I hardly got anywhere today.  What did I miss or forget?  What obscure sagas should I read?  Runar Schildt, yes or no?