Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship: Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde 6090701742, 9786090701744 [PDF]

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Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship FESTSCHRIFT IN HONOUR OF ĒRIKA SAUSVERDE

NDINA

VILNEN

SIS SCA

VILNIUS UNIVERSITY PRESS

TIC VIS A 14

Ērika Sausverde. Copenhagen, 2009

Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship Festschrift in honour of Ērika Sausverde

Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė

Vilnius University Press 2019

All papers have been peer reviewed. Editorial board for Scandinavistica Vilnensis series: prof. Jurij K. Kusmenko (Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia / Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany) prof. Anatoly Liberman (University of Minnesota, MN, USA) dr. Ērika Sausverde (Vilnius University, Lithuania) dr. Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania) dr. Loreta Vaicekauskienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania) dr. Aurelijus Vijūnas (National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan) Editorial board for this issue: dr. Solveiga Armoškaitė (Rochester University, NY, USA) dr. Rasa Baranauskienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania) prof. M. J. Driscoll (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) dr. Aurelija Mickūnaitė Griškevičienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania) dr. Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania) dr. Loreta Vaicekauskienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania)

Supported by:

Designer Tom Mrazauskas Typeset by Silva Jankauskaitė © M. J. Driscoll, Axel Holvoet, Jurij Kusmenko, Asta Laugalienė, Anatoly Liberman, Ugnius Mikučionis, Ivars Orehovs, Rasa Ruseckienė, Birutė Spraunienė, Ieva Steponavičiūtė, Loreta Vaicekauskienė, Aurelijus Vijūnas, David Östlund, 2019 © Vilnius University, 2019 ISSN 2029-2112 ISBN 978-609-07-0174-4

Contents

Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings  7 Tabula Gratulatoria  15 I M. J. Driscoll. Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life  21 Aurelijus Vijūnas. Problems in Mythological Reconstruction: Thor, Thrym, and the Story of the Hammer over the Course of Time  39 Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė. Dreaming the Hammer Back: On Teodoras Bieliackinas’s Translation of Þrymskviða  61 Ugnius Mikučionis. The Hero and his Values  87 II Rasa Ruseckienė. That Rune Will Unlock Time’s Labyrinth…: Old Norse Themes and Motifs in George Mackay Brown’s Poetry  113 Ivars Orehovs. Den kultur- och litteraturhistoriska gestalten i den lettiska novellen “Svētā Briģita” (“Heliga Birgitta”) av Jānis Ezeriņš  137 David Östlund. Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology  147 Jurij Kusmenko. Fornisländsk litteratur, genetik och historisk demografi om samisk-nordiska tidiga kontakter  183 III Anatoly Liberman. An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog: Icelandic setja upp við dogg, Engl. to lie doggo, Engl. dog, and Engl. it’s raining cats and dogs  201 Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė & Asta Laugalienė. Some Implications for Ērika: Implicatives in Danish, Finnish and Lithuanian  215 Loreta Vaicekauskienė. Driving Forces behind Language Change. Does Danish Theory Hold up in Lithuania?  241 Contributing authors  273

Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings

Odin laid on the pyre that gold ring which is called Draupnir; this quality attended it, that every ninth night there dropped from it eight gold rings of equal weight. Snorri Sturluson, “Gylfaginning” This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

This volume of essays is a symbolic reflection of the present contacts between Lithuanian Scandinavianists and their fellow scholars around the globe. The scope and content of the book can, of course, only capture a small part of these cultural and academic collaborations, but the incentive behind it was to foreground a core element in cross-cultural relations, the importance of which cannot be overestimated: it often requires a dedicated individual to start and shape a fellowship, which can then grow and multiply its rings. It was our wish to show how far a single individual’s good will and effort can take us, and what an impact it may have. The present book is a tribute to Ērika Sausverde on her 60th birthday. The anniversary gives her students, colleagues and close associates a joyous opportunity to celebrate the founder of Scandinavian Studies in Lithuania. For many people in this country Scandinavian Studies are synonymous with Ērika’s name. Ērika Sausverde was born in Rīga on the 18th of June, 1959. She completed her MA in Swedish Philology in 1981 at the University of Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.1 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings 

Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and then received her PhD in 1987 from the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Leningrad Division) with the thesis “Seaside landscape vocabulary in Germanic languages”. She began teaching at Vilnius University in late 1986, first at the Department of Classical Philology and later at the Department of Baltic Studies. Right after Lithuania regained its independence, Ērika founded the Department of Scandinavian Studies (now the Centre for Scandinavian Studies), drawing on her incredible enthusiasm, charisma and professional contacts. Although there had been some Scandinavian courses taught before, for the first time in the history of Vilnius University a systematic and comprehensive study programme in the field was offered. Here is how Ērika herself described her feelings, when she, just 27 years old, was setting the ground for what was to become the Centre for Scandinavian Studies: I came to Vilnius and put small Swedish flags on the desks in various departments, thus announcing a course in the Swedish language. On arrival my ‘baggage’ was far from heavy – just one Russian textbook on Swedish, coupled with a doctorate from St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) and topped by a desire to change the world. […] But things went on smoothly; the world changed too, and in 1991 the Department of Scandinavian Studies was established.1

Right from the start Ērika took the direction towards close and intense collaboration with Scandinavianist institutions and scholars worldwide which by now has developed into numerous networks and projects in most diverse areas of Scandinavian studies. Already back then, during the exiting but also somewhat chaotic times of political and social transition, she took great care that her students should receive instruction of the highest quality. Ērika managed to organise classes and courses on old and modern Scandinavian literature, runology, the grammar, lexicon and history of Scandinavian languages and much more – all read by well-known experts in these subjects from various countries. In Ērika’s own words:

1 “20 years of Scandinavian studies at Vilnius University − feast, play and puzzles.” In Ērika Sausverde & Ieva Steponavičiūtė (Eds). Fun and Puzzles in Modern Scandinavian Studies, Vilnius: Vilnius University (Scandinavistica Vilnensis, 9), 2014, 9; republished in Taikomoji kalbotyra, 2015, 7, retrieved from https://taikomojikalbotyra.lt/ojs/index.php/taikomoji-kalbotyra/article/view/72/65.

Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings The lack of local academic staff turned out to be an academic luxury for the first students of the Scandinavian Department. […] One can claim that the seeds sowed by these […] extraordinary specialists have yielded a remarkable harvest. The first international conference of teachers and students Scandinavistica Vilnensis, which was held in 1994 and brought together students and professors from Estonia, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Russia, Poland and Sweden, became an important milestone in the life of the young department. It was here that a number of Lithuanian students (some of them now teaching at Vilnius University) presented their research papers to an international audience for the first time.2

Scandinavian studies rapidly became (and remain still) one of the most popular programmes at Vilnius University. The Scandinavian environment and international networks that Ērika Sausverde has created in Vilnius, and the new ways of teaching and learning that came with them, have been decisive in shaping the lives and careers of many young people (including some of the authors in this book who are no longer young). The institution is now firmly established in the country as the centre of expertise in Scandinavian languages and culture, where field studies co-exist with comparative linguistic, literary and socio-cultural investigations. It is thanks to the Scandinavian centre that Lithuanian readers can enjoy Scandinavian literature, old and modern, in direct translation. Ērika’s style as the head of an academic unit has been quite exceptional. She has always had a focus on the Centre as a collective body; however she has never left any individual member out of sight. It speaks for itself that the first spontaneously chosen title for the present book was Mennesket i centrum ‘the individual at the centre’, one of the good old slogans of the Nordic welfare concept. The welcoming work and study environment that Ērika has created has few parallels in Lithuania or beyond. Those who have studied or worked at the Centre for Scandinavian Studies (and often also those who just visit it) instinctively develop a feeling of belonging and cherish long lasting bonds. Now this phenomenon of leadership has a ripple effect, as Ērika has been elected the Director of the recently established Institute for the Languages and Cultures of the Baltic, of which the Centre for Scandinavian Studies is now a part. 2 Ibid.

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Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings 

Ērika’s dedication has received a great deal of official acknowledgment. She is a recipient of both the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania and of the Norwegian Order of St. Olav. She has been awarded the prize of the Swedish Authors’ Fund as well as a special prize of the Swedish Academy (twice!). The present Festschrift is a much less formal, however heartfelt sign of recognition – evidence of gratitude and esteem that students and colleagues have always felt for Ērika. The papers in this Festschrift are written by scholars from different countries (Norway, Taiwan, USA, Russia, Latvia, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark and Lithuania) and from different fields of Scandinavian studies, or areas closely related to them. All contributors have in some way been involved with Ērika. Some are her long-term colleagues, while others have joined the Centre for Scandinavian Studies more recently. A few are her former professors, and a few have been her students. Finally, some have become her close associates through joint academic and teaching undertakings. This book covers a broad range of topics. Almost half of the contributions deal with Old Norse literature from various perspectives. In the first part of the book, Icelandic literary material from a later period is explored in the article by Matthew Driscoll, whose first encounter with Ērika was in Iceland, where he was her teacher of Icelandic at around the same time as Scandinavian Studies were being established in Vilnius. His contribution to this volume, “Herdís & Ólína: The poetry of everyday life”, seeks to bring scholarly justice to the fine but largely forgotten poetry of the twin sisters Herdís Andrésdóttir and Ólína Andrésdóttir, who achieved a modicum of success in the early part of the last century. In the paper “Problems in mythological reconstruction: Thor, Thrym, and the story of the hammer over the course of time”, which in many ways results from the personal and academic friendship between the author and the Centre for Scandinavian Studies over the course of several decades, Aurelijus Vijūnas compares the Old Icelandic poem Þrymskviða with a number of later texts describing the story about the theft and retrieval of Thor’s hammer. The author sets out to investigate the possibility of reconstructing an earlier, common Scandinavian version of this myth. The same poem is discussed in the essay “Dreaming the hammer back: On the differential margin in the first Lithuanian translation of Þrymskviða” by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė, who explicates

Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings

the allegorical message of hope she finds inscribed in the translation of this poem by Teodoras Bieliackinas (1907–1947), Lithuania’s first professional Scandinavianist who was an exile in Iceland. Bieliackinas’s career was very short, and he never made it back home. One may however say that Ērika’s fundamental role in the creation of a comprehensive programme of Scandinavian studies in Lithuania has indirectly fulfilled his life’s aspiration: to bring Lithuania and Scandinavia closer to each other. Ugnius Mikučionis, whose interest in Old Norse philology is to a large extent due to Ērika’s introductory course in Germanic philology and the invited courses organised by Ērika from his student times, deals with the Old Norse narrative about Sigurðr’s killing of Fáfnir according to the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs. In his paper “The hero and his values” he compares the two versions of the narrative and relates their structural differences to the differences in the set of values that the hero figure represents. The second part of the book is opened by one of the leading translators of modern Icelandic and Old Norse literature into Lithuanian, Rasa Ruseckienė. Her paper “That rune will unlock time’s labyrinth…” discusses Old Norse themes and motifs in the texts of the twentieth-century Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown. The contribution is also a sign of gratitude to Ērika, with whose support Rasa went to Iceland to study as a young graduate in Germanic Linguistics. Rasa has asked us to extend her special thanks to Ērika for her “friendship, enthusiasm and wonderful achievement, and for being able – like the amazing Ring of Brodgar in Orkney – to create a perfect circle of all-Nordic fellowship”. Reflections of cultural history in modern literature are dealt with in yet another paper, written in Swedish by Ivars Orehovs, “Den kulturoch litteraturhistoriska gestalten i den lettiska novellen ‘Svētā Briģita’ (‘Heliga Birgitta’) av Jānis Ezeriņš”. Ivars Orehovs examines how the intertext of the Swedish St. Birgitta, a historical and mythological person, functions in a short story by the Latvian writer Jānis Ezeriņš. Being related to Ērika not only academically but also through their first language, Ivars wishes, in Latvian, Ērika’s academic spark to be long-lived: “Allaž saglabāt un droši vadīt tālāk Ērikai raksturīgo radoši akadēmisko dzirksti!” Through her institution-building efforts, and through her enthusiasm and social skills, Ērika Sausverde has become a bridge builder contributing to new chapters also to the history of “Swedology”. Scandinavian studies as a project in cultivating fellowship and exchange among nations

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Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings 

and regions is touched upon from a historical vantage point by the intellectual historian David Östlund in his paper “Peaceableness as a weapon in wars of Swedology”. It deals with the symbolic role that Sweden has played in the debates of other nations since the early 1930s. The paper shows how Sweden’s profile as a peaceful nation – both in terms of its internal developments and its role in the world – has been deployed on distant battlegrounds by Sweden’s friends and foes alike, the former claiming it to be an exemplar to follow and the latter using it as a warning example. The second part of the book ends with another paper in Swedish, dedicated to Ērika by her longtime mentor, Professor Jurij Kusmenko. “Fornisländsk literatur, genetik och historisk demografi om samisk-nordiska tidiga kontakter” is an expanded version of the talk delivered by Kusmenko at the 25 year anniversary of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies. It explores representations of the Sámi in Old Icelandic literature and combines them with the genetic evidence to promote his claim about the spreading of Sámi genes in northern and central Scandinavia and the appearance of Sámi interference features in the North Germanic languages. Cross-linguistic and typological perspectives are developed further in the third and final part of the book, which starts with a paper by Professor Anatoly Liberman “An etymological dog kennel, or dog eat dog”. The author lauds serendipity which the paper explores and pays tribute to Ērika Sausverde with her talent for finding great things “accidentally” and putting them to use. The reader is then taken along to the etymological discovery of several idiomatic expressions in Icelandic and English that include Germanic dog –. Doggies have nothing to do with dogs. The importance of being Ērika (if we may paraphrase Wilde’s The Importance of Being E(a)rnest) is matched only by the manifold glorious implications, for us all, of having Ērika. Drawing on this inspiration, Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė and Asta Laugalienė in their paper “Some implications for Ērika: Implicatives in Danish, Finnish and Lithuanian” explore the so-called implicatives in grammar – a type of verb that carry implications as to the factual status of their propositional complements. The authors take a novel, cognitively oriented, approach and compare representations as well as development of implicatives in the three languages. In the closing paper of the book Loreta Vaicekauskienė tests the ideas conceived by Danish scholars on the role of subjective factors

Ērika Sausverde and her Scandinavian Rings

for language development. Her paper “Driving forces behind language change: Does Danish theory hold up in Lithuania?” evidences that language awareness affects value assignment to language and that subconsciously held attitudes can be decisive for language use in real life. People create their social identities individually, and when their choices converge, language change happens. Cultural changes, however, can be made ‘by hand’, to quote Ērikas favourite expression. They are crafted by the greatest individuals, people with an open mind and a big heart. Much of Lithuanian sociolinguistics would not have been as it is today without the academic venues opened by Ērika – the driving force of the fellowship. And finally, since this is a celebratory publication, we would like to end this introduction somewhat unconventionally: Once upon a time, not such a long time ago, in the splendid Hanseatic city of Rīga, there lived a bright and beautiful girl. Ērika Sausverde was her name, and the time was to come when she would find out that this name was of Swedish origin. One day she left her home, as it befits a fairy tale heroine, driven by a great desire to see the world and to taste the fruit of knowledge. Eventually it was a wedding ring that brought her to Vilnius, through St. Petersburg, in the time of the great change. Many large and small things have happened to her since, but a tale must be allowed to keep some of its secrets. One thing, however, can be said with certainty: the heroine will be known, for generations to come, as the crafter of beautiful rings and the founder of a strong and steadily growing fellowship.

Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė & Loreta Vaicekauskienė Vilnius, May 2019

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Tabula Gratulatoria

Stefan Anbro, København  Per Thomas Andersen, Oslo Paal Arbo, Oslo Solveiga Armoškaitė, Rochester Karin Aronsson & Stellan Ottosson, Stockholm Rasa Baranauskienė & Kęstutis Baranauskas, Vilnius Audrius Beinorius, Vilnius Sturla Berg-Olsen, Oslo Katarina Bernhardsson, Lund Alma Braškytė, Vilnius Jelena Brazauskienė, Vilnius Nijolė Bražėnienė, Vilnius Thomas Bredsdorff, København Martin Helt Brunsgaard & Charlotte Helt Brunsgaard, Aabenraa Aleksej Burov, Vilnius Anna Cavalin, Stockholm Elena Chekalina, Moskva Loreta Chodzkienė, Vilnius Rima Ciburevkinaitė, Vilnius Asta Čekaitė, Linköping Aurytė Čekuolytė, København Ramunė Dambrauskaitė Muralienė, Vilnius Miroslav Davlevič, Vilnius Jim Degrenius, Vilnius Den Kongelige Norske Ambassade i Vilnius

M. J. Driscoll, København Fatima Eloeva, Vilnius/ Sankt-Peterburg Helén Ericson, Stockholm Ruth E. Vatvedt Fjeld, Oslo Ebbe Flatau, København H.E. Dan E. Frederiksen, Vilnius Jonė Grigaliūnienė, Vilnius Vibeke Groven, Vilnius Liutauras Gudžinskas, Vilnius Eglė Guobytė Bučienė, Vilnius Jurga Götlund, Stockholm Cecilie Hauglund, Budapest Viktor Hennius, Stockholm Axel Holvoet & Gina KavaliūnaitėHolvoet, Vilnius Institut lingvisticheskikh issledovanij Rossijskoj akademii nauk, Sankt-Peterburg Eglė Išganaitytė-Paulauskienė, Vilnius Henrik Galberg Jacobsen, København Evalda Jakaitienė, Vilnius Eva Jernström, Stockholm Paulius Jevsejevas, Vilnius Gunnar Johannesen, Oslo Charlotta Johansson, Stockholm Raimonda Jonkutė Sandberg, Göteborg

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Tabula Gratulatoria Jolita Jurėnaitė, Vilnius Peter Stray Jørgensen, København Kafedra germanskoj i keltskoj filologii, MGU, Moskva Vilma Kaladytė, Moskva Karin Karčiauskienė, Vilnius Snorre Karkkonen-Svensson, Rīga Violeta Katinienė, Vilnius Jurga Katkuvienė & Laurynas Katkus, Vilnius Laima Erika Katkuvienė & Donatas Katkus, Vilnius Inesis Kiškis, Vilnius H.E. Karsten Klepsvik, Vilnius Elžbieta Kmitaitė, Vilnius Risto Koivisto, Kouvola  Kongelig Dansk Ambassade i Vilnius Jelena Konickaja, Vilnius Eglė Kontutytė, Vilnius Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm, Stockholm Anders Kreuger, Helsingfors-Helsinki Roma Kriaučiūnienė, Vilnius Marija Krupoves, Vilnius Agnė Kudirkaitė Ydrauw, Stockholm Antanas Kulakauskas, Vilnius Jūratė Kumetaitienė, Vilnius Jurij Kusmenko, Sankt-Peterburg/ Berlin Vitalija Kvale, Ljungskile Trygve Kvithyld, Trondheim Latvijas Republikas vēstniecība Lietuvas Republikā, Vilnius Asta Laugalienė, Vilnius Pavel Lavrinec, Vilnius Jūratė Levina, Vilnius Anatoly Liberman, Minneapolis, MN Ala Lichačiova, Vilnius Svein Lie, Oslo Anne-Charlotte Liman, Vaxholm

Thomas Lundén, Solna Tom Lundskær-Nielsen, Cambridge H.E. Maria Christina Lundqvist, Vilnius Eglė Marcinkevičiūtė, Lund Virginija Masiulionytė, Vilnius Nijolė Maskaliūnienė, Vilnius Elin Rask Matzdotter, Uppsala Agnietė Merkliopaitė, Kaunas Galina Michailova, Vilnius H.E. Christer Michelsson, Vilnius Aurelija Mickūnaitė-Griškevičienė, Vilnius Ugnius Mikučionis & Jurgita Mikučionė, Bergen  Tomas Milosch, Berlin Alexander Mionskowski, Vilnius Kęstutis Nastopka, Vilnius Solveiga Navickaitė Bayani, Göteborg Agnė Navickaitė-Klišauskienė, Vilnius Helén Nilsson, Vilnius  Karin Nordquist, Östersund Sirkka Ojaniemi, Vilnius Maria Olofsson, Örebro Ulf Olsson, Stockholm Ivars Orehovs, Rīga Jurgis Pakerys & Inga VidugirytėPakerienė, Vilnius Agnė Petrauskaitė, Vilnius Jurgita Petronytė, Vilnius Saulius Pivoras, Kaunas Kirsi Podschivalow & Sergei Podschivalow, Vantaa Olegas Poliakovas, Vilnius Šarūnas Radvilavičius, Vilnius Meilutė Ramonienė, Vilnius Andrius Raskazovas, Frankfurt/ Vilnius

Tabula Gratulatoria Artūras Ratkus, Vilnius Liudas Remeika, Vilnius Rimas Remeika, Vilnius Tomas Riad & Maria Lim Falk, Stockholm Anthony Richter, New York  Lotte Rienecker, København Vytautas Rinkevičius, Vilnius Sven Hakon Rossel, Wien Alexander Rusakov, Sankt-Peterburg Rasa Ruseckienė, St Andrew/Vilnius Else Ryen, Oslo Birgit Rønne, København Monika Rönngren, Stockholm Samarbetsnämnden för Nordenundervisning i utlandet, Reykjavik Vytenė Saunoriūtė Muschick, Berlin/Belgrad H.E. Einars Semanis, Vilnius Karianne Skovholt, Tønsberg Knuts Skujenieks, Salaspils Emil Slott, Vilnius Olga Smirnickaja, Moskva Kristian Solvang, Stryn Birutė Spraunienė, Vilnius Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė & Gintas Aleksiejūnas, Vilnius Suomen Suurlähetystö, Vilna / Finlands Ambassad, Vilnius Svenska Institutet, Stockholm Arūnas Sverdiolas, Vilnius Sveriges ambassad i Vilnius Daniel Sävborg, Tartu Inesa Šeškauskienė, Vilnius Šiaurės ministrų tarybos biuras Lietuvoje Diana Šileikaitė-Kaishauri, Vilnius Liana Šimanskienė, Vilnius Giedrius Tamaševičius, Vilnius

17 Trond Thue, Arendal Irma Timonen, Kerava Ieva Toleikytė, Vilnius Arne Torp, Oslo Ricki Torstensson, Göteborg Ringailė Trakymaitė, Guildford/ Vilnius Eugenija Ulčinaitė, Vilnius Kęstutis Urba, Vilnius Aistė Urbonienė, Kaunas Brigita Urmanaitė, Vilnius Viktorija Ušinskienė, Vilnius Loreta Vaicekauskienė & Mikas Vaicekauskas, Vilnius Einar Vannebo, Oslo Kjell Ivar Vannebo, Asker Lolita Varanavičienė & Arūnas Varanavičius, Labanoras Irena Veisaitė, Vilnius Regina Venckutė, Vilnius Aurelijus Vijūnas, Kaohsiung Loreta Vilkienė, Vilnius Anna Vogel, Stockholm Eglė Voidogienė, Vilnius Asta Vonderau, Berlin Vuk Vukotić, Vilnius Svante Weyler, Stockholm Monika Wirkkala, Stockholm Ragnhild Hagen Ystad, Bergen Mantas Zalatorius, Vilnius Anton Zimmerling, Moskva Daiva Zubaitė, Vilnius Rūta Zukienė, Vilnius Vaiva Žeimantienė, Vilnius Rasa Žiburkutė, Oslo Eglė Žilinskaitė-Šinkūnienė, Vilnius  Sladana Živkovic, København Jonas Öhman, Vilnius  David Östlund, Stockholm

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Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life M. J. Driscoll University of Copenhagen

Abstract: The twin sisters Herdís Andrésdóttir and Ólína Andrésdóttir were born on the island Flatey in Breiðafjörður, western Iceland, in 1858. Following the death of their father at sea three years later, the family was dispersed and the sisters did not see each other until half a century later, when they were reunited in Reykjavík. In the intervening years both sisters had become well known as capable verse-makers in the traditional style, but it had never, it seems, occurred to them to write any of their poems down, let alone publish them. They were encouraged by friends to do so, and in 1924 they brought out a collection of their verse, entitled simply Ljóðmæli (Poems). Their poetry was highly traditional both in its form, which principally made use of rímur and ballad metres, and in terms of its subject matter, dealing with nature, reflections on life’s joys and sorrows and so on. Ólína, like her cousin Theodóra Thoroddsen, also contributed to the revival of the þula, a form of poetry traditionally associated with children. The book sold well, and a second edition, with some additional poems, came out in 1930. A third edition was brought out in 1976, long after their deaths, containing much new material; this edition has since been reprinted twice. Critical reception was overwhelmingly favourable, both in the learned and more popular press. Though somewhat at odds with the literary establishment of the day, they nevertheless had several powerful supporters among the literary and intellectual élite, foremost among them professor Sigurður Nordal. Despite having been “world-famous in Iceland” in their old age, Herdís and Ólína are little known today, and their work – much of it very fine indeed – has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves.

Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.2 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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1. Introduction Herdís Andrésdóttir and her twin sister Ólína were born on 13 June 1858 on the island Flatey in Breiðafjörður, western Iceland, daughters of Andrés Andrésson, a crofter and fisherman, and his wife, Sesselja Jónsdóttir. In December 1861, when Herdís and Ólína were just three, their father perished at sea along with eleven other men, all but one local, when the shark fishing boat Snarfari went down with all on board. There were six children, all daughters, and a seventh on the way.1 With no means of support, their mother had no choice but to go into service, and the following year she became housekeeper for Sveinbjörn Magnússon (1821–1899), her brother-in-law, who had himself recently become a widower and lived on the nearby islands Skáleyjar. The family was dispersed, with four of the daughters going with their mother to Skáleyjar, while the other three, Herdís, Ólína and María Magdalena, born in 1859,2 were sent off to be fostered in various places. Sesselja and Sveinbjörn later married. Herdís was taken into the household of Brynjólfur Benedictsen (1830–1870), merchant in Flatey, and his wife Herdís, after whom she had been named. She remained there until she was thirteen. Although not treated badly by her foster-parents, she was made to work hard from an early age and lacked all tenderness, being brought up, in her own words, “við strangan aga eins og siður var” (with strict discipline, as was the custom) (Herdís Andrésdóttir, 1963, 7). She spent a year at Staður in Reykjanes with the Rev. Ólafur Johnsen (1809–1885), who prepared her for Confirmation. After that she worked in various places around Breiðafjörður. In 1880 she married Jón Einar Jónsson (1844–1889), from Steinnes í Húnaþingi. They had seven children, four of whom died in infancy; her husband died in December 1889, when she was just thirty-one (and pregnant with their youngest child). After her husband’s death she was taken in by her sister-in-law, moving with her to Reykjavík in



1 There is some discrepancy in the sources regarding the number of children in the family. Herdís herself says in her poem, “Brot úr kvæði”, cited below, that they were six when their father died; the seventh, named Andrésa, was born the following April. A poem by Sesselja in which she names her children, who number seven, is cited in Valdimar Már Pétursson, 2002, 16. Nine children are listed by Þorsteinn Jónsson (1996, 10–11), two of whom died in infancy, which may account for the discrepancy. 2 María Magdalena died in 1965, 106 years old, the oldest person in Iceland at the time (see Valdimar Már Pétursson, 2002, 18).

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life

The sisters Herdís (L) and Ólína (R) Andrésdætur. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Iceland (Þjóðminjasafn Íslands), Mms-30060

1902. For the last years of her life, Herdís lived with her daughter, Elín Elísabet Thorarensen. Ólína was initially taken in by the Rev. Eiríkur Kúld (1822–1893) and his wife at Helgafell on Snæfellsnes, but reunited with her mother eight years later. She remained with her mother in Skáleyjar, working at various jobs, until taking up a position as a domestic servant in the household of Guðbrandur Sturlaugsson (1820–1897) at Hvítidalur in Dalasýsla, western Iceland, thirty-eight years her senior, married and the father of nine. She had two children by him, one of whom, a girl named Sesselja, died in infancy. The other, named Ástríður, was born in 1880, when Guðbrandur was sixty and Ólína twenty-two. Ólína and Ástríður remained at Hvítidalur for twenty years, in an arrangement which must have been difficult, though not all that unusual at the time. Guðbrandur openly acknowledged Ástríður as his daughter – in the census for 1890, for example, she is listed as being nine years old, “hórgetin dóttir bónda” (illegitimate daughter of the farmer) – and appears to have had a close relationship with her.

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Guðbrandur was a prolific scribe and collector of learned lore (þjóðlegur fróðleikur), and there are over twenty manuscripts preserved in his hand. Three of these bear inscriptions to Ástríður. In one, written in 1888–1889 and presented to Ástríður in 1890, Guðbrandur has written: “Fargaðu ekki bókinni dóttir mín. Þegar þú ert orðin stór geturðu lesið hana” (Don’t part with this book, my daughter; when you grow up you will be able to read it).3 Following Guðbrandur’s death in 1897, Ólína and Ástríður left Hvítidalur (presumably at the request of his widow), returning initially to Flatey. They spent two years there and then moved to Vatneyri, Patreksfjörður, in the Westfjords, where Ástríður worked as a seamstress and Ólína at various menial jobs (domestic servant, in the fishing etc.), but also offered instruction to children. In 1916 the two moved to Reykjavík. Although they had occasionally corresponded over the years, Herdís and Ólína had not seen each other after their initial separation, until reunited many years later in Reykjavík. This reunion was brought about by their sister María Magdalena, who recognised Herdís, whom she had not seen for fifty years, on a ship travelling to Reykjavík.4 Herdís and Ólína5 had by this time become well known, locally at least, as capable story-tellers and verse-makers in the traditional style. Not surprisingly, in view of the nature of the lives they led, it had scarcely occurred to them to write any of their poems down, let alone have them published.6 After they had both settled in Reykjavík, the sisters were encouraged by friends to do so, and in 1924 they brought out, at their own





3 On Guðbrandur and his manuscripts see Driscoll, 2017, 232–235. 4 María tells this story in an interview with Matthías Jóhannessen on the occasion of her 100th birthday. The interview was published in Morgunblaðið on 22 July 1959, and appears also in the collection of interviews by Matthías, M. - Samtöl (Matthías Jóhannessen, 1977). A long interview with María was also published on the same day in Þjóðviljinn, where she tells the story in even greater detail (Þjóðviljinn, 22.07.1959, 4–7). 5 The order in which the sisters are named varies. On the title pages of the various editions of their poems, for example, Ólína appears first, whereas it is the other way round on the covers. When mentioned in ordinary prose, the names generally appear in this order, Herdís first, then Ólína. 6 In her review of their book, Theodóra Thoroddsen (1925) mentions that Ólína had in fact previously published several of her poems in various newspapers and journals, though always under assumed names; she repeats this in her obituary of Ólína (1835). Herdís appears never even to have written anything down.

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life

The cover of the first edition of Herdís and Ólína’s Ljóðmæli (Reykjavík, 1924). Photo by Suzanne Reitz

expense, a collection of their poems, entitled simply Ljóðmæli (Poems). The poems were written down from memory, theirs and other people’s, over the course of just two weeks and represented only a small fraction of what they had actually composed. The book sold well, and a second edition, with some additional poems, came out in 1930. A third edition, prepared by Herdís’s grandson, the Rev. Jón Thorarensen (1902–1986), was brought out in 1976, long after their deaths. It contained much new material, principally by Herdís; this edition has since been reprinted twice, in 1980 and 1982.7 Critical reception was universally favourable, both in the learned and more popular press, with highly positive reviews appearing for example in the journals Skírnir (Árni Pálsson, 1924) and Eimreiðin (Sveinn Sigurðsson, 1925) and in the newspaper Lögrjetta (Guðmundur Finnbogason, 1924). Although the sisters were in many ways at odds with the literary establishment of the day, they had several powerful

7 The third edition is a photostatic reprint of the second, with additional material added on pp. 185–199 and 265–308.

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supporters among the literary and intellectual élite, foremost among them Prof. Sigurður Nordal (1886–1974), who published a glowing review of their book, in which he said, among other things: “Þessa bók leggur enginn frá sér án þess að hafa lært eitthvað í henni” (No-one can put this book down without having learnt something from it).8 Nordal also wrote a warm obituary of Herdís when she died in 1939.9 Another major literary figure of the time, himself something of an outsider, Þórbergur Þórðarson (1888–1974), also spoke very highly of them. In a short humorous piece called “Styrjöldin við Herdísi og Ólínu” (The war with Herdís and Ólína), published in his book Edda (Þórbergur Þórðarson, 1975, 203–210), he describes an evening spent in their company, the “war” in question being conducted in verse – he won, in his own telling, although admitting that the sisters were far more skilful poets than he was. In the piece he says, among other things: “Ég held, að mesta skemmtun mín á þessum árum hafi verið að ræða við þær systur, sérstaklega að heyra þær segja frá. Þær höfðu frásagnagáfu á háu stigi og voru geysilega fróðar” (I think that my greatest pleasure in those years was talking to the sisters, especially hearing them tell stories. They had a tremendous gift for storytelling and were enormously knowledgeable). When Sigurður Nordal and Þórbergur Þórðarson later collaborated on a collection of tales and anecdotes, Gráskinna (Grey-skin), much of the material was collected from the telling of Herdís and, in particular, Ólína.10 Þórbergur can also be said to have “immortalised” Herdís in a poem he composed for her daughter Elin’s sixtieth birthday, one of the stanzas of which begins with the line “Þar var Herdís, þar var smúkt” (Herdís was there; it was lovely). The poem, or several verses from it, is frequently sung to this day in Iceland, to a melody by the composer Atli Heimir Sveinsson.11 8 Sigurður Nordal, 1925, 74. Nordal’s review of Ljóðmæli appeared in two parts in the newspaper Vísir (21–22.10. 1924); it was later reprinted in the journal Iðunn (1925). 9 Nordal’s obituary appeared in Morgunblaðið on 3 May 1939; it was reprinted in Nordal’s Áfangar II (1944) and again in Mannlýsingar II (1986). 10 The collection was originally published in four volumes in the years 1928, 1929, 1931 and 1936; in 1962 it was re-issued as a two-volume set, called Gráskinna hin meiri (Sigurður Nordal & Þórbergur Þórðarson, 1962). 11 The poem was printed in Þórbergur’s Edda (Þórbergur Þórðarson, 1975, 211–213). In performance there has been a tendency in recent years to replace the name “Herdís” with the word “herlegt” (splendid), which, like “smúkt”, is a loanword from Danish; see Soffía Auður Birgisdóttir, 2011.

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life

In 1951 a book was published under the title Lundurinn græni (The Green Grove) containing a series of humorous poems by the sisters concerning a visit to their cousin Ásthildur Thorsteinsson (1857–1938). Along with the poems were illustrations by Halldór Pétursson (1916–1977). The book was edited by their friend, the Rev. Jón Auðuns (1905–1981), who also wrote an introduction to it, and had previously written a fine obituary of Ólína (Jón Auðuns, 1935). The poems from Lundurinn græni were incorporated into subsequent editions of Ljóðmæli, starting with the third in 1976. Ljóðmæli, in all editions, is divided into two parts: poems by Ólína, which make up about two thirds of the book, and then poems by Herdís; in between there is short selection of poems written by them jointly. 2. Style and form In terms of form, the sisters favoured the traditional Icelandic metres, in particular ferskeytla, or “square rhyme”. Ferskeytla was the preferred metre for the long narrative poems known as rímur (rhymes), a uniquely Icelandic genre which first made its appearance in the fourteenth century and remained popular until the late-nineteenth century.12 It was also used for shorter poems and stökur (sing. staka), individual stanzas generally composed on the spot to refer to specific events (a practice which survives to the present day). Although the rímur were, for the most part, the domain of male poets, stökur could be composed by anyone; in fact, it has been suggested (Guðrún Helgadóttir, 1961–1963, I, 16) that this form of expression, the staka, particularly suited women, who would have had little time to devote to the composition of longer poems. Ferskeytla, in its most basic form, consists of four-lined stanzas rhyming a b a b, with the a-rhymes masculine and the b-rhymes feminine. Closely related to this are langhenda (lit. “long-verse”) where the a-rhymes are feminine and the b-rhymes masculine, and samhenda (lit. “same-verse”) rhyming a a a a, and stafhenda (lit. “stave-verse”) a a b b (all rhymes masculine). In addition to rhyme there was alliteration, the first line of the couplet containing two alliterating words, on the first and third, second and third or third and fourth stressed syllables, and the second line one, always on the first stressed syllable. All vowels alliterated with each other, but it was considered bad form to use the same one. Only the first consonant in a cluster mattered, so that words beginning 12 On rímur see e.g. Shaun Hughes, 2005, and references there.

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with, for example, k, kr, kn and kv could all alliterate with each other; the only exception to this were clusters beginning with s, meaning that sk, sl, sm, sn, sp and st could only alliterate with themselves. Ofsluðlun (over-alliteration), i.e. having more alliterating words than required by the metre, was also considered bad form. Despite the complexities, many Icelanders, at least of the older generation, are still able to “kasta fram stöku” (dash off a quatrain) if the mood takes them. Ólína even composed a poem, “Til ferskeytlunnar” (To ferskeytla), in praise of the metre. The poem appeared in the journal Eimreiðin in 1924 and in Ljóðmæli the same year. It comprises fifteen stanzas in a form of ferskeytla called hringhenda (ring-rhyme), which also uses internal rhyme, vertically, on the second stressed syllable in each line. The following diagram, taken from the website Bragi (http://bragi.arnastofnun.is/), illustrates the structure of hringhenda; light grey indicates the masculine a-rhymes, dark grey the feminine b-rhymes and very light grey the internal rhyme.

“Til ferskeytlunnar” was one of Ólína’s more popular poems, and there are nearly two dozen recordings on the ÍsMús website (https:// www.ismus.is/) of people reciting it, the earliest from 1920 – before it appeared in print. Enn á Ísa- góðri grund græðist vísum kraftur, ertu að rísa af rökkurblund rímna dísin aftur?

(Again in Iceland the good verses gain strength. Are you rising from your twilight slumber, O goddess of rhymes?

Vertu á sveimi vina til, vek þá hreimi snjalla, láttu streyma ljós og yl ljóðs yfir heima alla.

Hover over your friends, awaken them with your bright voice, let poetry’s light and warmth stream throughout the world.)13

13

13 All translations are by the author. Only the sense is given; no attempt has been made to reproduce the metre or rhyme-scheme.

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life

Both sisters were deeply conservative when it came to poetry, and were quite disparaging about the work of the younger, neo-romantic poets like Davíð Stefánsson (1985–1964). Ólína wrote several poems describing her reaction to reading recently published books of poetry, which was not favourable: “Nú ertu hrygg og sjúk, mín sál” (Now you are sad and sick, my soul) starts one. For her, the greatest living Icelandic poet was the Rev. Matthías Jochumsson (1835–1920), their first cousin once removed, the author of what later became the Icelandic national anthem. When news reached her of his death in 1920, Ólína composed the following verse: Gleðin smækkar, hrygðin hækkar, hróður brást um andans völl, skáldum fækkar, landið lækkar, loksins sjást hjer engin fjöll.

(Happiness diminishes, sadness increases, glory fails in the spiritual domain, poets become fewer, the land sinks, finally no mountains can be seen.)

Despite, or possibly because of, its highly complex metre, which makes use of internal rhyme both horizontally (smækkar – hækkar, fækkar – lækkar) and vertically (smækkar – fækkar, brást – sjást), this verse has survived better than most other poems written in memory of Matthías Jochumsson and is still widely known. Herdís also prefers the older forms, as she makes clear in her poem “Nýjir bragir” (New Poems): Snemma hafði jeg yndi af óð og ást á fögrum brögum. En ungu skáldin yrkja ljóð undir skrítnum lögum.

(Early on I enjoyed poetry And loved beautiful poems But the young poets compose verses In strange metres.

Uni jeg mjer við eldri ljóð, ungdóms fjærri glaumnum. Jeg er út úr öllum “móð” og aftur úr nýja straumnum.

I enjoy older poetry Away from the ruckus of youth I am totally out of fashion And way behind the new trend.)

3. Þulur Ólína, and to a lesser extent Herdís too, also wrote poems in metres other than ferskeytla. Indeed, Ólína may be said to have been instrumental in

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reviving the þula, a type of poetry with ancient roots but associated in modern times with verses for children. A þula (pl. þulur), often called in English a “rote” or “rigmarole”, is a string of verse-lines undivided into stanzas. The origin of the word is not completely certain, but it is used in Old Icelandic in this sense, especially of long poems involving lists of names. Related is the verb þylja, “to say, read or chant in a continuous manner, to recite, to run off a list”. Þulur could be very long. There is end-rhyme, but no, or at least no regular, use of alliteration. Lines could vary in length. The rhymes often came in couplets but could also occur in much longer stretches, seven or eight lines in a row, or even whole poems, all rhyming on the same sound. In the late pre-modern period þulur were primarily associated with children, and many were collected from oral tradition by folklorists in the nineteenth century, generally from recitations by women. Modern literary þulur began with the sisters’ contemporaries “Hulda”, the pen name of Unnur Benediktsdóttir Bjarklind (1881–1946; Sumargjöf 1905), Ólöf [Sigurðardóttir] frá Hlöðum (1857–1933; Nokkur smákvæði 1913) and especially Theodóra Thoroddsen (1863–1954; Þulur 1916), who, like Matthías Jochumsson, was a cousin. In a review in Skírnir for 1914 of Ólöf frá Hlöðum’s book Nokkur smákvæði, the journal’s editor, philosopher and psychologist Guðmundur Finnbogason, while genuinely positive, reflects that the þula as a form seems particularly suited to women poets – indeed the form itself, he implies, is just like a woman: lacking formal structure, ever-changing and impulsive, dwelling on one thing and then leaping to another for no apparent reason – “Þulan er kvennlegur bragarháttur”, he concludes (The þula is a feminine metre). This metaphysical interpretation did not impress Theodóra Thoroddsen, who in the following number of Skírnir wrote an article – accompanying the first of her own published þulur – in which she offers an entirely pragmatic explanation, arguing that women do not compose þulur because their form suits women’s scatter-brained and fickle nature, but because they provide an effective way of keeping children occupied and entertained while other tasks are performed – such as mending clothes and darning socks (Theodóra Thoroddsen, 1914; Helga Kress, 1997, 75–76). Ólína composed about a dozen þulur. “Barnaþula” (Children’s þula), the second poem in Ljóðmæli, is very much in the tradition of children’s verse (as the title suggests), containing descriptions of named

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life

children at play mixed with words of advice on good conduct etc., such as “Heimskur er sá sem hirðir ekki um að lesa” (foolish is the one who doesn’t pay attention to reading). Others, such as “Gekk jeg upp á hólinn” (I went up onto the hill), focus on nature and the supernatural forces at work there. There is a similar theme in “Margt er það í steininum” (Much there is within the stones), certainly one of her best poems. It is not referred to as a þula, though formally it has much in common with them. Comprising thirty-two rhyming couplets, it tells the story of an amorous encounter the poet has with an elf, described as a “dökkhærður sveinn” (darkhaired lad), who is in search of an eternal soul. Unlike the bulk of the sisters’ work, its tone is decidedly erotic. It begins with a line well known from folklore: Sat jeg upp við Svarthamar sumarkveldið eitt. Hljóður var minn hugur og hjartað mitt þreytt.

(I sat up at the Black cliff one summer’s eve. Quiet was my mind and weary my heart.)

And ends with another: Margt er það í steininum, sem mennirnir ekki sjá. Er þar stundum grátið, svo enginn heyra má.

(Much there is within the stones that humans cannot see. Sometimes there is weeping there that no-one can hear.)

Ólína’s best known poem – which was not in the first edition of Ljóðmæli but was included in the second14 – is called simply “Þula”. It is however written in a ballad metre reminiscent of that used in the medieval Icelandic Tristrams kvæði (The Ballad of Tristram), probably the most beautiful of the one hundred or so Icelandic ballads that have come down to us. Known as “Útnesjamenn” (The Men of the Outer Peninsula) or “Suðurnesjamenn” (The Men of the Southern Peninsula), the poem was set to a rousing tune by the composer Sigvaldi Kaldalóns (1881–1946) and recorded, under the latter title, by the Icelandic folk-group Savanna-tríóið in 1963. It has since become an Icelandic standard, a regular feature of Scout rallies and long-distance coach trips. As is often the case with such things, the song 14 Herdís Andrésdóttir & Ólína Andrésdóttir, 1930, 103–107.

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as sung today hardly does the original poem justice. Reduced from thirty stanzas to just six or seven (or four, in the case of the Savanna-tríó recording), the original narrative content – on the collecting of eggs on the treacherous skerries off the Reykjanes peninsula – is entirely lacking. It is also doubtful that many of those singing it today are aware of its authorship. 4. Love, nature, hardship and sorrow In general, Ólína has been regarded as the better poet, and certainly a number of her poems, such as the fine and delicate love poem “Svarað brjefi” (A Letter Answered) or the beautifully evocative “Til næturinnar” (To the Night), are easily equal in quality to anything else written at the time. In Herdís’s poetry, much of which is more overtly autobiographical, sorrow and hardship play a prominent role, giving her verses a “hardness”, which has perhaps diminished their appeal to some readers (Soffía Auður Birgisdóttir, 2011, 18). In her “Brot úr kvæði” (Fragment of a poem), for example, she describes the difficulty of growing up in another household, denied her mother’s love, a theme she also addressed in her prose piece “Ekki er allt bezt, sem börnin vilja” (Herdís Andrésdóttir, 1963). The poem consists of eight stanzas; the first four are given here: Jeg var ung, er unnir alt mjer tóku frá, má þess aðeins minnast, margt hvað breyttist þá. Föður minn hinn milda, marinn kaldur fól, Sex við áttum systur samt hjá móður skjól

(I was young, when the waves took everything from me I can remember how many things changed then My gentle father the cold sea embraced Still we six sisters had shelter with our mother.

Þá kom þrauta-árið, það jeg man svo vel, heitt mjer hrundi tárið, harm þann stærsta tel, að jeg frá minni móður mátti fara burt. Þá sorg og hel oss sækja, að sökum ei er spurt.

Then came the year of suffering, I remember it well, My hot tears fell, I think it the greatest sorrow That I had to go away from my mother When sorrow and death visit us, no-one asks the reason why

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life Á göfgum höfðings-garði gefið var mjer brauð; þar voru nógar nægtir, nóg af hvers kyns auð, gull og dýrir gripir, góðra vina fjöld, og alt, sem yndi vekur, æðst þar hafði völd.

At a noble household I was given bread There was enough of everything, plenty of wealth of every kind Gold and fine object, many good friends And everything bringing pleasure was given priority.

Fann jeg fljótt og skildi, föðurlaus og snauð, að minna var um mildi og mannkærleikans auð. Lærði lítt að kvarta, leið þó margt og bar; en að jeg ætti hjarta, enginn hugði þar.

I realised quickly and understood, fatherless and poor There was less gentleness and human kindness I learnt not to complain, but suffered and endured much And that I had a heart, no-one there thought of that.)

In another poem, which was first published in the journal Skírnir in 1924 under the curious – and somewhat offensive – title “Kerlingarnöldur” (lit. The Grumbling of an Old Woman), Herdís writes of how she had wanted more out of life: “Leiddist mjer að lúta smáu, / langaði eftir flugi háu” (It wearied me to deal with lesser things, longing to fly high). The poem appeared later that same year in the first edition of Ljóðmæli, with the first line used as the title and an additional verse. It is one of her bestknown, and best, poems. Another well-known poem is “Kveðið við spuna” (Recited While Spinning), which was composed, as she says in the first stanza, when she was seventy-five. It first appeared in print in the women’s magazine Hlín in 1951 and was then taken up in the third edition of Ljóðmæli, published in 1976. In the edition’s table of contents the poem is given, presumably by the book’s editor, Herdís’s grandson Jón Thorarensen, the extra, explanatory title “þjóðháttakvæði” (lit. “folk-customs poem”), and although it in a way is a catalogue of traditional women’s tasks, it is first and foremost Herdís’s autobiography (Helga Kress, 2008, 59–62; Soffía Auður Birgisdóttir, 2011). The poem comprises thirty stanzas in ordinary ferskeytla. The poet speaks in the first person, addressing a group of children, whom she is looking after, and whose full attention she is trying to get. The subject

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of the poem is all the hard work which the poet has had to perform in her life, back-breaking, never-ending hard physical labour from which, however, she says she has at times nevertheless derived pleasure. She lists a wide range of domestic and agricultural chores: washing, knitting, darning, mending clothes, preparing food, rounding up sheep, cleaning down, making hay, mending nets, rowing boats, gathering berries etc.15 Kveðið við spuna Þó mig gigtin þjái grimm og þunnan beri eg lokkinn, séð hafi árin sjötíu og fimm, sit eg enn við rokkinn.

(Though cruel arthritis afflicts me and my locks are thin, I’ve seen seventy-five years. Still I sit and spin.

[…]

[…]

Þó gæfist mér ei gull í mund og grátt mig léki þörfin, eg hef marga yndisstund átt við hversdagsstörfin.

Though I have not been given gold in hand and I had unfulfilled needs, I’ve had many good times in the course of daily tasks.

Þá eru kveðin þessi ljóð, þar við skal nú lenda. Verið þið blessuð, börnin góð, bragurinn er að enda.

Thus these verses are sung, there we shall now finish. May you be blessed, good children, the poem is concluded.)

5. Conclusion Herdís Andrésdóttir and her sister Ólína, ordinary self-educated women who had endured much emotional hardship, both as children and as young adults, became in their old age well known cultural and literary figures in Reykjavík, regularly giving readings and speaking at various events organised by reading groups, literary societies, women’s institutes and so on. Their book, Ljóðmæli, brought out at their own expense in 1924, when they were in their mid-sixties, sold well and was often reprinted. From the very first, reviews of it were overwhelmingly 15 There is a recording by Bára Grímsdóttir on the album Flúr, released in 2013.

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life

positive. Sigurður Nordal, in his review of the first edition in the newspaper Vísir (Nordal, 1925), predicts that the sisters’ poems are of such outstanding quality that they would soon be known to everyone: “[Þ]að er óhætt að fullyrða, að sumar þulur Ólínu, kvæði eins og “Svarað bréfi”, “Til næturinnar” og fjölda margar af vísum þeirra beggja systra verði áður en langt um líður á hvers manns vörum” (It is safe to say that some of Ólína’s þulur, the poems “Svarað bréfi”, “Til næturinnar” and many more of the verses by both sisters will before long be on everyone’s lips). In his review of the second edition, published in 1930, the poet Magnús Ásgeirsson makes a similar claim as to the lasting value of their work: “Skerfur sá er þessar tvær alþýðu konur hafa lagt til íslenzkra bókmennta, er harla merkilegur, og mun verða metinn að verðleikum, er tímar líða fram” (The contribution that these two working-class women have made to Icelandic literature is quite remarkable, and will come to be truly appreciated as time goes by). Strangely, this has not happened. Despite having become “world-famous in Iceland” in the 20s and 30s, the sisters are but little known today. Their work, with very few exceptions, has not been anthologised to the same extent as that of other poets from the period, and has consequently not been taught in schools and at university, or read by the general public, and, despite some recent studies, it has certainly not received anything like the scholarly attention it deserves.16 It may well be that this has something to do with the fact that they were women, and that what we have here, as has been argued by, among others, Helga Kress (2008), is simply another example of the silencing of women’s voices. But I think there is more to it than that. Herdís and Ólína were traditionalists, preferring the old rímur-metres, which at the time were rapidly falling out of fashion, and in the þula embracing a traditional poetic form primarily associated with nursery rhymes. So it may also be that, although they were popular in their time, they have not been seen as being typical of their time – “út úr öllum móð”, as Herdís put it. Whatever the reason, a reassessment is long overdue. 16 There have been a few recent academic studies of Herdís and Ólína in Icelandic, viz. Ármann Jakobsson, 1995; Helga Kress, 1997, 78–80; Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir, 2006, 184–186; Helga Kress, 2008, 59–62; Soffía Auður Birgisdóttir, 2011 and Ingveldur Thorarensen, 2014. In English, apart from a very fine assessment by the Icelandic-Canadian scholar Richard Beck (Beck, 1950, 149–150), there has been almost nothing, only brief references in e.g. Stefán Einarsson, 1957, 289, and Helga Kress, 2007, 508, 525–526.

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M. J. Driscoll References Ármann Jakobsson (1996). Þar sitja systur. Lesbók Morgunblaðsins (17.08.1996), 12. Árni Pálsson (1924). Ritfregnir. Skírnir, 98, 208–236 (234–236). Beck, Richard (1950). History of Icelandic Poets, 1800–1940, Islandica 34. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Driscoll, M. J. (2017). Pleasure and Pastime: The Manuscripts of Guðbrandur á Hvítadal. In Margrét Eggertsdóttir & M. J. Driscoll (Eds.). Mirrors of Virtue: Manuscript and Print in Late Pre-Modern Iceland (pp. 225–276). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. Guðmundur Finnbogason (1914). Ólöf Sigurðardóttir: Nokkur smákvæði [review]. Skírnir, 88, 99–102. Guðmundur Finnbogason (1924). Bókmentir. Ljóðmælir eftir Ólínu og Herdísi Andrjesdætur [review]. Lögrjetta, 19.49, 2. Guðrún P. Helgadóttir (1961–1963). Skáldkonur fyrri alda I–II. Reykjavík: Kvöldvökuútgáfan. Helga Kress (1997). Kona og skáld – Inngangur. In Helga Kress (Ed.). Stúlka: Ljóð eftir íslenskar konur (pp. 13–102). Reykjavík: Bókmenntafræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands. Helga Kress (2007). Searching for Herself: Female Experience and Female Tradition in Icelandic Literature. In Daisy Neijmann (Ed.). A History of Icelandic Literature (pp. 503–551). Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. Helga Kress (2008). Saga mín er sönn en smá: Um ævikvæði kvenna. Són, 6, 49–74 [repr. in Óþarfar unnustur 2009 (pp. 147–173). Reykjavík: Bókmennta- og listfræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands]. Herdís Andrésdóttir & Ólína Andrésdóttir (1924). Ljóðmæli eftir Ólínu og Herdísi Andrjesdætur. Reykjavík: Gutenberg. Herdís Andrésdóttir & Ólína Andrésdóttir (1930). Ljóðmæli eftir Ólínu og Herdísi Andrjesdætur, önnur útgáfa, aukin. Reykjavík: Gutenberg [2nd ed.]. Herdís Andrésdóttir & Ólína Andrésdóttir (1976). Ljóðmæli eftir Ólínu og Herdísi Andrjesdætur, þriðja útgáfa, stóraukin. Reykjavík: Oddi [3rd ed.; repr. 1980, 1982]. Herdís Andrésdóttir & Ólína Andrésdóttir (1951). Lundurinn græni. Reykjavík: Ísafoldarprentsmiðja. Herdís Andrésdóttir (1963). Ekki er allt bezt, sem börnin vilja. In Konur segja frá: Frásögur minningarþættir, sögur og ljóð (pp. 7–16). Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs.

Herdís & Ólína: The Poetry of Everyday Life Hughes, Shaun (2005). Late secular poetry. In Rory McTurk (Ed.). A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (pp. 205– 222). Oxford: Blackwell. Ingveldur Thorarensen (2014). ‘Snemma hafði jeg yndi af óð’: Herdís og Ólína Andrésdætur. BA-dissertation, Háskóli Íslands. URL: http:// hdl.handle.net/1946/18208. Jón Auðuns (1935). Ólína Andrjesdóttir. Morgunblaðið (26.07.1935), 4–5. Magnús Ásgeirsson (1931). Ljóðmæli eftir Herdísi og Ólínu Andrésdætur. Önnur útgáfa, aukin. Reykjavík 1930 [review]. Tíminn (01.03.1931), 4. Matthías Jóhannessen (1977). Ég hef alltaf orðið að láta í minni pokann: María Andrésdóttir 100 ára. In M – Samtöl I (pp. 157–166). Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið. Ólína Andrésdóttir (1924). Til ferskeytlunar. Eimreiðin, 30, 21–23. Sigurður Nordal & Þórbergur Þórðarson (Eds.). (1962). Gráskinna hin meiri. Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Þjóðsaga. Sigurður Nordal (1925). Ritsjá. Iðunn, 9 (01.01.1925), 73–80 (73–75) [originally published in Vísir (21.10.1924), 2 and (22.10.1924), 2]. Sigurður Nordal (1939). Herdís Andrjesdóttir. Morgunblaðið (03.05.1939), 5 [repr. in Áfangar II: Svipir 1944 (pp. 174–178). Reykjavík: Helgafell, and Mannlýsingar II: Skáldaöld 1986 (pp. 281– 285). Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið]. Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir (2006). Skáld í eldri stíl. Íslensk bókmenntasaga IV, ed. Guðmundur Andri Thorsson (pp. 184–186). Reykjavík: Mál og menning. Soffía Auður Birgisdóttir (2011). ‘Þar var Herdís’: Um ljóðagerð Herdísar Andrésdóttur (1858–1939). Stína, 6.3, 6–24. Stefán Einarsson (1957). A History of Icelandic Literatur. New York: Johns Hopkins Press for the American-Scandinavian Foundation. Sveinn Sigurðsson (1925). Ritsjá. Eimreiðin, 31, 78–96 (88–89). Theodóra Thoroddsen (1914). Þulur. Skírnir, 88, 415–420. Theodóra Thoroddsen (1925). Herdís og Ólína Andrésdætur [review]. 19. Júní, 8.4 (01.04.1925), 1–2. Theodóra Thoroddsen (1935). Ólína Andrésdóttir [obituary]. Nýja dagblaðið (24.07.1935), 2. Valdimar Már Pétursson (2002). Langlífir afkomendur. Fréttablað Ættfræðifélagsins, 20.4, 16–19. Þórbergur Þórðarson (1941). Edda Þórbergs Þórðarsonar. Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Heimskringlu; 2nd ed. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1975. Þorsteinn Jónsson (1996). Eylenda: Æviskrár og saga Flateyjarhrepps II. Reykjavík: Byggðir og bú.

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Problems in Mythological Reconstruction: Thor, Thrym, and the Story of the Hammer over the Course of Time Aurelijus Vijūnas National Kaohsiung Normal University

Abstract: In this article, the Old Icelandic poem Þrymskviða, which depicts an ancient myth about the theft and retrieval of Thor’s hammer, is compared with a number of later texts describing the same story – a late medieval Icelandic rhyme Þrymlur and a number of ballads from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, – in order to find out if it is possible to reconstruct an earlier, common Scandinavian version of this myth. While such a reconstruction appears to be plausible, none of the extant sources reflects the proto-myth in its complete form: although the oldest source Þrymskviða generally appears to be the most conservative among the different versions of this story, some of the scenes from the proto-myth have been preserved better in the later sources.

1. The myth about the theft and retrieval of Thor’s hammer, which was highly popular among early Scandinavians, over the course of time has also enjoyed almost exceptional popularity among philologists: few other mythological Scandinavian stories – or concrete texts – have attracted as much scholarly interest as this myth.1 It may be beneficial to provide a brief summary of the story, as it is presented in the oldest – and the most familiar – text, the Eddic poem Þrymskviða: one day, the mighty thunder god Thor wakes up to realize that his hammer Mj0˛llnir has disappeared. The trickster Loki finds out that the hammer has been stolen by the giant Thrym, who only agrees to return the precious hammer if the Æsir give him the most beautiful

1 A relatively recent overview of the very rich literature on this myth may be found in Lindow (2001, 295f.). Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.3 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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goddess Freyja as wife. Instead of Freyja, however, gods send the giants Thor himself, dressed as the bride. Thor devours an astonishing amount of food and alcohol at the feast, and, after the hammer is brought in to consecrate the marriage, Thor seizes his weapon and smashes all the giants. Early studies of the hammer myth were often preoccupied with the dating of the sources (primarily Þrymskviða), as well as the origin of the myth itself – the latter concern spurred an intense search for extra-Scandinavian mythological parallels.2 Much research has also been devoted to the investigation of the historical relationship between the Icelandic poem Þrymskviða and its later counterparts, viz. the late medieval Icelandic rhyme Þrymlur and a large number of even later continental Scandinavian ballads presenting variant descriptions of apparently the same myth.3 In some of the more recent scholarship, researchers have also interpreted the symbolism of this poem, reflecting upon the meaning of Thor’s transvestism (Lindow, 1997), or the reception of Þrymskviða in the medieval Icelandic “shame and honour” society (Clunies Ross, 2002). 2. Regarding the dating of Þrymskviða, which poses much more serious difficulties than the dating of the later ballads, very different opinions have been expressed: while some scholars classified this poem together with the very oldest eddic songs, others argued for a much more recent origin, often citing stylistic peculiarities of Þrymskviða, e.g. not infrequent employment of formulae also present in other Eddic poems, or the excedingly comical – even satirical – tone of the poem.4 The currently most widespread belief among philologists regarding the date of Þrymskviða, however, as pithily summarized by Lindow (1997, 204), is that this poem is “a very late reworking of very early materials”, that is, while the familiar text of Þrymskviða is likely to be relatively young, the myth that it retells must go back to some very early times.



2 See Singer (1932), Schröder (1965, 21ff., 41), Puhvel (1972); more recently Lindow (1997, 209). 3 The term “rhyme” will be used throughout this article to refer to late medieval Icelandic epic poems known as rímur or rímnaflokkar in Icelandic, whereas the term “ballads” will be reserved for the much later continental Scandinavian poems. 4 For overviews, see Hallberg (1954, 52–70), Schröder (1965, 4–12); more recently Lindow (1997, 203–204).

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What “early times” the Scandinavian hammer myth goes back to, and what this myth was like in that distant past is a question that is not possible to answer, due to absence of even earlier Scandinavian texts, close parallels in the mythologies of other nations, as well as the generally changeable nature of orally transmitted texts. Over the course of time a fair number of myths comparable to the Old Norse hammer story have been presented either as mythological parallels, or even as the potential sources of this myth. Even a quick comparison of all these myths, however, reveals large numbers of differences, making such claims speculative, and even if there once existed a single myth that all the known theftand-retrieval stories, bearing any similarity to the Scandinavian hammer myth, could be derived from, its reconstruction today is beyond reach. 3. Although the putative ancestor of all the stories adduced in literature can no longer be reconstructed with any certainty, the multiple similarities among the Scandinavian texts still suggest some sort of historical relationship, with at least two major possibilities available: on the one hand, the similarities among the texts may imply a common source, a single proto-myth that once was known to all pre-Viking Age Scandinavians. On the other hand, it is also possible that the very late continental ballads might be somehow based on the much older Icelandic sources: early on, the latter possibility was advocated by Bugge & Moe (1897). 4. Bugge & Moe (1897) derived the continental ballads directly from the Icelandic rhyme Þrymlur: according to a very complex scenario proposed by the two authors, the original Icelandic story was carried to continental Scandinavia by a presumably Norwegian poet at the time when Norwegian and Icelandic were still largely mutually intelligible (Bugge & Moe, 1897, 78, 111ff.). Shortly after that, the hammer story in its new Norwegian form would have travelled further to Denmark and Sweden. Although the authors were aware that the extant Norwegian and Swedish versions of this myth are much more fragmentary than the Danish versions, they insisted on the Norwegian ballads being the oldest – the primary reason for that was their belief that the Icelandic poems could have only successfully reached Scandinavia via a speaker of some

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continental West Scandinavian (i.e. Norwegian) dialect, attributing the relative length and complexity of the Danish ballads to a speedy transmission of the myth from Norway to Denmark. In the later times, the myth would have had rather different fortunes in the three traditions, over the course of time losing much of the original material in Norway and Sweden, but being preserved much better in Denmark (Bugge & Moe, 1897, 62ff.). 5. The complexity of the scenario described in the preceding section clearly results from the way in which the two authors imagined the transition of the story, as well as their belief that the continental Scandinavian ballads must derive from Þrymlur. It is highly unlikely, however, that Þrymlur served as the model for the later ballads: while the similarities (most of which are also shared with Þrymskviða) can be equally easily interpreted as reflexes of some even older prototype, Bugge & Moe’s model is seriously undermined by the very numerous structural, lexical, and formulaic differences between Þrymlur and the texts from continental Scandinavia. If the ballads indeed derived from Þrymlur, they should exhibit a significant number of secondary features clearly borrowed from the medieval Icelandic rhyme – while there is a large amount of such secondary material in Þrymlur, no traces of it can be discerned in any of the preserved ballads. 6. It is suggested here the continental Scandinavian stories about Thor’s hammer do not derive from the Icelandic texts: instead, all the extant stories may more or less directly reflect a probably much older source, a sort of “proto-myth” that was once well-known throughout the entire continental Scandinavia. Although the oldest source Þrymskviða probably recounts that proto-myth in many ways more accurately than the later texts, the early comon Scandinavian prototype most likely still differed from the Eddic poem in certain aspects: as will be demonstrated below in this article, several scenes that occur in the rhyme Þrymlur all the later ballads are completely absent from Þrymskviða, suggesting that Þrymskviða itself has lost some of the original material. The Scandinavian ballads display a number of obvious similarities, too, but while they imply close historical relationship among particular texts,

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

the structural differences between the continental Scandinavian and the insular (i.e., Icelandic) texts strongly favour an earlier common source. 7. In this article, I will compare the plot of the hammer story as presented in Þrymskviða (later: “Þk”) with the other extant, more or less complete versions of this myth, seeking to determine what insights they can provide into the structure and the contents of the underlying proto-myth. Including the fragmentary texts, over 20 different versions of the hammer story have been registered in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and 17 more complete texts have been selected for this study:5 1. Þrymlur (Þm): an early fifteenth century Middle Icelandic ballad preserved in ms. AM 604 g 4° (the manuscript itself is much later, from mid sixteenth century). This ballad is the longest of all, and many scenes are unique to it. Much of the text seems to be the author’s addition (cf. Finnur Jónsson 1896:iii). Þrymlur both shares certain scenes with Þrymskviða vis-à-vis the continental ballads and agrees with the continental ballads on some scenes absent from Þrymskviða; 2. Torekall (N1): Norwegian; recorded 1913 in Fyresdal, Telemark.6 Exhibits clear similarities to N3 and N4, both recorded in the same county (fylke), as well as most of the Danish versions listed below; 3. Torekallvisa I (N2): Norwegian; recorded 1877 in Vestre Slidre, Valdres. Displays many similarities to N5 and N6, as well as some to the Swedish version (HH); 4. Thor-guten (N3): Norwegian; recorded 1913 in Fyresdal; 5. Thor af Havsgaard, eller Asgaard (N4): Norwegian; recorded ca. 1840 in Seljord, Telemark. It is in some ways different from N1 and N3,



5 Throughout this article, the individual poems will be referred to using their abbreviated forms, e.g. “N5”, “D1”, “HH”, “Þk” etc. When a specific stanza from a certain text is cited, the number of the stanza will be separated from the abbreviation of the text by a period, e.g. “D1.12”, “N5.1”, “HH.3”. In the case of Þrymlur, which consists of three individual rhymes (rímur), it will be necessary to cite both the rhyme (Roman numeral) and stanza (Arabic numeral), e.g. “Þm I.10”, “Þm II.1” etc. 6 The texts of the Norwegian ballads have been retrieved from http://www. dokpro.uio.no/ballader/lister/tsbalfa_titler/tittel_290e.html, and the order of presentation follows the website. The titles of the individual ballads follow the corresponding manuscripts.

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Aurelijus Vijūnas and exhibits some minor similarities to the Swedish version (HH); 6. Torekallvisa II (N5): Norwegian; record discovered 1877; text from Ulnes, Valdres; 7. Thore Kalls viise (N6): Norwegian; recorded 1750 in Hallingdal, Buskerud; 8. Tor af Havsgård (D1): Danish; from Seks indgange til balladen, by Anelise Knudsen and Thorkild Knudsen, 1995. Displays many similarities to D2 and D7;7 9. Thors Hammer (D2): Danish; from Jydske Folkeviser og Toner, by Evald Tang Kristensen, 1871. D2 is closer to D7 than D1;8 10. Tord aff Haffsgaard oc Tosse Greffue (D3): Danish; from It Hundrede udvaalde Danske Viser by Anders Sørensen Vedel, 1591. Displays some similarities to D5; 11. Tord aff Haffsgaard I (D4): Danish; from Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, by Svend Grundtvig, 1853. Displays some similarities to D9; 12. Tord aff Hafsgaard II (D5): Danish; from Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, by Svend Grundtvig, 1853; 13. Tor af Havsgaard (D6): Danish; from Danmarks folkeviser i udvalg, by Svend Grundtvig, 1882. Displays some similarities to D8 and D9; 14. Tor aa Hagensgaard (D7): Danish; from Et hundrede udvalgte danske viser by Jørgen Lorenzen, 1974; 15. Thor av Havsgård (D8): Danish; from Hjemligt Hedenskab i almenfattelig Fremstilling by Gudmund Schütte, 1919; 16. Tord af Havsgaard (D9): Danish; from Danmarks Fornviser, by Ernst von der Recke, 1927; 17. Hammar-Hemtningen (HH): Swedish; from Svenska fornsånger by Adolf Iwar Arwidsson, 1834–1842. Two nearly identical variants exist, and only one is used in this study. The Swedish variant displays similarities to N2, D6, and D8.9

8. The introduction Although all the texts agree that Thor’s hammer was lost, the descriptions of how it was lost vary so drastically that an accurate reconstruction of this scene is impossible. In almost all the texts (with the exception

7 This version of the ballad has been retrieved from http://www.skjaldesang.dk. 8 This and the following Danish texts were retrieved from http://heimskringla. no/wiki/Tor_af_Havsgård. 9 Retrieved from http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Hammar-Hemtningen_I.

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

of Þrymlur), the story has an abrupt beginning that feels incomplete: in Þrymskviða, the poem begins with Thor waking up to learn that his hammer has disappeared (Þk.1), whereas at the beginning of the Swedish version, Thor is already lamenting his loss (HH.1). The Danish and the Norwegian sources – which overlap to some extent – possess only slightly longer introductions: in one version, shared by all the Danish texts and the Norwegian ballads N1, N3, N4 (which generally display many similarities to the Danish texts), Thor is said to have either thrown his hammer to some unknown location, or lost it there. The Norwegian texts N2, N5, and N6 begin the story in a still different way, depicting Thor as returning home from the forest, and realizing that a thief had stolen his hammer. The only text with a detailed introduction is the Icelandic rhyme Þrymlur. After a lengthy presentation of various heathen gods (stanzas I.1–10, the last six and a half describing Thor alone), the text proceeds to a description of the circumstances under which the hammer disappeared: Thor throws a party at home, and one of the guests is Thrym. During the night, the hammer mysteriously disappears (Þm I.11–12). While the beginning sections in most of the texts appear too short, the introduction of Þrymlur is clearly too long: the initial 10 stanzas of Þrymlur are obviously a later addition (cf. also Finnur Jónsson, 1896, iii), and introductions exhibiting a very similar flavour can be found in two other contemporary Icelandic rhymes, viz. Völsungsrímur and Lokrur (both preserved in the same manuscript as Þrymlur). It is also conceivable that the poet/performer of Þrymlur may have secondarily lengthened his introduction, desiring to make the text more complete, or to have a less abrupt beginning. 9. The search for the hammer All the texts agree on this scene, but it is described rather differently in the texts from different countries, the continental Scandinavian ballads exhibiting more similarities to each other than to the Icelandic versions of this myth. In the ballads, this scene is quite brief: Loki puts on wings (or some sort of a feather suit, cf. No. fjederham, fjærhame, Da. fjederham), and goes to look for Thor’s hammer to a place generally described either as Thrym’s palace, cf. Gremmeli-gard (N2, N5, N6), Trolltrams gård (HH), or some northern/Norwegian location, cf. Nordenrikji (N4), Norgefjæld (D1, D2, D7), resp. Nørrefjæld (D4, D6, D8, D9).

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In the Icelandic texts, this scene is considerably longer, more detailed and humorous, although the two versions do not completely agree with each other: in Þrymskviða, this scene starts with an apparently bewildered Thor confessing to Loki that his hammer has been stolen (Þk.2). The two go to find Freyja, and ask her to lend them the feather suit, after which Loki flies to Jotunheim (Þk.3–5). In Þrymlur, on the contrary, Thor does not involve Loki until Freyja asks him who is going to search for the hammer (Þm I.14–17). The conversation between Thor and Freyja is quite different in the two texts, too. Nevertheless, these scenes in the two Icelandic texts exhibit certain lexical similarities, suggesting that the author of Þrymlur may have been familiar with Þrymskviða, cf. the following formulae from the two texts that employ very similar vocabulary: fagra Freyio túna ‘Freyja’s beautiful dwellings’ (Þk.3) vs. fagran Freyiv gard ‘Freyja’s beautiful abode’ (Þm I.14); muntu mér, Freyia, fjaðrhams liá ‘lend me your feather suit, Freyja’ (Þk.3) vs. Freyia lia mier fiadr ham þinn ‘Freyja, lend me your feather suit’ (Þm I.15); ef ec minn hamar mætta-c hitta ‘if I am to come upon my hammer’ (Þk.3) vs. ef þu hamarinn hitta matt ‘if you are able to come upon your hammer’ (Þm I.16).

The longer description of this scene, displayed by the Icelandic texts, probably reflects the original story more faithfully than the shorter scenes from the ballads. The scene in which Thor asks Freyja for help resembles a motif that occurs fairly frequently in mythological stories and folktales, in which a character in distress asks others for assistance (and is often rejected for a number of times): a comparable scene may be found in the structurally similar Anzu myth from Mesopotamia (Dalley, 1989, 203–221), as well as numerous stories from around the world, including such diverse places as Siberia, Taiwan, and Australia. 10. The meeting with Thrym While this scene is described in all the texts, the individual details vary so much that it can only be reconstructed in a very sketchy way. Both Icelandic texts agree that Loki finds Thrym on a mound (OIc. haugr), but Thrym is

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

involved in different activities. In the continental ballads, the lord of the giants appears walking by the seashore (D1, D7), staying in some sort of building (D3–6, D8, N4), stirring fire (N2, N5, N6), or forging something (HH; cf. st. 3: Trolltram stodh och smidde ‘Trolltram stood and forged’). The conversation between Loki and Thrym (or the corresponding character in the continental ballads) starts differently in the different versions of this story, too: whereas in all the Danish ballads as well as N1 and N3, Tossegreve welcomes Loki with (at least seemingly) friendly words, asking about life in Asgard and/or Thor’s personal life, in some of the Norwegian texts (N2, N5, N6), at first Gremmil briefly teases Loki. In some other texts, Thrym goes straight to the point of Loki’s visit (N4, Þk, Þm), whereas in the Swedish version, it is Loki himself who addresses Trolltram first, asking him to admit having stolen the hammer (HH.4). Thrym admits having stolen and hidden the hammer in all the texts. The depth at which Mjollnir was hidden exhibits much variation, and although the variation itself is banal – and in most cases due to alliteration, – one can notice that some of the numbers recur: most of the Danish texts agree on “55 feet”, whereas three sources say “44 feet”; N4 and HH have “55 fathoms” (the text actually says “15 and 40 fathoms”), N1 and N3 show “15 fathoms”, and N2 and N5 (which generally agree on many details) have “8 ells and 9 fathoms”. The two Icelandic texts in this case greatly disagree with each other, although the numerals employed in these texts are strangely similar to the numerals used in N2 resp. N5, cf. “8 leagues” in Þrymskviða vs. “9 feet” in Þrymlur.10 In exchange for the hammer, the lord of the giants demands a bride. The Icelandic versions of this story, in both of which Thrym demands Freyja – the sexiest goddess of all, – must reflect the original story the most faithfully,11 whereas the various names of the bride in the conti 10 Unlike the continental texts, in the Icelandic poems, the numerals alliterate not with the units of length, but with some other words, cf. átta ro˛stum fyr iorð neðan ‘eight leagues under the ground’ in Þk.8, resp. nyv feta nidur j jord nv er hann grafin med ollv ‘nine feet down the earth now it has been buried entirely’ (Þm I.25). 11 Divine or semi-divine beings threatening to capture the most beautiful goddesses also occur in other mythologies, cf. the Greek myth about the powerful brothers Otos and Ephialtes who set out to kidnap the Olympian goddesses Hera and Artemis. Also in Indian mythology, the invincible twins Sunda and Upasunda fatefully seek to possess the perfectly beautiful apsaras Tillotamā. Another parallel may be adduced from the Prose Edda, in which a certain giant tries to strike a deal with Æsir, demanding Freyja in exchange for a powerful defensive wall.

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nental ballads, such as “Frøieborg”, “Fredensborgh”, “fruga Valborg” etc. are later corruptions of the original name “Freyja”. 11. Loki returns to Asgard This scene exists in all the sources, but the texts display great variation, making an accurate reconstruction of the proto-scene almost impossible. In some of the continental Scandinavian ballads, the scenes in which Loki meets Tossegreve/Gremmil and Thor employ the same formulae, e.g. in D1, Loki finds both Tossegreve and later Thor walking by the seashore,12 whereas in D4, D6, and D8, Loki finds both in a “stoffue/Stue”, i.e. their respective manors. In N5, Loki finds the giant and Thor just before they retire to their respective beds, cf. kom han se aat Gremmeli-gard / før Gremmil han gjikk se aat senge ‘he came to Gremmeli-gard before Gremmil went to bed’ (N5.2) vs. kom han se aat Æsagard / før Torekall gjikk se aat senge ‘he came to Asgard before Torekall went to bed’ (N5.8). Also Þrymskviða employs almost identical vocabulary in the two scenes. In the other texts, the description of this scene is much briefer, as Loki proceeds straight to retelling Thrym’s words: such are three Norwegian versions (N1, N3, N4), three Danish ballads (D2, D7, D9), the Swedish text, and Þrymlur, in all of which the text is reduced to minimum, retaining only the word-exchange between Thor and Loki. Although it is likely that this minor scene has always been brief, the poems of the latter group probably display an abbreviated version of the original story. 12. Freyja approached This scene is present in most of the variants, with the exception of the closely related D1, D2, and D7. The descriptions of this scene exhibit much variation, but the greatest differences lie between the continental texts vis-à-vis the Icelandic sources. The two Icelandic texts display a number of differences, too: in the older Þrymksviða, Thor goes to Freyja accompanied by Loki (Þk.12), whereas in Þrymlur, Thor goes alone (Þm II.1). The conversation between 12 In D7, which otherwise often agrees with D1, only Tossegreve walks by the seashore.

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

49

the gods also proceeds differently in the two texts: in Þrymskviða, Thor tells Freyja to dress up and accompany him to Jotunheim (st. 12). Freyja angrily refuses (st. 13), becoming so angry that even her necklace Brisingamen (OIc. Brísingamen) falls to the ground. In Þrymlur, the text is, as usual, more comical: in a way that seems nearly naïve, Thor asks Freyja if she would like to marry a giant (st. II.2), offering her gold13 and a necklace (=Brisingamen?; st. II.3). Freyja – red in the face from anger – says she would rather drown herself than go to Jotunheim (st. II.4). Rejected by Freyja, Thor is so distressed than he cannot fall asleep at night (st. II.5). 13. The accounts in the ballads are generally much briefer, and they normally begin with Freyja’s reaction to Thor’s request. The descriptions of her reaction vary greatly: in the Danish ballads D6 and D8, Freyja becomes so upset with Thor’s request that blood splashes from her fingers and flows to the ground (st. 12). She firmly tells Thor she will never marry a troll, cf. Ret aldrig tager jeg til Mand / den Trold så led og lang ‘never shall I take as husband such an unpleasant and tall troll’ (D8.13). Thor asks Freyja how much gold she will give him for another solution (st. 14). This scene is presented in a very similar way in HH, although in the Swedish ballad, it is Freyja’s fingers that fall to the ground, and the goddess does not maintain that she would not marry a troll. The rest of the Scandinavian texts are still briefer: the Danish D3-D5 and D9, as well as the Norwegian N1, N3, and N4 only contain the scene in which Freyja refuses to marry a troll. This scene is obviously related to the same scene from D6 and D8, but, unlike D6 and D8, in all the latter texts it is further specified that Freyja would rather marry a Christian man than a troll, cf. I giffue mig helder en Christen Mand / end denne her Trold saa læd ‘give me rather to a Christian man than such an unpleasant troll’ (D3.12). The Norwegian versions N2, N5, and N6 only contain the scene in which blood splashes from Freyja’s face (cf. D6 and D8 above), but the Norwegian text is in a peculiar way different from the Danish: whereas in the Danish ballads, Freyja’s blood flows to the ground, cf. Da. blodet… 13 The text says ‘now accept metal’, but some precious metal (gold or silver) is clearly implied.

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randt paa Jorden ned (D6.12), in the Norwegian texts, Freyja is said to have become “as black as earth”, cf. No. ho sbartna so de vøre jord (N5.11). 14. The comparison of the interaction between Thor and Freyja in all the sources reveals both differences and similarities. Among the ballads, D6 and D8 may well display the most archaic and the most complete variants of the story; nevertheless, they are quite different from the Icelandic accounts. It appears, therefore, that the continental and the insular versions of the myth may have begun to diverge quite early. Which of these differences and similarities are likely to reflect the most archaic elements? It is likely that the scene in which Thor (whether alone or with Loki) goes to search for Freyja, and which is only described in the Icelandic texts, is an inherited feature – the later ballads may have simply lost this connecting scene.14 It is also safe to maintain that the main points of this part of the story are Thor’s request for Freyja to marry Thrym in exchange for the hammer, and her refusal, that are described in the simplest and clearest way in Þrymskviða. Freyja’s claim that she would rather marry a Christian man than a troll (as per some of the Danish and Norwegian ballads), is an obvious innovation that could have been added to the story only after Christianity had become quite familiar to Viking Age Scandinavians (probably not earlier than IX c.). Likewise, also the scenes occurring in some of the texts, in which Thor either offers Freyja gifts (Þm II.3), or, conversely, demands that she pay him (D6, D8, HH), must be later additions: since all the texts indicate (sometimes indirectly, see section 16 below) that the ultimate decision to send Thor to Jotunheim instead of Freyja was taken at the divine assembly, the special negotiation between Thor and Freyja looks secondary. 15. As for the rest of the details displayed by the individual texts, the most puzzling among them appear to be the following two: on the one hand, 14 Other instances of connecting scenes poorly reflected in the ballads include Thor going to meet Freyja at the beginning of the story, the gods Æsir meeting to discuss the loss of the hammer, the description of Thor wearing bridal clothes, Thor travelling to Jotunheim – these scenes are described in a more or less detailed way only in the Icelandic sources.

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

the differences in the descriptions of the necklace scene in the Icelandic texts (the only texts that mention a necklace), and, on the other hand, the differences and the similarities among Þrymskviða and many continental ballads, in which it is said that as Freyja becomes angry with Thor’s words, something that belongs to her falls to the ground: whereas in Þrymskviða, it is her necklace Brisingamen, in the continental texts it is either blood from Freyja’s face or fingers, or the fingers themselves. Regarding the latter scene, it is obvious that the different descriptions presented in the individual texts ultimately reflect a single proto-scene, which developed differently in different areas. Þrymskviða probably displays the most archaic features here, whereas the ballads are almost certainly innovative: first and foremost, the paragon of divine beauty cannot afford to lose her fingers, or to have them (or her face) mutilated. Furthermore, one may also speculate whether the word ‘finger’ (or ‘fingers’) cannot be a late corruption of the original ‘Brísing-’, as the two display much phonetic similarity. In the texts where blood splashes from Freyja’s limbs or face, one can probably see another variation of the same theme, a different attempt to dramatize the scene. As for the differences displayed in the necklace scene in the Icelandic sources, Þrymskviða may once again display the more archaic material: the necklace (note the definite article in MIc. men-it, Þm II.3) that Thor is said to have offered Freyja in Þrymlur may or may not refer to Brisingamen. If it indeed refers to Brisingamen, this detail would have to be interpreted as the author’s invention, as there are good reasons to believe that Freyja had obtained the beautiful necklace long before Thor lost his hammer: on the one hand, there exists another account of how Freyja acquired Brisingamen, described in the introduction of the Old Icelandic So˛rla þáttr (see Sigurður Nordal, 1944, 304). On the other hand, another indication that Brisingamen must have been generally perceived as Freyja’s major attribute is provided in Þrymskviða: when Heimdall suggests that the gods dress up Thor as the bride (see section 16 below), he specifically mentions that the bride should be adorned with Brisingamen (Þk.15). All this makes it likely that Freyja did not receive Brisingamen from Thor, and that the necklace mentioned in Þrymlur most likely does not reflect any “archaic” or “lost” story, whether or not it indeed refers to Brisingamen. To sum up, it is likely that the scenes from the proto-myth that have been discussed in the preceding sections 12–15 may be reflected the

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most faithfully in Þrymskviða. Whenever the younger texts disagree with Þrymskviða, the differences may be plausibly explained as later additions or corruptions of the original story. 16. The council of the Æsir and the wedding preparation This scene is clearly depicted only in the two Icelandic texts, in which it is clearly said that all the Æsir gathered at an assembly, wondering how to retrieve the hammer: in Þrymskviða, seven stanzas (56 half-lines) are devoted to this episode (Þk.14–20), whereas in the longer and generally much wordier Þrymlur, only five fairly short stanzas (15 lines) are allotted to this scene (Þm II.7–11). In both texts, Heimdall (called “Heimdallr” in Þrymskviða, but “Heimdæll” in Þrymlur) suggests that Thor is dressed as the bride instead of Freyja, and Þrymskviða contains an additional scene in which Thor initially refuses to put on women’s clothes. In the Scandinavian ballads, this scene is not represented as well as in the Icelandic texts. In the Swedish text, only half a stanza is allotted to the description of how Torckar has bridal clothes made for him, cf. Däth var Torker sielfver han låtte bröllopskläde skiera… ‘it was Torckar himself; he let cut bridal clothes’ (HH.10).15 Most of the Danish and the Norwegian texts tell how Thor is prepared for the wedding, but the descriptions are much briefer than in the Icelandic texts: D8.15: Tage vi Thor, vor gamle Broder, så vel vi børste hans Hår, føre vi hannem til Nørrefjæld alt før så væn en Mår! N2.14: No vilja me taka han Torekall, væl vilje me byste hass haar, klæ so paa hono brureklæo, og føre n aat Gremmeligaard!

(Let’s take Thor, our old brother, we’ll comb his hair well, we will take him to Nørrefjæld as a pretty maiden! Now let’s take Torekall, we’ll comb his hair well, [we will] put bridal clothes on him, and take him to Gremmeligaard!)

Unlike the Icelandic texts, an assembly of the gods is nowhere mentioned in the continental texts; however, the usage of the first person plural pronoun ‘we’ in the description of Thor’s preparation (cf. N2 and 15 A fairly similar line occurs in D6 and D8.

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

D8 above) implies that the prototype of the ballads must have contained such a scene, too. 17. Thor travels to Jotunheim and meets the giants This scene, too, is described in a detailed way only in the two Icelandic texts (although the two descriptions are quite different). In Þrymskviða, Thor is said to travel to Jotunheim in a rather noisy manner, breaking rocks and scorching Earth with flames (Þk.21); meanwhile, Thrym is rejoicing at the prospect of marrying Freyja (st. 22–23). The narration in Þrymlur is much longer this time, containing 11 stanzas (33 lines): in Þrymlur, Thor is said to travel to Jotunheim by Woden’s “excellent boat” (Ic. frábært far)16 with a very numerous company that contains gods, birds, wild beasts, cattle, and other creatures – the description of Thor’s company covers two full stanzas (Þm II.13–15). When they arrive at Jotunheim, the merry giants are waiting outside – not seeing Thor in the company, they ask the guests where he is, judging that the mighty thunder god did not have the courage to leave home without his hammer (st. 17–18). In the ballads, also this scene is not given much space. In the Swedish text, Thor’s preparation for the wedding and the subsequent journey to Jotunheim fit within a single stanza (HH.10). In the mutually close Danish texts D1, D2, and D7, this scene is somewhat longer: the texts mention Thor’s boat trip to Norgefjæld (=Jotunheim), and the welcoming at the destination. This scene is the longest in D1, covering 5 stanzas (D2 and D7 only devote two stanzas to this scene). The Norwegian sources do not contain this scene. Since all the other versions have at least some description, one must conclude that in the Norwegian tradition, this scene was lost in the course of time – perhaps because, not containing any dialogue, it did not contribute much to the development of the story. The Icelandic texts once again probably contain more original material than the continental texts, and most likely fairly large parts of the original myth must have been cut out from the later ballads. 18. The feast None of the texts misses this episode, in which the suspension is about to reach the climax, but it is perhaps here that the texts exhibit the most 16 A “boat” or “sailing” are also mentioned in D1, D2, and D7.

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variation in the narration. It is obvious that at least in some of the texts, the vocabulary choices were dictated by the form: e.g. in Þrymlur, the poet was confined not only by alliteration (as in the older Þrymskviða), but also by rhythm and end rhyme – the latter was a new feature in Icelandic poetry, but typical of rhymes and ballads. The part of the story describing the feast consists of many scenes, presented differently in different texts. These scenes may be briefly summarized as follows: 1. The bride is served by many trolls or Tossegreve (Thrym) himself; 2. Thrym wants to kiss the bride, but the bride looks scary; Loki tells him the bride had not slept for many nights out of desire to marry Thrym; 3. The bride asks Thrym to give her a large vessel to drink/eat from (or drinks from a large cup/horn); 4. The bride consumes enormous amounts of food and alcohol, making Thrym wonder why she seems to be so insatiable.

Not all the scenes listed above occur in all the sources, e.g. scene 1 only occurs in the Danish texts (all), as well as some of the Norwegian ballads. Furthermore, the Danish sources exhibit two variants of this scene: the bride is served by trolls in D1, D2, and D7, whereas in all the remaining Danish ballads, as well as the Norwegian N1 and N3, the bride is served by Tossegreve (i.e. Thrym). 19. Scene 2 only occurs in the Icelandic sources. Although the text is not exactly the same in the two poems, the usage of an almost identical formula in both texts may serve as additional evidence that the author of Þrymlur may have known Þrymskviða (cf. section 9 above), cf. hví eru ˛ondótt augo Freyio? ‘why are Freyja’s eyes terrible’ (Þk.27) vis-à-vis the almost identical þvi erv ondott augu Freyiv? in Þm II.22. 20. Different variations of scene 3 only occur in some of the balladic versions – specifically HH, N2, N5, and N6. The Norwegian texts display the most consistency: the bride refuses to drink from a horn, demanding

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

a huge vat, and that it should be brought on poles, cf. No. …eg gjiet inkje drikke taa hødno / du gjeve me drikke taa bøllestampo / og føre so hit med stongo (N2.19). The Swedish version is only slightly different: the bride tells the giants that, in order for the wedding banquet to take place, they should throw away the small cups/chalices, and provide buckets and tubs or vats, cf. Sw. …kasta dhe små bägare bort, bähr ihn medh ämmar och såå (HH.11). In the Danish versions, this scene is depicted somewhat differently: first, unlike the Swedish and the Norwegian texts, the bride does not specifically demand large drinking vessels, but is said to be drinking from them, cf. D3.17 and D5.17 (nearly identical texts). In some of the Danish texts, the large vessels are used not for drinking, but for eating, cf. D2.17 and D7.17 (the texts are almost identical). The two types of Danish texts are quite different from each other. D1 is different from the other Danish versions in that in this ballad, the bride both drinks from a large vessel (like in D3 and D5), and demands her porridge to be cooked in a large pot (like in D2 and D7). It is obvious, though, that the text of D1 is based on the same underlying story as the other versions, as the same vocabulary and the same scenes are repeated. 21. The Icelandic rhyme Þrymlur contains a unique variant of scene 3, displaying many differences from the continental ballads. Unlike the continental sources, Thor does not demand any large vessels for drinking or eating; nor does the description of the bride’s drinking capacity resemble the formulae employed in the later ballads. In Þrymlur, scene 3 has to be discerned from a longer scene in which more than one thing happen: at the beginning of this scene, Thrym is wondering at the barbarous atmosphere of the banquet, then he orders the great drinking horn to be fetched, a scary “waiter” comes in, the drinking horn is briefly described, and, in the very last line, the bride empties it in a single gulp (Þm III.14–16). 22. Scene 4 occurs in all the versions of this myth, although the individual texts display many differences. The most significant of these are the ways

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the giants react to the bride’s appetite, as it is once again possible to discern certain patterns, recurring scenes, and formulae: 1. Tossegreve/Trolltram wonders why the bride never becomes full (D1, D2, D7; HH); 2. Tossegreve wonders why the bride eats and drinks so much (D3, D5); 3. Tossegreve/Gremmil wonders why the bride eats so much (D4, D6, D8, D9; N2, N5, N6); 4. Tossegreive wonders why the bride drinks so much (N4); 5. Tussegre(i)ven/Thrym notes the “sharpness” (i.e. intensity) of the bride’s bite (N1, N3, Þk).

One can quickly see that at times not only the story, but also entire formulae are repeated in texts from different countries, cf., e.g. D3.18 vis-à-vis N1.17, or D3.19 vis-à-vis N4.15. These similarities clearly point towards shared roots, although it is also obvious that in the course of time, the different versions of the myth mingled extensively, borrowing formulae and vocabulary from each other. It has to be noted that no scene of the types listed above occurs in Þrymlur: its omission is quite surprising, as otherwise the style of this text is very humorous, and direct speech is liberally employed. The bride’s extraordinary drinking capacity, which is so pompously highlighted in most of the texts, in Þrymlur is only vaguely alluded to at the very end of st. III.16 (see section 21 above). In most of the texts, Thrym’s surprise at the bride’s appetite is followed by Loki’s line, in which he tells Thrym that the bride had not eaten for many days/nights – from 7 to 14, depending on the text. Such a line is only absent from D1, D2, and D7, as well as the Norwegian N1 and N3.17 23. Although the comparison of the various scenes discussed in sections 18–22 has revealed a large amount of variation, the good attestation of these scenes in the extant sources, as well as their relative similarity 17 This line is also absent from N5 and N6, both of which break off just before this scene. However, based on their general similarity to N2 (which contains this line), it is likely that N5 and N6 derive from a longer earlier version that contained such a line, too.

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

to each other, imply that these scenes reflect original parts of the proto-myth – this seems to be especially true of scenes 2 through 4. Scene 1, describing how Thrym or the trolls desire to serve the bride, must have certainly been somehow represented in the original myth, but its highlighting in some of the closely related ballads may well be their shared innovation. On the contrary, the scene in which Thrym desires to kiss the bride (scene 2; attested only in the Icelandic sources), most likely reflects an archaic section of the myth: as one can see from its comparison with scene 4, in both scenes, the giants are surprised by some feature of the bride – in scene 2 it is her looks, whereas in scene 4 it is her appetite, both of which are rather un-feminine. In both cases, Loki provides an explanation for the giants, dissipating their suspicion. Since scene 4, which is very well attested in the extant sources, is very likely to be an inherited feature, the same can be fairly safely assumed for scene 2. Some variant of scene 3 must also be reconstructed for the proto-myth, even though it is absent from Þrymskviða. As was discussed in sections 20–21 above, the texts disagree on whether the bride demands large drinking/eating vessels, or whether the giants supply them themselves (in the latter type of texts, the bride is silent throughout the banquet). It is tempting to view the texts in which the bride does not speak as reflecting a more archaic variant of the story: on the one hand, Loki’s speaking is the only justification for his presence at the banquet at all. On the other hand, the omission of the scene in which Loki tells the giants that the bride had not eaten for many days prior to arriving at Jotunheim (cf. D1, D2, and D7) looks secondary: in the proto-myth, Loki must have provided the giants with the answers in all cases. Also the bride’s demand for a large pot of porridge (as per some Danish texts) must be an innovation, as in the rest of the texts, only drinking vessels (cups, horns, buckets, etc.) are mentioned. In the original scene, therefore, most likely, the giants supplied a large drinking vessel (a drinking horn?) for the enormous silent bride, and, to everybody’s surprise, she emptied it instantly. 24. The hammer is brought in; Thor beats up the giants These two scenes conclude the story, and they appear in all the complete texts. They must have been part of the original myth, but here it is where Þrymlur and the ballads display an important difference from Þrymskviða. The scene of the fetching of the hammer is quite brief in Þrymskviða, fitting within a single stanza 30, whereas in all the later texts,

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the description of this scene is longer and more detailed: generally, after Thrym orders the hammer to be brought into the wedding banquet hall, the hammer turns out to be so heavy that it requires the strength of many giants to carry it. The bride, on the contrary, lifts it very easily – in some texts, she does it with one hand, and in others – with two fingers. In some texts, the bride lifts it as lightly “as a stick”. The continental ballads exhibit especially many similarities. The Icelandic poem Þrymlur contains this scene, too, although it is in certain ways unlike the corresponding scene in the continental materials. The text is not entirely clear (parts of it may be corrupt), but it appears that the hammer was brought in by an old ogress rather than a group of giants (Þm III.214) – it was only later that the bride snatched it (Þm III.223). In spite of the differences between the ballads and Þrymlur, it is obvious that the same scene is being described. The author of Þrymlur only seems to have altered the story a little, substituting an ogress for the (probably more original) group of giants, and “re-assigning” Thor’s ability to lift the hammer easily to the ogress. 25. Conclusions The similarities among the Scandinavian sources for the hammer story make it tempting to derive them from a single source, a proto-myth that once was known to all early Scandinavians. The fundamental points of the plot of this myth may be reconstructed in the following way: Thrym steals Thor’s hammer, Loki finds it out, but Thrym demands Freyja in exchange for the hammer. Freyja refuses to sacrifice herself; therefore, by gods’ suggestion, Thor goes to the giants himself, disguised as the bride. He keeps silent throughout the banquet, while Loki does the speaking. The giants are surprised by the bride’s appearance, appetite, as well as drinking ability, but do not realize they have been deceived until the hammer is brought to the banquet hall. Many trolls struggle with the heavy hammer, by Thor lifts it easily, and, having retrieved his weapon, beats up (or kills off) the giants. Among the scenes that do not appear in all of the extant texts but can be plausibly reconstructed as part of the proto-myth, the following three must be stressed: the decision-making at the divine assembly, Thor’s drinking from a very large drinking vessel at the wedding banquet, and the fetching of the hammer.

Problems in Mythological Reconstruction

The decision-making at the divine assembly is only described in the two Icelandic texts; however, hints towards such a scene are also provided in some of the continental texts (see section 16). As for Thor’s drinking from an extraordinarily large horn (or some other drinking vessel), this scene of the proto-myth is primarily reconstructed on the continental evidence, whereas its depiction in the Icelandic sources is quite scanty (see section 21 above). Perhaps the most striking difference between Þrymskviða and the later texts is the absence of the hammer-fetching scene in the former: the structural similarities among the ballads and the Icelandic poem Þrymlur make it fairly clear that this must be an archaic scene, not included in Þrymskviða.

References Bugge, Sophus, & Moe, Moltke (1897). Torsvisen in sin norske form. Christiania: Centraltrykkeriet. Clunies Ross, Margaret (2002). Reading Þrymskviða. In Paul Acker & Carolyne Larrington (Eds.). The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Mythology (pp. 180–94). London and New York: Routledge. Dalley, Stephanie (1989). Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and others. Edited and translated with an Introduction and Notes by Stephanie Dalley. Oxford: University Press. Dansk folkedigtning: Tor af Havsgård. Retrieved from http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Tor_af_Havsgård. Dokumentasjonsprosjektet. Kjempe- og trollballadar: Torekall vinn att hamaren sin. Retrieved from http://www.dokpro.uio.no/ballader/ lister/tsbalfa_titler/tittel_290e.html. Finnur Jónsson (1896). Fernir forníslenskir rímnaflokkar. Kaupmannahöfn, í prentsmiðju S. L. Möllers. Hallberg, Peter (1954). Om Þrymskviđa. ANF, 69, 51–77. Lindow, John (1997). Þrymskviða, Myth and Mythology. In Martha Berryman, Kurt Gustav Goblirsch, & Marvin Taylor (Eds.). Germanic Studies in Honor of Anatoly Liberman (pp. 203–212). NOWELE 31/32. Odense: Odense University Press. Lindow, John (2001). Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford: University Press.

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Aurelijus Vijūnas Puhvel, Martin (1972). The Deicidal Otherworld Weapon in Celtic and Germanic Mythic Tradition. Folklore, 83/3, 210–219. Schröder, Franz Rolf (1965). Thors hammerholung. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 87 (1/2 Heft), 3–42. Sigurður Nordal (1944). Flateyjarbók. Fyrsta bindi. Flateyjarútgáfan. Prentverk Akraness hf. Singer, Samuel (1932). Die Grundlagen der Thrymskvidha. Neophilologus, 17, 47–48. Skjaldenes Bibliotek: Tor (av Havsgård). Retrieved from http://www. skjaldesang.dk. Svenska fornsånger: Hammar-hemtningen I. Retrieved from http:// heimskringla.no/wiki/Hammar-Hemtningen_I.

Dreaming the Hammer Back: On Teodoras Bieliackinas’s Translation of Þrymskviða Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė Vilnius University

Abstract: The paper deals with the legacy of Teodoras Bieliackinas (1907–1947), a Lithuanian exile in Iceland, the first Lithuanian professional Scandinavianist and the first translator of Eddic poetry into Lithuanian. With its background of the “biographical turn” in translation studies and with the help of the concept of “differential margin” proposed by Theo Hermans, the paper focuses on Bieliackinas’s rendition of Þrymskviða into Lithuanian. The aim is to trace the translator’s own ideological agenda, which appears to have been inscribed by him into the Old Norse song. It is claimed that the song about the loss and recovery of Thor’s hammer has been invested by Bieliackinas with a new – allegorical – meaning and can be read as a message of hope that Bieliackinas was sending to his countrymen who, like himself, were scattered around the world and mourned the loss of their state.

The biographical (re)turn in literary and translation studies In literary studies, the biographical subject has been back for some time now, “resurrected” to a new life, as was professed some decades ago by, among other scholars, Sean Burke. Burke argued that the way in which the concept of the death of the author had been treated in the literary academia had resulted in its insularity, its breach with broad intellectual culture (Burke, 2004, ix), where, as we know, individuals and The research behind the present paper was carried out within the framework of the project “Lithuanian exile in Iceland: Explorations of Teodoras Bieliackinas’s (1907–1947) creative legacy” under the National Lithuanian Studies Development Programme for 2016–2024. Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.4 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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their lives do matter. Literary scholarship also had to reckon with the ways literature developed, and the growing popularity of “ego-writing” and auto-performative art, which played at the boundaries of fact and fiction, the intimate and the public, and which staged and restaged the author’s own body and life experience, required to reconsider the role of the author vis-à-vis the meaning of his or her own text.1 Significant transfigurations of authorial agency have also taken place during recent decades in the field of translation studies. The traditional hierarchical relations between author and translator, which echoed the construed gender distinctions (“creative versus reproductive, original versus derivative, active versus passive, dominant versus subservient, free versus confined, and so on”, Hermans, 2001, 8), have often been questioned, and the personality of the translator has been drawn into the spotlight.2 Translators have been recognised as active agents of literary production who play a crucial role in shaping the trends and tastes of their cultural environment. They are considered to be an important factor in securing the inexhaustibility of the text: by adding their own touch to a text, they stimulate its unending semiosis, the constant deferral of its final meaning (see Petrilli, 2003, 517). It is in such a framework that translation is promoted by some theorists to the status of art: according to Barbara Godard, for example, translation must be understood not as mimesis, but as “poiesis, or making with the force of an original and creative act” (Godard, 2003, 92). The translator’s creative freedom vis-à-vis the original text is not simply “excused” as an inevitable consequence of the differences in languages and cultures to which the source and target texts respectively belong, but is declared by such theorists to be the translator’s right – something for which translators “should not apologize”. Theo Hermans, the author of the article “Shall I apologize translation?”,3 explicitly renounces the criteria of





1 In Scandinavia these tendencies are usually associated with such names, among others, as Karl Ove Knausgaard, Tomas Espedal, Madame Nielsen, Karina Rydberg, Daniel Sjölin, Kerstin Ekman and Yaya Hassan. Different forms of ego-writing, such as autofiction and performative biographism, are discussed, for example in Behrendt and Bunch (2015) and Haarder (2014). 2 See, for example, Morini, 2013; Munday, 2008; Rojo & Ramos Caro, 2016. The stress on the translator, as an intercultural mediator, lies also at the core of Bruno Osimo’s approach to translation that combines semiotics and cognitive studies, see Osimo, 2019. 3 The title is a direct quotation from John Florio’s preface to his translation of the essays of Michel de Montaigne, published in 1603.

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“sameness” and “fidelity” as ideals according to which a translation should be judged. However, contrary to Godard, he is content with translation being called a “mimetic mode”. In a mimetic narrative, he reminds us by quoting Plato, the author speaks “as if he or she were someone else, assimilating the diction of the person he or she imitates” (Hermans, 2001, 3). Nonetheless, assimilation, or being “as if ”, is not equal to becoming identical; moreover, in mimetic mode, several voices are heard as if they were quoted “verbatim” – whereas in “diegetic narration […] we continually hear the poet’s own voice” (ibid.). Something similar, Hermans claims, happens in every translation: the translator mimics the author’s voice, but does not abandon his or her own, and there is always a breach between the two voices. Hermans calls this breach “the differential margin” and relates it to the translator’s personal conscious and unconscious agenda, which often has ethical and ideological dimensions: It is not really a matter of rhetoric or style, of expressive means or idiolect. Rather, it is a matter of voice and value, of a speaking subject positioning itself in relation to, and at a critical distance from, even in direct opposition to the source text. (ibid., 3)

Hermans has an interesting theory about the persistent anxiety to eliminate this margin, which goes back to the times of European colonial expansion, but it will be skipped here, in order to quote at length what seems to be Hermans’ most important message: [T]he significance of translation as a cultural and historical phenomenon lies precisely in that margin, the slant, the presuppositions, the selectivity and the value judgements it reveals. Translation is of interest not despite but because of the way it prises open the ever-present interstices between originals and translations, between donor and receptor texts… [T]ranslation matters, historically and culturally, because it allows us to glimpse the selfpositioning of individuals and communities with regard to ‘others’. (Hermans, 2001, 7, emphasis added)

The cultural and historical significance of the differential margin, as a testimony of changing times and self-definitions of the text’s translators, is especially strongly felt when multiple translations of the same text exist. Unfortunately, and for a number of reasons, this is not generally the

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case in Lithuania. There is, however, one classical Scandinavian text that has been translated three times into Lithuanian by translators with very different sociocultural and geopolitical backgrounds. This is Þrymskviða (The Lay of Thrym), which is part of the Elder (Poetic) Edda and is already present in its oldest manuscript Codex Regius, usually dated to about 1278–1280. It is one of the best known and most appreciated Old Norse mythological poems – not least due to its dramatic and comic action, and probably also because it ends happily with the re-establishment of the divine status quo (Clunies Ross, 2002, 180–1824). Three Lithuanian translations of Þrymskviða Teodoras Bieliackinas (1907–1947) was the first person to translate the poem into Lithuanian, although this fact was known to very few until quite recently. His translation was done during the early stage of Lithuania’s occupation by the Soviets, while Bieliackinas was living in Iceland. It was published shortly before his death, in Sweden, in the Lithuanian expatriate magazine Pragiedruliai (1947). The editor-in-chief of the magazine, the ethnologist Juozas Lingis,5 a good friend of Bieliackinas’s, had suggested some corrections to the manuscript prior to publishing it. The manuscript, together with more than a dozen letters from Bieliackinas’s hand, has been preserved in Lingis’s personal archive, which is now stored in the library of Vilnius University. Thus, Bieliackinas’s translation exists in at least two types of hard copies and in three different textual versions: the translator’s handwritten copy (Bieliackinas MS), the same copy, but with Lingis’s corrections in red taken into account, and the printed version (Bieliackinas, 1947), which shows that most, but not all, of Lingis’s corrections have been implemented.



4 While, according to Margaret Clunies Ross’s interpretation, this status quo concerns the male hierarchy and social order, and the hammer symbolises virility (its loss is seen as symbolic castration, see ibid., 188), in Bieliackinas’s translation, as we will see, the happy end acquires a different frame of reference. 5 Lingis (1910–1998) came to Sweden to study ethnology in the 30s on a state scholarship and remained there after Lithuania was occupied. He cooperated with Prof. Sigurd Erikson, taught at the universities of Stockholm and Uppsala, and contributed significantly to the promotion of the Lithuanian language and culture in Sweden. He also translated numerous Scandinavian literary texts of a smaller scale into Lithuanian, most of which have been published in Pragiedruliai.

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A fragment of Teodoras Bieliackinas’s translation manuscript with Juozas Lingis’s corrections (courtesy of Vilnius University Library, RA F247-879)

The second translation of Þrymskviða is even less well known. It was done from German by Vladas Nausėdas (1911–1983) – a poet and master translator from this language, who among other things had translated into Lithuanian the Nibelungenlied. Nausėdas belonged to the same generation as Bieliackinas, but suffered a different fate – in 1941 he was sent for seven years to the Gulag, and after his return to Lithuania he settled in a provincial town and worked as a schoolteacher and translator. His translation of the entire Poetic Edda was completed in 1980, in the midst of the era of Soviet stagnation. Nausėdas’s translation combined

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two sources: the translations of the Edda by Hugo Gering (1892) and by Karl Simrock (1851). For some reason, Nausėdas’s translation has never been published; its typescript is stored at the Centre for Scandinavian Studies at Vilnius University. The third translation was carried out by Aurelijus Vijūnas (born 1975), whose translation of the Poetic Edda, now already a classic, came out in 2009. Vijūnas is a representative of “the generation of transition”: he was born in the time of the Soviet regime, but became a student at Vilnius University after Lithuania’s independence was restored in 1990. He later completed his BA and MA studies in Iceland, obtained a PhD degree in Indo-European linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is now associate professor at the English Department of National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan, where he has been teaching since 2006. The present paper will not provide a comparative study of the three translations, neither will there be a systematic comparison of Bieliackinas’s translation vis-à-vis the original Old Norse version of the Poetic Edda. As someone who works with contemporary Scandinavian literature, I hope that such a project will be carried out one day by a scholar from the field of Old Norse studies. It could, among other things, provide answers to the question of whether, or how, the three translators’ different backgrounds have affected the form and contents of their respective renditions of The Lay of Thrym. And although the present paper will point towards some possibilities for such research, my primary aim has been to draw the academic audience’s attention to the earliest literary translation from Old Icelandic into Lithuanian and to pay tribute to its author. This will be done by demonstrating some of the text’s “interstices” (to borrow Hermans’ word), which Bieliackinas appears to have filled in with his own ideological “agenda”. By understanding how this “agenda” manifested itself, one will be able to contribute in the future to a more nuanced (re)construction of the personality and life of the man who was the first professional Lithuanian Scandinavianist. He could have made a great difference to Lithuanian Scandinavian Studies, had history and fate been less brutal co-authors of his biography. “Writing” Bieliackinas During the period of Soviet occupation Bieliackinas appears to have been mentioned in the official press in Lithuania only once, and only in

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passing, without any political implications. It was done on the occasion of the translation of Halldór Laxness’s novel Íslandsklukkan (Iceland’s Bell) into Lithuanian, in a review written by the writer and physician Vytautas Sirijos Gira, who in his youth was a close friend of the Bieliackinas family (Sirijos Gira, 1982, 241–244). Bieliackinas’s activities had numerous mentions in the Lithuanian expat press, especially in connection with his death: obituaries were published in Germany,6 Sweden7 and the USA.8 After his death, his name and details of his life would continue occasionally to appear in publications by Lithuanian émigrés: there was, for example, an entry on him in the Boston Lithuanian Encyclopedia (Biržiška, 1954, 493), and he figured in Pulgis Andriušis’s memoirs (Andriušis, 1968, 93). Due to Bieliackinas’s outspoken anti-Soviet views, such information was not freely available to those who lived behind the Iron Curtain, and even those few who knew it had no chance of publicly spreading it. It was not until 2009 that there appeared a couple of paragraphs about Bieliackinas’s fate in an article written by Svetlana Steponavičienė and published in a special issue of the Lithuanian magazine Krantai dedicated to Iceland9 (Steponavičienė, 2009, 71). A year later, the book Paviliojo Islandija: Teodoro Bieliackino pėdsakais (Enticed by Iceland: In Teodoras Bieliackinas’s Footsteps), by the German-based journalist and author Leonas Stepanauskas, came out, which sketched and documented, with the help of testimonies from the people who knew him,10 the outline of Bieliackinas’s life story. It was also supplied with extensive quotes from Bieliackinas’s own letters and articles, and the author’s own impressions of Iceland. An important source for Stepanauskas were the obituaries written by some outstanding Icelandic cultural personalities: the writer Guðmundur G. Hagalín (1947, 3, 5), the editor-in-chief of the conservative newspaper Morgunblaðið, Valtýr Stefánsson (1947, 6), the cultural worker Gunnar H. Stefánsson (1947, 4) and the Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness (1947, 3), whom Bieliackinas had taught Russian. Not so long ago, Bieliackinas’s name began re-emerging in the Icelandic press: in the preface and commentary to the republished 6 Aidai (April 1947, 1, 8); Lietuvių žodis (April 1947, 39 (51), 3), Tėviškės garsas (March 1947, 65, 6). 7 Pragiedruliai (March 1947, 6, 25). 8 Draugas (April 1947, 80, 3). 9 The article is dedicated to the Icelandic linguist Jörundur Hilmarsson, who told its author about Teodoras Bieliackinas. 10 For example, Auður Laxness, see Stepanauskas, 2010, 45.

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Icelandic translation of Prof. Ants Oras’s book The Baltic Eclipse (1948; Oras, 2016, 8, 147), and also in connection with the explorations of the activities of the Icelandic communists during the Cold War and of Halldór Laxness’s “flirtation” with the Soviet Union (Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson, 2018, 42).11 Bieliackinas has also made an appearance in the family saga Shipwrecked in Africa by the Icelandic-Spanish author Georg Davið Mileris (2011).12 What follows is a short summary of the basic facts about Teodoras Bieliackinas’s life. He was born in 1907 in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the family of the distinguished lawyer Semion Beliackin (Семён Беляцкин), who fled from the Bolshevik revolution and settled in Lithuania in the early 1920s. Simonas Bieliackinas, as he was called in Lithuania, had played a key role in creating the legal system of the young state. He co-authored laws, acted as legal advisor for the Ministry of Jewish Affairs, was a professor at Vytautas Magnus University, an active scholar, a practising solicitor and even a writer of fiction. He perished in the Holocaust (his tragic fate is described in the book by Avraham Tory, 1990, 206 and 478– 481).13 Very little is known about Teodoras’s mother, only that she could have been a doctor (Hagalín, 1947, 3) and that she could have been killed by the Bolsheviks (Aidai, 1947, 8; Tėviškės garsas, 1947, 6).14 Teodoras had studied in Berlin and Kaunas, and he first came to Iceland in 1936, living there permanently from 1939. He graduated from Háskóli Íslands in 1945, with a degree in Icelandic, French and Philosophy. Bieliackinas had a phenomenal talent for languages: alongside Icelandic, which he mastered very quickly, he had a good command of Finnish and Swedish, and could read Norwegian and Danish. He gave classes in German, French, Russian, Classical Greek and Lithuanian, and he worked as an interpreter from English for the British and US armed forces after the war broke 11 Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson is the primus motor behind these confrontations, some of which have stirred heated public debate in Iceland. 12 The book tells the dramatic story of the writer’s Icelandic grandmother Fjóla Steinsdóttir and his German-Russian grandfather Vladimir Knopf Mileris (1916– 1999), who was born in Lithuania, found refuge in Iceland during WWII, became close friends with Bieliackinas and spent a good part of his life in Sierra Leone. 13 The commentary to Tory’s book, however, contains a number of factual mistakes, regarding, for example, Fedja’s (a Russian diminutive of Fiodor/Teodoras) place of death and occupation (see Tory, 1990, 481). 14 In Simonas Bieliackinas’s application for Lithuanian citizenship, which can be obtained at the Lithuanian Central State Archive, it is stated that she died while the family were already living in Lithuania, and no cause of death is provided.

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out and his father’s financial support stopped. Bieliackinas was officially engaged to a young Icelandic woman, Svava Ágústsdóttir, who was of tremendous help to him in all his Icelandic endeavours. He remained in Iceland until his early death from nephritis in 1947. After settling in Iceland, Bieliackinas often wrote for the Lithuanian press (mainly for XX amžius, Naujoji Romuva and Draugas) about Scandinavia, spoke on Icelandic radio and wrote articles (mainly for Morgunblaðið), thereby spreading the word about Lithuania and later about its occupation; he had also protested against the Soviet invasion of Finland (Bieliackinaz [sic], 1939, 5). His writings made him a target of aggressive attacks from Icelandic communists,15 who in the Soviet-funded paper Þjóðviljinn promoted the view that the Baltic States had voluntarily joined the Soviet Union. They labelled Bieliackinas a “Lithuanian fascist Jew” (“fasíski litúviski Gyðingur”; Björn Franzson, 1946, 5) and demanded his expulsion from the country. He had, however, friends among leading Icelandic intellectuals who supported him, especially the writer Guðmundur G. Hagalín and the journalist Valtýr Stefánsson, and even Laxness, although their political views were radically different. Bieliackinas’s letters to Lingis show that he was well read in Old Norse literature and had plans to engage in extensive translations, as do his articles, in which he tried to compare Lithuania and Iceland to each other by finding parallels between sagas and Lithuanian folklore and referring to the Scandinavian-Baltic contacts in the Middle Ages (especially Bieliackinas, 1940, 14). The project of reconstructing Bieliackinas’s profile as the first Lithuanian Scandinavianist will have to include the collection of everything that his pen has produced and that can still be traced. His numerous articles in Icelandic can be accessed online at Tímarit.is, and some Lithuanian articles published in XX amžius can be found on the Lithuanian platform e-paveldas, despite the poor quality of its search function. His translations of shorter texts from Swedish classics exist,16 and his letters tell us that he was working on the translation of Lithuanian literature into Icelandic and that he had himself written a novel in that 15 The party, however, was at that time officially called “The Icelandic Socialist Party”. 16 His translations of the Viking Code (Vikingabalk) from Fritjof’s saga by Esaias Tegnér and of two shorter texts by Hjalmar Söderberg were printed in Naujoji Romuva, 1939, 18 (432), 389 and 392–393. The Viking Code was republished shortly after his death in Pragiedruliai, 1947, 2, 20–21.

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language.17 Bieliackinas could have left more translations, more personal letters and manuscripts, related to Scandinavian studies, which must be searched for, collected and explored. So far, his translation of The Lay of Thrym remains the most complete surviving testimony of Bieliackinas’s engagement with Old Norse literature and deserves special attention. Approaching Bieliackinas’s translation of Þrymskviða Most Scandiniavianists will remember that The Lay of Thrym tells the story of the loss and recovery of the hammer Mjollnir (Mjo˛llnir), which had been stolen from its owner Thor (Þórr) by Thrym (Þrymr), the king of the giants (Jötnar). It is an asset of crucial importance to the gods (Æsir), because it keeps the giants, their greatest enemies, at bay. The story ends well, but the hammer is recovered only after wit and physical strength join forces. Loki, the trickster, takes Thor to Jotunheim (Jötunnheimr), the realm of the giants, disguised as the beautiful goddess Freya whom the giants demand as ransom – to be married to Thrym. As soon as “the bride” again lays hands on Mjollnir in a fake wedding ceremony, (s)he kills the giant king and his greedy sister. There are various ways to approach Bieliackinas’s translation of this poem. One often starts with the title, which in this case is especially rewarding, as the title presents an issue that Lithuanians like to quarrel about – the transliteration of foreign proper names. Bieliackinas’s choice of Trimas reflected the modern Icelandic pronunciation, but Lingis corrected it to Trymas, which was closer to the original Icelandic orthography. Obviously for the same reason, the king of the giants was also called Trymas by Nausėdas, whereas Vijūnas found the variant Triumas most appropriate, as it complied with the reconstructed phonology of Old Icelandic. Since there exist three different versions of Bieliackinas’s translation, a contrastive and comparative analysis of these versions could also be undertaken with the aim of exploring whether all changes to the manuscript are justified. One of Lingis’s interventions, which appeared in the printed version, is found in the lines in which Thor demands that Loki deliver 17 So far, one published translation of a short story by the Lithuanian realist writer Petras Cvirka has been traced: Samviskan, Fálkinn, 1944, 31, 8. As to Bieliackinas’s novel, he claims in his letter of 26.08.1945 that it had been accepted by an Icelandic publishing house. It has not been published though.

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his recount before landing: Loki had just returned from Jötunnheimr, to which he had flown on a scouting trip with the help of Freya’s feather dress. Although Bieliackinas’s original version (ex. 2 below) contains the word that is also used in the Old Norse poem (pasakos – so˛gur – (fairy)tales) and has a more natural flow, Lingis’s suggestion (ех. 3) follows the most common trend: the phrase so˛gur of fallask18 is most often rendered in a way that means that a seated teller’s memory is deceitful, and stories are forgotten or things are easily mixed up (ex. 3–6 and 8–10 below). Bieliackinas, however, had rendered it differently in his handwritten text: if seated, people often “tell fairy tales” (ex. 2), that is, they let their imagination run away with them and thus tend to tell things not exactly the same way as they happened, if they happened at all. He is not alone in his choice: seated storytellers’ aptness for producing fiction (as opposed to lying, which is expressed in the subsequent lines) is implied in George Johnston’s English translation (ex. 7) and in the Danish translation by Thøger Larsen (ex. 11). 1. Finnur Jónsson (1932) 10  … opt sitjanda so˛gur of fallask ok liggjandi lygi of bęllir.

2. Teodoras Bieliackinas (MS) 10  … Dažnas, kas sėdi – pasakas seka ir tam, kas guli, melas išsprunka. Literally: Often the one who sits tells fairy tales And from the one who is lying down, a lie slips out.

3. Teodoras Bieliackinas (1947) 10  … Nes mintys sėdint dažnai nusilpsta O gulint gi melas dažnai išsprunka. Literally: Because thoughts, while sitting, often slacken And in a lying position, a lie often slips out. 18 I am grateful to Professor A. Liberman for the following explanation in a letter: “fallask is a reflexive form of falla, which means something like ‘to fall with regard to oneself ’. But -sk sometimes does not affect the meaning of the verb, so the literal translation should be something like ‘to get lost’”.

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Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė 4. Vladas Nausėdas (TS) 9 [sic]  … Sėdintis kartais žodžių pritrūksta, Gulintis dažnas ima meluoti. Literally: The sitting one sometimes gets short of words, The lying one is prone to a lie. 5. Aurelijus Vijūnas (2009) 10  … Tas, kuris sėdi, dažnai susimaišo, O tas kurs guli –  per daug primeluoja. Literally: The one who is sitting often gets confused, The one who is lying down,  tells too many lies. 6. Karl Simrock (1851) 10  … Dem Sitzenden manchmal mangeln Gedanken,  Da leicht im Liegen die List sich ersinnt. Literally: The sitting one sometimes is short of thoughts, And in a lying position a deceit is easily devised. 7. George Johnston (1990) 10  … seated messengers say more than truth, lying down messengers lie every word.

8. Jackson Crawford (2015) 10  … Stories are often forgotten When the teller sits down, And lies are often told When people lie down.

Dreaming the Hammer Back 9. Оlga Smirnickaja (1999) 10  … Часто, кто сядет, в беседе нескладен, Часто, кто ляжет, ложь затевает. Literally: Often the one who sits down is awkward in a conversation, Often the one who lies down contrives a lie.

73 10. Rolf Stavnem (2018) 10  … den siddende glemmer sager den liggende lyver om alt. Literally: The one who sits forgets things the one who lies down lies about everything.

11. Thøger Larsen (1926) 10  … Den, som sidder, snakker i Taage, den, som ligger, har Løgn i Halsen. Literally: The one who sits speaks in mist [in an obscure way], the one who lies down, has lie in the throat.

Probably the most relevant thing would be to investigate how Bieliackinas translates the details of Scandinavian mythology, or rather what solutions he comes up with regarding some trickier cases. One example could be the lines that John Lindow refers to as “a troubling passage” (Lindow, 2001, 170), because the words sem vanir aðrir (literally: “like other Vanir”) may imply that Heimdall (Heimdallr) also belongs to that group of gods, although he is normally numbered as one of the Æsir.19 Translators choose different solutions with respect to this episode: Bieliackinas (ex. 2), Benjamin Thorpe (ex. 5) and Rolf Stavnem (ex. 9) do not attempt to avoid the implication, while others decide to remove it outright, probably in order not to confuse the reader not well versed in Old Norse mythology:

19 The word annarr (other) is often used redundantly, or may here mean “else”, “otherwise” (i.e. Heimdall could see the future, which otherwise (only) the Vanir can do) (Wimmer, 1877, 168).

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Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė 1. Finnur Jónsson (1932) 15 Þá kvað þat Hęimdallr, hvítastr ása, vissi vęl framm sem vanir aðrir:  …

2. Teodoras Bieliackinas (MS; 1947) 15 Heimdalis tarė, dievų balčiausias, Kas bus žinojo, kaip visi vanai –:  … Literally: Heimdall said, the whitest of gods He knew what will be, as all the Vanir –:

3. Vladas Nausėdas (TS) 14 Heimdalis tarė, dievas gudriausias – Viską žinojęs, nors jis ir ne vanas –:  … Literally: Heimdall said, the shrewdest god – He knew everything, although not a Vanr –: 4. Aurelijus Vijūnas (2009) 15 Heimdalis tarė,  asas šviesiausias – Išmintim savo prilygo jis vanams:  … Literally: Heimdall said, the brightest of gods In his wisdom he  equalled the Vanir: …

5. Benjamin Thorpe (1866) 16 [sic] Then said Heimdall, of Æsir brightest he well foresaw, like other Vanir –  …

6. Karl Simrock (1851) 15 Da hub Heimdall an, der hellste der Asen, Der weise war den Wanen gleich:  … Literally: Then Heimdall started, the brightest of Æsir The wise one was like the Vanir.

7. George Johnston (1990) 15 Word from Heimdal whitest of gods, second-sighted seer, like the Vanir:  …

Dreaming the Hammer Back 8. Оlga Smirnickaja (1999) 15 Хеймдалль сказал, пресветлый ас, Ведал он судьбы, как вещие ваны:  … Literally: Heimdall said, a brightest Áss, He knew destinies like the prophetic Vanir.

75 9. Rolf Stavnem (2018) 15 Så sagde Hejmdal, hvidest af aser, vis om fremtiden som andre vaner:  … Literally: Then said Heimdall the whitest of Æsir wise about the future like other Vanir.

A comprehensive analysis of Bieliackinas’s translation should certainly also include an investigation of the aspects that have a major impact on the translation’s artistic quality. One could explore whether, or how and to what effect, the traditional metric and alliterative patterns of Eddic poetry have been rendered, although Bieliackinas (as later did Vijūnas) explicitly expressed the decision to disregard the original alliteration (Bieliackinas’s letter to Lingis of 19.12.1946; Vijūnas, 2009, 27). One of Bieliackinas’s most creative choices was the employment of grammar in order to (re)create the style and characters of the poem. For example, he evoked the archaic effect by using the dual form of the verb vykti (to go) and the dual personal pronouns mudu (we two, masc.) and mudvi (we two, fem.).20 Loki says to Freya: Finnur Jónsson (1932) 12  … bitt þik Fręyja brúðar líni, vit skulum aka tvau í J0˛tunhęima.

20 The dual form of verbs is extinct in most Indo-European languages, but is still used, although mainly in dialectal forms, in Lithuanian. The dual form of the personal pronoun remains a standard in Lithuanian.

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Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė Teodoras Bieliackinas (MS) 12  … Tu puoškis, Frėja, jaunosios rūbais. Vyksiva mudu nūn Milžinijon. Literally: You, Freya, better dress yourself in bride’s clothes. We two (masc.) will go now to Giantland.

And when Loki tells Thor that they have to go to the giants disguised as women, he says: Finnur Jónsson (1932) 21  … Mun ek ok með þér ambótt vesa, vit skulum aka tvær í J0˛tunhęima

Teodoras Bieliackinas (MS) 21  … Aš tavo vergė dabar štai būsiu Vyksiva mudvi į Milžiniją. Literally: So now I will be your slave-maid We two (fem.) will go now to Giantland.

In this last example, the choice of the feminine dual first person form seems to be well grounded – not only because it corresponds to the grammatical form of the source text (vit … tvær) and contributes to conveying the comic character of the situation, but also because it reflects Loki’s androgynous nature and the ease with which he adapts to his often-changing identity. The treasure lost will be restored As previously discussed, Bieliackinas’s translation does not exhibit any drastic breach with the source text. The situation becomes different when one takes into consideration the translation of some key words that pertain to the topology of action and to some degree also of the words that identify the dramatis personae of the epic poem. It is here that one notices the greatest “differential margin” between the “donor” and “receptor” texts, that “interstice”, according to Hermans, where the translator’s own agenda can make an appearance.

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Bieliackinas calls the individual Æsir and Jötnar by their proper names (Toras – Thor, Frėja – Freya, Lokis – Loki, Trimas – Þrymr); nonetheless, he never refers to these characters collectively as the Æsir or Jötnar. Instead, he uses the more general nominations dievai (gods) and milžinai (giants). This is the first little step towards minimising the distance between his intended reader and the world of the song, which in all respects lies light years away from his countrymen (never before had they been exposed to Old Norse material in their mother tongue, and few had read it in any other language). Furthermore, Bieliackinas never calls Thrym a king, but always “commander of the giants” (milžinų vadas), which brings in disquieting associations with the military and political conflicts of the time. The distance is reduced further when Bieliackinas translates þing (the assembly, where Old Norse gods and men alike gather to resolve vital issues) as seimas. This is what the Lithuanian parliament, which had its origins in the parliamentary tradition of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Petrauskas, 2005), was called before the Soviet occupation of 1940 (and what it has been called again since 1991). In the same stanza, Bieliackinas lets the female deities (dievaitės) hold (literally: enter) a council (ex. 2). Thus he not only keeps the stanza within the register of political discourse, but also emphasises that the loss of the hammer was a matter of “state importance” to all the gods, both male and female on equal terms – a threat to the entire kin’s collective security. This “gender equality” is lost after Lingis’s revision (ex. 3): 1. Finnur Jónsson (1932) 14. Sęnn vó˛ru æsir allir á þingi ok ó˛synjur allar á máli. ok of þat réðu ríkir tívar, hvé Hlórriða hamar of sœtti.

2. Teodoras Bieliackinas (MS) 14. Tada į seimą dievai suėjo, ir į tarybą stojo dievaitės. Dievai aukštieji ėmė čia tartis, kas Toro kūjį parnešt galėtų. Literally: Then the gods gathered in the seimas and the goddesses entered a/the council. The High Gods started here conferring who could bring Thor’s hammer back.

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Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė 3. Teodoras Bieliackinas (1947) 14 Tada į seimą dievai suėjo, pasikalbėti stojo dievaitės. Dievai galingi tuoj ėmė tartis, kas Toro kūjį parnešt galėtų. Literally: Then the gods gathered in the seimas, the goddesses entered into converse. The powerful gods started conferring at once who could bring Thor’s hammer back.

The same wish to emphasise the political implications of the disaster the gods were facing seems to have governed Bieliackinas’s translation of Ásgarðr (the home of the Æsir) as dievų valstybė (the gods’ state): Finnur Jónsson (1932) 18  … þegar munu j0˛tnar Ásgarð búa, nema þinn hamar þér of hęimtir.

Teodoras Bieliackinas (MS) 18  … Valdys galiūnai dievų valstybę, Jei neatgausi iš jų tu kūjo. Literally: The powerful will rule the gods’ state If you do not get your hammer back from them.

Lingis did not interfere with this choice, but for some unclear reason replaced the word galiūnai (the powerful ones) with the word milžinai (giants) in this stanza. The home of the giants, Jo˛tunheimr, is not called a state by Bieliackinas, however, but is systematically referred to as Milžinija. The root of the word means “giant”, while the suffix, together with the inflexion, reflects the usual way of forming country names in Lithuanian. For instance: Lenkija (Poland), Vokietija (Germany), Anglija (England) and, of course, Sovietija (“Sovietland”) – the pejorative form used by Lithuanian émigrés when referring to the Soviet Union. This association is weakened in the printed version, where the word is no longer capitalised. Taken together, Bieliackinas’s lexical choices, which have been discussed here, symbolically relocate the action of the story to the Lithuanian reader’s own dramatic space and time, and inscribe into the topos of the

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hammer the allegorical significance of lost (Lithuanian) statehood. This probably explains why so much energy is put by Bieliackinas into the last stanza. In no other translation does there seem to be such genuine rejoicing at letting the giants get what they have deserved for laying hands on the gods’ treasure. The final blow in this poem is struck not only with Mjollnir, but also with the translator’s own – onomatopoeic and also alliterative (at least in the modern sense of the notion) – hammer. Hopefully even people with no understanding of Lithuanian can feel its emotional charge:21 Finnur Jónsson (1932) 34 Drap hann hina 0˛ldnu j0˛tna systur, hin ’s brúðféar of beðit hafði; hón skęll of hlaut fyr skillinga, ęn h0˛gg hamars fyr hringa fj0˛lð. Svá kom Óðins sonr ęndr at hamri.

Teodoras Bieliackinas (MS) 34 nukovė seną milžino sesę, kur dovanų sau prašyti mėgino. Čakšt per pakaušį – štai pinigėliai! Žiebt jai su kūju21 – štai ir žiedai tau! Taip savo kūjį Toras atgavo. Literally: He slayed the giant’s old sister who had tried asking for presents. Wham on the back of the head – here is your money! Bonk with the hammer – here are the rings for you too! This is how Thor his hammer regained.

“Bringing Scandinavia and Lithuania closer to each other” Bieliackinas’s original translation of Þrymskviða is one of many proofs of the paradoxical power of the myth to express and explain things, which, in a given historical moment (or in one’s personal experience), may, without this background, appear to be specific and singular, and often tragic, beyond consolation. Other scholars have noted the political undertones of the divine drama in this song and related it to concrete historical events: 21 Lingis changes the onomatopoeic interjections “čakšt” and “žiebt” into “taukšt” and “žybt”, respectively. While Lingis’s second suggestion may be a matter of personal choice, his first suggestion is more exact with regard to the sound of the hammer.

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according to Paul Beekman Taylor, for example, the story about the loss and retrieval of Thor’s hammer (“an essential mark of cultural identity”) anticipated the deterioration of the traditional Icelandic political and religious institutions (Taylor, 1994, 277). Almost 50 years earlier, Bieliackinas already seemed to be aware of the universality and elasticity of this myth when he invested his translation with Lithuanian political reality and thus created in it a direct reference to the catastrophic present of his homeland. The end of World War II, during which Lithuania had changed hands several times between Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, did not bring liberation to the country, but marked the beginning of a new occupation. For Bieliackinas, this was a personal tragedy, and when Lingis’s letters made him realise that he had no chance of returning home, he wrote in his reply from 2 August 1945: I do not know what to do. When I had opportunities to create a future for myself here, I did not take care of that, because I dreamt of coming back to Lithuania, to teach Icelandic literature, to work for bringing Lithuania and Scandinavia closer to each other…22

Being a Jew, he suffered twice, and during the time he was working on the translation, in 1946–1947, he must have at least suspected what had happened to his family. What he could probably never imagine was that the time would come when Lithuanians, in whom he had invested so much trust and whom he considered himself to be one of, would have to evaluate their own role in the atrocities of the war, in which the divisions into gods and trolls did not neatly follow nationally and politically established lines. Neither could he anticipate a much brighter vision: that Iceland would be the first country to grant political recognition to Lithuania in 1991 and therefore become an object of almost uncritical reverence for Lithuanians. It is difficult to say to what degree Bieliackinas himself was conscious of the semantic implications in the poem his translation had produced. He had after all consented to most of Lingis’s emendations, which minimised the effect that has been explored in this article. Possibly, the 22 Orig.: Nežinau, ką daryti. Kai buvo progų susitvarkyti savo ateitį čia, nesirūpinau tuo, nes svajojau grįžti į Lietuvą, dėstyti islandų literatūrą, dirbti Lietuvos ir Skandinavijos suartinimui…

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translator simply conceded to his authority: his letters demonstrate his great respect and warm affection for Lingis, who was a Lithuanian native speaker and also his senior – not in terms of age, but in academic status. These circumstances notwithstanding, there is little doubt that the idea of the restoration of “the hammer” must have been the central concept in Bieliackinas’s Icelandic life. Probably, one could even call its pursuit, with reference to Jurij Lotman’s (1992, 369) concept of literary biography, one of the governing codes of Bieliackinas’s creative life script. The belief that the lost Lithuanian statehood will be recovered constantly emerges in his letters and articles. It is sometimes expressed in a somewhat naive and sentimental way, as when he urges Lithuanians living in exile to move together, establish a colony and start a new life until “things return to their usual course” (letter to Lingis of 2 August 1945). It can also be discerned behind his public actions, his cultural activities and even his last wish, according to which he bequeathed his clothes to Lithuanian refugees (see Svava Ágústsdóttir’s letter to Lingis of 12 April 1947). And, as the present article has tried to demonstrate, we find it allegorically expressed in his translation of the old Scandinavian poetical text, as a message of hope to his countrymen who, like himself, were scattered around the world and mourned the loss of their state. As for Lithuanian Scandinavianists of today, the topos of “the restoration of the lost hammer” posits a very concrete and easily performed task – to restore the original handwritten version of Bieliackinas’s translation in printed form and make it accessible for the Lithuanian audience as well as for scholarly research.

Bibliography Þrymskviða and its translations Old Icelandic version Þrymskviða (1932). In De gamle Eddadigte. Udgivne og tolkede af Finnur Jónsson (pp. 114–119). København: G. E. C. Gads Forlag. Retrieved from http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Þrymskviða_(FJ). Danish translations Tryms-Kvadet (1926). Oversat fra oldnordisk af Thøger Larsen. In Nordens Gudekvad (Edda-Myterne, 1). Lemvig: Herman Bechs Boghandel. Retrieved from http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Nordens_Gudekvad.

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Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė Trymskvadet (2018). Nyoversat og kommenteret af Rolf Stavnem. In Den Poetiske Edda (pp. 193–203). UPress. English translations The Lay of Thrym or the Hammer Recovered (1866). Translated by Benjamin Thorpe. In Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða. The Edda of Sæmund the Learned, 1 (pp. 62–66). London: Trübner & Co. The Lay of Thrym (1990). Translated by George Johnston. In his Endeared by Dark. Collected Poems. Ontario Porcupine’s Quill. Retrieved from Paul Douglas Deane (Ed.). Forgotten Ground Regained, http://alliteration.net/poetry/thrym.htm. Thrymskvitha (2015). Translated by Jackson Crawford. In The Poetic Edda. Stories of the Norse Gods and heroes (pp. 115–122). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. German translation Thrymskvidha oder Hamarsheimt. Thryms-Sage oder des Hammers Heimholung (1851). übersetzt und mit Erläuterungen begleitet von Karl Simrock. In Die Edda: die ältere und jüngere, nebst den mythischen Erzählungen der Skalda (pp. 61–65). Stuttgart: Verlag der J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung. Lithuanian translations Giesmė apie Trimą (manuscript, ~1947). Translated by Тeodoras Bieliackinas (with markings by Juozas Lingis). Stored in Juozas Lingis’s Personal Archive, Vilnius University Library, archive file F247–879. Giesmė apie Trymą (1947). Translated by Тeodoras Bieliackinas, comments by Juozas Lingis. Pragiedruliai, 4, 11–14. Trymo giesmė (typescript, 1980). Translated by Vladas Nausėdas. In Poetinė Eda (pp. 19–24). Stored at the Centre for Scandinavian Studies, Vilnius University. Giesmė apie Triumą (2009). Translated by Aurelijus Vijūnas. In Poetinė Eda (pp. 161–166). Vilnius: Aidai. Russian translation Песнь о Трюме (1999). Перевод О. А. Смирницкой [translated by Оlga Smirnickaja]. Атлантика, 4, 222–233. Retrieved from Norrœn Dýrð, http://norse.ulver.com/src/edda/thrym/ru2.html.

Dreaming the Hammer Back Other references A+A Teodoras Bieliackinas (1947). Pragiedruliai, 6, 25. Andriušis, Pulgis (1968). Septinton įleidus. Rinktiniai raštai, 1. Boston: Lietuvių enciklopedijos leidykla. Behrendt, Poul, & Bunch, Mads (2015). Selvfortalt. Autofiktioner på tværs: prosa, lyrik, teater, film. København: Dansklærerforeningens Forlag. Beekman Taylor, Paul (1994). Völundarkviða, Þrymskviða and the function of myth. Neophilologus, 78 (2), 263–281. Bieliackinaz [sic.], Teodoras (15.12.1939). Endurminningar frá Kyrjálanesi, Morgunblaðið, 294, 5. Bieliackinas, Teodoras (22.02.1940). Lithauen – landið, sem norrœnir víkingar huggu á strandhögg og rœndu konum. Vikan, 8, 14. Bieliackinas, Teodoras (1945–1946). Letters to Juozas Lingis, unpublished. In Juozas Lingis’s Personal Archive, Vilnius University Library, file nr. F247–1183. Bieliackinas, Teodoras (1954). In Vaclovas Biržiška, Antanas Bendorius, Pranas Čepėnas & Juozas Girnius (Eds.). Lietuvių enciklopedija, 2 (p. 493). Boston: Lietuvių Enciklopedijos Leidykla. Retrieved from http://lituapedija.net/Puslapis:LE02.djvu/493. Björn Franzson (15.08.1946). Sannleikurinn um Eystrasaltslöndin. Þjóðviljinn, 283, 5. Bubnys, Arūnas (2005). Kauno ir Vilniaus getų žydų policija (1941– 1944 m.). Genocidas ir rezistencija, 1 (17), 66–86. Retrieved from http://www.llks.lt/pdf2/Bubnys-Kauno-geto-policija.pdf. Burke, Sean (2004). The death and return of the author: Criticism and subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Edinburgh Universtity Press. (First published in 1992). Clunies Ross, Margaret (2002). Reading Þrymskviða. In Paul Acker & Carolyne Larrington (Eds.). The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse mythology (pp. 180–194). London and New York: Routledge. Godard, Barbara (2003). Translation poetics, from modernity to post-modernity. In Susan Petrilli (Ed.). Translation translation (pp. 87–99). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. G.St [Gunnar H. Stefánsson] (22.02.1947). Minningaorð. Teodoras Bieliac­kinas. Vísir, 55, 4. Guðmundur G. Hagalín (26.02.1947). Í minningu látins útlaga. Alþýðublaðið, 95, 3, 7.

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Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė Haarder, Jon Helt (2014). Performativ biografisme −en hovedstrømning i det senmodernes skandinaviske litteratur. København: Gyldendal. Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson (2016). Formáli. In A. Oras. Örlaganótt yfir Eystrasaltslöndum (pp. 7–10). Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið. Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson (2018). The Apologist Halldor K. Laxness. In his A twentieth century intellectual totalitarianism in Europe. Three case studies (pp. 33–50). Retrieved from https://www. acreurope.eu/files/ACRE-Totalitarism-preview%28low-res%29.pdf. Hermans, Theo (2001). Shall I apologize translation? Journal of Translation Studies, 5, 1–17. Retrieved from http://discovery.ucl. ac.uk/516/1/Ep_Apologizetrans.pdf. HKL [Haldór Laxness] (25.02.1947). Nokkur orð um Teodoras Bieliackinas. Þjóðviljinn, 46, 3. Later included into his Reisubókarkorn, 1950. Lindow, John (2001). Norse mythology: A guide to gods, heroes, rituals, and beliefs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lotman, Jurij = Лотман, Ю. М. (1992). Литературная биография в историко-культурном контексте. К типологическому соотношению текста и личности автора. In his Избранные статьи в трех томах, 1 (pp. 369–376). Талинн: Александра. Mileris, Georg Davíð (2011). Skip mitt braut við Afrikuströnd. Örlagasaga Fjólu Steinsdóttur Mileris og fjölskyldu hennar. Reykjavík: Salka. Mirė Teodoras Bieliackinas (1947). Aidai, 1, 40. Morini, Massimiliano (2013). The interpersonal function/1 (External): The translator’s personality. In his The pragmatic translator: An integral theory of translation (pp. 64–82). London/New Delhi/New York/Sydney: Bloomsbury. Munday, Jeremy (Ed.) (2008). Translation as intervention. London: Continuum. Osimo, Bruno (2019). Basic notions of translation theory: Semiotics – linguistics – psychology. Kindle edition (Studi sulla traduzione, 7). Petrauskas, Rimvydas (2005). Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės Seimo ištakos: didžiojo kunigaikščio taryba ir bajorų suvažiavimai XIV–XV a. Parlamento studijos, 3. Online resource, http://www. parlamentostudijos.lt/Nr3/Istorija_Petrauksas.htm. Petrilli, Susan (2003). Translating with Borges. In Susan Petrilli (Ed.). Translation translation (pp. 517–530). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Rojo, Ana, & Ramos Caro, Marina (2016). Can emotion stir translation skill? Defining the impact of positive and negative emotions

Dreaming the Hammer Back on translation performance. In Ricardo Muñoz Martin (Ed.). Reembedding Translation Process Research (pp. 107–130). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Sirijos Gira, Vytautas (1982). Kelios mintys Islandijos varpo proga. H. Laksnesas Islandijos varpas, 1967. In his Iš gyvenimo į knygą (pp. 241–244). Vilnius: Vaga. Stepanauskas, Leonas (2010). Paviliojo Islandija: Teodoro Bieliackino pėdsakais. Vilnius: Versus aureus. Steponavičienė, Svetlana (2009). Jörunduro dvidešimt lietuviškųjų gyvenimo metų… Jörundar saga Hilmarssonar Lithaugalandsfara. Krantai, 1, 66–89. Svava Ágústsdóttir (1947). Letter to Juozas Lingis, April 12. In Juozas Lingis’ Personal Archive, Vilnius University Library, file nr. F247–1183. Tory, Avraham (1990). Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary. Cambridge, Mass./ London: Harvard University Press. V.St [Valtýr Stefánsson] (1.03.1947). Nokkur minningaorð um Teodoras Bieliackinas. Morgunblaðið, 50, 5. Wimmer, Ludvig Frands Adalbert (1877). Oldnordisk læsebog med anmærkninger og ordsamling. København: C. Steen & Sön.

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The Hero and his Values Ugnius Mikučionis University of Bergen

Abstract: In this article, I argue that the portrayals of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani as a hero that emerge from the narratives about the slaying of the dragon in the Prose Edda and in the Saga of the Volsungs are rather different. A hero’s essence is not only about what actions the hero performs or what physical qualities the hero possesses, but also about what choices he makes and what values he adheres to. Therefore, one has to investigate why Sigurðr chose to agree to slay Fáfnir in order to be able to judge how heroic this deed was – or was not. A comparative analysis of the two source texts shows that while the main motivating factor for Sigurðr in the Prose Edda version of the narrative is the prospect of gaining Fáfnir’s treasure, the version contained in the Saga of the Volsungs gives a completely different picture. Here, the main motivation arises from Sigurðr’s own desire to avenge those who had killed his father, Sigmundr. In order to be able to wreak his vengeance, Sigurðr needs a suitable weapon, a sword without equal. Since Reginn is extraordinarily zealous in inciting Sigurðr to slay Fáfnir, Sigurðr promises to do so in exchange for a sword that Reginn – who is a smith with supernatural, dwarf-like competences – has to fashion using all his skill and effort. Additionally, avenging the injustice suffered by Reginn seems morally right, and is compatible with Sigurðr’s plans. The prospect of acquiring a hoard of gold may have contributed to his resolution, but in the Saga of the Volsungs it is not the main motivating factor for Sigurðr.

1. Introduction Some time ago, I was rather perplexed to read, in a book by Aron Gurevich, that the famous Russian researcher Mikhail Steblin-Kamenskij did not consider Sigurðr Fáfnisbani a real hero. According to Gurevich, Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.5 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Steblin-Kamenskij argued that the most glorious deed performed by Sigurðr, i.e., the slaying of the dragon, required only physical, and not spiritual, strength. The way he killed Fáfnir by attacking him from a trench was more of an ambush than an honest fight. The reason why Sigurðr killed Fáfnir was nothing more than greed for gold. Immediately after having killed Fáfnir, Sigurðr committed treason and killed Reginn, the one who had forged the victorious sword for Sigurðr and who had taught him how to kill Fáfnir.1 I was taken aback. If Sigurðr is not a real hero, then who is? Are there any heroes at all? Admittedly, Gurevich “defends” Sigurðr against Steblin-Kamenskij’s criticism, and justifies his status as a hero. Why would Scandinavian and other Germanic people keep the memory of Sigurðr/Siegfried in high esteem if they had not seen him as a true hero, Gurevich asks rhetorically. The reason for killing Fáfnir cannot have been something as unsophisticated as greed for gold. One has to remember that the gold in question was not simple gold: it had magical characteristics and embodied the “luck” and power of its owner. Sigurðr did not attack and kill Reginn before he had learnt that the latter was planning to kill him. Importantly, the distinction between one’s physical strength (or other external characteristics, such as handsomeness) and one’s spiritual firmness was not drawn by the Old Norse audience in the same way it is usually drawn in our days. Sigurðr was a living embodiment of perfectness in the eyes of people of that time.2



1 “М. И. Стеблин-Каменский специально останавливается на Сигурде, наиболее прославленном из героев «Эдды». Что же героического совершил Сигурд? Прозвище Сигурда – Убийца Фафнира (дракона, охранявшего клад Нифлунгов – Нибелунгов), но, замечает исследователь, Сигурд, совершая этот подвиг, затратил одни только физические силы, «не обнаружив никакой силы духа». Он забрался в яму на пути ничего не подозревавшего дракона и пронзил его мечом. Не честный бой, а убийство из засады! Побудительную причину поступка Сигурда М. И. Стеблин-Каменский усматривает в простой корысти, в стремлении завладеть золотом, которое охранял дракон. Мало этого, Сигурд, умертвив Фафнира, тут же прибегает к предательству: не желая делиться добычей, он убивает его брата Регина, кузнеца, который выковал для него победоносный меч и научил его, как умертвить Фафнира” (Гуревич, 2005, 54f.). 2 “[П]очему же скандинавы и другие германские народы веками хранили память о Сигурде – Зигфриде и иных героях и все вновь воспевали их в своих песнях? Они ведь хорошо знали, […] что он стремился завладеть золотым кладом и убил своего учителя Регина. Очевидно, эти обстоятельства, настораживающие современного исследователя, вовсе не тревожили сочинителей

The Hero and his Values

Still, I could not help thinking about Sigurðr and about what exactly makes a hero. I came to the conclusion that such a discussion cannot be confined to the question of how the hero performs his deeds and what qualities (physical or spiritual) he possesses, but also has to take into account the question of why the deeds are performed. It seems obvious that Sigurðr killed Fáfnir because Reginn urged him to do so; but why did Sigurðr choose to agree to kill the dragon? Was Sigurðr interested in the act of killing itself, in all the glory and honour he knew he would win by killing the dragon, or in the gold he knew Fáfnir was guarding? Did he consider it a rightful thing to kill the evil creature, well, because all dragons are evil by definition – or because he knew this particular dragon was remarkably evil? Does the choice to kill Fáfnir tell us anything about Sigurðr’s own values? In this article, I discuss how Reginn the smith persuades Sigurðr to kill Fáfnir as well as what choices Sigurðr makes, and reflect around what и исполнителей песней «Эдды» и отвечали ожиданиям и вкусам их аудитории. […] [Ж]елание завладеть золотом невозможно свести к элементарной жадности. Ведь золото, предмет раздора между асами (Æsir), альвами (álfar) и братьями Регином и Фафниром, обладало магическими свойствами и материализовало «удачу» того, кто им обладал. В нем как бы воплощались благополучие и власть. Неверно было бы игнорировать его символическую и магическую функцию. Далее, Сигурд напал на Фафнира по подстрекательству его брата и убил Регина после того как узнал, что тот замышляет умертвить его. Борьба с чудовищем, в какого обратился великан Фафнир, охранявший золото, доставшееся ему, кстати говоря, в результате отцеубийства, не требовала соблюдения тех правил, какими руководствовались персонажи исландских саг, мстившие своим обидчикам. […] Утверждение о том, что эддические герои, собственно, вовсе и не герои, проистекает из мысли об идентичности понятия героического в давние времена и в Новое время. Герой, свершающий ратный подвиг, с современной точки зрения, – человек, который обладает прежде всего силой духа; выдающихся физических качеств он может быть и лишен, во всяком случае, они не обязательны. Между тем древнескандинавский герой выделяется как силой духа, так и физической силой, – по сути своей они едины и неразрывны, и потому никакого противоречия между ними не ощущается. […] Дух и материя, моральное состояние героя и его физические качества не воспринимались в ту эпоху раздельно. Тогдашней системе ценностей чужда подобная дихотомия. Внешняя сила была симптомом величия духа. Ценили человека как за бесстрашие и верность, так и за физическую сноровку и силу мышц. Не случайно в песнях отмечается «великолепный облик» Сигурда – это не просто красота и воинская сила; Сигурд, в глазах людей той эпохи, – воплощение совершенства” (Гуревич, 2005, 55ff.).

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Sigurðr’s core values are. The source texts used in the study are the Prose Edda (specifically, Skáldskaparmál) and the Saga of the Volsungs.3 The text of the Prose Edda referred to in this article is the one edited by Anthony Faulkes (Snorri Sturluson, 1998 [2007], ed. Faulkes). It is based mainly on the R manuscript (that is, Codex Regius, or GKS 2367 4to) because “[i]t is assumed that R, which has the fullest text of any of the medieval manuscripts, represents the contents and arrangement of the Prose Edda in the form nearest to that in which Snorri left it” (Snorri Sturluson, 1998 [2007], ed. Faulkes, li). The edition of the Saga of the Volsungs consulted in this study is the one edited by Ronald George Finch (Vo˛lsunga saga. The Saga of the Volsungs, 1965, ed. and trans. Finch), but for English quotations I chose to use a more recent translation by Kaaren Grimstad (Vo˛lsunga saga. The Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, ed. and trans. Grimstad).4 There is only one vellum manuscript of this saga, dating from around 1400, namely Ny kgl. Saml. 1824 b 4to, which numerous paper manuscripts (dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century) derive from (see Finch, 1993, 711). Although the narrative about Sigurðr’s killing of Fáfnir in the two sources comprises the same core elements,5 there are significant differences as to the order those elements come in, and how they are used. Thus, in the Prose Edda the story about Hreiðmarr having been killed by



3 For a thorough discussion of the lays of the Poetic Edda telling the story of Sigurðr, see e.g. Haimerl (2013) and Clark (2012, 67–88). 4 Both Finch’s and Grimstad’s editions are bilingual, and provide a translation into English besides the Old Norse original. The reason I have chosen to use Finch’s edition for quotations of the Old Norse text of the saga, despite its being over five decades old, is that this edition uses the so-called “normalized” Old Norse spelling. The much more recent edition by Grimstad is, by contrast, diplomatic (i.e., non-normalized). In this article, I have chosen to use the normalized spelling in all quotations from Old Norse texts (both the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs). 5 Indeed, certain phrases in the two texts are nearly identical, e.g. “En er þat var gert, þá gekk Hreiðmarr fram ok sá eitt granahár ok bað hylja” (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 26; emphasis added) and “En Hreiðmarr leit til ok hugði at vandliga ok sá eitt granahár ok bað þat hylja” (Snorri Sturluson, 1998 [2007], ed. Faulkes, 45; emphasis added). Of course, such affinity is not incidental, but is a consequence of the fact that the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs share the lays of the Poetic Edda as a major source. In Reginsmál (2014, eds. Jónas Kristjánsson & Vésteinn Ólason, 297), it says “En er þat var go˛rt gekk Hreiðmarr fram ok sá eitt granahár ok bað hylja”.

The Hero and his Values

Fáfnir is primarily an account of why gold is called “otter-payment”, and serves as a precursor of the later events. In the Saga of the Volsungs, this story is, by contrast, told by Reginn himself, and used by him as a part of his argument that Fáfnir has to be killed. My point of departure is the assumption that such differences between the texts result in somewhat different portrayals of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, as they show rather different sets of values that Sigurðr adheres to. The method I use in this study is first and foremost close reading and comparison of the source texts, and reasoning around the differences between them. I also use the actantial model developed by Algirdas Julien Greimas in order to analyse the communication between Sigurðr and Reginn. 2. The story in the source texts A comparison and reasoning around some differences in the source texts. Both the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs have it that Sigurðr killed Fáfnir because Reginn urged him to do so. The reason Reginn wanted to have his brother killed is that Fáfnir did not share the gold with Reginn after having killed their father, Hreiðmarr. In his turn, Hreiðmarr had received the gold as a ransom for his son Otr who had been killed by Loki. The original owner of the gold was Andvari the dwarf, who pronounced that possessing the gold, which had been taken from him, would cause the death of its subsequent owners, a pronouncement Loki reiterated once more before leaving Hreiðmarr’s farm. Thus, the direct reason for Sigurðr’s killing of the dragon in both the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs is Reginn’s urging, but also Andvari’s pronouncement, or curse, is important. In older, underlying versions of the story, reasons of cosmological importance may have made the slaying of the dragon necessary. It may, for instance, be argued that the whole thing from the very beginning was a smart plan that Óðinn had made in order to get rid of Fáfnir,6 or that the encounter between Sigurðr and Fáfnir is, ultimately, a remote reflection of an old Indo-European myth about the

6 “Odin appears here as ancestor and patron of the Volsung line and its scion, the dragon slayer Sigurd. […] It is Odin who first provides the magical sword that Sigurd later inherits from his father Sigmund. Odin also advises Sigurd how to identify the special horse Grani, a descendant of the god’s own eight-legged steed Sleipnir. […] [A]t crucial moments for Sigurd’s ancestors, Odin’s intervention ensures the continuation of the family that is to produce the monster slayer. […]

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thunder-god’s killing of the serpent guarding a desirable object and preventing access to it.7 The encounter has been interpreted as a story of initiation.8 On the profane level, slaying Fáfnir may have been necessary to uphold social order.9 Furthermore, dragon slaying may be – and has been – seen as related to a bridal quest.10 Finally, it may be argued that Odin, together with the silent god Hoenir and the trickster Loki, sets in motion the events that bring a great treasure from the chthonic world of the dwarves into the world of men. […] For reasons that are not explained, Odin distances himself from Sigurd after the monster has been slain. Perhaps Sigurd is no longer of use to the god” (The Saga of the Volsungs, 1990, introduction and translation by Byock, 8–10; emphasis added). 7 “The thunder-god is not after you and me. His wrath is directed against devils, demons, giants. Their identity varies from one country to another. But there is an adversary of a different order who lurks in Vedic, Greek, and Norse mythology and who seems to represent an Indo-European concept: a monstrous reptile associated with water, lying in it or blocking its flow. It is perhaps a cosmic version of the common mythical motif of the serpent who guards a spring, or some other desirable thing, and prevents access to it” (West, 2007, 255; emphasis added). “The archetypal Indo-European dragon-slaying myth is presumably the one […] where the victor is the thunder-god and his victim the monstrous serpent that blocks the waters. […] I do not suggest that all dragon-slaying heroes are faded thunder-gods, only that – seeing that dragons or colossal serpents are not a feature of the real world – the concept of slaying one as a heroic feat may have originated with the cosmic myth” (West, 2007, 430; emphasis added). 8 “This episode may exemplify the initiation of a young hero in Old Norse society: instruction in the wilderness, a deed of strength and courage, the gaining of wisdom and of a new name” (Hedeager, 2011, 142). 9 “Fafnir represents all that is antipathetical and threatening to a heroic society – he is a greedy tyrant, hoarding gold instead of sharing it, and an evil father-murderer who has violated sacred kinship bonds. In slaying him Sigurd acts to uphold social order (chap. 18)” (Vo˛lsunga saga, 2019, ed. and trans. Grimstad, 35). 10 “The task of killing a monster is one classic test of suitor eligibility in traditional tales. Before he meets Brynhild for the first time, Sigurd slays the mighty dragon Fafnir, thereby establishing his everlasting fame as the Nordic dragon-slayer (chap. 18). Although this accomplishment is not, strictly speaking, a condition for marriage set by the bride, he can understand the birds and learn the way to Brynhild’s mountain only by slaying Fafnir, eating his heart, and tasting his blood. Like the prince in the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”, he must awaken Brynhild from her enchanted sleep. This he does by cutting the armor from her body (chap. 21), an action recalling his recent penetration of Fafnir’s scaly skin. Upon awakening, Brynhild recognizes him immediately as Sigurd, the slayer of Fafnir, and they swear betrothal vows to each other” (Vo˛lsunga saga, 2019, ed. and trans. Grimstad, 27).

The Hero and his Values

the portrayal of Sigurðr was influenced by – or, at least, found compatible with – Christian ideas and paralleled to Saint Michael the Archangel.11 All these considerations are something I am not going to discuss further in this article, as they do not reveal much about Sigurðr’s own choices and values, which is in the focus of the present study. I do not aspire to reconstruct the original story of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani or its subsequent development, but aim rather to discuss differences between the versions of the story in the Prose Edda and in the Saga of the Volsungs, with a special focus on the way Reginn the smith manages to persuade Sigurðr that he has to kill Fáfnir, and on Sigurðr’s own choices and values. An important point for this study is the fact that the story in the Prose Edda has a completely different frame narrative to that in the Saga of the Volsungs. In the Prose Edda, the frame narrative is a dialogue between Bragi and Ægir, who discuss various kennings and other poetical techniques. Admittedly, by the time the reader reaches the story of Sigurðr, Reginn and Fáfnir, the names of Bragi and Ægir are not mentioned any longer (they are mentioned at the beginning of Skáldskaparmál), but the general form of a dialogue between someone who wants to know more about kennings (Ægir) and his conversation partner who is an expert in such things (Bragi) is still easily recognizable. In the Saga of the Volsungs, by contrast, the story of Sigurðr, Reginn and Fáfnir is a part of a larger story spanning over several generations of the Volsung family, which Sigurðr is the most glorious representative of. In the Prose Edda, the story about Andvari’s gold is told before the account of Reginn’s arrival at King Hjálprekr’s court, i.e., the narrative follows the chronology of events. In the Saga of the Volsungs, the story about Andvari’s gold is put into the mouth of Reginn, who tells it answering Sigurðr’s question about why he is so keen on urging Sigurðr to kill Fáfnir (in the Prose Edda, Sigurðr does not ask any such questions). Interestingly, the slaying of Fáfnir by Sigurðr is completely missing from one of the main manuscripts of the Prose Edda, known as Uppsala Edda, and it may be argued that the only reason the author of the Prose Edda needed this story in the first place is the background it provides for gold kennings like “lair or abode of Fáfnir”, “metal of Gnitaheiðr” or “burden 11 “The idea of transforming Sigurd into Michael is fairly straightforward; the hero, whether Sigurd, Christ, or Michael, overcomes the treacherous and evil enemy. […] A further parallel could also be drawn between the worldly treasure won by Sigurd and the heavenly treasure promised to the baptized Christian” (Bradley, 2013, 101).

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of Grani”. Had it not been for these kennings, Snorri might have chosen to omit the tale about Sigurðr’s main heroic deed completely – just as he chose to omit the tale about Sigurðr’s revenge on Lyngvi and his brothers for having killed Sigmundr, Sigurðr’s father. In the Saga of the Volsungs, by contrast, the revenge on Lyngvi is an essential part of the narrative. Actually, it may be argued that this part of the story is directly related to the real reason why Sigurðr agreed to kill Fáfnir. In the following paragraphs I will demonstrate that this is indeed the case. Apart from a different frame narrative, the process of incitement from Reginn’s side is completely different in the source texts. To be precise, there is no direct incitement to kill Fáfnir in the Prose Edda at all. The only sentence that explicitly tells the reader anything about urging from Reginn’s side is this: “Regin told him about where Fafnir was lying on the gold and incited him to go and try and get the gold” (Snorri Sturluson, 1987, trans. Faulkes, 101), “Reginn sagði honum til hvar Fáfnir lá á gullinu ok eggjaði hann at sǿkja gullit” (Snorri Sturluson, 1998 [2007], ed. Faulkes, 46). The text says “at sǿkja gullit”, and not, for example, “at drepa Fáfni”. Of course, Sigurðr – and the audience of the Edda – understand that facing and killing Fáfnir is ineluctable in order to acquire the gold, and we do remember Andvari’s pronouncement, which must mean that Fáfnir, the current owner of the cursed treasure, is doomed to die. Consequently, the killing of the dragon does not come as a surprise. What is germane to our discussion about what values the hero adheres to is that the text of the Prose Edda gives no reason to argue that Sigurðr needed any additional motivation besides the prospect of acquiring the treasure per se. This is very different from the much more elaborate and sophisticated process of incitement in the Saga of the Volsungs. Here, Reginn starts by asking Sigurðr how much wealth his father had had, who looks after this wealth now and whether he trusts the king completely. All these questions serve as a preparatory stage before telling Sigurðr more details about the possibility of gaining a treasure that would be his own, and that no one else would have any command of. Clearly, Reginn expects Sigurðr to show some signs of disappointment with his current situation, so that Reginn can tell him about Fáfnir and all the possibilities killing Fáfnir would open up for Sigurðr. However, Sigurðr does not show any signs of being interested in a further discussion on this topic. He does not need to change his status or his relationship with the king. Then Reginn tells Sigurðr he should ask the king to give him a

The Hero and his Values

horse. Perhaps this is a kind of a test. Should Sigurðr be denied a horse, Reginn could use it as “proof ” that the king cannot be trusted, and that Sigurðr definitely needs to do something in order to change his situation. Or perhaps this is just a new step in the preparatory process for the future slaying of the dragon: Reginn assumes Sigurðr will need a horse, and wants to make sure he has got one. Then Reginn, once more, starts talking about what a shame it is Sigurðr has too little wealth, but this time he says that he not only knows where a great treasure can be acquired, but also that “you (i.e., Sigurðr – UM) will gain great honour and fame if you can seize it” (Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 125), “þat sé sómi at sǿkja ok virðing, ef þú næðir” (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 24). Now Sigurðr seems to be interested in hearing more details. I do not find it plausible that Sigurðr’s interest is simply woken by the fact that Reginn talks about the wealth repeatedly. It is more likely that the decisive factor here is the mention of honour and glory (“sómi” and “virðing”), which rank higher in Sigurðr’s value system than wealth (cf. Leeming (2005 [2006]) who notices that what Reginn tried to incite in Sigurðr was pride and heroic spirit as opposed to avarice).12 However, Sigurðr is not immediately tempted to try and kill Fáfnir when Reginn tells him it is he who guards the treasure. Sigurðr feels cautious, if not directly scared, because he has heard of Fáfnir: “that no one dares to face him because of his size and evil nature” (Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 125), “at engi þorir at koma á mót honum fyrir vaxtar sakir ok illsku” (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 24). Reginn concludes, correctly, that Sigurðr thinks more of honour than of wealth. Rather than insisting that Sigurðr needs the treasure guarded by Fáfnir, Reginn reproaches him for lacking the spirit of the Volsungs. After this, it is not long before Sigurðr eventually changes his mind. In my view, it can be read between the lines that, from now on, Sigurðr cannot help thinking of his 12 “As Sigurd began to grow to manhood, his foster father attempted to incite in him the pride and heroic spirit necessary to confront Fafnir; eventually Sigurd agreed to do so, on the condition that Regin forge for him a magnificent sword. Regin created two lesser blades that Sigurd shattered upon the anvil, but the third time Sigurd bade him use the two pieces of Sigmund’s broken blade, which Sigurd had obtained from his mother as his inheritance. This blade was named Gram and had come to Sigurd’s father, Sigmund, indirectly from Odin. When Regin refashioned it, it cut easily through the anvil. Sigurd now agreed to face Fafnir, once he had avenged his own father’s death. Once Sigurd had accomplished this vengeance he returned to Regin and prepared to make good on his oath” (Leeming, 2005 [2006]).

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own ancestors, the Volsungs. Admittedly, some more steps are needed before the incitement from Reginn’s side has proven successful, but a shift in Sigurðr’s mind has already begun, and he has started making his own plans. Next, Sigurðr asks what the reasons for Reginn’s zeal are. When Reginn has finished telling him the story about the death of Otr and Hreiðmarr, Sigurðr promises to kill Fáfnir. One significant difference between the two versions of the story is the identity of Hreiðmarr’s murderer. In the Prose Edda, the two brothers kill their father together. In the Saga of the Volsungs, by contrast, Fáfnir is solely responsible for the murder of his father – or, at least, this is what Reginn wants Sigurðr to believe as patricide makes it clear that Fáfnir is an evil and dangerous creature, who deserves to be killed.13 Importantly, the verb Reginn uses here is “myrði”, which is a term for the kind of murder that was considered a particularly heinous crime. Reginn’s tale proves to be an eye-opener for Sigurðr in more ways than one. To a certain degree, Sigurðr’s resolution arises from his feeling of honour and justice, perhaps even empathy. Sigurðr says: “You have suffered great losses at the hands of your monstrous kinsmen” (Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 129), “Mikit hefir þú látit, ok stórillir hafa þínir frændr verit” (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 26). Thus, Reginn has succeeded in persuading Sigurðr that he (Reginn) has been treated badly, and that Fáfnir is substantially evil, which provides valid reasons for killing the dragon. I agree, partly, with the following analysis: [T]he reasoning behind Sigurðr’s decision to slay the dragon is not related to his particular desire to do so, but is rather a result of his sense of obligation to Reginn, and perhaps a sense of empathy aroused in the youngster after hearing the tale of “the Otter’s Ransom”. (McGillivray, 2015, 374)

However, the final and decisive motive for Sigurðr’s determination is, in my view, his own thoughts about the importance of family and blood ties, and his duty as a Volsung and a son – Sigmundr’s son. Sigurðr does not simply and unconditionally promise to kill Fáfnir. At first, he requires Reginn to forge a sword without equal. 13 In his recent book, Martin Arnold says that Reginn consciously lied to Sigurðr on this account: “That he omits to mention his part in the murder of his father is a fair illustration of Regin’s deceptive nature” (Arnold, 2018, 99).

The Hero and his Values “Now use your skills as a smith to forge for me the best sword ever made, a weapon which will enable me to accomplish mighty deeds if I prove brave enough – that is, if you want me to kill that great dragon.” “I am confident that I can make a sword with which you’ll be able to kill Fafnir”, says Regin. (Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 131) “[…] Ger nú eitt sverð af þínum hagleik, þat er ekki sé jafngott gert ok ek mega vinna stórverk, ef hugr dugir, ef þú vilt at ek drepa þenna inn mikla dreka.” Reginn segir: “Þat geri ek með trausti, ok muntu mega drepa Fáfni með því sverði”. (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 26f.)

This short dialogue and its placement right after Reginn’s tale about his own father having been murdered by Fáfnir is crucial for my argument. There are some blatant differences between the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs here. First of all, in the Prose Edda, Reginn simply makes a sword for Sigurðr to use. There is no reason to assume that Reginn does not fashion the sword on his own initiative. In the Saga of Volsungs, by contrast, it is Sigurðr who requests a sword, and he is very clear about the qualities of the sword he needs (“the best sword ever made”). Secondly, in the Saga of the Volsungs Sigurðr actually gives a hint about his plans, but it does not seem that Reginn takes this hint immediately. Sigurðr says that possessing such a sword will enable him to accomplish mighty deeds if he proves brave enough, before adding “if you want me to kill that great dragon”. It is quite clear that Sigurðr needs this sword for his own plans, and not exclusively for slaying Fáfnir. However, he wants Reginn to focus on Sigurðr’s promise to kill the dragon, because that is what Reginn finds important, and what makes sure Reginn will use all his skill and put all his effort into producing such a unique and excellent sword. It may also be argued that the tale about Hreiðmarr and his sons, and about Andvari’s ring, was an eye-opener for Sigurðr in one more way. Before learning about Reginn’s background, Sigurðr did not actually realize what kind of smith Reginn was, but now he understands that Reginn must possess non-human, supernatural competences and powers related to smithery. Not every smith has brothers who can turn into otters and serpents! Obviously, there is something uncanny about Reginn’s family. Even if he is not called a dwarf in Vo˛lsunga saga, it is a

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reasonable assumption that Reginn is not entirely human. That’s exactly the kind of smith Sigurðr needs to produce a sword for him.14 When Reginn (at the third attempt) has fashioned a sword that Sigurðr finds good enough, he says he will face Fáfnir, but: “first there’s something else I need to do – avenge the death of my father” (Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 133), “annat fyrr, at hefna fo˛ður míns” (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 27). In the battle against Hundingr’s sons, Sigurðr uses this particular sword, kills his enemies, thereby avenging his father, and wins a great victory. King Lyngvi promptly has troops called up in every part of his realm. He rejects the idea of retreat and summons all warriors willing to fight for him; he and his brothers then move against Sigurd with a huge force. The encounter is bloody and a sight to be seen. […] After the battle has raged on for a long time, Sigurd, the sword Gram in hand, fights his way alone past his war standards, shattering enemy lines. With both his arms drenched in blood to the shoulders he hacks down men and horses right and left; warriors fled wherever he advanced, for neither helmet nor coat of mail withstands him. No one recalled ever before having seen such a man. The battle went on and on with vast slaughter from repeated assaults on both sides. But the outcome was not what usually happens when the home 14 In the prose preface to Reginsmál, it says that Reginn was “more skilful in making things than anyone else and a dwarf in height”, and “clever, fierce and knowledgeable about magic” (The Lay of Regin, 2014, trans. Larrington, 147); “hverjum manni hagari ok dvergr of vo˛xt” and “vitr, grimmr ok fjo˛lkunnigr” (Reginsmál, 2014, eds. Jónas Kristjánsson & Vésteinn Ólason, 297). Even if it is not entirely clear whether Reginn in Reginsmál is a “real” dwarf, or just looks like a dwarf, he is definitely not an ordinary, human smith. I find it likely that the author of the Saga of the Volsungs also wanted the audience to think of Reginn as a being who is either non-human or, perhaps, only partly human, and who is able to produce smithery comparable to such dwarf-made weapons as Óðinn’s spear or Þórr’s hammer. Hedeager (2011, 142), in her analysis of Sigurðr’s story according to the Poetic Edda, argues similarly that Reginn “is the only one who knows how to forge a sword with necessary (magical) power to kill Fáfnir” and that “[o]nly with this particular sword, named Gram, was Sigurd able to kill the dragon Fáfnir”. Reginn is no ordinary smith, and Gramr is no ordinary sword. In my analysis, it is Sigurðr who manipulates Reginn by making him concentrate on the prospect of having Fáfnir killed, while the real reason why Sigurðr needs this sword, is his desire to avenge Sigmundr’s death.

The Hero and his Values forces attack: their effort came to naught. The sons of Hunding lost countless numbers of men. Sigurd was in the vanguard of his troops when the sons of King Hunding attack him. Aiming a blow at King Lyngvi, Sigurd splits his helmet, skull, and mail-clad torso. With another stroke he slices Lyngvi’s brother Hjorvard in two. He then struck down the remaining sons of Hunding and the better part of their army. (Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 135, 137) Lyngvi konungr lætr nú fara um allt sitt ríki herboð; vill eigi á flótta leggjask, stefnir til sín o˛llum þeim mo˛nnum, er honum vilja lið veita. Kemr nú á mót Sigurði með allmikinn her ok brǿðr hans með honum. Teksk þar in harðasta orrosta með þeim. […] Ok er orrostan hefir svá staðit mjo˛k langa hríð, sǿkir Sigurðr fram um merkin ok hefir í hendi sverðit Gram. Hann høggr bæði menn ok hesta ok gengr í gegnum fylkingar ok hefir báðar hendr blóðgar til axlar, ok sto˛kk undan fólk, þar sem hann fór, ok helzk hvárki við hjálmr né brynja, ok engi maðr þóttisk fyrr sét hafa þvílíkan mann. Þessi orrosta stóð lengi með miklu mannfalli ok ákafri sókn. Ferr þar, sem sjaldnar kann henda, þá er landherrinn sǿkir til, at þat kom fyrir ekki. Fell þar svá margt fyrir Hundings sonum, at engi maðr vissi to˛l á. Ok Sigurðr var framarla í fylkingu. Þá koma á mót honum synir Hundings konungs. Sigurðr høggr til Lyngva konungs ok klýfr hjálm hans ok ho˛fuð ok brynjaðan búk, ok síðan høggr hann Hjo˛rvarð, bróður hans, sundr í tvá hluti, ok þá drap hann alla Hundings sonu, er eptir lifðu, ok mestan hluta liðs þeira. (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 29, 30)

In my interpretation, these episodes – Sigurðr’s request that Reginn make a sword without equal, the forging of the sword and the subsequent battle against Hundingr’s sons where the sword is used – and especially their placement between Sigurðr’s promise to slay Fáfnir and the actual slaying are what explain the reasons why Sigurðr chose to promise to do what Reginn asked him about. I argue that the story told by Reginn about Hreiðmarr having been murdered by Fáfnir was not the crucial motivating factor per se, but that it triggered Sigurðr’s thoughts about his own family. The fact that Fáfnir’s crime was a patricide made Sigurðr think about those who had killed his own father, Sigmundr. After having heard Reginn’s tale, Sigurðr’s “main desire is to avenge his father” (Ármann Jakobsson, 2010, 41). In order to be able to perform his vengeance, Sigurðr needed a suitable weapon – not just a good sword, but the

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sword.15 This means Sigurðr needed to make sure Reginn produced such a sword, putting all his effort into forging it. Therefore Sigurðr needed Reginn to believe he was making the weapon that was to give Fáfnir a deadly blow; it was killing Fáfnir that Reginn found extremely important. It was not a lie that Sigurðr was to use this sword to slay Fáfnir, because he eventually did; but Sigurðr had, additionally, his own agenda, namely to kill Lyngvi and the others who were responsible for the death of Sigmundr, Sigurðr’s father. Without Gramr, Sigurðr would hardly have had a chance to realize his plan, and without Reginn, he would not have got Gramr. This is why Sigurðr agreed to kill Fáfnir.16 Sigurðr, Reginn and the actantial model. In order to make the main points of my argument clearer, I will now relate my analysis to the actantial model of Algirdas Julien Greimas. 15 The significance of this particular sword, and weapons generally, has recently been discussed in detail by Agneta Ney in her book devoted to various versions of the story of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani (Ney, 2017, 112–118). Especially relevant for my argument are the following ideas: “Rätten att bära vapen skiljer den vuxne mannen från pojken, men också den frie mannen från trälen” (Ney, 2017, 114), “Mansidealet på medeltiden handlar generellt om heder och ära […] Synnerligen ärofyllt var innehav av ett gott vapen som ägaren fått i gåva, ärvt eller tagit som krigsbyte” (Ney, 2017, 116) and “Svärdet Gram kan i Völsunga saga ses som symbol för manlighet och krigarideal: i fadershämnden, i drakdödandet […]” (Ney, 2017, 117). 16 At first glance, the following may seem similar to my analysis: “As Sigurd gets older, he increasingly sees avenging the death of his father as his fundamental duty, but Regin has other ideas. Rightly equipped, thinks Regin, Sigurd is just the one who could overcome his transmogrified brother and so provide him personally with the wealth to which he feels he is entitled. It is to this end that he tells Sigurd of the origin of the gold and just where Fáfnir can be found. […] Persuaded that he should tackle Fáfnir after he has fulfilled his familial duty, Sigurd has Regin forge him a sword […]” (Arnold, 2018, 99). However, there are at least three significant differences between Martin Arnold’s interpretation and mine. First, I claim that it was Reginn himself who unintentionally made Sigurðr think about his duty to avenge the death of his father. This happened while Reginn was telling Sigurðr about Hreiðmarr’s death and Fáfnir’s crime. Second, the text of the Saga of the Volsungs tells us explicitly that to equip Sigurðr rightly was not Reginn’s, but Sigurðr’s own idea and initiative. Third, Reginn did not persuade Sigurðr to tackle Fáfnir after having fulfilled his familial duty. On the contrary, that Sigurðr had his own plans related to the sword Gramr, came as a rather irritating surprise to Reginn. What Reginn had expected and desired, was that Sigurðr would use the sword to kill Fáfnir soon after having received it.

The Hero and his Values Sender Object Receiver Helper Subject Opponent Figure 1. The actantial model (based on Greimas, 1983, 207)

This model is based on the following prototypical scenario: Someone (the sender) sends another (the subject) to perform a series of actions in order to obtain something of value (the object). The subject will be helped by someone (the helper) and obstructed by someone (the opponent). From the acquisition of the object someone will benefit (the receiver). (Marsen, 2006, 69)

The six actants are divided into three pairs of contraries or oppositions: sender vs. receiver, subject vs. object and helper vs. opponent. Between the members of each pair there is a special type of relations.17 In the actantial model, the relation between the sender and the receiver is described as the axis of knowledge or transmission. According to Nastopka (2005), the sender is the one who makes actions be performed (fait faire), who makes the subject believe (fait croire), be willing to (fait vouloir), know (fait savoir), be obliged to (fait devoir) and be able to (fait pouvoir) act and perform their deeds.18 The relation between the subject and the object 17 “In his theory of narrative structure, Greimas conceived of three pairs of contraries: sender vs. receiver; subject vs. object; and helper vs. opponent. He argued that these contraries generate three types of relations, operating as intersecting narrative axes: knowledge, constituted by communication between sender and receiver; desire, which is felt by the subject for the object; and power, realised through the agonistic struggle experienced by the subject to acquire or achieve the object of desire, a goal facilitated by the helper and hindered by the opponent” (Austin, 2018, 156). “This is well established in Greimas’s (1983) actantial model with six metaphorical actors (actants), which form the three pairs or oppositions: Subject versus Object, Sender versus Receiver, and Helper versus Opponent […]. These oppositions generate three types of relations: desire, which is felt by the subject for the object; knowledge, constituted by communication between sender and receiver; and power, realised through the agonistic struggle between helper and opponent” (Kotlík, 2018, 38). 18 “Pagrindinis lėmėją apibūdinantis modalumas – daryti, kad būtų daroma (faire faire). Lėmėjas yra tas, kuris priverčia (paskatina) subjektą tikėti (fait croire), norėti (fait vouloir), žinoti (fait savoir), kuris įteigia privalėjimą (fait devoir), suteikia galėjimą (fait pouvoir)” (Nastopka, 2005, 6).

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is described as the axis of desire, while the relation between the helper and the opponent, who “either assist or hinder the subject in his quest for the object” (Abrantes, 2010, 76), is described as the axis of power. In other words, “[a]n actant is […] an element in a relation” (Ubersfeld, 1999, 45) or “a class of ʻcharacters’ (in the broadest meaning of the term) which in their different manifestations in a narrative have the same function” (Rulewicz, 1995) rather than a particular person or a character. This means that the same character may correspond to more actants than one and, conversely, that more characters than one may correspond to the same actant. Furthermore, a character “may simultaneously or successively assume different actantial functions” (Rulewicz, 1995). Also, an actant may be instantiated with an inanimate object or an abstraction and, finally, an actant may or may not be present in a particular narrative. We turn now to the Prose Edda version of the story. Here it seems to be clear that Reginn is both the sender and the receiver, Sigurðr is the subject, the treasure is the object, the sword Gramr is the helper and Fáfnir is the opponent. It is Reginn who incites Sigurðr to try and get the treasure (and, by implication, to kill Fáfnir). Also, Reginn provides Sigurðr with Gramr, thereby making him both willing to and able to perform the slaying of the dragon. Furthermore, Reginn has no intention to share the treasure with Sigurðr or anyone else, therefore it is Reginn himself who will benefit from the acquisition of the treasure. Reginn

the treasure

Reginn

Gramr Sigurðr Fáfnir Figure 2. The actants in the Prose Edda version of the narrative

In the Saga of the Volsungs, the narrative has to be divided into several parts in order to demonstrate how the characters become different actants in each part. a) At first, Reginn tries to initiate communication that would lead to entering into a contract where Reginn would assume the role as the sender, but Sigurðr is not interested in further communication. Thus, no contract, and no actants. b) When Sigurðr has changed his mind, he allows Reginn to believe it is still Reginn who is pulling the strings, while in reality Sigurðr pursues

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his own goals where the object is not the treasure, but the powerful sword. By promising to kill Fáfnir, Sigurðr makes Reginn be willing to produce the sword that Sigurðr needs. Thus, it is Sigurðr who is the real sender, while Reginn is the subject. It is also Sigurðr who is the (primary) receiver because it is he who will benefit from acquiring the sword, which will enable him to pursue his further goals. At the same time, Reginn is a (secondary) receiver, as Sigurðr does promise to kill Fáfnir using the same sword, so Reginn will also benefit from it, but only after Sigurðr has achieved his own goals. Sigurðr the sword Sigurðr and Reginn and his desire for vengeance Reginn Figure 3. The actants in the part of the story related to Gramr in the Saga of the Volsungs

c) Sigurðr uses the sword as a means to achieve this main goal, namely to avenge his father. Of course, Sigurðr needs the help of his troops, as Lyngvi also has a great army. It is a battle, not a duel. Nevertheless, it is Sigurðr himself who kills Lyngvi, Hjo˛rvarðr and all the other sons of Hundingr, – and the weapon Sigurðr uses is Gramr. Sigurðr’s feeling of duty as a Volsung, as Sigmundr’s son, is closely related to, or even synonymous with, his understanding of honour and justice, and makes the vengeance not only desirable but also incumbent on him. Consequently, Sigurðr is the one who makes actions be performed (the sender), who performs the actions (the subject), and who benefits from them (the receiver). Sigurðr and his feeling of duty as a Volsung

the vengeance

Gramr and Sigurðr Sigurðr’s troops

Sigurðr

the army led by Lyngvi

Figure 4. The actants in the part of the story related to vengeance on Hundingr’s sons

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d) The plot turns back to Fáfnir and the treasure. Sigurðr has promised Reginn he would kill Fáfnir, and now it is time for the promise to be fulfilled. Thus, Sigurðr is obliged to perform the slaying of the dragon because Reginn has urged him to do so and because his own understanding of honour and justice makes him keep his word. Additionally, Sigurðr seems to have genuinely believed that Reginn had suffered injustice from Fáfnir, and that it was morally right to kill the evil dragon. In contrast to the Prose Edda, one more character makes an appearance in this episode, namely Óðinn, who gives Sigurðr a life-saving piece of advice on how to kill Fáfnir without drowning in the dragon’s blood. Reginn Sigurðr’s understanding of honour and justice

the killing of the dragon

Reginn

Gramr and Óðinn

Sigurðr

Fáfnir

Figure 5. The actants in the part of the story related to the killing of the dragon in the Saga of the Volsungs

According to this analysis, Reginn is indeed the sender, but only in some parts of the narrative. This is completely in agreement with what the text of the Saga of the Volsungs explicitly says. Fáfnir himself uses wording that identifies Reginn as being the one who has caused the killing of Fáfnir. […] Fafnir spoke: “It’s my brother Regin who is the cause of my death, but it makes me laugh that he will also be the cause of your death and get just what he wanted”. (The Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 141; emphasis added) […] mælti Fáfnir: “Reginn, bróðir minn, veldr mínum dauða, ok þat hlǿgir mik er hann veldr ok þínum dauða, ok ferr þá sem hann vildi”. (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 32; emphasis added)

Also, Reginn admits his own role in what happened: After this, Regin came to Sigurd and said, “Hail, my lord. Killing Fafnir is a proud victory for you, for until now there was no one courageous

The Hero and his Values enough to lie in wait for the dragon. This brave deed of yours will be remembered until the end of time”. Regin now stands gazing at the ground for a long while. Then he said with a heavy heart, “You have killed my brother, but I am scarcely free of responsibility in this matter”. (The Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 143; emphasis added) Eptir þetta kom Reginn til Sigurðar ok mælti: “Heill, herra minn; mikinn sigr hefir þú unnit, er þú hefir drepit Fáfni, er engi varð fyrr svá djarfr, at á hans go˛tu þorði sitja, ok þetta fremdarverk mun uppi, meðan vero˛ldin stendr”. Nú stendr Reginn ok sér niðr í jo˛rðina langa hríð. Ok þegar eptir þetta mælti hann af miklum móði: “Bróður minn hefir þú drepit, ok varla má ek þessa verks saklauss vera”. (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 33; emphasis added)

Thus, Reginn is identified by the participants of the narrative as the one who has made Sigurðr perform his deed, which corresponds to the role of the sender in the actantial model. Reginn persuaded Sigurðr that he not only had reasons to want to kill Fáfnir, but also that it was a morally right thing to do, and made him be obliged to actually perform the slaying. At the same time, Sigurðr downgrades the importance of Reginn’s incitement, and identifies himself as the one who deliberately chose to kill Fáfnir. “Who provoked you to this deed? And why did you let yourself be provoked?” responds Fafnir. “Hadn’t you heard how everyone trembles in fear of me and my helmet of terror? But, you keen-eyed boy, you had a gallant father.” “My fearless heart urged me on”, replies Sigurd. “Help came from this strong hand and from this sharp sword that you felt. Those who are weaklings in their youth rarely become tough old warriors.” (The Saga of the Volsungs, 2019, trans. Grimstad, 139; emphasis added) Fáfnir svarar: “Hverr eggjaði þik þessa verks, eða hví léttu at eggjask? Hafðir þú eigi frétt þatt, hversu allt fólk er hrætt við mik ok við minn ægishjálm? Inn fráneygi sveinn, þú áttir feðr snarpan”. Sigurðr svarar: “Til þessa hvatti mik inn harði hugr, ok stoðaði til at gert yrði þessi in sterka ho˛nd ok þetta it snarpa sverð, er nú kenndir þú, ok fárr er gamall harðr ef hann er í bernsku blautr”. (Vo˛lsunga saga, 1965, ed. Finch, 31; emphasis added)

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This statement from Sigurðr’s side is not an attempt to conceal the true identity of the person responsible for the slaying of the dragon, but a revelation of his own role in the course of events. Importantly, Fáfnir mentions Sigurðr’s father in the above quotation (“you had a gallant father”, “þú áttir feðr snarpan”), which may indicate that Fáfnir, wise as he is, actually understands what Sigurðr’s secret plan and real motivation has been. 3. Conclusion This study has shown that there are significant differences between the story of Fáfnir’s slaying by Sigurðr in the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs, not only in terms of how the story is structured in the two sources and how detailed it is, but also in terms of what kind of image of Sigurðr emerges from the narrative. In the Prose Edda, there is little to suggest that Sigurðr had any elevated motives to kill the dragon. The greed for gold seems to have been a sufficient motivating factor. In the Saga of the Volsungs, Sigurðr may be contrasted with other characters whose actions are motivated by greed for gold. Analysing the story of Sigurðr as it is known from the lays of the Poetic Edda, Edgar Haimerl wrote: Narrative events here are without exception governed by avarice. Characterized by an insatiable greed for treasure, Loki demands the ring even after Andvari has already paid his ransom (Rm 4pr). Nor is Odin free of greed. Having put the ring Andvaranaut on his finger (Rm 5pr4), he has to take it off again at Hreiðmarr’s demand. Like the gods, so too the heroes are governed by greed: Hreiðmarr values possession of the hoard more highly than a long life; neither does he care about curse or threats (“hót þín hroeðomc ecci lyf” Rm 9). Driven by greed, Fáfnir murders his own father. Hreiðmarr seems to identify his son’s motivation: “Mart er, þat er þörf þíar” [Need makes men do many things] (Rm 10). The fact that their actions are solely motivated by greed makes these heroes seem more questionable. (Haimerl, 2013, 3419) 19 Admittedly, it may be argued that Reginn’s motivation to have Fáfnir killed could have been his desire to avenge the killing of Hreiðmarr by Fáfnir: “Reginn incites Sigurðr to kill his brother Fáfnir, and it is ambiguous whether his motivation is to avenge his father or greed for gold” (Clark, 2012, 81).

The Hero and his Values

This characterization is valid with respect to Loki, Óðinn, Hreiðmarr and Fáfnir in the Saga of the Volsungs as well. Unless we assume that these characters had no control of their actions because of Andvari’s curse, we can argue that they were all driven by avarice. Sigurðr, however, is different. The turning point in his communication with Reginn is the mention of honour and glory, and especially the tale about the injustice Reginn has suffered from Fáfnir and about the murder of Hreiðmarr by Fáfnir, which makes Sigurðr think about his own father. Therefore, I disagree with statements such as “[i]t is for this gold that Sigurd kills Fáfnir, at the request of the dragon’s surviving brother, Regin. […] The fight with Fáfnir is specifically motivated by greed for treasure; Regin sends Sigurd to kill Fáfnir in order to retrieve the gold that turned his brother into a dragon in the first place” (Symons, 2015, 81),20 “Siegfried slays the dragon […] and then slays Fáfnir’s brother, Reginn, also for the treasure” (Lecouteux, 2018, 52) or “Sigurd wanted to win renown and glory as much as he lusted for gold, and he gained them all” (Stein, 1968, 179). By contrast, I agree with the following statement: “Reginn’s covert aim is to use the young hero to retrieve the treasure guarded by Reginn’s brother, Fáfnir the dragon. Sigurðr has his own set of priorities, however” (Larrington, 2017, 136). This study has revealed what kind of priorities Sigurðr has, and how exactly these priorities are related to Sigurðr’s decision to kill Fáfnir. The main motivating factor for Sigurðr to kill Fáfnir in the Saga of the Volsungs is his desire to avenge his own father. Reginn’s tale about his father Hreiðmarr and his brothers Otr and Fáfnir reminded Sigurðr about his own family, and made him think about his duty as a son and a Volsung. In order to be able to fight Lyngvi and his brothers, Sigurðr needed a sword without equal, so he promised to do what Reginn had asked him about, namely to kill Fáfnir, in exchange for Gramr, the sword a random smith could not have forged or repaired. Only Reginn, a smith with supernatural, dwarf-like competences and powers, was able to do this. It also seems that Sigurðr genuinely believed 20 It may be appropriate to point out that this particular quotation refers specifically to the story of Sigurðr and Fáfnir according to the Saga of the Volsungs. Had it been a reference to the Prose Edda version of the story, I would have to agree with the author. Now, I only agree that Reginn’s motivation was avarice; but Sigurðr was much more than a mere instrument used by Reginn. Sigurðr made his own choices and had his own plans. Ultimately, it was Sigurðr who successfully manipulated Reginn the smith rather than being manipulated by him, and slaying the dragon was a part of this manipulation.

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Reginn had suffered injustice from Fáfnir, so he found it morally right to kill the dragon. Additionally, Fáfnir’s crime – patricide – must have seemed particularly disgusting to Sigurðr, whose own father had been killed by enemies. Thus, Sigurðr of the Saga of the Volsungs was not motivated by avarice, but by much more noble feelings of duty, honour and justice; first and foremost, he felt he needed to avenge his own father and, additionally, avenging Reginn’s loss was compatible with his plans. Certainly, the prospect of acquiring a hoard of gold may have contributed to his resolution, but it was not the main motivating factor.

References Primary sources and translations Reginsmál (2014). In Jónas Kristjánsson & Vésteinn Ólason (Eds.). Eddukvæði, Vol. II. (pp. 296–302). Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Snorri Sturluson (1987). Edda. Translated and edited by Anthony Faulkes. London: Dent, Everyman’s Library. Retrieved from http:// vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/EDDArestr.pdf. Snorri Sturluson (1998 [2007]). Edda. Skáldskaparmál. Part 1. Introduction, text and notes. Anthony Faulkes (Ed.). London: University College London & Viking Society for Northern Research. Retrieved from http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Edda-2a.pdf. Snorri Sturluson (2012). The Uppsala Edda. DG 11 4to. Edited with introduction and notes by Heimir Pálsson, Translated by Anthony Faulkes. London: University College London & Viking Society for Northern Research. Retrieved from http://vsnrweb-publications.org. uk/Uppsala%20Edda.pdf. The Lay of Regin (2014). In The Poetic Edda. Translated by Carolyne Larrinton [revised edition] (pp. 147–152). Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Saga of the Volsungs (1990). Introduction and translation by Jesse L. Byock. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Vo˛lsunga saga. The Saga of the Volsungs (1965). Edited and translated with introduction, notes and appendices by R. G. Finch. London & Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. Retrieved from http:// vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Volsunga%20saga.pdf. Vo˛lsunga saga. The Saga of the Volsungs (2019). The Icelandic text according to MS Nks 1824 b, 4º. With an English translation,

The Hero and his Values introduction and notes by Kaaren Grimstad. 3rd ed. (1st ed.: 2000, 2nd ed.: 2005.) Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag. Research works Abrantes, Ana Margarida (2010). Meaning and mind. A cognitive approach to Peter Weiss’ prose work. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH. Arnold, Martin (2018). The dragon: Fear and power. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. Ármann Jakobsson (2010). Enter the dragon. Legendary saga courage and the birth of the hero. In M. Arnold, & A. Finlay (Eds.). Making history. Essays on the Fornaldarsögur (pp. 33–52). London: University College London & Viking Society for Northern Research. Retrieved from http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/fornaldarsogur.pdf. Austin, Trice (2018). Some distinctive features of narrative environments. Interiority, 1 (2), 153–172. Retrieved from http:// ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/13237/1/Tricia%20Austin%20SDFNE%20 article%20Interiority.pdf. Bradley, Jill (2013). Adapting authority: The harrowing of hell on two Romanesque baptismal fonts. In S. Kangas, M. Korpiola, & T. Ainonen (Eds.). Authorities in the Middle Ages: Influence, legitimacy, and power in medieval society (pp. 89–106). Berlin & Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. Clark, David (2012). Gender, violence, and the past in Edda and saga. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Finch, Ronald George (1993). Vo˛lsunga saga. In Ph. Pulsiano, K. Wolf & al. (Eds.). Medieval Scandinavia. An encyclopedia (p. 711). New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc. Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1983). Structural semantics. An attempt at a method. Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer & Alan Velie (Trans.). Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press. Haimerl, Edgar (2013). Sigurðr, a medieval hero: A manuscript-based interpretation of the “Young Sigurðr Poems”. In P. Acker & C. Larrington (Eds.). Revisiting the Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse heroic legend (pp. 32–52). London & New York: Routledge. Hedeager, Lotte (2011). Iron Age myth and materiality. An archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400–1000. London & New York: Routledge. Kotlík, Pavel (2018). Technology roadmaps, innovation journeys, and nanoworld: A spatio-temporal consolidation of the EC nanotechnology policy. Central European Journal of Public Policy, 12 (2),

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Ugnius Mikučionis 34–49. Retrieved from https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/ cejpp/12/2/article-p34.xml. Larrington, Carolyne (2017). The Norse myths. A guide to the gods and the heroes. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. Lecouteux, Claude (2018). The hidden history of elves & dwarfs. Avatars of invisible realms. John E. Graham (Trans.). Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions. Leeming, David (print publication date 2005, published online 2006). Sigurd. In D. Leeming. The Oxford companion to world mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www. oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195156690.001.0001/ acref-9780195156690-e-1457. Marsen, Sky (2006). Communication studies. Houndmills & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McGillivray, Andrew (2015). The best kept secret: ransom, wealth, and power in Völsunga saga. Scandinavian studies, 87 (3), 365–382. Nastopka, Kęstutis (2005). Mitinio pasakojimo gramatika. Žmogus ir žodis, 7 (2), 3–12. Retrieved from http://www.biblioteka.vpu.lt/zmogusirzodis/PDF/literaturologija/2005/2005.pdf. Ney, Agneta (2017). Bland ormar och drakar. Hjältemyt och manligt ideal i berättartraditioner om Sigurd Fafnesbane. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. Rulewicz, Wanda (1995). A grammar of narrativity: Algirdas Julien Greimas. The Glasgow review, 3. Retrieved from https://www. gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/aboutus/resources/stella/projects/ glasgowreview/issue3-rulewicz. Stein, Ruth M. (1968). The changing styles in dragons – from Fáfnir to Smaug. Elementary English, 45 (2), 179–183, 189. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41386292.pdf. Symons, Victoria (2015). Wreoþenhilt ond wyrmfah: Confronting serpents in Beowulf and beyond. In M. D. J. Bintley & Th. J. T. Williams (Eds.). Representing beasts in early medieval England and Scandinavia (pp. 73–93). Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Ubersfeld, Anne (1999). Reading theatre. Frank Collins (Trans.). Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press Inc. West, Martin Litchfield (2007). Indo-European poetry and myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Гуревич, Арон Яковлевич (2005). Индивид и социум на средневековом Западе. Москва: «Российская политическая энциклопедия» (РОССПЭН).

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That Rune Will Unlock Time’s Labyrinth…: Old Norse Themes and Motifs in George Mackay Brown’s Poetry Rasa Ruseckienė Vilnius University

Abstract: George Mackay Brown (1921–1996), an Orcadian poet, author and dramatist, was undoubtedly one of the finest Scottish creative voices of the twentieth century. He was greatly influenced by Old Norse literature, and this is reflected in his writings in many ways. The present article aims to trace and discuss Old Norse themes and motifs in Brown’s poetry. His rune poems, translations of the twelfthcentury skaldic verse, experimentation with skaldic kennings, as well as choosing saga personalities, such as Saint Magnus, Earl Rognvald of Orkney and others, as protagonists of the poems show the poet’s in-depth interest in the historical and literary legacy of his native Orkney and Old Norse culture in general.

One of the delights for a Nordic scholar in Scotland is finding many reflections of Old Norse literary heritage in Scottish literature of various periods. Scottish writers helped to spread Old Norse literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both as regards saga translations into English and in using Old Norse materials in their own writings. Old Norse influence is even more significant in the works of the major Scottish writers of the twentieth century: Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Neil M.  Gunn, Naomi Mitchison, John Buchan, Eric Linklater, George Mackay Brown and others. These influences have been discussed in detail in Julian D’Arcy’s book Scottish Skalds and Sagamen: Old Norse Influence on Modern Scottish Literature (D’Arcy, 1996). The twenty-first century, with Scottish writers taking an active stance in the political debate about the future of Scotland, in which the Nordic model is viewed as an attractive possibility for the independent Scottish nation, shows an unabated interest in the Nordic countries and their culture. Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.6 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Old Norse literature had a profound influence on the Orcadian poet, author and dramatist George Mackay Brown (1921–1996).1 Undoubtedly one of the finest Scottish poetic voices of the twentieth century, Brown was born in Orkney, its second-largest town Stromness (for him always Hamnavoe2), and lived there for most of his life, except for a few years away at Newbattle Abbey College in Midlothian and later at Edinburgh University where he acquired a degree in English literature (Brown, 1997, 91–104; Fergusson, 2006, 101–118). Having started his writing career as a Stromness correspondent for The Orkney Herald newspaper, George Mackay Brown became a prolific author and left a sizeable heritage of fifteen collections of poetry, nine short story collections, six novels, eight essay collections, short story collections for children, theatre plays and an autobiography. Three of his novels – Magnus (1973), Vinland (1992) and Beside the Ocean of Time (1994) – deal with Old Norse subjects, and so do many of his poems. The aim of this article is to trace and discuss Old Norse themes and motifs in Brown’s poetry. The main source for the study was the comprehensive volume The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown compiled by Archie Bevan and Brian Murray (Brown, 2006), containing all the poetry collections published in the poet’s lifetime as well as selected poems from the posthumous publications. Orkney and the Shetland Islands off the north coast of Scotland boast a particularly rich Nordic historic and cultural heritage. These islands, colonized by Viking settlers from Norway in the ninth century, had been part of the Norwegian realm until 1468, when they were given to Scotland as a result of the marriage treaty between James III of Scotland and Princess Margrethe of Denmark (Magnusson, 2001, 260–261). One of the early sources of the history of Orkney is The Orkneyinga saga, written in the thirteenth century in Iceland. It tells the story of the earls of Orkney from the ninth to the thirteenth century but also touches on the history of other countries, Norway and Scotland in particular (Pálsson & Edwards, 1981, 9). The historical personalities of the saga have been popular in Orkney for centuries, particularly Saint Magnus

1 I am grateful to my friend, Scottish storyteller Ruth Frame, for introducing me to George Mackay Brown’s poetry and for many inspiring discussions about Scottish and Nordic literature, both ancient and modern. 2 Hamnavoe (from Old Norse hafn-vágr “haven inlet”) is the Viking name for the town of Stromness.

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the Martyr and Earl Rognvald of Orkney (Saint Ronald), the founder of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. Orcadians and Shetlanders spoke a Nordic language, called Norn, which survived until the 1850s. Even today, Orcadian and Shetlandic dialects show a strong Norse influence. Continuity of the Nordic tradition manifests itself in personal names and toponymy of the islands, as well as ballads, folk tales and legends. Nevertheless, the history of the settlement of the islands goes back much further in time. The islands had been inhabited for millennia by Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples, the latter leaving a rich archaeological heritage: the burial chamber of Maeshowe, the stone-built settlement of Skara Brae (from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC), the circles of standing stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. Iron Age cultures are represented by unique stone structures, called “brochs” (600 BC– 100 AD). The Nordic period, beside its architectural monuments, is also marked by a rich collection of runic inscriptions, one of the largest in Europe (Barnes, 1994). Few have better described this rich multilayered historical heritage of Orkney than George Mackay Brown, who devoted many poems to Orcadians through the centuries: Island Faces Many masks merge here, in an island face – Pict, Norseman, Scot Face of a crofter, gnawed with loam Face of fishermen, seamen – Gray of the sea, eyes level as horizons. “Haiku: for The Holy Places” (Brown, 2006, 461)

The poet was fascinated by these ancient cultures and their encounters. As told in The Orkneyinga saga, one such happened around 1150 AD when Earl Harald Maddadarson3 attempted to take over Orkney from Earl Rognvald, who was on the crusade to the Holy Land. The Vikings sought shelter from a violent snowstorm in an ancient burial mound they knew as Orkahaugr (the Norse name for Maeshowe). While waiting for the storm to subside, they cut runes into the stone walls of the

3 All Nordic names are used in the transcribed form as they occur in Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards’ edition of The Orkneyinga saga (Pálsson & Edwards, 1981) and in George Mackay Brown’s poems.

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chamber (Pálsson & Edwards, 1981, 188). Another episode is thought to have involved Earl Rognvald of Orkney and his men who also broke into the mound and left their mark on the walls. Brown reflects on these events in the poem “Crusaders in Orkahowe” (the collection Following a Lark, 1996) and “Two Maeshowe Poems” (Northern Lights, 1999). In the poem below, the lines in capital letters are paraphrased runic inscriptions: The first island poems Cuttings in stone Among the tombs of very ancient dead, Young men’s lyrics Struck with chisels among thronging ghosts ingibiorg is the loveliest girl hermund with a hard axe carved runes a great treasure is buried nearby jerusalem-farers broke in here dragon, guard the bones and the verses The young seamen climbed out of Maeshowe, Their nostrils wide to the salt wind. “Two Maeshowe Poems” (Brown, 2006, 420–421)

“Carve the runes…” Imitating the compact, laconic form of the runic inscriptions Brown composed several cycles of short haiku-style poems, which he called “Runes”: “Runes from the Holy Island”, “Runes from the Island of Horses” in Poems New and Selected (1971), “Sea Runes” and “Hill Runes” in Fishermen with Ploughs (1971). There are several similar cycles under various other titles: “Weather Bestiary” in The Year of the Whale (1965), “The Lesser Mysteries of Art” in Winterfold (1976) and “Haiku: for The Holy Places” in the posthumous collection Travellers (2001). According to Rowena and Brian Murray, “The short runes neatly provide cameos of experience and attitude, giving substance to the longer poems and being interesting variants of them” (Murray & Murray, 2008, 152), while Michael Stachura argues that Brown’s rune poems show the influence of the Imagist movement and Ezra Pound in particular (Stachura, 2011). Brown’s rune cycles consist of a varying number of three-line poems, which in a few brushstrokes portray the very cornerstones of Orcadian

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life: some quintessential landscapes, such as the Holy Island Eynhallow4 (ON Eyinhelga) and the Island of Horses (ON Hrossey, now Orkney Mainland), moments from the past and present, the island community, as well as philosophical meditations on the nature of time and human existence. Fourteen short verses of “Runes from the Holy Island” (like 14 Stations of the Cross – a recurrent symbol in Brown’s poetry, cf. Murray & Murray, 2006, 93) deal with the concrete and abstract, the mundane and sacred: an early monastic settlement, sparse island population, precarious existence through centuries, circle of life and death, advance of modern times: Hierarchy A claret laird, Seven fishermen with ploughs, Women, beasts, corn, fish, stones. Saint A starved island, Cormack With crossed hands, Stones become haddock and loaf. Circle Cod, give needles and oil. Winter hands. Must sew shrouds by lamplight. Books No more ballads in Eynhallow. The schoolmaster Opens a box of grammars. (Brown, 2006, 78–79)

The poems are minimalistic; the prevailing nominative phrases create static images as if preserved for eternity; sparingly used verbs mark crucial points of human life: expectation of a miracle (“Stones become haddock and loaf ”), inevitability of death (“Must sew shrouds

4 One of the smallest islands in Orkney, now uninhabited Eynhallow had since the twelfth century a church and a monastery.

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by lamplight”), advance of modernity (“The schoolmaster opens a box of grammars”). These verses share some structural and functional similarities with Old Norse ljóðahátt poems; like those, these too encode human wisdom.5 The poet uses intricately woven patterns of alliteration and assonance: “Haul west, fishermen, / With flushed violent mouths” (Easter, “Runes from the Holy Island”), “Among scattered Christ stones / Devoutly leave / Torn nets, toothache, winter wombs” (Ruined Chapel, “Runes from the Holy Island”), “Three winter brightnesses – / Bridesheet, boy in snow, / Kirkyard spade” (Winter, “Runes from the Island of Horses”), “Our isle is oyster gray…” (Fish and Corn, “Runes from the Holy Island”). Powerful metaphors encode crucial images: bridesheet symbolizes marriage, winter wombs – birth, and possibly miscarriages, kirkyard spade, shrouds, wilderness of skulls – death. The collection Fishermen with Ploughs (1971) contains another two short-poem cycles: “Sea Runes” and “Hill Runes”. These concentrate on two main aspects of Orcadian life through the centuries: fishery and agriculture, which have become inseparable. In order to survive, Orcadians had to become “fishermen with ploughs”, exchanging oars and nets for ploughs while on land. “Golden corn” and “silver brothers” (fish) are among the poet’s beloved images. Several parallelisms and kenning-type metaphors emphasize the intertwining of these two ancient occupations: sea waves are like furrows, a fishing boat and nets are called “sea plough” or “fish-plough”, a catch of herring is paralleled to a harvest of corn. A fisherman reads the salt book (sea), wave after wave, while a crofter reads the clay book (soil), furrow by furrow. Elder Charlag who has read the prophets A score of times Has thumbed the salt book also, wave after wave. Crofter-Fisherman Sea-plough, fish-plough, provider Make orderly furrows.

5 The ljóðahátt half-stanza consists of two short lines bound by alliterations and the third longer line that often contains a maxim or a summarizing statement. It is the metre of Old Norse gnomic poetry, or wisdom verse, the best known example being Hávamál (“Sayings of the High One”, i.e. Odin) of the Poetic Edda; one section of the poem, Rúnatal, tells how Odin acquired runes.

That Rune Will Unlock Time’s Labyrinth… The herring will jostle like August corn. “Sea Runes” (Brown, 2006, 121) Elder Andrew who has read the gospel Two or three times Has quizzed the clay book also, furrow by furrow. “Hill Runes” (Brown, 2006, 127)

The poet views these two professions with reverance and endows them with Biblical symbolism: The beauty of Christ’s parables was irresistible. How could they fail to be, when so many of them concern ploughing and seedtime and harvest, and his listeners were most of them fishermen? […] Now I looked with another eye at those providers of our bread and fish; and when I came at last to work as a writer, it was those heroic and primeval occupations that provided the richest imagery, the most exciting symbolism. (Brown, 1997, 54)

In another example, the poet muses on the impact of modern times and technology on the traditional way of life: “…alehouse, merchant and tractors obstruct the fishermen’s return with their catch and make the horsemen’s traditional skills redundant…” (Murray & Murray, 2008, 152). The poet again creates a juxtaposition while using a parallelism with a witty kenning for a tractor: Tractor The horsemen are red in the stable With whisky and wrath. The petrol-drinker is in the hills. “Hill Runes” (Brown, 2006, 128)

Runes in Brown’s poetry are not only the laconic poetic form but also one of his beloved poetic images, with a plethora of meanings. Traditionally, runes are the letters of the Old Germanic runic alphabet and inscriptions in those on stone, metal, bone or wood from the Viking era. This usage is quite common in Brown’s poems: a dying Viking bequeaths to his son among other things “worn runes over the lintel” and asks the skald to cut “a deep rune for Sigrid” (“Viking testament”, Brown,

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2006, 64–66), “They carried torches and the sword with runes on it, to a ship” (“Solstice”, Brown, 2006, 276), “Sire, the Trondheim carvers / Have rimmed the hull with tree runes” (“February”, Brown, 2006, 351). The poet extends the image to our times: the “rune” can be an epitaph on a gravestone: “Now read the rune of the stone / ROBERT BURNS POET” (“Homage to Burns”, Brown, 2006, 346). The image can also acquire a more general meaning and comes to symbolize lore, cultural heritage, even that of the Christian culture: “How should we read the runes of a new kingdom?” (“Bethlehem”, Brown, 2006, 149). Crucially, the “rune” is a symbol of the poet’s craft and mission, be it an ancient skald or a modern poet, and of the poetic diction and poetry in general: “Here is a work for poets – / Carve the runes / Then be content with silence” (“A Work for Poets”, Brown, 2006, 378).6 The symbolic meaning of the “rune” goes even deeper. In “The Lesser Mysteries of Art” it is described as follows: Rune Obliterator of a thousand questing mouths, and sevenfold silence still. (Brown, 2006, 189)

Thus, runes for the poet, like the Viking runes on the walls of Maeshowe, symbolize writing preserved for eternity when other sounds of human life vanish into silence. Poets should strive to achieve immortality by carving their own runes. To quote M. Stachura, “If Brown was looking for the perfect poetic form to present this idea, the axe poems of the Vikings, carved as they were into rock, gave the impression of something enduring, true, and eternal” (Stachura, 2011, 37–38). Dragon and Dove Fishermen with Ploughs: A Poem Cycle (1971) is a sequence of poems based on the history of Orkney. In the prose introduction, the four parts of the cycle are explained. The first two tell an imaginary story about a tribe of “fisher people” from Norway who in the ninth century sailed

6 The last two lines of this poem are carved as an epitaph on the poet’s gravestone in Stromness cemetery.

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west on a ship called Dove and settled in the fertile Rackwick Valley on the island of Hoy: Their god, the beautiful Balder, is dead. They are in flight from starvation, pestilence, turbulent neighbours (what the poet calls, in the shorthand of myth, the Dragon). But also they are compelled west by the promise of a new way of life: agriculture. The cargo in their hold is a jar of seed corn. Fate, blind and all-wise, has woven their myth about them. Now the same Fate sits at the helm. (Brown, 2006, 89)

Part I Dragon and Dove consists of nine poems that are particularly rich in Norse imagery. The first poem, “Building the Ship”, starts with the tribe receiving a prophecy: “‘A dove must fold your seed from dragon flame.’ / That blind rune stabbed the sea tribe”. The prophecy is uttered by Norn, a blind woman, Fate personified.7 The tribe starts building a ship, which they name Dove: Saws shrieked, sputtered, were sharpened, sang. Dunes were pale with strewment of boards. Seaward a keel was set. Sprang from that spine a vibrant cluster of ribs. (Brown, 2006, 90)

The cycle abounds in alliterations, and in the example above the ample use of sibilants together with the stylistic device of enumeration helps create a vivid picture of shipbuilding. The people of the tribe bear Nordic names: Thorkeld, a blacksmith, their leader; Norn, the seeress; Nial, Thorkeld’s son; Gudrun, his bride; Armod, a skald; Balder, their god. Thorkeld soon dies of wounds inflicted by the Dragon and is given a Viking funeral: “An oarsman slid a silver coin for ferry / Under the cold flame of the tongue. / Skald wove deathsong in the loom of his mouth”. Here also a broad epic Beowulfstyle narrative is enhanced by alliteration and assonance: “Steel came unclouded from stiffening mouth. / The oarsmen could not tell tears from spindrift”, “The ancient kings asleep under the aurora”, “Norn turned down her tranquil mouth. / Throats of the heroes throbbed”, “At once the blind tongue blossomed with bodings, biddings” (“The Death of

7 Norns (ON Nornir) are goddesses of destiny in Old Norse mythology.

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Thorkeld”, Brown, 2006, 91–92). The poet uses skaldic-style poetic syn­ onyms and kennings: sea is called “salt”, plough – the “earthship, …breaking frail furrows across / The slow surge of the hills”, but the “earthship” is also a coffin “under the hill drowned”; a timbered barn is called “earthark” (“The Blind Helmsman to the Shipwright”, Brown, 2006, 94–95). A woman is a “crude workday winter vessel”, “sweet grain jar” (“Gudrun”, Brown, 2006, 96–97). Whales are “threshing lumps”, “blue hills, cartloads of thunder”, “floating feast-halls”, their open mouths off the coast of Hoy recall the giant wolf Fenrir’s gaping jaws: “Sky jaw from sea jaw split, gigantic laughter!” (“Whales”, Brown, 2006, 97–98). The following sections of the cycle tell of the descendants of the tribe through the centuries, how their lives changed with the arrival of Reformation, annexation to Scotland, wars, advance of modern times. The beautiful Rackwick Valley becomes deserted, the “dwellers in islands are drawn to the new altars” (Brown, 2006, 89). The cycle ends in a long prose sequence “The Return of the Women”, which is set after the fateful events of the past are repeated, only on a massive scale. The Dragon manifests itself as “The Black Flame”, “the black circle of Mephistopheles”, i.e. atomic or nuclear war that wipes out civilization. Survivors of the disaster return to Rackwick, bringing with them the precious seeds of corn. To enhance the dramatic effect, the poet uses alliterative prose: “…we were among black islands – bone and rottenness everywhere, even on these western beaches” (Brown, 2006, 132). The egalitarian group of survivors – people from different walks of life – gradually turns again into a traditional stratified community: the laird, crofters-fishermen, a shepherd, tinkers, beachcomber, women – “the sea-watchers”. The poet was fascinated by the traditional island way of life (though acknowledging that it was hard) and apprehensive of calamities that could be brought by technological progress. In the poem dedicated to his friend Sylvia Wishart he wrote: “I see a thousand cities broken, / Science / Hounded like Cain through the marches of atom and planet, / And quiet people / Returning north with ox and plough. / They will offer it again to the light, a chalice” (“To Sylvia Wishart”, Brown, 2006, 383). “Where the saga sails forever…” As pointed out above, Brown admired Old Norse-Icelandic sagas and skaldic poetry and was greatly influenced by them. In his autobiography For the Islands I Sing he wrote:

That Rune Will Unlock Time’s Labyrinth… I think that, in the writing of narrative, I learned a great deal from Burnt Njal, Grettir, Orkneyinga saga. It is good, for certain kinds of writing, to use as few words as possible. The structure and form of the saga stories is magnificent. I think I have learned from them the importance of pure shape. But from my mother’s side, the Celtic, I delight too in decoration. Look at the intricacies of early Gaelic art. Whether it is desirable to marry ‘pure narrative’ with elaborate decoration is not for me to say. I write as I must. (Brown, 1997, 65)

The sagas had not only influenced Brown’s style but also served as an inexhaustible source of themes, plots and characters for his writings. Among them, The Orkneyinga saga stands out. Its central characters became protagonists of his novels, stories, plays and poems. The main character in his works and a continuous object of admiration was undoubtedly Saint Magnus of Orkney: “For me, Magnus was at once a solid convincing flesh-and-blood man, from whom pure spirit flashed from time to time – and never more brightly than at the hour of his death by an axe-stroke, in Egilsay island on Easter Monday, 1117” (Brown, 1997, 52). The life of Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney (1106–1115), is known from The Orkneyinga saga and two other sagas,8 the story of his life seemingly modelled on early Norse hagiographies. Magnus was a joint earl of Orkney together with his cousin Hakon Paulsson and was murdered by Hakon after the power struggle in the islands. He was buried on the spot where he was killed on Egilsay and soon miracles began to happen at his grave, with some blind people regaining sight and the infirm being cured. He was canonized as a saint in 1136 and soon his relics were transferred to the newly built Kirkwall Cathedral. In 1919, during the Cathedral restoration, a box containing bones and a cleft skull was discovered in one of the columns (Towrie, 2019). Brown dwelt on the story of St Magnus in numerous works: the essay collection An Orkney Tapestry (1969), the novel Magnus (1973), the play The Loom of Light (1984), and many stories and poems. To quote Timothy C. Baker, Brown “uses the framework of Magnus’ life further to explore the relationship between individuals and the community, the value of sacrifice and the meaning of death” (Baker, 2009, 58). Brown’s poems 8 Magnús saga skemmri and Magnús saga lengri. There is also a Latin account of his life, Legenda de santo Magno (Antonsson, 2007, 10–14).

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about St Magnus were composed for various occasions, especially for St Magnus Day, April 16th. Several of his longer narrative poems depict Magnus’s life and martyrdom. In the poetic sequence “Songs for St Magnus Day” (Brown, 2006, 230–231) Magnus is shown as a bearer of peace: “We have brought unwanted cargo, jar of peace’…” He refuses to fight in battles and sails to the fateful tryst on Egilsay with only two warships, as agreed, while Hakon has eight. On the way, Magnus’s ship is struck by a great wave in a calm sea. Magnus sees it as a bad omen and foretells his own death: “A thistle will thrust daggers through that clay / On the trysted shore”. He spends a night in a church praying, comes out and stands among his enemies: “The skipper steps out of the stone ship / With a blank bill-of-lading” (“the stone ship” is a kenning for “church”). Hakon’s men are unwilling to execute a peaceful man, so the earl summons his cook Lifolf (“life-wolf ”) and orders him to kill Magnus. Soon after Magnus’s death miracles begin to happen at his tomb and people come there hoping to be healed. In the poem “Saint Magnus on Egilsay”, a peasant finds Magnus’s body and buries it: “Hands from the plough carried the broken saint / Under the arch. Below, the praying sea / Knelt on the stones” (Brown, 2006, 32). Magnus is humbled by the role of a martyr destined for him: “A red martyr coat? / Domine, non sum dignus”. Lifolf ’s axe to him is “…the key / For the unlocking of the door into light” (“St Magnus”, Brown, 2006, 402). In “Tryst on Egilsay” (Brown, 2006, 291–297), the fateful meeting of the earls is shown through the eyes of its participants. Earl Hakon muses: “This can never be good, a cloven earldom, / Bad governance, the folk / Fallen into faction, insolence, orisons”. The helmsman of Magnus’s ship, having travelled as far as Africa, Russia, Byzantium and Greenland, asks himself: “What am I doing, rowing gentry / Through a sea of glass ad insulam ecclesiae?” and is taken aback by a great wave that strikes the ship on the calm sea. The killers wearing “masks / Of wolf and of raven” (beasts of battle in ON poetry) complain about the cloven earldom but are reluctant to kill the innocent man. Magnus himself, facing the enemies, acknowledges troubles in the islands and is ready to sacrifice himself: “Quick – let the silver cord be loosed”. Men of Egilsay wonder: “Why should the lords choose Egilsay / For their corn dance? Why Not? / […] / Look – the shape of Ingi against the sunset! / […] / Return to us, Magnus, laden with cornstalks”. Here, Brown not only portrays Magnus as a Christian martyr and saint but also endows him with features of a cultural hero, the Corn King of the early Irish and Scottish belief (cf. Murray

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& Murray, 2008, 76, 84). The pagan ritual is implied by mentioning Ingi (Ingi-Freyr), Old Norse god of fertility.9 St Magnus became a unifying force of the Orcadian community, the source of consolation and hope through centuries of hardships. On St Magnus Day, April 16th, the whole community comes to celebrate their saint bearing him gifts. Shepherds bring a fleece, tinkers – a new bright can that “Their hammers beat all night”, a fishless fisherman brought his torn net, the farm boys “offered / A sweetness, gaiety, chasteness / Of hymning mouths”, the women came “With woven things / And salt butter for the poor of the island”, and the poor “Came with their hungers” (“April the Sixteenth”, Brown, 2006, 154–155). Some poems contain skaldic-style kennings: the laird is a “keeper of corn / and peathill and jetsam, lord of the longship”, ships are “seahorses”, “they that send out seahorses to trample the waves” are shipbuilders and sailors; “fish-seekers” are fishing boats, “stone-ship” – a church, “earth-workers” – ploughmen, farmers (“St Magnus Day in the Island”, Brown, 2006, 231–233). The poet, being a devout Catholic, depicts the saint with great warmth and affection. According to Maggie Fergusson, “Magnus was becoming such an ally in George’s mind that he had begun to address poetry directly to him, beseeching him to breathe new life into Orkney” (Fergusson, 2006, 81). In “Song for St Magnus: 16 April” the poet speaks to the saint directly: “Magnus, friend, …” and beseeches him to extend his blessings not only to the Orcadian community but also to those suffering from wars and other disasters in various parts of the world: “Keeper of the red stone, remember well / Sufferers today, […] / Be present at the fires / Of women in Bosnia and Somalia / Kneeding dough smaller than fists. / […] / Magnus, give welcome to strangers. / Their children / Will sing with new voices, in April, / The words from the Iceland parchment” (Brown, 2006, 402–404). Not incidentally, Brown’s autobiography ends with the line: “I say, once a day at least, ‘Saint Magnus, pray for us…’” (Brown, 1997, 187). Another of Brown’s favourite characters in The Orkneyinga saga was Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson, later St Ronald of Orkney (1103–1158).

9 The ritual killing and rebirth of a king is described in the poem “Winter and Summer”: “The old scant-silver King, / Ice axes / Have hewn him down. / Give him to the ocean. / Lay in the ship his long bones. / […] / The world’s winter. / Twelve old folk / have followed their king / But into an earth-wave, a howe. / […] / Midsummer. The ascended King / Stores the island / With honey and green corn” (Brown, 2006, 335–336).

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He was the son of the Norwegian lendmann Kol Kalisson and Gunnhild Erlendsdottir, the sister of St Magnus of Orkney. He grew up in Norway and was known there as Kali Kolsson. When he became earl he was given the name Rognvald. He was an outstanding personality of his age: a talented skald,10 adventurer, crusader and a pilgrim to Jerusalem, one of Orkney’s most popular rulers, the founder of Kirkwall Cathedral, martyr and saint. Brown dedicated several poems to Earl Rognvald, mostly concentrating on his voyage to the Holy Land, but also on his other deeds, such as building Kirkwall Cathedral. Brown also embarked on an interesting experiment, which involved rendering Rognvald’s numerous lausavísur into English. The poems “Pilgrimage” from the collection The Wreck of the Archangel (1989; Brown, 2006, 234) and “St Rognvald’s Journey to Jerusalem” from Travellers (2001; Brown, 2006, 451–452) tell the story of the Earl’s journey to the Holy Land. The latter is a short poem, comprised of 14 stations, marking the main events of Rognvald’s journey. It is supposed to present Rognvald’s pilgrimage as Stations of the Cross except that the voyage reminds one more of a plundering crusade than of a religious feat. Jerusalem-farers set sail from Norway in 15 ships, are shipwrecked in Shetland and spend a winter in Orkney. After a storm in Biscay they land on the coast of Spain and burn a Spanish castle. In Narbonne, Rognvald falls in love with the beautiful Countess Ermengarde and composes poems to praise her. In the Holy Land, they take a Moslem dromond, “the torrent of molten gold”, his favourite skald Thorbjorn Black dies of disease in Acre and is buried “under sun-bright stones”. They reach Jerusalem, on their way back visit Byzantium, a “golden city”, and eventually make their return home to “dry sails in the lofts of St Magnus”. The poetic cycle “Kestrel Roseleaf Chalice. Twelfth Century Norse Lyrics” (Winterfold, 1976) contains Brown’s translations of skaldic verses by Earl Rognvald and some of his skalds. Brown did not read the saga in the original. He was using A. B. Taylor’s translations of skaldic poetry from his 1937 edition of The Orkneyinga saga (D’Arcy, 1996, 258). As demonstrated by Hans Ulrich Schmid, the technique Brown employed ranges from close reworking to free adaptation (Schmid, 2015). Brown did not aim to recreate either dróttkvætt stanzas or the precise 10 To him and the Icelandic skald Hall Thorarinsson is attributed the poem Háttalykill: “Together they composed The Old Key of Metres, using five verses to illustrate each metre: but in these days only two are used as the poem was thought too long” (Orkneyinga saga; Pálsson & Edwards, 1981, 149).

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content of the verse. In most cases he uses a laconic, distinctly modern form, discarding overembellishments of skaldic style. Here are a few examples of Earl Rognvald’s lausavísur recreated by Brown: In a princely coat, stiff with runes and dragons, I leapt from the wreck. Cold now, sea-insulted, I shiver at a Shetland fire. With tattered sealskin The women cancel my nakedness. “A Shipwreck in Shetland” (Brown, 2006, 158) Verse is a golden ring, a gathered silence. Nobility a cloak, quartered. Heroism a rune, cold cuttings on stone. Today in the claw of frenzy I fluttered, a naked soul. Masks and songs were no longer a comfort to me. “The Earl attacked by a Madman” (Brown, 2006, 160)

Rognvald’s love of Ermengarde of Narbonne is described in a set of laconic comparisons (no verbs!) and a contrast of two colours – white and red, which can symbolize both love and war: White as snow White as silver The lady, A beauty all whiteness, A kindness Red as wine. Another redness, fire About the castle A sharp whiteness, swords. “Love and War” (Brown, 2006, 162)

These examples show that Brown’s reworkings of the scaldic verse are very different from the formal, metrically strict dróttkvætt, often overembellished with poetic synonyms (heiti) and complex kennings. Due to its excessive formalism, skaldic verse was in most cases devoid

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of the personal and the intimate, while Brown’s renderings, in contrast, bring the characters closer to the modern reader, showing their feelings, disclosing their intimate side and vulnerability. Rognvald, his warriors and skalds stand on the crossroads of two cultures – paganism, discarded not long ago, and the recently accepted Christianity, and Brown chooses to expose this inner conflict between a Viking warrior involved in plundering, killing and rape on the one hand, and a penitent Christian on the other. This is how the poet has reworked Rognvald’s original quatrain from The Orkneyinga saga: “A cross on this bard’s / breast, on his back / a palm-branch: peacefully / we pace the hillside” (Pálsson & Edwards, 1981, 179): We stand here, shriven, A hundred warmen lustred with penance, In each hand Assoiled from murders, whoredoms, thievings now A leaf of palm. Footsteps, free and fated, turn To the fourteen redemptive lingerings And the hill marked ‡ with this sign. “Jerusalem” (Brown, 2006, 164)

The poet’s critical view of the Viking age is even more pronounced when he chooses to speak not about kings and earls but about ordinary men, Orcadian fishermen and peasants, involved in earls’ warmongering campaigns, and as a result suffering a tragic fate (cf. D’Arcy, 1996, 280). The poem “Orkneymen at Clontarf, AD 1014” (Voyages, 1983) is based on the episode in The Orkneyinga saga (Pálsson & Edwards, 1981, 37–38) about the participation of Orcadians in the Battle of Clontarf in Ireland in 1014 AD. The troops, led by Earl Sigurd Hlodvisson the Stout, came to the aid of the Viking ruler of Dublin Sigtrygg Silk-Beard but were hopelessly defeated by the Irish army under the leadership of King Brian. Earl Sigurd and many of his warriors were killed. The poem’s protagonist, an Orcadian peasant Finn, one of Earl Sigurd’s men, lies mortally wounded in a ditch on the battlefield, lamenting the fallen comrades and his wretched fate. He longingly remembers his home in Westray: “Today, Good Friday, the ox in Stronsay / Tears sweet grass / Beside an idle plough, the women / Go between kirk and bread-board”. The Viking heroic ethos is debunked here as in many other poems: “Brave

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boasting there – / Battles, blood, wall-breaching, booty. / Now the glory is come / There is no ditch anywhere / I would not creep into, / Sharing a mushroom with tramp and slut” (Brown, 2006, 215–217). In the poem “Voyager” (Voyages, 1983), a Norwegian Viking, now an old man, was left behind in an Irish village and is wondering whether he will ever come back to Norway: “I am a gray humped man. / I had to learn new speech long ago. / I tend horses in a field. / After ten thousand mornings / Of rain, frost, larksong / How should I find a way back / To the waterfront of Trondheim?” (Brown, 2006, 208). In “One Summer in Gairsay Isle” (Following a Lark, 1996), a Viking, Ivor, left his “good arm in Ireland” during an assault on a keep but thinks himself lucky compared with “The ghosts who do not come back / At Lindisfarne fallen, or under a cliff in Brittany” (Brown, 2006, 321). In his writings, Brown was often drawing upon episodes and characters from other Old Norse-Icelandic sagas. Among his favourites was the story of the discovery of Vinland by Icelander Leif Eriksson. This resulted in the novel Vinland (1992), which tells a story of an Orcadian man, Ranald Sigmundson, who as a boy travelled with Leif to Vinland, later fought in the Battle of Clontarf and was involved in many other adventures before returning to Orkney and settling as a peaceful farmer. Leif Eriksson and Vinland are mentioned time and again in Brown’s poems, but Leif is a more distant persona than Magnus or Rognvald and his voyages are usually shown through the eyes of Orcadians who had sailed with him. In the poem “The Abbot”, the abbot at Innertun monastery enumerates his monks; one of them, Sigurd, “sailed to Iceland, a boy, / And lost an arm there. / He was with Leif on the Greenland voyage” (Brown, 2006, 43). In “Tryst on Egilsay”, the helmsman of St Magnus’s ship talks about his voyages, one of them as far as Greenland: “I think there may be land further west. / […] / An Icelander, Leif / Plucked grapes on that shore. / The old sailors in Shetland say / Leif had too much of his own treading / The day he stained his mouth with Vinland juice” (Brown, 2006, 292). The poem “Vinland” (Winterfold, 1976) describes Leif ’s voyage “On the bleak / Unbroken circles of sea”. The sailors carry a hungry raven in the basket to show them the way and hope on a stone in the west to cut “Such runes – / icelanders / hunted the golden whale / beyond hesper”. The poet admires the bravery of the men who ventured into the unknown and sees them as pioneers, breakers of the new frontiers and new times:

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“I must give my strength to the welding of rune and kenning” Skalds are often mentioned in Brown’s poems. The poet, as said above, knew skaldic poetry through translations of the sagas. Besides Earl Rognvald Kolsson, some other skalds appear as protagonists of his poems. In “The Five Voyages of Arnor” (Poems New and Selected, 1971), the skald Arnor11 speaks of his travels and poetic achievements: he went to Ireland to fight in a battle (“Rounding Cape Wrath, I made my first poem”), to Norway to vow the girl Ragnhild who became his wife (“She was uglier than I expected, still / I made five poems about her”), to Iceland to settle his brother Sweyn’s killing (“In Unst two nights, coming home, / We drank the ale and discussed new metres”), to Jerusalem (“With fifteen ships in a brawling company / Of poets, warriors, and holy men”). Sick with black cough at home in Hamnavoe, he is preparing for his last voyage and makes a final request: “… Drop my harp / Through a green wave, off Yesnaby, / Next time you row to the lobsters” (Brown, 2006, 63–64). The poet now and again speaks of skalds playing the harp: “Arkol the skald mingled these / words with harp strokes / at the Earl’s Hall at / Orphir in Orkney in the / Yuletide of 1015” (“Sea Jarl”, Brown, 2006, 69). We know that lyres or harps were played in the Viking period, yet neither sagas nor Snorri Sturluson’s Edda mention skalds reciting poems to the accompaniment of harps. In Brown’s romantic image of the skald, the harp seems to be more a symbol rather than a real instrument. In the poem “Greenpeace”, the harp as a symbol of the poet’s craft is handed down through generations, from Pictish bards to modern poets “of machine and atom” (Brown, 2006, 253). Skalds were court poets, and their mission was to praise the deeds of the rulers they served. Norwegian kings and earls used to have several 11 Arnor jarlaskald Thordarson (ca 1012–1070s).

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skalds at the same time; they would accompany their lord to battles, on voyages and pilgrimages. Some rulers, like Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson, who himself was an accomplished poet, attracted many skalds to his court. One of them was Thorbjorn the Black12 who went with the Earl to the Holy Land and died of sickness in Acre. He is the protagonist of the poem “Black Thorbjorn” and starts his monologue boasting that “The best poets live in Iceland“, although he later admits: “But men say, behind their hands / ‘Thorbjorn with the black beard / Is the worst farmer in Broadfirth’”. He has no time to waste on farming as he must give all his strength “To the welding of rune and kenning”. He responds to Rognvald’s summons to join the crusade because the Earl wants poets for his ships. According to Thorbjorn, “‘Good skalds are voyagers, / Drinkers of gale and battle’…” His goodbye to his wife includes two beautiful kennings: “‘…Ragnhild, honey-bee, expect your wordman / In five years, or six, or whenever’” (Brown, 2006, 332–335). As shown in the examples above, Brown made a conscious effort to use Old Norse poetic techniques, such as alliteration and skaldic fixed metaphors, called “kennings”. Alliteration and assonance are intrinsic features of Brown’s poetry, endowing his verse and prose poems with a specific rhythmical pattern, giving them forcefulness, vividness and adding depth by emphasizing significant words. The poet was fond of coining skaldic-style kennings, which he first learned about while studying Old English at Edinburgh University: “His course included Old English, and in his copy of C. L. Wrenn’s edition of Beowulf he listed stylistic devices, such as the condensed metaphors, known as kennings that were to feature so frequently in his poems” (Murray & Murray, 2008, 65). Most of Brown’s kennings are scattered throughout his poems dealing both with Old Norse subjects and others. To mention but a few of the most expressive ones: “eye-salt” are tears (“Chinaman”, Brown, 2006, 153), “earth-wave” is a howe (burial mound) (“Winter and Summer”, Brown, 2006, 335), “little silver brothers” (“Our Lady of the Waves”, Brown, 2006, 44), “Silent seekers through wave and wrack” (“Fiddlers at the Harvest Home”, Brown, 2006, 156) are fish, “earth-key” is a plough, “sea-opener” – a net and sinker (“Haiku: for The Holy Places”, Brown, 2006, 461), “earthore”, “sun-gold” – corn (“The Harp in the Glebe”, Brown, 2006, 454), “sea-reel”, “a grey stallion” – a ship, “a death-dealer” – a hand, “cut-throats” – warriors, “leaf-fall” – autumn, “salt furrows” – waves (“Kestrel Roseleaf 12 Thorbjorn Svarti (d. 1152).

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Chalice”, Brown, 2006, 157–165). A church, as seen by the Vikings, is “a cave of wax and perfumes” (“The Stone Cross”, Brown, 2006, 181), it is also called a “stone ship”, “stone poem”, while the “maker of scattered stone ships”, “shipwright in stone” is a stonemason (i.e. Master Roger of Durham, the builder of Kirkwall Cathedral), the Cathedral itself being called the “great red psalm in the islands” (“Earl Rognvald Kolson of Orkney to an Itinerant Builder of Churches”, Brown, 2006, 449–451). A few poems contain lists of skaldic-style metaphors. The poem “Fiddlers at the Harvest Home” enumerates poetic expressions encoding the cornerstones of Orcadian life: the quarry (for stone), corn, sheep, fish, dance, wheels (circles). It is reminiscent of the lists of kennings in the Eddaic poem Alvíssmál13 and some other Old Norse poems. Here is an example from Brown’s poem: Corn The green and the yellow upstarts A wind dancer Keeper of the secrets of dust and sun and seed Spume at the scarecrow’s thigh The oat for the oven Malt for the kirn A crust kirk-broken A brightness across the jaw of the winter mouse. (Brown, 2006, 155)

The poetic sequence “The Sea: Four Elegies” (Winterfold, 1976) contains a list of expressive kennings describing one of the key elements of the Viking world – the sea:

The sea is the Great Sweet Mother. She is the Swan’s Path. She is the Whale’s Acre. She is the Garden of White Roses. She is the Keeper of Horses. (The Loom also, the Harp with a thousand voices.)

13 The poem Alvíssmál (“Talk of All-Wise”) is a conversation between Thor and the dwarf Alvíss who while answering Thor’s questions produces lists of poetic names for various things and phenomena.

That Rune Will Unlock Time’s Labyrinth… She is the Giver of Salt and Pearls. The Vikings, her closest children, hated the sea. She summoned them, twice a year, from plough and lovebed. They called her, with cold mouths, the Widow Maker. (Brown, 2006, 168)

Dealing with language as the poet’s legacy is “To a Hamnavoe Poet of 2093” (Following a Lark, 1996). It is a testament to future poets, urging them to preserve the language they inherited from the past generations through millennia of Orkney settlement. Here, Brown dwells again on the poet’s mission as keeper, guardian of the language, traditional images and the poetic legacy of previous generations, thereby ensuring the continuity of the cultural tradition. Language unstable as sand, but poets Strike on hard rock, carving Rune and hieroglyph, to celebrate Breath’s sweet brevity. Swan-path, whale-acre. Do you honour The sea with good images? […] I hoard, before time’s waste Old country images: plough-horse, Skylark, grass-growth, Corn-surge, dewfall, anvil; […] Creel-scattering gales; Thor’s Hammer, studdering on Hoy. Do your folk laugh and cry With the gentle ups-and-downs Not so different, I think From talk in Skarabrae doors, Celtic shepherds at Gurness, Sweyn’s boatmen off Gairsay? (Brown, 2006, 326)

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Conclusions Old Norse themes, motifs and characters are an integral part of George Mackay Brown’s writings. His rune poems were inspired by the runic inscriptions of the Viking age: he tried to imitate their brevity and sparse language, often endowing his poems with deep metaphorical and symbolic meaning. In his prose and poetry, Brown was largely drawing upon episodes from The Orkneyinga saga and other Old Norse-Icelandic sagas and attempted to render skaldic verses into modern English, while also experimenting with Old Norse poetic techniques, such as alliteration and kennings. As we know, sagas seldom concern themselves with depictions of the feelings and psychological states of the characters. Old Norse skaldic poetry is very formalistic, rarely allowing a deeper glimpse into the heroes’ inner world. In tackling Old Norse material Brown succeeded in bringing those characters closer to modern readers, making them alive and timeless, opening their inner worlds, showing their feelings and experiences, joys and tragedies in life. Among them, Saint Magnus stands out, transcending the boundaries of the saga, viewed as the guardian of the Orcadian community through the centuries, as well as the poet’s spiritual guide. Poetic devices, such as alliteration, assonance and kennings, widely used in the poems, enrich the verse, creating specific rhythms and sound repetitions, binding the lines together, putting a specific stamp on Brown’s poetic diction and creating a feeling of continuity with the Old Norse poetic tradition.

References Antonsson, Haki (2007). St. Magnús of Orkney: A Scandinavian martyr-cult in Context. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Baker, Timothy C. (2009). George Mackay Brown and the philosophy of community. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Barnes, Michael P. (1994). The runic inscriptions of Maeshowe, Orkney. Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska sprak, Uppsala universitet. Brown, George Mackay (1997). For the islands I sing: An autobiography. London: John Murray. Brown, George Mackay (2006). The collected poems of George Mackay Brown. Edited by Archie Bevan and Brian Murray. London: John Murray. D’Arcy, Julian Meldon (1996). Scottish skalds and sagamen: Old Norse influence on modern Scottish literature. East Linton: Tuckwell Press.

That Rune Will Unlock Time’s Labyrinth… Fergusson, Maggie (2006). George Mackay Brown: The life. London: John Murray. Magnusson, Magnus (2001). Scotland: The story of a nation. London: HarperCollins. Murray, Rowena, & Murray, Brian (2008). Interrogation of silence: The writings of George Mackay Brown. London & Edinburgh: Steve Savage. Pálsson, Hermann, & Edwards, Paul (Eds.) (1981). Orkneyinga saga: The history of the Earls of Orkney. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Schmid, Hans Ulrich (2015). Old writings are no mystery to me… Skaldenstrophen der Orkneyinga Saga und George Mackay Brown. In P. Moran & I. Warntjes (Eds.). Early Medieval Ireland and Europe: Chronology, contacts, scholarship: A Festschrift for Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (pp. 671–694). Turnhout: Brepols. Stachura, Michael (2011). Making it new: Imagism and George Mackay Brown’s runic poetry. International Journal of Scottish Literature, 8, 34–48. Towrie, Sigurd (2019). Magnus – the Martyr of Orkney: The Relics of St Magnus. Orkneyjar: The heritage of the Orkney Islands. Retrieved from http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/stmagnus/relics.htm.

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Den kultur- och litteraturhistoriska gestalten i den lettiska novellen “Svētā Briģita” (“Heliga Birgitta”) av Jānis Ezeriņš Ivars Orehovs University of Latvia, Rīga

Cultural-historical and literary gestalt in the Latvian short story “Saint Birgitta” (“Heliga Birgitta”) by Jānis Ezeriņš Abstract: The Latvian author Jānis Ezeriņš’s (1891–1924) literary heritage includes, among other texts, the collection of short stories Fantastiska novele un citas (Fantastic short story and others, 1923). The collection contains the short story “Svētā Briģita” (“Saint Birgitta”), in which the author has used the image of a saint, which is very well known in the history of culture, literature and religion. The image can be related both to Celtic mythology and the historical Swedish personality, who had been the founder of Vadstena monastery and a literary author herself (approx. 1303–1373). The aim of the article is to explore the function of the image in the prose text by the Latvian author Ezeriņš and its connections with the cultural and historical personality of St. Birgitta. It is not typical of Ezeriņš’s writings to make such an explicit and direct association with this kind of legendary phenomena, therefore the inclusion of the text in the collection may suggest a connection between St. Birgitta’s individual destiny and enduring human values. This writer’s choice can also be seen as his own claim to international recognition.

I en av landskapet Kurzemes småstäder – Grobiņa, som ligger nära Östersjökustens stad Liepāja i västra Lettland, finns det några sevärdheter med skandinavisk och i synnerhet svensk anknytning. Där kan man inte bara beskåda skandinaviska gravfält, daterade till tidsperioden 650– 850 e. Kr. och undersökta 1929–1930 av svenska arkeologer under ledning av Birger Nerman (1888–1971), eller Grobiņa-läkarmottagning, där Zenta Mauriņa (1897–1978) har tillbringat sin barndom på faderns arbetsplats och bostad. Hon var en av de i Lettlands kulturhistoria mest mångsidiga personligheterna och till främmande språk översatta författarna, som har Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.7 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Foto 1. Heliga Birgitta katolska kyrka i Grobiņa. Arkitekter Aija och Andris Kokins; byggnaden uppfördes från 2000 till 2002 och fick efter invigningen samma år utmärkelsen “Årets bästa offentliga byggnad i Lettland”. Foto: grobinasturisms.lv

varit bosatt i Sverige från 1946 till 1965 och varit privatdocent på Uppsala Universitet från 1949 till 1963. I Grobiņa finns också en av de mest moderna kyrkobyggnaderna i Lettland – Heliga Birgitta katolska kyrka (se foto 1). Byggnaden är konstruerad i symboliska arkitektoniska former – som en Noaks ark från bibliska legender. Den symboliserar ävenledes med båtar ankomna svenskar, som förde in kristendomen till denna region. Kyrkan är som ett skepp, vilket räddar varje människa och genom böljande hav, som en symbol för det världsliga livet, för ut till evighetens stränder. (GT-e)

Den lettiska novellförfattaren Jānis Ezeriņš (1891–1924) härstammar från den östra delen av Lettland – landskapet Vidzeme. En av hans noveller i samlingen Fantastiska novele un citas (En fantastisk novell och andra, 1923; se foto 2) är benämnd efter den i den kristna kulturtraditionen bekanta kvinnliga trogenhetsbäraren, nämligen – “Svētā Briģita“ (“Heliga Birgitta”). I detta kortprosans verk bildar legendens återberättelse den centrala delen av ringkompositionen, medan i berättarens perspektiv inleds och i den avslutande delen uttrycks problematiska tyngdpunkter av

Den kultur- och litteraturhistoriska gestalten

Foto 2. Bokomslag – Jānis Ezeriņš. Fantastiska novele un cit [En fantastisk novell och andra]. Rīga: Valtera un Rapas akciju sabiedrība, 1923

mentala, fysiska och egendomsförhållanden för en mänskligt meningsfull samlevnad, varvid det observeras en underskattning av den manliga rollen i legenden. För jag-berättarens roll har valts en i livserfarenhet härdad och en viss välmående levnadsstandard uppnådd jordbruksföretagare Nikolajs Lamberts, som “har nått sitt sjuttionde levnadsår” (“sasniedzis septiņdesmito dzīvības gadu”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 174). Efter ett årtionde av barnlöst samliv med sin vid skildringens tidpunkt 35-åriga hustru Krístīne bedömer han, att det största och intresset för livet bevarande bekymret utgör den framtida användningen av den anhopade rikedomen. Ett uppslag av en andligt helande effekt för att man skulle få barn i detta äktenskap ger ett besök av en väninna från ungdomstiden under den symboliskt hoppfulla “äppelblomningstiden” (“ābeļu ziedu laikā”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 175). Hon uppmuntrar det gifta paret att bege sig till Heliga Birgittas kloster, där makarnas böner åhörs och “de fruktlösa blir fruktsamma”, men de “av svartsjukans satan bedragna – kära och trogna” (“neauglīgie topot auglīgi”, bet “greizsirdības sātana pieviltie mīļi un uzticīgi”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 175). Genom att tydligt klarlägga för läsaren den här huvudhandlingens utgångsposition i introduktionsdelen av den tredelade strukturen låter författaren jag-berättaren och hans hustru bege sig i en lineär sekvens “genom katolska länder” till detta kloster “på ett högt berg”, som “var

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nästan otillgängligt på grund av sin branta sluttning” (“pa katoļu zemēm” uz šo klosteri „kādā augstā kalnā”, kurš „sava stāvuma dēļ bija gandrīz nepieejams”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 175). Den här vändpunkten i handlingens miljöskildring vittnar både om en skönjbar likhet med den i den baltiska kulturhistorien kända och i pjäsen av Rainis (1865–1929) Zelta zirgs (Den gyllene hästen, 1909) använda och i den estniska folksagan Kuidas üks kuningatütar seitse aastat oli maganud (Sagan om kungadottern, som har sovit i sju år, 1866) rotade ʻglasbergets’ motiv i urban miljö, där runt “det berömda kvinnoklostret […] har uppstått en hel liten stad med byggda hus i olika tider, för att Gudens tillbedjare från fjärran skulle kunna bosätta sig” (“slavenu sieviešu klosteri […] saradusies vesela pilsētiņa dažādos laikos celtu māju, kur apmesties dievlūdzējiem no tālienes”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 176), och ävensom om annalkande till den europeiska allmänna kulturmiljön genom att välja som ett ledmotiv legenden om Heliga Birgitta. Enligt källor i mytologins forskning påträffas Brigit i den keltiska mytologin som latiniserade brittiska namnets form Brigantia från irisk barr, walesisk bar ʻhögland’, i irisk mytologi […] poeternas beskyddare. […] I kristendomen är hon känd som Heliga Brigit, trots att i historier om henne har det bevarats många hedniska mytelement – hon föddes vid soluppgången, varken i ett hus eller utanför det. Hon kunde hänga sin kappa för att torka ut på solens stråle, runt varje hus, där hon kom in, sträckte sig en strålande nimbus. Hon och 19 nunnor bevakade den heliga elden. (ME, 1994, 148)

I norra Europas kulturhistoria och även i svensk litteraturhistoria är känd en märklig personlighet, vars livsbanor och litterära kvarlåtenskap har fått betydelse av en till helgonförklarad gestalt, nämligen – Den Heliga Birgitta (ca 1303–1373; se foto 4 och 5). Född i en lagmans familj i landskapet Uppland, centrala Sverige, har hon efter sin mors död, vid 10 års ålder, liksom sett en vision eller uppenbarelse av den korsfäste Jesus Kristus. Efter att ha gift sig med Ulf Gudmarsson, som senare blev lagman i landskapet Närke, förde paret ett familjeliv med 8 barn i gudomlighet, välgörenhet och vallfärder i Europa. Under en av dem blev mannen sjuk, men efter några år, 1344, dog han. Mannens dödsfall innebar också “en vändpunkt i Birgittas liv” (Lönnroth & Delblanc, 1993, 79). Hennes uppenbarelser har uppkommit

Den kultur- och litteraturhistoriska gestalten

Foto 3. Användning av den helgonförklarade Heliga Birgittas gestalt i Sveriges kyrkor, här: i 1500-talets väggmålning och skulptur (Källa: Lars Lönnroth, Sven Delblanc. Den Svenska Litteraturen. Från forntid till frihetstid. Bd. I. Stockholm: Bonnier Alba, 1993, 84)

allt oftare och blivit nedskrivna. Vid ett av dessa andliga inspirationstillfällen verkade hon “höra att Kristus kallar henne: ʻDu skall vara min brud och mitt språkrör’” (citerat från: Söderblom & Edqvist, 1997, 89). Birgitta har bott i flera år i klostret nära makens dödsort, genom att ägna sin energi och en del av egendomen åt skapandet av en ny klosterorden i Vadstena, Östergötland, både för munkar och nunnor. För det krävdes tillstånd från den romerske påven. Så reste hon till Rom och har bott där huvudsakligen i ett hus på Piazza Farnese (se foto 4–5) från 1350 till sin död 1373. Året 1370 – alltså några år före Heliga Birgittas bortgång – berättigade påven Urban V Birgitinerordens existens. Klostret i Vadstena, dit Birgittas kvarlevor fördes (se foto 6 och 7) hela vägen från Italien till Sverige i en speciell procession, invigdes 1384 och blev ett viktigt kulturellt centrum i det senmedeltida Skandinavien, men den birgittinska rörelsen spred sig snabbt över Europa. Klostrets aktiva verksamhet ägde rum fram till år 1595, men den funktionella betydelsen både som ett museum och ett bibliotek har byggnader eller deras delar behållit ända fram tills nu (se foto 8). Den personens egna kulturhistoriska minne har bevarats genom Heliga Birgittas helgonförklaring

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Foto 4. Huset på Piazza Farnese i Rom. Foto: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Foto 5. Huset på Piazza Farnese i Rom. Foto: Ivars Orehovs

i Rom redan 1391 (se t.ex.: Lönnroth & Delblanc, 1993, 79–80), men “1999 utsågs hon till ett av Europas skyddshelgon” av påven Johannes Paulus II (1920–2005; VN-e). I Ezeriņš novell skildras Heliga Birgitta i legendens återberättelse av en kaplan som “alla makars förmyndare i himmelska boningar” (“visu laulāto draugu aizbildne debesu mājokļos”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 176). Efter Birgittas död skänktes huset, där hon bodde med sin dotter i Rom, till klostret i Vadstena, som inrättade det som en fristad för svenska pilgrimer. Sedan 1931 har huset återigen ställts till förfogande av Birgitinerordens romerska gren (BV-e).

Den kultur- och litteraturhistoriska gestalten

Foto 6 och 7. Heliga Birgitta, hennes kvarlevor förs i en procession från Rom till Vadstena i Sverige (bilder på vykort)

Heliga Birgittas andliga verks kvarlåtenskap – de i religiösa läsningar och personliga erfarenheter och upplevelser rotade, såväl på svenska som på latin handskrivna och distribuerade visionerna – har i åtta volymer med den gemensamma titeln Revelationes Coelestes upplevt den första tryckta upplagan på latin 1492 (se t.ex.: Lönnroth & Delblanc, 1993, 80). För att återgå till novellens av Ezeriņš tematiska kärna – legenden om den Heliga Birgitta – kan det noteras, att i texten inkluderade legendens återberättelse sker i ett manligt sällskskap, eftersom “Heliga Birgittas avbildade gestalt får besökas endast av hennes systrar, medan männen ska böja sina huvuden i ödmjukhet bredvid – framför altaret” (“Sv. Briģitas tēlu var apmeklēt tikai viņas māsas, bet vīriem jānoliec galvas blakus altāra priekšā”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 176). Så Lamberts fru Christine går in i klostret för att få välsignelse, men han själv får åhöra kaplanens berättelse. I denna avslöjas ett sådant paradigmatiskt utmaningselement som en härskares avsikt att välja i form av både mental och fysisk tävling den

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Foto 8. Vadstena klosterkyrka. Foto: Artifex. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadstena_Abbey

bästa möjliga friaren till sin arvtagerska – dottern Birgitta. Utvald för henne blir “en främling, en aldrig förr sedd riddare. […] kraftfull, ståtlig gestalt […]” (“kāds svešs, vēl nekad neredzēts bruņinieks. […] spēcīgs, stalta auguma […]”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 177). Riddaren accepterar med en stark beslutsamhet härskarens – ʻlantgrevens’ – och hans gästers i gästabudets yrsel uttalade utmaning att bära Birgitta upp till det branta och svårtillgängliga bergets krön, vilket han med en övernaturlig ansträngning klarar av och därmed når målet, men därefter – enligt Birgittas ord: “Han släppte mig till marken, kysste mig och stupade död av trötthet” (“Viņš nolaida mani uz zemes, noskūpstīja un pats no noguruma nokrita beigts”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 179) Birgitta har sedan visat den högsta graden av trohet gentemot den avlidna riddaren genom “att aldrig klättra nerför berget – till stor sorg för sin far och många riddare i detta land och i avlägsna länder” (“vairs nenoejot no kalna par lielām bēdām savam tēvam un daudziem šīs un tālu zemju bruņiniekiem”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 179), och genom att uttrycka sin själs övertygelse: “Jag tillhör endast honom, jag har blivit sammanvigd denna morgon för att han har vunnit” (“Es piederu vairs tikai viņam, es esmu salaulāta šinī rītā, jo viņš ir uzvarējis”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 179). Det är därför klostret, grundat på det höga och branta berget, har blivit som mål för pilgrimsfärder för många, som längtar efter hängivelsens och fertilitetens välsignelse.

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Ringkompositionens avslutningsdel i novellen består av Nikolajs Lamberts positionerade reaktion på legendens framställning, ävensom av återspegling på argumentationen om beslutet i arvfallet. Hans intresse är inriktat på – och därmed skymtas även författarens åsikt – att det visserligen finns ett behov av en balans mellan de gestalterna som beskrivs i legenden: om Birgitta har med trohetsbekräftelsen fått en tillskriven status av ʻden Heliga’, då har den manligt beslutsame riddaren blivit underskattad. Nikolajs säger: Nämligen, jag tänkte på Heliga Birgittas riddare, vars andes arvtagare tycktes vara jag själv, men för honom visste inte den hela kristna församlingen några böner; eftersom felaktigt nog i sin tänkandets snävhet har den blivit förälskad i prestationer, men har glömt själva skaparen. [Proti, es domāju par Svētās Briģitas bruņinieku, kura gara īstenieks es šķitos sevī, bet kuram nevienas lūgšanas nezināja visa kristīgā draudze; jo savā domu šaurībā tā iemīlējusi sasniegumus, bet aplam aizmirsusi pašus sasniedzējus.] (Ezeriņš, 1998, 180)

Denna mänskliga position manifesterar sig också i den slutliga delen av narrativets framåtskridande om beslutet om arvsskifte, eftersom Heliga Birgittas klosterbesök “har inte blivit välsignat” (“nav bijis svētības”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 180), alltså – efter det har i familjen Lamberts inte fötts några barn – potentiella arvingar. Huset testamenteras till hustrun Kristīne, men penningkapitalet – i två delar, varav en skulle tillkomma “vårt hemlands medicinska fakultet i staden för ärftlighets- och embryologisk forskning” (“mūsu dzimtenes pilsētas medicīniskai fakultātei iedzimtības un embrioloģijas pētījumiem”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 180), medan den andra – för att nå ett filosofiskt-idealiskt mål, dvs.: “att gräva ut Heliga Birgittas riddare från glömskan, för att rätta till den historiska orättvisan och fullända sin tid med en moralisk fulltonighet” (“Svētās Briģitas bruņinieka izrakšanai no aizmirstības, lai izlabotu vēsturisku netaisnību un noslēgtu savu laiku ar tikumisku pilnskaņu”; Ezeriņš, 1998, 180). Det uttrycks även en generös sannolikhet att gestalta ett monument med följande inskription: “Till Mannen som vann vid döden” (“cilvēkam, kas mirstot uzvarēja”; Ezeriņš, 1923, 25). Säledes, med denna deklaration av universella mänskliga värden i Jānis Ezeriņš novell, med hänsyn till både legendens framställning och det

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veterliga i historiska källor om Heliga Birgittas av svensk härkomst liv efter makens död, som blev den avgörande “vändpunkten” i hennes identifierbarhet och tillbedjan, kan man uttrycka en viss sannolikhet, att författaren, genom att förutse den feminint inriktade litteraturens ökande inflytande, har uppmanat i detta litterära verk att inte glömma de maskulina värdena, följaktligen – att hålla balansen.

Litteratur BV – Birgitta. Vadstena. Retrieved 14.09.2018 from http://birgitta.vadstena.se. Ezeriņš, Jānis (1923). Svētā Briģita. Fantastiska novele un cit (pp. 16–25). Rīga: Valtera un Rapas akciju sabiedrība. Ezeriņš, Jānis (1998). Svētā Briģita. Noveles (pp. 174–180). Rīga: Atēna. GT – Grobiņas tūrisms. Retrieved 22.06.2017 from http://www.grobinasturisms.lv/lv/apskates-objekti-2/sv-brigitas-katolu-baznica. Lönnroth, Lars, & Sven Delblanc (1993). Den Svenska Litteraturen. Från forntid till frihetstid. Bd. I (pp. 78–92). Stockholm: Bonnier Alba. ME – Mitoloģijas enciklopēdija (1994). Vol. 2. Eds. Roberts Akmentiņš, Edgars Katajs, Janīna Kursīte et al. Rīga: Latvijas enciklopēdija. Söderblom, Inga, & Sven-Gustaf Edqvist (1997). Litteraturhistoria. Lärobok för gymnasiet (pp. 87–89). Stockholm: Natur och kultur. VN – Vatican News. Retrieved 29.09.2018 from https://www.vaticannews. va/sv/kyrkan/news/2018-07/heliga-birgittas-budskap-till-europa. html.

Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology David Östlund Södertörn University – Stockholm

Abstract: This article brings forward a set of examples from the “Swedological” literature that had its golden era circa 1930–1980 – i.e. non-Swedish interpretations of Swedish society (or features of it), done in order to fight ideological wars on non-Swedish soil, using Sweden as a case in point. The theme of Sweden as a peaceful nation, both in its internal developments and in its role in the world, was a crucial feature of the genre from the outset. It has been possible to interpret Sweden’s neutrality policies (including heavy production and exports of arms) in different ways. This has also been the case with Swedish attempts to take responsibility in the world, showing global conscience (e.g. through criticism against international bullies or through foreign aid). The theme of peaceableness has, over the decades, been a tool in fights between “Swedophiles” and “Swedoclasts”, both sides applying a certain “logic of debunkery” in their mutual attempts to disclose the opposite camp’s depictions as myths.

Peaceful Sweden and the war of “Swedophiles” and “Swedoclasts”1 Sweden used to be known as one of those poor European countries, abandoned by big chunks of their populations for a better life across

1 The main contents of this article were originally presented at a conference arranged by The Nobel Museum and Södertörn University, “Cosmopolitanism in a Wider Context: Conceptualizing Past and Present”, Stockholm, 24–26.11.2011. I have benefited from discussing its theme with students at the University of Michigan in 2004, 2011 and 2018, as well as with students at Vilnius University’s Centre for Scandinavian Studies – where I have had the privilege to be a recurring guest lecturer in its vibrant milieu, imbued with the generous spirit of Ērika Sausverde. Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.8 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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the Atlantic. Nothing of interest. But with a foretaste in a theme issue of the National Geographic in 1928, and a breakthrough in the press coverage from the Stockholm Exhibition of Arts and Crafts in 1930, Sweden suddenly became all the rage in the USA. “Smorgasbord” became a culinary fashion (and one of the few Swedish loan words in English). In discussions related to the Depression and the early New Deal, some depicted the country as a Utopia, rhyming “Sweden” with “the Garden of Eden”. As an argument in support of the “second” New Deal, the journalist Marquis Childs published a counter-image in his political bestseller Sweden: The Middle Way in 1936. He claimed that Sweden had become the world’s only really working laissez-faire economy, due to forces counteracting capitalism’s self-destructive tendency towards monopoly. The main example, and central theme of the book, was the consumers’ co-op movement. Childs saw parallel balancing influences in other popular movements as well, especially the trade unions. A constructive role was also assigned to the state, as Conservative, Liberal and Social Democratic governments, showing strong continuity over several decades, had intervened in production, only marginally, but in a way that created competition, rather than quenching it. Sweden was anything but a Utopia. On the contrary, the virtue of “the Swede” was his practicality: his focus on solving problems in a reasonable way, by means of earthbound dialogue between all interests concerned. Thus, in Childs’s take, the little kingdom illustrated the possibility of combining true democracy with economic efficiency, even to turn grass-roots action into a crucial lever of wealth creation (Östlund, 2014). Childs’s The Middle Way would become the major classic of an international genre. In the late 1960s another American, David Jenkins – one of its most astute contributors – dubbed it “Swedological writings” ( Jenkins, 1968, 17). The texts within this multifaceted genre were written by non-Swedes and used Sweden as a case in point within debates in other countries. Her case was used to wage ideological wars on foreign soil. But the points made in depicting and analysing various aspects of Swedish society differed in an astounding and instructively erratic way. Often it became obvious that the truth about Sweden as such was of marginal interest (if of any interest at all). The main question was in what ways was it possible to deploy the Swedish case, always relating new statements to clusters of claims already in place. The genre would thus be formed by “Swedophiles”, using different aspects of Swedish life, or Swedish society in general, as a model to follow, and by “Swedoclasts”,

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who were just as eager to single out Sweden, or things Swedish, as a deterrent, as a road leading astray. Even writers who attempted to be neutral and balanced – such as Jenkins – had to realize they had entered an ideological battlefield, finding their way in the line of fire between partisans on both sides, all claiming to debunk myths created by the other side. The golden era of Swedology would roughly span the five decades from 1930 to 1980. By all measures, the external attention attracted by the country during those years was disproportionate to its size and importance. The motor behind it all was very obvious: the economic Cinderella story of the nation. Her success was visibly founded on industrial and technological prowess. This was mirrored in the fact that Swedophiles and Swedoclasts all agreed on one basic condition of the debate: Sweden was perceived as the land of far-reaching industrial modernity. Most Swedologists tacitly agreed on treating the Swedish case as a crystal ball: in il paese del futuro (“the land of the future”, Altavilla, 1967), it was possible to discern futures for other countries on track towards economic, social, political and cultural modernity – rosy or thorny futures, opportunities or risks. In the years around 1970 Sweden was the second-richest country in the world. Even the angriest Swedoclasts could not, in those years, avoid admitting that the Swedes actually were the richest people in the world, as Sweden – in stark contrast to the USA, which had the world’s highest GNP – had practically eradicated poverty, allowing all citizens to enjoy the wealth of the nation. Thus, it became crucial to Swedoclasts of this generation – a choir reaching a crescendo – to turn Swedish material progress and obsession with efficiency into a vice. Making a case for economic failure was hardly an option. This soon changed. After the international economic crisis had finally reached the country in earnest, around 1976, Sweden turned into just another advanced industrial nation, having its ups and downs. Then the external attention dwindled rapidly. But the traditions of Swedology lingered. Patterns from the golden era of the genre were occasionally reactivated after 1980. One such case was when shocking “facts” about eugenic sterilization policies in the Welfare State between 1935 and 1975 suddenly became topical in media around the world in 1997 (Broberg & Tydén, 1998). In the decades since 1980, patterns of Swedological writings have increasingly been applied to the Scandinavian or Nordic countries in general – often putting the happy Danes, the rich Norwegians or the well-educated Finns in the front seat. Such efforts to turn Scandinavia in general into a “model” to follow have not necessarily referred to Sweden

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in particular, as they pretty much always did before 1980. This trend has possibly been reversed a bit in recent years, since issues of immigration and cultural diversity have become the centrepiece in a new wave of Swedoclasm, with critics like Donald Trump bringing Sweden back into the focus of attention (Rapacioli, 2018). The theme of this debate is quite foreign to the writings of the Swedological genre’s golden age, despite its dependence on inherited patterns. Interwar and early postwar contributions did often count cultural and “racial” homogeneity among the explanatory factors behind supposedly unique features of Swedish society. Only in the decade around 1970 did Sweden’s assumed cultural conformism and traditionally harsh treatment of its ethnic minorities turn up in Swedoclastic arguments, and Sweden’s increasingly non-assimilationist stance towards immigrants (e.g. offering home language classes in the school system) in Swedophile depictions. When such issues did turn up, they were closely related to the feature in Swedological writings that is the topic of this essay: the theme of peaceable Sweden. Readers of Swedological writings from the 1930s through the 1970s would see the basic story repeated ad nauseam – and extended in time, decade after decade. Sweden had not been at war since 1814 – a record beating even Switzerland by some decades. The puzzlingly peaceful divorce with Norway in 1905 had been one of the events that had attracted global attention to Scandinavia before the 1930s. Since the early nineteenth century, Sweden had been neutral, more or less consistently applying the principle of non-alignment in peacetime, aiming at neutrality in times of war. But in contrast to Switzerland, her neutrality policies did not exclude an active role on the global scene. The two European nations with confusingly similar names soon took on roles as peace mediators. Sometimes they did so together, and often in a hands-on fashion. An example of this was their shared responsibilities as protectors of the demilitarized zone between the two Korean states after 1953 – a still ongoing assignment. But the Korean War had actually been one of Sweden’s aberrations from strict neutrality. She had been a partisan in the camp officially fighting in the United Nations’ name, although she never contributed armed troops (only a field hospital and similar forms of assistance). This was consistent with a well-established stance. A relatively strong and consistent support for the League of Nations in comparison with many countries during the interwar years (we will soon see some testimonies to this) was followed up with becoming one of the UN’s most devoted founding members after 1945. Swedish soldiers in

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blue berets on peacekeeping missions would soon be a common sight in conflict zones all over the globe. Dag Hammarskjöld’s achievement as perhaps the strongest secretary general in the UN’s history (1953–1961) would become a symbol of the organization’s potential. After his dramatic death during the Congo Crisis in 1961, the Norwegian parliament’s Nobel committee awarded him the peace prize posthumously – a rare exception. Sweden had already received three such prices, and in 1982 Alva Myrdal would bring home another one for her work against the nuclear arms race – a mission linked to that of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), founded in 1966. One factor would seriously complicate the general image of Sweden as the land of peace. Few Swedologists neglected to point it out and many tried to interpret it. A central phenomenon within the basic reason for paying attention to Sweden in the first place – her industrial success – was linked to her neutrality policy, namely her proportionally large production and export of military goods. Sweden is still today one of the world’s largest arms exporters in relation to her population size. Particularly during the Cold War, the “Swedish hedgehog” claimed to secure its independence by making its own machine guns, cannons, bandwagons and fighter aircraft – needing an international market for the policy’s economic buoyancy, and creating well-paid, high-tech industrial jobs as well as profits for capitalist investors at the same time. On the other hand, there were always speculations about how intimate Sweden’s relationship with the Western bloc really was, since postwar visions of forming a “neutral pact” with her Nordic neighbours had crashed, and Norway and Denmark had joined NATO in 1949. Like almost every Swede, most Swedologists assumed the relationship to be closer behind the scenes than it was in public. But few would have expected it to have been as elaborate as it actually was shown to have been in investigations carried out after the Cold War – an era when Sweden would gradually become a more loyal partner within the NATO community than many of its formal members (Petersson, 2018). After the Cold War it also became a less complex option, trying to combine formal neutrality with membership in the European Union (Sweden joined in 1995). During the second half of the golden age of Swedology, security policy issues had been a major reason for Sweden to (mainly) keep its distance from the EU’s formation process. Sweden’s security policies and place in the world were seldom the major issue in Swedological writings. But it was a fairly constant and visible feature within the genre. It was linked to other features in intimate but

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complex ways. In creative manners, Swedologists used the theme as one of the bludgeons at hand, fighting the opposite camp in the continuous combat between Swedophiles and Swedoclasts. It will not be possible to carry out a complete survey of how it was done in this article. The ambition is rather to make a probe into the Swedological activities during the genre’s golden era, making some observations that may be useful in future examinations of this curious and elusive historical phenomenon. The middle way: champion of peace or Hitler’s fifth column? A land of negotiating problem solvers and labour peace The first Swedological full-length book, attempting to turn the kingdom of the Bernadottes into a case in point, an example carrying a message to the world, was probably Agnes Rothery’s Sweden: The Land and its People, published in New York in 1934. Soon in her portrait, Sweden’s peaceful history came into focus. Rothery claimed that the country was both old and new, showing the wisdom of age and the vitality of youth: Unravaged by wars for over a hundred years its men have had a chance to attain their full bodily stature; its laws have had a chance to become rational. The money which other nations have blown up in gunpowder has been used by this nation for education and the nourishing of art. Sweden is small and those who judge everything by size must use another criterion to appreciate her. If they will approach her humbly they will find much to learn and even more to enjoy within the confines of her lovely fringed and ravelled shores. (Rothery, 1934, 5)

In a chapter titled “Preparing for Peace”, Rothery reflected more closely on Sweden’s development from a warrior nation, a great power in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, to something quite different. Old garrison cities and naval bases like Kristianstad and Karlskrona had lost much of their significance:  …since, in 1925, [Sweden] prepared for peace by a sensible reduction and reorganization of both her army and navy and hopes ultimately to do away with all wars and preparation for them. To be sure, two thousand men are employed in the manufacture of munitions at

Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology the Bofors plant on orders that are three years in advance. But most of these orders under the Geneva Traffic in Arms Act are for other nations. (Rothery, 1934, 150–151)

Thus, an ambiguity that would remain present in most takes on Swedish peaceableness was introduced from the outset, although the tension between non-belligerence and providing others with arms did not seem to bother Rothery. In the same context, she quoted one of the articles that had recently singled out Sweden as a positive example in political debates. Under the heading “Sweden: Where Capitalism is Controlled”, Marquis Childs had stated his first Swedological position in Harper’s Monthly in late 1933. He had also invoked the theme of peace in the opening of his argument: The Scandinavian countries [Sweden, Norway and Denmark] have developed during the past hundred years more or less apart from the violent national and political passions of continental Europe. Aside from a healthy national rivalry, they have lived in peace and harmony. (Childs, 1933, 749)

Childs returned to the theme in the end, at the moment when this article contrasted most starkly against the argument that he would make two and a half years later. Supporting the “first” New Deal in 1933, Childs’s point actually came closer to conveying the message that many superficial latter-day readers, anachronistically, have read into his famous book. Here he actually claimed that Sweden was taking a middle road between the USA and the Soviet Union, pointing to the new Social Democratic cabinet’s ambitions to create a measure of discontinuity in Swedish history. Dealing with the emergency of depression – launching a “drastic unemployment programme” – they were “trying to restore purchasing power” in a way that Childs said resembled what J. M. Keynes had proposed (three years before the book that launched Keynesianism as such): But the Social-Democrats have not forgotten their ultimate goal. It is possible that, if world capitalism now gains a breathing space, there may be completed in Sweden the gradual and orderly transition from one type of economic life to another. The very fact that such a transition may be possible is enormously heartening. (Childs, 1933, 758)

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Any revolution instigated by the Social Democratic party, no matter how peaceful or gradual, would never be a part of Childs’s argument in Sweden: The Middle Way. Continuity rather than transition from one system to another, and grass-roots action rather than central dirigisme as a source of gradual change, became themes when he finished his book in late 1935. With regard to the value of the cabinet’s crisis policies in helping Sweden to a smoother way through the depression than most countries (a key element in his message), Childs was fairly sceptical. In a manner that would later become common wisdom among historians, he assumed that the general economic effects had been marginal, although he deemed the policies to be sound for other reasons. In any case, a theme about peaceful internal societal development had a strong presence between the lines throughout the book. The emphasized non-Utopian nature of Sweden’s exemplariness was related to “the Swede’s” lack of interest in lofty visions and ideological schemes, and focus on concrete problem solving. His rationality was not looking for ideal perfection, but for reasonable solutions through arguments gained in discussion and negotiation. Childs would carry on stressing this theme. In 1938, he added a chapter in the second edition of The Middle Way, roughly integrating recent steps towards a more elaborated welfare state, such as population policy measures inspired by Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, into his main message. But those matters were not his main interest after his success in 1936. The following years he worked on a sequel, which was published in the autumn of 1938. The title was This is Democracy: Collective Bargaining in Scandinavia. The matter at hand was, as he stated from the outset, “the status of labor and the problem of trade-union organization”. The background was the new rules of the game established in the US, as a part of “the second New Deal”. The Wagner Act of 1935 in particular had created a new landscape in industrial relations. Childs attempted to introduce Scandinavia in general, and Sweden very much in particular, as a source of inspiration. It was certainly not expected to be possible to imitate the example in the US, but it pointed towards hopeful possibilities. One of the main themes in the book was a sudden, dramatic historical shift. The Swedish labour market had for decades been probably the most conflict ridden in the world. Due to an unusually high level of organization among both parties, in the Capitalist camp as well as that of Labour, it had been characterized by recurring strikes and lockouts on a mass scale, making the economy of the nation bleed. As from 1936,

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industrial relations were rapidly heading towards a state of constructive coexistence between the parties, even some form of cooperation. But Childs had been too eager to bring the gospel of Scandinavian labour peace over the Atlantic, a fate he shared with a commission on industrial relations in Sweden within the Roosevelt administration (U.S. Department of Labor, 1938). A few weeks after his book was published, the Swedish federations of trade unions and employer organizations made it out of date. They did so by signing the epoch-making basic agreement that was the outcome of two years of negotiations at the Saltsjöbaden resort, near Stockholm. With the Saltsjöbaden peace treaty, “the Swedish Model” within the labour market was established in December 1938. The basic agreement would be completed with four follow-up agreements during the subsequent decade. The fundamental feature of this “model” was the rule that the parties should deal with their own problems through negotiation, without interference from the state. “The Swedish Model”, in this sense of the term, was all about limiting the role of political decisions and the public sector. (Social policies such as state-regulated minimum wages would be a non-issue in Sweden, and remain so today. State authorities would soon play mainly a service role in this context, e.g. meeting the private sector parties’ joint interests of creating “mobility” within the labour market of the 1950s and 60s. During those decades’ avalanche of urbanization, the Labour Market Board (AMS) would lead concerted efforts together with shrinking municipalities in the countryside, and expanding municipalities in the cities, in order to deal with the social challenges of deracination and resettlement. Interventionist labour market legislation initiated by the trade unions in the mid-1970s – prescribing forms of co-determination and regulating aspects of hiring and firing – would in fact terminate the labour market model in its classic Saltsjöbaden sense.) Childs had been too keen to share his experience as an observer of the formation of the Saltsjöbaden spirit of “common understanding” (samförstånd). But American readers would soon get rich opportunities to study the contents of the Saltsjöbaden agreement. A translation of the peace treaty’s whole text was published for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, in a book by Sigfrid Hansson, director of the state’s Social Board, the prime minister’s brother and for decades a leading ideologist of the trade union movement (Hansson, 1939). Two scholarly studies went into great depths with the marvels of the new order in 1941 and 1942: Paul H. Norgren’s The Swedish Collective Bargaining System and James J. Robbins’s The Government of Labor Relations in Sweden.

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The message in Childs’s forgotten book could not have been affirmed more strongly. The phenomenon of labour peace would remain a cornerstone in Swedological writings for decades to come. Few contributions failed to mention it. Two reasons for this are obvious. Firstly, this was something that was unquestionably unique, even sensational, in Swedish society. With member rates soon approaching a hundred per cent among blue-collar workers, the trade unions appeared to work in harmony with a mirror-image set of organizations on the opposite side. Secondly, the spirit of common understanding in industrial relations was intimately linked to the marvel that attracted foreign attention to the Swedish case in the first place: her industrial Cinderella story. From 1938 to 1976 Sweden’s path from rags to riches bore testimony to two facts that Swedologists were forced to accept and challenged to interpret: economic progress was clearly compatible with high levels of trade union and employer organization, and was also compatible with elaborate and centralized forms of collective bargaining. In David Jenkins’s earlier mentioned book Sweden and the Price of Progress from 1968, the chapter on “The Great Labor Peace Apparatus” was a cornerstone. The phenomenon had not become less remarkable over the years. Jenkins described the chummy relations between the leaders of the trade unions and the employer organizations as “the business world’s counterpart to the bearded lady or the three-headed calf ”. He talked about “the spirit of Saltsjöbaden” as something bafflingly genuine: “[A]n effort by a suspicious investigator to uncover the truth beneath the surface amiability and mutual respect is apt to come upon a solid core of amiability and mutual respect” ( Jenkins, 1968, 133). Wartime interpretations: a land of hope or treason? In the final years before the outbreak of World War II, a whole set of Swedophile books were published on both sides of the Atlantic. But it would not be until the dramatic spring of 1940 that the first volume in the genre with a strict focus on peace and international relations was available. Its author, Alma Luise Olson, can be said to have been the first contributor to the genre of Swedology, as she had written the main piece in the National Geographic’s theme issue in 1928 (Olson, 1928). Due to her family background and language skills, her focus was Swedish. But she tried hard to make Scandinavia: The Background for Neutrality a book in which the Nordic countries – including Finland and Iceland – were treated as equals. They were together forming the phenomenon she aimed to draw attention to. Olson had obviously been working on the

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manuscript for years. But the conditions for making the book’s argument had shifted dramatically since the bulk of the text had been written before the outbreak of the war. The final text appears to have been delivered during the weeks immediately after the end of the Winter War, in which Finland had successfully defended her independence against the Soviet Union (despite formally losing the war), and in the weeks before the occupation of Denmark and Norway by German troops, on April 9. A supplement was added somewhat later, immediately before printing, in which the story was continued beyond April 9. The main argument, phrased before Sweden became the only country to stay out of the war, was basically this. Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden had together set an example for the world. In the recent phase of history, they had shown a practical and constructive path to genuine and stable peace. Olson’s point was that the Nordic countries – not long ago a field of recurring wars among the heirs of the fierce Vikings – had begun to materialize a new kind of union. In a way, it was a more constructive version of the Kalmar Union of the late medieval era. What made this community so attractive was that the sources of peace came from beneath, growing upwards. Formal deals and arrangements top-down played a marginal role. Together the countries had created a kind of pact, turning their corner of a militarized world into a peaceable oasis. Together they were defending the ideals of neutrality and peace, together doing everything they could do to prop up the all-too-weak League of Nations. Summing up the theme of “A United North” in her introduction, Olson turned to Finland for a fitting metaphor. Under the heading “Kantele” she admitted that the “New North” would be “treated lightly” in an era of diplomacy shaped by great powers “arming to teeth and testing their cannons and bombing planes to give more point to their assurances that they are steering the international ship of state into the safe harbor of peace”. The Nordic example could be dismissed as a “primitive” contribution to statesmanship. But it called to mind the five-stringed instrument Kantele, usually tuned in minor, which in the Kalevala legends were invented by the gentle Väinämöinen, “who believed that harmony and not brute force rules the world” (Olson, 1940, 44). Olson thus portrayed each of the Nordic countries quite generally, in order to understand what had made the model case of the peaceable North possible. The phenomenon was mainly seen as a matter of culture and attitudes, growing out of peculiar patterns of societal development.

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In a chapter named “A Strong State”, Olson started out with the Swedish case. In a passage written with the Finnish Winter War as a backdrop, she discussed the fact that neutrality was still “the slogan”. Olson referred to the Scandinavian representatives’ plea to the League of Nations in December 1939 for help for Finland as being consistent with two decades of work for war prevention, disarmament, arbitration and conciliation, striving to avoid turning the League into an instrument for punishing members. This led to a vindication of the Swedish position: Today Sweden, together with the rest of the North, would be the first to cooperate in any constructive plan for union in Europe that does not stress collective defense but aims at law and justice. Bounded by the many isms east and south and west – all reducing themselves plainly to the one idea of imperialism – the Swedish State, a strong State, has every moral and humane right to refuse to serve as the battlefield for any clashing ideologies or for any alien armed forces whatever. (Olson, 1940, 115–116)

Having said this, Olson was eager to stress the Swedish support for Finland’s cause, in the form of both aid and sympathy with her “courageous stand” against the Soviet pretence of “helping to set up a people’s government”, disguising crass strategic military goals. Olson actually failed to point out that Sweden’s stance in this case was her formally most clear-cut aberration from strict neutrality policies (and remains so), as she declared herself to be a non-belligerent party in the war, not a neutral one. Sweden did not send armed troops. But her aid and semi-official mobilization of volunteer soldiers were clear acts of partisanship. This may not have fitted Olson’s argument, as she carried on with an oblique reference to the recent state of peace within the Swedish labour market: “Swedish capital and labor are combined in loyal support of the ideals of free government, freedom of speech and democracy in the whole of the North, for these traditions of the centuries are now threatened by the totalitarian aggressors” (Olson, 1940, 115–116). Anticipating many Swedophile arguments over the following decades, Olson indicated that the Swedes were choosing neutrality, not in order to avoid responsibility, but on the contrary as a way to take responsibility. In her view, Sweden was the backbone of a Scandinavian zone of neutrality, with five nations working together to twist the globe in the direction of peace founded on justice and freedom for all – in particular for small

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nations in a world of bullies. In the postscript that took the story beyond April 9 – “Wherein the Background for Neutrality becomes a Target in Flank Warfare” – Olson described the Swedes’ new situation in a way that may be read as a defence against anticipated criticisms: “A loyal Sweden that pleads for Northern peace and freedom and neutrality, as ideals to be recaptured, has not ignored the tragedy that has befallen Denmark and Norway”. The book ended by stating that “the story of Scandinavia and the unconquerable spirit of the North, though temporarily muted, is not ended. Only while the battles rage, the voices pleading for peace are silenced” (Olson, 1940, 337–338). Sweden’s way to navigate the stormy waters of World War II did meet criticism. The first full volume with a Swedoclastic intent was actually published in 1943. Its whole message was to debunk images created by Swedophiles, in order to warn the allied countries – in particular the American opinion – not to trust Sweden as a truly neutral country, or to trust the Swedes in any respect at all. The sarcastic title was Stalwart Sweden. The author was a left-wing German refugee named Joachim Joesten. He was married to a Swedish woman and had spent some years in Sweden before going to the USA. He used his experience, contacts and frame of reference from his time in Sweden to support the many public voices of suspicion that were actually heard in America. He offered a more elaborate argument. Laying bare the logic of debunkery that is still forming most Swedological writings, the book’s main strategy was to smash images established by Swedophiles. The theme was explicit from the outset. Joesten warned of any illusions about Finland being anything else than an enemy. Finland was not an exception, fighting its “private war”, as she now fought against the Soviets and the British in alliance with Nazi Germany: The people who continue blandly to credit this dangerous nonsense usually are also the stanchest [sic] believers in the Swedish myth. This myth has sprung from various sources. Its roots reach back to the early thirties, when roving reporters and “social tourists” discovered Scandinavia, which had been, to centuries, almost ignored by the world. The foreign visitors, searching the globe for a place where people lived peacefully and prosperously in an atmosphere of social progress and international co-operation, found Scandinavia, and, in particular, Sweden, came very close to their dreams. They were enchanted by what they saw and heard, and they eagerly rushed

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It is notable here that Joesten, who later during the war came forward with his sympathies for the Soviet Union, was explicitly not inimical to the internal workings of Swedish society. He fought against the remaining trust in Sweden as an actor in the international arena. But Joesten reinforced his argument by drawing attention to the activities of the American-Swedish News Exchange (ASNE), which had opened its office in Manhattan in 1922, with a corresponding office in Stockholm. These offices were run by a foundation that counted many of the major figures of official Sweden among its founders, ranging from the Archbishop of the Church of Sweden, Nathan Söderblom, to the Social Democrats’ party leader and first prime minister Hjalmar Branting (both of them soon Nobel Peace Prize laureates). The Swedish state was one of the financial benefactors. But just as important was the economic support from Swedish industry and trade interests. They saw a business investment in cultivating positive images of Sweden abroad, in particular in the USA. On a regular basis, the ASNE supported journalists writing about Sweden, supplying them with selected photos and pieces of information. Many books on Sweden, including Childs’s The Middle Way, were supported in a similar way (Kastrup, 1985).

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Joesten described the ASNE as being controlled by Swedish authorities, and thus uncompromisingly loyal to the state. But, contrasting with Olson’s way of alluding to the harmony between capital and labour in Sweden, he also stressed the extent to which it was financed by capitalist interests, “a representative cross section of Swedish big business”. Joesten listed them in detail: Axel Axelson Johnson, SKF, Svenska Amerikalinjen, AB Bofors Nobelkrut, SCA, Electrolux, Broström-koncernen, AB Separator, LM Ericsson, AB de Lavals Ångturbin, Sandvikens Jernverk, AB Ljungströms Ångturbin, Elektriska Svetsnings AB, and also Kooperativa Förbundet – the consumer co-op organization that had been the crown jewel of Swedish society in Childs’s The Middle Way. Joesten also claimed that the three wealthiest and most influential of these businesses were all controlled by Axel Wenner-Gren, who had been blacklisted in the USA and Great Britain “as an individual doing business with the Axis”. The core of Sweden’s role as Nazi Germany’s fifth column was obviously crass economic interests. According to Joesten, the picture of Sweden cultivated by the ASNE was completely misleading: That a small country like Sweden should do its best to build up prestige in the eyes of a determining power like America is understandable and justified; but not to the point where miscalculations may result with possibly catastrophic consequences. I am keenly aware of all that is good or even excellent in Sweden. If, perhaps, I dwell in greater detail on the shade of the picture than on its light, it is because the ASNE and sympathetic writers already are doing all they can to bring out the rosy colors. If this had not been done to excess, there would be no need at all to present the case against Sweden. Nor would this be necessary if we were still at peace. In times of war it is sound policy to look at both sides of the medal, even at the cost of destroying a dear and hallowed illusion. I am also aware that in doing this I lay myself open to the charge of vindictiveness, because of my personal experiences in Sweden, which have not always been of a pleasant nature. ( Joesten, 1943, 6–7)

Joesten never said what his unpleasant experiences were. But he promised to deliver facts in the case against Sweden. Through over 200 pages he acted as the devil’s advocate against Sweden’s alleged sainthood. Most things that would later be regularly mentioned in darker domestic images

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of Sweden’s record from the war were discussed. Joesten certainly included the obvious and drastic deviations from a strict neutrality policy in compliance with Germany, such as the traffic with permittents (unarmed soldiers) from Norway between 1940 and 1943, and the transit of a complete armed division, Engelbrecht, in sealed railway carriages from Norway to Finland in the summer of 1941. Joesten also discussed the censorship of newspapers, having printed anti-Nazi material or criticism of the Swedish concessions, and the suppression of entertainer Karl-Gerhard’s mockery from the cabaret stage of the Germans and their influence in Sweden. The widespread Nazi sympathies within the Swedish society were stressed. They could be traced even to the ranks of the war coalition cabinet (which included all parties except the Communists). Joesten’s final message retained a glimpse of hope, though. But against the backdrop of what had been said on the previous pages, it was tiny: Sweden is no poor, harmless lamb at the mercy of the Nazi wolf. She is no more in an inescapable vise than Germany herself is in now. Sweden, I hope to have shown in this book, is a powerful, if small, nation. In the past she has pursued a coolly selfish and even callous policy. In April 1940 and in June 1941 she let two great opportunities go by for tipping the balance in favor of a better world. A third, and last, such opportunity is in the offing. May Sweden see the light. ( Joesten, 1943, 205)

A model for the post-war world? Not many years would pass before the mill of positive images of Sweden was running again. As before the war, this happened with eager assistance from the ASNE. In 1949 probably the most enthusiastic portrait ever was published, Hudson Strode’s Sweden: A Model for a World. This volume was written during a trip on which the author was accompanied by the ASNE’s new director, Allan Kastrup, who happened to be home for a summer holiday. It was dedicated to the former director, Naboth Hedin – a major villain from Joesten’s book. The quality of Strode’s depiction was disputed, even within the ASNE circle. The co-worker in Stockholm who had been Marquis Childs’s main helping hand in the mid-1930s, Nils Horney, wrote a somewhat acerbic review. In particular, he pointed to Strode’s tendency to actually claim that Sweden was a kind of materialized Utopia, where everything was well ordered, beautiful and nice

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(Horney, 1949). Such claims were in fact rarely made by Swedophiles during the golden era of Swedology – if ever, after Childs’s polemic against it in 1936 – although most Swedoclasts, like Joesten, tended to postulate that their adversaries did so all the time. In the same year, another American book was published with keen assistance from the ASNE and Nils Horney. The author, David Hinshaw, was a pacifist with a Quaker background. The title conveyed the main message, Sweden: Champion of Peace. This was the first – maybe the only – whole book on the case of Sweden specifically as a moral lesson for world affairs. In 1949 Olson’s vision was dead: the Nordic defence pact that Sweden had striven for after the war had proved to be impossible. Denmark, Norway and Iceland became NATO members. Finland remained neutral, but in a subdued relationship with the Soviet Union in exchange for her liberty to remain a Western democracy with a capitalist economy. Sweden was starting her career as the sole player in her own game of non-isolationist neutrality, soon tending towards “active neutrality”. Hinshaw’s original argument may have been very similar to Olson’s. More than most Swedologists, he started out talking about Scandinavia in general. The Scandinavian example was basically said to illustrate something that had been claimed by left-wing pacifists for decades, namely that social justice – development in the sense of solving social problems and creating real individual life opportunities for all – was a precondition for long-term and stable peace, if not eternal peace. People with an increasing rate of problems solved tended to be gradually more and more peaceable: One Scandinavian contribution [to mankind], potentially by far the most important of all their contributions, is their creation of a formula for world peace. Its potency is overlooked because it rests on such a simple truth: world peace can be built on a foundation of domestic tranquility – that is, peaceful relations within a nation. This is the magic ingredient with which lasting peaceful international relations can be created. I advance no claim that the Scandinavian peoples set out to create an international peace formula, if their discovery can be called that. Nor do they hold that they have discovered one. On the contrary they insist, and the record supports their point, that they have centered their efforts on treating the individual citizen with the justice, integrity, tolerance, and consideration that they say is his rightful due. (Hinshaw, 1949, 3)

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Hinshaw suggested that the Scandinavians had made successful efforts to subdue a “combative spirit” inherited from their Viking forbears. This training had made them less likely to get angry at anyone. He carried on, stressing that the Scandinavian example was about much more than loyally supporting the United Nations: When a man is not angry at anyone he does not seek a fight. If he does not seek a fight, he is less likely to get into one, either home or abroad. Thus their peace-formula is a by-product of a way of life; just as sainthood is achieved by being rather than in striving to be. This indirect Scandinavian approach to world peace, which starts with the individual and ends with the state, rests on the opposite pole of the League of Nations or the United Nations approach, which started with the whole world in their design to reach the individual man. Which is the better or more practical method is not a point of discussion here. The world method was mentioned to bring out, by contrast, the nature and effectiveness of the Scandinavian method. If the world method will work, it might become universally effective in a much shorter time than could the Scandinavian one. But the Scandinavian method is more durable because its strength comes from individual conviction rather than from complicated organizational procedures. Related to domestic tranquility as an aid to peaceful living is the need for man to close the yawning and threatening gap that separates his scientific and engineering progress and his spiritual and social development. This the Scandinavian peoples have been rather successful in doing. (Hinshaw, 1949, 3–4)

Through almost 300 pages, Hinshaw told his readers about the ways in which Swedish society and the Swedish experience conveyed such an indirect message to the world. Among other things, he delivered a take on Sweden’s role during World War II that may be read as a belated polemic against Joesten’s alleged refutation of the idealizations of “the Middle-Way enthusiasts”, applying the logic of debunkery from the Swedophile angle. Naturally there was a chapter on “Swedish Labor and Capital”, stressing the theme of industrial peace. But before Hinshaw went into details, he made clear what the virtues of international relevance, embodied by the Swedish nation, really were: To the doubting-Thomas reader who holds that because of her geographical position and her smallness, little Sweden’s record is of

Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology no consequence peacewise, I ask only that he read the book before he passes final judgment on this point. I make this request because I believe the Swedish peace story that I have sensed and tried to interpret, which rests on her people’s ardent desire to solve problems without bitterness, will convince him that neither the geographical position nor the physical size of a country has any important relationship either to the extent of a people’s wisdom or to the high value they place on certain neglected virtues such as patience, perseverance, caution, integrity, and cooperative action. (Hinshaw, 1949, 7)

It was possible to argue in this manner concerning Sweden even before she really had developed her peculiar role in the Cold War era. Someone who believed Hinshaw’s message about “Tranquility at Home – Peace Abroad” would hardly hesitate to ask the Swedes to negotiate peace or to guard peace agreements throughout the world. The era of Hammarskjöld and Swedish blue berets seems to have been well prepared in terms of arguments and expectations. Virtues and vices of “active neutrality” in the Vietnam War era The land of future: heaven and hell Nevertheless, the 1950s would witness a wave of Swedoclastic counter-mobilization. As general enthusiasm about Sweden as an exemplar mainly blossomed among left-leaning Liberals in the USA, Labourites in the UK, Socialists in France and Social Democrats in West Germany (rebranding themselves after the Swedish sister party’s model with the Godesberg programme of 1959), much of the effort to turn the Swedish case into a deterrent would be made by their conservative adversaries. This tendency was gradually reinforced, year after year, since the Social Democrats kept on forming the cabinets in Sweden, imparting the impression that they were thus also forming Swedish society after their own will and blueprint. (This naïve illusion would soon also dominate Swedish historiography.) But the patterns of Swedology were complex. Forces to the left would soon also show interest in debunking what appeared to be a peaceful, non-revolutionary, non-Marxist, alternative path to socialism. For example, the leading British Labour Party ideologist Anthony Crosland’s pleads for trust in the Swedish example in The Future

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of Socialism in 1956 would become one of the first targets of the New Left Review, featuring an ambitious attack on “Mr. Crosland’s Dreamland” by the young Marxist Perry Anderson in 1961. In any case, Sweden became the symbol of the far-reaching welfare state. Most Swedoclasts warned that the Swedish case featured too much socialism, while quite a few on the contrary saw too little of it – if any at all. In the era of the Cold War, Sweden attained an ambiguous position in terms of putative socialism. Her security policies (including arms exports) and peculiar form of neutrality were seldom ignored in interpretations of this. The predominant strategy in Swedoclastic arguments was to raise the question of whether the Swedes really were happy in their supposed paradise – stating that they actually were not. Seeking comfort, Swedes typically drank heavily and indulged in unbridled sex – if they did not kill themselves. Sex, alcohol, drugs and suicide were soon parts of a widespread national stereotype. The theme of sex got a breakthrough in 1955, when an article on “Swedish sin” in Time magazine responded creatively to the introduction of mandatory sexual education in Swedish schools (Hale, 2003). Swedophile replies were often ambivalent, both absolving Swedes from accusations of promiscuousness and claiming their fairly relaxed attitudes to be sound. A less complex target was arguments about high suicide rates, although the strategies to debunk those as a sign of unhappiness shifted. In 1960, President Eisenhower used the established stereotype of sex, alcohol and suicide in a “fairly friendly European country” to get back at one of his most influential critics, Marquis Childs (Östlund, 2014, 181–184). That an ultra-modern Swedish mentality was cold, callous and streamlined – a negative expression of technological progress – became a related theme in a host of analyses of the Swedish psyche. One example is the British philosopher Kathleen Nott’s A Clean, Well-Lighted Place: A Private View of Sweden from 1961, written from a strongly modernist-rationalistic point of view, that could have been expected to predispose to sympathetic attitudes. A somewhat similar view, then stated from a far-left position, was offered in Susan Sontag’s “Letter from Sweden”, published in 1969 in the major counter-culture magazine Ramparts. Opening his aforementioned book from 1968 by taking stock of claims made about Sweden during the 1950s and 60s, David Jenkins complained about the “silliness that permeates some of the Swedological writing” ( Jenkins, 1968, 17). New takes were published all the time. It is unclear whether Jenkins’s survey included Enrico Altavilla’s book Svezia:

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Inferno e paradiso, published in Italy in 1967 – and in Franco’s Spain in 1969, in a translation that would remain in print well into the 1980s. This book immediately inspired a Mondo film – the “shockumentary” genre launched in Italy in the 1960s. Using the same title as Altavilla’s book in Italian, Sweden – Heaven and Hell gained some global success in 1968 and 1969. Director Luigi Scattini exploited the commercial potential of Swedoclasm, in particular the theme of Swedish sin. The basic idea was probably to sell soft porn (by Italian measures of the 1960s), legitimizing naked breasts by means of indignation. But Scattini’s film also deployed a whole arsenal of claims made to Sweden’s disadvantage in Swedological writings, twisting them some extra turns. Sweden was an affluent hightech nightmare. Old people died alone, abandoned by their families. The police terrorized car drivers with alcohol tests while ignoring real criminality. Heavy drugs permeated society. Drunkards spread shoe polish on bread in order to extract alcohol. Gang rapes turned young women into outrageously active lesbians as adults. Beautiful blond girls preferred black men to the “Latin lover” (in a scene clearly addressed to Italians considering going to Sweden as guest workers). People killed themselves en masse. The Swedes were certainly not happy, although the sexual part of their compensations was ambiguous. The film also made quite an affair of Sweden’s peaceable image and neutral status. Staying out of every war, the Swedes had been able to use their stunning resources and technological skills to prepare for a nuclear war. They had built a whole world of comfortable air-raid shelters deep down under the granite. The vision of the future at the end of the film was, thus, that the only survivors of the coming nuclear apocalypse would be the Swedes. Reconnecting to the theme of sex (naked girls on islet rocks in the Stockholm archipelago), the Swedes were expected to repopulate and take over the world, rapidly. Sweden was turned into il paese del futuro in the most literal way imaginable. Global pseudo-conscience as a safety valve in Dystopia Sweden as a crystal ball, revealing the future, was also the basic approach, but in a far more serious way, in the most elaborate anathema of the postwar Swedological literature (Östlund, 2007). In 1971, the British journalist Roland Huntford, a conservative Catholic with a background in South Africa, published The New Totalitarians. Its success would almost rival that of Childs’s The Middle Way. Before a slightly revised new edition reached American and British readers in 1975, it had been published

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in German as Wohlfahrtsdiktatur: Das schwedische Modell, in French as Le nouveau totalitarisme, in Norwegian as Formynderstaten and in Danish as Fagre ny Sverige: Demokrati eller Demokratur? The contents were sensational enough to render a translation (although an extremely free one) in Swedish as well, titled Blinda Sverige – “Blind Sweden”. An exception in its genre, it thus also reached the only audience for which it was not written, the Swedish one. The argument of The New Totalitarians was fairly sophisticated, applying a peculiar logic of its own. Even negative Swedish reviewers admitted that kernels of truth shone through. Around them, Huntford had spun a remarkably dark portrait. In stark contrast to Swedoclast pioneer Joesten, Huntford ignored the existence of the genre he contributed to. He indicated the profoundly polemical nature of his analysis only indirectly. But the whole argument was built as an attempt to debunk the Swedophiles’ debunkery of the Swedoclastic debunkeries of the Swedophiles’ purportedly Utopian images, thereby revealing Sweden to be a true Dystopia. Huntford’s overarching claim was simple, though. Whereas the Soviet Union and her satellites had roughly materialized the nightmare of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, characterized by brutal force and suppressed discontent, Sweden was something far worse. She was the real-world version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The problem with the Swedes was thus not that they were unhappy in their admired society. Quite the contrary. They were in truth very contented and nauseatingly proud of their society. The rulers in Huxley’s nightmare used all means available to make their subjects love their servitude. This was also the predicament for Sweden. In the Soviet bloc people hated their servitude. In Sweden they loved it. Sweden had taken the route to extreme technological modernity, and realized its totalitarian potentialities completely. The Swedish case made a future visible that would meet the rest of the world if it followed the same track. The main cause making extreme modernity possible was a bit paradoxical though. The Swedes were extremely backwards on the inside, according to Huntford. They had medieval minds. Their souls lacked the slightest vestige of individualism. They were true collectivists by nature. Sweden was not at all a Western country, in stark contrast to Norway and Denmark. Historically, Sweden was a part of the same Eastern world of pre-modern collectivism as Russia. This assumption was underlined by terminological choices. For example, Huntford called state boards like Socialstyrelsen and Arbetsmarknadsstyrelsen “directorates”.

Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology

But collectivism by virtue of inborn easternness was insufficient to make modern Swedes love their servitude. They had also had to be mentally manipulated by their “rulers” since the 1930s. The Social Democrats were portrayed as the modern inheritors of the old Swedish autocratic state and its bureaucratic power machine (including the Lutheran church). Mind control was applied in the spirit of Brave New World, and the key term in the book was social engineering. The main means of manipulation were wealth and welfare, material abundance and social care doled out by state expertise. On that foundation, more advanced forms of mental manipulation were developed – through the educational system, through culture policies and through mass media. One feature of Orwell’s Dystopia was also applicable in the Swedish case, namely a form of newspeak, in which “security”, trygghet, was the cornerstone. According to this logic it was possible for Huntford to twist familiar Swedoloclast themes in new ways. The problem with suicides was not that there were so many. It was that they were committed in a certain way, for certain reasons. Swedes killed themselves, taking a desperate escape for individualists in a world of mental conformity. The problem with teenage sex was not higher rates of premarital intercourse in Sweden than elsewhere (it was a global trend). It was that young Swedes had sex in a certain way, carrying out the will of the “rulers”. They enjoyed free, completely shameless, and thus mechanical and callous sex, using it as a safety valve. Hidden frustrations in a completely controlled existence were regulated in this way. This was mainly discussed in a chapter on “The Sexual Branch of Social Engineering”. Much was taken for granted in Huntford’s implicit polemics. The readers were, for example, expected to know that Sweden was often assumed to be a paragon of true democracy. They were expected to know that her peaceable history and attempts to take responsibility in the world were respected and idealized by Swedophiles. Furthermore, readers were supposed to be familiar with Swedoclasts’ ordinary way of denouncing Sweden as an actor on the international scene. Huntford’s readers were supposed to have heard claims that Sweden shirked from her responsibilities through her neutrality policies, while taking a free ride, leaning on NATO for her security anyway. They were expected to have been exposed to the idea that Sweden was loyal to the Western democracies only on the surface, revealing the country’s true nature as a soft-socialist state in attacking Western powers as racists, colonialists or imperialists. In Huntford’s concerted argument, the theme of

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“international Sweden” was discreet but ubiquitous. If nothing else, it was present through the many pointers to Sweden’s fundamental easternness and non-westernness. In Huntford’s argument, though, the active part of Swedish neutrality policies was turned into a tool of internal mental control. As such, it was treated as an immediate parallel to the supposed function of unbridled sex among young Swedes. Presumed Swedish isolationism through neutrality was not just a betrayal of her duties as a Western country – a matter of surprise and indignation. It was not at all a deviation from norms applying to her. On the contrary, it was a logical behaviour, motivated by internal reasons determined by the nature of Swedish society. Active neutrality was another safety valve, clearly revealing Sweden not to be a Western country at all, a worse case than the Soviet Union herself. This was not a matter of small vices, minor aberrations, but indications of immense and fundamental ones. In the chapter on “Economic Security and Political Servitude”, Huntford discussed trygghet as the untranslatably emotional keyword in Swedish newspeak – indicating the kind of safety of a harbour in the storm, the security in the womb. First among the things trygghet was claimed to refer to at a societal level was its meaning in the context of international policies, not social welfare: “In the political sense, trygghet means neutrality, the avoidance of war and insulation from the troubles of the outside world” (Huntford, 1971, 169). Key to massive manipulation of Swedish minds was the task of erasing the national memory. Sweden’s “rulers” were creating a new breed of people by eliminating all sense of historical consciousness, i.e. beyond the Social Democratic Party’s supposed Machtübernahme in the early 1930s. In a chapter called “Education in the Service of Conditioning” Huntford told his readers that uniformity of opinion had still been achieved in the late 1950s by means of traditional nationalism, e.g. nostalgia for Sweden’s era as a great power. But this had changed rapidly: A decade later, this had swung over to a guided internationalism, expressed as solidarity with the underdeveloped countries. It is an illustration of the powers held by the central authorities in directing what is to be taught. The Directorate of Schools decreed this particular ideological shift, and it was obediently enforced. Schoolchildren and school-leavers all over the country displayed the same homogeneity of opinion as they had always done, and it was at the bidding of the State. (Huntford, 1971, 217–218)

Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology

Huntford described how the Social Democrats had found cultivating interest in “underdeveloped countries” to be “politically profitable”, and how the fast implementation of this illustrated the extent to which the state bureaucracy was independent of parliamentary control, and thus a tool of the ruling party. He continued: By the late 1960s, most teenagers (and younger voters) supported aid to the underdeveloped countries, as they had been taught at school. This makes an interesting comparison with England or America, where attitudes among corresponding groups are generally those of indifference with minority groups that are fiercely hostile or in favour. But the younger Swedes are uniformly and overwhelmingly in favour of overseas technical aid, with a degree of emotionalism that may surprise the outsider. This is closely related to neutrality. ‘Neutrality,’ says a professor at Uppsala University, ‘is like cutting off a piece of the personality, and to make up for it we have to find some ways of extending our feelings of responsibility – it’s an urge peculiar to Sweden. That explains the obsession with the underdeveloped countries. It is an approach to the world outside. By identifying ourselves with a unit larger than Sweden, we can satisfy a need for significance.’ (Huntford, 1971, 218–219)

A bit later this argument was linked to the larger theme of Sweden being anything but just another Western country: By and large, the educated older Swedes passively regard Western Europe as something alien, to which a small number may regretfully wish they belonged; younger people display an actively hostile attitude. This has largely been achieved by school instruction that the only European accomplishment has been to exploit other continents, so that the sins of the West have been visited on its virtues. By association, all Western European values have been made suspect, and what otherwise would have been awkward political heritage has been discredited. (Huntford, 1971, 230–231)

The main supporters of this “attack on the West” were mass media, in particular school radio and TV. But in Huntford’s view, the attack was just a part of a broader phenomenon, which also explained the Swedish aloofness towards the EEC, the precursor of the EU:

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David Östlund As mentioned before, it has been made respectable in the interests of international equity, and the atonement for European sins. But it has not widened Swedish horizons, it has merely shifted them. By diverting attention to other quarters of the globe, and inducing a specious glow of solidarity with faraway peoples, it has deepened Swedish isolationism by cutting links with Continental neighbours. Trade and economics have been no antidote. The expansion of Swedish trade with Western Europe, and the resultant commercial interdependence, have not been accompanied by an intellectual approach to the Continent; but rather the reverse. These developments have not gone unnoticed by the outside world. A French diplomat taunted a Swede in Brussels when Sweden made her half-hearted approach to the Common Market, by saying: ‘You would make such good Asians or Africans. Why are you such bad Europeans?’ (Huntford, 1971, 231)

The theme of “guided internationalism” as a safety valve was also used in a chapter called “Agitprop and the Perpetuation of the Regime”. Here the obvious backdrop of the discussion, the Vietnam War, was more explicitly referred to. The agitprop of Swedish socialism was the adult education organization of the labour movement, the ABF. In Huntford’s eyes, this was an anti-democratic tool for keeping the Social Democrats in power under a veil of formal democracy. For example, it had played its role in a strategy during the elections of 1968, and less “violently” in those of 1970, applying the old principle that “foreign affairs divert attention from domestic difficulties”. But in the Swedish case, the problem was hardly a shortfall, and the diversion not war on foreign soil: What the regime was faced with was not so much embarrassing bread-and-butter issues as a nameless frustration mostly (but not entirely) found among the youth. It was inherent in the restraints of Swedish society. When everything is too well organized, ennui is almost bound to appear. And there is in Sweden a taboo on the discussion of fundamental domestic issues, born out of a terrible fear of rocking the boat. Within Swedish society, there is no room for iconoclasm, indignation and the yearning for commitment. Unless suitably guided, feelings of this kind could be exceedingly dangerous for the government. (Huntford, 1971, 151–152)

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Huntford supported the argument with quotes from Prime Minister Olof Palme, speaking of people’s “right to be dissatisfied”, and how fighting against sources of dissatisfaction created unity. Attacking the “idea of the death of ideologies” Palme had, in both the 1968 and 1970 election campaigns, celebrated the idealism of youth, who were indignantly watching “the horrors of the modern world” on TV and caring about “what is going on in Africa and Indochina”. Palme concentrated on “other people’s iniquities” in order to deflect unrest at home, according to Huntford. This train of thought was immediately linked to another of Huntford’s leitmotifs. In his view, Sweden was ruled by the most truly Marxist party in the world, something that was not contradicted by the country’s formally privately owned, capitalist industry. In a spirit of obsession with efficiency, private business was controlled by an elaborate web of corporatist strings, of which the Saltsjöbaden order of labour peace was only the foremost set. Business leaders were no rebels in the Social Democrats’ Sweden. Huntford quoted a director of Bofors, the arms industry company, who in spite of his pro-American stance and lack of left-wing sympathies thanked God for the “Anti-American and Vietnam protest”: without this “outlet”, keeping “the heat off us”, anything could have happened. This concerted attitude among Swedish leaders explained why Sweden, “despite neutrality, adopted a militant anti-American pose over Vietnam”. Mass media supported this, as did the ABF, whose textbook for study circles on “More Equality for a Society with More Justice” presented America as the villain – not only in Vietnam, “but in all fields where a cathartic bogeyman was useful” (Huntford, 1971, 153). In the concluding chapter, the theme of Sweden’s relations with the world was drawn into the forefront more than anywhere else in The New Totalitarians. Huntford riveted his view of how dangerous the Swedish path to the future was by pointing to the Swede as both a natural and a conditioned shirker from all sense of true responsibility in the world. The Swedes were on the one hand hubris-stricken navel-gazers, emotionally chilled to freezing point, and high on the drug of trygghet. On the other hand, they were raging enemies of all the core values of the West, while excusing themselves by creating the appearance of fighting for something even more universal than that. According to Huntford, neutrality had “exacted a price”: It has produced a kind of moral castration, so that collectively the Swedes may feel an urge to act, but lack the power to do so. These

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David Östlund disabilities may be self-inflicted, but are none the less galling. They are compensated by a specialized use of conscience. (Huntford, 1971, 340)

But conscience in the “normal sense” of a spiritual guardian of personal actions was “scarcely acknowledged” in Sweden. Here it meant “conscience to the world”. As a collective, rather than individual concept, it always meant condemning others – France, Britain, the USA. The Swedes’ “conscience” was always “on the side of the angels”, always directed to “remote corners of the world, from which no immediate danger may be anticipated” – Algeria, Vietnam, Rhodesia. White America was attacked “for the Negroes”. Passion blurred the distinction between “righteous and self-righteous indignation”. With targets chosen by “rulers” and intellectuals, mobilizing a corporatist system of organizations linked to the state, unanimity was established in a way that turned conscience into an “exercise in mass emotion”. In this context Huntford made another exception from the basic idea that Sweden was a Huxleyan nightmare, whereas Soviet-style totalitarianism had only reached the Orwellian level: Swedish conscience is, in fact, catharsis through ritual hate. It is akin to the ‘two minute hate’ of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Indeed, during the Vietnam war, the popular Swedish dislike of President Johnson had something of the grotesque fury against Goldstein in Orwell’s novel. ‘I feel so emancipated,’ a Swedish housewife once said in a newspaper interview after a particularly violent demonstration before the American embassy in Stockholm. (Huntford, 1971, 341)

A self-righteous but fairly admirable world citizen nation Probably not many Swedophiles attempted to debunk Huntford’s debunkery explicitly. After the international economic crisis had reached Sweden in earnest in 1976, Swedoclasts were suddenly able to lean on economic arguments, not needing to turn industrial progress into a part of the problem, in the way Huntford had to do. At the same time, for the same reason, the interest in Sweden began to dwindle. It would be fair to say that the last word of the Swedological genre’s golden era went to Marquis Childs, in Sweden: The Middle Way on Trial from 1980. “Sweden and the World” was the subject of the final chapter. Here, as in the rest of the book, Childs’s attitude to Sweden was basically positive. But he also stressed a set of reasons to take a distanced, problematizing attitude – especially as Sweden still might be suited to serve as a healthy

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example in many specific respects. Childs emphasized the relative continuity in Swedish policies, generally, including foreign affairs, after the Social Democrats had finally been pushed into opposition in 1976. The book did not reveal the fact that Childs had been a fairly outspoken voice against the Vietnam War from his tribune as a prominent syndicated columnist. He established that Olof Palme’s actions concerning Vietnam had meant a caesura in Sweden’s role in the world. In Childs’s view this revealed something about the country in general. There was more to it than just the solo actions of one individual: The Second World War had convinced many Swedes that the major powers were ruthless, without scruples of any kind, driven simply by a desire for conquest, with the possible exception of America. Nowhere, not even in the fiercest antiwar centers in the United States, was feeling against the American action in Vietnam stronger than in Sweden. One reason was the presence of several hundred – the exact number was never established – American deserters and draft dodgers. But even without their participation, and apparently at times incitation, the protest in the form of repeated demonstrations would have occurred. Swedish newspapers and the Swedish stateowned television and radio gave the war thorough coverage. In the Swedish view, here was a great power, a superpower, using the most lethal of modern techniques, short of nuclear weapons, to subdue a small Asian country resisting the American invasion with comparatively little help from any source. (Childs, 1980, 139)

Childs stressed how TV images of the atrocities had fuelled the anger among those who felt the injustice. The issue was said to have united “every political faction from extreme left to right”. An anti-American sentiment was, for example, mirrored in the demonstration that met the new US ambassador to Stockholm, the African-American Jerome H. Holland (according to Childs in 1968, but it should be 1970), when he was called “House nigger”, and the even stronger protests that had met Henry Kissinger in 1976. (For deserters and the Holland case, see Scott, 2001; Burton, 2009.) Childs also quoted from the speech that Olof Palme delivered in 1968, shortly before he became party leader and Prime Minister, at a demonstration where he walked side by side with the North Vietnamese ambassador to Moscow, stirring up the first diplomatic crisis with the USA during the war. Childs noted that Palme’s

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criticism was phrased in a language that at that time had been heard on every university campus in the USA. Childs also described the second crisis, in Christmas 1972, when Palme, “comparing the bombing of Cambodia to the genocide practiced by the Nazis”, made President Nixon retract his Stockholm ambassador and exclude his Swedish counterpart in Washington from normal diplomatic exchange. But early in his review of events, Childs had stressed a Swedish ambivalence towards the USA. Memories of World War II were not the only reason: It became a love-hate relationship, for what Swede could forget the great reservoir of Swedish Americans in the new country, many in positions of importance both in the private and public sectors, even as American bombs were falling on Hanoi. (Childs, 1980, 139)

No person embodied the Swedish ambivalence more clearly than Gunnar Myrdal. His career from the epoch-making study of the racial question, An American Dilemma, to his analysis of the economy of poverty in the three volumes of Asian Drama was sketched out in a positive manner. Myrdal did on the one hand identify strongly with American culture and academia, but on the other hand he was one of America’s most initiated critics, particularly concerning Vietnam. In matters of international responsibility, he represented a certain brand of Swedish self-confidence, even a kind of smugness, according to Childs. He quoted from Myrdal’s Nobel lecture, receiving the prize in economics in 1975: “The Equality Issue in World Development”. Myrdal had given his home country a “high remark”, in particular with regard to avoiding giving foreign aid “the justification of self-interest”. A “nationalistic motive” could never “with any credibility be presented to the Swedish people”, according to Myrdal (Childs, 1980, 148–149). A measure of ambivalence on Childs’s part was revealed when he established that Vietnam received by far the greatest amount of bilateral Swedish aid. But this aspect of Sweden’s international role was obviously what impressed Childs most – besides her staunch and multifaceted support for the UN. In his view, Sweden’s conscience was not about singing with the angels in order to release internal steam, as Huntford had claimed: In its participation in international programs to improve the lot of people in Third World countries, Sweden has set a record few other nations can match. It has undertaken to keep its contribution

Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology to the UN multinational organizations and to bilateral foreign aid at 1 percent of the country’s gross national product. It is the only country that has attained this level. The United States in 1975 contributed [0].27 percent of GNP, Switzerland [0].19, Germany [0].40. The figure for the Netherlands was [0].75, for Norway [0].66. Even when, under the new coalition government, borrowing abroad became necessary to meet budgetary deficits, the goal of increasing foreign assistance by 25 percent a year was maintained. This meant that the total of foreign aid was roughly equivalent to the $2 billion borrowed abroad in 1977. Sweden is one of the largest contributors to the United Nations Development Program and the United Nation [sic] International Children’s Fund. Food aid, tied to various international food programs with Swedish contributions in kind, amounts to close to $150 million in value. (Childs, 1980, 150)

A feature that also attracted Childs’s sympathies was the Swedish stance towards the nuclear arms race. This was mainly embodied by Alva Myrdal – who would receive her Nobel Peace Prize two years later. Childs delineated her international career, as well as her and her husband Gunnar’s links to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). He referred to her book The Game of Disarmament, from 1976, quoting her concerning the paradox of a rational efficiency in the arms race alongside a lack of rational criticism of its lunacy. Childs also mentioned Alva Myrdal’s part in abolishing the plans to make Swedish nuclear arms, which in the late 1950s and early 60s had been fairly advanced. This matter was in fact intimately related to a major theme in Childs’s book, the intricacies of Swedish politics concerning civil nuclear energy. But the fact that Sweden was a relatively large producer of conventional weapons and military technology was a complicating factor in Childs’s take on Sweden’s international role, especially as it was an integrated part of her neutrality policy. Childs pointed to a paradox. He did so, preparing to talk about diplomatic interchanges instigated by Swedish trade with Saab fighter aeroplanes, which were partly dependent on American patents: Much as it likes to stay outside the United States’ quarrels with the Soviet Union, Sweden has more than once found itself caught in the middle. The supersonic plane, for example, was a remarkable achievement for a nation of 8,000,000. In a world bristling with armaments, Sweden with its high technology was not to be left out.

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David Östlund But in the context of Sweden’s strict neutrality and the government’s high-minded criticism of the military and foreign policy of other nations the creation of the supersonic fighter plane was bound to cause complications. This is part of the paradox of a people determined to preserve the values of the past when those values are being rapidly eroded away almost everywhere else. (Childs, 1980, 145)

But the balance tipped in Sweden’s favour in Childs’s judgment. At the beginning of the chapter on Sweden and the world he had indicated this by giving a new meaning to his old catchword, “the middle way”: In its relations with the rest of the world as much as in its internal affairs, Sweden has sought a middle way – neutrality in war, aid to those who need it in peacetime. Abroad as well as at home, it has been determined to live up to the standards set in arriving at a middle way, though preachments on foreign policy by a small power in the north of Europe have often sounded self-righteous. Much of its policy has been concentrated on the division between the industrialized West and the Third World, and with it have gone large sums of aid – large for a nation of 8,000,000 people – to try to raise standards in developing nations and particularly in agriculture. The cornerstone was neutrality, strict and unyielding. (Childs, 1980, 120)

These were remarkably generous words from a person who had spent decades as a belligerent enemy of conservative calls for American neutrality policies in the spirit of isolationism and anti-federal sentiment. As in Childs’s take from 1936, peaceful Sweden was far from any Utopia. The reason for paying attention to her case was not a matter of bold visions. In contrast to Huntford’s and other Swedoclasts’ claims, Sweden was, in Childs’s view, still a useful case in point, not least by virtue of showing what a responsible citizenship in the international community of nations can look like. Pastoral landscapes for foreign battlefields “The Swedish peace story”, as Hinshaw called it in 1949, is a revealing strand in Swedological writings from the genre’s golden era. It shows how recurring clusters of themes were used for curiously shifting

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purposes. The topics of long-lasting peace, neutrality and Sweden’s role in the world were present and intimately linked to a whole set of other themes in all modes of Swedophilia and Swedoclasm, regardless of what the motives were behind specific arguments concerning Sweden, or what the motives were for taking interest in the small kingdom on the northern fringe of Europe in the first place. Whether the Swedish mode of peaceableness was to be seen as a vice or a virtue, a deterrent or a model to follow, was never decided by any realities on Swedish soil. It was decided by the ends for which the Swedish case was brought out as an example, the ways in which this “case in point” was deployed as a weapon on battlefields beyond the Swedish borders. Two factors decided the possible ways in which the Swedish case was charged with meaning: (1) the topical issues within the debates going on in the non-Swedish contexts in which Swedologists intended to intervene, and (2) what had been claimed about Sweden in such contexts before, the imaginary landscapes the country’s name could be expected to conjure up in the readers’ minds. The genre was characterized by its fundamentally polemical nature. A logic of debunkery was practised by Swedophiles and Swedoclasts, trying to disclose each other’s depictions as “the Swedish myth” (a term introduced in Joesten’s attack on the “Middle-Way enthusiasts” in 1943). That logic did also form the statements of Swedologists who attempted to paint relatively nuanced pictures – really taking interest in Swedish realities as such, beyond their possible uses as bludgeons elsewhere. In this way, perceptions of geopolitical matters and security issues in Northern Europe became linked to matters such as workplace relationships and sex habits. This was mainly due to the role Sweden attained as a “crystal ball” of industrial and cultural modernity, until her economic Cinderella story ended and she became just another modern economy among others as from circa 1976. Such perceptions were always related to interpretations of Scandinavia or the Nordic countries as a zone on the map. Often Sweden was treated as the most significant or consistent example of phenomena that were basically Scandinavian. But in many cases, pointing out differences between Sweden and her neighbours, contrasts behind superficial similarities, was a strategy to stress that her example was really unique, and thus an instructive “case in point”. A measure of schadenfreude in the other Scandinavian countries in the wake of Huntford’s anathema from 1971 illustrates that, as does a late crop of Swedoclastic writings by Nordic authors in the 1980s.

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Images from the classic era of Swedology linger. It will be interesting to see in what ways old takes on the pastoral landscape of Swedish industrial modernity and its place in the world may be reactivated in our time, as Sweden’s new role as a multicultural society with a tradition of generous immigration policies tends to bring her back into the spotlight as perhaps a unique case, even among her Nordic neighbours.

Bibliography Altavilla, Enrico (1967). Svezia: Inferno e paradiso. Milano: Rizzoli. Altavilla, Enrico (1969). Suecia: Infierno y paraiso. Barcelona: Plaza & Janes. Anderson, Perry (1961). Sweden: Mr. Crosland’s dreamland. New Left Review, Part 1, 7, 4−12, Part 2, 9, 34−45. Broberg, Gunnar, & Tydén, Mattias (1998). När svensk historia blev en världsnyhet. Tvärsnitt, 3, 98. Burton, Edward (2009). Racism on the palace steps? Scandinavian Journal of History, 34, 2. Childs, Marquis W. (1933). Sweden: Where capitalism is controlled. Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 167, 1002 (November), 749−758. Childs, Marquis W. (1936). Sweden: The middle way. New Haven: Yale University Press. Childs, Marquis W. (1938a). Sweden: The middle way (2nd ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. Childs, Marquis W. (1938b). This is democracy: Collective bargaining in Scandinavia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Childs, Marquis W. (1980). Sweden: The middle way on trial. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Crosland, C. A. R. (1956). The future of socialism. London: Jonathan Cape. Hale, Frederick (2003). Time for sex in Sweden: Enhancing the myth of the ‘Swedish Sin’ during the 1950s. Scandinavian Studies, 75 (3), 351−374. Hansson, Sigfrid (1939). Employers and workers in Sweden. (Published by The Royal Swedish Commission – New York World’s Fair 1939.) Stockholm: Nordisk Rotogravyr. Hinshaw, David (1949). Sweden: Champion of peace. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Peaceableness as a Weapon in Wars of Swedology Horney, Nils (1949). Sverige, ’modell för världen’. Morgon-Tidningen, November 11. Huntford, Roland (1971). The new totalitarians. London: Allen Lane. Jenkins, David (1968). Sweden and the price of progress. New York: Coward-McCann [1969 also published in Britain as Sweden: The progress machine]. Joesten, Joachim (1943). Stalwart Sweden. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. Kastrup, Allan (1985). Med Sverige i Amerika: Opinioner, stämningar och upplysningsarbete – en rapport av Allan Kastrup. Malmö: Bokförlaget Corona. Nott, Kathleen (1961). A clean, well-lighted place: A private view of Sweden. London: Heinemann. Olson, Alma Luise (1928). Sweden, land of white birch and white coal. National Geographic, LIV(4) (October), 441−484. Olson, Alma Luise (1940). Scandinavia: The background for neutrality. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. Östlund, David (2007). Maskinmodernitet och dystopisk lycka: den sociala ingenjörskonstens Sverige, upplaga Huntford 1971. Polhem: Teknikhistorisk årsbok 2006−2007, 40−63. Östlund, David (2014). ‘Laissez-faire under a bell jar’: Marquis Childs and the Sweden-fad of the Roosevelt Era. In Ērika Sausverde & Ieva Steponavičiūtė (Eds.). Fun and puzzles in Modern Scandinavian studies. Vilnius: Vilnius University (Scandinavistica Vilnensis, 9). Petersson, Magnus (2018). ‘The Allied Partner’: Sweden and NATO through the realist-idealist lens.’ In Andrew Cottey (Ed.). The European neutrals and NATO: Non-alignment, partnership, membership? London: Palgrave. Rapacioli, Paul (2018). Good Sweden, bad Sweden: The use and abuse of Swedish values in a post-truth world. Stockholm: Volante. Rothery (Pratt), Agnes (1934). Sweden: The land and its people. New York: Viking Press. Scott, Carl-Gustaf (2001). Swedish sanctuary of American deserters during the Vietnam War: A facet of Social Democratic domestic politics. Scandinavian Journal of History, 26, 2. Sontag, Susan (1969). A Letter From Sweden. Ramparts, 8 (1) ( July), 23−38. Strode, Hudson (1949). Sweden: Model for a world. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

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David Östlund U.S. Department of Labor (1938). Report of the commission on industrial relations in Sweden – With appendixes. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Offices. The film Sweden – Heaven and hell (1968), directed by Luigi Scattini, is available on a DVD published in 2008 by Klubb Super 8.

Fornisländsk litteratur, genetik och historisk demografi om samisk-nordiska tidiga kontakter Jurij Kusmenko Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences / Institutet för språkforskning, Ryska vetenskapsakademin

Old Icelandic literature, genetics and historical demography regarding Sámi-Scandinavian early contacts Abstract: The spreading of Sámi interference features to the North Germanic languages is confirmed not only by the Old Icelandic sagas, which show us an absolute acceptance of the Sámi in the North Germanic society and marriages between the two nations, but also by the populational genetics that show that the percentage of the “Sámish” haplogroups (Y-DNA N1c, mtDNA U5 and V) among the North Germanic people exceeds considerably the percentage of the modern Sámi population, which indicates a language shift and assimilation of a part of the Sámi (especially of the Southern Sámi). Changes in the population structure caused by two pest pandemics (in the seventh to ninth and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) that affected Northern and Central Scandinavia to a much lesser degree could also contribute both to the spreading of the Sámi genes in Northern and Central Scandinavia and of the Sámi interference features in the North Germanic languages.

1. Inledning I mina tidigare publikationer har jag förmodat en intim kontakt mellan samer och nordgermaner på samnordisk tid, på vikingatiden och på medeltiden (Kusmenko, 2008). Mina slutsatser har grundat sig på fornisländsk litteratur och på förändringarna i nordiska språk, som kan förklaras genom den samisk-nordgermanska språkkontakten. I nordiska språk har kontakten resulterat i två vågor av samisk interferens. Den första vågen hör till samnordisk tid (mellan 600 och 1100 AD). Till de morfologiska förändringarna som framkallats av den samiska interferensen i samnordiskan tillhör inn-suffigeringen som senare blivit till Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.9 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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suffigerad bestämd artikel, utvecklingen av suffigerad s(k)-form och av suffigerad negation (satsnegering -a/-at/-t och satsledsnegering -ki/-gi). Till samma tid hör också morfonologiska och fonologiska utvecklingar sådana som förlust av samgermanska prefix, preaspirationen, som är kännetecknade inte bara för isländskan och färöiskan utan också dialektalt för svenskan och norskan, nasalassimilationen nk > kk (jfr dricka < *drinkan, jfr ty. trinken, eng. drink, jfr nordsam. roggat “gräva” < *raŋ`Ge), utvecklingen av jj till ett explosivt ljud samt utvecklingen av n och m till dn och bm (Kusmenko, 2008, 34–214). Till den andra gruppen av samiska interferensfenomen hör utvecklingarna som spred sig på 1200–1400-talen och som beträffar bara en dialektareal, nämligen svenska och norska dialekter i Nordöstskandinavien och delvis de båda norska språknormerna och standardsvenskan. Till dessa interferensfenomen hör en särskild form av vokalbalansen, vokaltilljämningen, konsonantförlängningen vid kvantitetsförskjutning, samt sammansatta prepositioner som kan jämföras med samiska pre- och postpositioner med två formella och semantiska fokus och kanske framförställningen av genitiv (Kusmenko, 2008, 215–315). Den samiska interferensens mekanism i nordiska språk är antingen en direkt fonologisk interferens eller en morfologisk reinterpretation. Att en samisk interferens i samernas svenska och norska varit möjlig är klart, men tanken att dessa interferensdrag kunnat tas upp av enspråkiga skandinaver har förefallit otrolig. Det var omöjligt att föreställa sig att språket och kulturen hos ett stigmatiserat litet folk kunde utöva påverkan på språket och kulturen hos nordiska vikingar och deras avkomlingar. Invändningarna som kunde dras fram mot ett möjligt samiskt inflytande på nordiska språk är nordgermanernas1 förmodade negativa attityd till samer, samernas utbredningsområde och samernas fåtalighet. De två första invändningarna har jag försökt att vederlägga i mina tidigare publikationer och jag har ägnat en stor del av mina studier åt förhållanden mellan samer och nordgermaner på vikingatiden och medeltiden, jmf. t. ex. Kusmenko, 2008, 317–399; 2014. Else Mundals publikationer (jmf. t. ex. Mundal, 2003; 2004; 2010) som visat en fullständig acceptans av samer i fornnordisk tid och Inger Zachrissons studier (jmf. t. ex. Zachrisson, 1997; 2004; 2010), som visat att samernas utbredningsområde tidigare

1 Jag föredrar ordet nordgermaner i stället för skandinaver eller nordbor eftersom samerna inte har mindre rätt att kalla sig skandinaver eller nordbor.

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nått mycket längre söderut än i dag och som antar en kulturell symbios mellan samer och nordgermaner på fornnordisk tid, har varit till stor hjälp för mig. Enligt fornvästnordisk litteratur fanns det ingen stigmatisering av samer på fornnordisk tid. De var vänner och rådgivare hos legendariska och historiska kungar, andra mäktiga personer och även hos nordiska gudar. Samiska klichedrag framkommer – de är goda rådgivare, trollkarlar, läkare, siare, bågskyttar, jägare, fiskare, skidlöpare. Och till råga på allt var namnet Finn och sammansatta namn med finn- mycket populära inte bara på vikingatiden utan också före vikingatiden och efter vikingatiden. Den fornisländska litteraturen, arkeologin och namngivningen i fornnordisk tid visar oss ett förhållande mellan samer och nordgermaner som skiljer sig starkt från vad vi vet om senare tider, särskilt om 1800- och 1900-talen. Men en fråga har fortsatt att ansätta mig. Det är frågan om samernas fåtalighet. Den plats som samerna upptar i fornvästnordisk litteratur och även i Olaus Magnus bok Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus som kom ut i Rom 1555 (Magnus, 1555) korrelerar emellertid inte med ett mycket litet antal samer i dag. I Norge utgör samerna lite mer än en procent av befolkningen (70 000 av 5 214 000). I Sverige är deras andel ännu mindre (cirka 0,4%, 20 000 av 9 921 000). Därför syns frågan berättigad, på vilket sätt språket och kulturen av en sådan fåtalig och länge stigmatiserad befolkningsgrupp kunde påverka vikingar och deras avkomlingar. Men har den samiska andelen av befolkningen i Norden alltid varit så liten? Den moderna genetiska och historisk-demografiska forskningen ger oss en bild, som visar att samernas andel av befolkningen i Sverige och Norge inte var så liten, och denna korrelerar med uppgifter från fornnordisk litteratur. Med innan vi vänder oss till genetik tittar vi på hur de genetiska förbindelserna mellan samer och nordgermaner återspeglas i fornisländsk litteratur. 2. Fornisländsk litteratur om samer som föräldrar till nordgermaner I fornvästnordisk litteratur finns inte mycket information om samiska män som förfäder till nordgermaner. Men skalden Öyvind (Finnsson!) Skaldenspillare (900-talet) berättar i Háleygjatal (Hál., 3, 4) om Säming, som är son till Oden och Skadi och som är förfader till den norska

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konungasläkten.2 Denna information återges av Snorre i prologen till Snorres Edda (SE, prol., kap. 4): Eftir þat fór hann (Óðinn) norðr […] ok setti þar son sinn til þess ríkis, er nú heitir Nóregr. Sá er Sæmingr kallaðr, ok telja þar Nóregskonungar sínar ættir til hans ok svá jarlar ok aðrir ríkismenn, svá sem segir í Háleygjatali. Upplysningarna återfinns även i Ynglingasagan i Heimskringla: Njörðr fékk konu þeirrar, er Skaði hét, hon vildi ekki við hann samfarar eiga, ok giptisk síðan Óðni. Áttu þau marga sonu; einn þeirra hét Sæmingr. […] Til Sæmings taldi Hákon jarl hinn ríki langfeðgakyn sitt (Hmskr. Yngl., 9).3 Det har redan påpekats att Skadi har många samiska drag och hon och hennes son med Odin Säming kan betraktas som “Vertreter der skandinavischen Urbefölkerung der Samen” (Müllenhoff, 1906, 55; jmf. Kusmenko, 2008, 380–386). Blöndal för namnet Sæming tillbaka till adjektivet sámr “mörk, svart, mörkgrå”, som han i sin tur förbinder med den samiska självbenämningen sapmi/sami (Blöndal, 1989, 795, 1015). Müllenhoff för namnet Sæming direkt till den samiska självsbenämningen sapmi/sami (Müllenhoff, 1906, 56).4 Att den samiska självbenämningen var bekant hos nordgermaner visar Vatnsdalasagan, där tre samer som var bjudna av Ingemund till Romsdalen i Norge för att på samiskt sätt5 leta efter hans amulett på Island och att ta reda på läget där, kallar sig semsveinar (Vatn., kap. 12). Detta ord översättes av





2 (3) Þann skaldbløtr / skattføri gat / ása niðr / við jarnviðju /; þás þau meir / í Manheimun / skatna vinr / ok Skaði byggðu, (4) sævar beins, / ok sunu marga / ó ˛ndurdís / við Óðni gat. “Asernas släkting (Oden), dyrkad av skalderna, födde den skattbringare (jarl = Säming) med kvinnan från Järnveden (jättekvinnan = Skade), då de, fursternas vän (Oden) och Skade bodde senare i hemmet hos havets bens mö, och skidgudinnan (Skade) fick många söner med Oden.” Här betyder havets ben “klippa”, hemmet av havets ben betyder “Jötunhem” och mön i hemmet hos havets ben betyder jätinnan (dvs Skadi) (Poole, 2012, 199–200). 3 I prologen till Heimskringla skriver Snorre att Säming var sonen till Yngvi-Frey (Hmskr. Prol.). Det är möjligt att denna historia återspeglar en annan version av Sämings förhållande till de nordiska gudarna. I den härstammar de norska kungarna och jarlarna från Frey, förfader till de svenska kungarna, vilket satte norska hövdingar i en underordnad position i jämförelse med de svenska. En sådan släkttavla kunde knappast gillas av de norska hövdingarna, som hellre ville stamma från Odens son än från Odens barnbarn. Hos Öyvind och i prologen till Heimskringla har Säming blivit till Odens son (se texten ovan). 4 De Vries kritiserar Müllenhoffs etymologi, men föreslår ingen egen och lämnar ordet utan etymologin (de Vries, 1962, 462). 5 De blev instängda i ett hus i Romsdalen i tre dagar och inom denna tid flög de till Island och uppfyllde Ingemunds uppdrag (Vatn., kap. 12).

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Cleasby och Vigfuson som Finnish messengers (Cleasby, Vigfusson, 1957, 522) men som hellre kan tolkas som “samiska grabbar” eller “samiska unga män” (jmf. Olsen, 1920). Säming, som kan betraktas som “företrädare för samer” och som även i sitt namn har samernas självbenämning, ansågs av Öyvind och Snorre vara stamfader till norska kungar och jarlar. Denna föreställning överraskar, men den kan förklaras inte bara genom ideologiska grunder (en norsk kung eller en norsk jarl har rätt att från födseln regera över de båda nationerna, norrmän och samer (Mundal, 2003), utan återspeglar också verkliga äktenskapliga förbindelser mellan samer och nordgermaner, se nedan. Det andra exemplet på samiska fäder till nordiska hjältar är Völunds far som kallas finnakonungr (en samisk kung) i den prosaiska inledningen till Völundskvädet (Völ.). Namnet på en av Völunds bröder var Slagfinnr. Alla bröder hade en typisk samisk sysselsättning, “þeir scriðu ok veiddu dýr”. Det är klart att även i detta fall har vi att göra med ett litterärt motiv, som är förknippat med identifieringen av samer med dvärgar som var skickliga hantverkare och smeder och tillverkat alla magiska föremål åt gudar (Kusmenko, 2014, 73–74). De har gjort gyllene hår åt Siv, halsbandet Brisingamen, skeppet Skidbladnir och vildsvinet Hildisvini åt Frey, spjutet Gungnir och guldrinen Draupnir åt Oden och hammaren Mjölnir åt Tor. Völunds förmåga att vara en magisk smed förbinds med samisk trolldom, och därför är han framställd som en son till en samisk konung i inledningen till Völundskvädet. Men trots att den samiska härkomsten av Säming och Völung har en litterär karaktär visar dessa historier att det var möjligt i det forna Skandinavien att föreställa sig samiska fäder till nordgermanska hjältar. I de litterära källorna hittar vi mycket mer information om samiska hustrur till både mytiska och historiska nordiska kungar. I Ynglingasagan (Hmskr. Yngl., kap. 13) berättas om konung Vanlande från Uppsala, som övervintrade hos den samiska kungen Snö, gifte sig med hans dotter Driva och fick en son med henne. I kapitlet 19 berättas om konung Agne som besegrade och dödade den samiske kungen Frost och gifte sig med hans dotter Skjalf. I sagan om Hrolf krake (Hrólf., kap. 4) hittar vi en intressant berättelse om samisk-nordiska genetiska kontakter. När Ring, som var kungen i Opplandene i Norge, blev änkling skickade han sina män att söka en ny hustru till honom. De kom till Finnmarken och träffade två sköna kvinnor där. Den äldre som hette Ingebjörg var hustrun till en samisk

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konung; den yngre som hette Vit var hennes dotter. Rings sändebud föreslog Vit att gifta sig med Ring. Hon gick med på det och blev hans hustru. I denna episod hittar vi inte bara föreställningen om samiska fruar till nordgermanska kungar (Vit) utan också om nordgermanska fruar (Ingebjörg) till samiska kungar. Motivet med samiska kvinnor som fruar till nordiska kungar finns också i Saxos Gesta Danorum. Den danska kungen Gram förklarade krig mot den “finske” kungen Sumblus (Sumblus Phinnorum rex), men när han fick se dennes dotter förvandlades han från fiende till friare (Saxo, kap. 1). Kungen av Halogier (Halogie rex) gifter sig med Thora, dottern till kungen av “finnar” och Bjarmar Cuso (Finnorum Byarmorumque princes) (ibid., kap. 3). Men det mest berömda exemplet på en norsk konungs giftermål men en samisk kvinna är giftermålet mellan Harald Hårfager och Snöfrid, dotter till Svasi. Snöfrid födde fyra söner, som enligt Snorre regerade enskilda delar av Norge. Från deras son Sigurd Rise härstammar alla norska kungar till Magnus den blinde (1130–1135), och, om Harald Gille och Sverre verkligen tillhör denna ätt, till Olaf Hakonarsson (1380–1387). Historian om Harald Hårfagers giftermål berättas i flera fornisländska källor och det finns en drapa, som tillskrivits Harald Hårfager,6 som han skulle ha diktat efter Snöfrids död (utförligare om detta se Kusmenko, 2008, 345–351). Om vi vill utreda om föreställningen om samer som föräldrar till nordgermaner bara är ett litterärt motiv eller om den motsvarar verkligheten måste vi vända oss till genetik, som kan visa oss andelen nordgermanska och “finnougriska” gener hos de båda folken. Jämförelsen av kromosomiska haplogrupper (Y-DNA) kan visa oss andelen av samiska förfäder hos nordgermaner och andelen av nordgermanska förfäder hos samer. Jämförelsen av mitokondrie-DNA (mtDNA) tillåter oss att få se om berättelserna om samiska hustrur till nordgermanska män inte bara är ett litterärt motiv. 3. Genetiska data Som vi vet finns det två typer av gener: Y-kromosomer (Y-DNA) och mitokondrie-DNA (mtDNA). De första nedärvs enbart längs faderslinjen (från far till son), de andra längs moderslinjen (från mor till dotter).

6 Ólafur Halldórsson förmodar att denna drapa diktades på 1200-talet av skalden Orm Steinnþórsson (Halldórsson, 1969, 147–159).

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Den faderslinje som börjar med en man med en mutation bildar en Y-DNA-haplogrupp och den moderslinje som börjar med en kvinna med en mutation bildar en mtDNA-haplogrupp. I regel kännetecknas en population av flera haplogrupper och jämförelsen av haplogrupperna kan hjälpa en att få se om de aktuella populationerna har en gemensam förfader eller förmoder eller om de har haft en genetisk kontakt. Vi börjar med de kromosomiska haplogrupperna som är kännetecknande för samer, dvs med mutationerna som ärvs från far till son. De flesta moderna samiska männen karakteriseras av tre haplogrupper: N1c, I1 och R1a. Den mest frekventa haplogruppen är N1c som kännetecknar 45–50% av alla samiska män och som också är karakteristisk för andra etnier, som talar finnougriska språk, jmf. udmurter med 80% av N1c, finnar i Östfinland med 70,9%, finnar i Västfinland med 41,3% och ester med 40%. De etnier som hade eller fortfarande har kontakt med finnougrier har också en stor procent av N1c, t. ex. letter med 38% av N1c, litauer med 36% och nord- och nordvästryssar med 41,3% (Tambets et al., 2004; Lappalainen et al., 2008; 2009). Haplogruppen N1c som är kännetecknande för finnougriska folk har kommit till Skandinavien österifrån (från Nordösteuropa eller Nordvästasien). Haplogruppen I1 som är karakteristisk för 31,4% av samiska män och som annars är kännetecknande för germanskspråkiga först och främst för nordgermanska män (41,9% svenska, 37,9% norska och 32,5% danska, 27,7% nordtyska, 29,0% frisiska och 22,6% nederländska (Rootsi et al., 2003; Tambets et al., 2004; Karlsson et al., 2006; Dupuy et al., 2006) visar att nästan en tredjedel av alla samiska män har nordgermanska förfäder. Den tredje samiska haplogruppen R1a som är kännetecknande för 13–20% av samer, förbinder samer med baltiska och slaviska folk, jmf. 56,6% av R1a hos polacker, 41% hos letter och 38% hos litauer och med en del av germanskspråkiga folk (omkring 25% hos svenskar, norrmän och danskar och östtyskar). I överenstämmelse härmed kan haplogruppen N1c hos nordgermaner vittna om еn samisk eller finsk genetisk kontakt med nordgermaner. Procenten av nordgermaner med den “finnougriska” haplogruppen N1c överstiger markant procenten av samer i Norge och Sverige i dag (Dupuy et al., 2006; Lappalainen et al., 2008; 2009). I Norge är procenten av N1c inte så stor (bara 6%), även om den starkt överstiger procenten av modern samisk befolkning (1%). Men N1c är ojämnt fördelad i Norge. Medan det inte finns några spår av N1c i Sydvästnorge har Finnmarken 18,6% av N1c och i de inre områdena i Tröndelag är procenten mellan 10%

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och 15%. Ännu större är skillnaden mellan andelen modern samisk befolkning och procenten av N1c i Sverige (med bara 0,4% av samer i Sverige idag och 12% av N1c). Men om vi tar Mellansverige och Nordsverige är procenten av män med N1c mycket högre, jmf. 37% i Västerbotten, 15,4% i Södermanland, mer än 12% i Uppland och Västmanland. Det höga antalet av N1c i Västerbotten motsvarar det arkeologiska och toponymiska material som presenterats av Broadbent, som visar att samerna som utgjorde mer än 90% av Västerbottens befolkning före 1200-talet började assimileras först på 1200- och 1300-talen (Broadbent, 2010, 219). Broadbents karta som visar en tidigare utbredning av samer (Broadbent, 2010, karta 29; jmf. den ännu tidigare kartan av Zachrisson, 1997) sammanfaller i grova drag med kartan över utbredningen av N1c och motsvarar nästan fullständigt den karta över svenska och norska drag som jag förknippar med den andra vågen av den samiska interferensen i svenska och norska dialekter (vokalbalansen, tilljämningen och konsonantförlängningen, se Kusmenko, 2008, karta 8). Särskilt intressant är arkeogenetiska data. I slutet av 1900-talet undersöktes ett gravfält från vikingatiden i Tuna (Uppland) som bestod av 20 gravar, varav 12 med rikt utrustade båtgravar. En båtgrav är i vårt sammanhang särskilt viktig. Den tillhör en man med den finnougriska haplogruppen N1c (Götherström, 2001, 24), vilket betyder att hans släkt på fädernet härstammar från samer eller finnar, eller att han själv var finnougrier. Båtgravarna med samiska föremål hittades tidigare, t.ex. i Salte i Rogaland i Norge (Stenvik, 1979, 127–139). Om vi kommer ihåg att en båtgrav indikerar en hög social status ser vi att samerna på vikingatiden var långt ifrån att vara stigmatiserade. Här är det på sin plats att påminna att de flesta Rurikiderna (68%), avkomlingar av nordbon Rurik, som var den förste bekante ryske fursten och levde på 800-talet, har haplogruppen N1c (Rurikid Dynasty DNA, 2013), och det betyder att Ruriks förfäder kunde vara samer på fädernet. Den genetiska kontakten mellan samer och nordgermaner återspeglas också i utbredningen av en stor procent av “den germanska” haplogruppen I1 hos samer. Det betyder att mer än 30% av moderna samiska män har nordgermanska förfäder. Om vi jämför de mitokondriella haplogrupper som ärvs från mor till dotter ser vi, att samer har en stor procent av U5, särskilt U5b, och jämförelsevis stor andel av V. Fördelningen av U5b och V skiljer samerna från andra folkslag. Andelen av U5 (U5b1) hos de norska samerna är 56,8%, och frekvensen av V utgör 33,1%. Hos de svenska nordsamerna

Fornisländsk litteratur

utgör frekvensen av U5 33,5%, V 58,6%, och hos svenska sуdsamer är de motsvarande siffrorna för U 5 23,95% och för V 37% (Ingman & Gyllensten, 2006; Weinstock, 2010). Arkeogenetiska undersökningar visar att gropkeramiska människor i Norden, som kunde vara finnougrier, också kunde ha mitokondriella U5 och V (Malmström et al., 2010). Men i somliga områden i Sverige är deras procent mycket hög. En genetisk gåta bildar Sydsverige med 40% av V (Kittles et al., 1999; Erlingsson, 2005). I Sydsverige hittar man också en stor procent av U5 (36%): procenten av U5b1, en av de två typiskt samiska mitokondriella haplogrupperna, utgör i Skåne 29%. Även om vi lämnar denna sydsvenska genetiska gåta olöst ser vi ett stort mitokondriellt genetiskt inflytande på nordgermaner. Om vi jämför förhållandet mellan nordsamiska och sydsamiska haplogrupper får vi se att sydsamer har mer frekvenser på haplogrupper som utbreder sig från söder (både Y-DNA och mtDNA) och detta skiljer sydsamer från nordsamer (jmf. t.ex. bara 2,6% av den europeiska haplogruppen H (mtDNA) hos de svenska nordsamerna och 34,8% av H hos de svenska sydsamerna eller 9,45% av K (mtDNA) hos sydsamer och frånvaron av denna haplogrupp hos nordsamer (Ingman & Gyllensten, 2007). Vi ser att assimileringen av samer sprider sig söderifrån och spåren av assimileringen hittas både i nordiska språk (samisk interferens i nordiska språk och i nordsvenska och nordöstnorska dialekter – jmf. Kusmenko, 2008) och i gener, se ovan. Som vi sett ovan skiljde sig förhållandet mellan samer och nordgermaner tidigare markant från situationen idag. Men det finns ett indicium till som visar oss förändringen i befolkningens struktur i Skandinavien. Två gånger, nämligen på 600–700-talet och på 1300–1400-talet, förändrades befolkningens struktur i Norden på grund av två härjande pestpandemier. 4. Pestpandemier och förändringen i befolkningens struktur i Nordeuropa Den första bekanta pandemin för oss – den så kallade justinianska pesten – drabbade Europa på 500–700-talet och svarta döden eller digerdöden på 1300–1400-talet. Jag börjar med digerdöden, därför att den utforskats av nordiska demografer ojämförligt bättre än justinianska pesten. Innan digerdöden kom till Norge kan landets befolkning antas ha varit omkring 350 000 människor. Centralnorge med Jämtland och

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Nordnorge hade omkring 20% av Norges befolkning, dvs omkring 70 000 invånare. Circa 220 000 människor dog på grund av digerdöden i Norge, dvs efter digerdöden fanns här bara 130 000 människor kvar (Benediktow, 2003). Ännu mörkare var uppskattningarna av Ustvedt, som menade att två tredjedelar av Norges befolkning fallit offer för den svarta döden (Ustvedt, 1985, 129). Översikten av Benediktows bok i den norska internettidskriften forskning.no heter “Svartedauden. Enda verre enn antatt” (Aastorp, 2008). Och absolut samma titel har artikeln av den berömde svenske historikern Dick Harrison om digerdöden i Sverige i tidskriften Forskning & Framsteg (2013 № 1) “Värre än forskarna anat: Digerdöden” (Harrison, 2013). Om digerdöden hade drabbat Norden proportionellt, skulle vi ha väntat omkring 24 000 invånare i Central- och Nordnorge, men pesten härjade ojämnt i landet. Den var starkare i städer än på landet, och starkare i Väst- och i Sydvästnorge än i Nord och i Centralnorge. Gränsen för pesten låg i Tröndelag. Många av bygderna i Nord-Tröndelag och Inntröndelag förskonades från pesten (Ustvedt, 1985; Benediktow, 2003), jmf. också Carpentiers karta som visar digerdödens utbredning i Skandinavien (Carpentier, 1962, fig.) Samma utveckling var kännetecknande också för Sverige. Svenska demografer menar att digerdöden inom 20 år hade minskat Sveriges befolkning till hälften (Myrdal, 2003, 243; Harrison, 2002, 71–73, 129–130, 420). Utbredningen av pesten hade här samma riktning. Pesten drabbade först och främst Sydsverige. Gränsen gick genom Uppland. De sydliga och centrala områdena var berörda av pesten i mycket högre grad än de nordliga och centrala landskapen (Myrdal, 2003, 170, 187). Det betyder att andelen av befolkningen som var samer eller levde i kontakt med samer förändrats efter pesten. Trots att vi inte har direkta indicier om pesten i Skandinavien på 500– 600-talet kan man anta samma utveckling här. Solberg antar att orsaken till fyndnedgången på 500–600-talet i Skandinavien var pesten, som drastiskt minskat Nordens befolkning (Solberg, 2000, 201–202). Pestpandemin som drabbat Europa före digerdöden, den så kallade justinianska pesten, kom från Egypten till Konstantinopel (541–545) och spreds snabbt till andra europeiska regioner. Pesten kom först till Medelhavsregionen men sedan även till nordligare områden, till Irland, England, Frankrike och Tyskland. Man antar att inom två hundra år (541– 750) förlorade Europa omkring 50% av sin befolkning (Stathakopulos, 2007, 105, 114–117). Eftersom upplysningar om den justinianska pesten

Fornisländsk litteratur

i Centraleuropa och i England härstammar från kyrkliga författare (Gregorius av Tours 538/539–593/594, Beda Venerabilis 672–735, Paulus Diaconus 725–799) har vi ingen information hur långt upp till Norden pesten spridits. Men vi vet att kontakter mellan angler, saxar, friser och juter – som korsade Nordsjön och invaderade Brittiska öarna – fortsatte. Arkeologin uppvisar mycket intima kontakter mellan nordborna i England och Nordtyskland på 500–600-talet. Heimskringla och fornisländska sagor berättar om en skånsk kung, Ivar Vidfamne, som underkuvade inte bara Sverige och Danmark utan också Saxland och en femtedel av England (jmf. Hmskr. Yngl., kap. 41). Birger Nerman påstod att Ivar levde på 600-talet (Nerman, 1948, 90). Det är just den tid då kontakter mellan skandinaver, angler och saxar var mycket livliga (Åberg, 1948) och den tid då pestpandemien i England och Saxland uppnått sin höjdpunkt. Om vi antar att den justinianska pesten drabbade Skandinavien – och det var oundvikligt – kan man förmoda att dess utbredningsvägar var desamma som för digerdöden på medeltiden. Den justinianska pesten kunde spridas på 500–600-talet västerifrån från England och söderifrån från Tyskland. Pesten kunde drabba Skandinaviens inre områden i mindre grad än kustområden och efter pesten förändrades det numerära förhållandet mellan samer och nordgermaner samt förhållandena mellan nordgermaner som levde i kontakt med samer och resten av landet. Samerna och nordgermanerna som levde i kontakt med dem före 600talet och före 1300-talet utgjorde både i Sverige och i Norge mindre än 20% av befolkningen (de flesta nordgermanerna levde i Sydvästnorge och i Syd- och Mellansverige) och kom efter pestpandemierna på 600-talet och på 1300-talet att utgöra mer än 50% av befolkningen. Förändringen i befolkningens fördelning i Norden på 600–700-talet och på 1300–1400-talet som förknippats med två pestpandemier förklarar för oss två vågor av samisk interferens (samnordisk interferens på 600–1000) och nordöstnordisk interferens på 1300–1400-talet). 6. Slutsatser Möjligheten av utbredningen av samiska interferensdrag i nordiska språk bekräftas inte bara genom en positiv framställning av samer i fornisländsk litteratur och motiven av samiska män och kvinnor som partner i de matrimoniella förbindelserna med nordgermaner utan också genom genetiska data som visar en stor procent av den typiskt finnougriska Y-DNA-haplogruppen N1c och de typiska samiska

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mtDNA-haplogrupperna U5b och V hos nordgermaner. Förändringarna i befolkningens struktur i Norden som var förknippade med två stora pestpandemier, vilka drabbat Nordskandinavien i mycket mindre grad än Sydskandinavien, har ökat andelen av den samiska befolkningen och av den nordgermanska befolkning som levde i kontakt med samer. Två stora vågor av den samiska interferensen i nordiska språk på samnordisk tid och på 1300-talet kan förklaras som följden av förändringen i befolkningens struktur som förorsakats av två pestpandemier i Norden.7

Bibliografi Källor Hál. – Háleygjatal (2012). Edited by Russell Poole. In Poetry from the kings’ sagas. From mythical times to c. 1035. Vol. 1. Ed. by D. Whaley (pp. 198–220). Brepols N.V.: Turnhout. Hmskr. Prol. – Prologus (1911). In Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla. Nóregs konunga sögur. Udgivet af Finnur Jónsson (pp. 3–8). København: G.E.C. Gads Forlag. Hmskr. Yngl. – Ynglingasaga (1911). In Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla. Nóregs konunga sögur. Udgivet af Finnur Jónsson (pp. 9–85). København: G.E.C. Gads Forlag. Hrólf. – Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans (1959). In Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. Guðni Jónsson bjó til prentunar. Bd. 4. Reykjavík: Íslenzka fornritfélag. Rurikid Dynasty DNA (2013). Available at: https://www.familytreedna. com/public/rurikid. Saxo – Saxonis grammatici gesta danorum (1886). Hg. von Alfred Hodler. Strassburg: K. J. Trübner. SE, prol. – Prologus (1931). In Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Udg. efter håndskrifterne ved Finnur Jónsson. København. Vatn. – Vatnsdælasaga (1959). In Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. Guðni Jónsson bjó til prentunar. Bd. 8. Reykjavík: Íslenzka fornritfélag. Völ. – Völundarkviða (1962). In Die Lieder der Codex regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. Hrsg. von Gustav Neckel (pp. 116–123). 4. Aufl. hrsg. von Hans Kuhn. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.



7 Jag tackar Jim Degrenius för hans stora hjälp med att språkgranska texten.

Fornisländsk litteratur Sekundärliteratur Aastorp, Harald (2008). Svartedauden. Enda verre enn antatt. Available at: forskning.no/bakterier-pest-historiestub/ 2008/02/ svartedauden-enda-verre-enn-antatt. Benedictow, Ole Jørgen (1996). The demography of the Viking Age and the High Middle Ages in the Nordic countries. Scandinavian Journal of History, 21 (1), 151–182. Benediktow, Ole Jørgen (2003). Svarte dauen og senere pestepidemier i Norge. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Broadbent, Noel D., with contribution by Jan Stora (2010). Lapps and labyrints: Saami prehistory, colonization and cultural resilience. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Scholary Press (Contributions to circumpolar anthropology, 8). Blöndal Magnússon Ásgeir (1989). Íslensk orðsifjabók. 2. Útgáfa. Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskóla Íslands. Carpentier, Elisabeth (1962). Une ville devant la peste. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N. Cleasby, Richard, & Gudbrand Vigfusson (1957). An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dupuy, Berit Myhre, et al. (2006). Geographical heterogeneity of Y-Chromosomal lineages in Norway. Forensic Science International, 164 (1). Available at: http://vetinary.sitesled.com/norway.pdf. Erlingsson, Ulf (2005). Europeernas DNA fran en geografs perspektiv i 40.000 år omblandning. Available at: http://Europeernas_DNA. php. Götherström, Anders (2001). Acquired or inherited prestige? Molecular studies of family structures and local horses in Central Svealand during the Medieval period. Doctoral thesis. Stockholm University: Archeology research laboratory (Theses and papers in Scientific archaeology, 4). Halldórsson Ólafur (1969). Snjófriðar drápa. In Afmælisrit Jóns Helgasonar (pp. 147–159). Reykjavík. Harrison, Dick (2002). Stora döden: den värsta katastrof som drabbat Europa. Stockholm: Ordfront. Harrison, Dick (2013).Värre än forskarna anat: Digerdöden. Forskning & Framsteg, 1. Available at: fof.se/tidning/2013/1/artikel/ varre-forskarna-anat-digerdoden. Ingman, Max, & Gyllensten, Ulf. A. (2007). Recent genetic link between Sami and the Volga-Ural region of Russia. In European Journal of Human Genetics, 15, 115–120.

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Jurij Kusmenko Karlsson, Andreas O., et al. (2006). Y-chromosome diversity in Sweden – a long time perspective. In European Journal of Human Genetics, 14, 963–970. Kittles, Rick A., et al. (1999). Autosomal, mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA variation in Finland: evidence for male-specific bottenleck. In American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 108 (4), 381–399. Kusmenko, Jurij (2008). Der samische Einfluss auf die skandinavischen Sprachen. Ein Beitrag zur skandinavischen Sprachgeschichte. Berlin: Nordeuropa-Institut der Humboldt-Universität (Berliner Beiträge zur Skandinavistik, 10). Kusmenko, Jurij (2009). The Sami and Scandinavians in the Viking Age. In Ērika Sausverde & Ieva Steponavičiūtė (Eds.). Approaching the Viking Age (pp. 65–93). Vilnius: Vilnius University Press (Scandinavistica Vilnensis, 2). Kusmenko, Jurij (2010). Har ett samiskt inflytande pa nordiska språk varit mojligt? In Else Mundal & Håkan Rydving (Eds.). Samer som “de andra”, samer om de andra: Identitet och etnicitet i nordiska kulturmöten (pp. 48–67). Umea: Umea Universitet (Samiska studier, 6). Kusmenko, Jurij (2014). Samer som övernaturliga väsen i fornnordisk litteratur. In Ērika Sausverde & Ieva Steponavičiūtė (Eds.). Fun and Puzzles in Modern Scandinavian Studies (pp. 63–82). Vilnius: Vilnius University (Scandinavistica Vilnensis, 9). Lappalainen, Tuuli, et al. (2008). Migration waves to the Baltic Sea region. In Annals of Human Genetics, 72 (3), 337–348. Lappalainen, Tuuli, et al. (2009). Population structure in contemporary Sweden. A Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA analysis. In Annals of Human Genetics, 73 (1), 61–73. Magnus, Olaus (1555). Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. Romae. Malmström, Helena, et al. (2009). Ancient DNA reveals lack of continuity between Neolithic hunter-gatheres and contemporary Scandinavians. Current Biology. Available at: doi:10.1016/j. cub.209.09.017. Müllenhoff, Karl (1906). Deutsche Altertumskunde. Neuer verm. Abdr. besorgt durch Max Roediger. Berlin: Weidmann. Mundal, Else (1996). The perception of the Samis and their religion in Old Norse sources. In Juha Pentikainen (Ed.). Shamanism and Northern Ecology (pp. 97–116). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter (Religion and society, 36).

Fornisländsk litteratur Mundal, Else (2003). Kva fortel die norrøne skriftlege kjeldene om historia til sørsamene. Foredrag av Else Mundal på seminar om sørsamisk historie. Trondheim, 03.03.2003. Available at: http://www. stfk.no. Mundal, Else (2004). Kontakt mellom nordisk og samisk kultur reflektert i norrone mytar og religion. In Jurij Kusmenko (Ed.). The Sami and the Scandinavians. Aspects of 2000 years of contact (pp. 41– 53). Hamburg: Dr. Kovač (Schriften zur Kulturwissenschaft, 55). Mundal, Else (2010). Forholdet mellom samar og nordmenn i norrøne kjelder. In Else Mundal & Håkan Rydving (Eds.). Samer som “de andra”, samer om de andra: Identitet och etnicitet i nordiska kulturmöten (pp. 135–144). Umea: Umea Universitet (Samiska studier, 6). Myrdal, Janken (2003). Digerdöden, pestvågor och ödeläggelse. Ett perspektiv på senmedeltidens Sverige. Stockholm: Cetrum för medeltidsstudier vid Stockholms universitet (Runica et Mediavalia. Scripta minora, 9). Nerman, Birger (1948). Sutton Hoo – en svensk kunga- eller hövdingagrav. In Fornvännen, 43, 65–93. Olsen, Magnus (1920). Semsveinar i Vatnsdoelasaga. Et sproglig og litteraturhistorisk bidrag. In Maal og Minne, XII, 46–54. Poole, Russell (Ed.) (2012). Háleygjatal. In Poetry from the kings’ sagas. From mythical times to c. 1035. Vol. 1. Ed. by D. Whaley (pp. 198–220). Brepols N.V.: Turnhout. Rootsi, Siiri, et al. (2005). Phylogeography of Y-chromosome Haplogroup I reveals distinct domains of prehistoric gene flow in Europe. In American Journal of Human Genetics, 75 (1), 128–137. Rootsi, Siiri, et al. (2007). A counter-clockwise northern route of the Y-Chromosome haplogroup N from Southeast Asia towards Europe. In European Journal of Human Genetics, 15, 204–211. Solberg, Bergljot (2000). Jernalderen i Norge ca 500 f. Kr. – 1030 e. Kr. Oslo: Cappelen akademisk forlag. Stathakopulos, Dionysios (2007). Crime and Punishment. The Plague in the Byzantine Empire 541–749. In Lester K. Little (Ed.). Plague and the End of Antiquity. The Pandemic of 541–750 (pp. 99–118). New York et al.: Cambridge University Press. Stenvik, Lars F. (1980). Samer och nordmenn. Sett i lys av en uvanlig gravfunn fra Salteåmrådet. Viking, 43, 127–139. Tambets, Kristiina, et al. (2004). Western and eastern roots of the Saami – the story of genetic outliers told by mitochondrial DNA

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Jurij Kusmenko and Y-chromosomes. In American Journal of Human Genetics, 74 (4), 661–682. Ustvedt, Yngvar (1985). Svartedauen: En litterar-historisk beretning om massedød og overlevelse. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. Vries, Jan de (1961). Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Leiden: Brill. Weinstock, John (2010). Thoughts about Saami Prehistory. In Else Mundal & Håkan Rydving (Eds.). Samer som “de andra”, samer om de andra: Identitet och etnicitet i nordiska kulturmöten (pp. 31–46). Umea: Umea Universitet (Samiska studier, 6). Zachrisson, Inger (1997). Möten i gränsland: Samer och germaner i Mellanskandinavien. Stockholm: Statens Historiska Museum. Zachrisson, Inger (2004). Samisk-nordiska kulturkontakter i Mellanskandinavien under 600–700-talen e. Kr. (vendeltid) – utifrån det arkeologiska materialet. In Jurij Kusmenko (Ed.). The Sami and the Scandinavians. Aspect of 2000 years of contact (pp. 9–16). Hamburg: Dr. Kovač. Zachrisson, Inger (2010). Samisk-nordiska kontakter under järnåldern – i drakt och personliga tillhörigheter. In Else Mundal & Håkan Rydving (Eds.). Samer som “de andra”, samer om de andra: Identitet och etnicitet i nordiska kulturmöten (pp. 107–122). Umea: Umea Universitet (Samiska studier, 6). Åberg, Nils (1948). Vendeltida forbindelser med festlandgermanska och insulara kretsar. Fornvännen, 43, 111–122.

III

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog: Icelandic setja upp við dogg, Engl. to lie doggo, Engl. dog, and Engl. it’s raining cats and dogs Anatoly Liberman University of Minnesota

Abstract: There is a rare slangy British English phrase to lie doggo “to lie hid”. The earliest known example is dated in the OED to 1882. Doggo looks like dog + o (with -o, as in weirdo, typo, and so forth), but a formation consisting of an animal name followed by the suffix -o would have no analogs. Some light on the origin of lie doggo may fall from the Modern Icelandic idiom sitja upp við dogg ‘to sit or half-lie, supporting oneself with elbows’. Doggur, known from texts since the eighteenth century, occurs with several other verbs. Also, sitja eins og doggur ‘sit motionless, look distraught’ and vera eins og doggur ‘to be motionless’ exist. Doggur has nothing to do with dogs, because the Scandinavian word for “dog” is hund-. The origin of the English noun dog is obscure, but, contrary to the almost universal opinion, the word is not totally isolated. In some German dialects, the diminutive forms dodel, döggel, and the similar-sounding tiggel ~ teckel occur. Perhaps dog and its continental look-alikes were originally baby words. The same sound complexes as above sometimes mean ‘a cylindrical object’ (such are Icelandic doggur and Middle High German tocke). Two of the basic meanings of those words were probably ‘round stick; doll’. Although the evidence is late, we can risk suggesting that lie doggo also contains the name of some device that was current not too long ago in the European itinerant handymen’s lingua franca. The overall image looks nearly the same as in the phrase dead as a doornail. In English, folk etymology connected doggo with the animal name and misled even professional lexicographers and etymologists. Finally, of some relevance is the English idiom it rains cats and dogs, whose forgotten earliest form was it rains cats and dogs and pitchforks with their points downwards. Apparently, the original idea was that a downpour of sharp objects fell to the ground. Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.10 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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1. Etymological Discovery and Luck Nineteenth-century historical linguists had every right to celebrate its victories. Thanks to Rasmus Rask, Jacob Grimm, and their followers, it became possible to lay bare the ties, previously not only hidden, but even unthinkable. At the crest of the Neogrammarian euphoria, the phrase the science of etymology gained ground, and a science it was, though it shared the weaknesses of every field of knowledge: the foundation looked and often proved to be solid, even though the buildings erected on it developed multiple cracks. Etymological algebra, which works well in principle, left many questions unanswered: it went only “so far”. Hundreds of entries in our best etymological dictionaries still contain no answers. As a reaction to this state of affairs, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a romantic school sprang up (Leo Spitzer and other Romance scholars) that emphasized the role of inspiration in etymology. Great discoveries are always inspired, but not every discovery is great, and in reconstructing the past, the line between inspiration and fantasizing is sometimes hard to draw. Looking back at my long experience, I can single out several non-trivial situations that result in finding a feasible solution. 1) A word has been given up as hopeless, but a convincing guess exists, hidden in an obscure place. This is how I came to know the origin of the English word slang. It was explained more than a hundred years ago, but the short article on the subject appeared in a local journal, not devoted to language problems. I ran into it twice: first, because my team and I screened all available resources for my etymological database (Liberman, 2010), and at the same time through a footnote in a relatively recent but also “well-hidden” work. A similar rediscovery happened in my dealing with Engl. dwarf and yet. Dwarf is an especially sad case. Friedrich Kluge came close to understanding the distant past of this word, but later gave up his suggestion, and it fell into oblivion. I rediscovered his train of thought, after which connecting the dots (from dwarf < *dwezg to dizzy) was not too hard. The etymology of yet came to light in a long article by an outstanding German specialist in Slavic (in a section of that article), and English language historians had little chance of noting it. 2) The etymology is almost obvious, but, to put two and two together, special circumstances are required. A parade example of this situation is the origin of Engl. pimp. German scholars explained the derivation of Pimpf ‘a little boy’ long ago (the word is almost transparent), but they did not know Engl. pimp. Even if they had been familiar with English books about pimps and prostitutes, they would have discovered only a

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog

curious analog of Pimpf and left it at that. Unfortunately, English philologists, in turn, had no notion of Pimpf and overlooked the only cognate that would have explained how pimp was coined (see the etymology of slang, dwarf, yet, and pimp in Liberman, 2008). Not only lay people but also linguists have trouble overcoming language barriers. I can cite one more example of the same type as pimp – Pimpf. English etymologists are not certain whether fog ‘mist’ and fog ‘second crop of grass; aftermath’ are connected. If they were aware of the Russian words par ‘steam’ and par ‘a field left unsown for one year’, they might have felt more secure. In Slavic, the connection between par1 and par2 is obvious (from a historical point of view, rather than in today’s linguistic intuition). An etymologist faces a haystack, and the needle may be hidden in Polish, Irish, or French, or, worse still, in some dialect. One cannot explore, let alone know, them all. Buck (1949) and its likes provide some help, but their range is relatively narrow. And this brings me to my last point. 3) Serendipity. The English word galoot means ‘raw soldier or mariner; uncouth man’. The few guesses about its origin are so unconvincing that they do not deserve reproducing. While hammering away at my bibliography (see above), I examined tens of thousands of pages. Once I ran into Öhman (1940). The title of the article looked rather unpromising, but I had such a high opinion of Öhman’s work that I decided to read that contribution, and on p. 149 saw Italian galeotto ~ galeoto ~ galioto ‘sailor’, corresponding to Old French galiot ‘pirate’. The word provided a perfect etymon of galoot (apparently, it was part of the sailors’ lingua franca). I published this discovery in my weekly blog The Oxford Etymologist, and it has gained some recognition. On the same website, I posted my comparison of two slang idioms: Engl. it gets on my wick ‘it irritates me’ and German es geht mir auf den Wecker (the same meaning). If I, by mere chance, had not known both, both would have remained impenetrable. There is some difference between the situations described at (1) and (2) – slang, dwarf, yet; pimp – and the two last ones: galoot and wick. No acceptable etymologies of galoot and wick have ever been proposed, so that they did not have to be rediscovered or excavated. I stumbled into viable solutions by chance. In scholarly work, chance is inseparable from a goal-oriented effort, but it still remains chance; hence my respectful attitude toward serendipity, and it is to serendipity that I’ll devote the rest of this paper, dedicated to Ērika Sausverde, with her talent for finding great things “accidentally” and putting them to use.

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2. The English Idiom to lie doggo I cannot remember when or where I came across the rare English idiom to lie doggo ‘to lie quiet, remain hid; without moving or making a sound; without doing anything that could draw attention’. That phrase did not show up in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED); it is not entered at doggo or at lie. The idiom must have been equally foreign to American English in 1890–1910, for it is absent from the extremely detailed Century Dictionary. After the completion of the OED, a supplement was published, and in it, lie doggo is represented by three citations, dated to 1893, 1916, and 1924. The voluminous post-World War II supplement added nothing new, except a 1955 example. But the OED online has two pre-1893 citations, the earliest being dated to 1882. It is instructive to look at the evidence of doggo in some of our authoritative dictionaries. Although, most likely, no one knows anything definite about the word’s derivation, the attempts to disguise ignorance exist. The third edition of The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (1933) did not include the troublesome word, but that edition was revised many times. In 1942 and 1947 (=1952), the word appeared without any etymology (one finds only [?]). I have not seen the fourth and the fifth edition. Yet the sixth says that doggo occurs chiefly in lie doggo. The word chiefly is confusing, because the alternatives are not given. From the OED online we learn that play doggo also exists. In the first (1966) edition of the American Random House Dictionary, doggo is defined as ‘in concealment, out of sight’, and lie doggo, presumably from dog + o is called informal British slang. In the second (1983/1993) edition, the following example is given: “Lie doggo until the excitement blows over”. I suspect that the sentence was constructed by the editorial staff. With regard to the origin, all sources that risk an opinion say: “dog + (the suffix) -o”. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (the 1985 reprint) adds a short comment: “[…] app[arently] f[rom] dog +o, with ref[erence] to the light sleeping of dogs and the difficulty of telling when their eyes are shut whether they are asleep”. Webster’s New International (WNI1) (1909) could not know anything about doggo, but the second edition (1949) contains a novelty. Definition: “Quietly out of sight, esp. in concealment of a trained dog”; this is followed by: “From the pretended sleep of a trained dog”. Where did the information about trained dogs come from? The usually careful Weekley (1921) wonders: “?Like a cunning dog”. The third edition of WNI (1981) admits that the origin is unknown, “probably from dog + o” and defines the word as slang:

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog

“Quietly out of sight, esp. in concealment – used chiefly in the phrase to lie doggo”. In the sixth edition of The Shorter Oxford, the formulation is the same as in the Random House Dictionary: “Used chiefly in lie doggo”. The suffix or ending o indeed exists. It occurs without any obvious function in cheerio; for adding a familiar ring to some forms of address (my boyo); in weirdo ‘an odd “weird” person’, a synonym for weirdie; for making words sound “folksy”, as in the name of Drano, that is, “draino” (a liquid for opening clogged sinks and toilets), and the like (compare combo and condo). There can be no doubt that Godot in Waiting for Godot is God + o. It has also been known for a long time that the element o enjoys special popularity in Australian English, where it is ubiquitous; the word kiddo ‘kid, child’ is a common occurrence in fiction. Quite recently, the Internet began using doggo as a meme for dog, and the word, as expected, “went viral”. This was the rebirth of doggo. The meme has nothing to do with the old idiom, and the ending (or suffix) -o does not prove that this doggo originated in Australia. As regards the slang phrase lie doggo, a certain detail may be considered. One of the earliest (1893) citations in the OED is from Kipling. Today, Kipling’s relatively short-lived sky-high fame is almost inconceivable: every word he wrote was noticed, remembered (it would pass into proverb!), and repeated throughout the English-speaking world. Perhaps lie doggo became more widely known from him. Kipling, who, like Dickens and Thackeray before him, enjoyed parading his knowledge of street language and slang, may have heard it from his military friends or picked it up from any part of the empire. If so, to lie doggo was not just slang, but possibly military slang, with the original sense ‘to lie quietly in ambush’. To be sure, the source may also have been hunters’ and sportsmen’s usage. Quite naturally, English speakers associated doggo with the animal name dog. However, dogs do not lie in ambush (they are usually urged to attack their prey). Nor does the idea that it is hard to know whether a dog is sleeping or awake sound too appealing. The questions of origins would have remained unassailable if there were not such a thing as serendipity. 3. Modern Icelandic sitja upp við dogg I came across the Icelandic phrase by chance, while reading a newspaper or a short story. It was new to me, but it is common enough, because all good dictionaries feature it. I immediately thought of Engl. lie doggo,

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which had bothered me for years, for its own sake and in connection with my attempts to understand the origin of the word dog. All the glosses and explanations below have been borrowed from ÁBM. Sitja upp við dogg (dogg is the accusative of doggur) means ‘to sit or half-lie, supporting oneself with elbows’. Unlike Engl. doggo, which, if one disregards the Internet meme, is a “bound word” and has not been recorded outside the idiom lie (play) doggo, Icel. doggur, known since the eighteenth century, has an independent existence and designates a vertical cylindrical object (let us not forget the definition). In addition to sitja upp, one can say liggja ‘to lie’, hallast ‘to hold oneself ’, and rísa ‘to rise’, with dogg after them. Two close variants include sitja eins og doggur ‘sit motionless; look distraught’ and vera eins og doggur ‘to be motionless, devoid of emotions’. The question is whether the idioms in Icelandic and English are related. Whatever the answer may be, one thing is clear: doggur has nothing to do with the animal name dog, because that animal is called hundur in Icelandic and Faroese, and hund in all the continental Scandinavian languages. A look at other Modern Icelandic words beginning with dogg reveals the following picture (the parentheses are again from ÁBM): doggast (late occurrence) ‘to do something mechanically, without giving thought to the matter, (? from doggur, as above) – [so not quite the same as “to pursue the matter doggedly”]; doggslegur ‘weak, feeble; sad; dull’ (no time of the earliest occurrence is given; hardly from *dokslegur: dok ‘doubt; hesitation; obstacle, impediment; drowsiness); dogginn (late) ‘persistent’, but also ‘quiet; depressed, down in the mouth’ (a phonetic variant of dokkin; dok ‘doubt, etc.’ – see it above; in some of its senses the word is geographically limited). The nouns doggur ‘dog’ and ‘young shark’ are recent borrowings from English. The conclusion offered in the entry runs as follows: “No cognates in Germanic, but cf. Norwegian dogg ‘boathook; gaff’. The initial meaning may have been *‘pole, round stick; doll, puppet’”. One can summarize the evidence presented above so: Icel. doggur is late, and its origin is unknown; its only probable cognate is Norw. dogg, which, like doggur, designates an implement. However, the relevant objects differ: a vertical cylindrical object versus a boathook. Not improbably, gg in the root alternates with kk, but this conjecture cannot be substantiated. With this conclusion in view, it may be useful to examine briefly the history of Engl. dog. The most common statement in dictionaries is short: “Origin unknown”. However, the literature on dog is huge, the conjectures are many,

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog

and the findings in some more recent articles are significant. A few misleading look-alikes, such as Engl. dodge, Old Icel. dugga ‘a headstrong intractable person’, and the Old English personal name Dycga should probably be ignored. Speakers of Old English called the dog hund. In our earliest texts, only the form docgena, the genitive plural of the unattested word *docga appeared, and only a single time in the Boulogne Prudentius Glosses. It was applied contemptuously to the pagan henchman of the torturer Dacianus by their victim Vincentius and rendered Latin canum. The canum ~ docgena pair makes it certain that docgena did indeed mean ‘of (the) dogs’, and we note with surprise that the word’s pejorative sense turned up long before the regular, neutral one. It had either gained some currency as vulgar slang by the middle of the eleventh century and was avoided in writing or the glossator used an animal name current in his dialect, but unknown elsewhere (the glosses in question do contain rather many words not attested elsewhere). As regards word formation, *docga, with cg standing for gg, would have had the same structure as the recorded oldest forms of frog, stag, (ear)wig, and less certainly, pig. Those were hypocoristic words of the same type, though with a different suffix, as in Modern Engl. doggie and froggie. I will pass by the rather numerous but futile attempts to find Greek and Latin cognates of dog. By contrast, the related forms in Germanic are worthy of attention. Many modern languages have the word dog, and, whenever it appears, it is said to be a borrowing of Engl. dog. This pronouncement should not be accepted dogmatically. (It is hard to believe, but some brave amateurs did derive dog from dogma!) Today, few people consult the works of the once renowned German philologist August Pott (1802–1887). One of his many publications is an essay on dogs (Pott, 1863). He cited an astounding number of words for “dog”, among which we find dodel (apparently recorded in a German dialect of Alsace; the reference is unclear) and döggel from Schleswig. It is often impossible to determine the age of the otherwise unknown local and isolated words. They may be old or late, native or borrowed. Engl. dog ousted hound, that is, hund, in Middle English, when it became a generic animal name, with hound retaining the sense ‘hunting dog, dog kept for the chase’. Döggel may be a diminutive form taken over from English, but there is no certainty. In any case, dodel looks native. Even more instructive than Pott’s is the work of Werner Flechsig (1966), who investigated the name for “bitch” in Ostfalia (Low Saxony).

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In his discussion of the word Tache and its eighteenth-century synonym Tiggel, he suggested that they might be cognate with dog. Tiggel resembles döggel: both are diminutive forms, like dodel, and belong with the Old English animal names ending in cga (see above). Pott mentioned Teckel. Most likely, dog arose as a baby word. Not to be missed are two studi­es: by Ulrike Roider (1982) and Thomas Markey (1983). Roider listed German dialectal dogke ‘a foolish woman; doll’, related to German Docke ‘doll’. Old dolls were often short pieces of wood dressed like manikins. One of the senses of Engl. dock is ‘the solid fleshy part of a horse’s tail; crupper, rump’ (hence the verb dock ‘to remove the end of the tail; cut short’). Roider suggested that Engl. dog is allied to Docke and that it got its name from the practice of docking dogs’ tails. There must have been a less tortuous path from “doll” to “dog”. Children regularly use the same monosyllable for a variety of objects, including toys and pets: the object’s form and function do not matter. Presumably, dog and its phonetic variants had limited currency in English and Low German; yet dog eventually edged out hound. Markey (1983) cited similar Low German words in his discussion of dog. They mean “girl; doll; clump, straw bundle”. Like Roider (1982), whose work he had naturally not read, he referred to breeds of dogs with artificially abbreviated tails. But I think he, too, erred and that he went astray in following Eric Hamp’s etymology of pig and reconstructing the basic meaning of all those words as “small, young”. Hamp connected Engl. pig and Danish pige ‘girl’. Both words are of unclear origin, and nothing harms a sought-for etymology more than attempts to explain an obscure word by referring to another obscure one. Incidentally, pig is also an upstart; it superseded swine. In pige, g goes back to k (late Old Icel. pika; the connection with Finnish piika has not been clarified to everybody’s satisfaction). To reiterate my tentative conclusion: dog is a baby word, which in the beginning had a wide range of application, from ‘doll; puppet’ to ‘pet; dog’. Pig might be a close neighbor (d - g ~ p - g and any vowel in the middle). Here are a few more words of the type discussed above. In Modern German, Docke means ‘a ball of thread; bundle’, ‘doll’ is dialectal (the Standard word for “doll” is Puppe). Old High German tocka ~ tocha has been recorded with the sense ‘puppet’, but Middle High German tocke meant ‘puppet; girl; cylindrical object; windlass; bunch’. Especially surprising is ‘cylindrical object’, because, as we have seen, one of the senses of Icel. doggur is also ‘vertical cylindrical object’. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Engl. dog began to be used for various “mechanical

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog

devices, usually [!] having or consisting of a tooth or claw, used for gripping or holding” (the original formulation in the OED). Despite the word usually, all the devices listed in the entry are indeed for gripping, drawing, and holding (hooks, bars, screws, nippers, and so forth). Some of the implements are called ‘cat’, and we’ll return to this fact below. The metaphor behind the name (“a thing with teeth”) is obvious. The same idea must have occurred to people everywhere (cf. Russian sobachka ‘trigger’, literally, ‘little dog’ – a borrowing of French chien or an independent formation?). In the Scandinavian languages, outside Modern Icelandic, one observes Old Icel. dokka ‘windlass’ (a late borrowing from Low German), ‘doll’; Norwegian dokke ~ dukke ‘doll’; Swedish docka (< dokka), and Danish dukke ‘short column; doll; puppet’. Norwegian dogg ‘boathook, gaff ’ has already been mentioned. ÁBM suggests the initial meaning of Icel. doggur to have been *‘pole, round stick; doll, puppet’. 4. A Preliminary Approach to the Origin of sitja up við dogg and Engl. lie doggo ÁBM’s set of heterogeneous reconstructed meanings (‘pole, round stick; doll, puppet’) causes surprise, but a broader look at the evidence presented above failed to yield better results. The Middle High German glosses of Docke (‘puppet; straw bundle’ and ‘staircase support’) point to a similar union of soft and hard objects. It seems that any round (“cylindrical”) thing, long and sturdy structure (a staircase support, a windlass), tall mannequin (doll), and even some pet animal (puppy) could be called dog or dock; the frequent use of diminutive suffixes points to baby language. The confusion of g and k makes our wanderings among such words especially hard, because this confusion is predictable only in German. (A brief digression: not only Engl. dock ‘stump, etc.’, with its protomeaning *‘something round’ is obscure; for dock ‘herb’ and dock ‘a creek in which a ship rests’ dictionaries can only cite cognates; dock ‘an enclosure in a criminal court’ is impenetrable.) There were two ways from the ancient symbiosis. One led to the establishment of animal names; it was taken by English and some German dialects. The other way led to the naming of devices, predominantly, but not necessarily, round. In English, the records of dog ‘device, implement’ do not antedate the late Middle period. Perhaps earlier occurrences are unknown to us, but, more probably, the words listed in the OED (see

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them above) reached England from the continent as part of the itinerant artisans’ lingua franca. I have discussed two such words in the past: adz(e) (in the 2008 dictionary) and ajar in Liberman (2014). The records of the Icelandic words are so late that all hypotheses are doomed to remain guesswork. Even in Icelandic, the merger of dog and dok is possible, especially in such words with voiceless sound groups as doggslegur ‘weak’. We occasionally note an unexpected combination of senses: cf. Icel. dogginn ‘persistent’ and ‘depressed’, ? from ‘staying in the same state’. Building semantic bridges is easy; that is why they collapse with such regularity. One gets the impression that some dog ~ dok adjectives could be used loosely, with semantic borders shifting or blurred, while the related nouns functioned like synonyms of Engl. thingamabob. Whatever the etymology of such words, sitja up (liggja, hallast, rísa) up við dogg has nothing to do with the animal name dog. The English case is less clear. Perhaps some light comes from the simile dead as a doornail. It seems to have been coined in allusion to nails driven deep, to the tack, into wood and remaining immobile. Some such image, evoked by doggur ‘a long round vertical object’, may have been at play in Icelandic, regardless of whether doggur was native or, more likely, a borrowing (or an adaptation) of a Low German word. Judging by final o in doggo, Engl. doggo was hardly coined in England. The late emergence of the phrase in Kipling points in the same direction. The source might be, as presumably in Icelandic, some Low German dog form, and it too may have been part of North Sea Germanic handymen’s professional argot. The connection with the habits of sleeping dogs is, in my opinion, due to folk etymology. The association of objects made for gripping and pulling with dogs is common in many parts of Europe, but this fact should not undermine the suggestion that the name of the implement existed parallel to, rather than as a derivative from, the animal name. 5. The English idiom it rains cats and dogs As is well-known, the idiom means ‘it pours with rain’. Its origin keeps puzzling speakers, but most of the explanations offered in the past should be discarded as fanciful. The phrase has been traced to French cantaloupe ‘waterfall’ (then a product of either a naïve pronunciation or folk etymology); to Greek katà doxas (? ‘down in full force’); to the fact that torrential rains carried along with them the refuse of the streets, including many dead animals; to the Scandinavian myth in which a cat is

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog

said to be influenced by the coming storm (there is no such myth!); to the superstition that cats were transformed witches, while dogs were the hounds of Odin (Óðinn), the god of storms (however, Óðinn was not a thunder god or a weather god and had no such hounds); to cats and dogs pattering across a bare boarded floor, strongly resembling the sound of a heavy downpour of rain; to Italian tempo cattivo ‘bad weather’; to the word catodupe, meaning a cataract (“the great katadoupeo – the cataracts of the Nile, from katadoupeo – to fall with a heavy sound. It is raining cats and dogs – it is raining cataracts”). It will be seen that many authors were satisfied by accounting for cats, as though the second word of the idiom (dogs) did not matter. However, it was known rather early that the full (original) text of the idiom was it rains cats and dogs and little pitchforks, alternating with it rains cats and dogs and pitchforks with their points downwards. The note by N. E. Toke (1918) deserves being reproduced almost in full: The “New English Dictionary” [= OED], under the heading “cat” 17, quotes G. Harvey, “Pierce’s Super”, 8 (1592), “Instead of thunderboltes shooteth nothing but dogboltes or catboltes”. This seems nearer the mark, but it is impossible to judge without the context, and this I do not know. By the way, “dogbolts” and “catbolts” are terms still employed in provincial dialect to denote, respectively, the iron bars for securing a door or gate, and the bolts for fastening together pieces of timber (see “English Dialect Dictionary” [by Joseph Wright]). A variety of the very popular game of trap and ball was called provincially “cat and dog” – the “dog” being the club with which the players propelled the “cat”, i.e. the piece of wood which, as in the game of tip-cat, did duty for the ball. If a number of players were engaged in this game and they grew excited, it might easily be said that it “rained cats and dogs” on the playing field. Could the expression have arisen in this way? A “dog” also means a portion of a rainbow, and generally precedes or accompanies squall at sea. In this connection, the “English Dialect Dictionary” quotes “It’ll mebbe be fine i’ t’efternoon if t’ thunner keeps off, but there’s too many little dogs about” (West York[shire]). The connection of “dogs” with a downpour of rain is accounted for by this use of the word. Some humorists may have added “cats”, and the phrase, thus originated, may have caught the popular fancy. But this is merely a suggestion, and I should be glad of a less hypothetical explanation.

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The OED offers the closest approximation to the phrase dated to a. 1652. The quotation from Harvey is now dated to 1593 (at dog bolt). The reference to the rainbow is curious, but it does not account for cats in the idiom. Also, the evidence of pitchforks (with their points downward) cannot be shaken off. Apparently, the original idea was that a downpour of sharp objects fell to the ground. Later, catbolts and dogbolts lost their second elements, and the phrase became more elegant but senseless. I hope that the history of the idiom will reinforce the idea that in the enigmatic phrase lie doggo, the reference is to some inanimate object. Perhaps the phrase was coined by players in a popular game rather than by wandering handymen (note dog ‘club’; reminiscent of the supports and cylindrical objects, mentioned above). We may never know. The important thing in this case is to let the sleeping dogs lie and not bother etymologists.

References ÁBM = Ásgeir, Blöndal Magnússon (1989). Íslensk orðsifjabók. Orðabók Háskólans. Buck, Carl D. (1949. Repr. 1988). A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Flechsig, Werner (1966). Bezeichnungen für die Hündin in Ostfalen. Korrespondenzblatt des Vereins für Niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, 73, 8–12. Liberman, Anatoly, with the assistance of J. Lawrence Mitchell (2008). An Analytical Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Liberman, Anatoly, with the assistance of Ari Hoptman & Nathan E. Carlson (2010). A Bibliography of English Etymology. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Liberman, Anatoly (2014). Struggling with Words of Allegedly Unknown Origin: Agog, Ajar, Anlace, and Awning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis, 19, 11–33. Markey, Thomas L. (1983). English dog / Germanic hound. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 11, 373–378. Öhman, Emil (1940). Über einige mhd. Ausdrücke der Seefahrt. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 41, 145–56.

An Etymological Dog Kennel, or Dog Eat Dog Pott, August F. (1863). Zur Kulturgeschichte. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der arischen, celtischen und slawischen Sprachen, 3, 289–326. Roider, Ulrike (1982). Englisch dog ‘Hund’. In Wolfgang Meid, Hermann Ölberg, & Hans Schmeja (Eds.). Sprachwissenschaft in Innsbruck. Arbeiten von Mitgliedern und Freunden des Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck aus Anlaß des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens des Instituts im Jahre 1978 und zum Gedenken an die 25. Wiederkehr des Todestages von Hermann Ammann am 12. September 1981, 191–94. Toke, N. E. (1918). Rains Cats and Dogs. Notes and Queries, Series 12, IV, 328–329. Weekley, Earnest(1921). An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company.

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Some Implications for Ērika: Implicatives in Danish, Finnish and Lithuanian Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė & Asta Laugalienė Vilnius University

Abstract: The article deals with implicative verbs, i.e., verbs that, both in their affirmative and negative forms, carry implications as to the factual status of their propositional complements, e.g. manage, forget, bother etc. Karttunen (1971), who introduced the notion, already pointed out that a verb that is implicative in one language need not necessarily have implicative counterparts in other languages. It is conceivable that some languages have semantic groups of implicatives not represented, or less well represented, in other languages, and this deserves to be investigated. In this article the authors offer just a very preliminary exploration based on three languages, one North Germanic, one Fennic, and one Baltic. They show that even such a small sample may reveal interesting differences. The authors also pause over certain general tendencies in the semantic development of implicatives. While most of the work on implicatives has been done in the tradition of formal semantics, the authors show that a more cognitively oriented approach (invoking mechanisms of subjectification) can yield valuable insights into the polysemy of implicatives.

1. Introduction1 In 1971 Lauri Karttunen formulated the notion of implicative verbs, by which he means verbs that, both in their affirmative and their negative varieties, carry certain implications as to the factuality of the situation

1 We wish to thank Kirsi Podschivalow for her assistance with the Finnish data and Peter Juul Nielsen for his useful comments on the Danish implicatives. We also thank an anonymous reviewer for useful suggestions and criticisms. For any shortcomings we remain solely responsible. Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.11 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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described by their propositional complement. A typical example is manage2: (1)  Solomon managed to build the Temple. (2)  Solomon didn’t manage to build the Temple.

(1) entails Solomon built the Temple, whereas (2) entails Solomon did not build the Temple. With some verbs polarity is reversed, but a twoway implication still holds: (3)  Solomon forgot to build the Temple. (4)  Solomon did not forget to build the Temple.

(3) entails Solomon did not build the Temple, whereas (4) usually3 entails Solomon built the Temple. Karttunen’s article came a year after Kiparsky and Kiparsky’s (1970) equally famous article on factivity. The latter gave rise to the notion of factive complement-taking verbs, which presuppose the factual status of their complements, cf. (5)  Solomon regretted having built the Temple. (6)  Solomon did not regret having built the Temple.

As both (5) and (6) can only be felicitously used if the Temple has indeed been built, the building of the Temple is, in this case, a presupposition. Karttunen points out that implicative predicates also carry certain presuppositions, e.g. (1) and (2) usually presuppose that there were serious obstacles to the building of the Temple, and that Solomon made a directed effort at overcoming these obstacles. Karttunen furthermore points out that a verb that is implicative in one language need not have this property in other languages. He gives a list of Finnish implicatives that have no English equivalents. An example would be arvata ‘guess’:

2 Where it is not otherwise stated, the examples are constructed. 3 Unless, of course, one pronounces forget with a contrastive stress, as when wanting to say that it was not out of forgetfulness but for some other reason that Solomon failed to build the Temple.

Some Implications for Ērika (7) Finnish Arvasimme tulla juhlaan oikeaan aikaan. guess.pst.1pl come.inf party.ill.sg right.ill.sg time.ill.sg ‘We contrived to arrive at the party at the right time.’ (i.e. ‘we guessed what the best time to arrive would be and arrived at that time’)

Implicatives have hitherto drawn attention mainly from scholars working in the tradition of formal semantics. Their purpose has been to gain insight in the exact nature of the presuppositions associated with the use of an implicative, to establish what exactly is asserted by an implicative verb, etc. But what we know about the existence of language-specific (types of) implicative verbs suggests it might also be worthwhile looking at implicatives cross-linguistically. Noonan (2007, 139) briefly mentions implicatives (under the name ‘achievement predicates’) in his overview of complementation types but says nothing about typological variation, probably because no interesting variation in expression specific to implicative verbs is to be expected: whatever pattern is used in a given language for complement types involving systematic identity of main-clause and complement-clause subjects, such as those of desiderative or modal verbs, will probably also be used with implicative verbs. These will belong to what has been called the ‘stateof-affairs’ type of complement clauses, as opposed to the propositional type used, e.g., with verbs of saying, knowing etc. (cf. Kehayov & Boye, 2016, 812–818). Differences will concern the semantic domains in which implicative verbs occur; they are therefore a subject for lexical typology. This article offers no more than a very preliminary exploration of the cross-linguistic study of implicatives; it is based on a small conveniency sample comprising the languages on which the authors happen to be working. Still, the authors hope that this exploration, as well as their thoughts on the semantic description of implicatives, will prove to be of some use. For considerations of space, we basically leave phrasal implicatives (Karttunen, 2012) out of consideration. The structure of the article is as follows. In section 2, we will present some general considerations on the semantic properties of implicatives and the different ways in which one can look at them. Next, we will attempt a rough and preliminary semantic grouping of implicatives and try to identify a few groups where the languages under discussion show interesting differences. By way of conclusion, we offer a few preliminary generalizations.

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2. On the semantics of implicatives Almost all that has been written on implicatives has been written in the tradition of formal semantics. Authors working in this tradition have raised important questions and gained valuable insights, and we will briefly discuss a number of interesting points touched upon in the literature. We will argue, however, that a discussion of the semantics of implicatives can also profit from a more cognitively oriented approach. Karttunen characterizes the semantics of constructions with implicatives by pointing out the following features: (i) there are certain presuppositions associated with the use of implicatives, and (ii) a presupposed state of affairs is viewed as a necessary and sufficient condition for the realization of what is expressed by the complement. Consider (8): (8)  John remembered to turn off the light.

This sentence carries background presuppositions to the effect that John is under an obligation to turn off the light (e.g., before leaving his workplace), and that he is willing to carry out this obligation; there is also a specific presupposition to the effect that John’s remembering the obligation is a necessary and sufficient condition for his performing it. The act of uttering (8) amounts to stating that this specific presupposition is satisfied, and the truth of the embedded proposition automatically follows. A crucial element of Karttunen’s analysis is that, truth-conditionally, the implicative predicate adds nothing to what is asserted by the embedded clause; all it adds is the commitment to certain presuppositions. In a later formulation (Karttunen, 2014), the notion of presupposition is replaced with that of conventional implicature. This lack of truth-conditional content – the actual occurrence of the event described in the embedded proposition being automatically captured by the status of ‘sufficient condition’ – is one of the elements in Karttunen’s analysis that have been challenged. Writing on manage, Baglini and Francez (2016, 546) claim that this verb “makes a non-trivial truth-conditional contribution”. A sentence of the type ‘manage p’ “presupposes the familiarity of a ‘catalyst’, a causally necessary, but causally insufficient condition for the truth of p, and asserts that the catalyst actually caused the truth of p”. This proposal for improvement of Karttunen’s analysis seems intuitively convincing because, assuming free will in humans, no external circumstance or catalyst can ever be a sufficient condition for the accomplishment of an act.

Some Implications for Ērika

But there are problems of a more general nature with the reliance on presuppositions in describing the semantics of implicatives. Coleman (1975) draws attention to ‘shifting’ presuppositions with manage. Karttunen assumes ‘trying’ is an essential presupposition for the use of manage, but as Coleman points out, there are many contexts where this does not apply: (9)  My dog manages to get clawed by every cat that comes along.

Moreover, the subject of manage may be inanimate or ambient, in which case no attempts could possibly be involved: (10)  It always manages to rain on my day off.

Coleman suggests this can be accounted for by operating with a hierarchical ordering of presuppositions, presuppositional elements incompatible with the context being successively filtered out: if the presupposition ‘the subject tried to achieve p’ fails, the weaker presupposition ‘p is difficult to achieve’ is substituted, and if that fails as well, what remains is ‘p is unlikely’. This account in terms of ‘vanishing presuppositions’ was devised in order to avoid recognizing polysemy (or ‘homonymy’, as Coleman, true to the spirit of the times, puts it). The monosemy assumption pervades the whole literature in the tradition of formal semantics, and therefore also almost all of what has been written on implicatives. The assumption is usually that a linguistic sign can only have one meaning, and that apparent meaning differences must originate in pragmatics. Perhaps the study of implicatives could profit from an approach in the spirit of cognitive linguistics, based on the assumption that one linguistic sign may correspond to several conceptual structures mutually linked by recurrent patterns of semantic change such as metaphor, pragmatic strengthening etc. and thus forming a network, as has been argued in a large body of literature starting with Brugman & Lakoff (1988). This principled polysemy approach is also more in keeping with the purposes of cross-linguistic comparison, which is badly served by a monosemic approach. A use like (9) could be characterized as an instance of irony, in which case we would have to look for an explanation in pragmatic terms. But we could also consider a semantic account in terms of subjectification, that is, a shift “from ‘propositional’ to ‘textual’ meanings, or from describing

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an external Situation to reflecting evaluative, perceptual, or cognitive aspects of the ‘internal Situation’” (Langacker, 1990, 16, with reference to the pioneering work of Elisabeth Closs Traugott, starting with Traugott, 1982). When we compare (1) to (9), we may note a shift from an obstacle in the real world (the material difficulties standing in the way of the erection of the Temple) to an obstacle in the world of beliefs – the building of the Temple being a formidable task, its successful completion is unexpected, and unexpectedness is what remains from the original meaning in (9). A further metaphoric transfer enables the shift to inanimate or ambient subjects in cases like (10). Such processes are semantic, not pragmatic in nature, and they form regular patterns: as we will see below, a similar shift from reference to states of affairs in the extralinguistic world to evaluative meanings is characteristic of many implicatives. To discover a general pattern of this kind seems somehow more profitable than seeking ad hoc reasons for shifting presuppositions in every particular case. In a more recent publication, Karttunen (2014) gives as a rule of thumb for describing the meanings of implicatives that they all “suggest […] or conventionally implicate that there is some obstacle that must be overcome for the infinitival clause to be true”. We agree with this characterization but prefer to assume that the obstacle to be overcome is not conventionally implicated but linguistically encoded. As a result of different semantic processes the ‘obstacle’ may be variously reinterpreted, as the example of manage shows. But the obstacle may also, as long as it is situated in the extralinguistic world, be of different kinds, and it is here that cross-linguistic variation may manifest itself. Karttunen has already drawn attention to Finnish as a language rich in implicatives, adding jocularly that “having a specific implicative verb available for so many obstacles makes Finnish a great language for pithy excuses” (Karttunen, 2014). If this is the case, then perhaps Finnish implicatives are especially well represented in certain domains, whereas other languages specialize in other domains? This is, in our view, an interesting research question. It requires, of course, an adequate classification, which it will perhaps be possible to give only at a later stage, on the basis of broader empirical data. The classification used here is only preliminary and largely intuitive. The obstacles Karttunen refers to may remain unspecified, as in the case of manage, or they may be specified, as in the case of remember. In this classification, we set apart a group of implicatives that are non-specific in the sense of being noncommittal as to the nature of the obstacles, and several groups of more specific implicatives singled out

Some Implications for Ērika

according to the nature of the obstacles involved – mental, emotive, social, physical and spatio-motoric. 3. Non-specific implicatives All three languages examined here have several non-specific implicatives, by which we mean implicatives referring to an agent bringing about the occurrence of an event in spite of certain unspecified obstacles, such as manage and succeed. We can distinguish two subtypes here, one laying more emphasis on the subject’s skills whereas the other emphasizes external circumstances. The second type has a preference, in many languages, for impersonal constructions, with the subject-agent as a datival argument. This can be seen in Danish, which has evne ‘manage’, representing the first subtype (14) and lykkes ‘succeed’, representing the second (15): (14) Danish Hun  evnede at gøre vore  mange  hjem smukke. she manage.pst  to  make.inf  our many home.pl  beautiful ‘She managed to make many of our homes beautiful.’ (KorpusDK) (15) Det  lykkedes mig  at  gennemføre en udveksling: it succeed.PST  me to accomplish.inf an exchange [kgl. dansk porcelæn mod Chile rødvin.] ‘I succeeded in securing an exchange: Royal Danish china for Chile red wine.’ (KorpusDK)

The same holds for Lithuanian, which has sugebėti ‘manage’ and pavykti ‘succeed’: (16) Lithuanian Konkurs-e užduot-ys buvo ne-lengv-os, competition-loc.sg task-nom.pl be.pst.3  neg-easy-nom.pl.f bet aš sugebėjau jas atlik-ti. but  1sg.nom manage.pst.1sg  3.acc.pl.f accomplish-inf ‘The competition tasks were not easy, but a managed to solve them.’4

4 https://setosgimnazija.lt/kalbu-kengura-rusu-kalba.

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Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė & Asta Laugalienė (17) Turist-ė teigia, kad jai pavyko tourist[f]-nom.sg claim.prs.3 that 3.dat.sg.f succeed.pst.3 įamžin-ti garsi-ąją Lochnes-o pabais-ą. immortalize-inf  famous-acc.sg.f.def Loch.Ness-gen monster-acc.sg ‘The tourist claims she succeeded in capturing forever the famous monster of Loch Ness.’5

Finnish has the same lexeme for both, but has a similar syntactic differentiation as Danish and Lithuanian: the construction is either personal (18) or impersonal (19): (18)  Finnish Minä onnistuin pakenemaan. 1sg.nom manage.pst.1sg escape.inf3.ill ‘I managed to escape.’ (19) Minun onnistui paeta. 1sg.gen succeed.pst.3sg escape.inf ‘I succeeded in escaping.’

A second group puts less emphasis on the adverse influence of circumstances and on the need for a subject to surmount these. The occurrence of the event is driven by circumstances rather than by the subject’s will: (20) Claudia became the project scientist of the Rosetta mission where she got to work with NASA’s European counterpart, the European Space Agency.6

Implicatives of this type seem to develop out of acquisitive verbs like ‘get’ (ultimately also a source for modal verbs, cf. van der Auwera, Kehayov & Vittrant, 2009) and verbs of motion like ‘come’, the borderline between the two not always being clear (e.g. English get can be

5 https://www.gismeteo.lt/news/naujienos/4861-ar-tai-nese-turiste-teigia-kad-jaipavyko-iamzinti-garsiaja-lochneso-pabaisa. 6 https://www.aps.org/careers/physicists/profiles/calexander.cfm.

Some Implications for Ērika

acquisitive but is also used as a motion verb: How did you get there?). Danish has both sources. The productive construction has ‘come’: (21)  Danish Hun  kom bestemt ikke  til at kede sig. she come.pst certainly not till to bore.inf  refl ‘She definitely did not have occasion to be bored.’ (KorpusDK)

Danish få ‘get’ is, at least in the contemporary language, severely restricted lexically, occurring mainly with a few verbs of cognition and perception in what appear to be fixed expressions: (22) Danish [Hun måtte ikke kontakte ham og] hun fik ikke at vide hvor han var. she get.pst not to know.inf where he be.pst ‘She couldn’t get in touch with him and couldn’t get to know where he was.’ (KorpusDK)

Here the subject is a theme in motion towards a certain type of situation, but the spatial conceptualization may also be reversed, with the event as a theme and the agent as a recipient/goal, a pattern to be found in Lithuanian: (23) Lithuanian [Tai buvo neįtikėtina, nes] man niekados neteko regėti kažko panašaus. 1sg.dat never fall.to.pst.3 see.inf something.gen similar.gen.sg.m ‘[It was unbelievable, because] I had I never had occasion to see anything similar.’7

A reverse non-specific implicative is ‘omit’, here represented only by Danish undlade, without exact equivalents in Lithuanian and Finnish though phrasal implicatives may be used to fill the gap. It is interesting in that this verb meets the formal conditions for implicatives but presuppositions differ considerably according to polarity. The affirmative

7 https://www.lrytas.lt/sportas/atsukam-laika/2018/06/11/news/saras-pries-desimtmeti-apie-lemtinga-klaida-nba-ir-pamisusius-sirgalius-atenuose-6516716.

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form suggests failure to comply with an obligation or general norm of behaviour, but remains vague about the reasons of non-compliance (forgetfulness, carelessness, willful non-compliance etc.). The negative construction is usually ironical and suggests a person indulging a none too creditable character trait: (24) Danish Han  undlod at betale Mejerigaarden for he omit.pst to pay.inf dairy.farm.def for store  mængder is. large quantity.pl icecream ‘He omitted to pay the dairy farm for large quantities of icecream.’8 (25) Danish [Da mormor døde, åbnede tante Selma en flaske cognac for at fejre det,] hun  undlod ikke at fortælle  alle,  der kom she omit.pst  neg to tell.inf all who come.pst til begravelsen, to funeral.def [at det var en meget fin flaske.] ‘[When Grandmother died, aunt Selma opened a bottle of brandy to celebrate,] and she took care to tell all who came to the funeral that it was a very fine bottle.’ (Linn Ulmann, Før du sover, transl. Martin Dennis)

Discreditable character traits are not proscribed by formal laws but may invite censure, so that, in order to offer a unified account for (24) and (25), we could suggest that the subject in (25) fails to comply with an unwritten law requiring people to refrain from indulging bad tendencies. The actual presuppositions behind (25) are different, and the shift seems to be, at first glance, pragmatic, but it might in fact reflect a general tendency for implicatives to acquire an evaluating function, on which see below.



8 https://www.food-supply.dk/article/view/612508/stor_slikgrossist_tomte_ selskab_for_millionbelob.

Some Implications for Ērika

4. The mental sphere All three languages have specific implicatives singling out a mental process as determining the event named in the embedded predicate. The most widespread mental implicatives include ‘remember (to do something)’ and ‘forget’. Another aspect of mental activity is ‘presence of mind’, i.e. the ability quickly to devise an adequate course of action apposite to the situation. Finnish uses its verb ‘know’ for this meaning: (26) Finnish Mistä  tiesit etsiä täältä? how know.pst.2sg search.inf here.abl.sg ‘How did you think of searching here?’9

Lithuanian and Finnish use the verb ‘understand’ in more or less the same sense (in Lithuanian a special reflexive form is used): (27) Lithuanian Gaila, ne-su-si-pratau paklausti, kiek pity neg-pfx-refl-understand.pst.1sg ask.inf how.much ta paslauga kainuoja… dem.nom.sg.f service.nom.sg  cost.prs.3sg ‘Unfortunately I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask how much this service costs.’10 (28)  Finnish En ymmärtänyt kiittää kukka-asetelmista. neg.1sg  understand.part.pst  thank.inf flower.setting.elat.pl ‘It did not even cross my mind to thank for the flower settings.’11

Other expressions, like Danish falde ind and the Lithuanian phrasal implicative (cf. Karttunen, 2012) šauti į galvą, use a motion metaphor and a syntactic structure in which the thought is the subject-theme and the person is an indirect object:

9 https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi. 10 https://maga.lt/12171. 11 https://fi-fi.facebook.com/pontuksenkioski/ (a public post from 29.05.2018 by Mika Hänninen).

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Some languages have implicative verbs whose use presupposes that, all other conditions being satisfied, the accomplishment of an action depends only on an act of volition on the part of the subject. English bother belongs to this type. Finnish, true to its reputation as a language rich in implicatives, has several verbs to convey this meaning: viitsiä, välittää (only in negative sentences) and (apparently an innovation under English influence) vaivautua: (31) Finnish En viitsinyt ottaa mitään  riskiä. neg.1sg  bother.part.pst take.inf any risk.prt.sg ‘I did not bother to take any risk.’13

Interestingly, Lithuanian’s sister language Latvian has borrowed the Fennic verb reflected in Finnish viitsiä (Latvian nevīžot, used only with negation). Danish seems to have no exact equivalent: gide is usually given as a counterpart of bother in dictionaries, but it does not behave as an implicative. In Lithuanian the equivalent of bother would be pasivarginti ‘take the trouble’ (usually in an ironical sense):

12 https://rekvizitai.vz.lt/imone/televisuma/atsiliepimai. 13 https://hevosurheilu.fi/ravit/raviuutiset/creation-primerolle-kuskinvaihdosen-viitsinyt-ottaa-mitaan-riskia.

Some Implications for Ērika (32) Lithuanian [Pirmiausia stebina tai, kad korespondentė, ketindama rašyti straipsnį,] net ne-pasivargino pasikalbėti  ar prisistatyti. even  neg-take.the.trouble.pst.3sg talk.inf or introduce.oneself.inf [What is most surprising is that the correspondent, intending to write an article,] didn’t even bother to talk [to us] or introduce herself.’14

5. The emotive sphere Also well represented in the three languages, and probably rather universal, is the emotive sphere. The implicative refers to a state of mind viewed as a necessary condition for the realization of an event. The obstacle the subject has to overcome is a mental inhibitor such as shame, compassion, disgust etc. As such feelings are experienced in relation to other persons, socio-emotive would perhaps be a more appropriate term, but we will reserve ‘social’ for those meanings specifically connected with social hierarchies. A typical example of a socio-emotive implicative would be Danish nænne, which can be translated as ‘to bring oneself to do sth’. The obstacle is the subject’s sense of delicacy: (33)  Danish Men  han  nænnede alligevel ikke at vække hende. but he bring.oneself.pst  nevertheless  neg  to  wake.inf  her ‘Nevertheless he couldn’t bring himself to wake her.’ (KorpusDK)

Finnish has a whole set of reverse implicatives with the meaning ‘be prevented from sth by shyness’: kainostella, arastella and ujostella. They are presumably differentiated by subtle shades of meaning. (34) Finnish Todellisista tunteistaan hän-kin arasteli puhua. true.elat.pl  feeling.elat.pl.3sg  3sg-also  feel.shy.pst.3sg  talk.inf ‘He/she was also shy to talk about his/her true feelings.’15 14 http://www.vjg.lt/naujienos/svarbu/2014/11/atsakymas-i-straipsni-delfi. 15 http://www.hssaatio.fi/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Antti-Bl%C3%A5field_ julkistamispuhe.pdf.

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Not less abundantly represented is the opposite type, describing a situation in which a person surmounts inhibitors of various kinds. This type shows very fine distinctions as to the exact nature of the inhibitor: we have juljeta ‘have the impudence’, kehdeta ‘not be constrained by delicacy, shame etc.’, iljetä ‘surmount one’s repugnance’, sumeilla ‘have scruples’ (only with negation) etc. (35) Finnish Ruotsalaispelaaja julkesi selittää Swedish.player.nom have.the.cheek.pst3 explain.inf tekoaan vahinkona. action.prt.3sg  accident.ess.sg ‘The Swedish player had the cheek to explain his action as an accident.’16 (36) Hän ilkesi tulla (S)he have.the.impudence.pst.3sg come.inf häiritsemään, kun. tein kuolemaa. disturb.inf.3.ill when do.pst.1sg death.prt ‘(S)he even dared come and disturb me when I was dying.’ (Karo Hämäläinen, Ilta on julma) (37) Hän  ei sumeillut käyttää  valtaansa he neg feel.scruples.part.pst use.inf power.prt.3sg omaksi edukseen. own.trans benefit.trans.3sg ‘He felt no scruples about using his power for his own benefit.’17

6. The social sphere In this semantic group, the obstacles referred to by Karttunen are social barriers. There is no very specific reference to emotions involved in social interaction. Consider (38): (38) The King condescended to meet the petitioners. 16 https://www.iltalehti.fi/nhl/201702132200069576_nh.shtml. 17 https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi.

Some Implications for Ērika

Though the King had, perhaps, to surmount a natural social barrier that would have prevented him from meeting the petitioners, he may not have given much thought to this aspect of his decision and what the implicative verb adds is a certain evaluation to the effect that King’s readiness to meet the petitioners was extraordinarily gracious. The original notion of a social obstacle hardly ever occurs here. The ‘condescend’ type is represented in all three languages dealt with here, though, in our democratic times, it is probably restricted to ironical use: (39) Danish Peter nedlod sig ikke  til at svare. Peter lower.pst  refl  neg till to answer.inf ‘Peter did not condescend to answer.’ (KorpusDK)

In addition to malonėti and teiktis ‘deign, condescend’, Lithuanian also has the reverse implicative pasididžiuoti ‘refrain from doing sth out of pride’ (this verb also means ‘feel or express pride’), whose negative form nepasididžiuoti can be translated as ‘condescend’: (40) Lithuanian [Akcijos sumanytoja […] mano, kad renginys pavyko, nors] daugelis politikų ir Savivaldybės many.nom politician.gen.pl and Municipality.nom valdininkų pasididžiavo ateiti. official.gen.pl  feel.pride.pst.3 show.up.inf ‘[The action’s organizer […] thinks the event was a success], though many politicians and municipality officials did not deign to show up.’18

In addition to suvaita ‘deign, condescend’ Finnish also has alentua ‘stoop to morally reprehensible behaviour’: (41) Finnish Rouva ei suvainnut edes vastata kysymyksiini. lady.nom.sg neg deign.part.pst even answer.inf question.ill.pl.1sg The lady did not even deign to answer my questions.19

18 http://www.skrastas.lt/?data=2004-06-02&rub=1143711027&id=1146722913. 19 adapted from https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi.

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Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė & Asta Laugalienė (42) Tuomari alentui ottamaan lahjuksia. judge.nom.sg  stoop.pst.3 take.inf3.ill  bribe.prt.pl ‘The judge stooped to take bribes.’20

This seems to imply an evaluation that is not merely social but has a moral dimension, but anyway what the verb adds is only an evaluation – we do not even know whether the subject has to surmount any scruples. In this sense a verb like alentua is similar to implicatives in the social sphere: they do not add anything to the simple verb truth-conditionally, but add an evaluation in terms of societal norms. 7. The sphere of physical sensations Can the obstacle to be surmounted, as represented by an implicative verb, be a physiological sensation rather than an emotion? It can: this sphere is represented by Finnish tarjeta, which reflects sensitivity to temperature: (43)  Finnish (adapted from Karttunen, 2014) Minä tarkenin uida. 1sg.nom be.warm.pst.1sg swim.inf ‘I swam, braving the cold.’ (44) Minä en tarjennut uida. 1sg.nom  neg.1sg be.warm.part.pst swim.inf ‘I couldn’t get myself to brave the cold and swim.’

Here most languages would have a less specific verb like ‘dare’, but the Finnish verb additionally specifies that the subject must brave the cold in order to accomplish the feat described by the embedded infinitive. The verb tarjeta appears to occupy an isolated position among Finnish implicatives; there is no analogous verb referring to the act of braving the rain or ignoring a headache. So, while this example illustrates the general tendency of Finnish to be quite specific in its characterization of obstacles to be surmounted, the physiological sphere is weakly represented 20 https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi.

Some Implications for Ērika

in comparison to the socio-emotional one. It remains to be investigated whether equally specific implicatives in the physiological sphere can be found in other languages. 8. The spatio-motoric sphere Lithuanian has not been mentioned until now as a language particularly rich in specific implicatives, but in fact it has one interesting group of these, viz. a small group of verbs describing the ability to accomplish some action as determined by the ability to overcome certain spatio-motoric limitations, partly determined by bodily predispositions. Pasiekti ‘reach’ is one of them: (45) Lithuanian Šalia šaldytuvo buvo stendas, nuo jo next.to fridge.gen.sg be.pst.3 stand.nom.sg from 3.gen.sg.m pasiekė paimti tris saldainių dėžutes. reach.pst.3 take.inf three.acc sweet.gen.pl box.acc.sg ‘Next to the fridge there was a stand from which he could reach just far enough to take three boxes of sweets.’21 (46) Kaire ranka ji ne-pasiekia left.ins.sg.f hand.ins.sg  3.nom.sg.f  neg-reach.prs.3 paimti virvės virš kopetėlių, take.inf  rope.gen.sg above ladder[pl].gen [tai neranda kur tos rankos dėti.] ‘With her left hand she cannot reach far enough to seize the rope above the ladder, [and so she does not find a place to rest her hand].’22

We can add tilpti ‘have room enough to do something’ (perfective pratilpti): (47) Lithuanian Londone šeštadienį dviaukštis autobusas London.loc Saturday.acc.sg double.decker.nom.sg.m bus.nom.sg 21 http://eteismai.lt/byla/229473676590541/1-111-564/2016. 22 forum.speleo.lt/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1230.

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Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė & Asta Laugalienė ne-tilpo pravažiuoti po geležinkelio neg-have.room.pst.3 drive.through.inf under railway.gen tiltu ir kliudė jo perdangą. bridge.ins.sg  and graze.pst.3  3.gen.sg.m deck.acc.sg ‘Last Saturday in London a double-decker bus proved too high to drive through under a railway bridge and grazed its deck.’23

At least one verb also involves motor activity, viz. pataikyti ‘hit the mark’: (48) Lithuanian Tik alaus skardinių kai kas jau only beer.gen.sg can.gen.pl somebody.nom  pcl ne-pataikė įmesti į šiukšliadėžes. neg-hit.the.mark.pst.3  throw.into.inf into dustbin.acc.pl ‘But as to the beer cans, certain people seem to have been unsuccessful in throwing them into the dustbin.’24

This use of pataikyti is ironical, of course, as the implication is the people referred to didn’t bother to throw their empty cans into a dustbin. But more interesting here is the extended, metaphorical use of pataikyti, as in: (49) Lithuanian Jie padeda man įvertinti, ar vaikas 3.nom.pl.m help.prs.3  1sg.dat assess.inf if child.nom.sg paklaustas, tik pataikė atsakyti ask.part.pass.pst.nom.sg.m just hit.the.mark.pst.3 answer.inf [ar jis iš tiesų suprato pamokos turinį]. ‘It [sc. the homework] helps me to assess whether a child just hit upon the correct answer when asked or really understood the content of the lesson.’25

Here pataikyti means ‘by chance more than understanding, find the right way to do something’. Interesting questions are raised by the 23 https://www.15min.lt/naujiena/aktualu/pasaulis/londone-dviauksciamautobusui-kliudzius-tilta-suzeisti-26-zmones-57-701003. 24 http://musu.krastas.lt/?rub=1065924812&id=1436194333. 25 https://apklausa.lt/f/ar-tevai-padeda-5-8-kl-mokiniams-ruosti-namu-darbus4y7sjxx/entries/916659/text_results.

Some Implications for Ērika

negated variety nepataikė atsakyti, which could be interpreted as ‘answered but not to the point’. This would suggest pataikyti is, in this use, no longer implicative but factive. The interpretation of such sentences is not straightforward but such a shift to factive status would not be quite unexpected: as the implicative’s meaning becomes evaluative, the content of the complement clause may cease to be interpreted as being conditional on what is expressed by the complement-taking verb and become a presupposed event subject to evaluation. A metaphorical extension of the kind found with pataikyti is also found with the verb aprėpti, originally ‘encompass (with the arms)’, which belongs to the same group as pasiekti or pratilpti, and indeed also behaves as an implicative complement-taking verb, but seems to be attested only in an extended, metaphorical sense, as ‘manage to cope with a large number of tasks’: (50) Lithuanian Valstybinės miškų tarnybos inspektoriai […] State.adj.gen.sg forest.gen.pl service.gen.sg inspector.nom.pl fiziškai ne-aprėpia prižiūrėti visų physically  neg-encompass.prs.3 supervise.inf all.gen.pl privačių miškų. private.gen.pl  forest.gen.pl ‘The State forestry inspectors […] are physically unable to supervise all provate forests.’26

Interestingly, implicatives in the spatio-motoric domain are also found in Finnish, e.g., ulottua ‘reach, manage to reach’ (a counterpart to Lith. pasiekti), and mahtua ‘fit into sth, find place enough to do sth’ (a counterpart to Lith. tilpti): (51)  Finnish Hän ulottui vaivoin tarttumaan pelastusköyteen.27 (s)he reach.pst.3sg effort.instr.pl catch.inf3.ill lifeline.ill ‘With great effort (s)he managed to catch hold of the lifeline.’

26 https://lietuvosdiena.lrytas.lt/aktualijos/popierine-aplinkosaugos-lazda.htm. 27 https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi.

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Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė & Asta Laugalienė (52) Sängyssä mahtui hyvin pyörimään. bed.iness.sg fit.into.pst.3sg well roll.about.inf3.ill ‘One had space enough to roll about in the bed.’28

The construction seems to be not quite unknown in Russian: (53) Russian [San’ka provorno zaskočila emu za spinu, pojmala ruku,] čut’ bylo ne dostala čmoknut’, hardly  frustr  neg reach.pst.f kiss.inf [da on opjat’ vydernul i ešče popjatilsja.] ‘[Sanya deftly bolted behind his back, got hold of his hand] and nearly managed to kiss it, [but he withdrew it again and stepped backward].’ (RNC, from Fedor Knorre, 1973)

However, speakers of standard Russian do not readily accept such constructions, and constructions like (53) could be an occasional phenomenon. Verbs belonging to the group discussed here show a tendency to select clausal complements in other languages as well, but not necessarily with the verb in its original spatio-motoric meaning. The Danish verb nå ‘reach’ is also an implicative, but its spatial meaning has evolved into a general meaning of ability and ultimately into the temporal meaning of ‘manage to do something within a certain time frame’: (54) Danish Jeg   kan ikke nå bogen på øverste hylde. I can  neg reach.inf book.def on upper shelf ‘I can’t reach the book on the upper shelf.’ (55) Desuden nåede de at få et   par moreover have.time.pst they to catch.inf a couple videoapparater under armene, før de stak af. video.player.pl under arm.pl.def before they bolt.pst away 28 https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g189934-d199923-i29 8153317-Hotel_Kamp-Helsinki_Uusimaa.html.

Some Implications for Ērika ‘They also had time to snatch several video players before they made off.’ (KorpusDK)

To explain the transition we must, however, reconstruct for Danish an original construction analogous to (54), something like: (56) *Han  kan ikke nå at få fat i bogen. he can  neg reach.inf to catch grip in book.def intended meaning: ‘He cannot reach (high/far enough) to take the book.’

The shift to more general and abstract meaning can be compared to that observed in Lith. pataikyti, discussed above, which means ‘manage to do something in the way required by convention, at the right moment etc.’, or in Lith. aprėpti, which has acquired a quantitative meaning. Such extended and metaphorical uses appear regularly, but the specific feature of Finnish and Lithuanian is that they have a small group of spatio-motoric verbs that, as implicative predicates, have remained stable at the spatio-motoric stage instead of moving on to more abstract meanings, although these also arise and co-exist with the more concrete ones. The Finnish-Lithuanian convergence (perhaps extending to Slavic) is interesting, though it is not clear whether we are dealing with an areal feature. 9. Time frames as obstacles Several languages have specialized implicative verbs describing a situation in which a person succeeds in performing a task in spite of being pressed for time. Danish nå has already been mentioned. Lithuanian has a verb of the same type: (57) Lithuanian [Lietingą naktį vairuotojas, išvydęs žmogų kelyje,] ne-spėjo sustabdyti  automobilio neg-be.in.time.pst.3 stop.inf automobile.gen.sg ‘[During this rainy night the driver, having seen a person on the road,] did not manage to stop his vehicle in time.’29 29 https://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/crime/lietinga-nakti-vairuotojas-isvydes-zmogu-kelyje-nespejo-sustabdyti-automobilio.d?id=71813200.

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Though we can describe ‘lack of time’ as an obstacle to be surmounted (analogous to lack of space in the case of tilpti above), it seems verbs of the type dealt with in this section are prone to extended uses in which the implicative verb ceases to give an internal characterization of the situation and shifts to temporal location of the event with regard to other events, thus performing a function close to that of phasal adverbs. Cf. (58), where nesuspėjo pagauti means as much as ‘have not yet got hold of Father Christmas’: (58) Lithuanian Tad  jei  dar yra tokių, kurie so if still be.prs.3 such.gen.pl  rel.nom.pl.m ne-suspėjo pagauti Kalėdų senelio, neg-be.in.time.pst.3  catch.inf Xmas[pl].gen old.man.gen.sg [dar turit galimybę pasitaisyti.] ‘If there are still those among you who haven’t been able to get hold of Father Christmas, ‘[you can still make up for this].’30

The same is observed in Finnish, which has three verbs for this meaning: ehtiä, keritä and ennättää: (59) Finnish Jos joku ei ole vielä ehtinyt if anybody neg.3sg be yet be.in.time.part.pst tilaamaan Eurosport Playeria, order.inf3.ill  Eurosport Player.prt.sg [niin tästä linkistä saa palvelun kuukaudeksi.] ‘If anybody has not yet ordered Eurosport Player, [over this link one can get access for a month.]’31

  Finally, parallels are also found in Slavic (cf. Russian uspet’, Polish zdążyć), both in the original sense of ‘obstacle’ and in the temporal-location sense. Could this be an areal feature? Only Lithuanian seems to have a reverse implicative counterpart pavėluoti, meaning ‘be late’: 30 https://www.fashyas.com/XX/Unknown/188783921491895/Andra-Accessories. 31 https://keskustelu.jatkoaika.com/threads/olympialaiset-2018-pyeongchang.58011/ page-48 (a post from 14.02.2018).

Some Implications for Ērika (60) Lithuanian Keliavo ketvertas linksmai,  kol vienoje travel.pst.3 foursome.nom.sg merrily until one.loc.sg.f stotyje Rojus pavėlavo įlipti į traukinį. station.loc.sg  pn.nom  be.late.pst.3  go.aboard.inf  into  train.acc.sg ‘The four of them travelled happily on, until at one of the stations Roy came too late to board the train.’32

This verb, however, is not consistently implicative. The negated counterpart of (60), nepavėlavo įlipti, would imply the subject caught the train. Often, however, pavėluoti does not refer to being late as an obstacle to the accomplishment of an action, but expresses an evaluation of an event as having occurred, subjectively, too late. This is seen in (61): (61) Lithuanian Jis jau pavėlavo pasakyti  šiuos 3.nom.sg.m already be.late.pst.3 say.inf dem.acc.pl.f žodžius. word.acc.pl [Aš netikiu jo nuoširdumu.] ‘He was late in saying those words. [I don’t believe in his sincerity.]’33

Here, from inverse implicative the verb becomes evaluative, which could perhaps explain why it can become factive, in the same way as pataikyti in (49). In any case, these two verbs suggest there the borderline between implicatives and factives is sometimes fuzzy, which deserves to be examined in greater detail. 10. In conclusion This brief and very incomplete comparison between three languages of Northern Europe, among which one – Finnish – has been mentioned in the literature as being rich in implicatives, was intended to gain more insight in the general properties of this lexical class, and also to get a very preliminary idea of typological variety in this domain. 32 https://zmones.lrytas.lt/tv-antena/2007/03/17/news/nuotykiai-sibiro-eksprese4984208. 33 http://www.lrytas.lt/pasaulis/ivykiai/turku-fotografas-apie-protestus-salyje-zmones-yra-pasirenge-kovoti-iki-galo.htm.

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As Karttunen notes, implicatives usually imply that a certain obstacle has to be surmounted in order for the subject to bring about a certain event. The presence of obstacles to be surmounted as a presupposition associated with the use of implicative verbs is a convenient point of departure for a general characterization of implicatives, but certain groups of implicatives are prone to shifts of different types according to the semantic group to which the implicative belongs. In a general way, we can describe these shifts as instances of subjectification. As what should count as an obstacle is often a matter of subjective evaluation, the path to subjectification is open to virtually all implicatives, though in some cases the subjectified use is felt to be ironical, as in He managed to offend half of the electorate, etc. Whereas for verbs like ‘manage’ in their most basic sense it is an object of controversy whether the implicative makes a truth-conditional contribution or not, it is clear that there is no such contribution in the case of subjectified implicatives: here the sole difference is in the speaker’s evaluation. The subjectified reading of implicatives consists, in most cases, in an evaluation of a person’s behaviour in terms of social conventions, ethical standards etc. In some cases, the evaluative element is lacking: verbs like Finnish ehtiä, Lithuanian spėti may simply express relative location in a time-scale, while Lithuanian aprėpti in (50) has shifted to a quantitative characterization. But in such cases as well, a process of subjectification is at work. Our exploration confirms that languages may differ with regard to the degree of differentiation and specificity of meanings in the implicative domain. The non-specific implicatives may show occasional gaps in individual languages, but these are not of broader interest. More general tendencies manifest themselves where a language has a semantic class of specific implicatives lacking in other languages. Both Lithuanian and Finnish show instances of this. The spatio-motoric group looks like an interesting Finnish-Lithuanian convergence – could it be an areal feature? Finnish tarjeta ‘feel warm enough (to do something)’ points to the existence of a ‘physiological’ group, though we have as yet found no more examples. The Finnish-Lithuanian convergence with regard to the spatio-motoric type suggests that areal patterns might perhaps be discerned. The present cross-linguistic study was highly selective, the choice of languages being determined by the authors’ linguistic expertise. A broader investigation on implicatives in European languages would no doubt yield more trustworthy and revealing results. But we

Some Implications for Ērika

can already discern some common tendencies, some differences and some interesting lines of future research. Sources KorpusDK – Danish Language Corpus, https://ordnet.dk/korpusdk. RNC – Russian National Corpus, http://www.ruscorpora.ru. Abbreviations abl – ablative, acc – accusative, adj – adjective, dat – dative, def – definite, dem – demonstrative, elat – elative, ess – essive, f – feminine, frustr – frustrative, gen – genitive, ill – illative, iness – inessive, inf – infinitive, inf3 – third infinitive (Finnish), ins – instrumental, instr – instructive, loc – locative, m – masculine, neg – negative, nom – nominative, part – participle, pcl – particle, pfx – prefix, pfv – perfective, pl – plural, pn – personal name, prs – present, prt – partitive, pst – past, rel – relative, refl – reflexive, sg – singular, trans – translative

References Auwera, Johan van der, Kehayov, Petar & Vittrant, Alice (2009). Acquisitive modals. In Lotte Hogeweg, Helen de Hoop & Andrej Malchukov (Eds.). Cross-Linguistic Semantics of Tense, Aspect and Modality (pp. 271–302). Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baglini, Rebekah & Francez, Itamar (2016). The implications of managing. Journal of Semantics, 33, 541–560. Brugman, Claudia & Lakoff, George 1988. Cognitive topology and lexical networks. In Steven Small, Garrison Cotrell & Michael Tanenhaus (Eds.). Lexical Ambiguity Resolution (pp. 477–508). San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufman. Coleman, Linda (1975). The case of the vanishing presupposition. Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1, 78–89. Karttunen, Lauri (1971). Implicative verbs. Language, 47.2, 340–358. Karttunen, Lauri (2012). Simple and phrasal implicatives. In Proceedings of the First Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (pp. 124–131). Stroudsburg: Association for Computational Linguistics.

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Axel Holvoet, Birutė Spraunienė & Asta Laugalienė Karttunen, Lauri (2014). Three ways of not being lucky. Presentation for SALT 24 at NYU, 30.06.2014. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ salt2014/SALT_2014/Program_files/NotBeingLucky.pdf. Kehayov, Petar & Boye, Kasper (2016). Complementizer semantics in European languages: Overview and generalizations. In Kasper Boye & Petar Kehayov (Eds.). Complementizer Semantics in European Languages (pp. 809–878). Berlin etc.: De Gruyter Mouton. Kiparsky, Paul & Kiparsky, Carol (1970). Fact. In Manfred Bierwisch & Karl Heidolph (Eds.). Progress in Linguistics (pp. 143–173). The Hague: Mouton. Langacker, Ronald (1990). Subjectification. Cognitive Linguistics, 1.1, 5–38. Noonan, Michael (2007). Complementation. In Timothy Shopen (Ed.). Language Typology and Syntactic Description II: Complex Constructions (pp. 52–150). 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1982). From propositional to textual and expressive meanings: Some semantic-pragmatic aspects of grammaticalization. In Winfred P. Lehmann & Yakov Malkiel (Eds.). Perspectives on Historical Linguistics (pp. 245–271). AmsterdamPhiladelphia: John Benjamins.

Driving Forces behind Language Change. Does Danish Theory Hold up in Lithuania? Loreta Vaicekauskienė Vilnius University

Abstract: The paper presents a large-scale investigation of attitudes towards standard and dialectal speech varieties in Lithuania. It aimed at, firstly, obtaining comparable data on assessments of speech variation under two methodologically different conditions: ‘unaware condition’ (the participants being unaware of the linguistic goals of the research) and ‘aware condition’. Secondly, it aimed at testing whether the two layers of consciousness yield two different systems of social values and how the evaluations accord with changes in language usage. The theory was developed by Danish scholars whose numerous experimental studies proved the driving force role of subconscious attitudes. The investigation closely followed the Danish methodology and was carried out in 23 secondary schools in 7 regions and the capital city of Lithuania, covering almost 1.5 thousand pupils in total. The regularity of the findings, i.e. the overall tendency to overtly valorise local dialects but subconsciously to downgrade dialect accented voices, confirmed that language awareness affects assignment of values to language and must be regarded as an important explanatory factor for the scenarios of language change.

1. Introduction When a student of grammar proudly refers to his object of study as the spine of language, a sociolinguist can add that variation of forms is the spirit. What (s)he will have in mind is the social meaning of linguistic features that links language with the world of social identifications. We sociolinguists see language use as a man-made product – variant and changing in accordance with the choices of its speakers. People get acquainted with and assign value to language differences and they act according to this knowledge and consequent emotions. Those Shaping the Rings of the Scandinavian Fellowship. Festschrift in Honour of Ērika Sausverde. Edited by Ieva Steponavičiūtė Aleksiejūnienė and Loreta Vaicekauskienė. (Scandinavistica Vilnensis 14). Vilnius University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2019.12 Copyright © 2019 Authors. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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language features that, due to the association with certain types of speakers, have been imbued with positive social value are taken up and those forms which could raise unwanted social association are abandoned (cf. Kristiansen, Garret & Coupland, 2005, 12–13). This process of social meaning creation never stops. We cannot impact it, but we can indulge in the intellectual pleasure of observing and trying to grasp and foresee language development. The paper addresses a theory which models scenarios for language change and conceptualizes subjective factors behind it. The point is that language judgements are processed at two levels of consciousness and each of them elicits a different value system. Only the attitudes at the level of subconsciousness are believed to be able to account for the major changes on the level of language use. The theory of the nature and driving-force role of language attitudes was developed by professor Tore Kristiansen together with his colleagues at Copenhagen University (see among many others, Kristiansen, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2009, 2011). Kristiansen was certainly not the first scholar to recognize the dual perspective on language judgements and how they link to language change. In fact, pioneer of sociolinguistics William Labov had already addressed the distinction between overt and covert attitudes in the 1960s (see an exhaustive and captivating account of this matter in Kristiansen, 2009; 2011). The decisive Danish contribution consisted of persistent adjustment of research instruments for elicitation of covert attitudes and operationalisation of the conscious-subconscious distinction. During a workout of two decades, the Danish scholars collected a corpus of experimental attitudinal data from around 1000 young Danes and founded the theory with valid empirical evidence. In time, the Danish insights and research instruments became an export commodity, and we in Lithuania became one of the importers. A network and research program called SLICE (Standard Language Ideology in Contemporary Europe) was established in 2009 to enable comparisons of language ideologies and language use across European societies. Since then, investigations of speakers’ attitudes towards regional dialects and non-dialectal varieties were initiated in a few speech communities (see the studies from the network in Kristiansen & Grondelaers, 2013). The research presented in this paper replicates the Danish design and relates to the other SLICE investigations that adapted the methodo­logy. Prior to this study, in Lithuanian linguistics collection of attitudes to speech variation was performed using various surveys where participants knew they were evaluating language issues; experimental control

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of language awareness was only applied in a few theses by university students (see Čekuolytė, 2008, 2010; Širvytė, 2009; Vainalavičiūtė, 2009). By adapting the methods of the Copenhagen school to the Lithuanian speech community, Lithuanian linguistics was supplemented with new instruments for measuring linguistic attitudes, new empirical data were collected and the theory was tested under different societal conditions. In the following, a comprehensive investigation of value assignment to the three main varieties of Lithuanian, i.e. the standard language, the capital Vilnius speech and the dialectal speech, is presented. In addition to the empirical inquiry into young speakers’ attitudes towards dia­ lect-standard speech variation, the theoretical distinction of the levels of language awareness and their relation to language development is tested. The following research questions are addressed, formulated as hypothetical claims (to be falsified or confirmed): (1) Language-related values will differ depending on the level of consciousness; (2) The current language use situation is better accounted for in terms of subconsciously offered attitudes than in terms of consciously offered attitudes; (3) Regional linguistic varieties are evaluatively upgraded and emerge as competitive alternatives to non-dialectal varieties.

The paper starts with an overview of the theoretical concepts concerning the role of language ideologies in the processes of language change (for more, see a comprehensive account by Coupland & Kristiansen, 2011) and gives a concise summary of the results from Denmark and other SLICEnetwork communities (Germany, Ireland, Norway, and the Faroe Islands) (Section 2). Then the language ideology situation in Lithuania is presented (Section 3), followed by a section on the data collection procedure and research design (Section 4). Finally the results are examined in two sections (Section 5 and 6) and discussed in the concluding section (Section 7). 2. Theoretical and empirical foundations 2.1. Subconscious attitudes and their role in language variation and change When we collect data for the study of speakers’ social motivations and their role in language change, Kristiansen (e.g. 2011) argues that we need

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to take a principal methodological distinction into account: are the informants aware of expressing attitudes to language or are they not? This distinction follows from the theory that there exist two ideological systems, activated on two different levels of consciousness, i.e. evaluative reaction patterns to language differ depending on the level of consciousness (Grondelaers & Kristiansen, 2013). For instance, it has been noticed that when people are asked questions (explicitly/overtly) about language, conscious metalinguistic awareness is activated and reproduces a version of some dominant language ideology (cf. Preston, 2009, 115–117; Garret, 2010, 57). This type of attitude reveals which speech variety is assigned the highest status or value in the general discourse in society. Under these conditions, it is very likely that informants will try to present themselves as socially acceptable, or they will accommodate to the researcher and deliver responses they think the researcher wants to hear. The methodological issues that follow from this kind of informant behaviour are dealt with in terms of ‘social desirability’ or ‘acquiescence biases’ (Garrett, Williams & Evans, 2005). In communities with a well-established standard language culture, it is to be expected that language users overtly recite standard language ideology and grant top position to the standard language in the hierarchy of linguistic varieties used in the community. However, local ideologies can develop alongside the national standard ideology. The rebirth of regional identities is said to have uplifted sentiments to local dialects and explicit valorisation of dialectal speech (Mugglestone, 1995). The question remains why current overt attachments to dialect do not turn into a wider diffusion of dialect but rather dialects cease to be used? Or why, for instance, overtly stigmatised and downgraded urban varieties survive and spread? The reason is – following the argument in the theory – that people do not necessarily speak in accordance with what they express overtly about their own preferences. Rather, their choices are governed by attitudes which are not part of the overt discourses and speakers are scarcely cognizant of them (e.g. Kristiansen, 2009; Coupland & Kristiansen, 2011, 21–22). This layer of language awareness is referred to as subconscious, or covert, implicit attitudes. Subconsciously held values reveal the hidden prestige of language varieties. When asked directly, language users may not come out with these values, but they are said to follow them when adopting or preserving features of language in usage. Hence, speakers might overtly agree that dialects are in need of revitalization, but there

Driving Forces behind Language Change

will be no spread of dialect in usage unless dialect speaking is associated with qualities that enhance a positive self-image. Overt language ideology, i.e. speakers’ ideas about language ‘correctness’, also affects language use; it accounts, for instance, for correction applied to ‘individual linguistic forms’ (Labov, 1972, 123, quoted in Kristiansen, 2011, 271), yet the ‘overt’ attitudinal climate is said to be of little or no importance to the evaluative processes involved in language variation and change (Kristiansen, Garret & Coupland, 2005, 13). Methodologically, this established theoretical distinction means that researchers of language attitudes have to find ways to access the covert ideology of speakers, i.e. they have to control the two aspects of informants’ awareness – production of conscious and of subconscious evaluations. For the study of the latter, experimental techniques are employed and I will return to this in Section 4 on data gathering and research design. The idea that language changes accord well with subconsciously delivered attitudes was further developed to include scenarios for language change. Basically, there are two opposing options: (1) standardisation and (2) destandardisation. The first scenario represents a continued homogenization of language use in a society, i.e. striving for one regimented central norm and rejection of non-standard varieties in favour of that “one best language”. The second scenario represents a process where an established standard language loses its particular status as the whole idea of a ‘best language’ is weakened and eventually abandoned. Instead, several (regional) varieties acquire equally high value. Recent studies in European language communities have failed to provide empirical support for the destandardisation scenario. Rather, an on-going standardisation process has been evidenced, albeit with a remarkable ideological turn. It seems that the “one best language” ideology remains intact, but the idea of what language forms make the best language is changing. A subconscious upgrading of ordinary speech (often an urban variety of a capital city) to the status of the best language has been noticed. The development is referred to as the process of demotisation. (For more see Auer & Spiekermann, 2011; Coupland & Kristiansen, 2011). 2.2. Testing the theory In the Danish studies, the theoretical distinction discussed was empirically tested with attitudinal data covering all major dialectal regions of Denmark. At each research site, young people evaluated the

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three varieties that they (have to) relate to in their everyday life: Local speech (regional dialect), Standard language (conservative, codified Copenhagen speech) and Modern Copenhagen (the officially downgraded urban variety of Danish). The following general pattern was produced: overtly the informants evaluated local regional dialects most positively of all and covertly, in the context of a speaker evaluation experiment which was designed and conducted in a way so that the informants remained unaware of offering language attitudes, they downgraded the speakers from their own region and attributed the most positive personality traits to non-dialectal (Modern and Conservative Copenhagen) speakers. Thus, the ideological hierarchisation of dialectal and non-dialectal varieties was turned upside down when the informants were un­ aware of the language issue in the task given to them. The overtly expressed ‘local patriotism’ did not seem to provide the local speakers (representing the speech of the informants themselves) with appealing personality traits; these were shared by the voices of the two non-local speakers in an interestingly systematic way: values associated with superior personality (such as intelligent, conscientious, goal-directed and trustworthy) were attributed to the Conservative Copenhagen voices, whereas values associated with personality’s dynamism (such as self-assured, fascinating, cool and nice) were attributed to the Modern Copenhagen voices. The Danish research revealed that ‘the best Danish’ is covertly conceptualised by young Danes as serving two different types of social identification. The features of the Conservative standard are linked to success in education and business, whereas the Modern standard is seen as indexing youth and media style (Kristiansen, 2003; 2009). The Local accent (different from the Copenhagen voices only in terms of prosodic features) is excluded from this “share-out” of prestigious values and hence the Danish data evidence that what happens at the level of subconscious attitudes correspond to what happens at the level of language use. Local speech is replaced by Copenhagen speech, which spreads among young people in its Modern version – in parallel with the spread of Modern also in the public domain of broadcast media. (See a detailed account of the research in Grondelaers & Kristiansen, 2013, 14–26). The same pattern of conscious upgrading but subconscious downgrading of dialect was evidenced in other SLICE communities. For instance, German adolescents from the Stuttgart area top-ranked Standard German as well as the local Swabian dialect (with no significant difference

Driving Forces behind Language Change

between them) and down-rated capital Berlin speech as the significantly less “liked” of these three varieties (Svenstrup, 2019). However, subconscious assessments of the voices representing the three speech varieties resulted in a reverse hierarchy: the Berlin voices were evaluated as the ‘best’ on all personality traits and the speech closest to the local dialect was assigned the least positive values. It seems that the covert positivity towards Berlin accent in the speaker evaluation task was due to the perception of the Berlin voices as the most standard of all. Thus, the role of Stuttgart speech as a linguistic norm centre in the area was not confirmed (ibid.). Since ‘Standard German’ was not included in the speaker evaluation experiment, it remains unknown whether the Danish split between a ‘best superiority language’ and a ‘best dynamism language’ would apply for German standard language development. Also in Ireland (the province of Munster) an investigation of young people’s attitudes to a set of relevant ‘standard accents’ rendered the pattern of two opposite value systems on the two levels of consciousness (Ó Murchadha, 2013). Although the Irish sociolinguistic situation is quite specific, it seems that Irish youngsters behave similarly. Overtly they reproduce the dominant ideology, common in public discourse on ‘best language’, i.e. they top-rate the local dialects and the conservative standard. Yet such openly-offered reactions to linguistic variation do not correlate with the direction of language change in the Irish-speaking regions, where “a rapid shift away from traditional speech forms is reported” (ibid., 87). The values that appeared to be linked with the patterns of language use were those delivered by the informants subconsciously, where the Modern voices (modern standard and Gaeltacht youth speech) were upgraded relative to Local voices (ibid.). Quite different results were reported from two Nordic SLICE communities – Western Norway and the Faroe Islands (Anderson & Bugge, 2016; Bugge, 2018). Differently from many other Western European countries, Norwegians and Faroese do not have a codified standard spoken language; dialects are common and accepted in all domains. In their daily interactions, in public and in the media, people speak dialect and are used to speech variation. Such a linguistic climate makes dialect an unmarked variety in society (see Bugge, 2018, 327). When measured for their language attitudes, neither Western Norwegian nor Faroese students displayed subconscious disfavour to dialect-accented voices; no consistent hierarchy was reflected in the results of the speaker evaluation test. As put by the researchers themselves, the heterogeneity of

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informant reactions was striking (Anderson & Bugge, 2016). Being unaware of the goals of the research and listening to variously accented voices, the informants did not distinguish any accent as the best or the worst; the research indicated several cultural centres for young people to orient towards (ibid.). This was contrary to the communities where the use of dialectal features is more socially loaded and listening to voices containing regional variation, very likely, triggers a stronger and more consistent reaction pattern (Bugge, 2018, 327). Hence, typologically, Norway and the Faroe Islands provide a good empirical basis for the assumption that “the codification of a standard spoken language and the establishment of a standard language ideology are essential to the establishment of status hierarchies of spoken varieties” (Bugge, 2018, 327). Overtly, however, certain patterns of consistent hierarchisation emerged, both in Norway and the Faroes. For instance, the Faroese students ranked their local dialect as the most beautiful, whereas they stated that the speech of the capital city Tórshavn should have the highest status in the community. The latter indicates an established overt ideology of the best Faroese dialect that favours the speech of the capital (ibid.). Although at first glance the results from the Norwegian and Faroese investigations establish a divergent empirical pattern from the rest of the discussed SLICE communities (and the general trend of downgrading of dialect in Europe), they still support the theoretical distinction between overt and covert production of language values. As mentioned, the Faroese students overtly assigned the highest status to capital speech and covertly no hierarchisation emerged in their evaluations. The results of these two studies also support the hypothesis that subconscious evaluations reflect actual language usage. For instance, overt valorisation of capital speech does not explain the strong status of dialects in the Faroe Islands. Very likely, the explanatory factor behind the wide use of dialects in public in the two Nordic communities is the absence of covert negativity towards dialectal speech – the negativity that has been evidenced in, for instance, Denmark and Germany. One can thus presume that dialects will not cease to be used, at least not in the future of the current young Norwegians and Faroese. Before proceeding to the Lithuanian investigation, in the following section I will briefly review the language climate in Lithuania. In spite of a rather harsh official language standardisation ideology, dialects in Lithuania are much more alive than in Denmark where the ‘local’ speech (outside of Copenhagen) reportedly differs from Copenhagen speech

Driving Forces behind Language Change

mainly in some suprasegmental (prosodic) colouring (Kristiansen, 2009, 168; cf. also Kristiansen, 2001, 10–11). However, previous enquiries into chances for regional cities to become competitive linguistic norm centres did not give much hope. An ideological stronghold for dialects, the Lowland region of Lithuania, was studied, but it did not seem to ensure covert positivity to dialect speakers (see Vaicekauskienė & Aliūkaitė, 2013). If nation-wide research were to show that regional speakers are perceived at least equally positively as non-dialect speakers, one can predict that the Lithuanian language will remain dialect-coloured for quite some time. Hence, what ideologies characterise the Lithuanian speech community? 3. Linguistic climate in Lithuania Lithuania as a test location for the study of language attitudes is interesting in at least one respect. Standard Lithuanian originates not from an urban variety, but from rural dialects. Codification of both the written and spoken standard variety at the beginning of the twentieth century was based on the southern sub-dialects of West Highland, which was the mother tongue of a few cultural activists of the time (for more see Vaicekauskienė, 2011). Urban speech, and especially the speech of the capital Vilnius, was never conceived of by the norm-setters as possessing the qualities of proper Lithuanian. Rather, Vilnius speech has been publicly downgraded and stigmatized as a source of speech errors, an impure “semi-speech”, contaminated due to linguistic interference and borrowing from Polish and Russian (e.g. Vitkauskas, 1973, 1991; Pupkis, 2006). Obviously, the standard language has been raised above all other linguistic codes and granted the status of the best language; up to now a mixture of modernist and nationalist arguments including an emphasis on language engineering by linguists is used in language planning discourse when defining standard Lithuanian (cf. Pupkis, 2005, 30). Due to abundant language correction practices, the idea of standard Lithuanian (both spoken and written) can take a very concrete form. It is supported by legislation on language as well as by teaching programs in schools and echoed in public and political discourse (Urbonaitė, 2017). Many can recall historical knowledge and standard language ideology from school and public discourse. In folk linguistic awareness, the idea that the standard language is the most beneficial has become almost

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naturalized; references to West Highland dialect as the most “correct” are not rare, either. However, research into metalinguistic comments and language judgements show that the community’s approach to the best Lithuanian cannot escape the effects of urbanization. The urban shift in Lithuania took place around the eighth decade of the last century (when the size of the rural and urban population were equal), and the further growth of the cities changed the sociolinguistic landscape of the community (according to the Census of 2011, 67% of the population lived in the cities and more than one third of that number in the biggest urban areas). Being the urban hub of the country with a population of above half a million people, Vilnius became a major player in shaping the conception of the best Lithuanian. For instance, a strong association of Vilnius with a standard speech zone has been evidenced by folk linguistic perceptions in mapping tasks (Aliūkaitė, Mikulėnienė, Čepaitienė & Geržotaitė, 2017). Also, data from qualitative interviews show that Vilnius is considered the most dialect-neutral location and, consequently, the place where the standard (“grammatical”, “correct”, “common”) language is spoken (Vaicekauskienė, 2014). Or it is approached as the most prestigious city consistently associated with such social values as national authority, modernity, youthfulness, cosmopolitanism, good education, progress and success (ibid.; cf. similar conclusions from anthropological research in Venskienė, 2008, 93).1 The social qualities mentioned are assigned to the residents of Vilnius and then linked to the speech itself (Vaicekauskienė, 2014). Hence, we can see that the metalinguistic construction of the best Lithuanian by the community disregards the stigmas and the orthoepic norms and exceeds the normative discourse. As for an assessment of dialects, Lithuania, like the Danish and other Western European societies, undergoes an ideological turn to pronounced overt positivity towards dialectal speech, connected to the renaissance of regional identity and local patriotism. However, both in the official language planning documents and locally, favorisation of dialect basically is limited to occasional political mobilisation or symbolic support, when there is a need to emphasise one’s local affiliation; it does not reach out to the everyday lives of the speakers (cf. Kalnius, 2007a, 2007b; Vaicekauskienė, Sausverde, 2012). A unanimous agreement

1 Associations of a big city with a young, dynamic and prosperous place have also been noticed in other communities (cf. Kristiansen, 2004, 173–174; Bishop, Coupland & Garrett, 2005, 139; Svenstrup & Thøgersen, 2009, 203–207).

Driving Forces behind Language Change

exists that dialects make up an ethnocultural (and linguistic) heritage and therefore have to be protected and preserved, but such concerns reinforce the view that dialects belong to the vanishing ethnographic culture rather than support a potential revival of dialects as a competitive means of communication and social mobility (ibid.). Both the local communities and the decision makers (the school or language planners) continue stigmatizing dialectal speech as unsuitable for use in any public or educational domain (cf. attitudes of teachers in Keturkienė & Vaicekauskienė, 2016). The discussed attitudinal discrepancy is clearly visible from meta­ pragmatic constructions of types of speakers of different speech varieties. An experiment was carried out in 2012 as part of focus group interviews in 10 high schools in 9 bigger cities and included 83 students in total. Each student received a set of 56 cards indicating different personality traits (28 positive traits and 28 negative counterparts) and a card with a drawing of a human figure. The task was to pick out the cards that would best describe the typical speaker of a given speech variety and to place them around the human figure. The responses were photographed and discussed before the experiment continued with a new set of the same trait-cards in another colour for another speech variety. Comparison of value assignations to speakers of standard, Vilnius and dialectal speech revealed statistically significant differences in the choice of personality traits: educated, intelligent, conscientious, responsible and goal-directed were more frequently chosen for ‘typical’ standard language speaker; urban resident, open-minded and modern were more frequently chosen for a speaker from Vilnius; villager, old-fashioned and old-minded, but also sincere and warm were more frequently chosen for a dialect speaker. Remarkably, the only typification to consistently include negative traits and to emphasise personal attractiveness was that of a ‘typical’ dialect speaker (for more see Vaicekauskienė, 2014 and Ramonienė, 2017). In the following sections, this language-related ideological climate will be investigated more consistently with additional research instruments, including the verbal guise technique for the study of subconscious attitudes as a surmised major driving force of language change. 4. Design of the research The Lithuanian research started in 2011 with a pilot study in the Lowland region, West Lithuania. A few adjustments were made (see

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the discussion in Vaicekauskienė & Aliūkaitė, 2013) and the main study was carried out during the spring of 2012 in 23 schools in eight research sites – smaller towns around the seven regional centres of Kaunas, Šiauliai, Panevėžys, Alytus, Marijampolė, Utena and Telšiai, and in the capital city of Vilnius (see map 1). The participants were 9th and 10th graders, i.e. 15 to 17-year-old students. A total of 1451 students participated in the research: 712 boys and 703 girls (36 informants did not indicate their gender). The number of participants across research sites varied from 125 to 226. The informants were selected form the final grades of the 10-year compulsory schooling for several reasons. Older students are generally considered to be more capable of understanding and completing given tasks, and youngsters of this age are generally assumed to be highly sensitive to processes of social categorization, including the role of linguistic variation in social meaning-making (cf. Kristiansen, 2004, 189; Maegaard, 2005, 58). Most of today’s Lithuanian students leave school to continue professional or technical education only after 10th grade; hence, we assume that our informants were representing the widest possible social range of young Lithuanians. The choice of the smaller towns for the research was in each region based on considerations regarding the town’s inclusion or not in the ‘zone of influence from the regional centre’. The smaller towns had to have some administrative link to the regional city, at least to be a part of the county. We also took into account the distance and the convenience of the routes from the town to the regional city (compared to other cities). We aimed at collecting data from no less than one hundred (preferably a couple hundred) students in each region to allow for statistically-based generalisations. In some of the regions practically all 9th and 10th graders of the eligible towns had to be included in order to reach the desired sample size. In order to avoid the risk of leaking to the students the purpose of the experiment, which would have prevented us from obtaining subconsciously offered attitudes, we did not want to reveal the linguistic goals of the research to the school administration. This caused problems in relation to only one of the selected schools, where the administration requested all research materials be provided in advance. This particular school was excluded from the set. In each class the experiment took 45 min, the duration of a standard lesson in a Lithuanian school. This time frame was practical in several

Driving Forces behind Language Change

Žemaičių Kalvarija Alsėdžiai

253

LA T V IA

Seda

Gruzdžiai

TELŠIAI

Kuršėnai

ŠIAULIAI

Pumpėnai

PANEVĖŽYS

Radviliškis

Krekenava Ramygala

Antazavė Svėdasai Užpaliai Alanta

Dusetos Daugailiai

UTENA

Suginčiai Babtai Vilkija

KAUNAS KA L IN IN GRA D P R OVIN C E, R US S IA

Pilviškiai Vilkaviškis

Butrimonys

ALYTUS Simnas

ALYTUS Regional centres

Research sites City minicipalities District minicipalities

VILNIUS

MARIJAMPOLĖ

Kalvarija

Daugai

Kruonis

POLAND

Daugai Merkinė Varėna

B ELA RUS

Map 1. Language attitude experiments with Lithuanian adolescents: research sites, 2012

respects. A longer duration can discourage students, it would have been more difficult to get permission from schools to use more teaching time and students usually have to leave to another room for the next class.2 In most schools the experiments were conducted in all (two to four) 9th and 10th grade classes at the same time to prevent participants from sharing information about the experiment. Additionally, in the interest of not allowing rumours about the experiment to spread, all the chosen schools in a county were visited during the same day. When we began in a new school we always asked whether the students had heard about the research being carried out. This never turned out to be the case. When we first met the students in the class we told them that they were participating in an anonymous study on how people are judged,

2 In Lithuanian school the classrooms are divided according to school subjects (i.e. a teacher of math has his/her own room) and students move from room to room following the schedule of the particular day.

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and that they would be told more about the research afterwards. By doing so we stuck close to the procedure that had been followed in the Danish investigations. Data was collected in two rounds. First, a Speaker Evaluation Experiment (SEE) was conducted to elicit subconscious attitudes. The students listened to 12 speech clips, four for each of the three target speech varieties – standard language (SL), Vilnius (VLN) and Local speech – and evaluated each of the 12 speakers by ticking on eight scales representing separate personality traits. In this way they indicated how much the given personality traits were applicable to the speakers. At this stage of the data gathering, the students were not aware that we were interested in their reactions to different accents. The purpose was to investigate whether there was an established covert hierarchical relation between speech varieties in the community. The voices were selected from several dozen audio-recorded interviews with high school students who gave their opinions on what a good teacher is like. We anticipated this topic to be conceived of as both relevant and relatively uncontroversial, and did indeed experience that the students easily managed to make statements on the topic. For the SL and VLN voices, the interviews were conducted with high school (and some university) students in Vilnius. Since none of the interviewed young speakers were able to naturally and systematically produce the codified orthoepic features of standard Lithuanian, the SL in our research must be taken as an orthoepically accented speech. The SL clips contain semi-long vowels in unstressed syllables; semi-long and tense unstressed [oː], [eː]; in the VLN clips these vowels are short and lack tenseness. In the SL clips the diphthongs [uo] and [ie] are retained. Also the stress position (the so-called stress attraction to stem from the end of the word) is different in the SL and VLN voices (stressed end vs stressed stem, respectively). For the Local voices the speakers were recorded in the schools of the regional centres; the scale of dialectal variation was great and we selected clips containing just a few and not very salient dialectal features. The idea of the research was to provide for assessment a speech that was variant in a way the informants were familiar with from their local environment, but precautions were taken not to attract the listeners’ attention to any distinguishing speech feature. The clips were edited with the Audacity software. The duration of each clip was made approx. 15 seconds. Wording, speech fluency and

Driving Forces behind Language Change

voice intensity were made very similar. Neither negative judgements nor references to concrete school subjects were included in the clips, in order to make the speech content as abstract and neutral as possible. The voices differed basically in terms of accent, mainly in segmental phonetics, stress position and intonation. Efforts were made not leave any catchy linguistic feature in the prepared clips, so that no single voice would stand out among the others. In all the regions, the same clips of SL and VLN speech were used, whereas the local stimuli represented the speech of the various regional centres. The idea was to investigate whether the regional centre functioned as a local linguistic norm centre for the students in that particular region. In Vilnius the students only listened to SL and VLN voices, based on the assumption that dialectal speech was less relevant for the youngsters in the capital city. In order to estimate whether we had succeeded in obtaining subconscious attitudes, we asked the students, immediately after they had performed the assessment of all the voices, to say what they thought the experiment was about.3 It turned out that none of the judges had grasped the aim of the research (i.e., collection of attitudes to language varieties). Most often, the students guessed that we studied young people’s ideas about their teachers and how people express their opinions. If an informant had suggested that the experiment was about language attitudes, the pre-prepared procedure was to ask whether others in the class supported this opinion. In that case (which never occurred), we would have marked their questionnaires and continued the investigation. When the assessment of the 12 voices was completed, the collection of subconscious attitudes was finished. We gathered the questionnaires and revealed to the students that we also were interested in language differences. The students were asked to listen to the audio clips one more time, and simultaneously assess the voices, again on scales, in terms of standardness and geographical affiliation. These tasks aimed to shed light on aspects of recognition present in the informants’ subconscious assessments. It is believed that if people can easily recognize speech differences as soon as their attention is drawn to language, then we might presume that some form of recognition participated in

3 An alternative methodological approach in other SLICE studies has been to ask the informants to write down what they believed the test was about and why they thought so (cf. Anderson & Bugge, 2016, 249).

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their subconscious evaluations. The attitudes are considered ‘subconscious’, not because people operate unconsciously, but because they are radically different from the opinions expressed in public discourse (Kristiansen, 2011, 12). The second part of the data gathering session focused on obtaining conscious attitudes. The students completed a Label Ranking Task (LRT), in which a number of given ‘names’ (labels) for language varieties had to be ranked according to preference. The design of the research thus provided language-related attitudinal data from the same participants under two different conditions: an unaware condition and an aware condition. The purpose of the design is to investigate whether different levels of awareness hold different systems of language-related values – and to shed light on the role of these potentially different value systems in language change. The following sections give more details on the methods used and discusses the results. Starting with the Label Ranking Task, I shall proceed in the reverse order of the actual data gathering procedure described above. 5. Consciously expressed social values: dialects at the top The students received a list containing names, or labels, for 12 speech varieties. The labels were listed in random order and included 8 designations of regional city speech (‘name of the city’ + ‘speech’), the two labels ‘Vilnius speech’ and ‘Standard language’ (SL), and two additional labels naming the speech of two smaller local towns in each region. The first ten of these labels were the same in all research sites, whereas the two names for the speech of smaller local towns were added adjusting for each particular region. The students were asked to rank the labels, giving top position to the speech they liked best, second position to the speech they liked second best, and so on. Our primary interest was the relative ranking of Local speech, SL speech and Vilnius speech. The results of the LRT clearly showed that the students, when evaluating language varieties in full awareness of giving attitudes, display preference for the Local speech. In the majority of research sites the local labels were ranked better not just than the other regions’ speech, but also compared to the varieties that are considered non-dialectal, i.e. Vilnius speech and SL. It seems that the students chose to manifest their

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local identity rather than to reproduce the standard language ideology promoted by the educational system of Lithuania. The students ranked the ‘local speech’ (the speech of the regional centres or the nearest/municipal local towns4) higher than SL and Vilnius speech in a statistically significant way (p