Tags

, , , , ,

While engaging in a class discussion regarding the hyper masculine construction and consumption of Beowulf, it became striking how so little texts from the era (arguably none) survive today which contain genuine female sentiments portrayed from a female perspective. This issue resulted in our Old English class schedule being altered to accommodate a meeting dedicated to Anglo-Saxon female voices and perspectives in the hope of interrogating the period and its discourses masculine preoccupations.

The relative freedom of approach offered in this module combined with the limited pool of texts relating to women in Old English literature caused me to put on my feminist reading glasses and turn to the closely linked Old Norse canon and its cardinal eddic poem “Völuspá” as a way to better understand the role of women in the heroic age. What I found instead was a fascinating negotiation of gender and sex within the Norse mythic cycle which I would like to share with you today.

Even though women are generally barricaded from the heroic sphere characterised by death and destruction, they are linked with death through the complex gender politics present within Old Norse mythology.

1. The Norns under Yggdrasil

The norns are female figures who control the fates of all in the Norse cosmos. As Norse myth is fatalistic, they represent death and destruction on an individual and collective level. They predict the downfall of men and women at birth and predict the destruction of the world at Ragnarök. Urð, Verðandi and Skuld “silently pronounce death sentences against which there is no appeal while granting no stay of execution” (Quinn 54). They implement death through the feminised act of weaving rather than by entering the heroic masculine sphere and taking up arms like valkyries do (Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society 139). The norns are “totally independent and their active realm is vaster” (Jochens, “Vǫluspá: Matrix of Norse Womanhood” 357) than valkyries or shieldmaidens which makes them the only true example of independent female power in the Norse cosmos as they refuse to submit to any male figure.

The lads

2. Odin, Vili and Vé create the first humans out of wood

As women are generally confined to the domestic sphere in Norse culture (as well as in Anglo-Saxon culture), they are more commonly associated with nurturing and creation than death and destruction. “Völuspá” states that it is the male gods Odin, Vili and Vé who create the world in a masculine manner by carving it out of the body of the giant Ymir after slaying him. These male gods removed the right to give birth to mankind from its traditional sphere when they created Ash and Elm (“Völuspá” st. 17). Thus the norns supplement women’s lost role as creators of the universe with harbingers of its destruction. The purity of the new world birthed after Ragnarök in “Völuspá” is one created by the norns who destroy the old world corrupted by the actions of male gods. Through destroying the old hierarchy they conceive a new world where traditional gender roles are restored. Even though the new world is constructed by “two brothers’ sons” (“Völuspá” st. 60), it is set forth by the hands and will of independent female characters. The waters of the flood which the new world is reborn from in stanza 56 could even be read as a metaphor for the womb.

A combination of male corruption and female predictions destroys the Norse cosmos but allows it to be rebuilt on better ground. The fate promised by women is constant unlike the oaths made by male gods which allows for the heroic ethos which is central to Viking and early Anglo-Saxon culture to exist as death can be accepted as inevitable. Even though the norns do not take up arms and march into battle, their promise of death to all motivates Viking society to do so as they create the fatalistic mindset which inspires heroic deeds and ultimately sets Viking society towards its inevitable collapse.

All in all, “Völuspá” does attempt to reconcile male corruption and dominance through female actions but does little to reject the patriarchal construction of the society as women must continue to work from the margins to achieve a balanced society. It takes marginalised female power implemented through men to purify society which shows the need for cooperation between sexes but the desire for them to remain within their relative spheres.

Works Cited:

Jochens, Jenny. “Vǫluspá: Matrix of Norse Womanhood.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 88 (1989): 344-362. Print.

– – -. Women in Old Norse Society. New York: Cornell University Press, 1998. Print.

Quinn, Judy. “The Gendering of Death in Eddic Cosmology.” Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions. Eds. Andrén, Anders, Kristina Jennbert and, Catharina Raudvere. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006. 54-57. Print.

“Völuspá.” The Poetic Edda. Trans. Carolyne Larrington. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 3-12. Print.

Illustrations

  1. De Cosson, Anne. The Norns. 2013. Pinterest.com. JPEG. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
  2. Oden, Vili and Vé. 2014. Pinterest.com. JPEG. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.