Evergreen Ash: Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and Literature (Under the Sign of Nature)

255 Pages·2019·10.754 MB·English

by  Christopher Abram (author)

Evergreen Ash
Under the Sign of Nature: Explorations in Ecocriticism
Serenella Iovino, Kate Rigby, John Tallmadge, Editors
Michael P. Branch and SueEllen Campbell, Senior Advisory
Editors
Evergreen Ash
ecology and catastrophe in
old norse myth and literature
Christopher Abram
University of Virginia Press
Charlottesville and London
University of Virginia Press
© 2019 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
First published 2019
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Abram, Christopher, author.
Title: Evergreen ash : ecology and catastrophe in Old Norse myth
and literature / Christopher Abram.
Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, [2019] |
Series: Under the sign of nature : explorations in ecocriticism |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018041484 | ISBN 9780813942261 (cloth :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813942278 (paperback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780813942285 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Old Norse literature—History and criticism. |
Mythology, Norse. | Disasters in literature. | Apocalypse in
literature. | Environmental disasters.
Classification: LCC PT7154 .A227 2019 | DDC 839/.609—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041484
Cover art: Skútustaðir, Northeastern Region, Iceland.
(imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo)
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Note on Texts, Translations, Spelling,
and Pronunciation ix
Prologue: Ash 1
1. Ecocriticism and Old Norse 19
2. Remembering and Dismembering
a Transcorporeal Cosmos 41
3. The Nature of World in a World without Nature:
Heimr, Vero˛ld, Jo˛rð 63
4. Tree- People and People- Trees 84
5. Trees, Vines, and the Golden Age of Settlement 103
6. The Æsir and the Anthropocene 124
7. Reading Rangaro˛k at the End of the World 148
Conclusion 171
Notes 181
Bibliography 209
Index 227

Acknowledgments
The seed that grew into this book was planted when Annika Lindskog invited
me to contribute to a team- taught course on Nordic landscapes at University
College London. I’m grateful to her for believing that Old Norse trees might
be something our students might benefit from learning about and for starting
me on the path that led me to ecocriticism. Another colleague at UCL, Claire
Thomson, invited me to write up my thoughts on trees for a volume on Nordic
naturecultures that she was planning. Although in the end I didn’t manage to
get my piece together for that book, some of the first words of what became
Evergreen Ash were written for Claire, and I’m grateful to her for giving me
that opportunity. I should also like to record with the utmost fondness my
gratitude to the Department of Scandinavian Studies at UCL and my col-
leagues there: Margrethe Alexandroni, Michael Barnes, Karin Charles, the
late Helena Forsås- Scott, Haki Antonsson, Helga Hlaðgerður Lúthersdót-
tir, Mary Hilson, Tom Lundskær-N ielsen, the late Thomas Munch-P etersen,
Daisy Neijmann, Richard Perkins, Jakob Skougaard-N ielsen, and Marie
Wells. Working with them was a privilege, and my time at UCL changed me
and my work irrevocably and, I think, for the better.
When I moved to Notre Dame, I found to my delight another community
of scholars whose support of both medieval studies and ecocriticism is whole-
hearted and sustaining. Special thanks for many, many acts of kindness go to
Thomas Burman, Michelle Karnes, Kathryn Kerby- Fulton, Jesse Lander, Tim
Machan, Kate Marshall, Valerie Sayers, John Sitter, and John Van Engen. I
have been fortunate to have been able to think through some of this book’s
ideas with two groups of brilliant Notre Dame PhD students in a class called
The (Un)Natural World in Medieval Literature, to whose curiosity, critical
acumen, and openness to exploring new ways of thinking and reading I am
much indebted: Mimi Ensley, Richard Fahey, Maj- Britt Frenze, Alexandra
Hernandez, Emily Hirschmann, Leanne MacDonald, Angel Matos, Dan
Murphy, Katie Osborn, Brian Santin, Becky West, and Jill Wharton in 2013;
Patricia Bredar, Julian Dean, Margie Housley, Emily Mahan, Jake McGinnis,
vii
Emily McLemore, Laura Ortiz Mercado, Carlos Arenas Pachecho, Logan
Quigley, and Stacy Stavinski in 2017.
Above all the debts I owe to my colleagues at Notre Dame, however, looms
my obligation to the peerless Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery
Department of the Hesburgh Library. Our library staff are a treasure, and
I’m not sure whether I’d have managed to write this book without their help.
For assistance, friendship, and moral support during the period I was
working on Evergreen Ash I am also grateful to Eleanor Barraclough, Michael
Bintley, Lindy Brady, Richard Cole, Alison Finlay, Shaun Hughes, Mae Kilker,
Rosalind Love, Robyn Malo, Mathias Nordvig, Heather O’Donoghue, Carl
Phelpstead, Chris Scheirer, and Elaine Treharne. Charlotte Parkin and Alice
Tyrrell looked after me while I spent a semester at Notre Dame’s global gate-
way in London. I was lucky enough to be able to present work in progress
from this book at seminars at Harvard, Oxford, and UCL, and I am grateful to
Stephen Mitchell, Carolyne Larrington, and Richard North for their gracious
invitations to those events.
I could not have been happier with the enthusiasm and care with which the
University of Virginia Press has undertaken to publish this book. To the edi-
tors of the Under the Sign of Nature series, and especially to Boyd Zenner, I
send my undying appreciation. Ruth Melville copyedited this book, brilliantly,
and I’m grateful to her, too. Enid Zafran did a wonderful job with the index,
and I am pleased to acknowledge the support of Notre Dame’s Institute for
Scholarship in the Liberal Arts in funding her work.
Very special thanks and much love go to my parents, Carl and Valerie
Abram, and to my in-l aws, Steve and Martha Mulligan. They could not have
been more generous or kind.
But above all I am grateful to Amy Mulligan and our son, Henry. In the
midst of her own book- writing travails, Amy has never been anything less
than amazingly supportive of this project, and that support has been more
important to me than I can adequately express here. She is a brilliant scholar,
a wonderful mother, and a partner whose patience, care, and love I can hardly
repay but only hope to emulate. As for Henry? He’s just an awesome kid. This
book is for both of them, with love.
viii · Acknowledgments
Note on Texts, Translations, Spelling,
and Pronunciation
I hope that Evergreen Ash will be of interest to readers beyond the commu-
nity of Old Norse specialists. Accordingly, I have cited primary sources in
English translation in the main body of this book, with the original- language
texts presented in the endnotes.
The two most important sources for this investigation are the thirteenth-
century Icelandic mythological compendia known as the Eddas. I cite the
Poetic Edda from Eddukvæði, edited by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Óla-
son and published in the Íslenzk fornrit series. My preferred translation of the
Poetic Edda is Carolyne Larrington’s, published by Oxford University Press.
I refer throughout to the second edition of that work. Larrington’s translation
does not always accord with the Íslenzk fornrit edition, and I have at times
found it necessary to alter her translation to follow more closely the base text
I have been using. Such alterations are noted where they occur.
All citations from Snorri Sturluson’s prose Edda are taken from Anthony
Faulkes’s three- volume edition, published by the Viking Society for Northern
Research. Faulkes has also produced a single-v olume translation of Snorri’s
work, which I cite here.
One of the challenges that face the writer of a book about Old Norse texts
intended for an Anglophone audience is the lack of a standard protocol for
rendering Norse names into English orthography. Old Norse uses several
characters that are not employed in contemporary English, and translators
have never been able to agree whether these letters should be transliterated
by their closest phonetic equivalents or with letters that most closely resemble
them visually. Thus one tends to see the name Óðinn, the chief of the gods,
given as either Othin or Odin in English translations. For the sake of accu-
racy and consistency I have chosen to retain the original Old Norse spelling
of place- and personal names, given in the nominative case, throughout this
book. While this approach to names has distinct advantages, it does run the
ix