Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000

317 Pages·2011·6.08 MB·English

by  Lotte Hedeager

IRON AGE MYTH AND
MATERIALITY
Iron Age Myth and Materiality: an Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400–1000 considers
the relationship between myth and materiality in Scandinavia from the beginning
of the post-Roman era and the European Migrations to the coming of Christianity.
It pursues an interdisciplinary interpretation of text and material culture and exam-
ines how the documentation of an oral past relates to its material embodiment.
While the material evidence is from the Iron Age, most Old Norse texts were
written down in the thirteenth century or even later. With a time lag of 300 to 900
years from the archaeological evidence, the textual material has until recently been
ruled out as a usable source for any study of the pagan past. However, Hedeager
argues that this is true regarding any study of a society’s short-term history, but it
should not be the crucial requirement for defining the sources relevant for studying
long-term structures of the longue durée, or their potential contributions to a theo-
retical understanding of cultural changes and transformation. In Iron Age Scandina-
via we are dealing with persistent and slow-changing structures of world views and
ideologies over a wavelength of nearly a millennium. Furthermore, iconography
can often date the arrival of new mythical themes, anchoring written narratives in
a much older archaeological context.
Old Norse myths are explored with particular attention to one of the central
mythical narratives of the Old Norse canon – the mythic cycle of Odin. In addi-
tion, contemporaneous historical sources from Late Antiquity and the early Euro-
pean Middle Ages are examined. No other study provides such a broad ranging and
authoritative study of the relationship of myth to the archaeology of Scandinavia.
Lotte Hedeager is Professor of Archaeology and Head of the Department of
Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, Norway.

IRON AGE MYTH AND
MATERIALITY
An Archaeology of Scandinavia
400–1000
AD
Lotte Hedeager
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2011 Lotte Hedeager
The right of Lotte Hedeager to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hedeager, Lotte.
Iron Age myth and materiality: an archaeology of Scandinavia,
ad 400–1000 / Lotte Hedeager.
p. cm.
“Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada”–T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Iron Age–Scandinavia. 2. Scandinavia–Antiquities. 3. Material culture–
Scandinavia–History–To 1500. 4. Oral tradition–Scandinavia–History–To 1500.
5. Mythology, Norse. 6. Cosmology–Scandinavia–History–To 1500.
7. Old Norse literature–History and criticism. 8. Scandinavia–History–To
1397–Sources. 9. Scandinavia–Historiography. 10. Annales school. I. Title.
GN780.22.S34H4 2011
936.3–dc22
2010038671
ISBN 0-203-82971-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN: 978–0–415–60602–8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978–0–415–60604–2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–0–203–82971–4 (ebk)
For friends, colleagues, and students from whom
I have learned so much

CONTENTS
List of figures x
Acknowledgements xvi
Preface xxviii
Introduction 1
PART I
A mythic narrative 5
1 The mythic cycle of Odin 7
The myth 7
The constitution of primacy 9
Personification/Agency of objects 11
The underlying nature of reality 13
PART II
Words of identity 19
2 Written sources on the pre-Christian past 21
Early Scandinavian literacy 21
The Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda 23
Other Nordic texts 26
European sources 30
viii Contents
3 Origin myths and political/ethnical affiliations 33
Migration Period Europe: a historical survey 33
European national history 37
Origin myths from the Early Middle Ages 41
Historical ‘meaning’ of the Scandinavian origin myth 45
Formation of a political mentalité 48
Material manifestations: Germanic styles in a historical perspective 50
PART III
The constitution of ‘otherness’ 59
4 Embodied in animals 61
Scandinavian animal style AD 400–1200 61
Animals in the styles 66
The fi gurative art 75
Animals in names 80
Humans as animals – animals as humans: hugr, hamingja, fylgjur 81
The snake 85
The eagle and the raven 86
The wild boar 89
The wolf 90
The bear 91
Embodied and transformative existences 95
5 Other ways of ‘being in the world’ 99
Analytical categories and perceptual realities 99
Phallus, fertility and death 104
The power of penetration 115
Women in men’s image 118
Gender images/identities 122
Betwixt and between: gold-foil fi gures on display 126
PART IV
Materiality matters 135
6 Commemorative places 137
Objects as agents 137
The smith in Old Norse sources 140
Gold in the Old Norse sources 144
Places for acquisition and transformation 145
Central places as ‘centre of the universe’ 148
Contents ix
Asgard: home of the gods 150
A ‘central place’ par excellence: Gudme on Funen 152
The coastal site of Lundeborg 157
The cemetery of Møllegårdsmarken 158
Gudme’s sacred features 158
Gudme: the paradigmatic model of Asgard? 159
Cosmological emulation 162
7 The cosmic order of landscapes 164
Hoards as ritual and economic agents 164
‘Tournaments of value’ 170
Sacred topography 172
PART V
The making of Norse mythology 175
8 Knowledge production reconsidered 177
Epic poetry and historical reality 177
The enigma of Widsith 181
The topography of Widsith and the archaeology of Gudme 184
Widsith: a political narrative of the Migration Period 187
9 Hypothesis I: the Huns in Scandinavia 191
Historical framework: the impact/blueprint of the Huns 191
Archaeological framework: transferable cosmologies 194
Archaeological framework: Hunnic material culture 195
The Huns in Scandinavia: diagnostic features 198
Evidence of a new cosmology 205
Summarising the evidence 210
10 Hypothesis II: Attila and the recasting of Scandinavian mythology 212
Ornamentation – innovation – migration: a hypothesis 212
The migration story and myths of descent among the Scandinavians 214
Embedded knowledge – Greco-Roman tradition 220
Attila’s cosmological blueprint 220
11 Stranger kings: intruders from the outside world 224
Notes 229
Primary sources, including translations 240
Bibliography 245
Index 279