Lyfing
08-22-2009, 01:55 AM
Völuspá and the Book of Revelation, by Richard North..
Two of the most obvious questions facing a reader of Völuspá are when this poem was composed and whether or not its poet was heathen. In this essay I shall look for answers in the Book of Revelation. Naturally the poet’s dates and religious status depend on each other, for Iceland began to lose its heathen religion in the years following conversion in AD 1000 and the volcanic action in Völuspá (st. 25, 34-5, 50) shows that the author of this work was probably an Icelander. Völuspá is a long sublime poem seemingly linked to this time, in which one or more sibyls relate the history of the creation, from its distant beginnings to the world’s imminent end, through a series of visionary tableaux depicting Norse gods, giants, aspects of time and men. The gods in these visions make, regulate and then slowly lose their universe in an escalation of error which most commentators (McKinnell, 1994: 107-28) regard as a moral decline, given that Baldr’s death half way through Völuspá (in st. 31-2) appears due to the growth of evil in Loki and then leads to the image of mortal sinners being punished in hell (st. 35-8). Other Old Norse-Icelandic Eddic poems do not focus on good and evil in the same way, and Ursula Dronke has made a subtle reading of Loki in Judas’ role (1997: 55, 95-6); but if the poet of Völuspá was Christian, why does he or she show such respect for the gods of a heathen cult? If heathen, how do we explain the Christian cast of Baldr and the eschatology of the second half of this poem? Dronke, the greatest and most recent editor of Völuspá, is not alone in treating this poet as a heathen but with an awareness of Christian forms, including sibylline poems: such as the Cantus Sibyllae, part of the Christmas Office from the ninth to eleventh centuries in England; or the Prophetiae Sibyllae magae, a poem which was known in the ninth century in Alcuin’s abbey of Tours, possibly therefore in (Viking) York. These sibylline texts show some likeness with Völuspá, although Dronke has shown the sibylline tradition on which the Icelandic poet relies to be essentially heathen and from Scandinavia (1992: 3-23; 1997: 93-104).
there is a similar one..
Voluspá and the Feast of Easter.. (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6039)
Later,
-Lyfing
Two of the most obvious questions facing a reader of Völuspá are when this poem was composed and whether or not its poet was heathen. In this essay I shall look for answers in the Book of Revelation. Naturally the poet’s dates and religious status depend on each other, for Iceland began to lose its heathen religion in the years following conversion in AD 1000 and the volcanic action in Völuspá (st. 25, 34-5, 50) shows that the author of this work was probably an Icelander. Völuspá is a long sublime poem seemingly linked to this time, in which one or more sibyls relate the history of the creation, from its distant beginnings to the world’s imminent end, through a series of visionary tableaux depicting Norse gods, giants, aspects of time and men. The gods in these visions make, regulate and then slowly lose their universe in an escalation of error which most commentators (McKinnell, 1994: 107-28) regard as a moral decline, given that Baldr’s death half way through Völuspá (in st. 31-2) appears due to the growth of evil in Loki and then leads to the image of mortal sinners being punished in hell (st. 35-8). Other Old Norse-Icelandic Eddic poems do not focus on good and evil in the same way, and Ursula Dronke has made a subtle reading of Loki in Judas’ role (1997: 55, 95-6); but if the poet of Völuspá was Christian, why does he or she show such respect for the gods of a heathen cult? If heathen, how do we explain the Christian cast of Baldr and the eschatology of the second half of this poem? Dronke, the greatest and most recent editor of Völuspá, is not alone in treating this poet as a heathen but with an awareness of Christian forms, including sibylline poems: such as the Cantus Sibyllae, part of the Christmas Office from the ninth to eleventh centuries in England; or the Prophetiae Sibyllae magae, a poem which was known in the ninth century in Alcuin’s abbey of Tours, possibly therefore in (Viking) York. These sibylline texts show some likeness with Völuspá, although Dronke has shown the sibylline tradition on which the Icelandic poet relies to be essentially heathen and from Scandinavia (1992: 3-23; 1997: 93-104).
there is a similar one..
Voluspá and the Feast of Easter.. (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6039)
Later,
-Lyfing