#john lindow

[jonquilclegane]

As a Norse Pagan and follower of Sigyn, I'm interested in how you interpret the relationship between Loki and Sigyn. In my practice, I've often gotten the impression that she's amused by his antics, and doesn't care that he sleeps around because he always comes home to her. But I've seen depictions to the contrary. What are your thoughts?

Oh she LOVES his antics. Pretty sure she might be the only one that laughs at them (well, the kids love them too... And maybe Hoenir :p)

As for his sleeping around, there are 2 things you must keep in mind:

Unlike Sif, who is called “Jarnsaxa’s rival”, Sigyn does not have such kenning, quite the opposite. And the fact is, we do not have the official timeline for Loki & Sigyn’s relationship. Sure, most people think that Angrboda was Loki’s mistress, but we know that is a commonly spread mistake, as John Lindow states that Angrboda was Loki’s wife FIRST, before he joined the gods in Asgard (and therefore, met Sigyn). I don’t know for you, but I’d rather believe John Lindow, who is a Professor Emeritus of Old Norse and Folklore at University of California, than mainstream media XD Sure, we know Loki had affairs: the farmer from Midgard, Sif, Tyr’s wife, (I won’t count Svaldilfari, because that was clearly NOT part of Loki’s plan ^^’). But when did these happen? Was it before his wedding to Sigyn or after? Retellings writers will include all of these during their marriage, but only to show how poorly Loki treats his wife. But in the Eddas? IT IS NOT SAID. So, clearly, it’s up to us to CHOOSE how we see their relationship, and as far as I’m concerned, I much prefer to imagine Loki being quite a rake in his youth and first years in Asgard, and then, falling madly in love with Sigyn, marrying her, and being happy together… until tragedy strikes ^^’ THEY DESERVE SOME HAPPINESS, DAMN IT.

On the other hand, let’s imagine he was indeed unfaithful to Sigyn… Well, let’s face it, we do not think of this the right way. Even as pagans, most of us, we have been raised Christians, and even if we were not, we were raised in society that has accepted/integrated Christian social norms. So when we think of Loki’s infidelities, we think of them with our very Christianized point of view. And to us, infidelity is bad and a proof that your marriage is a failure. We do not think of it as the Vikings would have. Or better, as the Aesirs would have. Because let’s look at the facts, shall we? Odin had affair with half of Jotumheim and so many kids with these ladies (willingly or not ^^’). Thor had Jarnsaxa. Sif had a baby daddy somewhere, since we know Ullr is not Thor’s son (+ a one-night stand with Loki). Frigg had affairs with Odin’s brothers. Freyja & Feyr were lovers. And so on… I find it funny that these numerous affairs do not seem to count, and are accepted, but not Loki’s? I think that if indeed Loki had lovers while married to Sigyn, she would have not cared as IN THE AESIR SOCIETY, it was something everybody did ^^’ Think of Asgard as the French royal court (pre-revolutionary France) where every husband and wife had lovers of their own, and their couple were mostly fine. Strangely enough, while it’s possible Loki had lovers, I don’t think Sigyn did – I think Loki was quite enough for her, and she loved him and him only. Whenever I think of her, she’s giving me very strong demi-asexual vibes. Sigyn: Of course, the others want my husband. He’s wonderful, he’s clever, he’s funny, he’s handsome, he’s the best. Why would I want their scraps? Seriously. I don’t want them or need them. Once again, HAVE YOU SEEN MY HUSBAND?

Anyways. In my opinion, once he married Sigyn, Loki was faithful to her, as he loved her dearly. And she was enough for him, as he was enough for her. They were one of those annoyingly besotted with each other kind of people, always at each other’s hip, finishing each other’s sentences and sandwiches. She was his Treasure and the Delight of his hall. He was her Joy. That’s why Sigyn stayed. That’s where she found the strength to hold the bowl. Because their love was so powerful it was victorious over Odin’s divine punishment. I find it so damn annoying that writers will give us ALL THE REASONS why Sigyn should have hated Loki and left him, instead of giving us the reasons why she was so damn loyal and devoted to him. Gotta twist the story to force onto it your own narrative, I suppose, but it’s heartbreaking when everybody accepted that twisted version as the truth, when it’s so very wrong ^^’

[jonquilclegane]

I absolutely LOVE your knowledge on norse mythology and the way you analyze the myths to find out where deities like Sigyn come from, seriously. I'm amazed.

I really really like Norse myths and folklore but besides the Eddas I haven't seen many sources of such, and since you're the expert, do you know any other books/poems/authors/etc who have written down Norse myths? Besides Snorri, that is. Or at least an article talking about it? Even if they're post Christianity, I'd appreciate it a lot

Hi! :)

I wouldn't say I'm the expert. I'm sure there are much more knowledgeable people than I on this app. I have two master degrees, but alas, none on Norse mythology/Old Norse I'm afraid ^^'

However, I'm very interested in the subject and have been trying to educate myself by some intense reading for the past three years now, so if I can share with you the few things I've read/found out, it will be my pleasure.

There are so many books on Norse myths, but alas, not all have been written by experts/scholars/academics and you find again and again the same mistakes and generalisations. It’s so frustating! (but explains the mistakes we find in popular/mainstream media depiction of the Norse gods ^^' If their writers read THESE books, of course, they're going to write their characters like that ^^')

Now, for the GOOD, reliable sources/books :)

First of all, I must recommend Rudolf Simek’s Dictionnary of Norse mythology. He’s an expert in the domain. A lot of his works are in German, but at least, we’ve got his dictionnary. It’s a must have if you’re interest in Norse myths :)

(He has also written very interesting things about the world of LotR, if you’re into it :p )

@poeticnorth recommended me Andy Orchard’s Dictionnary of North myth and Legend, and it was fantastic and full of interesting information.

John Lindow is another great expert, and his book on Old Norse mythology is a fantastic reference too! :)

There are also A LOT of interesting academic papers on the subject of Norse mythology on the https://www.academia.edu/ website.

One of my favourites is the one about Loki as a Vatte and in Scandinavian fairytales.

”Loki, the Vätte, and the Ash Lad: A Study Combining Old Scandinavian and Late Material

ACADEMIA.EDU

The one about the Ardre images was really interesting too!!!

Re-Interpretations of Gotlandic Picture Stones Based on the Reflectance Transformation Imaging Method (RTI): Some Examples

ACADEMIA.EDU

And of course, you’ve got Professor Jackson Crawford’s work. He’s amazing and so very knowledgeable on the subject and is an expert in Old Norse. His translations of the Prose and Poectic Eddas, along with the Volsung saga are on amazon and on Audible, if you prefer.

He also did a lot of videos on youtube on Norse myths and the Old Norse language, etc.

There is also Professor of archeology Howard Williams on Tik Tok who is SUPER interesting and made a series on early Medieval Loki depictions in art and archeology.

If you want to know more about the Norse goddesses/Asynjur, may I recommend you @loptrcoptr 's brilliant master thesis on the subject. A must-read to get to know better all the goddesses from the Norse pantheon!

A Full(a) Roster: Re-addressing the Ásynjur in Snorra Edda and Beyond

The Ásynjur, goddesses of old Icelandic myth, do not draw much scholarly attention. When they do it is fairly dismissive, labeling many deit

And of course, if you're into paganism and want to worship Loki & Sigyn, there's Lea Svendsen's book "Loki and Sigyn: Lessons on Chaos, Laughter & Loyalty from the Norse Gods". Really interesting!!

If I find other interesting books/sources, I'll post about them on my blog :)

Happy reading!

[jonquilclegane]

Haustlöng

What is Haustlöng, you ask? Well, it's one of the oldest literary sources for Norse mythology. It's from the Ninth century, and was possibily written by Þjóðólfr óf Hvíni, who was a PRE-CHRISTIAN Norwegian skald.

In it you can find the story with Idunn's apples, and some of Thor's adventures.

Snorri added then to the Eddas later.

But do you know what else you can find?

Do you remember Loki's kenning "The Cargo of Sigyn's arms"? Well, it's from that poem.

So we have PROOF of Sigyn's existence in one of the oldest literary source of the Norse myths, from the ninth century, so WAY before Snorri, and even ONE CENTURY before the Gosforth Cross.

So, whatever the haters say: NO. Sigyn was NOT an invention of Snorri. And since this poem was written by a PRE CHRISTIAN skald, then NO, she's not a Christian invention either.

Here are John Lindow's article on Sigyn in his book about Norse gods:

BTW, "Cargo of someone's arms" is not a refence to Loki's punishment. It's a metaphor for "spouse". For instance, Odin is the "Cargo of Frigg's arms".

[oldbastard101]

"Not to speak" is a key: more people lose treasure through their inability to keep silent than gain it through all other means taken together. What is involved is a single story pattern, with variation occurring in the means by which silence is broken. The simplest (and numerically most popular) is the blurting out of something just as the treasure is within grasp, as in the following example.

Right in front of Ennesbo, between the railroad tracks and the lake Verveln, is the hill Planterberget. There a glow used to be seen at night, particularly at Christmas and other holidays. The glow could be seen for a long distance, all the way across to the earthwork Skansen on the other side of the lake. A farmhand who was up one night had the good fortune to see the treasure close by. There were mugs, bowls, spoons and other silver and gold objects, all lying together in a chest. When he caught sight of the chest and its contents he hurried back to the village and wakened a few farmers, and off they went to Planterberget again. To move a treasure like that from its place one must have a pair of twin oxen to drive with, and the farmers had taken such a pair with them. They loaded the chest on the cart and drove home. It went well right up to the moment they drove up to the lowest storehouse, in which the treasure was to be placed. When they were about to lift it from the cart, one of the farmers could not keep silent. "It's all done!" he said. But he should never have said it, for simultaneously a black sow came up and disappeared with the treasure. [Östergötland. Collected by Elis Åström from Axel Svensson in March, 1940. Printed in Åström 1962:34]

This type may be refined by letting the seventh brother break the silence, or by elaborating further the extent to which the treasure is almost obtained (for an example see Bergstrand 1951:no. 380). A didactic slant seems apparent when the treasure hunters break the silence with oaths and swearing. Slightly more complex versions occur when treasure hunters are induced into breaking their silence. Here a whole series of apparitions is attested, of which the most popular in Scandinavia is the sight of a hen pulling a load of hay. The treasure hunters laugh, and the treasure is lost. Similar humorous or outlandish sights include people creeping backwards or upside down (example in Friedlander 1934: 170), riding a sow, riding backwards, even dipping bread in the rear ends of their mounts and then eating it eagerly (example in Klintberg 1972: 268). To increase the odds against the treasure hunters, the beings in the vision may address them. The following offers an example:

In the brook Konsta a great treasure in an iron chest is said to have been sunk long ago. A man in Konsta village-his name has been forgotten, for it is now long ago-had convinced one of his neighbors to accompany him one Thursday night to dig up the treasure. Indeed they succeeded in getting up the chest, so that it was half on dry land. But then one of the men was going to change his hold to get a better grip, and he said to his companion, "Just hold on." He meant to add "while I change my grip," but he never had a chance, for the chest immediately fell back in the brook and sank so deep that all future attempts were impossible. For the person or persons who once fail at such an undertaking there is no point in trying a second time; but after a few years the desire to win the treasure was kindled in another farmer, and to avoid the fate of his predecessors he went quite alone to the place. However he excavated, dug, and quarried, he too managed to get the chest out of the water and was looking around for his axe to bind the treasure to him with its steel, when a hen dragging a big load of hay caught his eye. On the hay there sat a swarthy dwarf, endlessly encouraging the hen with a whip, for things were not going fast. "Onward, onward, forward; you must be to the gates of Rome tonight." "Oh yes, it should be no problem at that pace," said the man, laughing, whereupon the treasure slid back into the brook and vanished from his sight. Whether anyone tried subsequently to dig up the treasure is unknown, and probably it will be able to stay where it is until the end of the world. [Nårke. Collected by Nils Gabriel Djurklou from a Herr Wahlfisk between 1856 and 1865, and printed in Sahlgren 1943: 23].

Sometimes a series of similar visions escalates, until the treasure hunters break silence (example in Bergstrand 1961: 160). In one printed variant from Småland the treasure hunter thinks he sees the parson and offers a respectful greeting. At once the treasure vanishes (Hofberg 1882: 56-57). Finally, the treasure hunters can be frightened into breaking their silence. When one sinister looking being sometimes raising a gallows- asks another "Who shall we take first?" a treasure hunter might be likely to feel uneasy. When the question is answered "The one in the red jacket," it is not surprising that the man in the red jacket breaks silence by crying out "No! Don't take me!" (for an example see Klintberg 1972: 267)."

--John Lindow, from "Swedish Legends of Buried Treasure" (available with JSTOR free acct)

[oldbastard101]

"That treasures have long been found in Scandinavia is assured by provisions for dealing with them in the medieval laws, similar to stipulations in other European laws (Jørgensen 1950:265-270) Indeed, in Denmark a special term was used for treasure recovered from the ground: danafæ "death's money" (C. A. Christiansen 1957; Lund 1942). More generally the term was used for the estate of one who died without an heir, as in Swedish danaarv. Although the etymology of the term danafæ suggests an association of treasure with the dead, the convergence of the two meanings of the term may well have been caused by the fact that the crown laid claim to both sorts of wealth. In any case, there must have been sufficient treasure troves to cause the crown to promulgate such a law.

The relative importance of buried treasure and its claim on the imagination is further indicated by attributes assigned to Odin, head of the Norse gods, by the medieval Icelandic mythographer Snorri Sturluson. In a euhemeristic account of Odin's founding of a kingdom in the North, Snorri wrote in his Ynglinga saga: Odin knew all about treasure in the ground, where it was hidden, and he knew the charms which would open the earth and boulders and stones and mounds, and he bound with words alone those who dwelt there [scil. supernatural beings and/or the dead] and went in and took what he wanted …. Odin established those laws in his land which had previously been maintained among the æsir. Thus he established that all dead men were to be burned on a pyre with all their possessions. He said that with such riches as he had with him on the pyre each would come to Valhalla, and those too he would enjoy, which he had buried in the ground [Aðalbjarnarson 1941:19-20; my translation].

The beliefs implicit in this passage have been adduced as one of the reasons for the large number of treasure finds from the Viking age, as part of the more general context that people regularly buried their valuables, particularly in times of unrest (Rasmussen 1957:244). Norse literature attests many aspects of treasure lore still prevalent in rural Scandinavia until recently and includes many scenes of treasure hunting, often involving breaking into a grave mound and confronting the ghost who guards the treasure (Boberg 1966:202-203). Probably the most famous treasures of Norse literature are the Rhine gold of the Niflung cycle and Egill Skallagrímsson's two chests of English silver, which he planned to fling about at an assembly meeting to sow discord and, when thwarted in that plan, buried in the ground forever.

It is thus natural that folk belief would have to take account of buried treasure and that such treasure should be included in popular narrative. This paper attempts a survey of treasure tales from rural Sweden collected during the last century or so but presumably in circulation for far longer. Although much the same tales are told throughout northern Europe and are very common (Winter 1925), there exists no reliable overview of the tradition and its types. In The Migratory Legends, Reidar Th. Christiansen limits himself to assigning them the potential type number 8010f., noting that "stories about Hidden Treasure and the search for them, are told in practically every Norwegian parish. They have an individual, local character" (R. Th. Christiansen 1958:215). Although the works of Feilberg (1894 1914:III, 234-237), Norlind (1918), and Liungman (1957-69:V, 299-363) remain useful, their emphases are not modern and they are not accessible to those who do not read the Scandinavian languages. It would therefore seem useful to attempt such a survey, especially in light of recent American scholarship linking treasure tales to the anthropological concept of the image of limited good. In preparing this survey I have made use of Bengt af Klintberg's unpublished catalog of Swedish legends. To facilitate reference, all texts are from printed sources; the translations are my own."

--John Lindow, from "Swedish Legends of Buried Treasure" (available with JSTOR free acct)

see also:

Swedish Legends and Folktales, John Lindow (available for free checkout at the Internet Archive; limited preview at Google Books)

"Passing Through as Healing and Crime: An Example from Eighteenth-Century Sweden," Fredrik Skott

"Odin, Magic and a Swedish Trial from 1484," Stephen Mitchell

[girlwithouthands]

Swedish folk tradition makes a distinction between ghosts whose identity is known, called spöken (singular spöke), and ghosts of unknown identity, called gastar (singular gast). The latter, following the rule of fear of the unknown, are more terrifying than the former and share certain characteristics of the nature-beings.

John Lindow, Swedish Legends and Folktales

[girlwithouthands]

The legends in the second portion of the book I have termed those of the other world, by which I mean the world of the nature-beings. As the tales themselves demonstrate, this world is essentially the one in which the tradition-bearers live, and the term “other world” must therefore not be understood as referring to some sort of never-never land on the far side of the rainbow. It is, rather, the “other” world of the tradition-bearers, the part of their own world they know least well, including mysterious places like deep forests, mountains, graveyards, and watercourses. Under certain circumstances even familiar ground may become unfamiliar and “other.” Such circumstances would include darkness, bad or stormy weather, the period following a birth or death, the evening of great holidays, the visit of a stranger, or virtually anything else out of the ordinary. Under these circumstances, or at almost any time out on the periphery of their environment, belief in nature-beings might be actualized, and for that reason I sometimes refer to such beings as other- worldly beings or simply otherworlders.

John Lindow, Swedish Legends and Folktales

[idrawvikings]

An Unnatural History of Trolls

An Unnatural History of Trolls

This is sort of a belated review, but John Lindow’s book Trolls: An Unnatural History is out now, and EVERYONE SHOULD BUY IT!!! Seriously, this book, while a solid overview of the topic from a leading scholar in the field of Norse mythology and Scandinavian Folklore, is super accessible (well, as much so as a book can be while still remaining academic in nature). John has always been very at home…

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