Reinterpreting the Etymology of Old Norse Mythological Names

FF Communications 323. Helsinki: Kalevala Society., 2021

The present volume responds to the rising boom of interest in folklore and folklore research in the study of Old Norse mythology. The twenty-two authors of this volume reveal the dynamism of this lively dialogue, which is characterized by a diversity of perspectives linking to different fields and national scholarships. The chapters open with a general overview of how the concepts of “folklore” and “mythology” have been understood and related across the history of Old Norse studies, which is followed by a group of chapters that discuss and present different approaches and types of source materials, with methodological and theoretical concerns. The interest in folklore is bound up with interests in practice and lived religion, which are brought into focus in a series of chapters relating to magic and ritual. Attention then turns to images that link to mythology and different mythic agents in studies that explore a variety of usage in meaning-making in different forms of cultural expression. The next group of studies spotlights motifs, with perspectives on synchronic usage across genres and different media, cross-cultural exchange, and long-term continuities. The volume culminates in discussions of complex stories, variously in oral traditions behind medieval sources and relationships between accounts found in medieval sources and those recorded from more recent traditions. Individually, the chapters variously offer reflexive and historical research criticism, new research frameworks, illustrative studies, and exploratory investigations. Collectively, they illustrate the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary discussion at the intersections of folklore and Old Norse mythology, where the transformative impacts were recently described as a paradigm shift. They open new paths for scholarly discussion with the potential to inspire future research.

Folklore, 2020

New Norse Studies, edited by Jeffrey Turco, gathers twelve original essays engaging aspects of Old Norse–Icelandic literature that continue to kindle the scholarly imagination in the twenty-first century. The assembled authors examine the arrière-scène of saga literature; the nexus of skaldic poetry and saga narrative; medieval and post-medieval gender roles; and other manifestations of language, time, and place as preserved in Old Norse–Icelandic texts. This volume will be welcomed not only by the specialist and by scholars in adjacent fields but also by the avid general reader, drawn in ever-increasing number to the Icelandic sagas and their world. Table of Contents Preface; Jeffrey Turco, volume editor: Introduction; Andy Orchard: Hereward and Grettir: Brothers from Another Mother?; Richard L. Harris: “Jafnan segir inn ríkri ráð”: Proverbial Allusion and the Implied Proverb in Fóstbrœðra saga; Torfi H. Tulinius: Seeking Death in Njáls saga; Guðrún Nordal: Skaldic Poetics and the Making of the Sagas of Icelanders; Russell Poole: Identity Poetics among the Icelandic Skalds; Jeffrey Turco: Loki, Sneglu-Halla þáttr, and the Case for a Skaldic Prosaics; Thomas D. Hill: Beer, Vomit, Blood and Poetry: Egils saga, Chapters 44-45; Shaun F. D. Hughes: The Old Norse Exempla as Arbiters of Gender Roles in Medieval Iceland; Paul Acker: Performing Gender in the Icelandic Ballads; Joseph Harris: The Rök Inscription, Line 20; Sarah Harlan-Haughey: A Landscape of Conflict: Three Stories of the Faroe Conversions; Kirsten Wolf: Non-Basic Color Terms in Old Norse-Icelandic

L. Repanšek, H. Bichlmeier & V. Sadovski, vácāmsi miśrā krṇavāmahai Proceedings of the international conference of the Society for Indo-European Studies and IWoBA XII, Ljubljana 4–7 June 2019, celebrating one hundred years of Indo-European comparative linguistics at the University of Ljubljana, Baar, 2020

On Baldr and Balar see also: https://www.academia.edu/114396519/ . Abstract: The paper argues for a common origin for Old Norse (ON) Baldr (name of a Scandinavian god associated with LIGHT), Celtic Belinos (name of a Celtic god identified with Apollo) and its Slovenian reflex Belin (name of a saint associated with SIGHT), and Old Irish (OIr.) Balar (name of a mythical character with possible solar features). New formal analyses and semantic intepretations of the names are provided and supported by means of insight obtained from the comparative study of Indo-European poetic phraseology and mythological narratives. (1) ON Baldr is the reflex with d-epenthesis of Proto-Germanic *balra- and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *bʰol(H)-r-ó- ‘provided with light, splendor’, a possessive derivative of *bʰól(H)-r-/bʰélH-n- ‘light’, a heteroclite of the PIE root *bʰelH- (Greek φαλός ‘white’, Old English bæl ‘fire, light’, Proto-Slavic *bělъ ‘white’). This analysis exactly matches Baldr’s association with light in Norse myth and finds support in parallels in Old English (the name of Baldr’s Anglo-saxon counterpart *Bæl-dæg ‘[he who has control over the] shining day’) and in Slavic (the reconstructed theonym *Bělъ bogъ ‘white god’, a kenning referring to the [SUN] or the [SKY]), which are further strengthened by the correspondence between the flower names ON Baldrs brá ‘Baldr’s brow’, Old English dæges eāge ‘day’s eye’ (Modern English daisy) and Vedic Sanskrit divyásya suparṇásya kanī́nikā ‘pupil of the Sun’, all reflexes of an inherited kenning [EYE – of LIGHT/DAY/SUN-god], a poetic phrase which referred to [FLOWERS]. (2) Proto-Celtic *Belīno- (whose scansion with long -i- in the suffix is required by Gaulish Βελεινο-) is a reflex of *bʰelH-ēn-ó- ‘provided with light’ (if possessive) or ‘pertaining to light’ (if pertinentive), a derivative of *bʰ(e)lH-ḗn ‘(in the) light’, a delocatival derivative of PIE *bʰól(H)-r-/bʰélH-n- ‘light’, closely matching Saint Belin’s association with sight in Slovenian folklore. (3) Old Irish Balar is the reflex of Proto-Celtic *Balaro- (also in Lusitanian and Gaulish), which originally meant ‘provided with light’ (if possessive) or simply ‘light, splendor’ (if functionless thematization), and must be traced back to the analogical strong stem *bʰelH-r- of a reflex of PIE *bʰól(H)-r-/bʰélH-n- (the expected Proto-Celtic outcome *bolar-/balan- may be attested by the variant of the name Bolar). (4) A possible further parallel may be Homeric Greek φαληριάω*, a denominative verb from *φαληριo- ‘shining, white’, if this must be traced back to a hysterokinetic and possibly delocatival derivative *φαλήρ (*bʰl̥H-ḗr from loc. sg. *bʰl̥H-ér- of *bʰól(H)-r-?). (5) Parallels in the narrative structure and the onomastics of the Norse myth of Baldr’s killing by Loki (*lug-on-) and of the Irish myth of Balar’s killing by Lug (*lug-u-) allow for the assumption of a direct connection between all these characters and call for a common etymology of all of their names.

Nordistica Tartuensia 20, 2014

During the 20th century, Old Norse philology has been strongly textually oriented. This is evident in saga scholarship, where the book-prose ideology turned the issue of the origin of individual sagas into an issue of direct influences from other written works. This focus has methodological advantages, but it has also meant that valuable folkloristic knowledge has been neglected. The present volume targets the advantages, the problems and the methods of using folklore material and theory in Old Norse scholarship. An important theme in folklore is the encounter with the Supernatural and such stories are indeed common in saga literature. Generally, however, scholars have tended to focus on feuds and the social structure of the sagas, and less on encounters with Otherworld beings. In this volume, the supernatural themes in the sagas are discussed by means of several approaches, some folkloristic, some traditionally philological.

The pre-Christian religions of the North : research and reception Volume 2. From c. 1830 to the present Ross, Margaret Clunies (Herausgeber) Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, [2018] , 2018

Katja Schulz studied german and scandinavian language and literature, History and law at the Universities of Kiel and Bergen (Norway) and received her doctorate in 2002 at the Univer sity of frankfurt with a thesis on giants in old Norse literature. she researches and publishes in the field of old Norse literature and mytho logy as well as their reception in post-medi eval times. she is a member of the research projects Edda-Kommentar and Edda-Rezeption at goethe-Uni ver sity in frankfurt and co-author of the frankfurt Edda-Commentary.

2018

Religious practices and worship of and at natural landmarks such as hills, rocks, mountains, sacred groves etc. played an important part in Old Norse religions and was closely connected to the belief in various spirits and deities thought to dwell in these places. In this seminar paper I take a close look at what literary sources tell us about the Old Norse nature spirits called landvættir who were thought to live in the natural landscape and seen as having an important role for the land's well-being and protection as well as being able to influence the life and prosperity of its human inhabitants. I then mention examples of some related mythological beings who share characteristics with these spirits of the land, especially with regard to inhabiting certain landmarks. In the final part of my paper I consider the famous álfar and finish by looking at the development of meaning that finally led to the contemporary image of álfar or elves as inhabiting the Icelandic landscape as well as the popular place they inhabit in the contemporary imagination regarding Icelandic culture.

2017

Studia Metrica et Poetica 1/1 (2014): 100-139, 2014

This article explores patterns of language use in oral poetry within a variety of semantic formula. Such a formula may vary its surface texture in relation to phonic demands of the metrical environment in which it is realized. Metrically entangled kennings in Old Norse dróttkvætt poetry provide material for a series of case studies focusing on variation in realizing formulae of this type. Old Norse kennings present a semantic formula of a particular type which is valuable as an example owing to the extremes of textural variation that it enables. Focus will be on variation between two broad semantic categories in expressing the formula’s consistent unit of meaning that are otherwise unambiguously distinct: proper names for mythological beings and poetic terms for weapons and armour. This article introduces an approach to kennings as semantic formulae and includes an illustrative case study on kennings meaning ‘battle’ in the last three metrical positions of a dróttkvætt line. The case study is simultaneously used to demonstrate the degree of integration of mythological proper names in the poetic register. This article contains only the first case study of a series. It provides foundations for examining variation in the associative links exhibited by names of mythic beings as a category according to the metrical positions in which a battle-kenning is realized, as will be discussed further later in this series. In additions to insights into how language was used in the practice of this tradition, this study highlights that mythological names could be used in the poetry for purely metrical reasons without linking to the name's mythological significance.