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Obviously, I am talking about the \u00c6sir, the race of gods who rule over \u00c1sgar\u00f0r in Old Norse myth. The Icelandic author and politician, Snorri Sturluson (d. 1242) sets up the following little vignette in his Edda<\/em>, an Old Norse mythological compendium written in the 1220s. Here, \u00d3\u00f0inn is telling an anecdote:<\/p>\n \u00deat var snimma \u00ed \u01ebdver\u00f0a byg\u00f0 go\u00f0anna, \u00fe\u00e1 er go\u00f0in \u01eb h\u01ebf\u00f0u sett Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0 ok gert Valh\u01ebll, \u00fe\u00e1 kom smi\u00f0r nokkvorr ok bau\u00f0 at gera \u00feeim borg \u00e1 \u00ferim misserum sv\u00e1 g\u00f3\u00f0a at tr\u00fa ok \u00f8rugg v\u00e6ri fyrir bergrisum ok hr\u00edm\u00feursum \u00fe\u00f3tt \u00feeir komi inn um Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0. En hann m\u00e6lir s\u00e9r \u00feat til kaups at hann skyldi eignask Freyju, ok hafa vildi hann s\u00f3l ok m\u00e1na. \u00de\u00e1 gengu \u00c6sirnir \u00e1 tal ok r\u00e9\u00f0u r\u00e1\u00f0um s\u00ednum, ok var \u00feat kaup gert vi\u00f0 smi\u00f0inn at hann skyldi eignask \u00feat er hann m\u00e6lir til ef hann fengi gert borginni \u00e1 einum vetri, en hinn fyrsta sumars dag ef nokkvorr hlutr v\u00e6ri \u00f3gj\u01ebrr at borginni \u00fe\u00e1 skyldi hann af kaupinu … En er \u00e1 lei\u00f0 vetrinn, \u00fe\u00e1 s\u00f3ttisk mj\u01ebk borgarger\u00f0in ok var hon sv\u00e1 h\u00e1 ok sterk at eigi m\u00e1tti \u00e1 \u00feat leita. En \u00fe\u00e1 er \u00fer\u00edr dagar v\u00e1ru til sumars \u00fe\u00e1 var komit mj\u01ebk at borghli\u00f0i. \u00de\u00e1 settusk gu\u00f0in \u00e1 d\u00f3mst\u00f3la s\u00edna ok leitu\u00f0u r\u00e1\u00f0a ok spur\u00f0i hverr annann hverr \u00fev\u00ed hef\u00f0i r\u00e1\u00f0it at gipta Freyju \u00ed J\u01ebtunheimum e\u00f0a spilla loptinu ok himninum sv\u00e1 at taka \u00fea\u00f0an s\u00f3l ok tungl ok gefa j\u01ebtnum…<\/em> [1]<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt was early in the first days of the settlement of the gods, when the gods had established Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0r and built Valh\u01ebll, that a certain craftsman came and offered to build for them inside of three seasons a fortress so good that it would be reliable and safe against the Mountain Giants and the Rime Giants, even if they got into Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0r. And he named his price as being that he would marry Freyja, and he also wanted to have the sun and the moon. Then the \u00c6sir had a discussion and reached their decision, and the deal was made with the craftsman that he should have what he had named if he could get the fortress built inside of one winter, and at the first day of summer if any part of the fortress was incomplete then he would forfeit his payment … But as winter wore on, the construction of the fortress went very well, and it was so tall and strong that one could not attack it. And when there were three days until summer it was very nearly up to the fortress gates. Then the gods went to their thrones of judgement and held council, and asked each other who it was who had advised marrying Freyja off to Giantland or ruining the sky and the heavens by taking away the sun and the moon and giving it to the giants … \u201d<\/p>\n If this is the first time you have ever read a piece of Old Norse literature, you will be picking up on the theme that the \u00c6sir do not have a very good relationship with their giant neighbours. (We should quickly note that these giants might not always have been imagined as towering \u201cfee fi fo fum\u201d types, they are usually depicted as simply somewhat brutish, somewhat monstrous adversarial beings).[2]<\/a> According to Snorri, the civilisation of the giants precedes that of the \u00c6sir. They emerged from the sweaty left armpit of the first anthropoid being, who was called Ymir. In the Edda, <\/em>\u00d3\u00f0inn himself says of Ymir Fyr <\/em>\u00f8ngan man j\u00e1tum v\u00e9r hann gu\u00f0. Hann var illr ok allir hans \u00e6ttmenn<\/em>[3]<\/a> \u201cIn no way can we call him a god. He was evil, as are all his descendants\u201d (though \u00d3\u00f0inn would<\/em> say that). The \u00c6sir are descended from a different anthropoid, called B\u00fari, who spontaneously emerged from a block of ice at some point after the awakening of Ymir. B\u00fari then promptly set the tone for \u00c6sir-Giant relations by killing Ymir, and using his body parts to create the world. With Ymir’s blood the \u00c6sir made the sea, with his flesh they made the earth, his skull became the sky and his brains the clouds. Having murdered the giants’ patriarch, the gods had one last gruesome and mocking use for his corpse. \u00d3\u00f0inn explains that:<\/p>\n Hon [j\u01ebr\u00f0in] er kringl\u00f3tt \u00fatan, ok \u00fear \u00fatan um liggr hinn dj\u00fapi sj\u00e1r, ok me\u00f0 \u00feeiri sj\u00e1var str\u01ebndu g\u00e1fu \u00feeir l\u01ebnd til byg\u00f0ar j\u01ebtna \u00e6ttum. En fyrir innan \u00e1 j\u01ebr\u00f0unni ger\u00f0u \u00feeir borg umhverfis heim fyrir \u00f3fri\u00f0i j\u01ebtna, en til \u00feeirar borgar h\u01ebf\u00f0u \u00feeir br\u00e1r Ymis j\u01ebtuns, ok k\u01ebllu\u00f0u \u00fe\u00e1 borg Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0<\/em>.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt [the earth] is circular on the outside, on the outside lies the deep ocean, and by the shore of that ocean they [the \u00c6sir] gave land for the settlement of the race of giants. But further inwards on the earth they made a fortification all around the world against the warlikeness of the giants, and for those fortifications they used the eyelashes of Ymir the giant, and they called the fortification Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0r [Middle Earth].\u201d<\/p>\n Although at first the idea of beachside property for the giants might not seem so bad, Snorri and later authors reveal that the reservations to which the giants are relegated are not really prime real estate.[5]<\/a> There appear to be giants living in the place known as Muspellsheimr<\/em>, which is unbearably hot, and given the association between giants and ice (e.g. the subgrouping called the hr\u00edm<\/em>\u00feursar <\/em>\u201cthe Rime giants\u201d) there may also be giants living in Niflheimr<\/em>, which is forebodingly dark and cold. As John Lindow points out, the term for the giants’ homelands is usually given in the plural, J\u01ebtunheimar<\/u><\/em>, perhaps implying that there were multiple areas of mountain and forest – places which humans did not find hospitable – where giants and trolls were thought to live in medieval Scandinavian superstition.[6]<\/a> Our world, the human world, is Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0r, and the realm of the gods is \u00c1sgar\u00f0r, which in Snorri’s account is a fortification in the centre of Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0r (incidentally, this prompts the question of whether humans could hypothetically just walk into \u00c1sgar\u00f0r, or at least up to its walls, though Snorri doesn’t give us much to work with on that point). The giants are kept out with the palisades they made from Ymir’s eyelashes, with the walls they con the masterbuilder into making but never pay for, and by a dense band of forest called J\u00e1rnvi<\/em>\u00f0r <\/em>\u201cIron Wood\u201d. As an aside, we might note that this is the same name of the forested peninsula which once divided Denmark from Germany, modern Danish Jernved<\/em>.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n That is to say, a geographical feature which was viewed as a barrier to keep two warring peoples apart.<\/p>\n There is little doubt that the giants, as they appear in works older than Snorri’s, such as the poems of the Poetic Edda <\/em>(many of which are as old as the eleventh century, if not older still), are indeed people from whom the \u00c6sir would understandably want to be protected. But in Snorri’s telling of Old Norse myth one finds oneself sympathising with the giants, despite \u00d3\u00f0inn’s best attempts to slander them. It was the \u00c6sir who cast the first stone, by killing Ymir. They then claimed the good land for themselves, driving the giants into places that are too cold, too hot, too forested or too mountainous. The \u00c6sir enjoy technological superiority over the giants, thanks to \u00de\u00f3rr (Thor) and his mighty hammer, Mj\u01ebllnir \u2026 er hr\u00edm<\/em>\u00feursar ok bergrisar kenna \u00fe\u00e1 er hann kemr \u00e1 lopt, ok er \u00feat eigi undarligt: hann hefir lamit margan haus \u00e1 fe\u00f0rum e\u00f0a fr\u00e6ndum \u00feeira<\/em>[8]<\/a> \u201c… which the Rime-Giants and Mountain-Giants recognise when he holds it aloft, and that’s no strange thing: it has crushed the skulls of many of their fathers or their kinsmen\u201d. There are occassionally giants who get the upper hand prior to Ragnar\u00f8kr (the apocalypse, Snorri’s spelling), e.g. the trickster \u00datgar\u00f0aloki. But usually any attempt at resistance does not stand a chance.<\/p>\n The relationship of the \u00c6sir to the giants is fundamentally colonial.[9]<\/a> They dominate them technologically, control their land, but they also require their labour, as we have seen in the case of the duped craftsman.[10]<\/a> Moreover, the \u00c6sir males expect to have access to giant-women, but they are consistently horrified by the thought that giant males might have access to \u00c6sir women. When they are forced by a peace accord to let a giant-woman, Ska\u00f0i, marry a male god, they trick her so that she does not pick Baldr, her preferred choice and the most attractive of the \u00c6sir, but instead chooses Nj\u01ebr\u00f0r, who is in fact not one of the \u00c6sir but one of the Vanir, a tribe defeated in war and assimilated by the \u00c6sir.[11]<\/a> The giants are depicted as constantly slavering over Freyja, whom the \u00c6sir have a responsibility to protect from their advances. It is presented as uncontroversial that the male god Freyr can have sexual relations with the giantess Ger\u00f0r (by rape, according to Sk\u00edrnism\u00e1l <\/em>in the Poetic Edda<\/em>, though Snorri somewhat romanticises the congress in his Edda<\/em>). <\/em>Similarly, \u00de\u00f3rr has an extra-marital liaison with a giantess named J\u00e1rnsaxa. The resultant offspring, Magni, is raised as a good \u00c1ss (the singular of \u00c6sir \u2013 stop giggling at the back). But when the male giant F\u00e1rbauti has sex with the apparently non-giant female Laufey, the resultant offspring is Loki.<\/p>\n Though raised amongst the \u00c6sir, Loki is a devious figure whose own erotic encounters with the giantess Angrbo\u00f0a apparently re-concentrate his giant heritage, resulting in the monstrous brood of the wolf Fenrir, the serpent J\u01ebrmungandr, and the death-deity Hel. By way of analogy, we might observe that this is a sort of thinking which is not altogether remote from colonial sexual regimes such as those of the American south. As Ida B. Wells wrote back in 1892, \u201cthe misceg[e]nation laws of the South only operate against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white women\u201d [12]<\/a> (I am grateful to Jarvis McInnis for directing me to Wells’s work). I certainly do not intend to equate the actual <\/em>historic suffering of real populations with the imaginary <\/em>sufferings of mythical tribes. But I would propose that if we want to understand what is going on in the minds the \u00c6sir, as Snorri depicts them, then such analogies can be tremendously illuminating.<\/p>\n Despite the ready interpretation that it is really the \u00c6sir who victimise the giants, rather than the other way round, the \u00c6sir themselves sometimes entertain the feeling that their world is in a state of decay, and that it is migrants from Giantland who are to blame for their supposed decline. \u00d3\u00f0inn explains that:<\/p>\n \u00dear n\u00e6st ger\u00f0u \u00feeir \u00feat at \u00feeir l\u01ebg\u00f0u afla ok \u00fear til ger\u00f0u \u00feeir hamar ok t\u01ebng ok ste\u00f0ja ok \u00fea\u00f0an af \u01ebll t\u00f3l \u01ebnnur. Ok \u00fev\u00ed n\u00e6st sm\u00ed\u00f0u\u00f0u \u00feeir m\u00e1lm ok stein ok tr\u00e9, ok sv\u00e1 gn\u00f3gliga \u00feann m\u00e1lm er gull heitir at \u01ebll b\u00fasg\u01ebgn ok \u01ebll rei\u00f0ig\u01ebgn h\u01ebf\u00f0u \u00feeir af gulli, ok er s\u00fa \u01ebld k\u01ebllu\u00f0 gullaldr, \u00e1\u00f0r en spiltisk af tilkv\u00e1mu kvennanna. \u00de\u00e6r k\u00f3mu \u00f3r J\u01ebtunheimum<\/em>.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cNext they did so, that they made forges and so they made hammers and tongs and anvils, and from those all other tools. And next they smithed metal and stone and wood, and so abundantly [they made] that metal which is called ‘gold’ that all their fittings and utensils were made from gold, and this age was called the Golden Age, before it was spoiled by the arrival of those women. They came from Giantland.\u201d<\/p>\n Following James Barr and also Lowell Handy, who were writing about the case of Canaanite myth (a body of myth which Snorri, of course, could not have known beyond the snippets preserved in the Bible) we might call this episode a \u201ctechnogony\u201d.[14]<\/a> Calling this time a gullaldr<\/em> \u201cGolden Age\u201d is probably Snorri’s own idea, rather than a concept in Norse myth that existed in the minds of others before the 1220s. It is conceivable that gullaldr <\/em>originates as a calque of Latin aetas aurea<\/em>, e.g from Ovid’s Metamorphoses<\/em>, although Ovid’s \u201cGolden Age\u201d is not so technologically advanced and more peaceful: Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo, \/ <\/em>sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat. <\/em>\u201cThe first age is golden, where none commanded, \/ [and] of ones own accord, without law, [one] was faithful and did the right thing\u201d.[15]<\/a> But I digress.<\/p>\n It is worth noting that, like most \u201cGolden Ages\u201d, things were probably not really as good as they were supposed to be. The gullaldr <\/em>might have been a time when the \u00c6sir were wealthy, but their prosperity was founded on violence. The giant patriarch Ymir had been killed, his body used to create forifications to keep his descendants out of Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0r, and <\/em>all the Rime-Giants apart from one named Bergelmir and his household had been drowned by the ocean of blood that flowed out of Ymir’s corpse. (Bergelmir and his wife survived by floating on a giant wooden box, and then went on to repopulate the Giantlands, this detail presumably being drawn from Genesis’s flood narrative). Perhaps the reason \u00d3\u00f0inn tries to convince us that this was a \u201cGolden Age\u201d is not because he truly believes in the glory of \u00c1sgar\u00f0r, but because he truly believes in the nefariousness of giants. The point is not that \u00c1sgar\u00f0r was ever that great, but rather that the giants are what is standing between \u00c1sgar\u00f0r and greatness. It is fitting that we don’t really know who exactly the three ruinous giantesses were supposed to be. It is probable that Snorri didn’t either, and he was simply backforming from an equally cryptic verse in V<\/em>\u01eblusp\u00e1<\/em>: Tefl<\/em>\u00f0o \u00ed t\u00fani, teitir v\u00f3ro, \/ var \u00feeim v\u00e6ttergis vant \u00f3r gulli, \/ <\/em>unz <\/em>\u00feri\u00e1r qv\u00f3mo \u00feursa meyjar, <\/em>\/ <\/em>\u00e1m\u00e1tcar mioc, \u00f3r iotunheimom. <\/em>\u201c They played chess in their settlements, they were joyful \/ there was never any want for gold \/ until three came, maidens of the giants \/ very strong, from the Giantlands\u201d.[16]<\/a> By extension, \u00d3\u00f0inn himself doesn’t really know. The leader of the \u00c6sir knows how to propagandise in a post-truth political climate.<\/p>\n At the end of the world, called Ragnar\u01ebk in the Poetic Edda <\/em>and Ragnar\u00f8kr\/-r\u00f8kkr in Snorri’s Edda<\/em>, the age-old enemies of the \u00c6sir will finally get the upperhand. Led by Loki and the Muspellssyni<\/em>r<\/em> \u201cSons of Muspell\u201d, a force of giants will charge across the Rainbow Bridge, Bifr\u01ebst, and vanquish the \u00c6sir. Yet it would be a mistake to think that there is something of the Bildungsroman <\/em>about this narrative, where the giants are off accumulating their forces, and finally get their revenge through their own industry. The Muspellssynir may deliver the death-blow to the \u00c6sir, but it is actually the \u00c6sir who undo themselves. They make a series of consistently poor decisions which leave them ill-prepared to face their foes at Ragnar\u00f8kr. Freyr trades his sword to his messenger, Sk\u00edrnir, in return for Sk\u00edrnir’s co-operation in threatening the giantess Ger\u00f0r into sexual relations with him. He is consequently unarmed in the final battle. \u00d3\u00f0inn and the other \u00c6sir refuse to kill Fenrir when they have the chance, because they do not want to defile the sacred spaces they have set up in their own honour. <\/em>\u00d3\u00f0inn himself explains that Sv\u00e1 mikils <\/em>vir<\/em>\u00f0u go\u00f0in v\u00e9 s\u00edn ok gri\u00f0asta\u00f0i at eigi vildu \u00feau saurga \u00fe\u00e1 me\u00f0 bl\u00f3\u00f0i \u00falfsins \u00fe\u00f3tt sv\u00e1 segi sp\u00e1rnar at hann muni ver\u00f0a at bana \u00d3\u00f0ni<\/em>[17]<\/a> \u201cThe gods so highly esteem their sacred groves and places of truce that they would not defile them with the wolf’s blood, even though the prophecies might say that he would be the death of \u00d3\u00f0inn\u201d. This seems like a noble enough sentiment, but it must be remembered that in Snorri’s euhemerist account the \u00c6sir are not actually divine, and are in fact much given to deception, so it would appear that there is something \u00d3\u00f0inn is not telling us in his explanation.<\/p>\n Just as Fenrir ultimately destroys \u00d3\u00f0inn, \u00de\u00f3rr kills the serpent J\u01ebrmungandr but is himself killed in the process from resulting splashes of the beast’s venom: \u00de\u00f3rr … st\u00edgr \u00fea\u00f0an braut n\u00edu fet. \u00de\u00e1 fellr hann dau\u00f0r til jar\u00f0ar fyrir eitri \u00fev\u00ed er ormrinn bl\u00e6ss \u00e1 hann<\/em>[18]<\/strong><\/a> \u201c\u00de\u00f3rr … takes nine steps away. Then he falls down dead to the earth because of the poison which the serpent spewed on him\u201d The same tool\/weapon that gave the \u00c6sir supremacy over the giants also becomes their undoing; the story would have run rather differently if \u00de\u00f3rr had picked up a bow, like the god Ullr. But he doesn’t. The hammer has always worked against the giants before, and so he steps into spitting range of the serpent with a blind confidence of a man who only has a hammer, and so sees only nails. Like \u00d3\u00f0inn, \u00de\u00f3rr too had a chance to eliminate his killer before Ragnar\u00f8kr during an attempt to catch J\u01ebrmungandr on a fishing line. However, \u00de\u00f3rr took a giant with him on that expedition, one named Hymir, who quailed at the sight of the serpent and let it go. \u00d3\u00f0inn tells the story as a vindication of the giants’ supposed cowardice and idiocy. Though I wonder if Hymir might be engaging in a spot of civil disobedience. After all, when you have spent a lifetime smashing the skulls of giants, and you then take a giant with you to help you pre-emptively kill the beast that will otherwise be your death, you can’t be all too surprised when that giant exhibits a lack of motivation in the workplace.<\/p>\n The \u00c6sir are powerful and cunning, but they are not able to think ahead to the point where they will take decisions that hurt in the short term, in order to allow them to survive in the long term. As Christopher Abram observed in a paper delivered at Harvard’s \u201cOld Norse Mythology in its Comparative Contexts\u201d in 2013, the gods are not so different from us: when the world around them is ending, they are to be found sitting around having a conference. The refrain in the Eddic poem V<\/em>\u01eblusp\u00e1 <\/em>goes: \u00de\u00e1 gengu regin \u01ebll<\/em> \/ \u00e1 r\u01ebkst\u00f3la<\/em>,\/ ginnheil\u01ebg go\u00f0<\/em>, \/ ok<\/em> um \u00fea<\/em>t<\/em> g\u00e6ttuzk <\/em>\u201cThe powers all went \/ to the thrones of fate \/ the divine gods \/ and this they discussed\u201d. As Abram pointed out, this is exactly what humanity was doing during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009. Just like modern capitalism, the \u00c6sir have established an order that suffers from bureaucratic inertia,[19]<\/a> and which is too short-sighted to prevent its own destruction. When it falls, it will take the rest of the world with it.<\/p>\n What is the value of drawing such analogies between the world depicted by Snorri and the world we find ourselves in today? Where Old Norse literature (the body of literature written in Iceland and to a lesser extent Norway from c. 1100 to c. 1500, to which Snorri’s Edda <\/em>belongs) offers lessons for our own time, those lessons should be told. Of course, they will have absolutely no impact whatsoever. No politician is going to read this, buzz their secretary, and exclaim: \u201cPat, get in here! I’ve just found out about this thirteenth-century Icelander called Snorri Sturluson and I’ve totally rethought my policy on fracking!\u201d. So the need for the past to teach the present is not why I offer these analogies (even if it is a strong second place). Rather, I would propose the value of the opposite possibility: that we can sometimes permit the present to teach the past. Naturally, we have to be very wary of anachronism in doing so. Medieval people did not think of things such as the environment or race in the way that we do today. Many of the key concepts around which our world is built cannot even be expressed in the vocabulary of medieval languages. But medieval people often did possess the psychological building blocks which would later go into constituting those ideas as we know them.<\/p>\n To my mind, the chief problem attendant to understanding Snorri’s Edda <\/em>is also the chief intellectual opportunity: Snorri was more like J. R. R. Tolkien than he was like David Attenborough. His aim was not to describe and document. He was not attempting to present a rigorous, scientifically accurate account of the myths and religious traditions of his forefathers. Rather, he was cobbling together an imaginative fictional world, wonderfully eclectic in its use of sources. Snorri would borrow anything from anyone. His Edda <\/em>is a composition of pre-Christian Norse poetry, folk superstitions, Latin learning, Biblical apocrypha, and a fair few generous dollops of Snorri’s own creativity. The result is one of the most enigmatic and exciting works of world literature. Snorri’s eclecticism is beautiful, but it also makes it very hard to know precisely what we are discussing when we attempt to analyse a portion of his mythological world. What bits are \u201cauthentically\u201d pre-Christian? What bits are the intellectual achievements of the thirteenth century? Much ink has been spilled on sorting Snorri’s sources accordingly, some of the weaker smudges my own.<\/p>\n The principle value of the type of analogy I have suggested here is the insight it can give us into Snorri’s own thinking \u2013 and the thinking of his fictional characters. If we wanted to provide an account of the ideology of the \u00c6sir (let’s call it \u201c\u00c6sirism\u201d) how would we go about it? One way would be to attempt to pick out the bits that could be from the Viking Age, via juxtaposition with sources older than Snorri, e.g. Eddic poetry, archaeology, accounts by Adam of Bremen (fl. 1070s) and Ibn Fadlan (fl. 920s) etc. Afterwards, we could also integrate Snorri’s Edda <\/em>with what we know about political thought from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as per Sverre Bagge’s work on another thirteenth-century masterpiece, Konungs skuggjs\u00e1.<\/em>[20]<\/a> This would be a very worthy and enlightening project. But it would not give us a picture of \u00c6sirism as a unified ideology. True, ideologies are always conditioned by time and place \u2013 the capitalism of seventeenth century Holland is different to the capitalism of present day Florida, the feminism of Shulamith Firestone is different to that of Sandi Toksvig \u2013 but ideologies are at their core timeless. <\/em>They exist immaterially as a set of ideas, beliefs about the world, about how it works and how it could be made more just. The pre-occupations of our own world provide a useful diagnostic for exposing those beliefs, in everything from works of literature to Kinder Surprise Eggs (or so Slavoj \u017di\u017eek would have us believe, anyway: http:\/\/bit.ly\/2htZ8Cc<\/a>). So what do Snorri’s \u00c6sir think about the notion we now call race? About the legitimacy of power? About bureaucracy? About sex, war, and natural resources? Yes, all these questions are impositions from our own troubled times. But so long as we recognise that, and we recognise the limits of our questioning, a pinch of anachronism paradoxically allows Snorri’s Edda<\/em> to exist in its own right as a rich imaginative world of subcreation much like Tolkien’s Middle-earth. We can interview the \u00c6sir, appreciating \u00c6sirism as Snorri’s own invention rather than as a distorted memory of the Viking Age.<\/p>\n In this way, being worried for the fate of the world might just make us better scholars, as we incline our ears more closely to our source texts, listening more intently for the ghosts that prefigure the monsters of our modern situation. One might protest that it is ridiculous to be pursuing Old Norse philology \u2013 an almost comically obscure topic \u2013 at a time when, like the \u00c6sir, we face the prospect of seemingly apocalyptic ecological and political crisis. Perhaps that’s true. There may well be something \u00c6sirist in today’s ethno-nationalist inflected capitalism, but in this regard there is also something \u00c6sirist about those of us who would resist it, too. As the sun turns black and the earth sinks beneath the waves, we know we cannot win. We go to meet our enemies with tools that will do nothing, but which we love too much to relinquish.<\/p>\n Richard Cole is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught Old Norse at Harvard University, University College London, and \u00c5rhus Universitet. He has published on Old Norse philology in Saga-Book, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, Scandinavian Studies, and other journals. This blog post is a side-project from an article currently under preparation, provisionally entitled: \u201c’Make \u00c1sgar\u00f0r Great Again’, or, is there an \u00c6sir-ist ideology?\u201d Correspondence can be directed to: richardcole@alumni.harvard.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Prologue and <\/em>Gylfaginning. (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1988) p. 34 [ch. 42]<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen & Anna Birgitta Rooth. \u201cJotner\u201d in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder. <\/em>Vol. 7. Ed. by Allan Karker. (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1962) pp. 693-700.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Gylfaginning<\/em>, p. 10. [ch. 5]<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Gylfaginning<\/em>, p. 12. [ch. 8]<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Rudolf Simek. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. <\/em>Trans. by Angela Hall. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993) p. 180.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> John Lindow. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. <\/em>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p. 206.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> To my knowledge, the first to point out the similarity between mythical J\u00e1rnvi<\/em>\u00f0r <\/em>and historical jernved <\/em>was: Gustav Klemming. \u201cJernveden\u201d in Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon<\/em>. Vol. 13. Ed. by Chr. Blangstrup. (Copenhagen: J. H. Schultz Forlagsboghandel, 1922) p. 52. The concept comes under stimulating theoretical discussion in an unlikely place, namely: Frederick Engels. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. <\/em>(New York: International Publishers, 2011 [1891]) pp. 153-154. For further comments on Old Norse myth by Engels, including his apparent familiarity with Sophus Bugge and Anton Christian Bang, see also: p. 102, pp. 147-148, 196-199. In a letter to Laura Lafargue (n\u00e9e Marx) written on the 23rd<\/sup> November 1884, Engels also writes that: \u201c[William] Morris … was here the other night and quite delighted to find the Old Norse Edda<\/em> on my table \u2014 he is an Icelandic enthusiast \u2014 Morris read a piece of his poetry (a \u201crefonte\u201d of the eddaic Helreid Brynhildar (the description of Brynhild burning herself with Sigurd\u2019s corpse) … their art seems to be rather better than their literature and their poetry better than their prose\u201d. http:\/\/bit.ly\/2hhBTL6<\/a> (Last accessed, 11th<\/sup> December 2016).<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> Gylfaginning<\/em>, p. 23. [ch. 21]<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> Indeed, it has been suggested that Ska\u00f0i, with her skis and hunting prowess, is supposed to be a Finnic figure, representing the indigeneous pre-Germanic-speaking population of Scandinavia. Her husband. Nj\u01ebr\u00f0r, on the other hand, prefers to live in the coastal regions, of the sort where the majority of Norway’s Germanic-speaking population lived during the Middle Ages. See: Lois Bragg. Oedipus borealis. The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga. <\/em>(Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004) pp. 85-86.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> One might also cite the example of Gefjun’s giantish bulls, or \u00de\u00f3rr taking Hymir on his fishing expedition.<\/p>\n [11]<\/a> Historically the war between the \u00c6sir and the Vanir has also been viewed as a memory of some long-lost, actual religious conflict. On this view, now outdated, see: E. O. G. Turville-Petre. Myth and Religion of the North. The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. <\/em>(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964) esp. pp. 156-162.<\/p>\n [12]<\/a> Ida B. Wells. Southern Horrors and Other Writings. The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells. <\/em>Ed. by Jacqueline Jones Royster. (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997 [1892-1900]) pp. 53-54.<\/p>\n [13]<\/a> Gylfaginning, <\/em>p. 15. [ch. 14]<\/p>\n [14]<\/a> James Barr. \u201cPhilo of Byblos and His ‘Phoenician History’\u201d, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library <\/em>57 (1974) pp. 17-68. Lowell K. Handy. Among the Host of Heaven. The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy. <\/em>(Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994) pp. 136-139.<\/p>\n [15]<\/a> Ovid. Metamorphoses. <\/em>Vol. 1. Ed. & trans. by Frank Justus Miller. Rev. by G. P. Goold. LCL 42. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1916) p. 8. [Bk 1: 89-90] My translation used.<\/p>\n [16]<\/a> Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten <\/em>Denkm\u00e4lern. <\/em>Ed. by Gustav Neckel & Hans Kuhn. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1983) p. 2. [stz. 8]<\/p>\n [17]<\/a> Gylfaginning, <\/em>p. 29. [ch. 34]<\/p>\n [18]<\/a> Gylfaginning, <\/em>p. 50. [ch. 51]<\/p>\n [19]<\/a> Concerning the canard that capitalism is the antithesis of bureaucracy, think of the last time you attempted to get an Xfinity internet connection set up, or changed your address with your bank, or tried to re-arrange a delivery with a courier service. The \u201clove affair\u201d of capitalism with bureaucracy is treated by: David Graeber. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy<\/em>. (New York: Melville House, 2015). In fact, it ought to be protested that the political culture of the \u00c6sir is not wholly bureaucratic \u2013 indeed, in many ways it is anti-bureaucratic because it exhibits virtually no trace of alienation in a Marxian sense. However, these are arguments for another time.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/thenorsegods.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/thor-duels-hrungnir.jpg\")
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