Month: November 2019

Timothy Bourns

Driftwood and the Divine: Ecocritical Readings of trémenn

Thursday, November 28, 2019, at 16.30
Lögberg 101

This presentation will examine trémenn and the ways in which the categories of human and wood intersect in Old Norse literature, both metaphorically and metaphysically, thus blurring the lines between human and non-human, sentient and non-sentient, mind and matter.

Þorleifs þáttr jarlaskálds—the tale of Þorleifr, the earl’s poet—provides an introductory case study, telling of a Norwegian king who calls upon his tutelary goddesses, the sisters Þorgerðr Hǫrgabrúðr and Irpa, to help him construct a trémaðr assassin out of a piece of driftwood and a human heart, which he sends to Iceland to kill the poet who shamed him. This wooden character is named—Þorgarðr—given clothes, and is able to walk and talk.

Drawing on wide-ranging examples, I will explore the ways in which this type of pre-Christian figure was imagined in post-conversion Iceland (e.g., the wooden idols of Freyr in Gunnars þáttr helmings and Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta); how trémenn are imbued with emotional interiority and selfhood (e.g., the ashamed trémenn in Hávamál and the tearful trémaðr in Ragnars saga loðbrókar); and how bark acts as both metaphorical and literal clothing (e.g. the Birkibeinar in Sverris saga and the Næframaðr in Örvar-Odds saga). Evidence from Sonatorrek and other skaldic verse provides parallel evidence, with a diverse range of kennings figuratively linking people with trees.

I will also analyse why driftwood in particular is used as a building material for human-tree hybrids (e.g., Askr and Embla in Gylfaginning); the symbolic connection between driftwood and fate (e.g., Ingólfr’s high-seat pillars in Landnámabók); how natural objects can be granted vitality and narrative agency (e.g., Þuríðr’s cursed driftwood in Grettis saga); and how this might relate to medieval Icelandic thinking about wood, trees, and a changing environment with limited natural resources.

I will thus argue for the merits of a more expansive, post-humanist, object-oriented, material ecocriticism to provide new readings of the Old Norse-Icelandic literary environment.

Timothy Bourns is graduate of the Medieval Icelandic Studies Master’s program. He wrote his doctoral thesis about animals in Old Norse literature at the University of Oxford, and now he is a postdoctoral researcher on the international project ‘Emotion and the Medieval Self in Northern Europe’ based at the University of Iceland.

The talk will be delivered in English. All are welcome to attend.

From the 13^th to the 15^th of November, we held our first Emotion and the Medieval Self in Northern Europe workshop in Utrecht, Netherlands, and by all accounts it was a great success. On the first afternoon, Frank Brandsma led a round of general introductions and Sif Ríkharðsdóttir introduced and outlined the project; then Timothy Bourns led a discussion of key terms and working definitions and Carolyne Larrington concluded with the aims and goals of the workshop. Having prepared ourselves for the next day’s discussion of emotion and selfhood in medieval Dutch, Norse, and German romance, we had a joyful dinner at the charming pancake house De oude Muntkelder, before heading back to the Court Hotel for an early night.

The second day featured the texts themselves; participants were asked to share a passage in advance which they then presented for group discussion in the workshop, as we aimed to utilise key terms (emotion, self, performativity) to articulate possible cultural contingencies of emotive performativity or selfhood, textual idiosyncracies, cross-cultural traces, and linguistic characteristics. In the opening Dutch Session, Frank Brandsma (Utrecht) presented on Queen Guinevere’s madness and loss of self in Lanceloet, Martine Veldhuizen (Utrecht) on Constantine and the weeping mothers in Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea, and Chloé Vondenhoff (Iceland and Utrecht) on Perceval’s memory loss and penitence in Perchevael.

Following lunch, textual discussion turned northwards with the Norse Session, starting with Carolyne Larrington (Oxford) on Blensibil’s sighting of Kanelangres and lovesickness in Tristans saga ok Ísöndar, Timothy Bourns (Iceland) on animal emotionality and the lion in Ívens saga, and Sif Ríkharðsdóttir (Iceland) on Íven’s madness and emotive performance in Ívens saga. Ending the day’s discussion was the German Session, with Miriam Edlich-Muth (Düsseldorf) presenting on the negotiation of joy in Der Stricker’s Daniel von Blühenden Tal, Lucie Kaempfer (Oxford) on Partonopier’s fear before meeting Meliur in Konrad von Würzburg’s Partonopier und Meliur, Lena Zudrell (Vienna) on narratorial selfhood in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and Hartmann von Aue’s Erec, and Cora Dietl (Giessen) on the various shades of embarrassment in Parzival. After a very full, lively, and productive day of close reading and collaboration, we had a delicious workshop dinner at De Rechtbank in the Court Hotel.

On our third and final day, we concluded our discussion with comments from Bart Besamusca (Utrecht), who sat in on the workshop and provided valuable feedback on the project and its aims. We also revisited our working terms and definitions and discussed the project’s broader aims and goals in detail, before having a final lunch at Grand Café Luden. Thus concluded our first workshop, and we now look forward to our next gathering in Oxford in March, 2020, where we will examine emotion and selfhood in Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Welsh, Irish and Scots romance, once again exploring how emotion is conveyed and how such emotive performance contributes to constructing a notion of selfhood in the medieval North. We sincerely thank all of the participants for an incredibly instructive, engaging, and enjoyable workshop in Utrecht. We hope to stay in touch and see each other again before long!