This paper addresses variation in lexical semantics by oral-poetic register and genre, including semantic variation in formulaic language. It reviews uses of the Old Norse term þurs (commonly translated 'ogre') in verse contexts, including runic inscriptions. It argues that the semantics of this term varied in relation to the genre in which it was used, including uses with reference to mythological giants (jötnar) in mythological narratives, agents of illness in charms, and as a vague synonym for 'monster' in death-songs more like the prose narratives in which these appear. It proposes that variation by genre includes genres embedded in narrative as speech acts, approaching these as 'registral irruptions' in mertical narrative. It shows that, especially in the fornyrðislag meter, use of this term was highly formulaic and considers the question of whether it may have indexed excessive or inappropriate sexuality.

It can be demonstrated, from celestial observations in 19th century Icelandic tradition, that certain ideas in Old Norse mythology referred directly to peculiar celestial phenomena, beyond the obvious idea of the bridge Bifröst being a mythological interpretation of the rainbow. In view of the actual proof from the 19th century it should be worth discussing the possibility of taking that idea a step further and read the entire Snorri's Edda as a mythological interpretation of the world as it appears to the naked eye: The earth below and the sky above where the stars and other heavenly bodies move around, as well as up and down, some in a clearly regular pattern and others less so, day and night. This approach changes radically all our discussion about systematic thought behind the individual myths as well as about their source value as reflections of pre-Christian ideas in the north.

This paper outlines a methodology for approaching mythology in earlier cultural environments for which written sources are limited or completely lacking. This methodology here specifically targets how to relate that mythology to evidence in the material record. This is illustrated through the case of the so-called clay paw rite of Viking Age Åland. Åland presents an interesting example owing to its position between linguistic-cultural areas on the one hand while the language and intangible culture of Åland remains otherwise unknown. The clay paw rite is a distinctively Ålandic phenomenon of the late Iron Age that is customarily interpreted as related either to a cult of the bear or a cult of the beaver. This rite is also interesting because it was apparently carried by Ålanders along the Eastern Route where it became established deep in a Finno-Ugric cultural area. The methodology outlined here includes a theoretical framework for approaching 'mythology' in terms of systems of symbols, relating these to narratives, magic and ritual practices. All of the systems of symbols within a cultural environment (which may include both e.g. Christian and vernacular systems, vernacular Germanic and Finnic systems, etc.) are together approached as a 'symbolic matrix' within which there can be different perspectives. The different perspectives are discussed in relation to different genres of performative practices and different institutions or social roles of ritual specialist, from ritual lamenters to Christian priests. The local and regional developments of mythology that are historical outcomes of both external contacts and internal change are viewed as producing 'dialects' of mythology. The long history of contacts and interactions in the Baltic Sea region are viewed as forming the equivalent of a language-dialect continuum for (at least certain areas of) mythologies cross-culturally. Åland is situated on this continuum between North Germanic and North Finnic cultures. This situation on the continuum enables certain reasonable inferences about the mythology current in the Viking Age irrespective of whether Åland was a Scandinavian- or Finnic-speaking area. The inferences that this approach enables are then applied to the case of the clay paw rite, the evidence of which is considered material outcomes of a mythologically informed symbolic practice.

This chapter outlines an approach to how ritual technologies prominent for a person can impact on the development of that person’s body image – i.e. a symbolic and iconic model of what our body is (and is not). Three types of ritual specialists from the Old Norse milieu are explored: berserkir, vǫlur and what are here described as deep-trance specialists. It is argued that all three were likely conceived as having distinct body images linked to the respective ritual technologies that they used. Bringing into focus the relationship between the technology of practice and body image interfaced with it offers insights into how their technologies were imagined to “work”, and also the degree to which they aligned with or diverged from the normative body image identified with non-specialists in society. A response to the chapter has been submitted by Margaret Clunies Ross.

This article addresses a historical transformation in Finno-Karelian mythology of kalevalaic poetry (which provided the basis for the national epic Kalevala). The transformation is addressed in long-term perspective, focusing on the discontinuities from a Finno-Ugric heritage. It addresses several strata of development in terms of 'ethnocultural substrata' (see Papers on Theory, Method and Tools). These include stratified developments evident in the lexicon of the mythology; evidence of a Circum-Baltic narrative cycle connected with the spread of iron-working technology; and concentrates on the revolution in the mythology associated with a language-based technology of incantations, which included conceptual models of the body incompatible with inherited shamanism. Discussion centers on the mythological cycle associated with the mysterious object called sammas/sampo, looking at the historical backgrounds of the material and its transformation in the emergence of this mythological cycle. These transformations are considered in relation to the restructuring of the mythology and its relationship to the new category of ritual specialist associated with the technology of incantations. This paper overlaps with "Shamans, Christians, and Things in between", which is oriented to medievalists and especially Germanic scholars and discusses processes and implications of synthesis of the tradition and its spread over a large geographical area, displacing other forms of Finnic mythology and also the Sámi mythology of linguistically assimilated populations. This paper also overlaps with "Evolution, Revolution and Ethnocultural Substrata", which concentrates on the Uralic sky-gods in long-term perspective and what happened to the inherited models in Finnic cultures.

This paper presents a methodological framework for addressing variation and change in mythology within a cultural environment. Mythology is approached in terms of a ‘symbolic matrix’, which provides a semiotic context for mythic discourse. Different formal ‘integers’ of mythology are distinguished. ‘Dialects’ and ‘registers’ of mythology are introduced along with an approach to ‘positioning’ within the symbolic matrix.

This chapter offers an introduction to approaching mythology in North Finnic cultures during the Iron Age. The target audience is specialists in fields other than Finnish folklore studies and comparative religion who are interested in addressing or referencing mythology in their own historical research. The chapter includes discussions of mythology as a phenomenon, its relationships to cultural practices, synchronic and diachronic variation in mythology as well as theoretical and methodological points that have general relevance to research on mythology in earlier periods. A primary focus is not to present a reconstruction of mythology in the Viking Age but rather how mythology and sources for mythology from later periods can (and cannot) be used when approaching other source material and evidence of culture from the Viking Age or from the Iron Age more generally.

This paper has received a surprising amount of attention. It has some interesting points. There are also some places where I would handle material differently, and I thought it might be worthwhile to mention both its highlights and a soft spot that has been addressed better elsewhere. The observation had not, to my knowledge, been made before that the eddic poem Völundarkvida exhibits not only a shift in characters but that this co-occurs with a marked stylistic shift suggestive of different backgrounds to its two parts of the poem. The most valuable part of the article is, to my mind, the comparison of the capture of Völundr in this poem with a traditional story-pattern found elsewhere in medieval Scandinavian sources: the story pattern accounts for the capture of a supernatural being and acquisition of its magical sword and ring/necklace/belt. I would like to return to this at some point with some additional material. I still find the most convincing explanation for the various evidence that Völundarkvida has evolved from the combination of the story pattern with the Germanic tradition of the avenging smith (presumably already in eddic form, noting the stylistic and narrative shift in the poem). It is nevertheless good to note that the publication is based on a student conference paper presented in 2006. The discussion of Finno-Ugric bear traditions and comparison with Old Norse evidence is methodologically soft. On this topic I would recommend a reader instead to the handling of the question in: http://www.academia.edu/12361723/From_Mythology_to_Identity_and_Imaginal_Experience_An_Exploratory_Approach_to_the_Symbolic_Matrix_in_Viking_Age_%C3%85land I would now reframe discussion in this article to view bears as a category of being that can blur with humans and with other categories of supernatural beings. The whole study initially began, inspired by Kaaren Grmistad's work, through the exploration of possible links between Völundr and bear traditions. In retrospect, I see that the argument about the combination of two plots in the evolution of Völundarkvida that developed is not dependent on the bear question, which in fact distracts from the more significant argument. I would now be more inclined to separate these discussions before attempting to look at them in combination. On the whole, there are a lot of interesting and fun details addressed here and I would like to return to this topic in the future. On the other hand, this was very much at the beginning of my work; it anticipates my later research in many respects, but I now feel it is dated in more than years, even if it still contains a few observations that may be worthwhile.

The paper discusses the metre and the diction of a previously unpublished short poem composed in the 18th century about characters of Laxdæla saga. The stanzas are ostensibly in skaldic dróttkvætt. Analysis shows them to be a remarkably successful imitation of the classical metre, implying an extraordinarily good grasp of dróttkvætt poetics on the part of a poet who was composing several centuries after the end of the classical dróttkvætt period.

North Finnic religions underwent a transformation during the Iron Age. This paper argues that the transformation occurred through the assimilation of Scandinavian ritual practices that produced a new type of ritual specialist that gradually displaced inherited forms of shamanism (and later displaced Sámi shamanism). Within the context of the volume, this is addressed in the framework of conversion. This paper concentrates on changes in conceptual modeling systems and the relationships of Finnic gods to the corresponding gods carried with the Germanic models. The text is oriented to scholars interested in Scandinavian or Germanic traditions with little or no knowledge of the Finnic traditions discussed. The study shows that comparisons of these traditions can be mutually illuminating. Der Aufsatz behandelt eine auf germanischen Modellen beruhende religiöse Umwälzung in den nordostseefinnischen Kulturen. Dieser Prozess passierte, bevor das Christentum eingeführt wurde, und verdrängte den traditionellen Schamanismus, wodurch das mythologische System vollständig verändert wurde. Dieser Aufsatz konzentriert sich auf die Veränderungen in den Vorstellungssystemen und auf die Beziehungen der finnischen Götter (Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, Ukko) zu den entsprechenden germanischen Göttern (Odin, Thor), wobei gezeigt wird, dass ein Vergleich dieser Traditionen gegenseitig erhellend sein kann.

Any historical study of Sámi religions links religion to the history of the language. Here, Proto-Sámi language spread is reviewed and the fundamental (and often implicit) assumption that religion spread with Proto-Sámi language is challenged. An alternative model that language spread as a medium of communication adopted by different cultures is proposed and tested against the Common Proto-Sámi lexicon. The finding is a lack of positive evidence for the spread of religion with Proto-Sámi language, while the name of the central sky-god / thunder-god in Sámi languages on the Kola Peninsula is identified as a loan from an indigenous language, indicating some degree of religious continuity through language change. The lack of positive lexical evidence for a spread of religion combines with evidence that vocabulary and apparently traditions linked to ritual and belief spread through the Proto-Sámi language networks subsequent to its spread. In addition, the archaeological record does not present positive evidence of spread of religion with the language and instead archaeological cultures seem to exhibit continuities through the relevant period. The paper concludes that religion formations documented among later Sámi language groups cannot be assumed to derive from a common Proto-Sámi religion or even to have an Uralic background. Instead, it is possible or even probable that the diversity in later Sámi religions could be an outcome of multiple other linguistic cultural groups shifting to Proto-Sámi language while maintaining their vernacular religion, or at least parts of it. Consequently, generalizations about 'Sámi' religion, claims about common Sámi religious heritage, and also uses of Sámi evidence in comparisons with Uralic traditions should be built on arguments rather than assumptions.

This article builds on the survey of evidence of ATU 1148b traditions in "Circum-Baltic Mythology?" (2011) with concentration on the Germanic evidence. It argues that Thor's adventure to the home of the giant Geirrøðr is an adaptation of or has adapted models from the 'Theft of the Thunder-Instrument' (tale-type ATU 1148b) tradition, which in Germanic culture seems to have become connected with motifs linked to iron-working technologies. It also shows that the eddic poem Þrymskviða is a culture-specific adaptation of ATU 1148b and that internal evidence of the poem indicates that this adaptation is some form of parody against the thunder god, most likely reflecting a Christian perspective within the contemporary discourse on paganism. This view of Þrymskviða is consistent with the poem's later adaptation and wide circulation as a Scandinavian ballad while the idiom of Þrymskviða makes it highly probable that the poem was composed in Iceland, most likely in the thirteenth century.

The cult surrounding the complex and seemingly core Old Norse deity Óðinn encompasses a barely known group who are further disappearing into the folds of time. This thesis seeks to shed light upon and attempt to understand a motif that appears to be well recognised as central to the worship of this deity but one rarely examined in any depth: the motivations for, the act of and the resulting image surrounding the act of human sacrifice or more specifically, hanging and the hanged body. The cult of Óðinn and its more violent aspects has, with sufficient cause, been a topic carefully set aside for many years after the Second World War. Yet, with the ever present march of time, we appear to have reached a point where it has become possible to discuss such topics in the light of modernity. To do so, I adhere largely to a literary studies model, focusing primarily upon eddic and skaldic poetry and the consistent underlying motifs expressed in conjunction with descriptions of this seemingly ritualistic act. To these, I add the study of legal and historical texts, linguistics and contemporary chronicles. I further include the results of modern archeology and toponymy, with additional examples drawn from directly related and comparative time periods and cultures. The primary chapters first assess Óðinn in connection with men and specifically, trees. These three elements (god, worshiper and object) can be seen to link into the overarching motif and practice of hanging, as observed in theophoric places-names of Scandinavia. It then follows to link the deity and the motif and practice of hanging more specifically, through close analysis of the gods’ own hanging and how that related to, or created, ritual practice. It is also essential to understand how methods of execution were understood in the Viking Age and as such, evaluate hanging’s social reputation in order to bring the effects of cultic practice into Viking reality. Through contemporary poetic and historical examples, I examine the method and academically suggested motivations for this practice and by highlighting the specific factors of proper death, reputation, personal honour and essentially, lasting memory, find that the two do not match. Lastly, I examine the social response to death and the importance of entering the afterlife correctly and additionally, being left to rest peacefully. With hanging lying in direct opposition to this belief, it is possible to show that the practice of hanging, dedicated to Óðinn, is not a sacrifice of an individual to a war deity, but a multipurpose wartime sacrifice of knowledge as well as performing the role of highly destructive and dangerous political and social weapon. This document is available in an edited/adapted format as the Kindle ebook entitled "The Deathly Gallows".

This paper confronts the research tendency to treat a performance tradition as a semiotic phenomenon in isolation from its performance environment. 'Performance environment' is developed as an analytical concept describing an abstraction of the conventional environment of a performance practice as constituted of customary features that reciprocally become predictable. This is distinguished from the 'situation-specific environment' as the setting of any particular performance. Performance environment is a broad concept that may include anything from spaces, places or temporal settings to social situations or emotional atmosphere. It is considered in relation to John Miles Foley’s concept of 'performance arena' as an experienced-based semiotic framework for producing and receiving expressions of a particular tradition. Foley’s concept is extended from concerning only semiosis to also include emotional engagement, with potential for its activation to vary by degree. We propose that performance arena and performance environment are linked through conventions of practice. When considering this connection in relation to particular cases, we consider parameters of alignment versus disalignment and reinforcement versus contrast. These parameters are tools for exploring how situation-specific environments interact with a performance environment and performance arena. The soundscape of Karelian funeral lament is taken up as a feature of the performance environment that contextualizes and reinforces the performance arena, while lament performance participates in the soundscapes of additional ritual activities. The case’s analogical value is illustrated through comparison with examples from Old Norse eddic poetry and saga literature.

The present study scrutinizes the outlawry and outlaws that appear in the Icelandic Family Sagas. It provides a thorough description about outlawry on the basis of extant law and saga texts as well as an analysis of referential connotations attached to it. The concept of outlawry was fundamental for the medieval Icelanders conceptions of their past. Indeed, understanding outlawry is essential for understanding many of the Family Sagas. Outlaws appear in saga texts in significant roles. The Icelandic Family Sagas comprise a group of prose narratives that were written down in the 13th and 14th century Iceland. They are based on events and personae that belong to the 10th century Iceland. These narratives introduce many outlaws, out of which some 75 are named. The Family Sagas are studied here as one corpus and special emphasis is given to those narrative features that repetitively appear in connection with outlawry and the outlaw characters. Therefore, the eventual objects of this study are the medieval Icelanders general conceptions of the historical outlawry as well as the variations of these conceptions throughout the period of saga writing. The medieval Icelanders general conceptions about the 10th 11th century, which are reflected in the Family Sagas, are here referred to as the Saga World. The Saga World is the historically based taleworld to which all of the Family Sagas refer. The medieval law texts, which were derived from centuries old legislative traditions, reveal that outlawry meant banishing from the society and being denied all help, and that the outlawed person lost the protection of the law. In practice, outlawry was a death sentence. However, outlaws occupy many differing roles in the saga narratives even in connection with recurrent narrative motifs. These roles reflect the social and spatial structures of the Saga World. The inspection of outlawry within these structures reveals that the definition of outlawry as it appears in the law texts is insufficient for understanding outlawry in the saga texts. The social and spatial structures also provide a basis for the connotations of outlawry. In this study, these connotations are inspected primarily from the referential connections between outlawry in the Family Sagas and corresponding phenomena in other concurrent literature. This is done by studying the implementations of the basic elements of outlawry in the Family Sagas marginalization, banishing, rejection and solitariness within other literary genres and the taleworlds to which they refer. It is argued that these taleworlds reflect the same ideas that were associated with outlawry in the Family Sagas albeit in different forms and that these different forms reciprocally contributed to the conceptions of outlawry. The variety of denotations and connotations of outlawry that is visible in the medieval Icelandic texts reflects the ambiguity of outlawry in the Family Sagas. This ambiguity may shed light to questions such as why an outlaw could be perceived as a hero in a literary genre that predominantly promoted law and order and why the same outlaw could be perceived as a villain on another occasion.

Háskóli Íslands. This thesis is a study of the valkyrjur (‘valkyries’) during the late Iron Age, specifically of the various uses to which the myths of these beings were put by the hall-based warrior elite of the society which created and propagated these religious phenomena. It seeks to establish the relationship of the various valkyrja reflexes of the culture under study with other supernatural females (particularly the dísir) through the close and careful examination of primary source material, thereby proposing a new model of base supernatural femininity for the late Iron Age. The study then goes on to examine how the valkyrjur themselves deviate from this ground state, interrogating various aspects and features associated with them in skaldic, Eddic, prose and iconographic source material as seen through the lens of the hall-based warrior elite, before presenting a new understanding of valkyrja phenomena in this social context: that valkyrjur were used as instruments to propagate the pre-existing social structures of the culture that created and maintained them throughout the late Iron Age.

The human memory is treacherous. Ideas can become forgotten, be misattributed and mutate. As a result, the mythologies of oral cultures change over time. Taking literature about Þórr as a case study, this thesis aims to understand the operations underpinning both this change and stability in Old Norse mythological representations. To do so, I adopt, develop and evaluate a methodology from the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), an amalgamation of disciplines including psychology, anthropology, neurobiology and zoology. I hope to contribute to the ongoing debate over the socio-cultural and cognitive roots of religion. Many of the major sources of Old Norse religion are Christian documents, negotiating with a pagan heritage through the prisms of Biblical and classical religious traditions. After discussing the problems this creates for modern commentators examining diversity, I analyse two competing schools of thought in CSR, a context-focused model of transmission and a concept-focused model. Certain factors are distinguished as key to stability in oral transmission: culturally inculcated expectations regarding a concept, counterintuitive breaches of these expectations and the capacity of a concept to adapt to novel textual and extra-textual contexts. In the following chapters, two major concepts now associated with Þórr are examined. Strength is shown to be integral to the deity’s mythological representation, but thunder and lightning, despite the breadth of sources considered, is not. According to the factors previously identified, therefore, thunder and lightning cannot offer a transmission advantage. However, a dichotomy between Icelandic and Scandinavian material is observed regarding the importance of thunder and lightning to Þórr’s characterization. Þórr is demonstrated to be a very flexible supernatural concept. The pivotal quality of strength facilitates the formation of new associations with culturally salient concepts like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, whilst irrelevant associations are shed. Coalitions of strongly associated concepts act as narrative vessels for the deity’s survival, preserving conceptualizations about the god over successive authors’ iterations on a narrative and perhaps assisting in the stability of traditional poetry in oral transmission.

Myth has become a fundamental frame of reference for Western thinking. This paper explores the term and category " myth " from the perspective of folklore studies, with concern for the use of myth as a tool in research. The ways in which myth has been used in both academic and popular discourses are discussed. These are viewed in a historical perspective against the backdrop of the origins of the modern term. Attention is given to how historical patterns of use have encoded " myth " with evaluative stance-taking, building an opposition of " us " versus " them " into myth as something " other people " have, in contrast to us, who know better. Discussion then turns to approaching myth as a type of story. The consequences of such a definition are explored in terms of what it does or does not include; the question of whether, as has often been supposed, myth is a text-type genre, is also considered. Discussion advances to aesthetic evaluation at the root of modern discussions of myth and how this background informs the inclination to identify myth as a type of story on the one hand while inhibiting the extension of the concept to, for example, historical events or theories about the world or its origins, on the other. Approaching myth as a type of modeling system is briefly reviewed—an approach that can be coupled to viewing myth as a type of story. Finally, discussion turns to the more recent trend of approaching mythology through mythic discourse, and the consequences as well as the benefits of such an approach for understanding myth in society or religion. There are many different ways to define myth. The present article explores how different approaches are linked to one another and have been shaped over time, how our definition of myth and the way we frame the concept shape our thinking, and can, in remarkably subtle ways, inhibit the reflexive application of the concept as a tool to better understand ourselves.

'The Contemporary Evidence for Early Medieval Witchcraft-Beliefs' is a note drawing attention to a group of early medieval texts relevant to the history of European witchcraft, and the reasons why they have been overlooked. The main texts are the Life of St Samson, the Old English medical text Wið færstice and the Life of St Swithun.

The article considers the image of the Old Norse Vanir gods and their religion that seems to have existed in Nordic oral tradition from pres-Christian times, underlining the degree to which this "religion" was seen as being different in nature to that of the æsir.

This short chapter treats the use of Memory Studies in the discipline history of religion in general and in the study of pre-Christian Nordic religion specifically. While the conception of cultural memory stems largely from Jan Assmann’s work on Egyptian religion and society and various scholars of religion have worked with memory studies approaches not much research has been done explicitly on religion and memory. This also seems true of the study of pre-Christian Nordic religion, where an even more limited amount of work dealing with memory has been produced. Furthermore, the chapters suggests fruitful future approaches and uses of Memory Studies in the Study of pre-Christian Nordic religion. The main avenue for this future research seems to be the study of ritual.

The purpose of my paper is to analyse the influence of medieval European literature on the composition of the Icelandic Sagas. The literary production in medieval Iceland becomes especially important when an antimonarchical, anti-courtly faction of intellectuals appears on the mostly monarchical European stage. The search for a cultural identity has a fundamental effect on the world of literary creation. The fundamental question of the invention of tradition in Iceland in the Middle Ages works as a trigger for the observation of the problematic involved in its literary production. Pre-Christian myths, Latin literature, old poetry and beliefs crystallized in the so called by Meulengracht Sørensen “paradox, of a copious and highly developed literature in a remote country” . The explanation given by now to this paradox from a literary and sociological approach is to consider that an exceptional society, formed in exceptional circumstances, as is the case in medieval Iceland, produced an exceptional literature. Beyond the isolating terms implied in this conception, this “exceptional” character will be our actual matter of work. Considering it not as a solitary development rooted in ancient times, but as a “response” to its contemporary European scenery. A courtly literature would have had no reception in a small farming population, organized far from a kingly structure. It is this exceptional sociological and political situation, in contrast to the birth of European kingdoms, a great companion for the creation of a literature in terms of invention of tradition. Challenging the theory of a self-constructed isolated literature, we will reveal within the texts of the sagas how the different voices from the Viking Age are set to dialogue with its contemporary European text-context referent. Bibliography: Meulengrachr Sørensen, Preben, “Social institutions and belief systems of medieval Iceland (c. (70-1400) and their relations to the literary production”, p. 10, in Clunies Ross, M. Old Icelandic Literature and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

A group of Old Icelandic Óðinn names are known to contain the second component -foðr, the etymology of which has been subject to some discussion. In the present study, an etymology presented by Hollifield (1984), according to which -foðr is to be understood as cognate with Greek -pátōr, is considered superior to the alternative suggestions. A problem with this etymology is discerned: Greek compounds in -pátōr are possessive, whereas the -foðr compounds are traditionallt regarded as endocentrics. An attempt is therefore made to interpret each of the known -foðr compounds as possessive. The method employed consists of testing tentative semantic possibilities with reference to the mythological account of Óðinn and his ancestry given in Snorra Edda. The study does not yield any conclusive results, but it is found that an interpretation of Alfoðr as a possessive compound meaning 'having a forefather who is (grown) big' enjoys remarkable support from the account given in Snorra Edda of Óðinn's ancestry, where his grandfather Buri is described as "beautiful in appearance, big and powerful" (Edda 1987: 11). For the remaining compounds, it is suggested that they might have been formed through free combination of the second component -foðr with first components gathered from other dithematic Óðinn names, thus lacking a semantic relationship between the components.

This paper presents a new understanding of the cosmology of pre-Christian Scandinavian myth. The sources appear to give contradictory information; for example, the Æsir are located in different places: at the centre of the world, in the west, in the east, under the sea, and in the sky; Hel is placed both in the underground and beyond the sea. In recent studies, this has led to the conclusion that there is no system. The author argues that there is, and that we misunderstand the passages to other worlds. The otherworld can be defined as ‘the world beyond what we can access by natural means’. The starting-point is the realm that is physically accessible to humans, forming a compressed, wide ‘bubble’ around him/her and the local community, since our natural range is very wide in the horizontal plane in all directions, but very short downwards and upwards. Still, people have always imagined that it is possible supernaturally to transcend this ‘bubble’ through certain passages. These passages point in many directions from the middle of the ‘bubble’, but the locations of the passages are not identical to the location(s) of the other world(s), the passages being interchangeable with each other and often lead to the same (kind of) land/place. The other worlds have interfaces with this world and with each other, but have no geographical location in relation to this world or to the others – they are simply ‘beyond the passages’, ‘on the other side’. Accordingly, the fundamental model may be construed as an opposition between ‘us’ and ‘the others’, with an ever-changing border. This system becomes clear when we examine not only the limited Old Norse sources, but consider them in the light of the abundant folktales and legends recorded in post-medieval times throughout Northern Europe.

This paper explores the concept of ‘Circum-Baltic mythology’ as an outcome of long-term contacts between cultures in the Baltic Sea region. Regional variations in the mythology of a culture are approached as “dialects” and the mythologies of cultures of the Baltic Sea region are approached as “macro-dialects” with both shared features and differences. Case studies mentioned in the title are presented to illustrate different types of contact-based developments in these macro-dialects of mythology.

Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations. The eighteen articles of Mythic Discourses address the many facets of myth in Uralic cultures, from the Finnish and Karelian world-creation to Nenets shamans, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from twenty eastern and western scholars. The mythologies of Uralic peoples differ so considerably that mythology is approached here in a broad sense, including myths proper, religious beliefs and associated rituals. Traditions are addressed individually, typologically, and in historical perspective. The range and breadth of the articles, presenting diverse living mythologies, their histories and relationships to traditions of other cultures such as Germanic and Slavic, all come together to offer a far richer and more developed perspective on Uralic traditions than any one article could do alone.

I this study I have explored the medieval Icelandic folk theory of emotions - what emotions were thought to be, from what they originated and how they operated - and additionally, whether medieval Icelanders had alternative emotion discourses in literature, in addition to the usual manner of representation (poetry, dialogue, description of somatic changes).

'Were there Vikings in Finland?’ Fibula, Fabula, Fact – The Viking Age in Finland is intended to provide essential foundations for approaching the Viking Age in Finland. The volume consists of a general introduction followed by nineteen chapters and a closing discussion. The nineteen chapters are oriented to provide introductions to the sources, methods and perspectives of diverse disciplines. Discussions are presented from fields including archaeology, folklore studies, genetics, geopolitics, historiography, language history, linguistics, palaeobotany, semiotics and toponymy. Each chapter is intended to help open the resources and the history of discourse of the particular discipline in a way that will be accessible to specialists from other fields, specialists from outside Finland, and also to non-specialist readers and students who may be more generally interested in the topic.