Encounters at the Mound in Old Norse Literature: Dialogues between Landscape and Narrative
2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 94; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/21638195.94.4.01
ISSN2163-8195
Autores Tópico(s)Linguistics and language evolution
ResumoIn Old Norse literature, landscape is a significant component of the grammar of a text. To take just three examples, consider Drangey in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar: a sheer and unassailable island described as a "vígi" (Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar 1936, 218) [stronghold], where the outlaw Grettir makes his last stand. This "vígi" represents the ultimate topographical expression of Grettir's progressive dislocation from society, a locus "symbolic of an incarcerated psyche" (Damico 1986, 11). Consider the body of water across which two hostile interlocutors hurl insults and negotiate identities in the eddic poem Hárbarðsljóð: "'Hverr er sá karl karla / er kallar um váginn?'" (Hárbarðsljóð 2014, 389) [Who is that churl of churls who calls across the gulf?].2 This spatial threshold is structural to the speech-act that ensues, since it enforces verbal rather than martial combat. And consider the dynamic seascape of cliff, rock, and wave, conjured through cumulative kennings by the skáld Vǫlu-Steinn in his stylistic re-enactment of the myth of the mead of poetry:3Heyr Míms vinar mina—mér er fundr gefinn Þundar—við góma sker glymjaglaumbergs, Egill, strauma.(Vǫlu-Steinn 2017, 428)(Egill, hear my streams of the merriment-cliff [breast] of the friend of Mímr [Óðinn > mead of poetry] [i.e., poem] resound against my gum-skerries [teeth]. Óðinn's find [mead of poetry] is given to me.)This article explores landscape as a component in the narrative and performative grammars of Old Norse literature, focusing primarily on the haugar (mounds) in Gísla saga Súrssonar and in the eddic corpus. In saga literature, and particularly in the Íslendingasögur, scholars have observed the capacity of landscapes to store and transmit narratives, using these observations to inform wider discussions on cultural memory and Icelandic national identity.4 Elsewhere, scholars have examined the role of landscape in the outlaw sagas, investigating the relationship between place and identity, and demonstrating how this relationship sheds light on the social and psychological condition of the outlaw.5 Attention has similarly been paid to the relationship between landscape and memory in eddic poetry, particularly the mnemonic functions of topographies and spatial structures.6 Beyond the field of cultural memory, landscapes in eddic poetry have chiefly been explored through two avenues: the conceptualization and topology of mythic space,7 and the dynamics of performative space.8In saga literature and Norse mythology, the frameworks of ecocriticism and, to a lesser extent, geocriticism, have also begun to be implemented. While ecocriticism is concerned with the entanglements between humans and the natural world, particularly in terms of ecological advocacy, geocriticism is more founded in spatial theory, and explores the relationships between real and fictional spaces (Miller 2017, 106).9 Ecocriticism is concerned with the vibrant relationships between texts, humans, and the non-human world, disengaging us from an exclusively anthropocentric perspective: as Christopher Abram argues, "all cultural production takes place within particular ecological contexts in which both human and nonhuman actors are enmeshed" (2019a, 19). In this respect, ecocriticism (and especially its offshoot, material ecocriticism)10 shares some common interests with several other burgeoning fields of inquiry also gaining traction among medievalists (e.g., new materialisms, posthumanism),11 particularly in terms of its rejection of dualisms indebted to Enlightenment thought (human/nature, subject/object, self/other, and matter/information, to name a few). While the application of ecocriticism to Norse material is relatively recent,12 it is nonetheless a rapidly growing field, as attested to by the establishment of the collaborative network ENSCAN (Ecocritical Network for Scandinavian Studies) and the publication of the first full-length ecocritical study of Old Norse Literature (Abram 2019a).One of the central tenets of ecocriticism, however, makes it less tenable as a lens of inquiry for this present article: its interest in "reading texts in order to inform current environmental debates or action" (Phelpstead 2014, 2). Because of this impulse, the ecocritical lens, when applied to medieval literature, has the potential to introduce fundamental anachronisms into one's research—as Abram acknowledges and indeed welcomes in his monograph: "This book is concerned with reading contemporary ecological issues into the medieval past so that we can read out of medieval texts ideas that inform our responses to the world that we live in now" (Abram 2019a, 39). By embracing anachronisms, we risk de-centring the texts, and can lose the ability to engage with them, as much as is possible, on their own terms.This article investigates the ways in which saga narrators and eddic poets use landscape as a semantic and semiotic tool, and advocates for increased attention to the presentation of the relationship between landscapes and narratives across this literature. It does so through two case studies concerning the representation of one topographic feature (the haugr) in two "genres" of Old Norse literature (the Íslendingasögur and the eddic corpus).13 These case studies are presented within a single scholarly discussion in the hope that future research, where appropriate, will likewise span text-types. Motifs that recur across the literature can inform us of underlying perspectives on the relationship between landscape and narrative in the Old Norse world; while divergences in the use of landscapes among genres and discursive modes can inflect our understanding of the stylistic and compositional features that characterize these genres and modes.Several recent studies have explored various functions of burial mounds.14 These studies either adopt a synoptic approach to their literary sources and therefore do not consider the function of mounds within their wider narrative contexts15 or they focus exclusively on archaeological evidence.16 The following analyses provide close readings of burial mounds within their narrative contexts, illustrating two distinct textual functions of the landscape. Firstly, landscapes are represented as exerting an influence on the direction of the narrative, as actants.17 This function is of especial interest to the field of saga studies, where there has been little research into the potential agencies exhibited by saga landscapes. Secondly, landscapes signal thematic and dramatic information to the audience. This function has been explored in saga literature,18 but not yet in the eddic corpus, where, as argued in my second case study, topographic cues are used to signpost type-scenes and speech-acts.19 For this eddic case study, a comparative approach is adopted to explore the recurrence of one spatial motif (the trope of an individual sitting on a mound), supported by a brief discussion of another motif associated with a speech-act—the gulf that provides the setting for sennur (flytings). This case study highlights how observations of the relationship between setting and speech can inform our readings of these poems, affording us greater insight into eddic praxis.The saga case study focuses on haugar in Gísla saga,20 exploring the relationship between pivotal speeches and burial mounds developed by the saga narrator. By examining this relationship, a new framework is arrived at, within which to interpret Gísli's "confessional" verse—a famous narrative crux in which the protagonist admits to the clandestine murder of his brother-in-law. The saga provides no clear motivation for his confession, and, as observed by Joseph Harris (1996, 75) and Jeffrey Turco (2016, 279), the verse constitutes the turning point in the saga, leading directly to Gísli's outlawry and ultimately to his death. This case study offers one close reading of the relationship developed between landscape and narrative by a saga narrator. It is therefore not representative of landscape functions in the Íslendingasögur at large, but rather, I hope, suggestive of the ways in which these sagas might benefit from more close readings that attend to the presentation of landscapes.21This section gives an overview of the ways in which saga narrators develop a relationship between landscape and narrative in the Íslendingasögur, providing a wider literary context for the treatment of mounds in Gísla saga. In the Íslendingasögur, landscapes are presented as instrumental both in the preservation and transmission of narratives, and in the construction and direction of narratives.The sagas frequently imprint narrative moments into the "real" topography of Iceland, claiming that physical relics of tenth-century saga action are still visible in the landscape of the thirteenth-century saga audience. For example, in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, the successful settlement of Skalla-Grímr (famous for his smith-craft) in Iceland is tethered to a present landscape through a massive boulder he retrieved from the seabed: Liggr sá steinn þar enn ok mikit sindr hjá, ok sér þat á steininum, at hann er barðr ofan ok þat er brimsorfit grjót ok ekki því grjóti glikt ǫðru, er þar er, ok munu nú ekki meira hefja fjórir menn. (Egils saga Skalla-Grímmsonar 1933, 79)(That stone still lies there with much slag next to it, and the hammer-marks can be seen on top. The stone is sea-polished, and there is no other stone like it. Nowadays more than four men could not lift it.)Through his hammer-marks, Skalla-Grímr scores the narrative of his Icelandic settlement into the boulder, and there is a sense in which the saga narrator makes the immovability of the rock coterminous with the perpetuity of his memory. Both the landscape that Skalla-Grímr has marked and the author's saga itself function as texts. This saga moment exemplifies a theory recently proposed by Emily Lethbridge concerning the relationship between place and narrative: that Icelandic landscapes serve "as a medium for transmission [of narratives] alongside the parchment and paper tradition" (2016, 52).Narrative artifacts like Skalla-Grímr's boulder are also often preserved linguistically through place-names (e.g., "Grettishaf"; Grettir's Lift) (Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar 1936, 48).22 Even when no physical object reifies the narrative, place-names can yoke story to topography.23 Such toponyms often function as a kind of punctuation mark concluding an episode, establishing a synecdochic relationship between place-name and narrative. Place-names abbreviate narratives and can therefore prompt their retelling. Inversely, the relationship that certain sagas develop between toponyms and narratives has led critics to suspect that some place-name anecdotes have been constructed by saga writers out of pre-existing toponyms, with place-names acting as a source for saga writing.24 This phenomenon and its implications for the composition and transmission of saga narratives have been explored comprehensively by Lethbridge (2016, 58–66), who argues that the practice of taking place-names and using them "as the spark of anecdotal inspiration, creating characters and events out of them and moulding these anecdotes into bigger and more coherent wholes" would have occurred alongside the practice of writing up "pre-existing, 'genuine' oral traditions that were associated with specific places and place-names" (58).While physical landmarks and place-names are used by saga narrators to preserve, construct, and transmit narratives, some sagas in turn present the possibility of landscape-as-actant, instrumental in the direction of the narrative. A well-known turning point (both literal and narratological) in Brennu-Njáls saga sees Gunnarr, having been outlawed at the Alþing, riding to a ship to leave Iceland. As he and his brother Kolskeggr approach the Markar River, Gunnarr's horse stumbles. He leaps from the saddle and finds himself looking back up toward the valley of his farm. The sight compels him to speech: Fǫgr er hliðin, svá at mér hefir hon aldri jafnfǫgr sýnzk, bleikir akrar ok slegin tún, ok mun ek ríða heim aptr ok fara hvergi. (Brennu-Njáls saga 1954, 182)(How lovely the slopes are, more lovely than they have ever seemed to me before, pale cornfields and new-mown hay. I am going back home, and I will not go away.)Kolskeggr cannot persuade him to board the ship, and Gunnarr returns home, breaking his oath, dying at the hands of his enemies. Gillian Rudd, highlighting Gunnarr's concept of heim (home), argues that Gunnarr's speech "articulates that we are products of our actual geographical environment as much as our social one" (Rudd 2017, 144). Landscapes not only record narratives (as in Skalla-Grímr's boulder) but potentially reroute them, with pivotal consequences.Recent scholarship has focused more on the embedding of human meaning in saga landscapes, while the influence of the landscape on the direction of saga narratives has been largely left unexplored. For example, Jürg Glauser speaks in terms of a "semioticization" of the landscape, referring to how the human act of place-naming encodes cultural traces in the sagas (2000, 209); Gillian R. Overing and Marijane Osborn assert that human presence within a landscape makes space "accessible to our understanding, 'translates' it" (1994, 79); Matthias Egeler, discussing the nexus between space and place, describes how "meaning is imbued into spaces, turning them into places and landscapes" (2019, 37). This vantage point in part takes its cue from the social sciences, where the prevailing understanding is that "what humans perceive as 'nature,' 'environment,' or 'landscape' is cultural construction rather than objective reality" (Hoggart 2010, 2).25 The corollary of this view, as Carol Hoggart explores in her article on cognitive mapping in the Íslendingasögur, is the framing of landscape as a passive object, as "something that is cognitively acted upon without it in turn having any effect on that cognition" (2010, 2).26While landscape in the Íslendingasögur can legitimately be read as a map of human identity and history, the sagas also invite a more bi-directional reading, in which landscapes both record and catalyze actions.Gísla saga examines the disintegration of the family as the fundamental social unit in the face of complex divided loyalties (consanguineal, affinal, and homosocial). This dissolution is mapped through the trajectory of one sibling, Gísli Súrsson, a man "out of tune with the world around him" (O'Donoghue 2005, 159). His unbending commitment to increasingly obsolete principles of family honor and social justice distinguishes Gísli from others, leading him to murder, outlawry, and death.The text explores the way humans relate, and fail to relate, to one another. The tyranny of this domestic drama is intensified by repeated acts of concealment, surveillance, and disclosure: there are covert affairs27 and clandestine murders.28 There is use of disguise29 and extensive intelligence collection—people eavesdrop,30 listen through walls,31 and enlist the help of spies and emissaries.32 Information is transmitted between characters through the unofficial routes of gossip and eavesdropping: Gísli's first violent action is triggered by a rumor, "þat tǫluðu sumir menn, at Bárðr fífldi Þórdísi" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 7) [some people said that Bárðr had seduced Þórdís]; the deadly feud at Haukadalr is initiated by overheard gossip, as Auðr, Gísli's wife, is quick to recognize: "'Opt stendr illt af kvennahjali, ok má þat vera, at hér hljótisk af í verra lagi'" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 31) [Women's gossip often leads to trouble, and it may here result in the worst kind of trouble].The prevalence of rumor and surveillance in Gísla saga creates a claustrophobia that is magnified by the landscape within which the action unfolds. In the main narrative, there is little geographical roaming, both within and beyond Iceland.33 When characters do traverse the landscape, they do so whilst being pursued.34 The setting of the saga forces families shoulder to shoulder—"liggja þar saman garðar á Hóli ok Sæbóli" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 19) [the two farms, Hól and Sæból, lay side by side, divided by a hayfield wall]—heightening the conditions for gossip and hostility. Indeed, the "longer version" of the saga draws a connection between the physical and social space of the saga, ironically equating the proximity of the farms with the intended harmony between the two families: "Enn a Sæboli þar ligia saman garðar oc er vinfengi þeira gott at sva bunu" (Loth 1960, 7) [The two farms lay side by side and their friendship seemed likely to last]. As relations deteriorate, the topography of Haukadalr begins to exhibit the unspoken hostility in the community, with two burial mounds (Vésteinn's and Þorgrímr's) erected in the vicinity of the farmsteads (Barraclough 2010, 379).Throughout the saga, the narrator shows an interest in how meaning is constructed, stored, and transmitted: not only is the narrator concerned with how information travels via oblique roots (gossip, runic messages, cryptic verses), but the narrative of Gísli's outlawry is mapped onto the landscape by the protagonist, who, to his own detriment, leaves "signatures" scattered across this landscape, unwilling to disappear completely from the physical record.35 It is therefore no surprise that the burial mounds are also incorporated into the semiotic discourse of the text.36As Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough observes, the burial mounds of Vésteinn and Þorgrímr are instrumental in the narrative: "Action is drawn towards this conspicuous symbol of conflict and social instability [Vésteinn's mound]" (2010, 379). More precisely, however, it is speech rather than action that is drawn toward the mounds. Four decisive moments of speech in the saga occur near the haugar. Each speech concerns the identities of the killers of Vésteinn or Þorgrímr, and therefore holds critical significance for the direction of the narrative.As soon as Vésteinn's mound is built, it assumes an agentive role in the narrative as the setting for revelatory speech: the burial rights are performed, the men "setjask þeir niðr fyrir útan hauginn ok talask við ok láta allólíkliga, at nǫkkurr viti, hverr þenna glœp hefir gǫrt" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 46) [sit themselves down beside the mound and speak together, agreeing that it was unlikely that anyone knew who had done the deed]. Despite this initial prognosis, moments later, Gísli reveals to Þorkell that he has dreamt about the killing, and that his dreams indicate the identity of the murderer, though he will not name them. This partial revelation heightens the psychological depth of this scene between brothers (since Þorkell may be Vésteinn's killer) whilst setting in motion a pattern of verbal disclosures "fyrir útan hauginn" [beside the mound].As the community at Haukadalr attempts to move on following Vésteinn's murder—"tókusk nú upp leikar sem ekki hefði í orðit" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 49) [the games now started up as if nothing had happened]—the landscape prevents them from doing so, with the mound acting as an indexical sign of Vésteinn's unavenged death. This time, it is Þorgrímr who is prompted to speak "fyrir útan hauginn." During the games, Gísli tackles Þorgrímr to the ground. Þorgrímr retaliates with a dróttkvætt couplet: "Þorgrímr stóð seint upp; hann leit til haugsins Vésteins ok mælti: 'Geirr í gumna sǫrum / gnast; kannkat þat lasta'" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 50) [Þorgrímr slowly stood up; he looked toward Vésteinn's burial mound, and spoke: "Spear screeched in the wound of the man; I cannot be sorry"].The couplet's g-alliteration binds subject—"geirr" [spear]—object—"gumi" [man]—and verb—"gnast" [screeched]—together, aurally underscoring the details of Vésteinn's murder. Similarly, the aðalhending (full, internal rhyme) in the second line associates the past, anonymous act of murder—"gnast" [screeched]—with Þorgrímr's present lack of remorse—"lasta" [be sorry]. Where the previous revelation "fyrir útan hauginn" plays with the potential of Þorkell as murderer, Þorgrímr's taunt suggests the possibility of his own involvement in the death.When Þorgrímr is murdered soon after, his burial mound joins Vésteinn's beside Sæból, and soon exhibits its own agency: first, it resists the natural effects of the weather, giving off a warmth that protects the mound from frost (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 57). Then it prompts two pivotal moments of verbal disclosure. The first is a well-known narrative crux in Gísla saga. At the ball-games following Þorgrímr's funeral, Gísli sits down nearby a group of women in order to mend a bat, looks toward Þorgrímr's burial mound and speaks "vísu er æva skyldi" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 58) [a verse which he never should have]: Teina sák í túnitál-gríms vinar fǫluGauts þess's geig of veittakgunnbliks þáamiklu;nú hefr gnýstœrir geiragrímu Þrótt of sóttan,þann lét lundr of lendanlandkostuð ábranda.(Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 58)(I saw shoots in the thawed homefield of the {harm-Grímr of the {giantess's friend}} [giant > Þórr + grímr = Þorgrímr)]. I did great harm to that {battle-gleam of Gautr } [sword > warrior = Þorgrímr]. Now the increaser of the clash of spears [battle > warrior = Gísli] has attacked the {hooded Þróttr } [warrior = Þorgrímr], the land-hungry one, to whom the {tree of {river-flames}} [gold > man = Gísli] gave land.)The "strange implausibility" (O'Donoghue 2005, 151) of Gísli's confession has vexed many audiences of the saga, past and present. At this critical moment, the AM 556a 4to manuscript version of Gísla saga includes a remark that intrudes upon the narrative, anticipating the deadly consequences of Gísli's verse with the qualification that the verse "æva skyldi" [never should have (been spoken)]. This slippage in narrative objectivity is unique to this manuscript text of Gísla saga, and testifies to the discomfort of at least one early reader of the saga (the scribe/compiler) at Gísli's self-incrimination.Contemporary scholars are still puzzling over Gísli's admission. Turco tries out several scenarios: "Is he merely an 'irrepressible poet' . . . does he naively believe that no one will understand the poem . . . or does Gísli's confession simply form part of a psychological portrait: a medieval Icelandic Raskolnikov who cannot help but pronounce his own guilt?" (2016, 279–80). By analyzing this moment within its narrative and locative context, a different reading can be developed. The conditions under which Gísli speaks his confessional verse, as he "horfir á hauginn Þorgríms" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 58) [looks at Þorgrímr's mound], respond directly to Þorgrímr's taunt, spoken as he too "leit til haugsins Vésteins" (Gísla saga 1943, 50) [looked toward Vésteinn's mound]. As Simon Schama observes, landscape is built up "as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock" (1995, 7); for Gísli and Þorgrímr, the private, deadly memories built into each mound impel the men to provocative speech.37That the landscape might be acting upon Gísli's cognition here is further suggested by the prevalence of topographic imagery in his verse—"teinar" [shoots]; "lundr" [tree]; "á" [river]; "tún" [homefield]—as well as his closing remark that Þorgrímr, greedy for land, has now received a plot of his own. Further evidence is found in the polyvalence of the opening statement—"teina sák í túni" [I saw shoots in the homefield]—referring literally to the strange resistance of Þorgrímr's mound to frost, and figuratively to Þorgrímr's unborn child with Gísli's sister Þórdís.38 The phrase teinar í túni also appears in the eddic poem Guðrúnarkviða II, where Guðrún relates how her husband Atli awoke from a dream portending Guðrún's murder of their children: "'Hugða ek hér í túni / teina fallna'" (Guðrúnarkviða II 2014, 360) [I thought that here in the homefield shoots had fallen]. Where in Gísla saga, the image evokes the life of a child in the context of the death of a father, in Guðrúnarkviða II, the image evokes the death of children from the perspective of a living parent. Harris notes that the phrase "has a traditional look and might have been associated with children" (1991, 186), and this is supported by the use of plant imagery to signify lineage elsewhere in eddic poetry.39 This opening of Gísli's verse, spoken as he looks toward Þorgrímr's haugr, invokes a relationship between genealogy and mound that chimes with Ann-Mari Hållans Stenholm's closing statement to her article analyzing the creation of social memory through burial mounds at Ärvinge: "The burial mound was an important monument of memory contextualised in the landscape, and through it, genealogy was rooted in geography" (2018, 612). It seems likely that this genealogical component would add to the magnetizing force that the burial mounds exert on speech in Gísla saga.Heather O'Donoghue notes the placement of Gísli's verse within a series of supernatural events in the saga (the performance of a curse by Þorgrímr nef; the resistance of Þorgrímr's mound to frost; Auðbjǫrg's conjuring of an avalanche to avenge an insult to her son), suggesting that the narrative may be presenting Gísli "as being 'fated' to express his guilt, influenced by, indeed subject to, a power which works above and beyond naturalistic motivation" (2005, 153). If this is the case, then we can read the mounds not only as symbols of the covert murders at Haukadalr, but as instruments of fate, directing the narrative by triggering decisive moments of speech.40 Engaging with the catalytic force of the burial mounds in Gísla saga thus offers an alternative framework within which to unpuzzle Gísli's confession.Gísli's verse is overheard by his sister Þórdís, who memorizes and privately solves it. Þórdís does not act upon her discovery immediately; it is several months before she discloses Gísli's guilt to her new husband, and it is no coincidence that this revelation again plays out beside Þorgrímr's mound. Þórdís is accompanying Bǫrkr to Þórsnes, and they pass by Þórgrímr's mound on the way. Þórdís stops suddenly and refuses to continue: "Segir hon nú ok hvat Gísli hafði kveðit, þá er hann leit hauginn Þorgríms, ok kveðr fyrir honum vísuna" (Gísla saga Súrssonar 1943, 61) [Now she relays what Gísli had said, when he looked at Þorgrímr's mound, and she recites the verse to him].As with Gísli's confessional verse, readers have sought an explanation for why Þórdís, having initially concealed Gísli's culpability, betrays her brother at this moment. Lethbridge notes the structural and emotional functions of Þórdís's silence and revelation (2004, 48), while Vésteinn Ólason rationalizes Þórdís's behavior with reference to Þórdís's unborn son: "The possibility of raising a son with an obligation to take revenge for the killing of his father by killing her brother is too much for her, and she decides to get the matter resolved at once" (1999, 170).We can also understand Þórdís's behavior as part of this pattern of impulsive speeches that occur around the mounds. When read collectively, these four instances of revelatory speech "fyrir útan hauginn" [beside the mound] provide evidence for the catalytic force the haugar exert on the community at Haukadalr, a force that the saga narrator uses to deepen his investigation into emotional conflict and human motivation. By engaging with the narrator's use of landscape-as-actant in the drama of his narrative, we gain insight into the processes and possibilities of narrative construction in the Íslendingasögur.There are some interesting parallels in how eddic poetry and the Íslendingasögur incorporate landscapes into their narrative grammar. Both genres feature natural environments as actants.41 Both genres conceptualize fate in topographical terms.42 In both genres, characters process emotions through imagery drawn from the natural world.43 In both genres, settings hold a special significance for the speech and action that unfolds within them, as explored below.This section provides a backdrop for the case study of the mound in eddic poetry by outlining the ways in which a relationship between landscape and narrative, setting and speech, are developed in eddic verse.Eddic poetry pays close attention to the spatio-temporal positioning of its drama: action is often temporally dislocated from the audience (e.g., "ár var alda . . . " (Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 2014, 247) [it was early in the ages]) while references to spatial setting are turned to dramatic effect, as, for example, in the Codex Regius version of Vǫluspá.44 This poem is a visionary monologue, performed in the voice of a vǫlva (seeress), blending history with prophecy, cosmogony with eschatology. In the poem, the ligature for the past and the future appears at stanza 28,45 marked by the abrupt interjection of a narrative frame for the poem: Ein sat hon úti,þá er inn aldni komyggjungr ása,ok í augu leit:"Hvers fregnið mik?Hví freistið mín?Allt veit ek, Óðinn,hvar þú auga falt . . . "(Vǫluspá [R] 2014, 298)(She sat outside alone,when the old one came,the Terrible One of the Æsir,and looked into her eyes:"Why do you question me?Why do you try me?I know it all, Óðinn,where you hid your eye . . . ")The stanza jolts us from the changing spaces of the vǫlva's recitation into a stable narrative locus where the vǫlva herself resides, accosted by Óðinn during her ritual of útiseta (sitting out). A play of perspectives is introduced, embedding the vǫlva's speech within speech, "ek" [I] within "hon" [she]. The use of this spatial and narrative frame nearly halfway through the poem not only aids the text's chronological schema (which moves from past to present, present to future), but produces a dramatic moment of clarity in the center of the poem—as Ursula Dronke notes, "the poet makes Óði
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