Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature
2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 94; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/21638195.94.4.05
ISSN2163-8195
Autores Tópico(s)Linguistics and language evolution
ResumoWhat makes a people? The answer to this question will vary depending on whom one asks and which people one has in mind. For an early medieval perspective, one may turn to Isidore of Seville who at first glance appears to subscribe to a genealogical notion of peoplehood, which he sees inscribed in the noun gens, one of the Latin terms for “people”: A nation (gens) is a number of people sharing a single origin, or distinguished from another nation (natio) in accordance with its own grouping, as the “nations” of Greece or of Asia Minor. From this comes the term “shared heritage” (gentilitas). The word gens is also so called on account of the generations (generatio) of families, that is from “begetting” (gignere, ppl. genitus), as the term “nation” (natio) comes from “being born” (nasci, pp. natus). (Barney et al. 2006, 192)1The notion of shared descent is a powerful one, but looking closer at Isidore's text, one sees that it is only one conception among others. A few lines earlier, he had prioritized a linguistic notion of peoplehood declaring that “peoples (gentes) have arisen from languages not languages from peoples.”2 Still yet, at the beginning of the same chapter, it is apparent that he envisions distinct peoples as having existed before the construction of the Tower of Babel: “All the peoples (nationes) had one language which was called Hebrew.”3 Thus, he contradicts his claim that languages precede peoples. Elsewhere, he writes that there are many Germanic peoples (germanicae gentes) and characterizes them as “varied in their weaponry, distinct in the color of their clothing, having distinct languages, and names of uncertain origin.”4 Isidore's wavering illustrates that objective criteria for peoplehood are difficult to establish and that differing, even contradictory, models may coexist alongside one another. To the Romans of Classical Antiquity, two complementary notions of peoplehood existed. The first pertained to the Romans themselves and was constitutional and founded on law. The second model, which applied to the non-Roman peoples living beyond the borders of the Roman empire (usually referred to as the Barbarians), was biological, determined by descent and supplied with incidental characteristics such as language, weaponry, dress, customs, and so on. In a study entitled The Myth of Nations (2002), historian Patrick Geary charts the development and gradual merger of these competing notions as the Roman Empire comes to an end and the various successor kingdoms emerge in Western Europe.From our present-day vantage point, we see clearly that the factors that demarcate a people and distinguish it from other peoples are overwhelmingly cultural, in the broadest sense of the word, and cultivated, rather than inborn and natural, and that they are often of a political or constitutional, rather than a genealogical, character. The biological model nevertheless has a remarkable tenacity. It is also strongly present in medieval texts where it inter alia finds expression in the so-called Origines gentium (sg. origo gentis) “origins of peoples,” texts describing how particular peoples came into being. This topic is often discussed under the heading of ethnogenesis—a term strongly associated with the historian Herwig Wolfram, who in turn relied on Wenskus (1961) for a number of central concepts and ideas.5 Generally speaking, an early medieval gens, or people, was, from the perspective of Wenskus, Wolfram, and others, an army led by and centered around a core group of aristocratic individuals, rather than a people in the biological sense. Membership of or affiliation with a gens was not determined by birth, but by other, non-biological factors, such as recognition of utility. Although these texts give expression, sometimes powerfully, to the idea that a gens share a common biological and genealogical origin, this notion should, from this perspective, be considered an ideological construct rather than a historical reality. This ideology of common biological descent was transmitted in various ways and found expression in origo gentis narratives. These narratives are, as mentioned, insolubly intertwined with notions of ethnogenesis—so closely, in fact, that one can see the modern term “ethnogenesis” as a pseudo-Greek rendering of Latin origo gentis.In the context of Old Norse literary history, Annette Lassen has argued that the earliest fornaldarsǫgur, and Skjǫldunga saga in particular, “must . . . be viewed as an Icelandic offshoot of the European Chronicles of the origo gentis-kind” (2012, 52), and she outlines convincingly the contours of a history of how the fornaldarsaga-genre developed from historia to fabula. This argument is used to support the contention that the fornaldarsǫgur “originate in the learned culture of the Middle Ages and were written, not for a common audience, but in close connection with church and royal authority” (2012, 34). I believe this is a highly productive way of situating the Scandinavian textual materials and am convinced that the earliest fornaldarsǫgur did indeed spring from learned traditions (see also Gottskálk Þ. Jensson 2009). In what follows, I wish to develop Lassen's suggestion further by considering first Skjǫldunga saga and then Ynglinga saga from the perspective of origo gentis-narratives, applying a definition that is somewhat narrower than the one used by Lassen. The discussion will be organized as the answers to two questions: What is an origo gentis-narrative? And how do the sagas of the Skjoldungs and the Ynglings fit into the category of origo gentis-narratives? Toward the end, the perspective will be changed from royal or dynastic history to communal history, and the notion of the stranger-king will be introduced.The term origo gentis is ubiquitous in the literature on ethnogenesis and is evidently used to refer to narratives of origin of a people. The term can nevertheless be somewhat mystifying. First of all, it is worth pointing out that it does not designate a literary genre. Wolfram, a major promoter of the term origo gentis and exegete of such narratives, begins the lengthy article on the topic in Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde by stating that “die Origo gentis bildet keine selbständige liter. Gattung” (Wolfram et al. 2003, 174)6 [the Origo gentis does not constitute an independent literary genre]. Rather, it is a kind of narrative that can be found in various literary genres, and usually at the head of large-scale so-called national or ethnic histories, such as Jordanes's mid-sixth-century Getica, which recounts the history of the Goths, and Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum from the late eighth century, Dudo of St-Quentin's Historia Normannorum from around 1000, Saxo Grammaticus's early thirteenth-century Gesta Danorum, and the anonymous Gesta Hungarorum, also from the early thirteenth century, to mention some of the highlights. None of these works of history are named the origo of the people/gens whose history they outline. Instead of focusing exclusively on origins, they cover periods of time. Thus, they do not focus exclusively on origins. One is therefore hardly justified in referring to them as narratives of origin although they do include narratives of origin and also have certain other features in common. The early members of the group attempt to reconcile Roman/classical stereotypes about barbarians, that is, non-Roman peoples, with the traditions of the particular people whose history is being treated, and to integrate the local (barbarian) past with Christian history. This is perhaps most clearly expressed when Cassiodorus is praised for having made “Gothic origins a Roman history” (Bjornlie 2019, 388).7 Cassiodorus's history of the Goths has not been preserved, but Jordanes claims that his own Getica is a condensation of it (Mommsen 1882, 53, Get. 1).In Latin, the term origo, from which the English “origin” is derived, did not necessarily refer to origins in particular but could also be used in a wider sense as “history.”8 This wider usage is also occasionally found in scholarship. One example is Grundmann, who equated origo with “history” when he presented the works of Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Paul the Deacon, Bede, and so on, under the heading “Volksgeschichte (Origo gentis)” in his brief survey of medieval historiography (Grundmann 1965, 12–17). Using this understanding of origo, Cassiodorus's praise quoted above could be for having turned “Gothic history into a Roman history.” Pizarro, in an article surveying the major texts belonging to this group of ethnic histories, makes the point that it is an unusual heterogenous group; Bede's history of the English Church is usually included among them, even though it is a Church history, and so is Gregory of Tours's history of the Franks, although this work is ostensibly conceived as a universal history. The main reason why these texts are grouped together, Pizarro argues, is that scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that it was possible in these texts to discern the otherwise silent voices of the barbarians and find kernels of ancient Germanic tradition, in particular those that relate to pre-Christian cults (Pizarro 2003, 44–5).The Origines gentium are thus a heterogenous group, and the term origo gentis can refer to either a narrative dedicated to explicating the origin and early history of a particular people, narrowly speaking, or to a historical work of a larger scale that traces the history of a particular people from its origins to the time of the writing. Thus, it has been argued that the group is not so much held together by formal criteria as by functional ones. Plassmann states that the main purpose of these works is not to preserve traditions of the past, but rather to explain the present, while Mortensen, along similar lines, argues that they serve to legitimize the secular power that prevails at the moment of composition.9The anonymous Origo gentis Langobardorum (Origin/History of the People of the Langobardi), one of the shorter works belonging to the group, will be given as an example. This text, which is generally dated to the second half of the seventh century, focuses heavily on the origin of the people and then proceeds to sketch the history of the following generations of kings in a more cursory fashion—although it does pause to expand on some periods that are considered to be of special importance, such as the reign of Albuin, who led the Langobardi into Italy.10The Origo gentis Langobardorum is a short text of less than 1,000 words. It recounts the story of how a minor people called the Winniles/Winnilis received the name Langobardi (later Lombards) from Godan and subsequently migrated from the island of Scandanan—the name is generally, and with good reason, taken to be a garbled form of Scandinavia or Scania—to Italy by a somewhat circuitous route. There, the Langobard king Albuin, who was the twelfth in line since they left their homeland, becomes “the lord of Italy.”11 After having recounted the death of Albuin and its consequences in some detail, the text assumes the character of a king-list rather than a narrative in a strict sense and runs quickly through the reigns of eight kings. The last king mentioned is Berthari, that is, Perctarit who ascended to the throne in 661. This short text is preserved in a few manuscripts, the oldest of which dates from the ninth century,12 and transmitted as an introduction to the first written compilation of Langobardic law, known as Edictum Rothari or The Edict of Rothari, which was promulgated in 643. As the dates show, the edict must have circulated at least 20 years before the origo-narrative was affixed to it. The close connection between the Origo gentis Langobardorum and the edict is nevertheless confirmed by Paul the Deacon, who, writing shortly before 800, is concerned that the readers of his narrative may find it hard to believe the deeds ascribed to a Langobardic king by the name of Waccho, and asserts the trustworthiness of his story by appealing to the Origo gentis Langobardorum, which he refers to as the prologue of the Edict of King Rothari: If anyone may think that this is a lie and not the truth of the matter, let him read over the prologue of the edict which King Rothari composed of the laws of the Langobards and he will find this written in almost all the manuscripts as we have inserted it in this little story. (Foulke 1974, 39–40)13This brief text commands our interest not only as an archetypal origo gentis-narrative, but also because the story features what appears to be divine name-givers, in the shape of Godan and his wife, Frea. The story is well-known, and only a brief summary will be provided here: Among the many peoples of Scandinavia, the brothers Ybor and Agio ruled, along with their mother, Gambara, a small, insignificant people called the Winniles. The Wandales, another people similarly led by two brothers (Ambri and Assi), demand tribute from the Winniles. The Winniles refuse, considering it better to fight than to pay. Both groups now seek to improve their odds of victory in the coming battle. The Wandal leadership asks Godan to grant them victory, and Godan replies that he will grant victory to whichever troop he first lays his eyes on the following morning. At the same time, Gambara and her sons seek out Godan's wife, Frea, and beg that she be favorably inclined toward the Winniles. She advises them that they should bring their wives to the battlefield the following day and arrange their hair so that it looks like beards. The following morning before Godan wakes up, Frea turns his bed so that it faces east, and the first thing he sees as he wakes up is the Winniles and their wives. He exclaims: “Who are these longbeards?” At this, Frea says: “You gave them a name, now give them victory.” And so it happened that they won and received the name Langobardi.14This story about how Frea deceitfully guided Godan's hand in attributing victory and how this group received their name is ostensibly a myth, although the exact ontological status of Godan and his wife is not specified in the text. It is worth pointing out that Paul the Deacon relates what is basically the same story in his history of the Langobardi. He elaborates greatly on the migrations of the Langobardi and the reasons for migrating, and while he acknowledges the traditionality of the story of the name-giving by attributing it to “antiquity,” he undermines it by introducing it as a ridiculous fable: “refert antiquitas . . . ridiculam fabulam” (Waitz 1878, 52, Hist.Lang. I.8). Paul further subverts the story when he concludes it by pointing out that Godan was a human being although all the peoples of Germania worship him as a god, and by characterizing the entire story as laughable and worthless.15 The three oldest versions of this story are discussed in some detail in an article by Haubrichs where he concludes: “In der Rezeption werde jeweils die Fassung des Mythos ausgewählt—ich würde eher sagen konstruiert—welche die Gegenwart in eine dieselbe erklärende Geschichte übersetzt” (2013, 289) [In the reception, the version of the myth is every time selected–or rather constructed–that transforms the present into a tale that accounts for the present]. This point aligns well with the views of Plassmann and Mortensen cited above.The name of Godan corresponds, etymologically speaking (although not perfectly), to that of Óðinn in the Old Norse tradition, and a number of Scandinavian texts also attribute to him the ability to grant victory in battle.16 One may thus claim that the story about how the Langobardi received their name is the earliest attested story about Óðinn.17 One of the manuscripts of the Origo contains a number of illuminations; including a (poorly preserved) full page rendition of two scenes belonging to the story discussed and summarized above. The upper part of the folio depicts Godan sitting up on his bed and Frea standing over him (presumably having just turned the bed). In Godan's line of vision, one sees bearded warriors. Tituli identify all characters with certainty, and it is therefore probable that this is the oldest certain depiction of the god.18 In the lower part of the folio, one sees the beardless brothers Ibor and Agio approaching the seated Gambara asking for her assistance.In his discussion of this and other stories of ethnogenesis, Wolfram has highlighted some elements or motifs that are often, but by no means always, found in such stories. The most important is that there is a momentous primordial deed in the form of either a migration across the sea or a victorious battle against an otherwise superior enemy, and that this primordial deed in many cases is followed by a change of religion or cultic practices.19 However, the crucial notion that characterizes Wolfram's writing on the topic of stories of origin and migration is the notion of a Traditionskern, a core tradition preserved by a core aristocratic group who wield this tradition as a means to mobilize larger groups of individuals around themselves in the form of peoples or gentes. In this model, the people/the gens of the origo gentis-narrative is not identical to the biological or cultural notion of a people, but rather a more ad hoc fluctuating conglomeration of individuals who are assembled around a core tradition and whose aristocratic custodians trace their ancestry back to the primordial foundation of the gens. In scholarly writings of this sort, one notes a tendency to ascribe to this Traditionskern the ability to preserve actual historical information about the origin, although the instability of the tradition is also noted as well as the penchant of successful kings of such gentes to attach themselves to genealogies that would provide them with a link to the foundational moment, even if this link were fictive. In this model—which, it should be stressed, is created to tackle processes of ethnogenesis and notions of peoplehood in the age of migrations—all elements (the individuals who make up the people, the aristocracy, and the traditions being marshaled) are to some extent changeable and unstable, but the aristocratic agents mobilize the tradition to bolster their authority and thus create an impression of continuity. In brief terms, such is the ethnogenesis model that lies at the heart of Origo gentis narratives. The prime examples scholars have drawn on in establishing this model are the Goths and the Langobards.Having presented this basic model of the origo gentis narrative, it is now time to consider how the oldest fornaldarsǫgur fit into this model. Lassen's suggestion that the fornaldarsǫgur have a learned origin and that the earliest of them “must . . . be viewed as an Icelandic offshoot of the European chronicles of the origo gentis-kind” (Lassen 2012, 52) is, as mentioned above, a highly productive way of contextualizing the fornaldarsǫgur. Of course, one immediately encounters the much-discussed question of how one defines a fornaldarsaga and whether Ynglinga saga and Skjǫldunga saga belong to this category,20 but in order to get to the main point, I will sidestep the genre discussion and focus on Skjǫldunga saga and Ynglinga saga, as both sagas certainly contain fornaldarsaga-like materials. Lassen centers her attention on Skjǫldunga saga (2012, 47–52), but the two sagas share characteristics that make it reasonable to discuss them in tandem regardless of whether they are classified as fornaldarsǫgur or not—indeed Ynglinga saga has been considered to be modeled on Skjǫldunga saga.21 Both sagas also relate materials that at least to some extent can be paralleled in some of the earliest Scandinavian chronicles that have been preserved, such as the Chronicon Lethrense, Historia Norwegie, and Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum—that is, texts we would not hesitate to characterize as learned texts.A second and more difficult issue to address is that Skjǫldunga saga is not actually preserved as a unified text and that any discussion of Skjǫldunga saga therefore relies on the Latin retelling of the text by the learned Icelander Arngrímur Jónsson, which is dated to 1596.22 Arngrímur Jónsson's text, entitled Rerum danicarum fragmenta (Fragments of Danish History), may be supplemented or fine-tuned with the help of the textual materials that Bjarni Guðnason has assigned to Skjǫldunga saga in his thesis from 1963 and his publication of an assembled or reassembled Skjǫldunga saga in the 1982 Íslenzk fornrit volume containing sagas of the Danish kings. But Bjarni Guðnason left out parts of Arngrímur Jónsson's Rerum danicarum fragmenta in his edition of a reconstructed Skjǫldunga saga, and one cannot therefore gain an accurate impression of Arngrímur's work on the basis of his edition; the full text of Arngrímur Jónsson's Rerum danicarum fragmenta has been edited by Jakob Benediktsson (1950–1957, 1:331–456).23 Determining whether Arngrímur Jónsson, in any given passage, translated, retold, abbreviated, supplemented, or commented upon his original is difficult, however, even when one relies on the basis of Jakob Benediktsson's edition. The opening chapter of the text, which deals with the foundation of the line of Skjǫldung kings, that is, the part of the text that presents the origo gentis in the most narrow sense, illustrates these problems well: The records of the Norwegians do not begin the history of the affairs of the Danes with Dan, as Saxo Grammaticus does, but with a certain Scioldus, a son of Odinus (commonly called Othinus). For they relate that this Odinus, coming from Asia, won authority over Northern Europe (over Saxony, over Dania, over Svecia) after having subdued its inhabitants.24Skjǫldunga saga belongs to the oldest layer of vernacular Old Norse historiography. Other texts from the same period, such as Ágrip and the so-called Legendary saga of St. Óláfr, show that the style now recognized as “the saga style” developed gradually. It would therefore be no surprise if Skjǫldunga saga contained some unusual stylistic traits when considered from the perspective of the saga style. The quotation above should nevertheless make clear that Arngrímur Jónsson neither translates nor condenses his source in this part, but that he comments upon it. Reading the entire first chapter, reproduced along with Arngrímur's introductory letter and a translation as an appendix to this article, one will clearly sense that multiple voices are present in the excerpt. It is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle all with absolute confidence. Lassen understands the opening sentence quoted above as a translation from the lost Skjọldunga saga and characterizes it as a programmatic opening statement that in the saga, and she is here referring to the original lost text, is intended to function as a corrective to Saxo Grammaticus's claim of Danish autochthony.25 It is evident that there is a dialogue between Arngrímur Jónsson's text and that of Saxo, but it seems to me that the corrective is given in Arngrímur's voice rather than that of the anonymous author of the lost Skjǫldunga saga.In Rerum danicarum fragmenta, Arngrímur Jónsson actively compares and contrasts his Icelandic source material with Saxo's work, which, in his days, was highly regarded as a source to Nordic, and in particular Danish, antiquity. In his prefatory letter, Arngrímur Jónsson asserts the value of the Icelandic and the truthfulness of his texts vis-à-vis “other writers” who do not present the line of kings in an unadulterated fashion. The “other writers” mentioned in the prefatory letter should probably be taken as a reference to Saxo.26 At the end of the first chapter, Arngrímur yet again points to a presumptive error in Saxo's text when he states that the stronghold Lejre was not founded by Hrólfr kraki as Saxo claims, although he concedes that Hrólfr may have enlarged it. The main purpose of Arngrímur's works on Danish history and the task that he had been given by the Royal Danish historiographer Niels Krag, for whom he wrote, was to provide materials that would supplement (and where possible correct) Saxo's history of the Danes.27 The corrective efforts of Arngrímur's text are thus clearly motivated by his commission. If, on the other hand, one wishes to attribute the corrective efforts to an Icelandic author of a Skjǫldunga saga writing around the year 1200, discerning a motivation for these efforts becomes much more difficult.Furthermore, Arngrímur writes in his prefatory letter that the text begins ex abrupto (“somewhat abruptly,” “suddenly,” or perhaps “fragmentarily”). This statement is naturally open to interpretation, but in my opinion, it should—when seen in the context of the explicit correction of Saxo's information on the beginning of Danish history—caution us from taking for granted that the original Skjǫldunga saga began with a migration story at all. The text might as well have begun simply with a list of names. This, after all, is how Arngrímur characterizes large parts of the text in his introductory letter, when he mentions that the text contains nuda nomina (“the bare names”) of the early kings and that the series “line” of early kings is given in a very discontinuous fashion.28 All the information Arngrímur Jónsson's text provides on the migration of Óðinn and the origin of the Skjǫldungar and Ynglingar can also be found in other sources, most of which were certainly known to Arngrímur Jónsson and may very well derive from these sources. In sum then, it is not impossible that Skjǫldunga saga contained features associated with origo gentis-narratives narrowly defined, including a primordial deed in the form of a migration followed by a change of religion, but the text as it is relayed to us through Arngrímur Jónsson's Latin text does not allow us to conclude that it did. However, looking at Arngrímur Jónsson's text in the context of his letters makes it clear that the primary purpose of writing Rerum Danicarum fragmenta was to rectify inaccuracies found in works on Danish history, with the help of the trove of Icelandic texts at his disposal.If the troubled transmission of Skjǫldunga saga makes it difficult to draw certain conclusions about the text, Ynglinga saga is not only better preserved, but it also seems to fit the parameters of an origo gentis-narrative (as outlined above) better than what can be gleaned of Skjǫldunga saga.29 It contains an elaborate account of a primordial deed in the form of a migration—the migration out of Asia of Æsir under the leadership of Óðinn. The saga also alludes to what may be considered a primordial conflict between the Asian Æsir and the Swedish king Gylfi, although the conflict is not presented as a bloody one, as is typical of the Origines gentium: And when Óðinn learned that good lands were to be had east where Gylfi lived, he went there and he and Gylfi reached an agreement for Gylfi did not think he had the power to defy the Æsir. Óðinn and Gylfi often contested one another with tricks and illusions but the Æsir were always the more powerful.30Finally, the saga underscores greatly that the arrival of the Æsir leads to the adoption of a new religious practice, namely, the veneration of the Æsir as gods. However, on the point of religion, Ynglinga saga diverges from the narratives following the ethnogenesis model. While it is the migrating peoples that adopt new religious practices in the standard model, in Ynglinga saga, it is the population that is already present in the area into which the newcomers arrive who change their religious practice. This calls attention to the ways in which the relationship between newcomers and those already residing in the areas to which the newcomers arrive is described in the texts relating to ethnogenesis. This aspect, that is, the consequences of the arrival of a people under arms to a new region that is already populated, has received less attention than the accounts of migrations and the concept of the Traditionskern related to the distant origin of the migrating people. Nevertheless, texts that are traditionally grouped as origo gentis-narratives occasionally touch on this matter. One example is found in Paul the Deacon's history of the Langobardi: In these days, many Roman nobles were killed because of greed. The rest were divided by visitors and made tributaries so that they should pay a third part of their produce to the Langobardi. By those leaders of the Langobardi, in the seventh year after the arrival of Alboin and his entire people, churches were plundered, priests killed, cities destroyed and the people, which had grown like crops, killed. In addition to the regions which Alboin had grasped, most of Italy was seized and subjugated by the Langobardi.31Another example, found in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, outlines the consequences of the comings of the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes to the British Isles: These heathen conquerors devastated the surrounding cities and countryside, extended the conflagration from the eastern to the western shores without opposition and established a stranglehold over nearly all the doomed island. Public and private buildings were razed; priests were slain at the altar; bishops and people alike, regardless of rank, were destroyed with fire and sword, and none remained to bury those who had suffered a cruel death. A few wretched survivors captured in the hills were butchered wholesale, and others desperate with hunger, came out and surrendered to the enemy for food, although they were doomed to lifelong slavery even if they escaped instant massacre. Some fled overseas in their misery; others, clinging to their homeland, eked out a wretched and fearful existence among the mountains, forests, and crags, ever alert for danger. (Sherley-Price and Latham 1990, 63–4)32As these two examples show, interactions between residents and new
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