Review: Old Norse Mythology

Lindow emphasises early in this book that in Old Norse mythology, for which canonical texts are lacking, we frequently find 'numerous versions of the same story, … often contradicting one other (sic) in ways great and small ' (pp vii-viii; cf.pp.64, 116).This is especially well illustrated in Chapter 2, where Lindow steers a careful course among various versions of the story of the god Þórrʼs fishing expedition, as will be shown below.Referring in his Introduction to the carmina (songs) mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania (c. 100 CE), Lindow sees these as the likely ancestors of Germanic alliterative poetry, including Old Norse poetry, both eddic and skaldic (for which latter term he prefers Old Norse dróttkvaett 'recited before a retinue'), in which much of the mythology was transmitted orally before being given written form by such antiquaries as Saxo Grammaticus (c.1200), Snorri Sturluson (d.1241), and the anonymous redactor of the collection containing most of what is known as the Poetic Edda (c.1250?).In Chapter 1 he presents the mythology as a system, as far as this is possible given the nature of the sources, following the examples of the eddic poem Vǫluspá and the Gylfaginning section of Snorriʼs prose Edda in tracing the mythic history of the cosmos from its creation to its destruction at Ragnarøk and rebirth.The story of Þórr's encounter with the world serpent while fishing, the subject of Chapter 2, is preserved in versions depicted on stone monuments mostly from the Viking Age (c.800-1100, cf.p. 1), as well as in dróttkvaett poetry, in the eddic poem Hymiskviða, and in Gylfaginning.Of the pictorial stone versions Lindow considers the runestone from Altuna, Sweden (mid or later 11th century, p. 84), the picture stone from Hørdum, north Jutland (?8th-11th century, p. 84), and two somewhat more doubtful cases (see p. 83): the stone slab from Gosforth in northern England (most likely 10th century, p. 86), and the picture stone Ardre VIII, from Ardre, on the Swedish island of Gotland (8th or 9th century, p. 87).The relevant dróttkvaett poems are what is preserved of Ragnarsdrápa by the Norwegian poet Bragi Boddason (9th century, p. 70), of Húsdrápa by the Icelander Úlfr Uggason (late 10th century, pp.56, 75), and of poems by Ǫlvir hnúfa, a court poet of Haraldr hárfagri (d.c. 930, p. 74) and by Eysteinn Valdason and Gamli gnaevaðarskáld (both thought to have been active in Iceland towards the end of the pre-Christian period, i.e. in the late