Katherine Marie Olley - Kinship in Old Norse Myth and Legend

Kinship in Old Norse Myth and Legend

Studies in Old Norse Literature

Print ISSN 2514-0701

Online ISSN 2514-071X

Series Editors

Professor Sif Rikhardsdottir

Professor Carolyne Larrington

Studies in Old Norse Literature aims to provide a forum for monographs and collections engaging with the literature produced in medieval Scandinavia, one of the largest surviving bodies of medieval European literature. The series investigates poetry and prose alongside translated, religious and learned material; although the primary focus is on Old Norse-Icelandic literature, studies which make comparison with other medieval literatures or which take a broadly interdisciplinary approach by addressing the historical and archaeological contexts of literary texts are also welcomed. It offers opportunities to publish a wide range of books, whether cutting-edge, theoretically informed writing, provocative revisionist approaches to established conceptualizations, or strong, traditional studies of previously neglected aspects of the field. The series will enable researchers to communicate their findings both beyond and within the academic community of medievalists, highlighting the growing interest in Old Norse-Icelandic literary culture.

Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editors or to the publisher, at the addresses given below.

Professor Sif Rikhardsdottir, Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Iceland, Aalbygging v/Smundargtu, S-101 Reykjavk, Iceland

Professor Carolyne Larrington, Faculty of English Language and Literature, St Johns College, Oxford University, Oxford, OX1 3JP, UK

Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF, UK

Previous volumes in the series are listed at the end of the volume.

Kinship in Old Norse Myth and Legend

Katherine Marie Olley

D. S. BREWER

Katherine Marie Olley 2022

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sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published 2022

D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 978 1 84384 637 6 hardback

ISBN 978 1 80010 602 4 ePub

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Cross references refer to page numbers in the print edition

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Cover image: Paternal Recognition of the Son. Isaac blesses Jacob with Rebecca watching. Copenhagen, arnamagnan Collection, aM 226 fol, 34v. Photograph: Suzanne Reitz. Published with permission from the arnamagnan Institute.

Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

For my parents

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, my thanks must go to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council without whose generous funding [grant number AH/L503897/1] this book would never have been possible. Thanks must also go to Trinity College, Cambridge, for their many years of support and to my current college, St Hildas College, Oxford, the community of which has been unfailingly supportive as I completed my manuscript.

On a more personal level, I would like to thank Richard Dance, Carolyne Larrington, Simon Keynes, Brittany Schorn, Elizabeth Rowe and, above all, Judy Quinn, for their unfailing guidance and support over many years. Many people have also contributed over the course of this project with helpful comments at conferences, conversations about eddic poetry, fornaldarsgur, and kinship or simply offered encouragement when it was needed and I am sorry for any omissions in the list which follows: Benjamin Allport, Caroline Batten, Emma Bourne, William Brockbank, Francesco Colombo, Caitlin Ellis, Rosie Finlinson, Thomas Grant, Kate Heslop, Jonathan Hui, Thomas Morcom, Millie Papworth, James Parkhouse, Lukas Rsli, Sara-Luise Smith, Harriet Soper, Rebecca Thomas, Pragya Vohra, Anna Wagner and Alexander Wilson.

To all the staff at Boydell and Brewer, I am profoundly grateful for the hard work that has helped me through the publication process. Special mention must be made of Caroline Palmer, Elizabeth McDonald, and of series editors Carolyne Larrington and Sif Rikhardsdottir for their invaluable comments on the text.

For provision of the cover image and the necessary permissions, my thanks go to Suzanne Reitz and the University of Copenhagen.

Finally, large-scale studies of this kind are greatly facilitated by decades of earlier editorial and translation work. Like all scholars, I stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before me and I am grateful to all those whose editions and translations both stimulated my interest in this field and enabled me to tackle such a large source-base within a feasible timeframe.

A Note on Conventions

All eddic quotations, references and abbreviations refer to Neckel and Kuhns 1962 edition. Although the more recent slenzk fornrit edition offers some advantages as to normalisation and orthography, I have preferred the readings in Neckel and Kuhn for their greater fidelity to the manuscript and fuller textual apparatus. The titles of eddic poems have been normalised, as have eddic names outside quotations.

All references to and prose quotations from the fornaldarsgur are taken from Guni Jnssons four-volume edition (except where otherwise indicated). For consistency and clarity fornaldarsaga titles therefore follow Guni Jnssons orthography, Vlsunga saga being preferred to Vlsunga saga etc. The names of saga characters likewise follow the orthography of Guni Jnssons edition. All poetic quotations from the fornaldarsgur are taken from Poetry in Fornaldarsgur, edited by Margaret Clunies Ross as volume 8 of the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages series. Editors of individual saga entries are given only in the first reference to each saga, with full references to be found in the Bibliography.

All translations are my own, except where noted. Translations from the Poetic Edda owe a particular debt to Carolyne Larringtons revised translation for Oxford Worlds Classics published in 2014 and to La Farge and Tuckers Glossary, both of which inform my own interpretations.

Abbreviations

Akv. Atlakvia

Alv. Alvssml

Am. Atlaml in grnlenzku

ANF Arkiv fr nordisk filologi

Br. Brot af Sigurarkviu

CMCS Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies

Fm. Ffnisml

FNS Fornaldar sgur Norurlanda, ed. Guni Jnsson, 4 vols (Reykjavk, 1954; repr. 1976)

Gr. I Gurnarkvia I

Gr. IIGurnarkvia II

Grm. Grmnisml

Grp. Grpissp

Hv. Hvaml

Hdl. Hyndlulj