Papers by Thomas Spray
Pre-print papers of THE 18TH INTERNATIONAL SAGA CONFERENCE SAGAS AND THE CIRCUM-BALTIC ARENA, Helsinki and Tallinn, 7th–14th August 2022, 2022
Since the rediscovery of the name Amlóði in a skaldic verse from Snaebjörn Galta in the Prose Edd... more Since the rediscovery of the name Amlóði in a skaldic verse from Snaebjörn Galta in the Prose Edda, the possibility of a literary link between Shakespeare's Hamlet and an earlier, lost Old Norse saga of the same narrative has drawn many a writer from many a nation. This paper attempts is to demonstrate the widespread applicability of common literary motifs from the Hamlet legend across medieval Scandinavian literature. It ibriefly revisits and updates Gollancz’s catalogue, most significantly with the addition of the post-classical íslendingasaga Svarfdæla saga. The study will first outline the basic features of the Hamlet narrative, and review the possible sources of Shakespeare’s version. It will then re-examine Israel Gollancz’s 1898 edition and essay. Finally, the paper will consider the example of Svarfdæla saga, an often-overlooked family saga which shares a number of elements with the Hamlet narrative. I believe highlighting the many ghosts or versions of Hamlet in European literature is critical for understanding the previously obscure elements of the individual texts involved.
The Journal of William Morris Studies, 2019
This paper examines the links between the Grettis saga-Beowulf discussion and the romances of Wil... more This paper examines the links between the Grettis saga-Beowulf discussion and the romances of William Morris, arguing that the Victorian writer's later works seem to engage with the debate and suggesting Eiríkur Magnusson as a likely source of inspiration.
In this introductory article, the authors discuss the topic of social constructions of space by d... more In this introductory article, the authors discuss the topic of social constructions of space by deconstructing what are widely referred to in academic studies as hegemonic narratives. In order to introduce a collection of articles critically, however, the authors pay special attention to the ways in which academic studies have traditionally historicised cultural, political and geographical spaces and have therefore played a role in spatial interpretations of nationalism, sovereignty, and territory. References to research findings and observations presented by an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars during a symposium held at Durham University's Institute for Advanced Studies provide the context for this article. To this end, the authors expand the scope of three of these presentations-comprising a collection of articles exploring nationalism, sovereignty, and territory-and extract common research findings before proceeding to engage more critically with questions about how the various participating disciplines understand space in the context of knowledge and power. The authors conclude that hegemonic narratives relate to individual past, present, and future contexts, as well as to the ways in which academics, politicians, and the wider public interpret them. In conclusion, the authors demonstrate how the relationship between knowledge about space on one hand, and power to construct or interpret space(s) on the other, provides ample opportunity for discussion across disciplines.
Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna has a unique place in the recent history of the Old Norse sagas. Its sh... more Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna has a unique place in the recent history of the Old Norse sagas. Its short, yet intense rise to fame began in 1825 when Esaias Tegnér’s poetic adaptation Frithiofs saga soared in popularity all across Europe, in turn inspiring numerous musical pieces, paintings, engravings, and children’s literature. In 1839 the Stockholm-based Englishman George Stephens published Frithiof’s Saga, A Legend of the North, which contained the first complete translation of an Old Norse saga into English. In Frithiof, readers found a protagonist who displayed the very finest features of the ancient North alongside the meditative maturity of their own age. In his 1994 essay on Friðþjófs saga, Andrew Wawn suggests that in Nineteenth-century Europe the tale of Friðþjófr was ‘better known than any other medieval Icelandic narrative except the Prose Edda’ (222).
Yet how much of what was known was truly accurate? In an age before Old Norse grammars, and in the face of often unreliable source texts, could a Swedish Bishop or a British antiquarian really be expected to give readers a faithful account of pagan Norway?
This paper will examine the presentation of northern pre-Christian faith in the original saga alongside that presented in its early nineteenth-century translations and adaptations. It will explore both the artistic expansion of the saga and the incorporation of erroneous notions of saga-age heathenism. The paper will argue that from its temple(s) to Baldr to its hero’s agnostic philosophy, Friðþjófs saga has been a mistranslated and misunderstood text.
Keywords: Esaias Tegnér, Frithiofs Saga, Friðþjófs saga, George Stephens, translation.
From the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and beyond, northern Europe saw the blossom... more From the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and beyond, northern Europe saw the blossoming of a far-reaching artistic and political movement: Romantic Nationalism. Combined with new concepts of Germanic identity this led to a fundamental re-consideration of northern Europe‟s settlement myths and cultural heritage. Meanwhile the ever-expanding
field of Germanic philology, with its notion of language as the defining characteristic of race, promoted the appropriation of myths from Old Norse across Scandinavia, Germany, and
Britain.
In England the general public‟s first introduction to these northern tales was in 1770 in the form of Bishop Percy‟s Northern Antiquities: a heavily-edited translation from the
French of Paul Henri Mallet. Sharing an education with Danish royalty, Mallet was introduced to such works as Snorri Sturlusson‟s Prose Edda. Percy‟s highly-popular work
was republished and re-edited by I. A. Blackwell in 1847, simultaneously whetting the public‟s appetite for more northern folklore and distancing them from the source material via editorial opinion.
Both Blackwell and Percy make it clear in their prefaces that the primary vision for their material is as nationalist history. „Pure blood‟, the „noble savage‟, and „genetic reinvigoration‟: these are the concerns of the editors. This interaction with Snorri‟s Edda for nationalist purposes demonstrates the methods by which traditional oral myths and tales become part of a divisive national image. This article will explore how these initial
translators used their phenomenally influential position as gatekeepers of a previously little-known body of literature and myth. At the same time, this article will identify some of the
key ways in which these early appropriations have affected our interaction with Old Norse literature in its modern editions. Is the shadow of Romantic Nationalism still controlling our engagement with Old Norse myth?
Keywords: Blackwell, nationalism, Norse mythology, Northern Antiquities, Percy, Prose Edda, Snorri Sturlusson.
Thesis Chapters by Thomas Spray
[Ph.D. thesis], 2019
The unprecedented production of English translations of the Icelandic sagas in the 1860s occurred... more The unprecedented production of English translations of the Icelandic sagas in the 1860s occurred alongside widespread cultural discussion concerning ethnic-nationalism and the developing science of comparative philology. Although the relationship between these phenomena has been examined, there has been no scholarly consensus on the reality, extent, or direction of any influence between them.
This thesis reports on the seminal texts which gave context to and informed the late-nineteenth-century translations of Old Norse Íslendingasögur into English, their cultural stimuli and progeny. Firstly, the thesis examines the influence of and contextual philosophies behind J. A. Blackwell’s revised edition of Northern Antiquities, and in particular its depiction of Old Norse literature as key to understanding British ancestry. The thesis then considers the impact of Blackwell’s inclusion of Walter Scott’s Eyrbyggja saga ‘Abstract’, and the extent to which this partial translation characterised subsequent attitudes to nationality. Finally, the thesis examines the wide nationalist implications of the European interest in Friðþjófs saga, and the nature of the scholarship of George Stephens, its first English translator.
The results of this study demonstrate that far from following a simplistic model of cause and effect, one needs to view the development of the reception of Old Norse literature as being intricately bound with contemporary political and national interests. Previous studies have often emphasised the unconventionality of the pioneering translators; this study underlines both their reliance on wider academic discussion and the wide-spread acceptability of their ideas within Georgian and early-Victorian Britain. The study complements previous research in providing a detailed assessment of ethnic-nationalist discourse within British Old Norse scholarship and eschewing the common view that the discussion was merely a product of foreign philosophy.
Conference Presentations by Thomas Spray
[Paper given at the IMC Leeds, 2019.]
[Paper given at the conference 'Texts in Times of Conflict', at De Montfort University, Leicester.]
[Paper given at 'Reflections on Revenge: A Conference on the Culture and Politics of Vengeance', ... more [Paper given at 'Reflections on Revenge: A Conference on the Culture and Politics of Vengeance', 4th September 2015, University of Leicester.]
[Paper given at 'Norse in the North', at Durham University, 2015.]
A paper for the conference 'Mapping Identities in the Modern World, 1830-present' at the Universi... more A paper for the conference 'Mapping Identities in the Modern World, 1830-present' at the University of York.
[Paper given at the Leeds IMC, 2017]
The second half of the nineteenth century saw the Old Norse... more [Paper given at the Leeds IMC, 2017]
The second half of the nineteenth century saw the Old Norse Íslendingasögur presented to British readers in a series of influential translations. A particularly popular example was the first translation of Njáls saga-translated into English and published as The Story of Burnt Njal by George Webbe Dasent (1817-1896). It was a work which remained popular well into the last century, and which stood unopposed as the only English version for over ninety years. Dasent's translation inspired many writers, drawn to Iceland's scenes of strife and drama. The writer Mary Disney Leith (1840-1926) travelled the scenes of Burnt Njal many times between the years 1894 and 1914. She made 'pilgrimages' to the sites mentioned in Dasent's translation and wrote about them with barely-contained excitement. Her subsequent poems such as 'Kari's Revenge', 'The Death-Song of Skarphedinn', and 'Hallgerda's Hair' demonstrated her thorough knowledge of the narrative. Both her poetic interactions with the saga and personal pilgrimages to Iceland dwarfed those of her British contemporaries. This paper will follow this engagement with Njáls saga through Disney Leith's poetry and travel writing, arguing that while Dasent's translation opened the door for engagement with Iceland's most-loved blood feud, it was the Aberdonian skáldkona who was his staunchest disciple, bringing the imagery of the northern sagas to the polite circles of late-Victorian Britain. Moreover, it will consider how behind the artistic endeavour of moulding Old Norse narrative into Romantic poetry lurked a far more serious phenomenon: the appropriation of Northern values into a self-realised nationalist vision of Britain.
The second half of the nineteenth century gave birth to two works with long-lasting influence on ... more The second half of the nineteenth century gave birth to two works with long-lasting influence on their respective fields. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was first published in 1859 and popularised a number of pre-existing scientific and social theories regarding the history of the natural world and humanity’s place within it. Particularly influential would be comments (drawn from the works of Herbert Spencer and added to Darwin’s fifth edition) describing evolution as a process of ‘Survival of the Fittest’, imposing a notion of pre-ordained superiority on Darwin’s theory in the minds of generations of so-called “Social Darwinists” to come.
In the same year, George Webbe Dasent published his essay ‘On the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales’, attached as an introduction to his Popular Tales from the Norse. Dasent is more widely known as the first translator of Njáls saga, and indeed his Story of Burnt Njal, or Life in Iceland at the End of the Tenth Century remained the sole English translation for almost a century, attracting both artists and academics. The scholarship of ‘Darwin’ Dasent – a comic alias imparted by Charles ‘Umbra’ Clifford – held sway as expert commentary on Old Norse sagas and their relevance for Victorian Britain.
Yet Dasent’s seemingly objective scholarship was the end product of decades of pre-Darwinian theories of an ethnic-nationalist nature. For Dasent, Iceland’s literature was an ancestral record of Victorian values now returned to its rightful place under the watchful supervision of British foster-parents. Old Norse ‘Glossology’ (palaeontology’s philological cousin) provided evidence of missing links between barbarism and civilisation, as well as proof of the extinction of inferior races. This paper offers a comparison of thematic interests held by these two highly-influential Victorian scholars; it examines Dasent’s application of nineteenth-century theories of racial superiority to the field of Old Norse, and considers the extent to which Popular Tales set the tone for future Old Norse Philology.
Paper given in 2016 in Bergen - later modified into a full article.
In 1878 the Oxford-based Ice... more Paper given in 2016 in Bergen - later modified into a full article.
In 1878 the Oxford-based Icelander Guðbrandur Vigfússon commented on apparent similarities in the content and language of the Old English poem Beowulf and the Old Norse Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar. Guðbrandur supported a ‘Common Origin Theory’, which posited that there was a common source for both texts. Whilst it has its fair share of critics (see, for example, Fjalldal 1998), the theory has nevertheless proved highly influential, but although Guðbrandur is generally credited with establishing the link, he was not the first to recognise it. Eiríkur Magnússon – friend to and co-translator with William Morris – acknowledged the possible connection between the texts in a series of lectures given in 1875 after the devastating eruption of Askja (see Einarsson 1936 and 1938; Liberman 1986; and Wawn 1994). Eiríkur favoured the ‘English Hypothesis’, which suggested that Grettis saga had its roots in the Old English Beowulf.
Despite common acceptance of Eiríkur’s familiarity with this theory, very little has been done to investigate the possible ramifications regarding his later work on Old Norse literature or that of his colleague Morris. The pair collaborated on numerous publications and projects of an Icelandic nature from their initial introduction in 1868 (Grettir the Strong being one of their first translations) until Morris’s death in 1896; Eiríkur continued with their joint ‘Saga Library’ long afterwards. This paper looks at both the personal correspondence of Eiríkur and Morris and their later works, and argues that the conception of northern society as demonstrated in their translations of Old Norse sagas and Morris’s later works of fiction was heavily influenced by the theory of Anglo–Icelandic cultural interaction sparked by the Beowulf–Gretla connection. Furthermore, the paper highlights the discrepancies that this approach created in Morris’s appreciation of the concepts of race and nation.
In I. A. Blackwell's 1847 edition of Bishop Thomas Percy's Northern Antiquities the nineteenth-ce... more In I. A. Blackwell's 1847 edition of Bishop Thomas Percy's Northern Antiquities the nineteenth-century reader was offered a rare glimpse into the world of the ancient Scandinavian north via Old Norse literature. At the time, translations of Old Norse texts into English were rare. Aside from George Stephens' Frithiof's Saga in 1839 (in any case usually considered one of the fornaldarsögur) and a scattering of translated extracts from the Vínland sagas, very few of the Íslendingasögur had been translated into English. The few that had been were available only as extracts. The Old Norse enthusiast in Britain had to be content with poetic adaptions or Latin translations of the originals. Unlike Percy and his contemporaries, Blackwell had the advantage of actually having knowledge of Old Norse himself. He put this into practice creating an English translation of Snorri's Prose Edda directly from the original language. His expertise was also offered on the sagas themselves. In Northern Antiquities he provides running commentaries and translated extracts of three of the major sagas: Kormáks saga, Njáls saga, and Laxdoela saga. Through these, he argues, one could get a true impression of the ancient Scandinavian character. This paper will examine nineteenth-century impressions of the sagas conveyed through Northern Antiquities. It will focus on Blackwell's opinions of the sagas' historical worth, interwoven northern characteristics, and nationalist potential. Considering the role that political agendas often play in literary analysis, the paper shall propose that Blackwell uses his unusually influential position as a translator to support his own nationalist theories of the northern peoples.
Spray, Thomas (2015) 'Of schooners and sagamen : Anglo-Icelandic tourism in the nineteenth centur... more Spray, Thomas (2015) 'Of schooners and sagamen : Anglo-Icelandic tourism in the nineteenth century.', in Sea lines of communication : construction. Southampton, England: University of Southampton, pp. 161-174.
Talks by Thomas Spray
[A public lecture given as part of the Late Summer Lecture Series at Durham University.]
Book Reviews by Thomas Spray
The Review of English Studies, 2020
BJLL, 2015
Carolyn P. Collette, Rethinking Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (The Boydell Press in association ... more Carolyn P. Collette, Rethinking Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (The Boydell Press in association with York Medieval Press, 2014), pp. xi + 168. Reviewed by THOMAS E. SPRAY Ph.D. candidate in English Literature, Durham University Chaucer's Legend of Good Women has not had the warmest academic reception. A strong critical engagement aside, it naturally does not draw the same attention as Chaucer's longer works. Past scholars were often disillusioned by the poem's incomplete nature or baffled by Chaucer's selection of virtuous women. This misunderstanding has been reversed in recent decades, alongside movements with an emphasis on rethinking medieval texts. Building on this
Uploads
Papers by Thomas Spray
Yet how much of what was known was truly accurate? In an age before Old Norse grammars, and in the face of often unreliable source texts, could a Swedish Bishop or a British antiquarian really be expected to give readers a faithful account of pagan Norway?
This paper will examine the presentation of northern pre-Christian faith in the original saga alongside that presented in its early nineteenth-century translations and adaptations. It will explore both the artistic expansion of the saga and the incorporation of erroneous notions of saga-age heathenism. The paper will argue that from its temple(s) to Baldr to its hero’s agnostic philosophy, Friðþjófs saga has been a mistranslated and misunderstood text.
Keywords: Esaias Tegnér, Frithiofs Saga, Friðþjófs saga, George Stephens, translation.
field of Germanic philology, with its notion of language as the defining characteristic of race, promoted the appropriation of myths from Old Norse across Scandinavia, Germany, and
Britain.
In England the general public‟s first introduction to these northern tales was in 1770 in the form of Bishop Percy‟s Northern Antiquities: a heavily-edited translation from the
French of Paul Henri Mallet. Sharing an education with Danish royalty, Mallet was introduced to such works as Snorri Sturlusson‟s Prose Edda. Percy‟s highly-popular work
was republished and re-edited by I. A. Blackwell in 1847, simultaneously whetting the public‟s appetite for more northern folklore and distancing them from the source material via editorial opinion.
Both Blackwell and Percy make it clear in their prefaces that the primary vision for their material is as nationalist history. „Pure blood‟, the „noble savage‟, and „genetic reinvigoration‟: these are the concerns of the editors. This interaction with Snorri‟s Edda for nationalist purposes demonstrates the methods by which traditional oral myths and tales become part of a divisive national image. This article will explore how these initial
translators used their phenomenally influential position as gatekeepers of a previously little-known body of literature and myth. At the same time, this article will identify some of the
key ways in which these early appropriations have affected our interaction with Old Norse literature in its modern editions. Is the shadow of Romantic Nationalism still controlling our engagement with Old Norse myth?
Keywords: Blackwell, nationalism, Norse mythology, Northern Antiquities, Percy, Prose Edda, Snorri Sturlusson.
Thesis Chapters by Thomas Spray
This thesis reports on the seminal texts which gave context to and informed the late-nineteenth-century translations of Old Norse Íslendingasögur into English, their cultural stimuli and progeny. Firstly, the thesis examines the influence of and contextual philosophies behind J. A. Blackwell’s revised edition of Northern Antiquities, and in particular its depiction of Old Norse literature as key to understanding British ancestry. The thesis then considers the impact of Blackwell’s inclusion of Walter Scott’s Eyrbyggja saga ‘Abstract’, and the extent to which this partial translation characterised subsequent attitudes to nationality. Finally, the thesis examines the wide nationalist implications of the European interest in Friðþjófs saga, and the nature of the scholarship of George Stephens, its first English translator.
The results of this study demonstrate that far from following a simplistic model of cause and effect, one needs to view the development of the reception of Old Norse literature as being intricately bound with contemporary political and national interests. Previous studies have often emphasised the unconventionality of the pioneering translators; this study underlines both their reliance on wider academic discussion and the wide-spread acceptability of their ideas within Georgian and early-Victorian Britain. The study complements previous research in providing a detailed assessment of ethnic-nationalist discourse within British Old Norse scholarship and eschewing the common view that the discussion was merely a product of foreign philosophy.
Conference Presentations by Thomas Spray
The second half of the nineteenth century saw the Old Norse Íslendingasögur presented to British readers in a series of influential translations. A particularly popular example was the first translation of Njáls saga-translated into English and published as The Story of Burnt Njal by George Webbe Dasent (1817-1896). It was a work which remained popular well into the last century, and which stood unopposed as the only English version for over ninety years. Dasent's translation inspired many writers, drawn to Iceland's scenes of strife and drama. The writer Mary Disney Leith (1840-1926) travelled the scenes of Burnt Njal many times between the years 1894 and 1914. She made 'pilgrimages' to the sites mentioned in Dasent's translation and wrote about them with barely-contained excitement. Her subsequent poems such as 'Kari's Revenge', 'The Death-Song of Skarphedinn', and 'Hallgerda's Hair' demonstrated her thorough knowledge of the narrative. Both her poetic interactions with the saga and personal pilgrimages to Iceland dwarfed those of her British contemporaries. This paper will follow this engagement with Njáls saga through Disney Leith's poetry and travel writing, arguing that while Dasent's translation opened the door for engagement with Iceland's most-loved blood feud, it was the Aberdonian skáldkona who was his staunchest disciple, bringing the imagery of the northern sagas to the polite circles of late-Victorian Britain. Moreover, it will consider how behind the artistic endeavour of moulding Old Norse narrative into Romantic poetry lurked a far more serious phenomenon: the appropriation of Northern values into a self-realised nationalist vision of Britain.
In the same year, George Webbe Dasent published his essay ‘On the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales’, attached as an introduction to his Popular Tales from the Norse. Dasent is more widely known as the first translator of Njáls saga, and indeed his Story of Burnt Njal, or Life in Iceland at the End of the Tenth Century remained the sole English translation for almost a century, attracting both artists and academics. The scholarship of ‘Darwin’ Dasent – a comic alias imparted by Charles ‘Umbra’ Clifford – held sway as expert commentary on Old Norse sagas and their relevance for Victorian Britain.
Yet Dasent’s seemingly objective scholarship was the end product of decades of pre-Darwinian theories of an ethnic-nationalist nature. For Dasent, Iceland’s literature was an ancestral record of Victorian values now returned to its rightful place under the watchful supervision of British foster-parents. Old Norse ‘Glossology’ (palaeontology’s philological cousin) provided evidence of missing links between barbarism and civilisation, as well as proof of the extinction of inferior races. This paper offers a comparison of thematic interests held by these two highly-influential Victorian scholars; it examines Dasent’s application of nineteenth-century theories of racial superiority to the field of Old Norse, and considers the extent to which Popular Tales set the tone for future Old Norse Philology.
In 1878 the Oxford-based Icelander Guðbrandur Vigfússon commented on apparent similarities in the content and language of the Old English poem Beowulf and the Old Norse Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar. Guðbrandur supported a ‘Common Origin Theory’, which posited that there was a common source for both texts. Whilst it has its fair share of critics (see, for example, Fjalldal 1998), the theory has nevertheless proved highly influential, but although Guðbrandur is generally credited with establishing the link, he was not the first to recognise it. Eiríkur Magnússon – friend to and co-translator with William Morris – acknowledged the possible connection between the texts in a series of lectures given in 1875 after the devastating eruption of Askja (see Einarsson 1936 and 1938; Liberman 1986; and Wawn 1994). Eiríkur favoured the ‘English Hypothesis’, which suggested that Grettis saga had its roots in the Old English Beowulf.
Despite common acceptance of Eiríkur’s familiarity with this theory, very little has been done to investigate the possible ramifications regarding his later work on Old Norse literature or that of his colleague Morris. The pair collaborated on numerous publications and projects of an Icelandic nature from their initial introduction in 1868 (Grettir the Strong being one of their first translations) until Morris’s death in 1896; Eiríkur continued with their joint ‘Saga Library’ long afterwards. This paper looks at both the personal correspondence of Eiríkur and Morris and their later works, and argues that the conception of northern society as demonstrated in their translations of Old Norse sagas and Morris’s later works of fiction was heavily influenced by the theory of Anglo–Icelandic cultural interaction sparked by the Beowulf–Gretla connection. Furthermore, the paper highlights the discrepancies that this approach created in Morris’s appreciation of the concepts of race and nation.
Talks by Thomas Spray
Book Reviews by Thomas Spray
Yet how much of what was known was truly accurate? In an age before Old Norse grammars, and in the face of often unreliable source texts, could a Swedish Bishop or a British antiquarian really be expected to give readers a faithful account of pagan Norway?
This paper will examine the presentation of northern pre-Christian faith in the original saga alongside that presented in its early nineteenth-century translations and adaptations. It will explore both the artistic expansion of the saga and the incorporation of erroneous notions of saga-age heathenism. The paper will argue that from its temple(s) to Baldr to its hero’s agnostic philosophy, Friðþjófs saga has been a mistranslated and misunderstood text.
Keywords: Esaias Tegnér, Frithiofs Saga, Friðþjófs saga, George Stephens, translation.
field of Germanic philology, with its notion of language as the defining characteristic of race, promoted the appropriation of myths from Old Norse across Scandinavia, Germany, and
Britain.
In England the general public‟s first introduction to these northern tales was in 1770 in the form of Bishop Percy‟s Northern Antiquities: a heavily-edited translation from the
French of Paul Henri Mallet. Sharing an education with Danish royalty, Mallet was introduced to such works as Snorri Sturlusson‟s Prose Edda. Percy‟s highly-popular work
was republished and re-edited by I. A. Blackwell in 1847, simultaneously whetting the public‟s appetite for more northern folklore and distancing them from the source material via editorial opinion.
Both Blackwell and Percy make it clear in their prefaces that the primary vision for their material is as nationalist history. „Pure blood‟, the „noble savage‟, and „genetic reinvigoration‟: these are the concerns of the editors. This interaction with Snorri‟s Edda for nationalist purposes demonstrates the methods by which traditional oral myths and tales become part of a divisive national image. This article will explore how these initial
translators used their phenomenally influential position as gatekeepers of a previously little-known body of literature and myth. At the same time, this article will identify some of the
key ways in which these early appropriations have affected our interaction with Old Norse literature in its modern editions. Is the shadow of Romantic Nationalism still controlling our engagement with Old Norse myth?
Keywords: Blackwell, nationalism, Norse mythology, Northern Antiquities, Percy, Prose Edda, Snorri Sturlusson.
This thesis reports on the seminal texts which gave context to and informed the late-nineteenth-century translations of Old Norse Íslendingasögur into English, their cultural stimuli and progeny. Firstly, the thesis examines the influence of and contextual philosophies behind J. A. Blackwell’s revised edition of Northern Antiquities, and in particular its depiction of Old Norse literature as key to understanding British ancestry. The thesis then considers the impact of Blackwell’s inclusion of Walter Scott’s Eyrbyggja saga ‘Abstract’, and the extent to which this partial translation characterised subsequent attitudes to nationality. Finally, the thesis examines the wide nationalist implications of the European interest in Friðþjófs saga, and the nature of the scholarship of George Stephens, its first English translator.
The results of this study demonstrate that far from following a simplistic model of cause and effect, one needs to view the development of the reception of Old Norse literature as being intricately bound with contemporary political and national interests. Previous studies have often emphasised the unconventionality of the pioneering translators; this study underlines both their reliance on wider academic discussion and the wide-spread acceptability of their ideas within Georgian and early-Victorian Britain. The study complements previous research in providing a detailed assessment of ethnic-nationalist discourse within British Old Norse scholarship and eschewing the common view that the discussion was merely a product of foreign philosophy.
The second half of the nineteenth century saw the Old Norse Íslendingasögur presented to British readers in a series of influential translations. A particularly popular example was the first translation of Njáls saga-translated into English and published as The Story of Burnt Njal by George Webbe Dasent (1817-1896). It was a work which remained popular well into the last century, and which stood unopposed as the only English version for over ninety years. Dasent's translation inspired many writers, drawn to Iceland's scenes of strife and drama. The writer Mary Disney Leith (1840-1926) travelled the scenes of Burnt Njal many times between the years 1894 and 1914. She made 'pilgrimages' to the sites mentioned in Dasent's translation and wrote about them with barely-contained excitement. Her subsequent poems such as 'Kari's Revenge', 'The Death-Song of Skarphedinn', and 'Hallgerda's Hair' demonstrated her thorough knowledge of the narrative. Both her poetic interactions with the saga and personal pilgrimages to Iceland dwarfed those of her British contemporaries. This paper will follow this engagement with Njáls saga through Disney Leith's poetry and travel writing, arguing that while Dasent's translation opened the door for engagement with Iceland's most-loved blood feud, it was the Aberdonian skáldkona who was his staunchest disciple, bringing the imagery of the northern sagas to the polite circles of late-Victorian Britain. Moreover, it will consider how behind the artistic endeavour of moulding Old Norse narrative into Romantic poetry lurked a far more serious phenomenon: the appropriation of Northern values into a self-realised nationalist vision of Britain.
In the same year, George Webbe Dasent published his essay ‘On the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales’, attached as an introduction to his Popular Tales from the Norse. Dasent is more widely known as the first translator of Njáls saga, and indeed his Story of Burnt Njal, or Life in Iceland at the End of the Tenth Century remained the sole English translation for almost a century, attracting both artists and academics. The scholarship of ‘Darwin’ Dasent – a comic alias imparted by Charles ‘Umbra’ Clifford – held sway as expert commentary on Old Norse sagas and their relevance for Victorian Britain.
Yet Dasent’s seemingly objective scholarship was the end product of decades of pre-Darwinian theories of an ethnic-nationalist nature. For Dasent, Iceland’s literature was an ancestral record of Victorian values now returned to its rightful place under the watchful supervision of British foster-parents. Old Norse ‘Glossology’ (palaeontology’s philological cousin) provided evidence of missing links between barbarism and civilisation, as well as proof of the extinction of inferior races. This paper offers a comparison of thematic interests held by these two highly-influential Victorian scholars; it examines Dasent’s application of nineteenth-century theories of racial superiority to the field of Old Norse, and considers the extent to which Popular Tales set the tone for future Old Norse Philology.
In 1878 the Oxford-based Icelander Guðbrandur Vigfússon commented on apparent similarities in the content and language of the Old English poem Beowulf and the Old Norse Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar. Guðbrandur supported a ‘Common Origin Theory’, which posited that there was a common source for both texts. Whilst it has its fair share of critics (see, for example, Fjalldal 1998), the theory has nevertheless proved highly influential, but although Guðbrandur is generally credited with establishing the link, he was not the first to recognise it. Eiríkur Magnússon – friend to and co-translator with William Morris – acknowledged the possible connection between the texts in a series of lectures given in 1875 after the devastating eruption of Askja (see Einarsson 1936 and 1938; Liberman 1986; and Wawn 1994). Eiríkur favoured the ‘English Hypothesis’, which suggested that Grettis saga had its roots in the Old English Beowulf.
Despite common acceptance of Eiríkur’s familiarity with this theory, very little has been done to investigate the possible ramifications regarding his later work on Old Norse literature or that of his colleague Morris. The pair collaborated on numerous publications and projects of an Icelandic nature from their initial introduction in 1868 (Grettir the Strong being one of their first translations) until Morris’s death in 1896; Eiríkur continued with their joint ‘Saga Library’ long afterwards. This paper looks at both the personal correspondence of Eiríkur and Morris and their later works, and argues that the conception of northern society as demonstrated in their translations of Old Norse sagas and Morris’s later works of fiction was heavily influenced by the theory of Anglo–Icelandic cultural interaction sparked by the Beowulf–Gretla connection. Furthermore, the paper highlights the discrepancies that this approach created in Morris’s appreciation of the concepts of race and nation.