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- Title
The Endowing of Askr and Embla, and Its Reverberations in the Poetry of Egill Skallagrímsson.
- Authors
Sayers, William
- Abstract
Among the accounts of cosmic beginnings in the eddic poem I V luspá i and in Snorri Sturluson's I Gylfaginning i is the quickening to life of the first humans, named Askr and Embla, generally understood as "ash tree" and "elm" (or "vine"), from logs encountered by the gods along the seashore. The occasional verse by Egill Skallagrímsson that was examined by Kure ([23], 161) comes at a point in the saga when Egill is well-settled in Iceland but has vivid memories of fairly recent viking expeditions to continental Europe. In response to the question of which situation Egill had found most trying, "Einarr spurdi Egil, hvar hann hefdi thess verit staddr, at hann hafdi mest reynt sik, ok bad hann that segja sér" ( I Egils saga Skallagrímssonar i 1933, 269), Egill, as so often, adopts an Odinic pose (Ódinn was also a spearman) but, typically, with a twist consonant with their amusing and entertaining talk ("thær rædur skemmtiligar"). Egill's idiosyncratic evocation of Embla and Askr also looks forward to one of the final chapters of the saga (chap. 85), in which the aged poet, now a weathered ash, sits by the hearth surrounded by I embla i - elm-ware - and is chided by the women for obstructing their work, a last, wry incongruity. Henning Kure ([23]) addresses the complex of problems associated with Askr and Embla from one of Egill Skallagrímsson's I lausavísur i , where he boasts of encounters in which he defeated large numbers of armed opponents - eight, eleven at a time.
- Subjects
NORSE mythology; EGILL Skallagrimsson, ca. 910-ca. 990; SNORRI Sturluson, ca. 1179-1241; CREATION mythology; SPATIAL orientation; SENSORY perception; HUMAN sexuality; INTELLECT; MEDIEVAL &; Renaissance (Literary period); 13TH century (Literary period)
- Publication
Scandinavian Studies, 2023, Vol 95, Issue 3, p345
- ISSN
0036-5637
- Publication type
Poetry Review
- DOI
10.5406/21638195.95.3.03