INTRODUCTION

The gay/lesbian rights movement has been called the civil rights issue of the new millennium. Conservative Christian groups oppose granting the gay-lesbian community the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution and they do so on the basis of a black and white moralistic dichotomy. Some Pagan groups do as well. I will argue here that opposition to gay and lesbian rights on a historical basis is misguided and – where not influenced by Judeo-Christian understanding of morality – is based on modern ideas of gender roles and categories. Homosexuality has not been universally seen as immoral; it has not even always been seen as homosexuality. As often happens, the truth is much more complex than the simple black and white model offered modern Western audiences.

We claim to live in an enlightened age yet we are trapped by our own understanding of gender roles and categories. We are brought up to believe that there are boys and there are girls. Boys have penises and girls have vaginas. And there is nothing in between and it is obvious how the pieces are supposed to go together. And no surprise: we are brought up to see the world in this way.

But it is not the only way; other cultures and other ages have different ideas and understandings. In the industrialized West we determine gender categories based on plumbing. We don’t base these categories on gender roles; instead, gender roles have for a long time been determined by gender categories: men fight and hunt; women engage in domestic duties.

Likewise, if a boy makes love to a boy, it is homosexuality. You thus have a category called “homosexual” – those who engage in same-sex sexual relations. Both participants are labeled as homosexuals.

But homosexuality, few people realize, is a modern concept. The pathology of the 19^th century created the category from the male/female conceptualized as abnormal.[1] Ancient ideas about sex and sexuality are far more ambiguous.[2]

To claim therefore that modern distinctions and prejudices are simply continuances of ancient Pagan feeling on the subject is to misstate the case. As Marilyn Katz puts it, “the nineteenth-century notion of sexual pathology was unknown to antiquity.” As she goes on to say, “[T]here is a radical discontinuity between the ancient and modern discourses on sexuality.”[3]

This is a point upon which modern Pagans would do well to ponder. Will we appeal to the past, or to the present, or will we find our own way? And if we appeal to the past we must have a care that we do not impose our own prejudices on our interpretation of history. As Beate Wagner-Hasel observed in 1989, the debate over the status of women in ancient Greece “is not only an attempt to reconstruct a bygone way of life, it is also a discourse over woman’s place in modern bourgeois society which had its beginnings in the Enlightenment and has continued up until the present time.”[4]

Archaeologist Joan Breton-Connelly speaks of “presentist” assumptions – arguments based on or colored by “late twentieth -century political sensibilities.”[5] With regard to genders as “fixed” categories Breton-Connelly appeals to Judith Butler’s questioning of “woman” as a fixed category in her Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) in which she “exposes the ways in which traditional feminist constructs decontextualize individuals from their historical, political, and cultural settings and identities.”[6] The same can be said of homosexuals as a fixed category.

OTHER PARADIGMS

But what if gender was based on gender roles instead of plumbing?

Take for example my own Norse ancestors. While a boy might be born with male sex organs, that simple fact did not in itself make him a man. Gender categories were not fixed and manhood was something that had to be earned – and maintained – through the activities normally associated with that gender category. This meant that while a boy and his penis could aspire to manhood, so could a woman. By laying aside one set of gender roles and embracing another, a woman could become a man. Conversely, a man could become a woman.

Critics – many of them Christian – and Western – say “you confuse gender roles with gender categories.” The answer to this claim is that such a viewpoint is ethnocentric and of little help in understanding the complex nature of gender issues both temporally and spatially.

“This is a world in which ‘masculinity’ always has a plus value, even (or perhaps especially) when it is enacted by a woman,” writes one scholar.[7] It was “a society in which being born male precisely did not confer automatic superiority, a society in which distinction had to be acquired, and constantly reacquired, by wresting it away from others.” Because women had no theoretical ceiling and men no theoretical floor, gender categories were flexible and movable.[8]

Like the Norse, the Romans and Greeks lacked a modern understanding of “homosexual” and “heterosexual.” Once again, it was not what a Roman “was” but what a Roman “did” that determined things. A Roman male was supposed to be a penetrator, the “active” partner in sexual activity. It was manly to penetrate; it was feminine to be penetrated.

The poet Horace put it thusly:

When your organ is stiff, and a servant girl

Or a young boy from the household is near at hand and you know

You can make an immediate assault, would you sooner burst with tension?

Not me. I like sex to be there and easy to get.

As one author puts it, for a free male citizen of Rome “to be sodomized was shameful, a betrayal of his masculinity. Anyone who was known to enjoy being buggered was scorned.”[9]

The Norse understood things in the same terms. “Anal penetration constructed the man who experienced it as whore, bride, mare, bitch, and the like – in whatever guise a female creature.”[10]

To put it bluntly: A hole was a hole was a hole, and quite literally, since the Roman word “vagina” (which means sword-sheath) applied equally to vagina and anus and certain Norse words served the same dual purpose.[11]

The evidence suggests that for the Norseman’s “character was not either male or female, but lay on a spectrum ranging from strong to week, aggressive to passive, powerful to powerless, winner to loser.”[12]

To be called a man was the highest compliment a man could pay a “woman,” as we see in Laxdaela Saga when Snorri of Helgafell says of Gudrun the Fair, “Now you can see what a man Gudrun is, when she gets the better of both of us.”

To be a man was to be hvatur – bold, active, and vigorous – and this was to be admired, whatever sort of plumbing you had. Likewise, to be blauður – soft and weak – was to be despised, whatever sort of plumbing you had.[13]

CONCLUSIONS

In our world of assumed certainty, things are far less certain than we like to pretend. As it turns out, gender roles and categories are nebulous, shifting things. In the end, they are what we say they are from age to age and culture to culture. We decide man = x and woman = y but x and y are neither fixed nor universal.

The moralizers in some ancient pre-Christian societies decided that men were penetrators and women were penetrated. The old ditty about Caesar demonstrates this, that he was “every woman’s man, and every man’s woman.” In contrast to today’s paradigm, by sodomizing another man Caesar would not be seen as effeminate; but being sodomized was another matter altogether.

Christian moralizers, following Jewish Law, presented the Western world with a new paradigm: Not only did men “insert” and women “receive,” but men could only be insertive with regards to women and women could only be recipients of men. Any toying with this equation was an abomination that had unhappy results for all concerned. And the derision of your fellows (in Pagan cultures) and a relatively quick death (in Judaism) was replaced in Christianity by an eternity of hellfire.[14]

And so it remains today.[15]

Except that these distinctions are all artificial. In mathematics numbers added to or subtracted from other numbers have certain, unchangeable results. But nature – and life – don’t work that way. There is homosexuality in the natural world outside of the human species – or at least we label it as such (we can’t possibly know how the animals involved would think of it).[16]

It is the human-imposed synthetic categories of “moral” and “immoral,” “normal” and “abnormal” that is unnatural. They are not universal; they are not constant and unchanging. They are what we say they are. And if we want, we can say they are something else. The irony is, for the West, that it is a religion that distances itself from nature that has decided for us what is and is not natural.

Some Pagan moralizers sound like conservative Christians; they like to say that homosexuality is immoral but they have forgotten to change their moral filters. For a reconstructionist religion making this determination isn’t reconstructing the past; its imposing modern prejudices on their model of the past (which had an entirely different set of prejudices).

On reconstructionist grounds alone, there is no basis for 21^st century ideas about gender roles and categories; you cannot reconstruct what did not exist. It seems the pathology of the 19^th century can capture those who escape the clutches of Judeo-Christian moralizing.

The monolithic and universal category of male/female is a myth, the determinants differing for every culture and/or religion. For one group to say “our way is the True way” is not only arrogant but wrong-minded. Just as every ethnic group or culture has a religion that is true for it (true because it works) so every culture has gender roles that work for it. We may not approve of them, but then, who are we to say that we are right and they are wrong? Put the shoe on the other foot and see how you feel about it.

Once we start imposing our particular views, once we start categorizing our local views as universal, we open ourselves up to a world where might makes right, where the dominant culture (which in recent centuries has been Western and Christian) determines in a blatantly ethnocentric manner what is right for everyone: this is what a woman is, this is what a man is. These are the rules permissible for men and women; conform or die.

But ancient Church Councils aside, universal truths are not attainable by popular vote. One book, developing out of one culture and society (and religion) no matter how popular, cannot dictate for everyone what determines gender roles and categories. Such an understanding is only one out of many thousands of possibilities.

If we are going to come to a new understanding of these matters, we have to set aside our arrogance and our ethnocentrism; we need a new paradigm…and a new discussion.

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[1] Marilyn Katz, “Ideology and ‘The Status of Women’ in Ancient Greece,” History and Theory 31 (1992), 92. With regard to “homosexual” or “gay/lesbian,” and the effect of using one term over another see Steve Williams, “Gay and Lesbian or Homosexual? What’s in a Word?” http://www.care2.com/causes/civil-rights/blog/gay-and-lesbian-or-homosexual-does-it-matter/

[2] See Ray Laurence, Roman Passions: A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome (Continuum, 2009), 84-86 for a discussion of views of “homosexuality”in the Roman world.

[3] Katz (1992), 92.

[4] Beate Wagner-Hasel, “Frauenleben in orientalischer Abgeschlossenheit? Zur Geschichte und Nutzanwendung eines Topos,” Der Altsprachliche Unterricht 2 (1989), 19.

[5] Joan Breton-Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece (Princeton University Press, 2007), 19-20.

[6] Breton-Connelly (2007), 22.

[7] Carol Clover, “Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe,” Speculum 68 (1993), 372.

[8] Clover (1993), 380.

[9] Anthony Everitt, Augustus (Random House, 2006), 149.

[10] Clover (1993), 375.

[11] Clover (1993), 378.

[12] Nancy Marie Brown, The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman (Harcourt, 2007), 74.

[13] Brown (2007), 74.

[14] And in Uganda, with the support of extremist American Evangelicals, we are seeing the return of the death penalty for homosexuality. See “Human Rights Impact Assessment of Uganda’s Anti-homosexuality Bill,” The Zeleza Post, January 17, 2010 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86439&id=18903-6770804-EYlalox&t=5

[15] See the discussion at ReligiousTolerance.org: http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_legis.htm

[16] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5550488/Homosexual-behaviour-widespread-in-animals-according-to-new-study.html

(This is a continuation of my debate with Scholar, begun two posts ago – “The Myopic Christian” – Hrafnkell)

You wrote “I spoke specifically of Mr. Douthat and those who think like him – there was no blanket condemnation of Christians made or implied” and “As for specific Christians and/or groups of Christians, I identify these when addressing the topic in question”. You ought to read your post again because you have not identified specific groups of Christians in your post; you write about one particular Christian and then proceed to speak of “Christians” as though to imply a unity. You do, indeed – in the post that I commented on – imply that Christians as a whole are intolerant.

I think it’s quite clear from the context who I was speaking of. To the extent I was unclear, I apologize. If you are a all familiar with my blog, you will have seen me say often enough that I do not include all Christians. I have said many times that my own family is Christian and I have the utmost respect for their toleration of other forms of belief. But you enter onto the stage, apparently unacquainted with me at all, and presume to know me. You don’t.

You wrote “Indeed, I carefully cite my sources when I write”. I missed the source that you cited when you proclaimed what “Christians” would say and that “Christians” initiate conversations about religion. Nowhere did you say that you were writing only about Christians who think like Mr. Douthat.

Would you like me to cite every personal encounter I’ve ever had with a Christian? I happily invite every Pagan who drops by to comment upon their own experiences. I can guarantee you they won’t be any different than mine.

You wrote “I’m sorry, but this won’t do. This is an old excuse and I’m quite frankly tired of seeing it trotted out. The crimes committed by Christianity since the fourth century cannot be wished away by simply waving a magic wand…” Indeed, this won’t do – I did not say (and here you are putting words in my mouth) that Christians have not committed atrocities. Clearly they have. No need to elaborate. I was referring to Christians now, not Christians then. (But I think that you have difficulty differentiating…).

Not trouble differentiating at all. I was quite clear in pointing out that these crimes continue today in the form of cultural genocide. The basic premise of Christianity is one of intolerance. There is a difference between that and what individual Christians think and do, but as I made clear, the religion is itself intolerant by its very nature – as are Judaism and Islam, both being monotheisms.

Please see (in no particular order): Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History (Morning Star Books, 1995), 136 n. 103. Ellerbe’s position is that the Christian legacy fosters sexism, racism, and intolerance; Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity’s Creation of the Sex War in the West,” (Elm Tree Books, 1986). Armstrong condemns what she calls “Christian sexual neurosis” and argues that Christianity’s traditional hatred of women and of the body still cripples woman’s self-image today;  H.A. Drake, “Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance,” Past and Present 153 (1996), H.A. Drake argues that Christianity is not inherently intolerant while making allowance for a certain level of intolerance endemic to monotheism in general; David Lochhead “Monotheistic Violence” Buddhist-Christian Studies 21 (2001); Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997); R. Joseph Hoffmann, ed., The Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006); Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (University of California Press, 2005); Charles Freeman, A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State (The Overlook Press, 2009); Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Harvard University Press, 1997);  Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism (Stanford University Press, 2009).

Let’s try a little test, shall we?  We’ll play “Who’s God is It?” (and remember, these passages are are part of Christian SCRIPTURE – the word of God, and these scriptures are spouted every Sunday in churches across the world and nobody bats an eye:

The virulent hatred and intolerance of monotheism for polytheism is astounding.  See YHWH’s threats espoused at Lev 26.14-17; they are enough to chill anyone’s blood. As R. Joseph Hoffman observes, the God of Abraham “has always threatened vengeance of cosmic proportions for not keeping his laws…The Abrahamic god must be understood in terms of two words: exclusivity and judgment.”[1] Schwartz notes the manner in which the biblical narrative paints “inclinations toward polytheism” as “sexual infidelity” and how Israel itself “is castigated for ‘whoring after’ other gods, thereby imperiling her ‘purity.’” The land itself must be kept clean “or its inhabitants will be ejected, ‘vomited’ out of the land…when Israel is not monotheistic, it is filthy and it pollutes the land” (Lev 20.22-25). When Israel worships a foreign deity, she is a harlot, the land is made barren, and she is ejected from the land” (Jer 3.2-3).[2] The God of monotheism is made the “True” God and the “gods” of polytheism are false. The result, when the opportunity offered, was slaughter, pure and simple. See as examples, 2 Kings 23:20-25 and Deuteronomy 13:13-18 for chilling examples of what happened to those as, George Carlin has put it, “gave the wrong answer to the God question.”

You wrote “you won’t find any such list of polytheistic intolerance”. Wrong and wrong. There is plenty of indication of Roman intolerance (despite your careful waving away of it with the magic wand of “Christian bias”). Read Josephus for some of the description of Roman treatment of the “Other”. Consider the Chanadala and associated groups trampeled by Hindu society… I am sure that if you were interested in having a real ecumenical view you would investigate the dark sides of polytheism as well.

You haven’t even begun to advance an argument. I give you a list many pages long citing specific, documented examples, and you throw a vague reference to Judaism at me and a comment about Hindus (I’ll give you some Josephus in a moment).

As I said, there is a vast gulf of difference between finding the notions of a religious group (or even its practices) ridiculous, abhorrent, foolish, or what have you, and actually putting an end to those practices. I think Christianity is a ridiculous religion – it offers nothing new, nothing original – but I don’t deny your right to practice it.

The Romans did not oppose the Druids so much because of human sacrifice but because the Druids were at the center of resistance against Rome. That was their crime – they threatened the peace of the province (Gaul, and later, Britain). I’ve read Josephus many times over. Do you want a list of all the nice accommodations the Romans came to for Judaism, just as one small example?

Let us take a look here at some of the concessions and privileges granted to the Jews by the Roman state (and compare and contrast, if you will, American treatment of the Native Americans in the 19^th century – a supposedly enlightened “Christian” century):

• No Quartering of Troops on the Native Population (Ant. 14.10.2 § 195). Nor did the Jews have to generally even see Roman troops, except on holidays such as Passover, when they were present in Jerusalem to keep the peace. The Roman garrison appears to have been stationed largely in Caesarea, a Greek-speaking area.[3] One might think back to the situation in the American Colonies in the days leading up to the revolt and the role quartering played on American sensibilities. This was one annoyance spared the Jewish population of Palestine.
• Tax allowances (Jews allowed to deduct out of their tribute every second year the land is let (in the Sabbatic period), a corus of that tribute (Ant. 14.10.5 §201)
• The Jews allowed to live “according to their own customs” (Ant. 14.10.8 § 214).
• Jews excused from military service by Prefect of Asia (Ant. 14.10.11-12 §§ 223-228) “on account of the superstition they are under” (Ant. 14.10.14 § 232) in other words, Sabbath restrictions on travel and fighting, etc. Note that this does not mean that Jews could not, if they wished, serve in the military, and also that it is a far cry from excluding Jews from military ranks by the Christian Roman Empire (C. Th. XVI.8.24).[4]
• Roman acquiescence of Jewish ban on images customarily observed by procurators (Ant. 18.3.1 §§ 55-56). This included the re-routing of Roman troops (no doubt at great expense) due to the Jews finding the images on the standards offensive when paraded anywhere on “Jewish” soil, as shown by the incident with Vitellius described by Josephus (Ant. 18.121-122). The Romans went so far as to omit from coins struck in Judaea “any sign or symbol that might be offensive to the religious feelings of the Jews…”[5] It is interesting to compare the coins of Herod, which while also observing the ban on images, do bear Pagan religious symbols, for example a coin of 37 BCE which portrays the tripod of Apollo and on the reverse, the Dioscuri cap topped with a star.[6]
• Augustus confirmed Jewish privileges conferred originally by Julius Caesar (Ant. 16.6.1 §§ 160-165) “that the Jews have liberty to make use of their own customs, according to the law of their forefathers” See also Philo, Leg. ad Gaium 309-319.
• The Sacred Money was not to be touched (Ant. 16.6.2 § 163) – This was violated on several occasions, including, allegedly, by Pontius Pilate (Ant. 18.3.2 § 60) and on one occasion the proconsul of Asia, L. Flaccus in 62/1 BCE confiscated the temple contributions from his province (Cicero, Flacc. 66-9) but his action was not repeated.[7] See also Ant. 16.6.3 § 166, where Augustus commands the recipient, the proconsul of Sardinia, to let the Jews “send their sacred money to Jerusalem” freely and a similar letter from Herod Agrippa to the Ephesians (Ant. 16.6.4 §§ 167-168). There is also an example from Berenice in Cyrenaica, where the local Jewish community commemorated a Roman official for his part in seeing that the sacred money was not diverted from the Temple to pay the tax levied on resident aliens.[8]
• Anyone stealing the Jewish holy books will be deemed a “sacrilegious person” and his property confiscated (Ant. 16.6.2 § 164). We have duly noted the punishment meted out to a Roman soldier (by Roman authorities) for profaning the Torah. By way of contrast, the United States is continually being accused of mishandling the Qu’ran but the US Government pretends it never happens and so far, no American soldiers have been punished.
• Exempted from participation in the imperial cult and allowed to make prayers in their own temple on behalf of the emperor (War 2.10.4 §197; Against Apion 2.7 §77) instead of to the gods in Pagan temples.[9] Philo tells us that the cost of these sacrifices was born by the Roman government and not the Jewish people (Spec. Leg. 157).
• Gentiles were not allowed into the sacred precincts of the temple (Tacitus, Histories 5.8; Josephus, War 5.193; Ant. 12.145, 15.417; cf. Philo, Leg. 212). This prohibition (of which Paul runs afoul Acts 21.28-29) has been proven by archaeological findings.[10]
• Far from persecuting the Jews, the Roman government served as their advocate: “The Romans appear at times to have chosen to put their influence behind Jewish communities in dispute with their neighbors…and did not even cease after A.D. 70.”[11] For examples, see Josephus, Ant. 14.10.12-26).
• Jews exempted from court on the Sabbath.[12]
• Claudius renewed the edict of tolerance issued by Caesar and renewed by Augustus, making it empire-wide (Ant. 19.5.3 §§286-291). The edict is not specific; Rajak argues “that Claudius is not doing much more than expressing his good will towards the practice of the Jewish cult and establishing a lead for Greek cities to follow.”[13] If, as Rajak argues, this falls short of a Jewish Magna Carta, it still illustrates the extent to which Rome permitted self-rule and represents a general good will not mirrored in Europe for the fifteen centuries following the end of Pagan rule.

It is important to note that these edicts of toleration were not general and empire wide, but seem to have been issued on a city by city basis. Though these senatus consulta were ad hoc in nature, they also served as legal precedents to which future governors and emperors could appeal. Leonard Rutgers makes an important point when he notes that “Rome did not have a standard policy toward the Jews: Roman magistrates responded to situations.”[14]

Momigliano, not along among scholars, takes note of the fact that “the members of the ruling class of Rome were ready to transact business with people who worshipped different gods and were used to different political traditions. Roman polytheism could adapt itself to, and indeed merge with, what we may call the provincial traditions.”[15] Provincial traditions = ethnic religion. Roman polytheism was itself an ethnic religion. Barriers translated.

But, it is clear that you are a thirty year reactionary against a bad experience from your youth. This is clear when you write “I speak from three decades of experience as a polytheist and before that an upbringing as a Lutheran (ELCA) – from birth to age 22″. You throw this out as some kind of claim for authority about what you are saying – and it is a common trope used by reactionaries against religions – but being raised in a tradition is no guarantee of sufficient knowledge of it. Perhaps you have sufficient knowledge, maybe you have studied Lutheran theology in depth – I don’t know; what I do know is that the claim which you make carries little weight.

Yes, right, because only your experiences as a Christian are relevant. Those of a polytheist are irrelevant. And you have yet to show that the claim I make carries little weight. In point of fact, you have offered me very little at all.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not interested only in defending Christianity. I am defending it here because you are attacking it with rather specious arguments. If you were attacking polytheism, I would be defending that. But, in your rebellion against your previous religious tradition (which was no doubt thrust upon you authoritatively) you craft your own Other against which you demonstrate very little tolerance. You contradict your own claims for polytheism.

I invite you again to show where my arguments are specious. You have yet to do so. And please, the old “saw” that it is a “rebellion” against my previous religion…Christians trot that out EVERY time. Ask any Pagan. We’ve all heard it. But it says far more about the Christian in question than it does the Pagan.

I would think that a real ecumenical position would seek to rehabilitate all religious positions to be tolerant of the Other rather than seek to brand some inherently and irremediably intolerant and therefore not worthy of regard.

Universal intolerance is a logical impossibility. We cannot be tolerant of intolerance. You have a right to believe what you believe. You do not have a right to coerce others (and I’m not saying you specifically are). But Christianity, since the fourth century, as a whole, has done so, and continues to do so. And it continues to spout hate for the “other” through recitation of biblical passages in churches and confirmation classes and Bible study meetings. The Bible itself, as I said, is one long anti-Pagan diatribe. Christianity is a religion of condemnation. It is not Pagans who seek to brand some religions as unworthy of regard, but Christianity. I recognize your God is real; can you say the same?

But you have already crafted your own vision of Christianity and have declared it to be the only viable one (and you make use of similarly ideological representations) and thus you cannot take into account any nuance that can be legitimately read in Christian scriptures.

But I have not done so. I am representing Christianity as a historical religion – one that existed then and one that exists now. Are we going down the old “Only a believer can understand the Bible?” road now? Please tell me we are, because I love that argument.

I am sure that if you read any polytheistic writings the way that you read Christian writings you would find intolerance of Others (whether or not these Others are differentiated according to religious view or according to some other criteria).

I’ll just let Jan Assmann speak here:

Does not every religion quite automatically put everything outside itself in the position of error and falsehood and look down on other religions as “paganism”? Is this not quite simply the religious expression of ethnocentricity? Does not the distinction between true and false in reality amount to nothing other than the distinction between “us” and “them”? Does not every construction of identity by the very sane process generate alterity? Does not every religion produce “pagans” in the same way that every civilization generates “barbarians”?

However plausible this may seem, it is not the case. Cultures not only generate otherness by constructing identity, but also develop techniques of translation. We have to distinguish here between the “real other,” who is always ther beyond the individual and independent of the individual’s constructions of selfhood and otherhood, and the ”constructed other,” who is the shadow of the individual’s identity…

He goes on to  argue that polytheism (which he calls cosmotheism) functioned as a means of translation between cultures, translating across cultural and ethnic barriers.

The Mosaic distinction was therefore a radically new distinction which considerably changed the world in which it was drawn. The space which was “severed or cloven” by this distinction was not simply the space of religion in general, but that of a very specific kind of religion. We may call this new type of religion “counter-religion” because it rejects and repudiates everything that went before and what is outside itself as “paganism.”It no longer functioned as a means of intercultural translation; on the contrary, it functioned as a means of intercultural estrangement…the new counter-religion blocked intercultural translatability. False gods cannot be translated.[16]

I would like you to prove that all polytheisms have been perfectly tolerant to all Others. After all, your silence suggests that you deny my claim that polytheists do not escape the dark, intolerant side of human nature.

I would like you to prove that polytheism is intolerant; prove Jan Assmann wrong. The Pope tried (Truth and Tolerance, 2004) but he failed. Maybe you can do better but you’ll have to try harder than this. You have yet to done so, unless I am expected to take your word for it, that such is the case. I’m sure you can understand in light of the mountains of scholarship to the contrary, if I decline to do so.  I have provided you with evidence; you have offered me nothing in return. The burden of proof is not on me, but on you. I have offered not only these two posts, but every post I’ve published here since 2005, and all the sources I’ve cited in that space.

I would also like to know what silence you speak of? I have answered you in some depth; I am unaware of any gulf of silence.

I have made an argument that polytheism is by its very nature tolerant. It does not construct others (as Assmann said, you must distinguish between “real” and “constructed” others. The Greeks and Romans saw people as barbarians but this was not a religious distinction. They saw an unreasoning fear of the divine as superstition, but they did not treat these people like monotheists treat Pagans.

Your final point is not even part of the equation. I have nowhere argued that polytheist do not commit crimes. Criminal activity, the “dark side of human nature” has always existed, and it exists just fine outside of the religious spectrum. And as I said, you might claim the Romans were intolerant because they laughed at Egyptian religion, but they didn’t exterminate it, did they? One guess who did? (and that answer will be the same for who exterminated Roman religion – and all other ancient religions, and indeed, every indigenous ethnic religion in Europe and the Middle East and many in Africa, South America and in other parts of the world. Just one guess Go ahead.

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[1] R. Joseph Hoffmann, ed. The Just War and Jihad: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, & Islam (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006), 10-11. Among this god’s enemies are, as Hoffmann identifies this group’s composition, “a blend of idolaters, foreigners, sorcerers, heretics, homosexuals, drunken sons, dismissed wives, disobedient slaves, and above all the catch-all remainder of ‘those who do not do his will.’”

[2] Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain, 18, 63.

[3] Maurice Sartre, The Middle East Under Rome, 103.

[4] Leonard Victor Rutgers, “Roman Policy towards the Jews: Expulsions from the City of Rome during the First Century C.E.,” Classical Antiquity 13 (1994), 58.

[5] F.W. Madden, History of Jewish Coinage (London: Bernard Quartich, 1864), 135.

[6] See David M. Jacobson, “Herod the Great Shows His True Colors,” Near Eastern Archaeology 64 (2001), 100-104. As Jacobson states in relation to the cap of the Dioscuri, “such an image might have been offensive to the Jews.”

[7] Tessa Rajak, “Was there a Roman Charter for the Jews?” JRS 74 (1984), 107; cf. Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 399.

[8] For the example of Cyrenaica see Martha W. Baldwin Bowsky, “M. Tittius Sex.f. Aem. And the Jews of Berenice (Cyrenaica),” The American Journal of Philology 108 (1987), 495-510.

[9] It has been demonstrated that sacrifices in the Imperial Cult were generally made on behalf of rather than to the emperor. See S.R.F. Price, “Between Man and God: Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult,” The Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980), 28-43. For this reason, the Jews had no difficulty accommodating the needs of the Empire just as they had in the past accommodated other foreign rulers. They simply prayed to their God to watch out for the emperor rather than to the gods of the State; the Romans, quite sensibly, were also satisfied with the arrangement since there was no rejection of YHWH implicit in polytheism. Claims that the Jews (or Christians, for that matter) were required to worship the emperor miss the mark.

[10] The warning inscriptions would have been difficult to miss: They were inscribed in Greek and Latin in red-painted letters on white limestone. Discovered by Clermont-Ganneau in 1871, the inscribed stone reads: “No foreigner may enter the forecourt beyond the barrier rail around the sanctuary; Anyone who is caught will have himself to blame for his own death.” See Elias J. Bickerman, “The Warning Inscription of Herod’s Temple,” JQR 37 (1947), 387-405. Bickerman compares similar inscriptions found at Pagan temples and notes that “The pagan visitor of the Temple however was shut out not because his hands or his heart were unclean but because he was an alien.”

[11] Rajak, 107.

[12] Jerry F. Daniel, “Anti-Semitism in the Hellenistic-Roman Period,” JBL 98 (1979), 45-65.

[13] Rajak, 115.

[14] Rutgers, “Roman Policy,” 58-59.

[15] Arnaldo Momigliano, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 123.

[16] Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian (Harvard University Press, 1997), 2-3.

(I am taking the time to respond at length to the objections of a commenter identified as “Scholar” – please see my previous post, “The Myopic Christian” for the background – Hrafnkell)

In response to this post, one could equally well write another called “The Myopic Polytheist”. It takes a certain kind of blindness of history and human nature to even suggest that all Christians (and-it seems-only Christians) are intolerant to all other religious forms.

In fairness, I have never said all Christians (or only Christians) are intolerant. This is, however, a response I get frequently. I should be used by now to having words put in my mouth but it still grates. If you are going to accuse me of something, please do me the courtesy of accusing me over something I did say, and not something you imagined or pretend I said.

Indeed, I carefully cite my sources when I write – if it is an opinion piece you will see that it is categorized as such – but even then I do not simply make things up. I carefully research and I speak from three decades of experience as a polytheist and before that an upbringing as a Lutheran (ELCA) – from birth to age 22.

You choose one particular form of religious fanaticism-this one in a Christian guise-and extend it to an entire religion. This is the same tactic that fanatics and blind people of all religious/political/etc. ideologies use.

I do not know if you are talking about this single post or a series of posts or articles by me when you say this. With regards to the former, I spoke specifically of Mr. Douthat and those who think like him – there was no blanket condemnation of Christians made or implied.

In the latter case, I have made abundantly clear my own opinion of Christianity in general – that it is, as I said, “the solution for a problem that does not exist.” I won’t go into all of my arguments here in this limited context – you are welcome to search my blog for the relevant posts. Suffice it to say, I do not think highly of Christianity and I think it offers nothing that has not already been offered in one form or another (and without the accompanying levels of intolerance).

As for specific Christians and/or groups of Christians, I identify these when addressing the topic in question. You might look specifically at my “Christianity As a Hate Group” (parts I and II) in this regard.

Finally, Christianity’s history of intolerance speaks for itself. I recommend you visit this page and provide me with a like page of Paganism’s intolerance:  The Genocide of Polytheism (4th to 9th Centuries CE)

I know plenty of Christians who find to be abhorrent precisely the same things which are disgusting you (and me for that matter) and who are absolutely welcoming and tolerant of other religions.

I have made abundantly clear in previous posts that I do not consider all Christians the same.  My family back in Minnesota is Christian and most of my friends have been Christian. Again, you are putting words in my mouth and then condemning them.

The group which you refer to as Christians are neither good Christians nor the norm amongst Christians.

I’m sorry, but this won’t do. This is an old excuse and I’m quite frankly tired of seeing it trotted out. The crimes committed by Christianity since the fourth century cannot be wished away by simply waving a magic wand and pronouncing that none of those criminals were Christians or by claiming that they were not good Christians or not the norm. They were, and it can be argued that they were doing precisely what Christianity demands of them (think back to that nasty “Great Commission” put into Jesus’ mouth). Catholics and Protestants both have been guilty of terrible crimes – genocide, ethnic cleansing, cultural genocide…the list is quite long and there is plenty of blame to go around. And all too often their behavior was the norm. As recently as colonial America – shortly before the Revolution, Christians were doing all sorts of nasty things – and they all considered it “the norm” – as they indeed should when the entire colony in question is composed of like-minded Christians.

You would do well to get to know the fear and frustration that these fanatics are experiencing and which are shaping their narrow-minded perspective: namely, they dream of religious, political and economic ideals which are mutually contradictory and, since they are unable to confront these contradictions, they need to find scapegoats.

There are many reasons these people are acting like they do. Part of it is their religious tradition – and monotheism itself, which is generally intolerant by its very nature. By pretending to have sole possession of some capital-T truth, everyone else gets labeled the “other.” I recommend the writings of Jan Assmann in this regard, among others – Moses the Egyptian (Harvard University Press, 1997) is a good place to start.

If you go back to the “Old” Testament to which nearly all Christians treat as scripture, and the terrible crimes portrayed there…you can see where it all begins. The entire “Old” Testament is an anti-Pagan diatribe, a rejection of everything polytheism holds dear. Jesus was no more tolerant even if he did not slaughter people. He considered Gentiles (that’s you AND me) to be swine, a typical attitude of his time. The promise of both Judaism AND Christianity (the end-time scenario) calls for all nonbelievers to be eradicated in genocide such as the world has never known. Anyone who believes this (or wants it) is guilty of intolerance and much else besides.

It would be more instructive to look to these factors rather than to the religion itself for the source of this fanatical response.

As I said above, there are many reasons for the fanatical response – including simple reaction to increasing marginalization and a sense of disenfranchisement by the white, uneducated or poorly educated base that see their days of privilege coming to an end. But the basis of the religion itself is also at fault, as I also pointed out above. To simply ignore these reasons, or to pretend they aren’t relevant, is absurd.

Christianity, properly understood and practiced is perfectly capable of intolerance, just as it capable of the most horrible intolerance when infused with human egoism. I suggest that the same dual possibilities exist for all religions practiced by human beings – it would be absurd to think that polytheists and followers of other religious traditions are incapable of tolerance. If you do not recognize this, then I suggest you consider your own tradition a little more closely.

I included a link above which lists acts of Christian intolerance for just five centuries. It is quite lengthy – and also quite incomplete. I’m sorry to disabuse you of your notions, but you won’t find any such list of polytheistic intolerance. As Jan Assmann says, polytheism was a means of translation between cultures, an ecumene of nations. It translated across cultural barriers. Monotheism (all monotheisms) builds barriers. And everyone outside of that particular monotheism becomes the “other.” People fought for a lot of reasons in the polytheistic world, but they did not have crusades, inquisitions and wholesale genocide of peoples on religious grounds.  And contrary to popularly-held belief, the Pagan Roman government did not persecute Christians. The only real episode that can be identified historically is that of Diocletian’s reign and we have no idea what transpired, or why it transpired, because all our sources are biased (i.e. Christian).

I suggest that you study history a little more closer before you proceed.

We can argue about what intolerance is and what forms it takes, but polytheistic governments did not care what gods were worshiped. All gods existed; there was no “my god is better than your god” or “your god doesn’t exist” or “I’m going force you to believe in my god.” The Romans might have thought Egyptian polytheism was ridiculous but you will notice they never tried to exterminate it. You can’t make this claim about Christianity – which did exterminate it (and Roman religion too).

And keep in mind that many of these horrible people are Saints today. Keep in mind also that anti-Paganism is just as present in the New Testament as the Old and is trumpeted from pulpits across the world every Sunday (and nobody bats an eye or objects – none did in my old church or in any other I’ve heard of).

A multitude of polytheistic religions existed in the ancient world and nobody was trying to exterminate all others. Sadly, you can’t make this claim about Christianity, which is still trying to change the religion of others even today. Do you know any churches that don’t support missionary activity, or who take objection to such activity? It’s cultural genocide, pure and simple. Proselyting ought to be illegal.

As for Islam and Judaism, I discuss these when and where appropriate. By no means are other forms of monotheism innocent. But rest assured, monotheism is the problem, and polytheism is the answer to a question that does exist. Because true religion is religion that works – for those who follow it. There my truth is found, not in some pretense of universalism.

This is a rather frightening story – that gays are possessed by demons. This is Spanish Inquisition stuff. I have updated my post on Christianity as a Hate Group in order to reflect this new information. I urge every one to read this article, which can be found here as well as the article on TheCall – a call to action against secular society by extremist Christians. Every day I encounter people who laugh off the idea of theocracy as absurd. It is not.

We would all of us do well to educate ourselves and to keep abreast of this threat. Watch the Maddow piece above. If Engle’s voice doesn’t give you the chills and have you seeing Hitler, I don’t know what will.

There are many useful sources of information out there to further educate yourself. Here are a couple of places to start:

• TheocracyWatch.org is maintained at Cornell University in Ithaca – don’t mind the appearance of the site – it’s the information that’s critical.
• GodsOwnParty is dedicated to an extremist Assembly of God type theology held by Sarah Palin, and which is far more of a threat than you might think. Though I’m freelancing there, I’m not plugging it because I write for them – I write for them because it’s an important cause.
• New Apostolic Reformation. This is an article on NAR (Palin’s brand of “Christianity” in the ApologeticsIndex. This is a brand of Christianity even the ultra-extreme Assemblies of God have condemned.

If you want more, Google “NAR” or “New Apostolic Reformation.”

As I’ve said here many times before, we’re all in this together.

With Biblical Dominionism, we are talking Old Testament, folks. These people want to “purge” secular society. If you know anything at all about Christian history, you know this is not a good thing. And this is not simply a few fanatic fools – members of Congress attended the prayercast in question: Senators Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback, and House Representatives Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes. Members of government.

Whether they’re trying to use the dominionists or the dominionists are using them or they’re using each other, really doesn’t matter. People once laughed at Hitler too. Remember that. Because they seem bizarre or extreme fringe to us does not mean they are not a threat, particularly with members of Congress endorsing them.

Inspired by recent posts by ExecutivePagan at The Executive Pagan http://executivepagan.wordpress.com/ and, it goes without saying,  Kayleigh at Kallisti, An Apple in Pandemonium http://kallisti.writingkaye.com/,   I have decided to (finally) take a look at Old Norse poetry.

Though this comes out as a rather long article, it is lamentably incomplete. The subject is vast enough for many books – one poor blog entry cannot hope to do it justice – especially at the hands of a dilettante like me. For any resultant mistakes I apologize and I invite correction.

Norse poetry is unlike anything the average English speaker has before encountered. Especially in this day and age of “freeform” poetry, something as carefully constructed and complex as skaldic poetry is certain, at first glance, to seem overwhelming. Yet a properly constructed poem is a work of art, not least of which because of its subject matter, the rich northern mythos.

Poetry is, for the Norse, an íflrótt, a skill that has to be learned. It is a craft, something that is shaped and brought into existence. Egil says its raw material comes from the poet’s hugar fylgsni ‘hiding place of thought’, “from which it must be dragged or driven” and there “is a location within the mind of a sacred store of words and emotions, the potentialities for poetry, which have to be shaped and projected by the poet’s craft”  (Alisan Finlay, “Pouring Óðinn’s Mead: An Antiquarian Theme?” Proceedings of the 11th International  Saga Conference, 92-93 ).

Mia Berg writes of the relationship between myth and poetry,

While myth is a product of a whole culture, a collective product, poetry, as art, is an individual expression. That means for instance that poetry is creating its own autonomous poetic universes. By way of personification and anthropomorphism, myth projects its phenomena into narratives in an outer world, and thereby focusses on what is general or common. Poetry, as a symbolic language, rather tries to show the general or common through the individual. When using material from the mythological tradition, poetry will, by a process of poetic transformation, also try to liberate itself from the very same tradition. As literature poetry is thus using mythological motives for its own purpose (Mai Elisabeth Berg, “Myth or Poetry, a Brief Discussion of Some Motives in the Elder Edda,”  Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference, 36).

There are two classes of poetry, Eddic and skaldic (alliterative). The difference between the two is one of degrees. Strict rules of composition govern each, but the rules for skáldic strophes are much more complex than Eddic. Skaldic poetry is rarely anonymous while Eddic poetry is “usually anonymous and devoted to heroic, gnomic, and mythological themes from the past” (Gade, The Structure of Old Norse Drottkvaett Poetry (Islandica) (Cornell University Press 1995),  1).

Within those two classes, there are many different types of poems, and this can be confusing, but some clue as to their genre can be had from their name: Kviða generally denotes a narrative poem; mál a poem in dialogue or didactic; Ijóð, söngr a lay or a song; tal a genealogical, drápa a laudatory heroic poem; rima a rhyme or rhapsody.

The Skáld

A poet and singer somewhat similar to the Irish bard. During the Viking Age, these skálds would travel widely, from hall to hall, and seek the patronage of jarls and kings. It is ironic that while we cannot assign authorship to many of the sagas they composed, yet we know the names of many skálds. For instance, though we have little of the poetry composed by those in attendance upon King Knut, we know, thanks to Snorri Sturlusson, their names. For others, the years have been kinder. For instance, Thorbjörn Hornklofi was a court favorite of King Harald Finehair, the antagonist of Egil’s Saga. Thorbjörn’s Haraldskvæði survived mostly intact, and others otherwise lost have surfaced in bits and pieces, quoted in other works.

Olrik says of the skaldic art:

The skaldic art is a type of poetic mathematics in which it is necessary to find the right answer to the problem of addition; there must not be too much nor too little, so that the ensuing image may accord with the taste of the time – otherwise the other skalds will soon call the poor workman to account. All the laws of verification must be observed, not only those referring to single lines and strophes; a proper drápa, which was the most ornate poetic creation, must also have the same number of stanzas in the introduction as in the conclusion, and the body of the poem must consist of sections presenting a uniform number of verses and a refrain, a stef, at the proper point. (Olrik, 158-159)

Some of the different types of poems (to be distinguished from different meters) are as follows:

drápa (pl. drápur) A skaldic praise poem. The word means literally “slaughter.” These are to be distinguished from erfidrápur, or “memorial lays” written post-death in honor of great leaders.

A praise poem has the following components: an introduction (stefjabálkr) punctuated by refrains (stef), and a close (sloemr). The introduction calls for those assembled to her the poem. Both introduction and close act as summaries of information about the subject, and contain generalized praise and comments, and might contain unrelated material as well. These last fell under the heading of læstir, or poetic slips or faults, and were to be avoided, since they had nothing to do contextually with the person being praised, or with their acts.

An example of this sort of error was that made by Arnórr Þórðarson as related in Morkinskinna, when in reciting his praise poem to King Harald Harðraða and his nephew and co-regent King Magnus, he spoke in his introduction about his travels in the Orkneys. Harald, well-versed in the skáldic arts, did not miss the slip.

The stefjabálkr contains a number of stefjamel, or sections, united by refrains. There can be as many as six different stef and therefore stefjamel. A stef is 2-4 lines long and can be split across stanzas. The content of a stef is often present tense praise and often vague.

flokkr – This is a short poem, a simple sequence of 5-13 stanzas without a refrain. An example of this type of poem would be the anonymous Liðsmannaflokkr, composed in either late 1016 or in 1017 in honor of Knut the Great.

lausavísur – Literally “loose verses.”This was an improvised stanza, not really a poem itself. The ability to improvise a stanza on the spot was a skill greatly feared and admired. An example of such a skáld would be Egil Skallagrímsson.

There were also different meters:

dróttkvætt - “Court Measure”, or “for recitation at court.” This is the heroic meter used in drápas (praise poems) or poems recited before the king or king’s men (drótt), hence the name. Gade calls dróttkvætt “the most stylized and prestigious meter of skaldic poetry.” In dróttkvætt, each stanza consists of two half-stanzas (helmingar) of four lines (vísuorð). A helmingr can consist of more than one sentence but as Gade relates, “the syntactic break between the two half-stanzas must be stronger than any break contained within the helmingr; that is, if the second helmingr begins with an introductory element and is subordinate to the main clause in the first, none of the half-stanzas can contain the direct connection between two main clauses.” (p. 3)

Turville-Petre describes Court Measure:

The lines consisted of six syllables, of which three were stressed. Each line ended in a trochee, and the lines were bound by alliteration in pairs. The measure was strophic, and the strophe consisted of eight lines, divided by a deep cæsura into half-strophes of four lines. The scaldic verses are often transmitted in half-strophes, and it is likely that the half-strophe of four lines was the original unit. Internal rime and consonance are employed, generally according to strict rules. (Turville-Petre, 13-14)

Hrynhenda – “Tumbling or falling meter.” This form developed out of dróttkvætt and had eight syllables per line instead of six, four of which were stressed. This style of meter is trochaic, in that the syllables are arranged in trochees, which are pairs of syllables that consist of a long syllable followed by a short one. Hrynhenda dates from about 985 C.E. and became popular in courtly poetry. An example of it is found in the fragments of the Hafgerðingadrápa.

An example in English would be “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”

fornyrðislag - roughly, “the old rules,” or “the manner of the old utterances.” This is obviously an ancient form, and it differed from dróttvætt in several ways: Instead of 3, it had only 2 stressed syllables per line, and the odd lines were not required to have double alliteration. The third difference was that the number of syllables per line was less rigid, in that while a line would usually have six, it might sometimes have 5, or even 7.

Fornyrðislag is similar in form to the meter used in Beowulf, and also the Völuspá. In fornyrðislag each line has four syllables. A variant form of fornyrðislag is málaháttr, or “speech meter”. The first stanza of the Völuspá will serve as an example:

Hljóðs bið ek allar helgar kinder meiri ok minni mögu Heimdallar Vildu at ek Valföðr vel fyr telja forn spjöll fira þau fremst um man

Silence I ask from all, the holy offspring, greater and lesser sons of Heimdallr. Do you wish, Valföðr that I clearly rehearse of living beings those ancient tales which I remember from farthest back?

kviðuháttr – This was epic, narrative meter, similar to fornyrðislag but utilizing alternating lines of 3 and 4 syllables. In other words, out of 8 lines, 1, 3, 5 and 7 would have only three syllables, the even numbered lines having four.

galdralag – This is “magic spell meter,” set apart from the other meters by the fact that it has a fourth line that both echoes and varies the third line.

Ljóðaháttr – “Song (or Ballad) Meter”. This was a meter in the form of dialogues, such as those found in the Poetic Edda. An excellent example of this meter is in the Hávamál, or Words of the High One, particularly stanzas 1-79, 91-110 and 147-165.

Hollander calls 111-137 “irregular” ljóðaháttr and judges 138-146 to be “composed in a somewhat incoherent stanzaic form.” (Hollander, 14) One of the variants found in ljóðaháttr was galdraháttr or kviðuháttr, or “incantation meter.

Note stanza 1 below, using Hollander because his translation best captures the poetry of the Eddas (and keep in mind that Hollander is more interested in capturing the meter and less in accurately translating the stanza – let alone rendering it in comprehensible English):

Here me, all ye | hallowed beings

both high and low | of Heimdall’s children

thou wilt, Valfather | that I well set forth

the fates of the world | which as first I recall

And compare this to stanza 112 (irregular). Notice the variation in lines from the eight half lines in stanza 1:

Hear thou, Loddfáfnir, | and heed it well

learn it, ’twill lend thee strength,

follow it, ’twill further thee

at night rise not | but to be ready for foe,

or to look for a spot to relieve thee.

And lastly, to stanza 138 (incoherent). If you read through 138-146 you will readily note that they are not all of like structure, but vary from stanza to stanza:

I wot that I hung | on the wind-tossed tree

all of nights nine,

wounded by spear | bespoken by Óthin,

bespoken myself to myself,

upon that tree | of which none telleth,

from what roots it does rise.

málaháttr – “Speech meter” or literally “in the manner of conversation.” A variant form of fornyrðislag, but with a requirement of five syllables per line, though this can vary. Examples of this style if found in the Poetic Edda in the Atli poems, but also in the Harbarthsljoth, albeit in a somewhat freer style which also incorporates other meters. It is possible that later interpolations or faulty transmission of the poem are responsible for the form in which the Harbarthsljoth has come down to us.

runhenda – This ancient meter is usually employed within other meters, most commonly with fornyrðislag. An example of runhenda is found in Egil Skallagrimson’s Head Ransom (Höfuðlausn), the poem he recited to Eirkr Bloodaxe to save his head:

Rauð hilmir hjör Þar vas hrafna gjör Fleinn hitti fjör Flugu dreyrug spjör Ól flagðs gota Fárbjóðr Skota Trað nipt nara Náttverð ara

The king’s sword is red. There was a raven flock, a spear meats life, bloody pikes fly to feed wolves; the Scots tell of misfortune and men gone to hell, become night-meal for an eagle.

tøglag – Also called tøgdrápulag. A type of meter sometimes used in drápur, which requires four syllables per line. This type of drápa is called a tog-drápa. It has been suggested that this meter comes originally from King Knut’s court, from the mouth of the skáld Sigvatr Þórðarson, who wrote a tog-drápa in praise of Knut c. 1027. Another tog-drápa to Knut is credited to Þórarinn loftunga in either 1029 or 1030, in celebration of Knut’s campaign against Ólafr Tryggvason.

mannsöngskvædi/mannsöngvísur – This was a type of love song, in which a man and a woman would exchange improvised verses. It was forbidden, unsurprisingly, by Bishop Jón Ogmundarsson (d. 1121).

Alliterative verse is complex in form, and it is easy to see why it is not something easily translated into English. Two half lines form a line, and depending upon the type of meter, the two together must equal a certain number of syllables. Alliteration is achieved by having an initial consonant alliterate or rime with the same consonant. However, certain sounds, sk, sp and st alliterate only with themselves, while vowels can alliterate with any other vowel. Furthermore, alliteration can only occur at the beginning of stressed syllables. (It can be noted here that since alliteration is more a matter of sounds than strictly of letters, that in English, for example, alliteration could be achieved using “s”, “c”, and “ps” in a line.)

Alliterating initial sounds are called “staves” (stafr) while those in the second half-line are called “main stave” (hafuðstafr). Stresses are called “props” (stuðlar) and either stress in the first half line may be alliterated.

An example of alliterative verse is as follows: Note the use of two words beginning with “s” in the first verse, one in the second, then two beginning with “b” in the third verse, and one in the forth, and so on:

út heyri ek svan sveita
sara þorns er mornar,
brað vekr broginmóða,
bláfjallaðan gjalla;
svâ gól fyrr, þa er feigir
fólknárúngar váru
gunnar haukr, er gáukar
Gauts bragdá spá sagdu.

Landnámabók, 2:33

Conclusion

Old Norse poetry was born in a Pagan world – a world filled with the divine. It came down to us through a Christian world, written down by at least nominally Christian hands. But it is firmly rooted in the world of gods and these Pagan themes are quite visible in what has come down to us. “These are myths,” we are told by John Hines, “whose roots must lie in prehistoric Scandinavia, and which will have been transmitted — undergoing substantial changes, one must assume — through the threshold phase called ‘proto-history’ into the historical Middle Ages” (“Myth and Reality: the Contribution of Archaeology” Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference, 166). Finlay says, “Skalds both pagan and Christian repeatedly invoke the myth of Óðinn’s mediation of poetry from the supernatural to the human world” and we see “in Hallfreðar saga, the traditional relationship of poetic skill with pagan values” (Finlay, 85, 98).

As such, Old Norse poetry should be of interest to every modern Heathen, whether we can fashion or own or not.  Language, culture and religion are closely intertwined. By understanding one, we increase our understanding of the others.

______________________

Sources:

Berg, Mai Elisabeth. “Myth or Poetry, a Brief Discussion of Some Motives in the Elder Edda”  Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference.

Finlay, Alisan.  “Pouring Óðinn’s Mead: An Antiquarian Theme?” Proceedings of the 11th International  Saga Conference.

Gade, Kari.  The Structure of Old Norse Drottkvaett Poetry (Islandica). Cornell University Press 1995.

Hines, John. “Myth and Reality: the Contribution of Archaeology” Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference.

Hollander, Lee trans. M. The Poetic Eddas,  Austin, 1962.

Olrik, Axel. Viking Civilization. New York 1930.

Townend,  Matthew. “Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur : skaldic praise-poetry at the court of Cnut” Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference.

Turville-Petre,  E.O.G. Myth and Religion of the North. New York, 1964.