“Old Norse literary sources repeatedly depict material artefacts as animate, imbued with ambiguous agency as if possessing self-determination. The most notorious of these, and featuring across many sagas, are magic swords, which not only are given names but are also portrayed with individual characteristics and behaviours as if characters in their own right. In Grettis saga, Grettir clenches his sword even after his hand is severed from his arm after death, as if the blade is an extension of his body. In Þórðar saga hreðu, an enterprising viking breaking into the burial mound of Hrólfr kraki and his champions fails to reclaim Böðvarr bjarki’s sword Laufi “því at hann fekk hvergi sveigt hans armleggi.”(Þórðar saga hreðu. In: Kjalnesinga saga. Ed. Jóhannes Halldórsson. Íslenzk fornrit 14. Reykjavík 1959, p. 169: “because no matter what he couldn’t lift his arm.”) In Gísla saga, the sword Grásiða shatters to pieces when it is used to kill its original owner — so much was this weapon a part of him that it could not autonomously exist without its true bearer. Where does one end and the other begin? Given that supernatural phenomena depicted in Old Norse sagas are becoming increasingly recognised as forming integral part of the medieval Norse ontological orientation, it becomes possible to posit the supernatural as playing a role in cultural constructions of medieval Norse self and personhood. Given that the concept of the self as a centralised autonomous locus of lived experience is a fairly recent phenomenon, it is not to be assumed that premodern selves were conceived of as identical to ours.
Recently posited reassessments of mind and materiality in cognitive science lead to a reconfiguration of the self as embodied and extended, bearing fruitful ramifications for medieval Norse textual depictions of material artefacts — which have heretofore been overwhelmingly banished by literary critics to the realm of symbol or allegory. Medieval saga depictions of supernatural objects as “other,” imbued with personhood and possessing agentive properties of their own, highlight the active role of objects in shaping and renegotiating human personal boundaries and self-experiences. It is proposed that an enquiry into depictions of these supernatural objects, as well as of psychosomatic dynamics brought about by characters’ interactions with said objects, will open doors towards investigating ecological entanglements between cognitive and material spaces across the medieval North, stressing cross-cultural variability and diversity inherent in medieval worldviews.”
Some of these dudes press fish fins in their journals like flower petals and it’s something.
Love the aesthetic notions people have of Victorian-era journals of like, a lady pressing delicate little natural mementos between the pages and then you get one from a whaleman and it’s just……..mangled flying fish fins.
u see:
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This also isn’t an isolated situation I have come across at least four of these. Flipping through another this morning like,
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‘Oh what’s that discoloration?’
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‘Ah.’
The archival note includes: ‘fish part is stuck to the left hand page and won’t come up.’
Thinkin about them.
Also in response to and before anyone else misunderstanding me is like ‘op these are beautiful this is cool you don’t know what you’re talking about, the human sentimentality behind this is beautiful’, you better know that……I am more sentimental about these lads and their journals than you could fathom. Get to know me.
As a book and paper conservator, I just learned a new thing to be anxious about.
good news guys. i found a falcon nest cam where two wood pigeons come by several times a day trying to build a new nest on top of the falcon nest. the falcon nest with falcon eggs currently inside of it and two parent falcons guarding it
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