Snorri Sturluson as a historian of religions: The credibility of the descriptions of pre-Christian cultic leadership and rituals in Hákonar saga góða Abstract
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- The criticism and previous scholarly discussions
Snorri Sturluson as a historian of religions
Later, at Yule, the king visited Mæri(n), where the chieftains and farmers held ceremo- nial meals. On this occasion he was forced to eat a few pieces of horse-liver. He also drank the toasts without making the sign of the cross. The criticism and previous scholarly discussions Snorri’s text has been debated during the last decades. Olaf Olsen, for instance, was very sceptical to Snorri’s description of pagan cult.¹² Indeed he accepted Snor- ri’s statement that pre-Christian ceremonial meals and drinking feasts were cele- brated indoors, however, details in Snorri’s account, such as the description of the
regarded as uncertain. Also Ernst Walter felt that Snorri’s description was suspicious, especially parts of the ceremonial drinking in chapter 17.¹³ He pointed out that the Old Norse word signa meaning ‘dedicate, bless’ is a loan word from the Christian- Latin concept, signare (signo), that is, ‘to make a sign’. Signa appears here in con- nection with krossmark (‘sign of a cross’) and hamarsmark (‘sign of the hammer’). The Old Norse krossmark is derived from the Christian expression signum crucis, while hamarsmark appears for the first time in Hákonar saga góða and thus cannot be accepted as authentically pre-Christian. The expressions gerði krossmark yfir and
With no doubt Walter’s argument seems plausible. The expression hamarsmark may very well be a construction made by Snorri or some other medieval writers. Whether the loan-word signa indicates that the content of the text is late and not built on pre-Christian notions is uncertain. This term appears in eddic and skaldic poetry, as well as in an 11 th century runic inscription from Uppland, namely U 942. The runol- ogist Henrik Williams therefore argues that it is possible that this word was borrowed already before conversion and thus may have been incorporated into the pagan reli- gious terminology.¹⁴ him to drink the broth from it. He would not do that, either, and they came near to make an attack on him. Sigurðr jarl said he would help them come to an agreement, asking them to cease their tumult; and he asked the king to gape with his mouth over the handle of the kettle on which the smoke of the broth from the horse meat had settled, so that the handle was greasy from it. Then the king went up to it and put a linen cloth over the handle, and gaped with his mouth over it. Then he went back to his high-seat, and neither party was satisfied with that.’
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Olof Sundqvist Also Klaus Düwel argued in the same vein as Olsen and Walter in his learned and impressive study “Das Opferfest von Lade”.¹⁵ The purpose of his study was to expose the structure of Snorri’s text and the storytelling. He also scrutinized the semantic development of certain religious terms, such as the concepts hlautteinn and hlaut, and finally he also investigated the sources Snorri may have used when describing the pre-Christian cult. In his conclusion, Düwel stated that the actions connected with the sacrifices at Hlaðir had no Germanic origin, that is, that Snorri had no pre-Christian sources for these rituals. Rather, when describing how blood was sprinkled on the altar in the hof there, Snorri modelled his account on ancient Jewish rituals described in Exodus 24, which was translated to Old Norse in the text called Stjórn. During the early Middle Ages, the sacrificial rituals of the Old Testament were considered pagan, and pagan religion was thought to be the same in all places: this led Snorri to use this material in his account of the ancient cult in Trøndelag. Düwel also argued that Snorri projected customs common in medieval guilds back to heathen times, for instance, the ceremonial minni-drinking. In his analyses of the religious terminology Düwel concluded that in most cases Snorri either misunderstood these concepts or mixed them up with Christian ideas with no basis in pre-Christian culture, such as the term minni. In the final parts, Düwel also stated that Snorri applied a method called interpretatio Christiana, when describing pagan religion in Heimskringla. Snorri’s purpose was actually not to describe the pagan cult, but to show how violent the mis- sions of the Norwegian royal power had been in contrast to the situation in Iceland. Düwel concluded therefore that the description of sacrificial rituals in Hákonar saga góða is not reliable and thus cannot be used as a source for pre-Christian religion. In a general sense Olsen’s, Walter’s, and Düwel’s criticism has been well-founded and good for the research on ancient Scandinavian religion. Düwel was, for instance most likely right in his conclusions about the terms hlautteinn and hlaut. However, sometimes this source criticism has been somewhat simplified and without nuances, especially when stating that Snorri had no access to ancient sources on these rituals. Scholars, such as Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Anders Hultgård and François- Xavier Dillmann have all been given, in my view, more balanced accounts.¹⁶ They agreed with Olsen and Düwel that some of the details in Snorri’s reconstruction cannot be verified and thus do not produce a trustful image of the pagan cult, as previous historians of religions sometimes claimed. They also agreed with Düwel that this text must be related to Snorri’s Christian view of history. However, this does not mean that Snorri was not at pains to make a trustfully image of the pre-Christian sac- rificial cult in a general sense. That some essential religious terms not with certainty
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