Terry Gunnell

ABSTRACT: This article considers the potential connections between the three nornir mentioned in Vǫluspá and the three roots of Yggdrasill mentioned in Grímnismál st. 31 and Gylfaginning which, like the nornir themselves, may have been seen (by some) as being connected with time. This raises the possibility that, at some point and for some people, the jǫtnar were closely connected with the world of death and the underworld (which, for some, may have been associated with the east from whence the sun rises). It also raises questions about whether Urðr should be seen as referring to the past, rather than the future, and reconsiders the earlier posited idea that life, death and time were seen as being a circular process much like the natural year. RESUME: Denne artikel omhandler den potentielle forbindelse mellem de tre nornir, der nævnes i Vǫluspá, og Yggdrasills tre rødder, der nævnes i Grímnismál st. 31 samt Gylfaginning. Ligesom nornerne selv kan de tre rødder være blevet set (af no...

On 17th January 2010, I received the news that my good friend and Kenyan "brother" Ezekiel Alembi had died of a stroke at his home in Nairobi at the tender age of 49. The news came as a great shock to all of us who had come to know him over the years as a friend and fellow folklorist, not only because of the sudden loss to African folklore studies (and folklore and ethnology in general), but more particularly for Ezekiel's extended family in Nairobi and Bunyore, Kenya, and the countless students of all ages (at home and abroad) who had benefited from his teaching and positive encouragement over the years. The story of Ezekiel's education is an example in itself, and no small achievement. Starting out in 1971 in the local Ziwani primary school in the Vihiga region, in the countryside of Bunyore, in western Kenya, Ezekiel went on to graduate from Ebwirany school in Kakamega, before taking his secondary education in the Kakamega and Kangaru Embu high schools in the same area. His university education in literature and English language then took place in Kenyatta University, Nairobi, where, in 1991, he wrote his MA thesis on local children's songs. Soon after this, Ezekiel began teaching at the same university (in the fields of literature, drama and folklore), and in 1995 became a member of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research, taking a regular and active part in the society's congresses (he became a representative on the ISFNR board in 2008, later going on to serve for more than ten years as the ISFNR Vice-President representing Africa). Participation in these conferences brought him into contact with fellow academics in Europe and America, and especially those from Estonia and Finland where he first took part in one of the Folklore Fellows Summer Schools in Lammi in 1997. This brought him into close contact with Prof. Lauri Harvilahti at the University of Helsinki. Lauri became a close friend and mentor, supervising Ezekiel's Ph.D thesis at the same university, "The Construction of the Abanyole Perceptions on Death through Oral Funeral Poetry" (2002), which dealt with Abanyole death culture in Ezekiel's home area of Bunyore (see http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/ hum/kultt/vk/alembi/). Typically, Ezekiel felt it necessary not only to add a summary to the thesis in the locallanguage of the people he was writing about, but also to defend the thesis for a second time orally in front of the local people of Bunyore, an outdoor affair that lasted all day and included not only deep discussions amongst the local people but also music and dance. This, he felt, was the real defence (and the most difficult, even though his listeners proved to be very positive in the end). Ezekiel Alembi's approach to his thesis was reflected in his other articles on folklore, such as "Telling Tales: The Use of Oral Narratives in Religious Sermons in Kenya" (Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 13 [2000] 103-110) and "Dawn of a New Era: Song and Dance in Kenya's Multi-Party Elections 2002" (Journal of Indian Folklore, 5,1 [2003]). (1) All of these works, dealing with his local Luhya people in his old home district of Bunyore (where he is now buried), show a deep love and respect for his Kenyan culture, along with a firm belief that it deserved equal attention to European and American folklore, and a sense that the new generations of Kenyans should grow up feeling a sense of pride in their local culture and history, rather than a feeling of hopelessness or inferiority in comparison to the European culture they meet daily in the media. This same feeling of pride was reflected in Ezekiel's demands of guests: those of us who visited him should experience Kenya as the Kenyans understood it, rather than from the balcony of a large hotel or a university apartment. It was important that Kenyan culture should be understood from an African viewpoint if it was to be understood more fully. Ezekiel Alembi's respect and hopes for the potential of the young people of his country (who he saw as representing a concrete dream for a better future) were similarly reflected in the over forty five novels and biographies that he wrote for young Kenyan readers, something that earned him not only a literary prize in 2003 but also the respect of his peers in various spheres of life. …

The articles in this anthology discuss the application of retrospective methods to a wide range of historical disciplines: Old Norse studies in a wide sense, folkloristics, history of religion, etymology, early Germanic iconography and cultural history, Uralic historical linguistics, and historical geography. The articles are the result of the conference New Focus on Retrospective Methods, held in Bergen by the Retrospective Methods Network and the Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS) at the University of Bergen, 27–8 September 2010.

thIs volume Is dedicated to the memory of the late, sadly-missed John Miles Foley, and it is fitting that this article should begin with a quotation from Foley's How to Read an Oral Poem. As with so much of what Foley wrote, the quotation is highly astute. I have regularly used it because it sums up almost everything I have ever wanted to stress about the key differences between oral and written poetry and the ways in which they function and are received: Any oral poem, like any utterance, is profoundly contingent on its context. To assume that it is detachable-that we can comfortably speak of "an oral poem" as a freestanding item-is necessarily to take it out of context. And what is the lost context? It is the performance, the audience, the poet, the music, the specialized way of speaking, the gestures, the costuming, the visual aids, the occasion, the ritual, and myriad other aspects of the given poem's reality [...]. And when we pry an oral poem out of one language and insert it into another, things will inevitably change. We'll pay a price. 1 * This paper was first presented in a session dedicated to the memory of John Miles Foley at the

This article considers the potential connections between the three nornir mentioned in Vǫluspá and the three roots of Yggdrasill mentioned in Grímnismál st. 31 and Gylfaginning which, like the nornir themselves, may have been seen (by some) as being connected with time. This raises the possibility that, at some point and for some people, the jǫtnar were closely connected with the world of death and the underworld (which, for some, may have been associated with the east from whence the sun rises). It also raises questions about whether Urðr should be seen as referring to the past, rather than the future, and reconsiders the earlier posited idea that life, death and time were seen as being a circular process much like the natural year.

The article deals with the background, context and strengths and weaknesses of Bertha Phillpotts over-neglected work, The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama from 1920. As the article shows, Phillpotts was one of the first female scholars to work in the field of Old Nordic Literature. Intelligent, well read, and in many ways ground-breaking, she not only knew the Nordic countries and the Nordic languages well, she was also a leading figure in opening the doors of universities to female scholars

On a large number of farms in Iceland, one finds so-called álagablettir (lit. enchanted spots) in the surrounding nature which must not be tampered with in any way, for fear of dire consequences that could befall the farm and those who live on it. Most of these spots are accompanied by legends which underline the potential consequences. There are obvious parallels between these legends and those related to ancient grave mounds in Norway, Shetland and Orkney, and the so-called “fairy forts” or raths in the west of Ireland. These legends thus have taken on international migratory forms, but are all linked to specific local spots. There is nonetheless a question why and how such stories should have evolved in a place like Iceland which does not have the same ancient history in its environment as Norway and Ireland. Are these spots in Iceland related to early religious activities or more recent activities (such as the burial of diseased animals), or some inner need to keep parts of the environment in their original form?

The article considers the image of the Old Norse Vanir gods and their religion that seems to have existed in Nordic oral tradition from pres-Christian times, underlining the degree to which this "religion" was seen as being different in nature to that of the æsir.

A detailed examination into the early implications of the word leikari and those performers almost indiscriminately referred to as leikarar, loddarar and trúðar in Old Nordic literature, and their potential links to the medieval mimi, historiones and ioculatores.

This paper examines an Icelandic invented
tradition that has come to play a central role in Icelandic National
Day ceremonies at home and abroad. Part of the movement to “create”
Icelandic culture in the late nineteenth century, the figure of
the “Mountain Woman” dressed in Icelandic national costume, who
nowadays
gives a speech every year on the Icelandic National Day
(17th June), has her origin in 19th century romantic poetry as an
image for Iceland (comparable to England’s Brittania and France’s
Liberté). However, in visual terms, she took shape as an image in the
frontispiece of the first English translation of Jón Árnason’s Icelandic
Folk Legends, and as a flag-waving elf-woman in Indriði Einarsson’s
national drama, New Year’s Eve (end of the 1860s). As time has
gone on, this figure has maintained her role in annual National Day
ceremonies, but also gained new aspects. For example, when Vigdís
Finnbogadóttir became Iceland’s first female president, it is clear
that she, directly or indirectly, played on the image.

It is clear that for those who lived by the sea in the North Atlantic, the sea shore was as much a liminal area between worlds (including life and death) as an airport is to us today. It was a place from which fishermen departed and sometimes never returned, and also a place at which other worldly beings could appear, ranging from washed-up bodies to monsters, selkies, and foreign pirates. At night, its dark surface and pervasive sound invited the imagination to work in a variety of ways. This article contains a brief examination of the role played by the shoreside in earlier Icelandic folk legends, placing the Icelandic material in the international context of other folk legend traditions from Shetland, Orkney, Norway and Scotland.