Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas 9783110674958, 9783110674842

Table of contents :
Series Foreword
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
1 Introduction: Memory in Medieval Literature
2 Memorizing by Way of Books
3 Imageries
4 Technologies
5 The Senses
6 Buildings and Seating
7 Cartography
8 Conclusion
Bibliography
Indexes

Citation preview

Pernille Hermann Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas

Memory and the Medieval North

Edited by Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell and Lena Rohrbach

Volume 1

Pernille Hermann

Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas

ISBN 978-3-11-067484-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067495-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067503-0 ISSN 2699-7339 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022936366 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: The Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, University of Copenhagen, AM 544 4to, 19r. Photo: Suzanne Reitz. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Series Foreword Among the most important and innovative developments in the humanities and interpretive social sciences in recent decades, modern memory studies offers scholars a valuable and cross-disciplinary strategy for re-considering the cultural history of medieval northern Europe. This new series, Memory and the Medieval North, is dedicated to scholarship which applies memory studies to the Viking and Medieval periods, in particular, in Scandinavia, as well as in the other culture areas of northern Europe historically connected to the Nordic world. Broadly speaking, the works in this series consider the place of memory (writ large, in such acts as commemoration, memorialization, oblivion, and so on) and the nature of interpreting, presenting, and re-envisioning the past as inscribed in the substantial materials from the pre-modern northern world. That Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas by our colleague and co-editor of this series, Pernille Hermann, should be the first volume in this series is especially appropriate. In this volume, the author, a prominent figure in Nordic memory studies, examines how memory, as it is treated in Latin sources, comes into contact with Icelandic learned environments, charting medieval memory culture’s meeting with, and influence on, Old Norse-Icelandic literature. Among other points, Hermann shows, for example, how orality and literacy should not be viewed as competitors, but rather as symbiotic techniques in the context of memory. Examined as well are such tropes as the ‘mind’s eye’, and the complex imagery intertwining memory, space and narratives. Mnemonic Echoing offers readers a rich survey and assessment of memory and the many different sorts of mnemonic technologies Nordic authors used. Jürg Glauser Stephen A. Mitchell Lena Rohrbach

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-001

Acknowledgements The idea for this book came up while I was on sabbatical at Harvard University in the autumn of 2016. I conceptualized the volume and began writing it in 2017, but other projects came in the way and I could only work on it off and on, frequently with long breaks in-between, until in the autumn of 2020 when reduced obligations in my department allowed me to write the main part of the book. During those years, I have had invaluable and inspiring discussions relating to the book’s themes with colleagues on many occasions, not least in connection with meetings, workshops and seminars in the international network Memory and the PreModern North (http://www.premodern-memory.org/). I am grateful for having been part of the stimulating discussions at these meetings, and I do not hesitate to say that this book would not have come to fruition had it not been for the generous exchange of ideas that characterized these gatherings. A special thanks should go to the Steering Committee of this network, which has been an immensely important research group for me over the past years. Furthermore, while writing this book I have had the pleasure to supervise, or to follow from the sideline, PhDstudents who have worked on various aspects of memory in the Viking Age and the medieval North, and I want to thank these young researchers for inspiring discussions, which have also helped me to look at my own work from new angles. Several people and institutions have been important in bringing this book to its final completion. First of all, I wish to thank my co-editors of the series Memory and the Medieval North, Jürg Glauser, Stephen A. Mitchell and Lena Rohrbach, for accepting this book for the series, and for their invaluable comments on the manuscript, both on the content and the form, which have helped me to tidy up inconsistences and strengthen my argumentation; in essence, to write a better book. Thanks go also to Agnes Arnórsdóttir and Karen Bek-Pedersen for reading and commenting on early versions of the manuscript. Further thanks go to student assistants, Heidi Christensen, Aarhus University, and Eline Elmiger and Natalie Menti, University of Basel, for reference-checking assistance and editorial help. Thanks also to the editorial team at De Gruyter, in particular Robert Forke and Dominika Herbst. I want to express my gratitude as well to my department, Scandinavian Studies, Aarhus University, for providing the working conditions that made it possible for me to finish this book, and to my colleagues in the department for showing interest in the book and giving me moral support. Thanks also to Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien, Uppsala, for providing funding for language editing. Further thanks must go to The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Reykjavík; The Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, University of Copenhagen; Handrit.org; and Uppsala University Library for giving me https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-002

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permission to use images of manuscripts in their collections. Especially, I wish to thank Carsten, Nina and Julia for their patience and their love. My scholarly interest in memory goes back some time and over the past decade or so, I have published a number of articles and book chapters on memory and its relevance for Old Norse culture and literature. I have treated some of the ideas and text-examples dealt with in this book previously in these works, yet, here the ideas have been further developed and reevaluated and now appear in new contexts and with new emphases. References are made to these articles where relevant and they are mentioned in the bibliography. Aarhus, February 2022

Pernille Hermann

Table of Contents List of Illustrations

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 Introduction: Memory in Medieval Literature . References to Memory 1 5 . Medieval Notions of Memory . Theoretical Perspectives 8 . Methodological Issues 11 . A Transitional Moment in Literary History 16 . The Structure of this Book  Memorizing by Way of Books 21 21 . Interacting Cultures .. Minnugir Men 21 .. Authorship and Memory 24 28 .. Rhetoric and Memoria .. Klerkligar listir and Memoria 30 . The Fear of Forgetting 31 34 .. Memory’s Enduring Complement . Two Co-Existing Storehouses 37 .. Preferences of Memory to Writing 38 . Living Memory and Cultural Memory 40 .. The History of Memory and Media History

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 Imageries 45 . Formulating and Constructing Memory 45 .. Jóns saga helga: Memory, the Heart and the Breast 47 .. Learning, Bees and Beehives 49 .. Hungrvaka: Memory as Stomach 52 . The Prose Edda: A Norse Art of Memory 55 .. Memory in the Breast 57 .. Memory in the Brain 61 .. A Spitting and Excreting Eagle 62 .. Suffocation and Honeybees 67 . Egils saga Skallagrímssonar 70 .. Inventing and Memorizing Poetry 72 .. Resorting to ‘the Depths of the Mind’ and ‘the Hiding Place of Thought’ 73

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Table of Contents

Constructing Buildings in the Mind 76 79 Characterizing a Memory Expert

 Technologies 84 . Mnemonic Methods 84 85 .. The Place-Image Method .. Early Christian and Medieval Mnemonics 97 .. From Roman to Norse Mnemonics . Channels of Communication 98 . Gylfaginning 103 104 .. A Hall of Memory: Háva hǫll .. Mnemonic Topographies and Graphics .. A Three-Seated Throne 112 115 . Hand Mnemonics

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 The Senses 122 122 . To See and to Remember . The Mind’s Eye 125 .. The Stave Church Homily 126 .. Mnemonics and Beyond 129 130 .. Instruments of Memory and Learning .. Konungs skuggsjá 134 .. Seeing in and with Memory 136 139 . Visualization Strategies .. The One-Eyed God 139 .. A High Seat with a View 142 .. Huginn and Muninn 145 .. High Above from the Rainbow 148 . Mnemonic Performances 150 .. Vǫluspá: Accessing Mnemonic Spaces 152 .. Grímnismál: Navigating Mnemonic Spaces 156 .. To Remember and to Learn 164  Buildings and Seating 168 . Houses, Table Arrangements and Narratives 168 170 .. Brennu-Njáls saga: Searching the Ruins .. Egils saga Skallagrímssonar: Grotesque Images 179 . Recollection, Rhetoric and Persuasion 187 .. Literary Representation and Mnemonic Devices 189

Table of Contents

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Seating Devices in Mythological Texts 193 Lokasenna: A Seat in Ægis hǫll

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 Cartography 201 . Geographical Abstractions 201 203 .. World Maps and Mnemonics .. The Prose Edda Prologue and Ynglinga saga: Visualizing Time and Space 205 .. Ekphrastic Texts 213 . Remembering a Vastness of Names 214 215 .. Landnámabók: Listing Knowledge .. Geographical Organization 218  Conclusion 225 . Literary Communication between Orality, Literacy and Memory . Literature and Memory 226 227 . Perceptions of Memory . The Theories 229 . A Leap Forward 231 233 Bibliography Primary Sources 233 Secondary Sources 236 Indexes

255 Personal names 255 Texts 257 Manuscripts 259 General Index 260

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List of Illustrations Fig. 1, p. 25: Fig. 2, p. 64: Fig. 3, p. 113: Fig. 4, p. 118: Fig. 5, p. 119: Fig. 6, p. 120: Fig. 7, p. 120: Fig. 8, p. 128: Fig. 9, p. 147: Fig. 10, p. 205: Fig. 11, p. 207: Fig. 12, p. 219: Fig. 13, p. 223:

Page of Sverris saga (AM 327 4to) Óðinn as a flying eagle (SÁM 66) Visual depiction of Gangleri and High, Just-as-High and Third (Codex Upsaliensis) Skáldatal (Codex Upsaliensis) Drawing of a hand in the margin (Codex Upsaliensis) Hands drawn in the margin (Skálholtsbók) Pointing fingers in the margin (Jónsbók the Younger) Heddal Stave Church, Notodden, Norway Óðinn with Huginn and Muninn (SÁM 66) T-O map of the Orbis terrarum (GKS 1812) Christ in Majesty with a T-O map at his feet (Teiknibókin) Pages from Landnámabók (Hauksbók) Map of Jerusalem (Hauksbók)

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1 Introduction: Memory in Medieval Literature Huginn ok Muninn fljúga hverjan dag jǫrmungrund yfir; óumk ek of Hugin at hann aptr né komit, þó sjámk meirr um Munin. (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 20, p. 372) (Hugin and Munin fly every day over the vast-stretching world; I fear for Hugin that he will not come back, yet I tremble more for Munin.) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 20, p. 51)

1.1 References to Memory The ravens Huginn and Muninn, ‘thought’ and ‘memory’, are the best-known symbolic references to the mind in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. They are highly valued by the god of wisdom, Óðinn, and when they fly out over the world, he is afraid that they will not come back to him. He fears that Huginn (thought) will not return, and – with an even stronger emphasis – he trembles from fear that Muninn (memory) will disappear. Óðinn’s affection for the birds is easy to understand, for what would the god of wisdom do without his mind, that is, without thought and memory? How would it be possible to gain understanding of the world and to preserve important cultural knowledge without these resources? Óðinn’s sensitive reaction to the prospect of losing Huginn and Muninn, representing his mind as a whole, reveals a fear of dementia. The prospect of losing his memory would have fatal consequences for the god of wisdom personally, but – since he is responsible for preserving and transmitting important cultural knowledge to others – it would affect the whole world, too. His loss of thought and memory would, in essence, mean the collapse of the tradition that holds the society together. While this mythological story is compelling in its own right, it does not only testify to a remote mythical tradition. Óðinn is not the only one to recognize that thought and – of particular relevance in our context – memory are important resources, and his relationship with the raven birds expresses quite neatly how some people in the medieval Norse world looked upon memory, namely as an important and muchvalued resource. During the Middle Ages, the Norse societies progressed from a situation where knowledge was preserved orally to a new media situation where knowledge was https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-004

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increasingly mediated in written form. Yet – as this book argues – the resource of memory, understood as a bodily and personal resource, continued to attract the attention of many of the authors who were in a transitional position. This book aims to show, firstly, that a culture based on memory constituted an important context for the literature that was written in the North, particularly in Iceland, in the High Middle Ages, roughly speaking from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. Next, and related to the first point, it argues that the resource of memory, and the principles and technologies that were used to enhance it, influenced the literature of that time. Old Norse-Icelandic texts contain multiple and varied references to memory, enough to suggest that memory was a reference point and a valued resource for the authors and their readers. Through a selection of text-examples, I demonstrate that memory was an important resource which assisted the preservation and transmission of cultural knowledge, and that many particularities of the medieval texts may very well derive from influences from mnemonic techniques that were in use among the authors, their informants and their readers. A study of memory in medieval Norse literature may seem complicated since the literary corpus does not contain a theoretical text that explicitly says that it deals with this theme, nor do any of the texts overtly summarize or gather opinions about this resource and its functions. It may not be immediately obvious from our sources, but a closer look nevertheless reveals that several texts of different genres are preoccupied with memory, some of them elaborate indirectly on this resource while others include ideas about memory in their narratives. In the end, there is enough information in the texts to give us an insight into the types of, and opinions about, memory and mnemonic technologies that underlie the texts, and there are several text-passages that speak to the fact that medieval societies were underpinned by memory. The following pages thus assume that medieval manuscripts were to various degrees not only surrounded by but also dependent on memory and describing it. The references to memory and remembering that we find in the vernacular Norse texts vary a lot. Some of the references are direct and literal, like when the Old Norse noun minni (memory) or the verb muna (to remember, to mind, to call to mind) are mentioned.¹ At other times, the references imply figurative language and metaphorical expressions, as is the case in the eddic poem Grímnismál (Grimnir’s Sayings) cited above, where thought and memory are personified as the wisdom god’s birds. The quotation clearly illustrates that our investigation cannot

 For linguistic descriptions of the lexeme minni and its meanings, see Heslop 2014; Schulte 2018; Glauser, Hermann and Mitchell 2018, 15 – 18.

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be limited to a search for literal terms of memory and remembering but must include symbolic expressions and circumlocutions as well. Expressions of memory are found both in authorial meta-comments and in statements uttered by persons in the narratives. In many instances, memory and remembering are talked about very briefly by authors or narrated persons, who soon move on to deal with other themes, seemingly not considering it to be necessary to elaborate on and explain memory in much detail, which is perhaps an indication of the circumstance that memory had an obvious presence in the societies that the authors and their readers belonged to and therefore needed no detailed explanation. But in other cases, the discourse results in lengthy reflections, and what at first looks like a simple and relatively unengaged hint at memory or remembering can lead into convoluted discourses where memory is elaborated upon and explained in much detail. We will see that, in many cases, the persons talked about in narratives and poems (be they historical, fictional or mythological ones) are preoccupied with memory, which makes it relevant besides authorial meta-comments to include what is said or implied in the narrated worlds. As a matter of fact, it is literary treatments that give us the most detailed information about memory. Yet, even if such treatments allow for idealizations and fictive situations to occur, narrativized persons and mythological beings may embody the qualities of and the skills that people of good memory were able to handle, or strived for. Put differently, literary figures may play the role of prototypical memory experts. Characters who practice mnemonic devices, be they pagan gods, legendary kings or wise women with extraordinary powers, demonstrate how memory works when this resource is used most vividly. Our investigation, which hones in on authorial meta-comments as well as on statements made by characters in the narratives, will reveal that memory-references range from being brief remarks to what we can consider depictions of mnemonic performances, where an individual demonstrates highly developed mnemonic skills in front of an audience. Altogether, these examples testify to the fact that authors were preoccupied with this resource, that they reflected upon memory and revealed an interest in communicating mnemonic principles to their readers. The Old Norse-Icelandic literary corpus contains genres that were well known in a European context as well as text-types that were unique to the North. While the texts in the first group, which also includes translations of Latin texts, deal with such issues as clerical knowledge and Icelandic church history, the others include the so-called forn fræði (ancient knowledge) and forn minni (ancient memory) of the Norse tradition. Among the most unique literary developments are the medieval Icelandic sagas, including the sub-group of the sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasǫgur), and the book about poetry known as the Prose Edda. References

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to memory, both at the meta-level and within the narratives, occur across genres in this literary record, and the perspectives in this book will take the reader to various corners of this varied textual landscape. It is not the intention to give an indepth analysis of individual works or genres, but to focus on references to memory and to give enough individual examples to document the existence of – and to draw the contours of – the mnemonic culture that surrounded and interacted with medieval manuscripts, and in this connection to suggest that an existing mnemonic culture in various ways puts its stamp on the texts. The present study pursues memory references both in texts with a close affiliation to learned literature with foreign origin and genres that are connected to local traditions and special developments in the Norse book-culture. It analyses memory-references in poetry and prose, in mythological and historical texts, and in historiographical and ecclesiastical literature. By including a broad spectrum of texts, and by crisscrossing generic boundaries, it will be possible to demonstrate not only that memory is an overarching theme in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, but also that – when it comes to expressions of memory – sometimes similarities exist and textual dialogues appear between texts of different genres. References to memory in different branches of the literary record show that even if the texts preserve knowledge and stories of different kinds, ranging from pagan mythology to learned Christian knowledge, they seem to have been dependent upon and have been influenced by similar mnemonic principles. For the sake of clarification, it should be mentioned here at the outset that the word minni (memory) was used prior to the Middle Ages and outside of the literary corpus considered here. Runic inscriptions document the existence of the word and the preoccupation with memory in Scandinavia before the introduction of the Latin alphabet. On the Swedish Rök stone we find the word mogminni (folk-memory), and the inscription on the Danish Virring rune stone uses the phrase gerði minni (made these memorials) (see Mitchell 2013; Malm 2018b; Schulte 2018).² How memory was talked about in this type of pre-Christian written sources, and the role that memory had in the oral culture of pre-Christian Scandinavia, will not be the topic of this book, which instead focuses on the function of memory in a culture where Latin literacy had begun to be used and where manuscripts had been produced for decades, even centuries, but where memory arguably still played an important role. Memory was without doubt necessary and important for the preservation and transmission of knowledge in the oral culture that predated the Christian Middle Ages, and many of the mnemonic aids that I deal with here

 For treatments of the Rök-inscription, including the meaning of mogminni, see e. g. Lönnroth 1977; Harris 2006.

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would have existed from early on, however, an investigation of how memory functioned at this time lies beyond the confines of this study. In this book, I focus on memory and mnemonic principles as they took form after Latin literacy had entered the Norse intellectual world and had gradually introduced new paradigms for the learned societies.

1.2 Medieval Notions of Memory The texts treated in this book depict various times and spaces (historical, legendary and mythological), but they were all written in the Middle Ages. This study looks at the time of the texts, more than on the earlier periods that are described in them, and the texts will be treated predominantly as sources to medieval societies’ perceptions of memory. I argue that all the ‘pasts’ that are dealt with, the mythological, legendary and recent pasts, are seen through the lenses of (mostly) thirteenth- or fourteenth-century authors, and that the activities and events they describe are likely to be intertwined with political, religious, ideological and literary ideas that existed at their time. Throughout, I refer to standard datings of the texts, but given the fact that the first versions of the texts very rarely exist and we only have copies or rewritings (which are often changed and adapted to new contexts), references are made also to the manuscripts that preserved the texts. It is possible, even quite likely, that details in the texts reflect the time of the manuscripts rather than the time of the first texts.³ The extant corpus indicates that the earliest texts that were produced in Iceland had close affinities with Latin literary culture, and that only gradually, and especially from the beginning of the thirteenth century, new literary forms with affinities to local traditions appeared, forms that looked so different from the foreign models that they constituted their own genres.⁴ It is important, however, to

 When manuscript transmission is taken into account, a wide-ranging diachronic perspective opens up, presenting a large interpretation space, which goes beyond the Middle Ages. Many of the texts treated here are dated to the thirteenth century, but only transmitted in manuscripts from the fourteenth century, and these two centuries make up the most relevant interpretation space in our context. There are, however, important exceptions, including key texts such as Íslendingabók and Hungrvaka, which are preserved in later manuscripts.  Vésteinn Ólason has defined the development of Old Norse-Icelandic literature thus: “The Icelanders started writing histories in their own language in imitation of European literary genres, but the combination of the new forms with traditional materials, and influences from the oral form of that material, gradually changed their histories, until they were writing narratives that are so different from the original models that they have been looked upon as a new kind of literature, the saga” (2007, 29). This suggests a literary development where foreign and con-

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emphasize that European literary genres must be seen as potential influences throughout Old Norse literary history, and foreign traditions can be expected to offer models for Old Norse-Icelandic texts throughout the whole period under consideration here, also for the texts that deal with material from the homely tradition. The authors’ knowledge of European tendencies would also have made them aware of various memory theories, and this knowledge could have had an impact on the way they quite practically trained their memories, on how they thought about this resource more generally, and – of course – on how they described memory and mnemonic technologies in their texts. Mary Carruthers has observed that literacy and memory are often considered to be incompatible. She has expressed this general belief as follows: Because oral cultures must obviously depend on memory, and hence value memory highly, such valorization has come to be seen as a hallmark of orality, as opposed to literacy. This has led to a further assumption that literacy and memory are per se incompatible, and that a “rise of literacy” will therefore bring with it a consequent devalorizing and disuse of memory. (Carruthers 1990, 10)

However, it is – and that is Mary Carruthers’ point – not as simple as that and it cannot automatically be assumed that the introduction of literacy will lead to an immediate decrease of and devalorization of memory. The Latin alphabet was introduced in the North in the wake of Christianization in the decades around the year 1000, and literacy took root and developed as a so-called ideological literacy that was closely related to the change of faith, to the new institution of the Church, its administration and belief systems, and its genre conventions. In this way, the acquisition of literacy skills went hand in hand with the acquisition of religious ideas and knowledge of genres that existed in the Christian world. Literacy spread in the Norse societies only gradually and at a different pace in various societal spheres, and – in contrast to the general opinion referred to by Mary Carruthers – there is good reason to believe that a culture of memory did not immediately cease to exist in the centuries following the introduction of Christianity, when book culture was still new and developing. This is supported by the circumstance that memory was a topic of interest among people of the Church and the monasteries; the sacraments were tightly connected to the remembrance of Christ, and the Church depended on memory in a broader sense as well. It based much of its communication on memorized knowledge, just as the resource of ventional models were increasingly changed and adapted to fit a local narrative and poetic culture. For other useful treatments of Icelandic literary history and the development of the saga, see Clunies Ross 1998, 44– 64; Andersson 2006; McTurk 2007; Bampi, Larrington and Sif Rikhardsdottir 2020.

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memory was closely related to theologically based epistemology and cognition, broadly speaking, to the human ability to perceive the truth. Memory, as a bodily and personal resource, was in its broadest senses germane to clerical mindsets. In this book, my starting point is the hypothesis that the memory culture that existed in the centuries after the introduction of the Latin alphabet did not exclusively refer back to the principles that were used locally centuries earlier, even if many mnemonic technologies would have persisted through time. The memory cultures of, say, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were also shaped from the principles that were under discussion in clerical environments and which were described in Latin texts. These principles may not always have resulted in entirely new inventions; it is, after all, likely that traditional devices that looked similar to, or did not contradict, those encountered in the Latinate texts would have been met with most interest. Not least, these discussions would have inspired the vocabulary that was used to talk about memory. Communities which rely on the human ability to remember and which experiment with mnemonic techniques exist as conglomerates of various influences, media and devices. As such, the Christian world of ideas brought multiple trends and tendencies to the North, one of the most sweeping ones being the new technique, the Latin alphabet, which had vital implications, but also a bookish culture, which dealt with memory and its techniques in theory and practise. As is implied in the quotation by Mary Carruthers above, memory is often discussed as a feature of oral culture. This is also true in Old Norse studies, where it is not uncommon that the words ‘memory’ and ‘orality’ are used nearly synonymously and treated as overlapping categories. However, the present study aims to make an analytical distinction between memory and different modes of communication. It will work from the premise that memory is not medium-specific or affiliated only with one communication situation and not others, and – even if it may not always be practically possible to make clear distinctions – memory will be discussed as a resource of the mind (as well as, as explained below, a cultural phenomenon, i. e. as cultural memory) that exists independently of a specific media context. This book aims to focus on memory in broad philosophical terms, so to speak, rather than on, for instance, aural communication and verbal devices such as rhyme, sound, rhythm and formulas, which are relevant especially in oral communication systems. Many excellent studies have scrutinized the Old Norse tradition, especially its poetry, in this light. This book will ask somewhat different questions and will be concerned with how memory was talked about in the medieval Norse world, how it functioned and what the devices that helped people to enhance their memory looked like. This focus leads into areas that concentrate upon, for instance, notions of storage and construc-

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tion, respectively, as well as on such key features as spatiality, visuality, orderly organization and so on.

1.3 Theoretical Perspectives Multiple methodological complications are connected to an attempt to clarify the so-called mnemonic aspects of Old Norse-Icelandic literature. We have no direct access to the mnemonic culture of the time, neither can we enter the minds of the people of that period. So how will we be able to know how memory functioned in the past? Memory, understood as a mental resource that can be trained to encompass a large amount of information, is important in all societies, and we can expect that ideas and thoughts about, as well as the vocabulary used to express this phenomenon, are incorporated into the mythologies, legends, narratives and literatures of a given society, which makes these cultural products important sources for a study of memory. Aleida Assmann has argued that literature is a valuable source to the memory theories that exist in a given culture, also literatures that were written before modern conceptualizations of memory. According to her, literary texts present “the most lucid theory and criticism of memory long before modern theorists such as Freud, Warburg, and Benjamin entered the scene” (A. Assmann 2011, xii). In this book, I investigate memory through a survey of a text-corpus that – as sketched out above – contains both direct and indirect, yet strong and convincing evidence, for the existence of a surrounding memory culture. Aleida Assmann neatly expresses one of the assumptions of this book, namely that the Old Norse-Icelandic literary record was a space for reflections on memory and remembrance, making it an excellent source to this particular society’s thoughts about this resource. This function is particularly relevant in a medieval literary tradition, which testifies to narrative modes of thinking and expresses knowledge and learning that would, from a modern point of view, belong to scientific traditions in literary, that is, in narrative or poetic, forms.⁵ Memory is an abstract and slippery phenomenon that has perplexed people throughout history, and it is likely that a given literature will reveal different, coexisting and sometimes contradictory opinions about this resource, just as it will show possible struggles with definitions. Jean-Pierre Vernant has explained how  As it appears when this investigation includes learned, historical, religious and mythological texts, the operational definition of ‘literature’ expands modern definitions of ‘the literary’, which often conflate with fiction and focus on few genres only. The literature of the Middle Ages requires a much wider definition and its ‘literary-ness’ consists not only in its fictive elements but also in its concern with style, form, narrative, intertextuality and so on.

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memory in ancient Greece was expressed through mythological deifications (Vernant 2006, 115 – 138). He argues that this early attempt to understand memory does not give an insight into a temporal category of chronological time; in contrast, it illustrates that memory had more wide-ranging functions than being an instrument for temporal organization. Of course, memory is temporal, and part of its importance lies in its ability to preserve the past and to combine the present time with the past and to show ways to go in the future, but memory goes beyond this temporal perspective. Vernant’s examination has shown that: “Wherever memory is revered, it is exalted either as the source of knowledge in general, of omniscience, or as the instrument of escape from time” (Vernant 2006, 134). Our sources, too, reveal that memory is not only about time and chronological organization. As in the Greek case they give the impression that it covers more widely. It is, at times, considered a storehouse of wisdom, one which allows for all-encompassing views, which relate to extrasensory perception and which may even function as an access gate to other (divine) realities. The arguments in this book rest on theoretical perspectives within the growing field of so-called Memory Studies. I use ‘Memory Studies’ as an umbrella term that encapsulates a wide variety of theories, cases and methods from a number of different disciplines, ranging from sciences (Neurosciences and Psychology) to the humanities (including Literature and History).⁶ Various insights from Memory Studies, in particular those coming from disciplines in the humanities, have already been brought into contact with Old Norse-Icelandic literature and medieval Norse culture, and this book will follow up on and elaborate on insights that have been reached during the past decades.⁷ It is particularly two strands of Memory Studies that constitute the theoretical framework of the present study. The first, which will be the primary concern, is concerned with mnemonic technologies (and with arts of memory in a broad sense), the other with cultural memory. In the first tradition memory is considered as a mental and cognitive phenomenon, and as an embodied craft that individuals can refine and

 Memory Studies is a diverse field where multiple different disciplines participate in the examination of memory. The boundaries between different disciplines are not always clear, and the terminologies used in one field do not always correspond to the terminologies used in others. A recent survey of the meeting points between sciences and the humanities is found in Brockmeier 2018. Summaries of studies of memory that are important for this book are found in Draaisma 2000; Erll 2011.  See the introduction to, and the entries in, the multi-authored Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies. Interdisciplinary Approaches (Glauser, Hermann and Mitchell 2018). See also the special issue of the journal Scandinavian-Canadian Studies. Études scandinaves au Canada (Nygaard and Tirosh 2021).

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train. Of particular relevance for a formulation of this tradition are the influential studies by Frances Yates and Mary Carruthers, which have cast light on the functions, and the ramified developments, of memory techniques and memory theories from the Greco-Roman world to the Renaissance (Yates 1974; Carruthers 1990. See also Coleman 1992). In the second tradition – which owes a debt to, among others, such scholars as Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann and Ann Rigney – memory is not treated as a personal and embodied resource but is understood metaphorically as a collectively shared phenomenon that materializes in bodily external forms and cultural products, such as texts, images, rituals, objects and buildings. Both of these different, yet in some ways overlapping theories, offer useful approaches to an understanding of the Old Norse-Icelandic literary tradition and its context. The first framework helps us to investigate medieval Norse memory culture, the mnemonic techniques and mnemonic vocabularies that people used, and the second framework helps to explain how the texts that were produced in this culture took on the function of media of cultural memory among groups of people in the Middle Ages (church communities, families and so on), and beyond. Cultural memory is closely related to identity formation and to the creation of self-images. It has been argued that texts, like the sagas of Icelanders, became powerful media of cultural memory in the Middle Ages, a suggestion that – roughly put – implies that the texts were crucial for the construction of a past that was believed to be relevant for, and served the identity purposes of, groups of people in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Glauser 2000). These two strands of Memory Studies may seem very different from each other, one focusing on memory as an inner, bodily phenomenon and on individuals with special skills, the other on cultural products and the shared memory of groups of people. But even if these branches are concerned with such different conceptualisations of memory, they tend to focus on similar mnemonic characteristics. They emphasize that memory does not – neither at the individual nor the collective level – exist in a vacuum, but conflates with its surroundings; mnemonic processes are affected not only by communication with other people, but also by the imagination. In relation to that, both strands agree that memory and remembering cannot simply be connected with such ideas as ‘exact repetition’ and a ‘fixed and static recovering’; more often than not memory and remembrance must be understood as a ‘re-collection’ in a quite literal sense, that is, as a reorganization of elements in new constellations, or even as a construction task. What is more, both strands emphasize memory’s dependency upon space, partly on internal spaces created in the mind, partly on external spaces in the physical world. Space is a major instrument of memory and a consistent theme

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throughout this book, where I argue that spatial anchoring stands out as a most pervasive and important mnemonic device in medieval Norse societies.⁸ Already the authors of the ancient Roman world argued that space is a key feature of memory, when they focused on the method of loci (spaces) which associates discourses and arguments with things and words that are laid up in a mentally constructed location, such as a building. Likewise, several scholars of collective and cultural memory have emphasized the relevance of sites in landscapes or cities for collective memory, and they have argued that such places have the ability to remind people of a shared past and to confirm collective identities by referring back to this past. Maurice Halbwachs, one of the earliest Memory Studies scholars to deal with collective memory, turned his attention to memory’s dependency on physical places (Halbwachs 1992, 234). More recently Pierre Nora has developed the influential concept of the lieux de mémoire (sites of memory), which emphasizes how such sites are composites of memory that capture “the maximum possible meaning with the fewest possible signs” (Nora 1996, 15). The perspectives that are presented here allow for a double perspective on the Old Norse-Icelandic literary tradition, which can be investigated both as a literary corpus that in different ways interacts with, and reflects on, embodied memory and its technologies, and as a corpus of texts that has had a crucial impact on the construction of cultural memory. The first of these strands will be the primary focus in this book, while the other stands as a reference and a reminder of the texts’ implications. The news of this book lies mainly in the attempt to describe medieval perceptions of memory and mnemonic technologies, and the majority of the analyses will deal with memory as an embodied resource.

1.4 Methodological Issues As already mentioned, and as is the case with texts from medieval Europe in general, most Old Norse-Icelandic texts have complex manuscript histories and in most cases a text exists in different versions or redactions. Obviously, this character of the text-material challenges the analyses and conclusions. I use the term ‘mnemonic topoi’ to designate places in the texts that arguably refer to their

 Inspired by the so-called spatial turn in the humanities, ‘space’ has become a category for literary, cultural and social analysis in studies in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture, see for instance Sverrir Jakobsson 2017b. The focus on space in this book concentrates on points of intersection between space and memory and will not go into the broader issues of spatial analysis. For a recent summary of Old Norse studies that concentrate on spatiality and memory, see the overview in Rösli 2018.

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mnemonic context and which represent features and patterns of memory. But it should be mentioned here at the outset that these assumed points of intersection between a text and a postulated mnemonic context cannot simply be understood in a direct one-to-one relationship. Copyist activity and rewritings, that is, the whole process of manuscript transmission, will at times have transported the mnemonic topoi to new textual contexts, where they have become infiltrated with the literary configuration of the texts, and what is left in the surviving versions may sometimes be mere literary commonplaces that only retain a faint connection with the mnemonic background that they might have had at some point in the text’s history. Given this distance, the mnemonic topoi may have lost their direct connection to a memory culture and have become components in, and devices of, literary communication. Despite these complications, this book will argue that it is nonetheless possible to find mnemonic reminiscences, or faint echoes of memory, as it were, even if we can only get a vague and indirect impression of them. What we have is essentially bits and pieces, chunks of information and isolated patterns in the manuscript-based literary corpus, enough, however, to enable us to gain an insight into the mnemonic dimensions of the texts. The term ‘memory-derived’ will be useful for our understanding of several of the texts. This term highlights that a text, even if it has been transmitted through time in different manuscripts and exists in various and varying copies and redactions, still carries with it mnemonic devices and continues to bear signs of the circumstance that it was, maybe at an earlier textual level, closely related to its mnemonic context. Perhaps it was even built from, or created in, memory. The term, of course, calls attention to John M. Foley’s concept of ‘oral-derived texts’ (Foley 2011, 603), which emphasizes that even if texts that are handed down to modern readers in manuscripts cannot be considered as genuinely oral, they still carry with them elements that indicate their origin in an oral tradition (Foley 2002, 132– 133). Foley’s term is useful in connection with Old Norse-Icelandic texts, where there is strong evidence for an oral origin or oral transmission (cf. Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, 45; Mitchell 2018b, 127; Hermann 2017b; Nygaard 2019, 28 – 33). Just like a medieval text cannot be considered genuinely oral, although it is built of material from oral tradition, it cannot be considered as directly corresponding to a mnemonic culture either; but it still carries traces of this culture with it. With the extended meaning of Foley’s term, we can concentrate more directly on memory and mnemonic processes and talk about Old Norse-Icelandic texts not only as ‘oral-derived’ but also as ‘memory-derived’, a distinction that, I hope, will provide an opening for new insights into these texts. As can be seen from these introductory remarks, the themes of this book touch on long-standing and to some extent on-going debates in Old Norse studies and saga scholarship, such as the connections of vernacular Norse texts with

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Latin book culture and other medieval traditions, as well as their debt to local oral traditions. These discussions have been imbedded into the Freiprosa/Buchprosa (free-prose/book-prose) debate, which was thus named by Andreas Heusler in the first decade of the twentieth century. This discussion divided scholars between those who saw the origin of the sagas in oral tradition and argued that they were factual representations of the past and those who, in contrast, argued for the sagas’ relationship to medieval literature and thus saw them as fictional accounts. More recently the debate about the origin of the sagas has taken new directions, and scholarship is generally inclined to use a more nuanced approach than this either-or model has implied in the past.⁹ With regard to the orality/literacyquestion, Carol Clover writes that: […] we no longer ask whether the saga is literary or oral, but what in the received saga can be ascribed to the literary author (whose use of written sources, both native and foreign, is firmly established) and what to a native tradition (the existence of which is the only explanation for the survival of traditional material through the preliterate period). (Clover 1982, 17)

This book is in agreement with the point of view that is here summarized by Carol Clover, namely that many of the texts are indebted to literary and oral traditions alike. But it wishes to nuance the discussion even further and to pursue the possibility that ‘memory’ is an important third reference point. I argue that Old Norse-Icelandic texts represent not only features that derive from oral and literary cultures, but also aspects that can be traced back to the memory cultures that constituted an important framework for the texts. Speaking about methodological implications, another point must be made, too. A medieval society like the Icelandic obviously used other terminologies and had other vocabularies than modern societies to theorize over and express an abstract faculty such as memory. Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether a discourse is specifically concerned with memory or with another capacity of the mind. The texts show that memory and remembering are closely related to other mind-resources, counting both cognitive and emotional capacities, and they show that memory is not always completely separated from these. The quotation from

 The debate has been revisited and reevaluated, and the tendencies and assumptions that the arguments were based on have been exposed. The debate was reinforced by strong nationalistic agendas with a root in nineteenth-century scholarship, which wished to set forth Icelandic literature as a result of a highly developed culture of writing, rather than as an oral folk tradition, see e. g. Byock 1994. Another major correction of this discussion has targeted the free prose-position’s outdated view on the nature of orality and oral traditions, see e. g. Mitchell 2001, 168 – 172; Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, 15 – 21.

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Grímnismál that begins this chapter describes Óðinn’s mind with reference to Huginn and Muninn, and it very tellingly hints at the circumstance that the Norse tradition splits the mind into at least two concepts, thought/thinking and memory/remembering.¹⁰ The term hugr (mind, thought) is the most frequent word for the mind, even if words such as munr and geð are used as well, but – as a matter of fact – all of these words have other meanings, too. We also see that the term nema (to learn) can overlap with muna (to remember). Since memory was a part of a ‘package of mind-resources’ that functioned as vehicles for remembering, thinking and feeling alike, our study will at times refer to a broader vocabulary and include terms that are closely related to, or used synonymously or interchangeably with, terms for memory and remembering.

1.5 A Transitional Moment in Literary History In the High Middle Ages authors oriented themselves in various directions: towards orality and towards the technologies of memory and of writing. In that sense, Old Norse-Icelandic sources document an interim moment, where memory and mnemonic abilities were still present as an actively used resource in the intellectual milieus that produced the texts and where literary culture arguably interacted with, and to some extent depended upon, this resource. This to the extent that the technology of writing was in some cases a medium of memory and used in service of memory, rather than as a means of communication as such. The texts reveal that the authors were discussing and contemplating, and most likely also practicing, mnemonic techniques, themes that are treated in the following chapters. From the perspective of literary history, Old Norse-Icelandic texts represent and can give an insight into a situation, when literature was if not always completely memory-dependent then at least in some of its aspects influenced by memory and mnemonic principles – that is, when a memory culture was still a living context for the texts. They provide us with the opportunity to see how memory functioned in the High Middle Ages, and how its principles became in-

 The etymologies of the names Huginn and Muninn associate the ravens with hugr (thought, mind) and muna (to remember), respectively (de Vries 1961, 265 and 395), an interpretation that according to several scholars is backed up in the narratives and literary contexts where the ravens appear (for instance Turville-Petre 1964; Clunies Ross 1994, 213; Lindow 2014; Hermann 2014). The first etymology has not caused much scholarly controversy, even if hugr’s wideranging meanings weave into a grey zone between various cognitive abilities (see Chapter 3). However, the latter interpretation has been more contested; for an overview of this discussion, see Mitchell 2018a, 2022.

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tertwined with this early literature, just as it tells us that the texts that became crucial for cultural memory and notions of identity were not only media of cultural memory but actually also rooted in personal and embodied memory. Even if the texts are in many ways the result of new options that were offered by the Latin alphabet and the literary devices that came with a steadily growing manuscript culture, many of the particularities of texts from this transition period can be explained exactly from their dependency on, or influence from, a memory culture. Yet, the argument that memory was ubiquitously present in early book culture should be seen within the framework of a general development where memory gradually lost its central position in response to the growing culture of the book. We see indications in our texts of this process, even if this diminishing relevance would properly have increased more steadily after the High Middle Ages. The development of literature in Iceland is a diversified process of great complexity, which we can only realize to a limited extent, and many of our attempts at understanding it depends upon hypotheses only. However, in the present book I dive into these complexities and investigate some of the principles that took part in the shaping of this literature. It is proper to mention here in the introduction that a scholarly awareness of memory’s importance, even cardinal function, for the Old Norse-Icelandic literary tradition is not new at all. What makes it particularly relevant to revisit and examine this assumption now, however, is the developments in the field of Memory Studies, which offer new theoretical frames of reference and present concepts that make it possible to examine memory’s role in and for this literary tradition in a more systematic way than before (Glauser, Hermann and Mitchell 2018).¹¹ Some clarifications are relevant here at the outset. The term ‘Old Norse-Icelandic’ is used as the general reference to the body of texts under consideration. In reality, most of the texts treated here were written in Iceland; only a few of them (the Norwegian Stave Church Homily, Konungs skuggsjá (The King’s Mirror) and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes)) were written in other parts of the North (Norway and Denmark). Technically, the designation ‘Old NorseIcelandic’ includes other areas in the North as well, but it is the texts written in Iceland, and the learned environment of that country, which constitute this book’s primary focus, a fact that relates to this area’s unique literary contribution, both quantitatively and qualitatively. This special status of Iceland was already recognized by medieval history writers from Denmark and Norway, the Danish cleric  Just like Oral Theory has made it possible to revisit the oral background of Old NorseIcelandic genres (see e. g. Harris 1983; Acker 1998; Gísli Sigurðsson 2004; Andersson 2008; Mitchell 2018b), Memory Studies help us to examine – with a new conceptual apparatus – their background in memory.

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Saxo Grammaticus and the Norwegian monk Theodoricus, according to whom the people of Iceland were especially renowned for their abilities to preserve ancient traditions. At the turn of the thirteenth century, these Scandinavian authors looked to the Icelanders’ stores of materials in order to record the histories of their own countries, which suggests that the Icelanders had maintained or developed a codification expertise that did not exist, or had declined, in the other Scandinavian regions. The attention paid to Iceland, which – we assume – was directed both at the oral and the written traditions of this country, in itself suggests that a culture of memory flourished in this region. It is worth mentioning, too, that I do not only use ‘author’ and ‘authorship’ narrowly to refer to the individuals who wrote the ‘original’ versions of the texts, but also as broad categories that more generally refer to those who participated in the texts’ preservation and transmission and who contributed to their corporate authorship. Essentially, the term ‘author’ can refer to the one who rewrote a text, a scribe, a copyist, a redactor or a compiler, and at times the more neutral ‘writer’ is used for stylistic relief. While in some cases an argument is connected to a specific, named author, I am actually more interested in the general ideas that were prevalent among those who took part in the production of the texts.¹²

1.6 The Structure of this Book The arguments on the following pages are based on the conviction that memory constituted an important context for Old-Norse Icelandic literature, and that – the complications in reconstructing it notwithstanding – this context must be included in the study of this literary tradition. ‘Memory’ and ‘remembering’ are identified from the utterances and references in the texts, not only based on philological investigation, but more often on literary analysis and always with a background in memory theory and concepts of mnemonic technologies. Attempts are made to capture features that define this resource as it was understood by the authors and their readers, and to show how medieval literature was actually permeated with mnemonic technologies and devices. The chapter following this introduction, Chapter 2, ‘Memorizing by Way of Books’, offers a background against which the arguments of this book must be understood. It gives an insight into and a documentation of the texts’ concern with  The notion of author is complicated, as is evident in the case of manuscript-based texts, which were written before texts were ‘owned’ by individuals (Foucault 1979). For studies that revisit the question of medieval authorship and the notion of the author, see Glauser 1998; Rösli and Gropper 2021.

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memory, showing that memory and remembering were topics that were treated with interest by medieval Norse authors, who often turned to memory when they produced their texts and books. This chapter gives a glimpse into learned societies that rest upon memory and literacy in combination. It emphasizes that some people – throughout the period in question – were famous for their mnemonic abilities and that those with a good memory stood out as a prominent group of experts, suggesting that mnemonic abilities were met with respect and admiration. I argue further that literacy was introduced into a culture where memory had traditionally been accompanied by various stratagems to support this ability and that the authors regarded the new technique of literacy as yet another aid to memory. The texts dealt with in this first chapter are Íslendingabók (The Book of Icelanders), selected kings’ sagas (konungasǫgur) and sagas of bishops (byskupasǫgur), mostly texts that have authorial meta-comments. Chapter 3, ‘Imageries’, deals with the memory vocabulary that features in the texts and it gives an insight into the metaphorical language that was used to express and explain memory. While Chapter 2 shows that authors talked about memory, this chapter details their understandings of this capacity. The abstract phenomenon of memory is expressed using a terminology that refers to the tangible world and with semantic patterns that may at first glance seem far removed from the subject matter, but which nevertheless would have helped to make sense of and comprehend memory, a resource that was deeply involved in learning activities. In this chapter I demonstrate that memory served other purposes than being a storage space, pointing out that it was an inner space where knowledge could be transformed and made one’s own. This chapter focuses on a selection of sagas of bishops and it instigates the treatments of the Prose Edda (with the main focus on Skáldskaparmál (The Language of Poetry)) and Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (Egil Skallagrimsson’s Saga), two texts which enable the exploration of a multitude of mnemonic features, and which are also treated in the chapters that follow. Especially the Prose Edda seems to have been indebted to societies of spirited exercises that involved mnemonic technologies of different sorts. Chapter 4, ‘Technologies’, details more fully the how of memory, that is, how a well-functioning memory was enhanced by the use of cues and devices. It deals with theories of memory and mnemonic techniques that were described in (a selection of) Latin texts from classical antiquity and the Middle Ages and argues that these descriptions are useful for our attempt to understand the memory cultures in medieval Iceland. The chapter touches upon historical points of contact between Latinate culture and Icelandic learning environments, suggesting that ideas deriving from the shared textual culture of Christian Europe do not only provide us with a theoretical framework, but that some of this book knowledge could actually have been known in Iceland. An examination of the section in the

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Prose Edda called Gylfaginning (Gylfi’s Illusion) illustrates how mnemonic devices are incorporated into this text, which features imagined spaces and images of different kinds. The chapter concludes with a treatment of (marginal) drawings in one of the Prose Edda-manuscripts, Codex Upsaliensis, which illustrate that hand mnemonics could have been evoked to help memory. Chapter 5, ‘The Senses’, highlights visuality, a feature that together with spatiality makes up a decidedly fundamental mnemonic principle. The chapter treats the motif of the ‘mind’s eye’, which calls attention to inner seeing and/as memory, in different textual contexts. The chapter shows that visuality and spatiality go hand in hand. Different ideas about visualization are shown to be relevant for the texts’ treatment of memory, and I argue that mnemonic structures that are created in front of the mind’s eye are accompanied by visualization strategies and imaginative perspectives that allow for inversions of scale and dimensions. It is suggested that, for instance, the ‘view from above’ (expressed through the motif of the Latin specula and the Greek kataskopos) helped to expand the mind and enabled people with a good memory to grasp a vast multitude of wisdom within the field of human vision. This chapter, which starts with a reference to the Old Norse Stave Church Homilies, shows that (religious) knowledge was learned and remembered by an evocation of architectonic structures in the mind. It continues to examine Gylfaginning and finally it introduces eddic poetry, Vǫluspá (Seeress’s Prophecy) and Grímnismál, into the discussion. Despite the fact that these texts treat the pagan past rather than Christian doctrine, they add support to the hypothesis that memorization is facilitated by a visualization of spatial structures in the mind. They illustrate many of the features that belong to a ‘Norse art of memory’, that is, a set of mnemonic techniques that in some of its aspects resemble what we learn from ancient and medieval theories about memory. They show how efficient inner vision is and they support the idea that mnemonic activities will at times collaborate with and facilitate cognition. Chapter 6, ‘Buildings and Seating’, and Chapter 7, ‘Cartography’, deal with the relationship between memory, space and narrative. Here I suggest that stories in the texts are created from, or in dialogue with, mnemonic structures and grids, and that such mind-constellations helped the authors – not only to remember – but also to invent and to organize narratives. Chapter 6 deals with the most conspicuous mnemonic location, buildings, and I argue that anchoring to particular seats were among the available mnemonic devices, which guaranteed remembrance of names and narratives. This chapter employs the legend from ancient Greece about the poet Simonides of Ceos, considered to be the founding father of the classical art of memory, as a reference point, and in it I show that principles similar to those presented in Latin texts were – in the broadest sense – at work in medieval Norse texts. Two sagas of Icelanders, Egils saga Skal-

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lagrímssonar and Brennu-Njáls saga (The Saga of Burnt Njáll), will serve as examples. They reveal how mnemonic technologies may have been helpful methods used by the authors and how these methods were also attached to the persons in the narratives, who at times are presented as memory experts. The latter aspect shows that mnemonics – which is not explicitly theorized in any one particular vernacular treatise – is explored in, and embedded into, the narratives. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Lokasenna (Loki’s Quarrel) in the light of memory, suggesting that this text demonstrates a conglomeration of various mnemonic techniques. It is a poem that is thematically concerned with memory, with forgetting and with the unstable position of pagan mythology within medieval cultural memory. In addition to the mnemonic structures inspired by buildings, examples of which are reviewed in earlier chapters, Chapter 7, ‘Cartography’, brings cartographic learning into focus. Various indicators suggest that abstractions of space known from maps and learned works of geography inspired the mnemonic structures that secured the preservation of the Norse past. I argue that mnemonic grids could be inspired from the mappa mundi-tradition, and that maps that were recreated in the mind could function as instruments of narrative invention. One of the conclusions I come to in this chapter is that many texts have an ekphrastic character, in the sense that they include verbal descriptions of graphics and images that might have been visualized in front of the mind’s eye before they were written down. In this chapter, and throughout the book, it is emphasized that mnemonic technologies are important for the construction of cultural memory. The texts dealt with in Chapter 7 are the prologue of the Prose Edda, Ynglinga saga (The Saga of the Ynglings) and, finally, Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), a text that contains multiple hints at a surrounding memory culture. Finally, the book draws some conclusions and summarizes its main points. The examples provided and the various types of mnemonic structures that are dealt with all add support to the conviction that established imaginary spaces and mnemonic images constitute one feature among many of the texts’ background. Together, the chapters give evidence to the idea that the authors needed something to hold on to when they preserved and transmitted knowledge and lore, whether this something took the form of spatial structures in the mind or letters written in manuscripts. This book does not exhaust its topic, and much more can be said about medieval memory culture and the relationship between this culture and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. Only minor corners of an extensive field are dealt with, and we possess many other examples than those included here, which deserve to be examined. Without doubt, the topic under consideration, medieval memory culture’s impact on Old Norse-Icelandic literature, can and needs to be further

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examined and explained. It is nevertheless my hope that the book’s theme and the examples that it provides suffice to convince readers of the relevance of such an approach, and that the paths that are laid out on the following pages will lead to more investigations and insights into Old Norse-Icelandic literature, its mnemonic dimensions and its debt to a living, but probably declining, memory culture. If an individual example seen in isolation is not convincing in itself, I trust that the overall picture, the theoretical framework and the examples taken together will support the main argument, namely that memory played a considerable role for authorship in medieval book culture and that the Old Norse-Icelandic literary corpus is much influenced by memory.

2 Memorizing by Way of Books 2.1 Interacting Cultures This chapter offers a glimpse into the learned societies from which Old NorseIcelandic texts emanate. In these societies, memory was characteristically considered a valued resource, and people who remembered well were held in high esteem. It seems as if authorship – a term that I use in the widest sense to refer to those preoccupied with textual production – often involved a transportation of knowledge from memory (the authors’ own or other peoples’ memories) to the book, and it is indicated that a great deal of mnemonic preparation was required before a book was written, just as the readers were invited to store the knowledge they took out of books in their memories. The chapter demonstrates that authors looked for means of supporting memory and that literacy, the new technology at the time, was considered an aid to memory.

2.1.1 Minnugir Men The texts point to people who had rich or retentive memories, presenting them as authorities and experts. In what is supposed to be one of the earliest works of history from the Norse world, Íslendingabók (dated to c. 1130), ascribed to the priest Ari Þorgilsson, references are more than once made to informants with good memories.¹³ The adjective minnigr (of good memory) is used to characterize the informant Hallr of Síða and it is said about another one, Þorkell Gellisson, that he remembered far back (Íslendingabók, 1986, ch. 1, p. 4; ch. 9, p. 21).¹⁴ The references to informants in Íslendingabók make it clear that memory is entangled with other skills and qualities, as the people with good memories are also characterized as  Íslendingabók is transmitted only in seventeenth-century manuscripts, the oldest ones being AM 113 a fol. (dated to 1651) and AM 113 b fol., both by Jón Erlendsson. While it is common in scholarship to anchor Íslendingabók in the twelfth century, a recent contribution has given arguments against this opinion. In this context Ari Þorgilsson is treated as a ‘literary figure’ in Icelandic cultural memory, see Rösli 2021.  When referencing primary sources, I give both chapter numbers and page numbers where possible. Where primary source editions are not divided by chapters, only page numbers are given. Where primary sources are divided into books, as is the case in several Latin texts, book numbers are mentioned as well. When referencing poetry, I give both the number of the stanza and the page number. All primary sources are quoted in the original language followed by an English translation. Unless otherwise attributed, all translations are my own. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-005

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fróðr (knowledgeable), spakr (wise) and – as it is indicated when the female informant Þuríðr Snorradóttir is mentioned – óljúgfróð (knowledgeable without lying). Memory thus is not contrasted with but goes together with other intellectual achievements – most prominently wisdom and the possession of knowledge – and it is even connected to peoples’ moral character, as the reference to the truthful Þuríðr Snorradóttir indicates. Scholarship often mentions that Ari Þorgilsson’s successors gave him the nickname inn fróði (the knowledgeable), a name that characterizes someone who is well-informed about historical or mythological knowledge. It is not so often stressed that he was also talked about as minnigr and that he was included among the group of people who were notable because of their mnemonic abilities. This is the case in the prologue to the compilation of kings’ sagas Heimskringla (The Earth’s Circle), which is dated to 1230.¹⁵ It says that: Því var eigi undarligt, at Ari væri sannfróðr at fornum tíðendum bæði hér ok útan lands, at hann hafði numit at gǫmlum mǫnnum ok vitrum, en var sjálfr námgjarn ok minnigr. (Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, I, 1979, p. 7) (Therefore it is not strange that Ari was well informed about events that had happened in the olden times both here [in Iceland] and in foreign parts, because he had learned from old and well-informed men, and himself was both eager to learn and endowed with an excellent memory.) (Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, History of the Kings of Norway, 1964, p. 5)

Moreover, in another context in Heimskringla, namely the prologue to the Separate Saga of St. Óláf, Ari Þorgilsson is mentioned in connection with memory as well. Here it is stated that he was the first one in the country to write down both old and new memories: “bæði forn minni ok ný” (Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, II, 1979, p. 419).¹⁶ These prologues give the impression that Ari Þorgilsson was considered  Heimskringla has been ascribed to Snorri Sturluson, although doubts have been posed regarding this assumption (see e. g. Louis-Jensen 1997; Cormack 2001; Jørgensen 2007). For attribution of authorship to manuscript-compilations like Heimskringla, see Rohrbach 2021, 145 – 147. Heimskringla exists in various (fragmentary) medieval manuscripts, as well as in later paper manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts are Kringla (from c. 1270, but – apart from a single leaf – only extant in seventeenth-century transcripts) and Codex Frisianus (AM 45 fol.) and Eirspennill (AM 47 fol.), both from the early fourteenth century. The prologue does not exist in Kringla, and the prologue in the Íslenzk fornrit-edition, which is quoted here, is based mainly on Codex Frisianus. For Heimskringla’s authorship, manuscripts and sources, see Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson 1979; Whaley 1991; Finlay 2011.  The passage quoted here is from the fourteenth-century manuscript AM 325 V 4to ‘325 V’. In another version, AM 325 V 4to from the early fourteenth century, fræði (knowledge) is used instead of minni (memory), a change of word which suggests that these terms were not far removed from each other meaning-wise. See Heimskringla, II, 1979, p. 419.

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a man of the past, who used literacy and memory simultaneously, and relied on both these resources, when he wrote his books. Other people are said to have had excellent or superior memories, too, and it is not only as early as in a text ascribed to the twelfth century that there is a focus on this resource, also texts that were written in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are concerned with memory and they also use minnigr to characterize people. This is the case, for example, in Knýtlinga saga (from the middle of the thirteenth century) when it is said about the Danish king Eríkr, who was king between 1095 and 1103, that he was wise, had excellent language skills and “var allra manna minnigastr ok snjallr í máli” (Knýtlinga saga, 1920, ch. 73, p. 169) (had the best memory of all men and was good with words).¹⁷ In one of the sagas of Icelanders, Brennu-Njáls saga (from c. 1280), the Icelandic chieftain and legal expert, Njáll Þorgeirsson, who lived c. 930 – 1010, is described as langminnigr (long-remembering) (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 20, p. 57), a term that underscores that his memory was considered particularly comprehensive and far-reaching.¹⁸ And, a final example, in one of the sagas of Bishops, Árna saga biskups (the early fourteenth century) the adjective minnigr is used to describe the skilfull young Jǫrundr Þorsteinsson (who died in 1313), later to become Bishop at Hólar, who stood out among the other students, among other things, because of his memory (Árna saga biskups, 2003, ch. 3, p. 7).¹⁹ The latter example shows that a retentive memory was not only associated with people of the past who lived in an oral culture, but also with people of more recent times who belonged to learned environments and had access to literacy in the form of the Latin alphabet. The people who had superior memories were experts within a variety of fields, they knew about events in Icelandic history, including law, they were eloquent, skilled in book-learning, foreign languages and clerical knowledge.²⁰

 Knýtlinga saga was preserved in the now lost Codex Academicus (c. 1300), the main manuscript now being the copy AM 18 fol. For the manuscripts, see Petersen and Olson 1920, ix – xxxiii.  Brennu-Njáls saga exists in numerous manuscripts, the oldest extant version of the saga is found in Reykjabók (AM 468 4to) from c. 1300 – 1325. I refer to the Íslenzk fornrit-edition which is mainly based on Möðruvallabók (from c. 1330 – 1370). For Brennu-Njáls saga’s manuscript tradition, see Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1953, 5 – 14; Jón Karl Helgason 1999; Guðrún Nordal 2005, 218 – 221; Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir and Lethbridge 2018.  Árna saga biskups is transmitted in manuscripts from the fourteenth century, most completely in Reykjarfjarðarbók (AM 122 b fol.) from the last quarter of the fourteenth century. For the manuscripts, see Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir 2003, v and lii – lvi.  References to people who had fine memories are not limited to Old Icelandic texts, but are found in Scandinavian textual materials generally, including the minnunga mæn and minnugha mæn, who are mentioned in Old Swedish texts, see Brink 2014; Mitchell 2014, 170 – 171.

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2.1.2 Authorship and Memory Many Old Norse-Icelandic texts are connected to memory in the very basic sense that authors consulted their own or other peoples’ memory when they collected the information that was compiled in their texts. As we saw, this was the case in Íslendingabók, where it is emphasized that information was gathered from the memory banks of wise people. This is the case also in one of the earliest kings’ sagas, namely Sverris saga (dated to late twelfth or early thirteenth century).²¹ The author, assumed to be the friar Karl Jónsson of the Benedictine monastery of Þingeyrar, explains in the prologue to the book that some of the information he had access to had previously been ‘fixed’ in peoples’ memories: “Sum þessi tíðendi váru svá í minni fest at menn rituðu þegar eftir er nýorðin váru, ok hafa þau ekki breytzk síðan” (Sverris saga, 2007, p. 3) (Some of these tidings were fixed in memory, having been written down directly by men (as) they occurred, and they have not been altered since) (see fig. 1). The formula festa í minni (to fix in the memory) (see Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1969, 152) implies that memory was understood as a structure upon which knowledge, that is, things and words, could be firmly attached.²² This formula can be seen as a reflection on a metaphor that was widely used in classical and medieval texts, one which describes memory as a tablet onto which things can be incised (the Latin tabula memoriae, ‘the tablet of memory’). In ancient and medieval traditions, the tablet-metaphor is associated with inscriptions of symbols on different surfaces, such as letters on a book page, seals on wax, signs on body parts, i. e. the heart (A. Assmann 2011, 140 – 142; Carruthers 1990, 16 – 45). The quotation from Sverris saga implies that knowledge had been incised in the memory before it was fixed in writing. This example gives no detailed information about how, more precisely, knowledge was organized when it was still kept in memory, but the author seems to be of the conviction that the information could relatively easily be moved from memory to book.²³  The prologue of Sverris saga is transmitted in various manuscripts, including AM 327 4to (from c. 1300). For the prologue in the various manuscripts, see Þorleifur Hauksson 2007, liii – lx.  The formula festa í minni features in other texts, too. For instance, in Stjórn (when referring to Augustine) and in a context where another motif that clinches itself to memory, namely the mind’s eye (hugskotsauga), is mentioned (Stjórn, 1862, ch. 26, p. 101). The formula is also used in the Flateyjarbók-version of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, 1860, p. 514) and in the prologue to the Prose Edda (in the edition by Anthony Faulkes) where people in prehistory are said to have named everything in the natural world in order to better be able to fix this knowledge in memory (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 4).  The term forn minni (ancient memories) is used in another episode in Sverris saga (2007, p. 34). The author thus refers both to the memories of specific individuals and to memories in the

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Fig. 1: Page of Sverris saga (AM 327 4to, 1v), which contains the formula festa í minni (line 13). Printed with the permission of The Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, University of Copenhagen, handrit.org.

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So, too, the church history Hungrvaka (Appetizer) (dated to the first decade of the thirteenth century), a book that concerns the succession of bishops in the cathedral of Skálholt in the southern diocese of Iceland.²⁴ The author of this text, whose name is not known to us, also turned to memory when he wrote the book, this time with a reference not to the memory of other people, but to his own memory (minni). Hungrvaka is an illustrative example that gives us an insight into the working conditions within medieval book culture. The author explains that he wrote (from rita) in a little book (bœklingr) the things he had heard (from heyra) from others and that he had them fixed in his memory (festa í minni): En ek hefi þó náliga ǫllu við slegit, at rita þat sem ek hefi í minni fest. Hefi ek af því þenna bœkling saman settan, at eigi falli mér með ǫllu ór minni þat er ek heyrða af þessu máli segja inn fróða mann Gizur Hallsson, ok enn nǫkkura menn aðra merkiliga hafa í frásǫgn fært. (Hungrvaka, 2002, ch. 1, p. 3) (Though I have cast together into my book well-nigh all that I have fast in my memory. I have put together this little book in order that there might not altogether fall out of my memory what I heard that man of knowledge, Gizor Hallsson, say on the matter thereof, and what certain other notable men have set forth in narrative.) (Hungrvaca, 1905, p. 425)

The vocabulary reveals that the author is situated in an intermediary position between orality, literacy and memory. He refers to oral tidings that he heard from Gizurr Hallsson and to the frásǫgn (oral narratives) of other esteemed people, showing that authorship depended on the modalities of orality and aurality (what was spoken and heard), just as he elaborates on his literary task when he uses the term setja saman (set together/compile), which refers to the literary organisation of the knowledge that he had collected; and, finally, he makes a reference to his own memory. Altogether, the wording illustrates that the coming into being of this book presupposed an orientation towards all of these different, yet interacting, modalities and cultures. Hungrvaka indicates that books are considered an integral part of a collectively shared tradition. At the end of the prologue the author addresses his readers who are expected to take active part in the process of preserving knowledge, as they are supposed to leave some things from the book behind and take into their minds those things which they like. It thus seems as if reading was practically an act of memory: more general sense of ancient traditions. For a treatment of the term forn minni in Sverris saga, see Wellendorf 2014.  Hungrvaka exists only in late paper manuscripts from the seventeenth century, of which the oldest is AM 110 8vo from 1601. For the text’s manuscripts and other background, see Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2002, vi – xxxi.

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Sýnisk mér þar ráð at sá hafi af þessum fróðleik inum fátœka, er ritaðr er, [þat er] bezt gegnir ok hann hendir svá gaman at, ok varðveiti þat eptir á er sjálfum mun í geð falla, en felli þat niðr er honum fellr eigi í skap. (Hungrvaka, 2002, p. 4) (I think it is adviceable that someone shall pick out of the matter that is here written, whatsoever he likes best and whatsoever gives him pleasure, and let him lay up in his mind that which fall in with his mind, but drop that which does not fall in with his fashion of thought.)

The author invites reader participation, letting it be known that the recipient must select and preserve what suits his or her geð (mind).²⁵ This example shows that knowledge that was preserved in books, as well as the undertakings of the author, were integral parts of a dialogical process, where the book was not necessarily considered an end-product in itself, but part of a wider context that involved participants’ selections and evaluations and which activated their minds and, with that, their mnemonic abilities. The preservation of knowledge, thus, did not only imply a process where knowledge was transferred from the author’s memory to the book, but also a process that went in the opposite direction, where knowledge travelled from the book to the minds, that is memories, of the readers, who were encouraged to store what they liked in their minds, or otherwise to add their own ideas to this exchange. We notice that the memories of one or more individuals were collected in the texts, but once they were presented in a book, they were ready to be accessed by other people and they become – by way of the texts – part of a collective memory. These facts indicate that learning activities did not only involve the technology of writing but was accompanied by memory as well. We cannot know exactly how an author prepared his written discourse, but our examples hint at a situation where a considerable amount of mnemonic activity and organization predated and surrounded both the production and the reception of a text. Mary Carruthers has argued that medieval authorship was not reduced to the act of writing itself, but went beyond a mastery of literacy and literary conventions. She says that “composition is not an act of writing, it is rumination, cogitation, dictation, a listening and a dialogue, a ‘gathering’ (collectio) of voices from their several places in memory” (Carruthers 1990, 198). This comprehension of the coming into being of texts is illustrative for a book like Hungrvaka. The author of this book did not only write, but took things from his memory and engaged in a

 The word geð is used here to refer to the mind. The word has the derived meanings of mood, wits and senses (Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1969, 193). Geð is used in poetry in the formula geð guma (the mind of men or the memory of men) (Mackenzie 2014, 39 and 46).

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dialogue with his readers who considered in their minds the material that the book gave them access to. We can perhaps look at Íslendingabók in this way, too. As in the case of Hungrvaka, the creation of this book cannot be reduced to the writing activity itself either. As mentioned, Íslendingabók engages memory in various ways, and in the light of the information that we get from Hungrvaka, it is not much of a stretch to expect that the author of this book, even if he makes no reference to his own memory, could have followed a similar authorial model, where he first heard and fastened in memory the information that he afterwards re-collected as it was organized in the book, which in the manuscript is defined with the Latin Libellus (Little book). What is more, this author likewise encouraged the readers, mainly the Bishops of Skálholt and Hólar, Þorlákr Runólfsson and Ketill Þorsteinsson, and the priest and chieftain from Oddi, Sæmundr inn fróði (the knowledgeable) to actively continue his work, either to keep it as it was or to add to it by following their own preferences and previous knowledge (Íslendingabók, 1986, p. 3), a formulation that may also imply that the knowledge that had been organized in the book was expected to be mnemonically processed in the minds of the readers. The examples thus indicate that what was gathered in books should not just stay there, but be moved into the memories of those involved in knowledge-sharing and knowledge-preservation; essentially, the book was an instrument that aided this process. The assumption that knowledge was transported in one direction only, that is, from memory to the book, is too unidirectional to grasp medieval learned culture, where writing at times seems to have been, not contrasting, but an accompanying partner in mnemonic practices.

2.1.3 Rhetoric and Memoria Hungrvaka demonstrates a type of authorship which is at one and the same time rhetorically aware and (perhaps as an integral part of this rhetorical awareness) memory dependent. The way in which the author presents his book suggests that he was inspired by the rhetorical guidelines that were laid out in treatises on rhetoric from classical antiquity, most noticeable those by Cicero, the anonymous author of Rhetorica ad Herennium and Quintilian. The rhetorical repertoire they described consists of five parts defined with the Latin terms inventio (invention), dispositio (disposition), elocutio (style), memoria (memory) and actio/pronuntiatio (delivery), where each part follows its own rules and methods. This system was made for oral delivery of speeches, but the various canons that it comprises are relevant for written discourses as well. Invention (inventio) of themes and arguments was the first step for Hungrvaka’s author, who created the discourse from

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knowledge that he had found and collected, whereafter he arranged this material in a certain order, expressed in the wording setja saman, which rhetorically speaking indicates that he practised a dispositio. That he was preoccupied with the style of the discourse (elocutio) becomes apparent in the metaphorical language he used to describe his endeavour, namely that he would refine the book as if he were mending a horn-spoon (hornspónn) (see Chapter 3).We note that memoria (memory) is an integral part of this rhetorical apparatus, and Hungrvaka makes it quite explicit that authorship also involves a mnemonic processing of knowledge. Possibly, knowledge about Latin rhetoric not only helped the author to prepare, invent, organize and stylize the text, it might also have provided the cues and ideas about how to remember the materials that he worked with. The example suggests that it may have been natural for authors to activate methods of memory along with other rhetorical devices. Admittedly, Old Norse-Icelandic texts, by and large, very seldom mention the art of rhetoric explicitly, only the section Málskrúðsfræði in The Third Grammatical Treatise (written c. 1210 – 1259 by Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskald) has a reference to rhetorica (málsnilldarlist) (Den Tredje og Fjærde Grammatiske Afhandling, 1884, p. 96). This mid-thirteenth-century text is, however, more overtly concerned with the art of grammar (Clunies Ross 1987; Guðrún Nordal 2001, 19 – 25; Glauser 2018, 39), just as our sources in general indicate that grammatica was most central to the Norse authors. However, we should be careful not to think in too strict categories here, as the borders between the art of grammar and the art of rhetoric (and other disciplines that played a role in medieval learning, for that matter) were not insurmountable (Patzuk-Russell 2021, 10, incl. notes). As also indicated by a text such as Hungrvaka, there is reason to believe that the art of rhetoric was actually known in Iceland, an opinion that has been expressed in the following way by Mats Malm: “There are no traces of rhetorical textbooks similar to the remains of the grammatical ones, but we can rest assured that basic rhetorical training was a fundamental part of the emerging intellectual culture that was to produce the Icelandic sagas and mythological works” (Malm 2016, 312). In this book I do not systematically look for (indirect) references to classical rhetoric, but nevertheless speak in favour of the point of view that is set forth in this quotation, suggesting that a consciousness of rhetoric was indeed developing.²⁶

 Rhetorical knowledge is, it seems, hinted at in various places, suggesting that training in rhetorical skills was an underlying principle of the textual culture (Halldór Halldórsson 1975; Gunnar Harðarson 2016a, 57– 58). See also James Knirk’s argument that Sverris saga bears signs of rhetorical influence, in particular in its representation of speeches (Knirk 1981, 56).

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2.1.4 Klerkligar listir and Memoria We must presuppose a development during the High Middle Ages towards a situation where the written word became increasingly prioritized and where a literary consciousness grew. This latter aspect is documented in the development of a literary vocabulary, which shows that a stronger awareness of literary concepts was underway (Glauser 2010).²⁷ It has been argued that, by the time of the thirteenth century, there was a preference among authors for the written word, and scholars have suggested that the old way of telling stories and transmitting knowledge orally was devalued and of lower prestige and authority than the ‘modern’ way, which included written letters (see e. g. Meulengracht Sørensen 2001).²⁸ Along these lines, it has been suggested that ‘the literary’ and ‘the oral’ came to represent high and low culture, respectively (Mitchell 2001). Much ambiguity is related to our material, and memory’s presence in medieval book culture reminds us that, when it comes to this resource, we ought to be cautious and not think in overly strict categories. At least, memory surrounds not only oral lore but also the literary tradition. It transfers into and continues for some time to be relevant in environments that can be categorized as ‘modern’, in the sense that they are based on the written word. Texts such as those dealt with above (of which most belong to the kings’ sagas and the sagas of bishops) suggest that memory had a natural presence among a clerical elite that orientated itself towards bookish culture, and the authorial comments analysed so far indicate that authors and readers regarded memory as a natural part of their learned activities. From what we can piece together, a good memory (which would have been supported by the ability to handle mnemonic techniques) does not oppose or contrast with other competences that are talked about, for instance in the sagas of bishops, such as riti (writing) and bóknám (book learning), all skills that can be included into the general term klerkligar listir (clerical skills) (Þorláks saga, B-version, 2002, ch. 22, p. 166; Árna saga biskups 2003, ch. 2, p. 5). The common understanding of so-called ‘learned culture’ often highlights the role of literacy, but rather than

 Also relevant in this context are other recent takes on the development of bookish culture, which affects the orality-literacy relationship, namely those concerned with the development of bureaucratic thinking and written administration in Iceland (Cole 2019; Sandberg 2021) and with mediality (Rohrbach 2014; Heslop and Glauser 2017).  For a definition of ‘modern’ in this sense, see Bruhn 1999, who writes that: “Med til ordet modernus’ betydning hører altså ikke blot, at det er nyt og til en vis grad anderledes, men også, at det er mere rigtigt eller passende i en situation, som er kvalitativt forandret” (1999, 17) (The word modernus does not only mean, then, that it is new and to a certain degree different, but also that it is more correct or suitable in a situation that is qualitatively altered).

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assigning a learned status narrowly to someone who had a knowledge of Latin letters, a litteratus (see Johansson 2018, 335), it is fruitful for our understanding of the texts to consider other, and a broader range of, skills that gave individuals their learned status, including mnemonic abilities. That an impressive and functional memory was an important resource beyond the thirteenth century is indicated in an example from yet another bishop’s saga, Lárentíus saga (from the middle of the fourteenth century). It says that the author, a leading cleric and Deacon in the diocese of Hólar, Einarr Hafliðason who lived between 1307 and 1393, recorded in writing both what had been held in his memory (í minni halda) and what he had read in the annals (Lárentíus saga, 2003, ch. 1, p. 216). This example from Lárentíus saga describes working conditions that would probably have been the norm, namely that authorship relied on both memory and books, and that authors had double-perspectives, hence that literary production took place in a zone between memorized and recorded knowledge. The statements in the texts dealt with so far already allow us to draw the vague contours of memory’s role in the Norse Middle Ages. Firstly, that authors referenced people with good memories, and that for instance Ari Þorgilsson was not only renowned in later times because of his written books, but also because of his good memory, which suggests that memory-skills were considered as important. Secondly, it appears that authors resorted to memory and considered it as an accompanying feature of their literary production; they were essentially aware of different cultures (oral and written) and evoked different sensory modalities (hearing and seeing) when they produced their texts.

2.2 The Fear of Forgetting But what other information can we extract from the authorial comments? What else do they reveal about memory? In Hungrvaka we find the wordings ór minni (out of memory) and falla … ór minni (fall out of memory) (Hungrvaka, 2002, ch. 1, p. 3; ch. 7, p. 27). They indicate that memory was understood as a container or a storage unit of some kind. Like the wording festa í minni, discussed above, these phrases, too, show that the Norse texts incorporated understandings of memory that were in line with other European traditions. They recall the storehouse of wisdom (Latin thesaurus sapientiae), which is a widely used metaphorical expression of memory.²⁹ That Hungrvaka’s author was of the conviction that things

 Etymologically, thesaurus means ‘treasure, treasury, storehouse.’ Already Plato evoked the word as a metaphor for memory (he compared the storehouse of memory to a pigeon coop), and

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could fall out of memory, indicates that this resource was believed to have some limitations. When the author transferred knowledge from memory to the book, he did so to avoid that knowledge would drop out of memory, in other words, he used the book as a mnemonic aid. Hungrvaka is not the only text that uses the wording ór minni or considers writing an aid to memory. Also, a slightly later text, namely Þorláks saga from the first decade of the thirteenth century uses this same wording when it addresses the fear of forgetting.³⁰ This saga deals with Skálholt-matters as well and is a biography of the Bishop and saint Þorlákr Þórhallsson (who lived between 1133 and 1193). Like other colleagues, this author, too, says that he wished to transfer knowledge from memory to the book and he, too, explains that he wanted to record the knowledge that he kept in memory before it disappeared. So once again we get the impression that authors viewed memory as a storehouse, but – we note – a storehouse in need of support. In this case, it is the speeches given at the funeral of the bishop that were moved from internal memory to external letters: “ok vil ek geta nǫkkurra orða, segir sá er sǫguna setti, þeira er hann talaði ok mér ganga sízt ór minni” (Þorláks saga, B-version, 2002, ch. 36, p. 190) (And I will set down some of the words, says the one who made the saga, which he [Gizurr Hallsson] spoke, which have gone least out of my memory).³¹ A last example in this connection takes us away from the sagas of bishops and back to the kings’ sagas, namely the prologue to the Separate Saga of St. Óláf, which has already been mentioned above. Its wording indicates that things can fall out of memory (ór minni … liðit), and also here memory is considered as a storehouse whose content is inclined to fade away: Þau orð, er í kveðskap standa, eru in sǫmu sem í fyrstu váru, ef rétt er kveðit […]. En sǫgur þær, er sagðar eru, þá er þat hætt, at eigi skilisk ǫllum á einn veg. En sumir hafa eigi minni,

in biblical texts the word designates a treasure house where valuables are kept. The term sapientia (wisdom) reveals that memory is associated with sagacity, which in practical terms means all kinds of knowledge. The metaphor of the storehouse developed in diverse contexts from Roman antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages (see Carruthers 1990, 33 – 45; Draaisma 2000, 30).  It is possible, but not documented, that the same author wrote Hungrvaka and Þorláks saga, see Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2002, xxi – xxxi. Þorláks saga exists in three redactions (A, B and C). The manuscripts of the A-redaction are AM 383 4to (middle of the thirteenth century) and Sthm Perg. 5 fol. (middle of the fourteenth century). The B-redaction is found in AM 382 4to (early fourteenth century). There are several manuscripts of the C-redaction. See Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2002, xxxi – lii.  Another comment on a fading memory, and writing, is found in one of the miracle collections attached to Þorláks saga (see Heslop 2021, 237).

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þá er frá líðr, hvernig þeim var sagt, ok gengsk þeim mjǫk í minni optliga, ok verða frásagnir ómerkiligar. (Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, II, 1979, p. 422) (The words in the poem are the same as in the first case, if they are correctly composed […] But with regard to the sagas that are told orally, the danger is that not everyone understands them in the same way. And some cannot, as time goes, remember how they were told, and often they are much altered in memory, and the narratives become unremarkable.)

The passage, firstly, expresses the conviction that time works against memory causing its contents to diminish or to become unremarkable and unimportant. But it offers other important information as well, details which suggest that the author considered two different types of mnemonic preservation. A distinction is made between, on the one hand, (trustworthy) kveðskapr (poetry, versemaking) and, on the other hand, (unremarkable) frásǫgn (oral narratives). The poetry, which is preferred by the writer, is skaldic verse, most likely considered trustworthy because of its internal metrical structure, where tightly textured rhyme schemes prevent changes occurring in the poem’s form, suggesting the belief that traditional skaldic metre could transmit words and sounds in unchanged form. In contrast to such poetry, according to the passage, orally told sagas were difficult to remember verbatim and could change when they were kept í minni (in memory). Interestingly, from our perspective, the author seemingly counts on a type of mnemonic preservation, which – if we borrow a terminology from ancient Roman memory theory – have similarities with a memoria verborum (memory for words), a term that refers to a form of memorization that takes into account every word and enables exact repetition (Cicero, De inventione, 1960, book 1, ch. 7, p. 21; Cicero, De oratore, I, 1959, book 2, ch. 88, pp. 470 – 471; [Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 20, pp. 212– 215). The Roman texts describe another type of memorization as well, namely a memoria rerum (memory for things), which instead concentrates on the recollection of subject-matter, notions and arguments. Based on this distinction between memoria verborum and memoria rerum, Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski have argued that the memory theorists in ancient and medieval cultures “recognized, as we now do, the dual aspects of storage and recollection involved in remembering” (Carruthers and Ziolkowski 2004, 1), which basically means that they counted on both rote memory and a creative recall.³² While the first of these forms seems to be recognized in the quotation above, it is not clear whether the second form is also counted on, or whether the author – when saying that sagas could change when they were kept in

 In another context, Mary Carruthers has explained this duality of memory with reference to heuristic principles (the activity of finding something in memory) and hermeneutic principles (the activity of interpreting something in memory), respectively (Carruthers 1990, 20).

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memory – instead expresses a general concern with a fading tradition or a decline of mnemonic abilities among people. So far, these considerations suggest that the wish to preserve knowledge was strong, and that the authors, when they transferred knowledge from memory (their own and other people’s memories) to the book, did so to prevent important knowledge from being forgotten. This highlights the book as an external mnemonic aid that exists outside of the body. Moreover, the authorial statements, despite being relatively short, when taken together give an insight into prevalent understandings of memory. The phrases festa í minni and ór minni reveal the conviction that memory was thought about as a template that things could be fastened to and/or as a storage that things could be kept in. Also, as our last example indicates, there seems to have been an awareness among the authors of different, yet co-existing, forms of memory, one of which looks similar to the memoria verborum mentioned in Latin texts, which is connected to skaldic poetry.

2.2.1 Memory’s Enduring Complement It has been argued that the passage from the Separate Saga of St. Óláf, which distinguishes between two ways of memorization, reveals a modern viewpoint held by authors skilled in literacy, a viewpoint which implies that the author in the culture of literacy looks from a distance at the orally transmitted tradition (Meulengracht Sørensen 2001). While a source critical evaluation was a natural part of the medieval history writers’ task, I will, however, be cautious about overemphasizing the difference in opinions about memory in oral and written cultures, respectively. It should not be overlooked that memory’s vulnerability and people’s (lack of) ability to remember correctly are not only debated in contexts where an author positioned within a literary culture evaluates his oral and memory-dependent sources. Judging from the texts, the conviction that memory needs supporting devices is relevant to oral contexts as well. At least, this is the message we get when later writers describe situations in the oral culture of the past. Put differently, the text corpus does not give the impression that the culture of literacy brought new standards that made it necessary for the authors to highlight that words and things would disappear from memory, or that they could change in memory over time. Such recognitions seem to be constants in the tradition of memory across the orality/literacy divide. There are several examples from the sagas of Icelanders which indicate a concern in oral contexts with memory and its counterpart, forgetting, and which deal with memory’s need for supporting devices. These sagas are not, like the sagas of bishops and the kings’ sagas that were touched upon above, accompa-

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nied by paratexts in the form of prologues that contain author-reflections on the discourses that follow, nor do the main parts of the texts themselves contain many authorial meta-comments. But the words of the narrators and the dialogues between the people in the narratives give us relevant information about memory and mnemonic aids in oral contexts – even if this information reflects mainly the image of the past that existed in the minds of the thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury writers, rather than the past itself. An episode in Laxdœla saga (The Saga of the People of Laxardal) (middle of the thirteenth century) indicates that words and things that are kept in memory are likely to be forgotten or unclear over time.³³ Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir and Þorgils Hǫlluson, when they debate a marriage promise that was made in the past, discuss whether words once spoken will fall out of memory as time goes by (ór minni liðit), whether they remember correctly (rétt muna) and whether two people will have the same memory of something: “ef okkr minnir eins um þetta mál” (Laxdæla saga, 1934, ch. 65, p. 195). While the two people in question pretend to remember their agreement in the same way, their discussion and the result of their encounter presuppose that the words spoken in the past are subject to individual interpretation and change. The dialogue between these two people, thus, questions what memory is actually concerned with, whether it is about “frozen moments of the past or living moments of the present” (Hermann 2014, 26). Even if the saga anchors this episode in the time before the year 1000 it is likely to reflect the time of the written text’s conception or its transmission, but it still reveals that discussion about memory’s capacity and reliability was not considered incompatible with the oral culture of the past. An example from Bandamanna saga (The Saga of the Confederates) (middle of the thirteenth century) expresses the need for memory aids within oral culture.³⁴ One of the persons in the text, Ófeigr Skíðason, is aware that people may forget the outcome of a legal case, and he concludes a legal settlement with the performance of a skaldic verse that he composes with the aim of strengthening the memory of those present at the alþingi (general assembly): “Þá mælti Ófeigr: Nú vil ek kveða yðr vísu eina, ok hafa þá fleiri at minnum þing þetta ok málalok þessi, er hér eru orðin” (Bandamanna saga, 1936, ch. 10, p. 356) (“Then Ofeig spoke up: Now I want to recite a verse, so that more people will remember this Althing and the outcome of this case”) (The Saga of the Confederates, 1997, ch. 10, p. 305). Ófeigr is aware of the threat of oblivion and his attempt to prevent forgetting points to the necessity to keep in memory the agreements that have been made. It  Laxdœla saga is preserved in fragments in several manuscripts and in complete form in Möðruvallabók.  Also, this saga is preserved in Möðruvallabók, as well as in the later Konungsbók (GKS 2845 4to) (from the fifteenth century).

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is only when, for instance, legal settlements are remembered that conflicts can come to an end and order can be maintained. The opposite, forgetting, will create disorder and will eventually lead to the destruction of organized society (see Hermann 2014, 27). This example points to a most intriguing mnemonic aid in oral culture, namely skaldic verse, the poetic form that the Separate Saga of St. Óláf sets forth as a Norse example of a verbatim memory. The episode from Bandamanna saga indicates that non-tangible verbal expressions could serve a mnemonic purpose. An oral verse disappears when it has been spoken out loud, it does not archive information physically, nor does it offer any material traces that can be consulted by means of touch and sight; it merges with the body that performs it. Still, the saga presupposes that such a verse is persistent and will last, which supports the idea that verses could be ‘found again’, that is, recalled from memory.³⁵ The episode reveals that oral performances, most dominantly skaldic verse, could share similar functions in oral contexts as books have in contexts of writing, a function that has led scholars to describe skaldic verse as ‘a literacy avant la lettre’ (Jesch 2005).³⁶ Thus, the opinion and observation that things can fall out of memory and that memory needs to be supported in order to keep its contents intact should not necessarily be seen as a consequence of the introduction of alphabetic literacy, nor as the result of a ‘modern’ point of view held by authors with access to the medium of writing. In any case, the texts suggest that the awareness of the risk of forgetting was considered memory’s persistent supplement.

 This episode seems to indicate that mnemonic abilities and the ability to remember skaldic verses were quite common, see also an example in Gísla saga Súrssonar (The Saga of Gisli Sursson) (1943, ch. 19, p. 61). But other comments in the textual record indicate that it was a specialist competence and that not everyone had the ability to remember poems. Firstly, in one of the legendary sagas (fornaldarsǫgur), namely Gautreks saga (The Saga of Gautrek) from the late thirteenth century, the poet Starkaðr is alternately blessed and cursed by the gods, first he is given the ability to compose poetry but soon after he is cursed in such a way that he will forget what he has composed: “Hann skal ekki muna eptir, þat er hann yrkir” (Gautreks saga, 1944, ch. 7) (“He shall never remember afterwards what he composes”) (King Gautrek, 1985, ch. 7, p. 156). Next, a humorous episode in Morkinskinna (Rotten manuscript) from the early thirteenth century tells of how the self-conscious poet Einarr Skúlason challenges the Norwegian King Eysteinn Haraldsson’s and his retainers’ mnemonic abilities, displaying their petty attempt to remember a verse (Morkinskinna, II, 2011, ch. 105, pp. 224– 225). For comments on those two episodes, see Mitchell 2014; Solovyeva 2019, 59.  Studies in orality have convincingly argued that oral cultures do not presuppose the existence of a fixed text. While this is undoubtedly true for some oral discourses, an episode such as this one indicates the existence of other forms of orality. For skaldic poetry and other manifestations of a Norse ‘literacy avant la lettre’, as well as the existence of ‘memorial discourses’, see Harris 2008, 2010a.

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2.3 Two Co-Existing Storehouses The statements above indicate that literacy was considered a welcome medium that could help the preservation of culturally important knowledge.³⁷ But do the texts contain reflections on the wider implications of the transfer of knowledge from the internal storehouse or the internal tablet of memory to the outwards storage on parchment? Is there any indication that one was preferred to the other? These questions feed into a theme with a deep history going back to ancient Greece. In Phaedrus, a text ascribed to Plato, different opinions on this question are presented in a dialogue, where Socrates refers, first, to Theuth, who believes that letters will help people improve their memories and who is of the conviction that this new invention is nothing less than an elixir of memory and wisdom, and next, to Thamus, who says that letters will produce forgetfulness because people will no longer practise their own memory; according to him, external characters can only remind people of what they already know and cannot offer any true wisdom (see Fleckner 1998, 28). The Norse authors, placed in a similar situation to the Greeks (namely a culture that relies on memory and a culture of writing), do not explicitly expand on this discussion, but they indirectly take part in a comparable debate when they bring together memory and writing and weigh these two resources against each other. There is no author who elaborates explicitly on the potentially uneasy relationship between memory and writing. The statements in the texts generally indicate a keen interest in the medium of writing, not in the sense that written letters would make people wise, but – as we saw – in the sense that writing could function as a fence against forgetting and a tool that helped people retain things in memory. When the authors handed over the preservation responsibility to the written medium, they did so because they had gained access to a tool that could help them minimize the process where memories would disappear slowly, and – seen in this light – the authors seem to have taken a pragmatic approach, where the practical advantages of writing overruled any possible ideal of keeping memories internally, within the body only. We recall that Icelanders were regarded as the caretakers of ancient tradition and history, and it is highly likely that they took part in, and continued, a tradition of memory where new aids were experimented with. When they turned to writing, they tested a new tool that could help them  This is supported by The First Grammatical Treatise (c. 1150), which uncovers the motivation behind the creation of the vernacular alphabet. With this tool, it became possible to record in books (setja a bækr) events of the country that were memorable (minnisamligr) (The First Grammatical treatise, 1972, pp. 206 – 207), a statement that confirms the prevailing interest in the preservation of cultural knowledge and the connection between literacy and a memory culture.

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preserve knowledge, and, in essence, the interest in written letters reveals that they were open to the idea of yet another mnemonic aid, which was much more complex than those used hitherto. The potential that the authors saw in this medium is in itself an indication of the fact that memory cultures are open to the inclusion of new techniques, and – as a consequence – are in a state of development.

2.3.1 Preferences of Memory to Writing Nevertheless, despite this apparently positive approach to written letters, some texts are quite insistent on the relevance of memory, which seems to have constituted an ideal for some authors. Íslendingabók leaves the impression that memory is a highly appreciated benefit. When it foregrounds individuals who were minnigr it highlights the circumstance that most of the contents of this book were based on knowledge that had previously been kept in wise and truthful people’s memories. Since Íslendingabók is one of the earliest history books of Iceland, or one of the earliest attempts to transfer knowledge from memory into the written record, there were not many written sources that could have been referred to and this source situation may be part of the explanation why the author so insistently consulted people who carried knowledge in their memories. Still, if such working conditions are compared to other medieval historians in similar situations, it appears that there existed strategies that made it possible to get around a source situation where books were lacking. In the prologue to Gesta Danorum, for instance, Saxo Grammaticus elaborates at great length on the existence of what was in reality a relatively limited amount of runic remains, but even so – and even if his argument was based on scattered evidence only – he creates the illusion that Denmark possessed an ancient literature, based on runes and inscribed on rocks, that was comparable to the Latinate tradition of classical antiquity (Friis-Jensen 2010). We see no similar attempts in Íslendingabók to construct such an ‘ancient literature’ (perhaps because there were no prominent runic inscriptions in Iceland). The author seems happy to use the memory-store of wise people as the backdrop for the book. While Íslendingabók’s references to minnigr people might mirror the given working conditions of the twelfth century, rather than indicate a preference for memory-based knowledge as such, the situation is different nearly a century later, when Heimskringla was written. The prologue of this work contains a discussion about sources. It emerges that the author (in continuation of what we saw in the Separate Saga of St. Óláf) preferred knowledge that was articulated in poetic form, albeit on the condition that the verses were composed without errors: “En kvæðin

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þykkja mér sízt ór stað færð, ef þau eru rétt kveðin ok skynsamliga upp tekin” (Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, I, 1979, p. 7) (Regarding the poems, I consider them as least corrupt if they are correctly composed and carefully interpreted). Here, we have an example where an author speaks in favour of using oral and memory-dependent knowledge as source material; we note, however, that this preference relates to skaldic poetry as a memoria verborum, that is, as a form of exact recall. A last example in this context is Sturlu þáttr (Sturla Þórðarson’s story), contained in the late thirteenth-century Sturlunga saga-compilation.³⁸ This text highlights the existence of memory-based stories and foregrounds mnemonic competences. It tells of Sturla Þórðarson, a thirteenth-century Icelandic chieftain and author, who was in charge of a redaction of Landnámabók and who wrote sagas about Norwegian kings and Icelandic chieftains, among them Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar and Íslendinga saga, all from the last half of the thirteenth century. The text presents this man as a keen practitioner of memory, a poet and a storyteller, while, however, it can be expected that the recipients of the text would have known that he was actively engaged in, and belonged to, a learned, bookish culture.³⁹ Sturla, it is told, is onboard the Norwegian king Magnús Hákonarson’s ship. While sailing he tells a story about the troll-woman Hulda so vividly, better and more wisely (betr ok fróðligar) than any one has heard it told before, and his performance attracts the attention of everyone on the ship (Sturlu þáttr, 1948, ch. 2, p. 378). The Norwegian Queen Ingibjǫrg, who is onboard the ship, becomes interested in why people are gathering and asks the entertainer to come forward and to bring the saga with him, she “bað hann koma til sín ok hafa með sér trǫllkonusöguna” (Sturlu þáttr, 1948, ch. 2, p. 378) (asked him to come to her and to bring the saga about the troll-woman with him). The story was told orally, from what we can tell, but the queen seems to have expected Sturla to have brought a written saga with him. As has been suggested (Mitchell 2001), this story may very well comment on the oral-literary divide of the time. The queen’s assumption – that the saga had a physical form – is to be expected by someone of her background, a royal environment with a marked interest in literature (especially during the reign of Hákon Hákonarson, the Norwegian court had considerable international contacts and it was, among other things, a centre for translations of Latin literature). This contrast, which the story establishes, between the literarily minded queen and Sturla, a man of memory, may be deliberate and a way for the  Sturlu þáttr is preserved in Reykjarfjarðarbók (AM 122 b fol.) from the last quarter of the fourteenth century.  For a treatment of the intellectual culture that Sturla Þórðarson belonged to and his debt to Snorri Sturluson and the school at Oddi, see Gunnar Harðarson 2016a.

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author to emphasize the speciality of Sturla and the world he belongs to, a world where people appear to have continued to utilize their memories and handle mnemonic technologies. Stephen Mitchell has argued that this episode on the Norwegian king’s ship reveals regional differences and speaks to the fact that learned environments in Iceland were more inclusive with regard to oral culture than was the case in Norway (Mitchell 2001, 189 – 190). He has argued that the episode in question juxtaposes “unaided narration” and “manuscript-based narration” (2001, 189). This vocabulary can be nuanced if we focus on memory and memorization rather than on orality as such, and we may ask whether the orally performed saga – just like a written saga – cannot be categorized as an ‘aided’ narration. The aids and devices would in that case have taken alternative forms, yet they would have served the same function as if they had consisted of letters that were inscribed on parchment. Perhaps they would have been mental images inscribed on spatial structures in the mind, or something else, but they, too, would have offered fixpoints that made it possible to remember and retell a story. Of course, we cannot know whether Sturla Þórðarson memorized the oral saga by using structures in the mind as anchor points, but Sturlu þáttr indicates a wish to present and introduce this learned Icelander as a man who stood out as an oral storyteller and a poet, that is, as a man who possessed an excellent memory. In different ways, these examples (from Íslendingabók, the Heimskringlaprologue and Sturlu þáttr) indicate that memory-based knowledge was at times preferred or prioritized. We can personify this tendency with the names of authors of different generations, Ari Þorgilsson (in the early twelfth century), Snorri Sturluson (early thirteenth century) and Sturla Þórðarson (the second part of the thirteenth century), who all seem to have been representatives of mixed cultures, which recognized written letters as well as memory, and who may have navigated within both a culture of writing and a memory culture. While I have already touched upon this with regard to Ari Þorgilsson and Sturla Þórðarson, not much has so far been said about Snorri Sturluson. But, as I come back to later, the texts that have been ascribed to him, Heimskringla, the Prose Edda and (possibly) Egils saga Skallagrímssonar indicate that he was a key figure in the transitional culture of the thirteenth century.

2.4 Living Memory and Cultural Memory Once we include Memory Studies, it becomes possible to generalize these observations, so allow me to conclude this chapter with some theoretical reflections. The Norse authors are of the opinion that memory tends to diminish over time, in

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the sense that things are gradually forgotten. In other words, memory is in need of support. The examples are in line with a tradition of memory that Ann Rigney has described as an “original plenitude and subsequent loss”-type of memory, which involves the conviction that memory is “something that is fully formed in the past (it was once ‘all there’ in the plenitude of experience, as it were) and as something that is subsequently a matter of preserving and keeping alive” (Rigney 2005, 12). Rigney has compared this way of thinking about memory with “a leaky bucket which slowly runs dry” of water (Rigney 2005, 12), a wording that quite neatly describes the experiences and beliefs that underlie the Norse authors’ attempt to transfer the knowledge they carried in their memory to the book.⁴⁰ When they transfer knowledge to the book, they stop the diminishing process and prevent memory from eroding and fading away. The tradition of memory hinted at here, however, should not stand without comment, and a perspective which takes into account cultural memory theory will provide us with a fuller understanding, not only of the memory culture of the Middle Ages, which increasingly relies on writing, but also of the implications of the preservation attempts that are attested in the Norse texts. Theories of memory often point out that total recall is never possible, neither in the individual’s own nor in society’s shared memory. In reality, memories will always be lost or change when they are preserved in people’s minds or when they are transmitted between media, people and generations; therefore, an insistent focus on this shortcoming will only cause a “chronic frustration” (Rigney 2005, 12).⁴¹ The concept of cultural memory embraces, and – dare I say – overcomes this frustration. In theory, the cultural memory to which groups of people adhere will neither disappear nor accumulate; instead, it adapts to the given social circumstances and works from a principle of relevance. Memories can be supressed or called forth whenever necessary, and in this sense, cultural memory is always rife with information. As the references above demonstrate, Norse authors were aware of the storage potential of the book, yet the wider implications of their activities are beyond their immediate horizon. The two models of memory mentioned by Ann Rigney nevertheless help us differentiate between the texts’ function in the initial phase, when they were produced, and the function they acquired later. Here we must

 See Hermann 2009 for an earlier study that applies Ann Rigney’s metaphor of the leaky bucket to Old Norse texts.  This recalls the ever-present role of forgetting in memory cultures. The theme of forgetting is gaining more attention in recent scholarship and is experiencing “a mini-boom of its own” (Heslop 2021, 238). For the interplay between memory and forgetting and its implications for cultural memory, see Aleida Assmann’s concepts of the ‘canon’ and the ‘archive’, one relying on an active and the other on a passive memory (A. Assmann 2008).

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further distinguish between a so-called ‘living memory’, as discussed by Maurice Halbwachs, and a ‘cultural memory’, as discussed by Jan Assmann. When – for instance – the author of Sverris saga’s prologue promises his readers that the tidings that he mediates in the book were written down directly and without alterations, he speaks from a position where a shared, living memory, or a communicative memory, exists.⁴² This author acted in a context where eyewitnesses or people who were close to the events were still alive, where others could evaluate the text by comparing it to experiences that they had had themselves or to information they had heard about. Yet, as is emphasized in cultural memory theory, external media, such as writing, allow things to survive beyond a living memory and – seen in that light – the author’s transfer of knowledge from memory to the book secures persistency beyond this specific context. In general, the medieval authors’ transfer-tasks begin a long and complicated era of reception. During this process, some of these texts become media of cultural memory and thus important resources for groups of people who were removed from the original context of the words, thoughts, opinions and feelings that had informed the texts.⁴³ Texts that live up to the defining characteristics of cultural memory reflect on the formation of identity and tradition. They not only preserve, but also, at the same time, construct the past (J. Assmann 1995, 130 – 133). This can be exemplified with Þorláks saga. This saga contains knowledge that had been kept in the author’s own and other people’s memories, and the recording of these memories in the book prevented important knowledge from fading away and being forgotten. In that sense the saga preserves knowledge of the past. But it is also a crucial medium for the construction of the cultural memory of the bishop and holy person, Þorlákr Þórhallsson. The saga is structured as a vita and what it says about the life of the bishop is regulated by the rules of this genre. Typological connections are established, for instance in the description of the bishop’s death, when he is said to have thirsted like God’s son (Þorláks saga, A-version, 2002, ch. 18, p. 82), and also in other ways do events in the bishop’s life correspond to  The notion of a ‘living memory’ is similar to what Jan Assmann calls ‘communicative memory’ (J. Assmann 1995, 126 – 127). Jan Assmann divides collective memory into two ways of remembering, communicative and cultural memory, of which the first concerns the informal traditions of the recent past, while the latter is a formalized memory most often concerned with the remote past (J. Assmann 2008).  While such processes start in the Middle Ages, they are not restricted to this period, and the texts that were produced in this period become crucial media of cultural memory beyond the Middle Ages, and beyond Iceland itself. Concerning the post-medieval reception of the sagas and other Old Norse-Icelandic genres within and outside of the Scandinavian countries (from the perspective of memory), see, for instance, the entries in Glauser, Hermann and Mitchell 2018, 771– 940.

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the life of Christ. Genre demands, and this type of typological connections with biblical events, support the institutional memory of the Icelandic church and more specifically of the Skálholt cathedral. Thus, the storage- or preservationproject that began in the Middle Ages not only concerned the ‘chronic frustration’ to which Rigney refers, with its attempts at preserving the past and preventing its disappearance; the texts also reveal that the authors created versions of the past that were acutely relevant to them and to the recipients at the time when the texts were written.

2.4.1 The History of Memory and Media History The focus in this book is on the period of the Nordic past when memory and writing first began to interact, thus documenting a critical phase both in the history of memory and in media history. The Norse texts reveal that the Latin alphabet, in the early stages of its uses, was considered (by the medieval writers) an aid to memory, even an integrated aspect of the mnemonic culture, one which helped people to remember. However, historical developments show that this memory aid would later take over human memory’s central position and authority. The discussion about how the introduction of new media is likely to influence memory has been taken up by Douwe Draaisma, who maintains that memory co-evolves with the technical progress of media history (Draaisma 2000, e. g. 138 – 164). Merlin Donald has likewise linked the history of media and the history of memory and has argued that changes in the shared and exterior media technologies, so-called ‘external symbolic storages’, will alter the human capacity for memory.⁴⁴ The discussion in Phaedrus between Theuth and Thamus reveals that media history and the history of memory have been interrelated from early times. It foresees the situation where writing, this external storage, takes over and, metaphorically speaking, becomes humanity’s external memory. The Greek example presents the basic ideas in a long philosophical discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of memory and writing, internal storage and external storage, dichotomizing pairs that have been followed up with discussions of authenticity

 Merlin Donald deals with modern information technologies, but has paid some attention to the technology of writing, arguing that Greek culture, aided by its rhetorical system, was the first to store memory and to develop a process of externalization. He follows Plato’s ideas (as expressed by Thamus) that externalization will to some extent influence human, or biological, memory capacities, but he nevertheless underscores the benefits that the expanded capacity – namely writing – allows for, as an external symbolic storage technology (Donald 1991).

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and inauthenticity. The platonic dialogue speaks in favour of a tradition which sees writing as memory’s “enemy and destroyer”, where “every act of writing creates the danger of eroding memory by handing over responsibility to the external medium” (A. Assmann 2011, 174). But where can Memory Studies be placed in this discussion? The distinction between living memory/communicative memory and cultural memory – as these concepts are explained by, respectively, Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Assmann – represent two different sides of the discussion. Ann Rigney (2005), in a summary of these positions, has pointed out that the former is shaped around the ideal of an unmediated, personal and embodied memory, where written letters are merely considered derivatives of a living memory, which is regarded as authentic. In contrast, cultural memory invests all focus and all trust in the various external media that can substitute for a living memory, among these written texts. Jan Assmann’s concept of cultural memory thus represents a change towards an increased reliance on the external tools and represents a stand in the philosophical discussion which sees a huge potential in external storage. Texts such as Sverris saga, Hungrvaka, Þorláks saga and Heimskringla (all of which have been dealt with above) were written simultaneously with other branches of the saga genre, such as the sagas of Icelanders and the Prose Edda, and they belong to a large-scale literary movement, which offers rich (and varied) evidence for the existence of various types and traditions of memory. From our considerations thus far, we can conclude that memory (as a bodily resource) was relevant in medieval learned culture – more in some environments and regions of Scandinavia than in others, it seems – a circumstance that suggests that techniques of memory were found in the toolbox that authors had access to. This makes it relevant to think about literacy and memory in combination, rather than seeing them as contrasting technologies. It has been pointed out, too, that the very task of writing down the memorable lore of the country had implications that went beyond a simple codification task inasmuch as some of the texts become important media of cultural memory. The following chapters seek to come to a more detailed understanding of the Norse memory cultures, first, by investigating more thoroughly how the writers talked about memory and thus gaining insights into the characteristics that were applied to this resource, and next, by examining the techniques that the authors may have used to enhance their memory.

3 Imageries 3.1 Formulating and Constructing Memory What has memory got to do with the stomach? Why are authors compared to bee swarms? Why is memory located in the breast? These are just some of the questions that will be answered in the following chapter, which looks into the memory-vocabulary that is used in our texts. By examining the vocabulary of medieval writers, with special attention to metaphorical expressions that were used for memory (and to the analogues that were established between this faculty and other contexts), a more detailed understanding of the role of memory and memorization in early book culture can be reached. The meaning-transfers that the metaphorical expressions imply insert memory into wide-ranging and disparate areas, relating, for example, to the alimentary system and the apian world, and they confirm that memory was not always talked about in literal terms. I look at texts from different genres, first, the two bishops’ sagas Jóns saga helga (The Saga of Jón the Holy) and Hungrvaka, and next, the Prose Edda and Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Even if these texts are generically different and vary on many points, they are in relative agreement about how to articulate the resource of memory. Since ancient times people have expressed themselves metaphorically when they talk about memory. As Douwe Draaisma notes: “Everchanging images are projected onto our theories of memory, a succession of metaphors and metamorphoses, a true omnia in omnibus” (Draaisma 2000, 3). Metaphors for memory mentioned in his work include, for example, libraries, archives, wine cellars, warehouses, dovecotes, aviaries, treasure chests, vaults, purses, woods, fields, labyrinths, caves, depths of the sea, palaces, abbeys, stomachs, honeycombs, to mention but some (Draaisma 2000, 3).⁴⁵ A metaphor implies, basically, that one thing is understood and experienced in terms of another, but, in a broader sense, a metaphor can also be seen as a cognitive tool that gives shape to the way people think and act (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). In this sense, metaphors are not simply linguistic decorations or demonstrations of eloquence, that is, a matter of aesthetics, but are fundamental for how people think about a certain phenomenon. Aleida Assmann says the following about memory:

 See Douwe Draaisma’s overview, which shows that, among its important features, the metaphor has the ability to unite opposites, concrete and abstract, visual and verbal, graphic and conceptual (2000, 13 – 17). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-006

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As the phenomenon of memory defies direct description, metaphors offer new access to it; they act as figures of thought rather than of speech, providing model frameworks for concepts and signposts for theories. In this context, therefore, we should take “metaphor” not as an indirect description of the phenomenon but as its cognitive and linguistic construction. In studying memory images, then, we also study memory models, their historical contexts, and their cultural requirements and patterns of meaning. (A. Assmann 2011, 139)

Metaphors, as she argues, are not merely descriptive, but constitutive of memory, and the different metaphors in toto that are used for memory give shape to this phenomenon. In other words: her argument advances the view that there are as many forms of memory as there are metaphors for it. Also, this passage expresses the conviction that metaphors are important doorways to a thorough understanding of memory in its historical and cultural context. Even if memory has been expressed by means of numerous and changing metaphors over time some underlying constants do attach themselves to memory, and a number of stable features make it possible to grasp some of its most noteworthy characteristics. The storage metaphor and the tablet metaphor, or, to use the Latin expressions: the thesaurus sapientiae (storehouse of wisdom) and the tabula memoriae (tablet of memory), are particularly prominent in European tradition. As noted in the previous chapter, such commonly used metaphors may lie behind the Old Norse wordings ór minni ([fall] out of memory) and festa í minni (to fix in the memory). From the storage room-metaphor, we understand that memory is imagined as a storage unit of some sort, and many of the figurative descriptions of memory suggest that it is an advantage to divide this storage into separate sections.When it comes to memory’s structure, orderly organization is an advantage and multiple small compartments help to keep order of thought. Authors from classical antiquity, including Cicero and Quintilian, focused on imagined buildings, such as houses with multiple rooms and inter-column spaces. Medieval authors continued this tradition but also found inspiration in their own contemporary contexts. A medieval variant of the storage room-metaphor is the Latin sacculus (money pouch), referring to purses that were used by money changers in medieval market places. Roman buildings and money-sacks may seem very different from each other, but – since both can be divided into small compartments – both can be associated with (an orderly, organized) memory. Just as knowledge can be lodged in rooms within an architectonic building, so it can be sorted like coins in a purse full of smaller pockets (Carruthers 1990, 39 and 34– 41). Hugh of St. Victor, one of the most important memory-scholars of the twelfth century, used the sacculusmetaphor in his schoolbook De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum (The Three Best Memory Aids for Learning History) (Hugh of St. Victor, De tribus maximis

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circumstantiis gestorum, 1943, p. 33).⁴⁶ According to Grover Zinn, the money changer image did not spread much beyond its Victorine context (Zinn 1974); it was nonetheless used in the Norse world, and one of the texts treated below, Jóns saga helga, features a vernacular expression of the sacculus, namely the Old Norse phrase minnis sjóðr (memory purse) (cf. Jóns saga helga, 2003, L-recension, ch. 28, p. 88; see Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2006, 2018). Obviously, like their colleagues in Europe, Norse authors were aware of the storeroom-metaphor and its various manifestations.

3.1.1 Jóns saga helga: Memory, the Heart and the Breast Jóns saga helga is a biography about Jón Ǫgmundarson (1050 – 1120), the bishop of the cathedral of Hólar who (like his counterpart at the Skálholt cathedal, Þorlákr Þórhallsson) after his death was made a local saint. The saga evokes a multifaceted memory-imagery, and the text plays an important role in the cultural translation of Latin memory-vocabularies into the Norse tradition. The saga was originally written in Latin, by Gunnlaugr Leifsson of Þingeyrar, but the Latin text is now lost and the saga exists in three vernacular recensions, one from the thirteenth and two from the fourteenth century.⁴⁷ Jóns saga helga contains elaborate descriptions of the educational activities at the cathedral of Hólar, and it is evident that the author and the redactors of the text believed that the bishop’s worthiness as a saint could be measured by the high quality and the exceptionally prominent status of the learned environment to which he belonged. Underlying the saga is the idea that the more prominent and the more spectacular this environment appears to have been, the more prominent the bishop would look and the higher the esteem he is due would be. The descriptions of the learning activities of the school in Hólar should be seen in this light, but even if the saga may very well provide an idealized account, it still gives valuable information about a Norse memory culture. The saga mentions the cognitive resources that are activated in learning activities, and it uses the words heart (hjarta) and breast (brjóst) to describe ac-

 Grover Zinn maintains that order must be considered the precondition of a properly functioning memory, but that the way in which this principle is expressed is subject to considerable change. As he says: “The striking analogy of the money changer’s purse indicates some distance traveled between Cicero and Quintilian and the age of the Victorine canon” (Zinn 1974, 220).  The L-recension of Jóns saga helga, written in the fourteenth century, was presumably written by Bergr Sokkason at the monastery of Munkaþverá. This version is particularly interested in memory and uses a, for Norse texts, unusual, florid imagery.

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tivities of the mind. The way in which the heart and the breast are talked about calls attention to memory and memorization, making it obvious that these words are used synonymously with memory. The saga mentions that the students in the cathedral stored their learning in “vanðlaupa síns hiarta” (the baskets of their hearts) (Jóns saga helga, L-recension, 2003, ch. 27, p. 86). This variant of the storage room-metaphor implies that memory is placed in the bodily organ of the heart. Another metaphor “i hiartans ackre” (in the field of the heart) further likens memory to a fertile land area, where learning is sown and seed is planted, that is, as a place where learning can grow and prosper (Jóns saga helga, L-recension, 2003, ch. 6, p. 61). These expressions suggest that the learning activities at the cathedral actively engaged with memory and memorization, and they indicate that people stored learning in their memories, idiomatically speaking that they learned things by heart. When Jóns saga helga uses the term heart for memory, it follows a widespread tendency. A look beyond the vernacular tradition (which is appropriate inasmuch as Jóns saga helga is inspired by a Latinate textual culture) shows that this choice of language links well with a vocabulary that goes back to Augustine and which is referred to also by Hugh of St. Victor. In Christian tradition the heart is consistently used as a metaphor for memory, a tendency that is likely to be influenced by the biblical use of Latin cor (heart), which the Church Fathers asserted would mean memory (Carruthers 1990, 48 – 49). References are made also to the larger body part, which contains the heart, namely the breast, and the versions of Jóns saga helga use variously the terms brjóst megin (breast-power) and brjóstvit (breast-knowledge) when they refer to memory (Jóns saga helga, L-recension, 2003, ch. 24, p. 82; Jóns saga helga, S-recension, 2003, ch. 8, p. 17). The term is used to describe the activities of the masters at the cathedral school, who base their authority variously on memory and books. A passage in the L-recension tells about the foreign (probably German) priest Rikini, who was invited to Hólar by the bishop (see Foote 1984b, 111), and about whom it is said that he was minnigr and capable of remembering much learning (Jóns saga helga, L-version, 2003, ch. 27, p. 86). At times, it is indicated that the masters took their knowledge from books. We hear about Gísli Finnason from Gautland, a young schoolmaster who, the saga stresses, took his knowledge from the holy book when he was preaching, even if he could have taken it from his brjóstvit > breast knowledge > memory: Ok ávallt er hann prédikaði fyrir fólkinu, þá lét hann liggja bók fyrir sér ok tók þar af slíkt er hann talaði fyrir fólkinu, ok gerði hann þetta mest af forsjá ok lítillæti, at þar hann var ungr at aldri þótti þeim meira um vert er til hlýddu at þeir sæi þat at hann tók sínar kenningar af

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helgum bókum en eigi af einu saman brjóstviti. (Jóns saga ins helga, 2003, ch. 8, pp. 205 – 206)⁴⁸ (And ever when he was preaching before the people, he had a book lying before him, and took therefrom what he spoke to the people, and he did this most out of prudence and humility, because as he was young in years that those that listened might lay more store by it, when they saw that he took what he taught out of holy books and not out of his own breastknowledge.) (S. John of Holar’s life, 1905, ch. 10, p. 552)

Most likely we here have a situation where books are signalling authority and are evaluated higher than memory, an indication of the change of ideals that was under way caused by the impact of book culture. In clerical culture, religious books were, indeed, regarded with veneration. The quotation might also reveal that high esteem and sovereignty came with old age and that young people were not considered authorities simply due to their memory; at least in this case it is the ability to decode the words in a holy book that gives the young Gísli Finnason’s words weight. In any case, the quotation repeats the tendency to locate memory in the breast. I will come back to the alignment between the breast and memory, a pair that is relatively frequently mentioned in Norse tradition, including in the Prose Edda and Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, but first I concentrate on other imageries in the sagas of bishops.

3.1.2 Learning, Bees and Beehives Jóns saga helga evinces another trope, also known in Latin traditions, when it describes the learning environment at the cathedral in terms of apian imagery. The saga compares the teachers and students with a swarm of busy bees (býflygi) which fly from their small cells (smá kofum) with their cargo to the beehive (býstokkr), i. e. to the holy church, bringing what they have collected from the “vinkiallara heilagra ʀitninga” (wine cellar of the holy writings) (Jóns saga helga, Lrecension, 2003, ch. 28, p. 87). When the saga mentions small cells and compares the learned people at Hólar with bees who fly out on collection missions, it evokes an imagery that goes back to classical writers and which recurs frequently in the medieval memory-vocabulary.⁴⁹ Ásdís Egilsdóttir has linked the small cells (smá

 I quote here from the Íslenzk fornrit-edition, but see also Jóns saga helga, S-recension, 2003, ch. 8, p. 17 and Jóns saga helga, L-recension, 2003, ch. 24, p. 82.  Peter Foote has mentioned various sources where the honeybee simile or trope is used, among them, Vitae patrum and a range of classical sources, just as he mentions works that have inspired Benedictine rules. He has also pointed to another monastic occurrence of the bee-trope,

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kofum) mentioned in the saga to the Latin word cellae (cells, storerooms) (2018, 440), a word that refers to small rooms, like monastic cells and small huts, as well as to the minor and well-organized compartments that bees make for their honey. But the word cella “has a number of more specialized applications that links it complexly to several other common metaphors for both the stored memory and the study of books” (Carruthers 1990, 35). For instance, Hugh of St. Victor and Geoffrey of Vinsauf, two Latin writers who, we suppose, were known in Iceland (Bekker-Nielsen 1982; Foote 1984a, 258 – 268), used this imagery to express memory and memorization. The bee-imagery expresses a certain type of learning where authors – like bees who sip nectar from flowers and make honey – collect knowledge from here and there in books, store this knowledge in memory compartments, and in turn produce their own discourse, i. e. honey, from a blend of these different tastes. It goes further back, but the trope is consistently present in European tradition. It is, for instance, elaborated on by the fourteenth-century scholar Petrarca, who wrote that: “Standum denique Senecae consilio, quod ante Senecam Flacci erat, ut scribamus scilicet sicut apes mellificant, non servatis floribus, sed in favos versis, ut ex multis et variis unum fiat, idque aliud et melius” (“This is the substance of Seneca’s counsel, and Horace’s before him, that we should write as the bees make sweetness, not storing up the flowers but turning them into honey, thus making one thing of many various ones, but different and better”) (quoted from Greene 1982, 98). Petrarca further elaborates on this, saying that one should: “Neve diutius apud te qualia decerpseris maneant, cave: nulla quidem esset apibus gloria, nisi in aliud et in melius inventa converterent. Tibi quoque, siqua legendi meditandique studio repperis, in favum stilo redigenda suadeo” (“Take care that the nectar does not remain in you in the same state as when you gathered it; bees would have no credit unless they transformed it into something different and better. Thus if you come upon something worthy while reading or reflecting, change it into honey by means of your style”) (quoted from Greene 1982, 99). This imagery, firstly, identifies memory as an important aspect of book learning, that is, as an intermediary of learning activities, and next, it proposes that memory represents not only storage that secures permanence of details, but also a space where knowledge is blended together or, we may say, transformed into a new substance. It is not likely that the cultivation of bees in beehives and honey production were immediate reference points for Icelandic authors who lived in an environment where there were virtually no bees (Foote 1994, 183). It is much more

namely in a Latin responsorium in honour of Þorlákr Þórhallsson, see Foote 1994, 183. Another source might be St. Aldhelm’s De Virginitate Prosa, see Cole 2020, 186.

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plausible that someone with a broad, learned horizon chose to express his or her opinion about memory and learning in a vocabulary known from readings of foreign texts, but which, it was believed, would nevertheless be grasped by fellows and readers of the text.⁵⁰ The analogue that Jóns saga helga establishes between the holy script and a wine cellar is interesting from a memory perspective as well. It shows, firstly, that the Bible was compared with an architectonic building which people could enter in their search for knowledge. The tendency to describe written works (in particular the Bible) in architectonic terms is deeply ingrained in Christian book culture and it is echoed, for instance, in the prologue to the compilation Stjórn (Guidance), which gathers together translated texts of different provinance (Old Testament-texts and excerpts from learned works and commentaries, by Augustine, Isidore, Petrus Comestor, Vincent of Beauvais and others). For instance, the prologue to the mid-fourteenth-century Stjórn-manuscript AM 226 fol. presupposes an analogue between the Holy Scripture and a herbergi (room) that consists of a floor (grundvǫllr), walls (veggr/veggir) and a ceiling (þekja): “Þetta sama herbergi, heilogh guds ritning, hefir þrennar greinir eda haalfur: Þat er grunduoll uegg ok þekiu. Sagan sialf er grunduollr þessa heimoliga guds huss ok herberghis” (Stjórn, 1862, p. 1) (This same room, the holy scriptures of God, has three branches or parts: It is a foundation, a wall and a roof. The narrative itself is the foundation of this homely god’s house and room).⁵¹ Next, the expression of the wine cellar suggests (like the apian imagery) that (biblical) knowledge was envisaged as a fluid that could be ingested by people, who were eager to learn. This transfer of meaning from learning to intake of liquids shows that the acquisition of knowledge engages the body, quite literally, it expresses the conviction that learning is ‘taken in’. Jón saga helga’s reference to the wine cellar of the Church refers to liquids, but at other times it is inclined to express learning activities by means of the intake of solid food, i. e. “andligrar

 In an analysis of the political symbolism of bees (and ants) in Old Norse literature, Richard Cole mentions that educated clerics in Iceland knew about býflugur (bee flies) from texts, such as Physiologus and Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale (as incorporated into Stjórn). Cole further maintains that bees may very well have been absent from the physical environment of Iceland, yet they would have been present in the minds of the authors as “types that recurred in a common, medieval Christian store of proverbs, fables, symbols, and rhetorical devices” (Cole 2020, 168). Cole has suggested an alternative interpretation of the smá kofum, býflugi and býstokkr mentioned in Jóns saga helga and understands these bees allegorically, as expressing a political context of labour and communality (Cole 2020, 185 – 187).  The Icelandic manuscript AM 226 fol. combines different earlier (and possibly Norwegian) texts (Stjórn I, II and III) into one. For the Stjórn manuscripts, its editing history and sources, see Wolf 1990; Astås 1991; Kleivane 2018.

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fæðu” (spiritual food) (Jóns saga helga, L-recension, 2003, ch. 28, p. 87. See also Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2006, 221).

3.1.3 Hungrvaka: Memory as Stomach Hungrvaka, which was dealt with in the previous chapter, also uses a metaphorical language when speaking about memory. The peculiar title of this work means ‘appetizer’ or ‘hunger-stirrer’, a word choice that is explained by the author who wishes the book to stir the appetite and make the reader interested in gaining more knowledge about the Skálholt bishops. But the meaning of the title goes deeper than that and this text, too, establishes an analogy between bodily intake and learning (Hermann 2015). Later in the prologue the discourse returns to the food imagery and the book is compared to a spoon. The author is preoccupied with style, or with what in the Roman rhetorical tradition is expressed using the Latin term eloquitio, and lets it be known that he will beautify the book (i. e. the spoon) as best he can (Glauser 2010, 315): En mik varir at vitrum mǫnnum mun þykkja bœklingr þessi jafn líkr sem hornspánar efni, af því at þat er ófimligast meðan vangǫrt er, þó at allfagrt sé þá er tilgǫrt er […] En því hefi ek jafnat þessu til hornspánar at mér sýnisk forkunnar efni í vera, en ek veit at mjǫk þarf um at fegra, ok skal ek þaðan at um vera meðan ek em til fœrr um at bœta. (Hungrvaka, 2002, ch. 1, pp. 4– 5) (And I am aware that to wise men this little book will seem most like unto the stuff out of which a horn-spoon is wrought, for that is most ungainly while it is yet a-making, but very fair when it is carved […] And for this cause also I have likened this to a horn-spoon, because methinks there is much good stuff therein, but I know that there is much need that it be beautified or fair wrought, and I shall as long as I am able busy myself to the mending thereof.) (Hungrvaca, 1905, pp. 426 – 427)

The comparison to a spoon further informs us about perceptions of, and the functions of, memory. Hungrvaka’s vocabulary implies that the finely carved spoon (the book) will facilitate the eating process (the activity of reading), and this focus on bodily intake seemingly highlights the metaphor of ‘memory as stomach’. That knowledge goes through the stomach and that a book can be eaten was emphasized by Seneca, who saw reading as a digestive process: “Non prodest cibus nec corpori accedit, qui statim sumptus emittitur” (“Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten”) (Seneca, Epistulae Morales, I, 1961, epistle 2, pp. 6 – 7). The Church Fathers evoke a similar vocabulary and they, too, associate memory with the stomach, as when, for instance, Augustine calls memory the stomach of the mind (Augustinus Au-

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relius, Confessions, II, 1961, book 10, ch. 14, pp. 112 – 113), or when Jerome talks about eating as a form of meditation, where the book is stored in memory, fills the belly and satisfies the guts (Carruthers 1990, 44). Like the apian imagery, this stomach imagery defines memory as more than a storage space. Memory, like the body part of the stomach, secures – not permanent storage – but a digestion and a rumination, that is, a blending and a transformation of knowledge. We recall that the author of Hungrvaka turns to his readers and asks them to take into their minds the learning which they like, which suggests that they, too, when their appetite has been stirred, will digest in their stomachs, or memories, all the knowledge of the Skálholt bishops that is conveyed in the saga. The metaphorical language (not only the stomach metaphor but also the apian imagery) focuses on an interiorization of the text, which not only regard the text’s letter but also its meaning. In the case of Hungrvaka, this means that the reader should not only remember what is told literally but also what it means that the church institution had been established in Iceland, i. e. that this place in the world had become part of the Christian community. It is also interesting to note here that the passage in Hungrvaka is specific about the spoon’s materiality and says that it is made of horn. This indicates that the author sees himself as a skilled craftsman, and – when he specifies his rhetorical abilities – he evokes a material imagery that is related to handicrafts. Like the idea that knowledge is ingested (Quinn 2010), also this analogue, which combines a (written) composition with a crafted product, has a relatively broad presence in Old Norse-Icelandic texts and is evidenced especially in connection with poetry.⁵² Jóns saga helga and Hungrvaka show that people in the various learned environments of Iceland engaged with memory and memorization. The apian imagery suggests that people would gather knowledge and learning, mix this learning together and create new discourses from it, just as they would continue to beautify the material that they worked with. Thus, mnemonic processing is about creating something new out of the acquired knowledge. The alimentary imagery points to internalization, assimilation and personalization of knowledge, each individual should absorb, digest and ruminate on (book‐)knowledge and strive to make it their own. Petrarca also evidences the persistency of the alimentary imagery and

 The author of Hungrvaka explicitly says that he wishes to refine the material (oral information) that he has collected. This may be connected to the author’s position in the culture of writing and the idea that books (in contrast to oral discourse) need to be refined by literary standards. However, I do not think that this comment indicates differences between oral and written discourse, rather that it expresses the obligation of an author to change the knowledge that he has collected into his own style, i. e. his own honey, so to speak.

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pursues the importance of the absorption of knowledge. How he understood this type of internalization is vividly illustrated in the following quotation: [… ] mane comedi quod sero digererem, hausi puer quod senior ruminarem. Hec se michi tam familiariter ingessere et non modo memorie sed medullis affixa sunt unumque cum ingenio facta sunt meo, ut etsi per omnem vitam amplius non legantur, ipsa quidem hereant, actis in intima animi parte radicibus. (I ate in the morning what I would digest in the evening; I swallowed as a boy what I would ruminate upon as a man. These writings I have so thoroughly absorbed and fixed, not only in my memory but in my very marrow, these have become so much a part of myself, that even though I should never read them again they would cling in my spirit, deep-rooted in its inmost recesses.) (Quoted from Greene 1982, 98 – 99)

Even if the Norse texts do not contain similarly lucid accounts, they hint at the circumstance that there was, indeed, intimacy between an individual and his or her books, a relationship that relates to the fact that memorization required a high level of personal involvement. A reflection of this is found in Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar (dating from the first half of the thirteenth century) where we hear about the priest Ingimundr, who carried his bókakistu (book-chest) with him while travelling overseas.⁵³ He was so unfortunate as to lose it and the text says that, when the book-chest was washed overboard, Ingimundr lost his ynði (delight, pleasure) (Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar, 1948, ch. 6, p. 208). The choice of word (ynði), as well as the text’s emphasis that the lost books were the ones he loved the most (“er hann unni mest”), implies that an intimate relationship existed between the priest and his books. The saga continues to relate that the bookchest (and the books) after having been lost came back, all undamaged (Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar, 1948, ch. 6, pp. 209 – 210). Judging from the literary context, the main message of this story is to show that the book-chest’s return happened by way of a miracle and divine intervention. The story nevertheless presupposes that Ingimundr’s relationship with his books involved feelings of delight and heartfelt affection. We cannot conclude with certainty from this short narrative whether Ingimundr had carefully studied and memorized the books’ contents, as the text says nothing directly about this, but the story seems to gain its meaning exactly from the intimacy that would have come from such activities.

 Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar is preserved in four redactions (from the fourteenth century), as well as in Sturlunga saga, which is quoted here, cf. Króksfjarðarbók and Reykjarfjarðarbók (AM 122 a fol. and AM 122 b fol.), both from the second half of the fourteenth century.

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3.2 The Prose Edda: A Norse Art of Memory I now turn to a text that was not, it is assumed, originally written within the institutional frames of Icelandic cathedrals or monasteries nor is concerned with bishops and church history, namely the Prose Edda. This text, dated to around 1220 – 1230, is commonly believed to have been composed by the poet, legal expert, historian and politician Snorri Sturluson. This assumption is supported by a scribal comment in the beginning of the Codex Upsaliensis-version of the text (from c. 1300 – 1325), which states that the book had been compiled (from the expression setja saman) by Snorri Sturluson (The Uppsala Edda, 2012, p. 6).⁵⁴ We know relatively much about Snorri Sturluson’s biography and his homestead Reykholt, a major ‘seat of power’ which secured his political and cultural influence in thirteenth-century Iceland (Viðar Pálsson, Helgi Þorláksson and Sverrir Jakobsson 2018).⁵⁵ The Prose Edda is an educational text or, more specifically, it is a handbook for poets, which aims to enlighten its readers about ancient skaldic poetry. As part of this attempt, it deals with Nordic pre-history (in the prologue) and pre-Christian myths and legends (in the sections Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál). While it is in this way concerned with Norse themes and forn fræði, it is, however, first of all a major agent for the learned transition of Norse poetry that took place in the thirteenth century, and the discourse in the Prose Edda should be seen in the light of the skaldic theories that were developed also in The First, Second and Third Grammatical Treatises. ⁵⁶ In this connection it proves useful to consider the Prose Edda as an ars poetica for the art of skaldic poetry (Clunies Ross 1987).  I do not argue against the attribution of the text (including its prologue, which has its own reception history) to Snorri Sturluson. I find it highly likely that he was the author, but the Prose Edda is also influenced by the fourteenth-century writers responsible for the text’s transmission. The Prose Edda exists in three medieval redactions, Codex Upsaliensis (DG 11 4to) from 1300 – 1325, Codex Regius (GKS 2367 4to) from the first half of the fourteenth century and Codex Wormianus (AM 242 fol.) from the middle of the fourteenth century, as well as in a post-medieval redaction, Codex Trajectinus (Universiteitsbibliotheek, Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, Ms. Traj 1374) from the end of the sixteenth century. For separate studies on, or editions of, the manuscripts see Faulkes 1985; Johansson 1997; Heimir Pálsson 2012. For an overview of the four main manuscripts, see Rösli 2015, 46 – 59. Unless otherwise noted, I use Anthony Faulkes’ editions (1998; 2005), which are mainly based on Codex Regius.  The key features of a ‘seat of power’ include, for instance, a large farm, a church, geographical centrality and facilities for book production (e. g. a scriptorium) (Viðar Pálsson, Helgi Þorláksson and Sverrir Jakobsson 2018).  The close connection between these texts is documented in the manuscripts, e. g. the Codex Wormianus, which contains the treatises together with the Prose Edda. For medieval Norse poetics, see e. g. Guðrún Nordal 2001; Clunies Ross 2005, 2018.

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The Prose Edda’s debt to local and foreign traditions, respectively, and its position in between oral traditions and the culture of the book are all themes that have been heavily debated. While some scholars have been inclined to find the sources to the Prose Edda mainly in Norse vernacular tradition and have leaned towards the possibility that the author was inspired by such texts, especially Norse poetry (which was originally oral) and vernacular histories of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (Faulkes 1993, 60 – 62), others have more openly embraced the possibility that it is referencing and inspired by various foreign texts.⁵⁷ It is only recently, however, that attention has been drawn more directly to the text’s debt to a memory culture. It nevertheless qualifies as one of our best sources to the memory culture of Iceland and it has, very tellingly, been called a “treatise on the medieval memory theories in the vernacular” (Glauser 2018, 44). More weight will be added to this view in the following chapters, where the different parts of the text will be used as a prism through which we can gain insight into some of the characteristics of the memory cultures within which the author and the fourteenth-century redactors of the surviving texts arguably worked and into the manifold mnemonic tools that were known and appreciated in these environments. I argue that the Prose Edda is more than an ars poetica which introduces its readers to skaldic theory (and, as part of that, to pagan mythology as seen through the spectacles of a Christian mythographer), it is also an ars memoria for Norse memory theory, which introduces many of the tools and techniques that prevailed in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iceland. In continuation of the attempt to define memory through the metaphorical language that was used by medieval authors, in this section I examine figurative expressions of memory that feature in the Prose Edda, especially in Skáldskaparmál. As we shall see, like the two bishops’ sagas Jóns saga helga and Hungrvaka, the Prose Edda associates memory with the heart and the breast; it carefully retells one of its central stories, the myth about the mead of poetry, with implicit references to the metaphor of ‘memory as stomach’, and it formulates learning activities with hints at the world of bees. Before I turn more directly to these points, it must be mentioned that the text helped facilitate the large-scale

 The lack of direct referencing and the relatively loose adaptation of assumed Latin sources have made Anthony Faulkes wonder whether the Prose Edda’s author had any Latin training at all, and he has argued that: “He [i. e. Snorri Sturluson] does not parade his learning – he may have had little to parade” (Faulkes 1993, 72). In other contexts, though, Anthony Faulkes is less categorical and summarizes his viewpoint thus: “it is difficult to know which, if any, the author was actually acquainted with; and if his ideas were derived from Latin authors, it is difficult to say how far his knowledge was at first hand and how much reached him orally through the general dissemination of ideas in literary circles in Iceland” (Faulkes 1983, 306).

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transition of knowledge from memory to the book that occurred in Iceland the thirteenth century. Like several other of its contemporary texts, the Prose Edda suggests that bookish culture can serve as an aid to memory. It does so, however, not with direct reference to memory/to remember (minni or muna), but to its counterpart forgetting/to forget (gleyma), namely when it states that the stories (sǫgur) it tells should not be forgotten. At the beginning of Skáldskaparmál the following points are made: En þetta er nú at segja ungum skáldum þeim er girnask at nema mál skáldskapar ok heyja sér orðfjǫlða með fornum heitum eða girnask þeir at kunna skilja þat er hulit er kveðit; þá skili hann þessa bók til fróðleiks ok skemtunar. En ekki er at gleyma eða ósanna svá þessar sǫgur at taka ór skáldskapinum fornar kenningar þær er hǫfuðskáld hafa sér líka látit. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 5) (But these things have now to be told to young poets who desire to learn the language of poetry and to furnish themselves with a wide vocabulary using traditional terms; or else they desire to be able to understand what is expressed obscurely. Then let such a one take this book as scholarly inquiry and entertainment. But these stories are not to be consigned to oblivion or demonstrated to be false, so as to deprive poetry of ancient kennings which major poets have been happy to use.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 64)

The indication that the stories were not as well-known as they had once been suggests that the forn fræði of the country was in decline. The passage lets it be known that, rather than forget about the stories, the readers ought to turn their attention to, and make inquiries into, this book, which – it is implied – will support the remembrance of this material. Bookish culture, once again, serves as a defence against forgetting. The passage foregrounds the book’s educational and didactic purposes, too, when it says that it is intended to inform young poets about the ancient poetic language. The passage thus presupposes a generational gap and is addressing a younger generation that is seemingly not so accomplished when it comes to traditional poetic vocabulary, i. e. the heiti (poetic synonyms) and kennings (figures of speech), which are (it is implied) in danger of becoming obscure expressions.

3.2.1 Memory in the Breast Skáldskaparmál presents a catalogue of poetic synonyms and figures of speech to the readers, which is a useful source that helps to explain how memory was understood. The literal term minni, however, is only mentioned occasionally in this connection, firstly, in a list of kennings for the brjóst (breast), secondly, as a heiti for hugr (thought, mind) and, thirdly, as a heiti for vit (wisdom) (Snorri

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Sturluson, Edda, 1998, pp. 108 – 109). Although the word is only mentioned a few times these instances do give us important information. The first two instances reveal that memory was believed to be located in the breast and that it could be substituted for, and used synonymously with, hugr, a word whose primary sense is ‘thought’, but which has the broader meaning of ‘mind’ as well. The latter example supports the notion that memory was affiliated with wisdom in a wider sense. The first instance mentions minni in the following context: “Brjóst skal svá kenna at kalla hús eða garð eða skip hjarta, anda eða lifrar, eljunar land, hugar ok minnis” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 108) (“The breast shall be referred to by calling it house or enclosure or ship of heart, spirit or liver, land of energy, thought and memory”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 154). Three points can be made here. We note, firstly, that Skáldskaparmál elaborates more on the breast than on the heart; still, from this passage it becomes clear that the breast is called ‘the house of the heart’, ‘the enclosure of the heart’ and ‘the ship of the heart’, which confirms the conflation between the heart and the larger body part that contains it.⁵⁸ Thus, the same tendency occurs here as in Jóns saga helga, where ‘heart’ and ‘breast’ were used with corresponding meanings and seemed nearly interchangeable. Next, the base-words of these breast-kennings, that is, hús (house/dwelling place), garðr (enclosure), skip (ship) and land (land), all indicate that the breast (and with that memory) is understood in spatial terms and contains various places of human habitation or activity, another tendency that was also evident in Jóns saga helga, for instance, in the expression ‘the field of the heart’.⁵⁹ These material expressions converge with the inclination to understand memory in spatial terms. Thirdly, the words that are listed call attention to various dispositions of the mind, not only minni (memory) but also andi (spirit), eljun (energy) and hugr (thought, mind), revealing that the breast is a spacious and inclusive location that hosts several resources besides memory.

 A look beyond the Prose Edda reveals that this conflation between the breast and the heart is backed up in other breast-kennings, i. e. hjarta salr and hjarta borg (Meissner 1921, 134).  More examples of the poetic language’s tendency to describe the breast in spatial terms are provided in Rudolf Meissner’s taxonomy of skaldic language. This mentions numerous human abodes, including buildings, ships, lived and natural spaces, pathways and the whole cosmos (Meissner 1921, 136 – 137). Guðrún Nordal has linked the connection between the breast and human dwellings with Christian doctrine and European imagery, which sees the human body as, for instance, a ‘temple of the spirit’. According to Guðrún Nordal, this image of the body (perceived in terms of buildings) is found in twelfth- and thirteenth-century skaldic verse in particular (2001, 254– 58 and 266).

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The second example from Skáldskaparmál places minni in a long list of heiti for hugr: Hugr heitir sefi ok sjafni, ást, elskugi, vili, munr. Huginn skal svá kenna at kalla vind trǫllkvinna ok rétt at nefna til hverja er vill ok svá at nefna jǫtnana eða kenna þá til konu eða móður eða dóttur þess. Þessi nǫfn eru sér. Hugr heitir ok geð, þokki, eljun, þrekr, nenning, minni, vit, skap, lund, trygð. Heitir ok hugr reiði, fjándskapr, fár, grimð, bǫl, harmr, tregi, óskap, grellskap, lausung, ótrygð, geðleysi, þunngeði, gessni, hraðgeði, óþveri. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 108) (Thought is called mind and tenderness, love, affection, desire, pleasure. Thought shall be referred to by calling it wind of troll-wives and it is normal for this purpose to use the name of whichever one you like, and also to use the names of giants, and then refer to it in terms of his wife or mother or daughter. These names form a special group. Thought is also called disposition, attitude, energy, fortitude, liking, memory, wit, temper, character, troth.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 154)

The terms for hugr are divided into two groups, one of them centres on the kenning vindr trǫllkvinna (wind of troll-woman) and gathers names from troll-wives, which according to the passage constitute a special group. However, the names of trolls and giants are not listed or further specified.⁶⁰ The other group, in contrast, gathers a long list of dispositions of the mind and the soul that (in contrast to the vindr trǫllkvinna, which points back at the pagan tradition and should be understood in terms of an intertext that belongs to this tradition) are compatible with a medieval perspective, a priority that suggests that an effort was made to align hugr with meanings that were graspable at the time of the text. The list lets it be known that memory can be used interchangeably with hugr. It confirms what the image of Óðinn’s twin ravens Huginn and Muninn has already indicated, namely that thought and memory are closely related, and perhaps at times even overlapping, resources of the mind. That memory is enumerated together with many other abilities (disposition, attitude, energy, fortitude, liking, wit, temper, character and so on) suggests that these other abstractions may share some of their meanings with memory, too. The extent to which each of these abstractions had been defined and clarified at the time when the Prose Edda was written is not clear, but given its many synonyms, it seems likely that hugr ought to be considered an umbrella term, or a hypernym, that covers mind-resources of various

 The kenning vindr trǫllkvinna has been connected to the idea that hugr, that is, the mind or thought, could leave the body and to ideas about wandering souls, see Strömbäck 1975; Tolley 2009; Quinn 2012.

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kinds, including memory.⁶¹ That hugr is a broad cover term is also seen in other literary contexts, for instance in the vernacular expression of the ‘mind’s eyes’ (hugskotsauga) which weights hugr and which can be translated literally as ‘eyes of thinking’ (rather than ‘eyes of the mind’). Before I look at the stomach metaphor, expressed with much creativity in the Prose Edda, it is helpful to contextualize the passages in Skáldskaparmál with mentions of minni in skaldic poetry in general. How often is minni mentioned directly in skaldic kennings? As clarified by Kate Heslop, minni is used relatively seldom in the poetic language (Heslop 2014); indeed, it seems that when memory is referenced in poetry, it is expressed using circumscriptions. Nevertheless, the few occurrences of minni confirm memory’s close connection with the breast, just as they follow the general inclination to express memory in spatial terms. The word features in two breast-kennings, namely minnis garðr (memory’s yard) and minnis knǫrr (ship of memory) (Meissner 1921, 136). The first of these is from the poem Guðmundarkvæði, which was composed around the middle of the fourteenth century by abbot Arngrímr Brandsson of the monastery of Þingeyrar. The author knew the Prose Edda and refers to it in one of the first verses of the poem, where he uses a humilitas-topos and lets it be known that he only composes leir arnar (eagle’s clay > bad poetry). Arngrímr Brandsson introduced another (more simple) rhetoric with less complicated kennings than those suggested in the Prose Edda and paved the way for a kind of poetry that was not excessive in its use of kennings of the type that presupposed detailed mythological knowledge (Males 2020, 294– 295). Ironically enough, he did go against his own programmatic point of view when he expressed his alleged submissive position using a phrase that actually did presuppose a detailed knowledge of the mythology, namely the myth about the mead of poetry, as told in the Prose Edda (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 5). In a monastic environment, it may have been more or less taken for granted that memory was connected to the breast (or the heart) and the breast-kenning minnis garðr probably made much sense for readers orientated towards clerical learning. At least it would not have required knowledge of Old Norse mythology or pre-Christian stories in order to have been understood. The other example, minnis knǫrr, is from the poem Hǫfuðlausn (Head-ransom) which is preserved in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. However, it is found only in a seventeenth-century version of the poem, whereas in earlier manuscripts the stanza has, for instance, mun knǫrr (ship of the mind) instead, that is, formulations that home in on the word

 Along these lines of thinking, Judy Quinn has suggested that the inclination among scholars to translate hugr with ‘thought’ is too narrow and that other English terms should be used instead, for instance ‘attitude’, which implies a broader coverage (2012).

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munr ‘mind’ (generally) rather than on minni ‘memory’ (specifically) (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 60, p. 185; Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, 1973, p. 31; Poole 1993, 93 – 94).⁶²

3.2.2 Memory in the Brain Both Jóns saga helga and the Prose Edda place memory in the heart and the breast. Another tradition, however, also existed in the Middle Ages which located the mind, with all its various functions, in the brain (see Glauser 2018). Aristotle, and the tradition of which he was part, suggests that both the heart and the brain were operational for the mind, an argument that was revisited in the thirteenth century by, among others, Boncompagno da Signa and Albertus Magnus (Boncompagno da Signa, On Memory, 2004, p. 106; Albertus Magnus, Commentary on Aristotle, On Memory and Recollection, 2004, p. 125). The teacher of rhetoric and oratory at the University of Bolonga, Boncompagno da Signa writes that human beings have three chambers in the head, and that the primary seat of the soul is in the brain, although it operates naturally in the heart (as asserted by God). There is a relatively strong and persistent tradition in vernacular Norse texts to locate activities of the mind in the heart and breast.⁶³ But scattered examples show that Norse authors were aware of this other tradition as well.⁶⁴ The most conspicuous

 Even if the Norse authors were inclined to consider skaldic verse as fixed forms, i. e., as a memoria verborum, this example speaks to the fact that transmission did cause variance in skaldic kennings. See Poole 1993 for a discussion on textual variation which also debates if variation in kennings relates to textual variance only or if it hints at the texts’ prehistory, too.  About the poetic language, Rudolf Meissner says that with few exceptions only, the skaldic corpus presents the breast (not the head or the brain, as could be alternatives) as the abode of both cognitive abilities and emotions: “Die meisten Kenningar bestimmen die Brust als den Sitz des geistiges Lebens, des Willens, der Gefühle, des geistigen Schaffens oder auch des Lebens überhaubt. Nur selten in der Skaldendichtung wird der Kopf durch geistiges Leben bezeichnet” (Meissner 1921, 134) (Most kennings define the breast as the seat of spiritual life, of the will, of the feelings, of the spiritual creation, or also of life. The head is only seldom denoted by spiritual life in skaldic poetry). See also Guðrún Nordal 2001 (for poetry); Mackenzie 2014 (for prose texts); Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir 2019 (for Egils saga Skallagrímssonar and Brennu-Njáls saga).  It should be noted that the brain (heili) is mentioned in Skáldskaparmál’s list of headkennings, which explains that the head can be called “land hjálms ok hattar ok heila” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 108) (“land of helmet and hat and brains”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 153). In the immediate context references are made to sense organs (the ears, the eyes and the mouth), which call attention to what in medieval philosophy are considered gateways to

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example of this is found in Fóstbræðra saga (The Saga of the Sworn Brothers), which is dated to the thirteenth century (scholars discuss whether it is from the beginning or the end of the century). In a passage in the Flateyjarbók-version of the saga (from the late fourteenth century) memory (minni) is placed in the brain (heili).⁶⁵ This version of Fóstbræðra saga reveals a strong medical interest, for instance when references to feelings of jealousy and anger are followed by an elaborate description of the bodily organs (the gall, the heart, the brain, the lungs, the spleen and the liver) and their relevance for interior faculties: “Lyptisk þá litt þat reiði í sinu rúmi, en reiði hvers manns er í galli, en líf í hjarta, minni í heila, metnaðr í lungum, hlátr í milti, lystisemi í lifr” (Fóstbræðra saga, 1943, ch. 21, p. 226) (“A man’s anger resides in his gall, his life-blood in his heart, his memory in his brains, his ambition in his lungs, his laughter in his spleen and his desire in his liver”) (The Saga of the Sworn Brothers, 1997, ch. 21, p. 374). It is debated whether a passage like this one was part of the original saga or was added by a later redactor who incorporated his own knowledge into the text. The latter option, which is a very likely case, reminds us that a manuscript-based text could be updated and thus cannot be discussed solely in the context of the time of its assumed origin. However, even if such scattered references place memory in the brain and even if this usage at some point entered the Norse intellectual world, it still seems that a cardiac tradition dominates in the Norse texts.

3.2.3 A Spitting and Excreting Eagle Guðmundarkvæði’s use of leir arnar > eagle’s clay in itself gave us reason to mention the myth about the mead of poetry, which is one of the central narratives in the Prose Edda, or perhaps its most important narrative. Its centrality obviously lies in the fact that the book as a whole is about ancient poetry, making it relevant to consider this myth as emblematic for the whole text. As Peter Orton has said: “There is, of course, a very obvious analogy between the telling of the story and Snorri’s broader purposes in the Prose Edda: His readers are, metaphorically speaking, given access to the mead of poetry” (Orton 2007, 281). Skaldic poetry is a

memory. It cannot be excluded that this combination of the brain and the senses is a vague reflection of a tradition that connects memory and the brain by way of the senses.  Fóstbræðra saga is also preserved in Hauksbók (AM 544 4to) (written between 1290 and 1360) and in Möðruvallabók. For a discussion of the learned and humourous passages found in the various redactions, see Meulengracht Sørensen 1993b. The saga’s interest in medicine and anatomy has been connected to the Salerno School (Jónas Kristjánsson 1972). For medical texts in Old Norse contexts, see Kålund 1907; Jón Steffensen 1990.

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memory-dependent genre, which makes it highly likely that the foundational myth, stating that poetry is a gift from the gods, will comment on, or explain, memory, just as it can be expected that memory imagery will be imbedded in the story.⁶⁶ The story provides poetry with a mythological foundation and it explains how poetic skills were brought to gods and humans by Óðinn. Poetry took form and materialized as a brew, and it says that the one who drinks this brew, the mead of poetry, will become a skilled poet. The Prose Edda gives the mead a complex background history: The precious liquid is produced by dwarfs, who possess smithing skills and produce a brew from the blood of a wise being, Kvasir, whom the gods had created out of a mixture of saliva from two different groups of gods (the Æsir and the Vanir). Kvasir’s blood is mixed with honey. The mead undergoes transformations, it travels from one mythological race to another, namely from dwarfs via giants to gods. At a late stage in the mead’s history, Óðinn cunningly acquires it from giants. To be able to take the mead out of the mountain Hnitbjǫrg, where it is guarded, Óðinn drinks it, transforms himself into an eagle and while carrying the mead in the eagle’s body – in a race where the giant Suttungr follows him closely – he flies over the homes of the gods where he spits out one portion of the mead and excretes another portion backwards (see fig. 2). The mead is thus divided into two portions, one portion that enables good poetry and another, the portion that is excreted, which enables poor poetry. The first portion is delivered in vats that are set out for this particular purpose, while the other portion is handed over with less care and control: en er Óðinn kom inn of Ásgarð þá spýtti hann upp miðinum í kerin, en honum var þá svá nær komit at Suttungr mundi ná honum at hann sendi aptr suman mjǫðinn, ok var þess ekki gætt. Hafði þat hverr er vildi, ok kǫllum vér þat skáldfífla hlut. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 5) (and when Odin came in over Asgard he spat out the mead into the containers, but it was such a close thing for him that Suttung might have caught him that he sent some of the mead out backwards, and this was disregarded. Anyone took it that wanted it, and it is what we call the fool-poet’s share.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 64, with modifications)

The story is packed with enigmatic symbols and references, and – as several critical readings have shown – it is open to multiple interpretations. Only a few elements, those that can be connected to medieval notions of memory, will be

 Numerous treatments and readings of the story of the poetic mead exists, see, for instance, Turville-Petre 1964, 35 – 41; Meletinskij 1973 – 1974.

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Fig. 2: Óðinn as a flying eagle in SÁM 66, 76r, Icelandic manuscript from the eighteenth century. Printed with the permission of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

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touched upon here.⁶⁷ It describes the delivery of the poetic gift, not only in much detail, but also presented as an – at first glance – odd and bizarre event. One of the studies that is of particular relevance here is Stephen Mitchell’s examination of the reification of poetic skills in the image of the mead. Mitchell has compared the transmission situation where Óðinn delivers the mead of poetry to a type of birdfeeding that is helped by regurgitation (Mitchell 2001), an interpretation that takes into account that the mead is ingested and later disgorged from the eagle’s body. This aspect, as also Jens Eike Schnall has pointed out in another study of relevance for the present argument, is of particular significance from a memory perspective (Schnall 2004).⁶⁸ It calls to mind a body-imagery and, more specifically, the stomach metaphor, which associates memory with the blending of a substance in the alimentary system, letting it be known that knowledge is to be internalized and made one’s own; and it makes it even more explicit than the texts treated above that memorization requires a bodily assimilation of acquired knowledge. The focus, not only on Óðinn’s ingestion of liquids, but also on his excretion, puts an emphasis on the aspect of personalization, as the mead can only come out as something different, either spit or excretion, in the wake of a digestion process where the mead (poetry) has been made his own, so to speak.⁶⁹

 I suggest that Latinate book culture provides an adequate background for coming to grips with the Prose Edda’s version of this story, but acknowledge that the complexities inherent to our materials make other approaches applicable as well. The various aspects of the myth (spit, intoxicating drinks, the bringing of a divine gift and so on) have been treated in comparative perspectives, where Greek and Vedic traditions (concerning ambrosia, soma and amrita) has been brought into the discussion, as has the notion of the comparanda, which stresses that the development of a poetic tradition results from a single incident which is later repeated (see the discussion in Mitchell 2 0 0 1 , 7 3 – 7 5 ) .  Jens Eike Schnall has found structural and typological similarities between the myth about the poetic mead and continental literature about mnemonics, and he concludes that: “Hinsichtlich des hier diskutierten Mythos des Metraubes bei Snorri ist zu konstatieren, dass dessen Darstellung in zentralen Bildelementen mit theoretischen Äusserungen zum Gedächtnis in mittelalterlichen lateinischen Quellen konvergiert” (2004, 270 – 271) (Regarding Snorri’s myth about the stealing of the mead, which has been discussed here, we can state that its representation of central imagery converges with theoretical expressions of memory in medieval Latin sources). Schnall’s analysis emphasizes, among other things, the representation of physical absorption of knowledge and the embodiment of wisdom.  Another interpretation has connected the regurgitation to ‘pseudo-procreation’, and it has been argued that poetry is generated by male actors mimicking the female process of pregnancy and giving birth, the gods’ “spitting into a caldron generates the wise being Kvasir while Óðinn’s swallowing and regurgitating of the mead when he is transformed into an eagle makes it fruitful for the life of the mind” (Clunies Ross 2005, 93; see also 1994, 129 – 130, 150 – 152, 216 – 218).

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The idea that mead (the materialization of poetry) is physically absorbed and in turn transformed and ejected is quite evident in this eagle imagery, and a medieval reader would probably not have missed this allusion to memorized learning. The story, it seems, not only says that poetry was once in the past a divinely sanctioned ability handed over to gods (and from gods to human beings) by Óðinn, it also shows that the acquisition of poetic skills requires mnemonic processing. Actually, Ódinn’s escape from Suttungr with the mead (poetry) in his guts, expresses a certain type of learning, which must have been considered relevant for poetic theories. It shows that poetic skills should first be acquired from others (i. e. stolen), then processed and personalized through mnemonic digestion and finally be spat out, that is, recreated by repetition or by making a new creative product. The European, intellectual tradition which expresses learning as a physiological absorption belongs to bookish cultures, where individuals learn and acquire book knowledge; this circumstance, however, does not conflict with the poetic culture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Iceland, where the art of poetry was in a state of transitioning from having been a purely oral phenomenon to becoming a literary matter. The myth puts an emphasis on the handing over, that is, the transmission, of the mead (poetry) between the characters in the story, a theme that is telling for the purpose of the Prose Edda itself, which hands over and explains the poetic language to a new generation of poets. This supports that the myth is emblematic and a reflection on the book’s (that is, the Prose Edda’s) wider purpose. It tells that the one who aspires to become a poet will have to follow the example of Óðinn, that is, to steal, to eat, and to spit out what they read in the book. The origin of poetry is treated in other sources than the Prose Edda (cf. Hávamál sts. 13 – 14, 104– 110 and 138 – 41). Óðinn’s contact with Suttungr is mentioned in the eddic poem Hávamál sts. 13 and 104 – 110, a poem that is also quoted in the Prose Edda, but not in connection with this specific myth. Yet, the eagle’s flying and the ingestion/excretion-imagery is unique for the Prose Edda, and it can be considered as a change or an addition that serves to emphasize an important theme of the book. Another difference between the Hávamál and the Prose Edda is the interpretation of the word Óðrerir (meaning poetry-stirrer or soul-stirrer). In Hávamál (st. 107) the word is used for the mead itself, while in the Prose Edda it refers to a pot that contains the mead before it is acquired by Óðinn (Simek 2006, 250). In the Prose Edda, the symbolism of these vessels – the pot and the two vats, Són and Boðn – as external containers that can be accessed by the various agents in the story is crucial, and the meaning-transfer that follows the change of the word Óðrerir (from poetry to container) casts focus on the media that allows its transmission. Clearly, the myth in the Prose Edda does not merely talk about poetry but about the handing over of it, homing in on the themes of exchange and com-

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munication, and the container, like the book itself, facilitates this delivery. This difference between the Hávamál and the Prose Edda has been explained by modern researchers as a misinterpretation by the author of the available sources (see Frank 1981, 161– 162), yet, it is much more relevant to see this change as a conscious choice, which helps to focus on the book’s theme (the mediation of poetry).

3.2.4 Suffocation and Honeybees Two other relevant details suggest that this story saw memory as an inseparable component of the poetic tradition. The first concerns the description of Kvasir’s death (the wise being whose blood was an ingredient of the mead). Kvasir is depicted as extremely wise, so wise that he choked in his own wisdom: “Kvasir hefði kafnat í mannviti fyrir því at engi var þar svá fróðr at spyrja kynni hann fróðleiks” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 3) (“Kvasir had suffocated in intelligence because there was no one there educated enough to be able to ask him questions”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 62). This situation, with its focus on intelligence and suffocation, inverts the ideal learning situation where knowledge is ingested (acquired) and digested (processed and internalized), whereafter it is disgorged or excreted from the body (given a new form). In Kvasir’s case, ingestion is not followed by digestion and excretion; no waste is discharged from his body; he has stuffed himself to the extent that he dies from suffocation (the word kafna means to be suffocated, choked). It thus appears that people can strangle because of too much (undigested) wisdom. This suffocation-motif only appears in this particular episode in Skáldskaparmál, even if Kvasir is mentioned in other contexts in the Prose Edda (in Gylfaginning) and Ynglinga saga; in all cases, however, Kvasir is described as an extremely wise being.⁷⁰ A look at medieval Latin sources shows that the alimentary imagery may include warnings against filling oneself with too much knowledge. In Didascalicon, Hugh of St. Victor discusses the problems caused when the mind and the heart (memory) are too full – what is eaten must be digested should it not lead to irritation (see also Schnall 2004, 266). Likewise, Geoffrey of Vinsauf uses the stomach metaphor to express learned activities, letting it be known that, just as it is advisable to drink and eat moderately so, too, must our acquisition of knowledge be moderate and taken in only in bits and pieces. He gives quite explicit  The poetry kenning Kvasis dreyra > Kvasir’s blood is used in the poem Vellekla by Einarr Helgason skálaglamm (bowl tinkle), dated to the end of the tenth century, which may indicate that the entanglement of Kvasir’s death with poetry has a long history. Even so, the suffocation theme may very well be a later addition to the myth.

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instructions on how to feed memory and says that, like the stomach, the mind operates best when it is more than half but not completely satisfied (Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, 1923, p. 258).What we encounter in the depiction of Kvasir’s death may very well be an elaboration on a similar vocabulary, that is, a learned hyperbolization that could have caused amusement and demonstrated eloquence and wit, but which at the same time nevertheless left a serious message about the nature of learning and memory. As Jerome says, “there is no point in reading if one does not also compose and write” (quoted from Carruthers 1990, 192). If too much knowledge is stored in memory, but is never used anew, the learning process has not reached the point of completion. Learning is about memorization (internalization and assimilation between individual and text), and – not least – about communication in oral or written discourses, or, metaphorically speaking, about ‘spitting knowledge out again’. Once again, we encounter an episode that may reflect the larger issues that are at play in the Prose Edda; it may explain the author’s own situation and point to the necessity of writing down the knowledge that is fastened in memory, that is, the necessity to communicate knowledge to others, which here happens in the format of the book. The next detail that deserves attention is one of the ingredients in the mead, namely honey, an element that has practically avoided debate in recent scholarship. The fluid with which it was mixed, blood, has been treated in more detail and has, for example, been compared to such different themes as ritualistic drinking of blood (Ström 1966) and to a European memory-imagery, i. e. to “(Körper‐)Flüssigkeiten” (body fluids), learning and memorization (Schnall 2004, 265). However, Jakob Grimm, who approached the Norse materials from a comparative-etymological angle and pursued analogues between Indo-European cultures, saw the reference to honey as a parallel to the sweet drinks of immortality (the amrita of Hindu mythology, the ambrosia of Greek mythology and the nectar of the Bible), just as he specified that a sweet drink of poetry appears in the Greek myth about Pindar, who was fed with honey and thus became an eloquent poet (Grimm 1883, 904 – 906; see also Mitchell 2001, 73; Clunies Ross 2005, 84). Anne Holtsmark has further specified that honey belongs to images of Paradise, which is testified in the Icelandic Homily Book (Holtsmark 1964, 46 – 47). As we saw above, an apian imagery and metaphors involving bees and honey were not unknown to medieval authors, for whom bees and the substance of honey may, among other things, have alluded to a specific type of learned activity and the products of this learning, namely the discourses that authors produced. Thinking along these lines, the incorporation of honey into the story may not so much hint at gods feeding poets in order to give them talent. Instead, it may inject an important element into the conceptualization of the poetic tradition, suggesting that it belongs to a type of learning that required its practitioners to blend together the

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knowledge they had acquired and to store it in mnemonic compartments until they would finally produce new discourses. Býflugur (bees) and honey, or more specifically, hunangfall (honeydew), are mentioned also in another context in the Prose Edda, namely in Gylfaginning, which further confirms that the authors knew this vocabulary and elaborated on it. The passage says that “Sú dǫgg er þaðan af fellr á jǫrðina, þat kalla menn hunangfall, ok þat af fœðask býflugur” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 19) (“The dew that falls from it on to the earth, this is what people call honeydew, and from it bees feed”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 19). This rare reference to the world of bees in the mythic stories (in the Prose Edda and generally) concludes a lengthy description of the tree Yggdrasill. Anne Holtsmark, pointing to international analogues, has mentioned that Roman works of Virgil and Horatius tell of trees that are dripping with honey, just as Plinius’ work on natural history mentions both bees and drips from trees (Holtsmark 1964, 46 – 47). In the next chapter, I provide more context to suggest that Yggdrasill – as it appears in Gylfaginning – is an example (and a literary representation) of a mnemonic structure, that is, of a configuration in the mind that enabled people to, at one and the same time, remember and organize mythic knowledge. Like the architectonic buildings that were mentioned briefly, also this structure allowed authors to divide their knowledge in smaller sections. Given this function as a tool for memorization and organization, Yggdrasill offers a relevant literary context for such a reference to honeydew and bees, which we may understand metaphorically. As we saw, the apian trope connects learning activities with the collection of knowledge from various places, and the bees that are buzzing around Yggdrasill’s honeydew can be a hint at those (students or readers) who suck nectar, that is, who pick up the mythic details and stories that are kept in Yggdrasill’s many compartments. Thus, the bees refer to people who, basically, act in the same way as the students in the cathedral of Hólar who, as we are told in Jóns saga helga, act like bees when they collect knowledge from the wine cellar of the holy writings. The Prose Edda’s description of Yggdrasill quotes both Vǫluspá and Grímnismál. Vǫluspá mentions that dew falls from the tree: “þaðan koma dǫggvar / þœrs í dala falla” (Vǫluspá, 2014, st. 19, p. 295) (“from there come the dews which fall in the valley”) (Seeress’s Prophecy, 2014, st. 19, p. 6). But neither of these poems mention bees or honey, so this is an elaboration that we must ascribe to the author of the Prose Edda or like-minded redactors. This addition establishes a new emphasis and with that a new meaning, which – once again – homes in on one of the important themes of the book, namely memory and an affiliated type of learning which involves collection, storing and blending of knowledge. Branches of scholarship have tended to emphasize that the learning seat of Snorri Sturluson, Reykholt, represented a native culture that existed parallel with

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institutionalized seats of learning that were indebted to the ecclesiastical culture of medieval Europe, such as the cathedrals schools of Skálholt and Hólar. Yet, such a strict division is hardly productive for an understanding of the Prose Edda, which we assume emanates from Reykholt. When it comes to the topic of memory, the Prose Edda features expressions that are not far removed from those found in the texts that have come out of institutionalized Christian learning centres, and the way the text treats this particular theme does not suggest that strong fences existed between Reykholt and these other enclaves. Quite to the contrary, the Prose Edda features a mnemonic vocabulary of a similar character as texts from these other centres, and the examination indicates, firstly, that when forn fræði was retold in the Prose Edda it was infused with contemporary ideas about memory, and secondly, that such ideas could have travelled, not only between Iceland and international environments, but also between learned enclaves in Iceland.⁷¹ I return to the Prose Edda in the next chapter, where I continue the argument that it is as much a Norse ars memoria as it is an ars poetica.

3.3 Egils saga Skallagrímssonar Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (dating to the beginning of the thirteenth century) is one of the earliest sagas of Icelanders, and it is the final example to be discussed in this chapter.⁷² Compared to the sagas of bishops, which are categorized as contemporary sagas that for the most part deal with knowledge that lies within living memory, the sagas of Icelanders treat a past that is distanced from the authors’ and their readers’ worlds by several centuries. This is the case also in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, where the action is set in the ninth century, around the time of the settlement of Iceland. As such, these sagas present information that had not been experienced by any living witnesses, but which had been mediated in narrative, poetry, visual sources and so on, for decades, even centuries. This suggests that they represent a cultural memory. The sagas of Icelanders do not leave the impression that memory is like a ‘leaky bucket’ running dry of water, to stick to Ann Rigney’s metaphor. Here we recall that, theoretically

 For treatments of Icelandic learned environments and schools, and the connections between them, see, for example, Andersson 1993; Haraldur Bernharðsson 2016; Johansson 2018.  Fragments of Egils saga Skallagrímssonar are preserved in manuscripts from the thirteenth century and onwards, while more complete versions are found in the three main manuscripts Wolfenbüttel (c. 1350), Möðruvallabók and Ketilsbók (middle of the seventeenth century). I quote from Sigurður Nordal’s edition for Íslenzk fornrit which is mainly based on Möðruvallabók. On the manuscripts and editions, see Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir 2015.

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speaking, information does not decline within cultural memory, quite the contrary, it can be called forth whenever it is relevant, often with the aid of the imagination. The sagas of Icelanders contain much detailed information about individuals and families, their actions and conflicts, norms and values, and they do not indicate a decrease of knowledge. This underscores that this period of the past (the time of the settlement), despite its distance from the time of the texts, was much alive in the minds of the writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The sagas of Icelanders allow for more vivid narrative expansion and plotconstruction than sagas of bishops, often offering lengthy and elaborate narratives. Among their many topics they feature ‘prototype memory experts’, that is, people of good memories, who in their literary description may at times represent ideal situations rather than real ones. We may count on the possibility that when these sagas describe people with a good memory, and one of them is Egill Skallagrímsson, they are informed by theories and practices of memory with which the authors of the texts were acquainted. Here, of course, we must be careful to assign authorship-status both to the assumed author and the people who copied, or perhaps more precisely, rewrote the sagas. Different writers have put their mark on the texts, as was also the case in the Flateyjarbók-version of Fóstbræðra saga, where there is good reason to believe that redactors have added their own comments to the text. More precisely, Egils saga Skallagrímssonar allows us to examine, among many other things, how (mainly) thirteenth- or fourteenth-century authors and writers depicted the memory culture of the past through the spectacles of their own time. The treatment of Egils saga Skallagrímssonar that follows here focuses on the mnemonic practices and the memory imagery that the text inscribes into the image of Egill as a poet. The poems in the saga present their own problematic area, with respect to dating and background. Much discussed is the question of whether the poetry in the saga can be attributed to the historical Egill Skallagrímsson, or to a literary characterization of him, that is, to a literary phenomenon that is constructed by the saga’s different versions (see e. g. Clunies Ross 2001; Poole 1993, 2010; Harris 2010b). While it cannot be ruled out that (some of) the lausavísur and poems in the text can be ascribed to the historical Egill Skallagrímsson, it is perhaps more relevant to see them in the light of the learned transition of skaldic theory that is documented in the Prose Edda and the grammatical treatises (see e. g. Guðrún Nordal 2015, 46 – 47), an approach that finds support in the notion that the saga may have been written by Snorri Sturluson.⁷³ In

 For an overview of the scholarly discussion of Snorri Sturluson as the author of this saga, see Vésteinn Ólason 1968; see also Poole 2010, 174.

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any case, it seems as if the ideas of memory expressed in the poems treated below (and the literary contexts that surround them) are in agreement with ideas that circulated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As in the cases of Jóns saga helga and the Prose Edda, these poems articulate memory with reference to the breast and, as in Hungrvaka, they evoke craftsman-imagery. Moreover, there is reason to believe that the literary construction of Egill and his poetic practise alludes to the art of rhetoric and, as an aspect of that, to memory’s relevance for poetic endeavours.

3.3.1 Inventing and Memorizing Poetry The poem Hǫfuðlausn, a twenty-stanza long drápa (a poem with refrains) that praises the Norwegian king Eiríkr Haraldsson blóðøx (blood-axe) will be my first example.⁷⁴ Together with its literary context, this drápa provides an elaborate description of poetic invention and reveals some of the crafts and skills that were handled by a poet, as he was seen by the later writers. Much is at stake at this point in the saga. Egill is under great pressure, but he keeps his life, or literally speaking he saves his head, in return for this praise poem, a prize that is evident from the poem’s title. According to the saga, Egill composes the poem during one night, which he spends alone in a garret, which suggests that isolation and silence constitute the ideal surroundings for someone who needs to concentrate in order to be able to invent and memorize a poem. At first Egill is distracted by a twittering swallow outside the window, and it is not until Egill’s friend, Arinbjǫrn, chases the bird away and keeps watch on the roof that Egill succeeds in making the poem and incising it into his memory. The saga says that Arinbjǫrn did not see an actual swallow, but rather a shapeshifter outside of the window, a literary hyperbolization that gives the whole situation a supernatural twist and underlines the idea that extraordinary skills are required to create a poem of this high standard. Óðinn, the bringer of poetry, had the ability to change shape and the incident may allude to the tradition which presents poetry as a gift from the gods; thus, it might refer to the same ideas as those presented in the Prose Edda’s story about the mead of poetry. Egill’s creative process is further described like this: “en síðan er Arinbjǫrn hafði þar komit, þá orti Egill alla drápuna ok hafði fest svá, at hann mátti kveða um morgininn, þá er hann hitti Arinbjǫrn” (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933,

 Hǫfuðlausn features in the mid-fourteenth-century Wolfenbüttel manuscript and in seventeenth-century Ketilsbók (Poole 1993, 78 – 79, 94– 95; Poole 2010, 177).

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ch. 59, p. 183) (When Arinbjǫrn came there, Egill composed the whole poem and fastened it [in memory], so that he could recite it to Arinbjǫrn in the morning). Later on the same day, he delivers the poem again, this time in front of the king and a large audience: “þá gekk Egill fyrir hann ok hóf upp kvæðit ok kvað hátt ok fekk þegar hljóð” (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 60, p. 185) (“Egil went before him [the king] and delivered his poem, reciting it in a loud voice, and everyone fell silent at once”) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 61, p. 120). The reaction of those present, who all fall silent and deprived of speech, clearly indicates that the poem was successfully delivered. It is noteworthy that the text concentrates on the various stages in the poem’s creation and its presentation to others. It zeroes in on invention (when attention is turned to the disturbing bird-singing), and on composition, memorization and delivery, various phases that are expressed with the Old Norse verbs orti/yrkja (to compose), festa (to fasten or attach) (which calls to mind the phrase festa í minni) and finally kveða (to perform or deliver). The care with which these stages are formulated makes it possible that the episode alludes to the rhetorical canon of classical antiquity and the methods and skills that belong to it (the five rhetorical sections inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria and pronuntiatio). The saga admittedly presents a reduced version of this system, which is explained in detail in the Latin texts, but the literary context and the emphasis on the vernacular terms (orti/yrkja, festa and kveða), nevertheless call to mind elements of this wider rhetorical complex. Thus, in continuation of the argumentation in the treatment of Hungrvaka, this example further advances the argument that an awareness of rhetoric lies behind textual production in medieval Iceland.⁷⁵

3.3.2 Resorting to ‘the Depths of the Mind’ and ‘the Hiding Place of Thought’ As Kate Heslop has written, (the poety in) Egils saga Skallagrímssonar “is unusually rich in kennings for mental states” (Heslop 2014, 81), and a look at Egill’s poems makes it possible to come closer to medieval perceptions of memory – and to what it means more specifically to fasten something to memory. Egill’s reflections on his poetic practise strongly indicate that he resorted to the breast when he composed the drápa to king Eiríkr, suggesting that he depended upon an inner processing in memory. Three breast-kennings feature in Hǫfuðlausn, namely munstrǫnd > shore of the mind (st. 1), munar grunni > the depths of the mind (st. 19)

 For a reading of Hǫfuðlausn from a memory perspective that takes into account the memoria of the classical world, see Solovyeva 2019, 156 – 166.

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and hlátra hamr > the seat of laughter (st. 20) (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 60, p. 185; ch. 60, p. 192).⁷⁶ The kenning munar grunni (the depths of the mind) occurs in the following context in Hǫfuðlausn: Jǫfurr hyggi at, Hvé ek yrkja fat, gótt þykkjumk þat, es ek þǫgn of gat; hrærðak munni af munar grunni Óðins ægi of jǫru fægi. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 60, p. 192) (King, bear in mind how my ode is wrought, I take delight in the hearing I gained. Through my lips I stirred from the depths of my mind Odin’s sea of verse about the craftsman of war.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 61, p. 123, with modifications)

The determinant of the kenning is munr (mind) (a word that, according to Skáldskaparmál, belongs to the same complex as hugr and minni). The base-word is grunnr, which we can translate as ‘depth’, but which also means ‘bottom (of the sea)’ and ‘sea floor’, which suggests that the poet envisages the mind, and with that also memory, as the depths of the ocean. In Skáldskarparmál the breast was presented as the abode of various mindfaculties, memory, spirit, energy and thinking. Grasping the finer nuances of, and the differences between, the various cognitive and emotional resources that are located in the breast, is complicated, and since this stanza does not mention minni directly, this opens the possibility that it refers to other faculties that are placed in the breast. But the literary context (the delivery of a poem that was invented and memorized the night before) makes it obvious that one should understand munar grunni as a reference to the poet’s memory. Seen in this light, the stanza insinuates that the poem (materialized and imagined as the liquid form of the sea, i. e. ‘Óðinn’s sea of verse’), before it was transported through the mouth (the lips), had

 All three are classified as breast kennings in Meissner 1921, 134, 136 and 137; see also Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir 2019, 44– 47.

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been kept in the spacious depths of the poet’s memory.⁷⁷ The word minni itself is barely used in Egill’s poems, even if – as mentioned – the term minnis knǫrr features in a late version of Hǫfuðlausn. But a breast-kenning such as the ‘depth of the mind’ nevertheless indicates an awareness of and a conscious use of memory, a resource that in the imagination of the medieval writers seems to have been understood as a spacious domain in the breast. Another poem in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar which is also attributed to Egill, Sonatorrek (The Loss of my Sons), can be mentioned in this context as well.⁷⁸ It, too, suggests that poetic invention relies on, and is helped by, memory, and here Egill likewise refers to his breast, this time in the kenning hugar fylgsni > the hiding place of thought.⁷⁹ Sonatorrek is an emotional lament composed by Egill in memory of two sons whom he has lost. He is grieving, feeling it impossible to find the inspiration he needs to be able to compose this poem, and it is only with difficulty that he finally manages to drag out poetry (Viðurs þýfi > the god’s prize) from the hiding place of thought (the breast): Mjǫk erum tregt tungu at hræra eða loptvætt ljóðpundara; esa nú vænligt of Viðurs þýfi né hógdrægt ór hugar fylgsni. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 78, p. 246) (My tongue is sluggish for me to move, my poem’s scales ponderous to raise. The god’s prize is beyond my grasp, tough to drag out

 Other kennings confirm that poetry is located in the breast (just as yet other kennings describe the tongue or mouth as the path of poetry), as Rudolf Meissner says with reference to the hlátra hamr-kenning in Hǫfuðlausn: “Die Brust ist auch der Sitz des dichterischen Vermögens” (Meissner 1921, 134, see also 135).  The first stanza of the poem is mentioned in Möðruvallabók but as a complete poem Sonatorrek is found only in the postmedieval Ketilsbók.  There are often uncertanities connected to the interpretation of the kennings, but it seems as if scholars agree that hugar fylgsni should be categorized as a breast-kenning, see Rudolf Meissner 1921, 137; Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir 2019, 44– 47.

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from the hiding place of thought.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 79, p. 151, with modifications)

The determinant of this kenning is hugr, the word whose meanings weave into several other abstractions of the mind, and which according to the list in Skáldskaparmál could be used synonymously with memory. The base-word fylgsni (hiding place) confirms that the breast, and with that memory, is once again conceived of in spatial terms, as a place where things can be stored away and can be found again (if one labours hard enough).

3.3.3 Constructing Buildings in the Mind The examples from Hǫfuðlausn and Sonatorrek stress that Egill’s poetic invention happened as a conscious processing of words in the breast, and both the words grunnr (in munar grunni) and fylgsni (in hugar fylgsni) add to the impression that memory is a distinctive spatial conception. Another enlightening aspect that helps to explain mnemonic processing is the analogue that Egill’s poems establish between poetic creation and craftmanship. Egill’s poems display several craftsman-related images of which a few examples will be given below, all of which seem to acknowledge that the poet builds poems in his mind or memory, and that he ponders on the poems in his memory before they are presented to others. The first example is found in Sonatorrek (st. 5), where Egill says that he carries the mærðar timbr (timber of praise > poetry) out from his orðhof (temple of words > mind): Þó munk mitt ok móður hrør fǫður fall fyrst of telja, þat berk út ór orðhofi mærðar timbr máli laufgat. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, ch. 78, 1933, p. 248) (Yet I shall first recount my father’s death and mother’s loss, carry from my temple of words the timber that I build my poem from,

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leafed with language.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 79, p. 152, with modifications)

Orðhof (temple of words) has been interpreted differently, for instance as the ‘mouth’ or the ‘mind’ (see e. g. Clunies Ross 2015, 85 – 86; Torfi Tulinius 2009, 709 – 710). I understand it in the latter sense, in which case the stanza presupposes that words (materialized as timber) are stored in the mind (materialized as a building) from where they can be brought out at the will of the poet. – Incidentially, the word hof (temple or holy building) brings to the fore an interesting perspective that tells us more about how the mind was understood. It says that the poet picks up his material from a sacred abode, perhaps indicating that the mind (and with that memory) constitutes a place of divine transcendence, which allows the poet to access true and authentic wisdom. The word hof is most often used to designate pagan buildings (Kreutzer 1977, 247– 248), but it cannot be ruled out that it alludes to ideas expressed in foreign traditions which see the mind as a divinely inspired resource.⁸⁰ To return to the craftsman-imagery, another example is found in yet another poem, Arinbjarnarkviða (Poem for Arinbjǫrn), which is a poem of praise that Egill makes in honour of his friend.⁸¹ In st. 15, the poet presents himself as a workman who refines or perfects the efni mærðar > stuff or raw timber with the ómunlokri > the voice’s plane (cf. lokarr > the tongue): Erum auðskœf Ómunlokri magar Þóris mærðar efni vinar míns þvít valið liggja tvenn ok þrenn á tungu mér. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 78, p. 263)

 Margaret Clunies Ross has touched upon such issues and has suggested twelfth-century Platonist thinking as a source of influence. In Platonist learning, poets (through the imagination and helped by reason and memory) could reach the natural order of things, just as there are examples where Icelandic poets (as followers of Óðinn) could obtain contact with the supernatural (see e. g. Clunies Ross 1989, 134– 135). Also Augustine sees memory as a metaphysical resource and a place of transcendence, see Oexle 1994, 304; Hochschild 2012. The word orðhof thus confirms that the mind (and memory) may allow contact with the divine.  Arinbjarnarkviða is found in Möðruvallabók as an addition on the last page of the manuscript. Two of its stanzas are preseved in The Third Grammatical Treatise.

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(The stuff of my praise is soon honed by my voice’s plane (> tongue) for my friend Thorir’s kinsmen, for double, triple choices lie upon my tongue.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 80, p. 160)

The stanza talks about a self-conscious poet who, like a craftsman, selects the raw material with which to shape his poem and who (soon ready to present the poem) in this initial preparatory phase polishes the themes he has chosen to deal with. The tongue is here considered as a tool that helps to shape and measure the material before it will materialize as poetry.⁸² Arinbjarnarkviða is concluded with an equal amount of self-consciousness (in st. 25). Egill says that he wakes up early in the morning to stack his words (bark orð saman) and that he creates a lofkǫstr > a piled mound of praise > poem: Vask árvakr, bark orð saman með málþjóns morginverkum, hlóðk lofkǫst þanns lengi stendr óbrotgjarn í bragar túni. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 78, p. 267) (I awoke early to stack my words as my speech’s slave did its morning’s work. I have piled a mound of praise that long will stand without crumbling in the poetry’s field.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 80, p. 162)

 The tongue is even more directly associated with craftsmanship in Katrínardrápa where it is compared with a knife, suggesting that the tongue is a means by which the poet can carve his poem, see Grant 2020, 40 – 41.

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Here, the craftsman-imagery not only expresses poetic endeavours as construction work, but (in the last half of the stanza) the poem itself is talked about as a built construction, a lofkǫstr. ⁸³ We note moreover that the poet relies on his ability to preserve the poem in his memory when he concludes by saying that the poem will stay in bragar tún > poetry’s field > memory for a long time.⁸⁴

3.3.4 Characterizing a Memory Expert It is common in skaldic poetry in general to describe poetry with references to craftsmanship and blacksmithing work, just as architectonic terms are used to describe the structure of skaldic verse, which is said to consist of such components as the stef (stave), stefjabálkr (stave balk) and the stuðill (support, beam) (Kreutzer 1977, 135, 137 and 246 – 250; Sayers 2002; Clunies Ross 2005, 85 – 91). Such a vocabulary is also used in The Third Grammatical Treatise, which explains alliteration by analogue and says that this device has the same function for the poems (in binding lines together) as nails that hold together the planks of a ship (The Third Grammatical Treatise 1884, 96). Tom Grant has argued that, in comparison with other European traditions that use the same analogue between poetic composition and craftsmanship, in Norse skaldic corpus this comparison “reached a far higher level of complexity than in other European literatures” (Grant 2020, 24).⁸⁵ The semantic overlap between poetry and crafting is consistent in Old Norse tradition, and Gert Kreutzer has said that the inclination to compare a poem with a building or a ship (or, we may add, to other built constructions) is “so alt wie die Skaldendichtung selber” (Kreutzer 1977, 251) (as old as skaldic poetry itself). Even so, this analogue, which is in line with a traditional skaldic intertext, may also have been inspired by more recent influences, for instance from Latinate texts about poetry which elaborate on a similar imagery.⁸⁶

 Lofkǫstr can refer both to a pile of wood or a cairn of stones in the form of a hǫrgr (Clunies Ross 1989, 143), which either way implies that the poem is compared to a built construction.  For the meaning of the kenning bragar tún (lit., town of song) as ‘mind, memory’, see Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1969, 645. Peter Hallberg mentions indigenous frames of interpretations of the stanza, but acknowledges that it looks like “Egil’s own counterpart to the Horatian monumentum aere perennius – a monument more enduring than bronze” (Hallberg 1975, 135).  According to Tom Grant, this imagery cannot only be understood as skaldic metaphor but leads into a complex semantic field which has shaped ideas about creativity in the Viking Age and the medieval North (2020).  Kreutzer continues to say, however, that: “Die Ausgestaltung dieses Bildkomplexes in der besonderen Weise einer fast allegorischen Gleichsetzung von Dichtung mit einem Gebäude

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In critical scholarship, attention has not often been paid to the circumstance that the invention of poetry involves inner processing (or crafting) and that it depends upon premeasuring tasks in the poet’s memory, something which is, however, highlighted in Egill’s poems. The various elements in Egill’s poems, the focus on the breast and on inner processing of words, as well as the analogues between poet/poetry and craftsman/built construction, look similar in important ways to the vocabulary and the memory concepts that are described, for instance in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s early thirteenth-century book Poetria Nova (The New Poetry). I have mentioned that the literary context of Hǫfuðlausn may allude to the rhetorical and oratory principles described in classical texts. The rhetorical art and its methods were increasingly included in commentaries and other scholarly works in the thirteenth century, to the extent that the distribution of the ideas about its various canons, including memoria, experienced a revival and a ‘medievalization’ at that time (see Yates 1974, 54– 56; Carruthers 1990, 122– 155). One of the medieval authors who transmitted ideas deriving from these texts, particularly Rhetorica ad Herennium, was exactly Geoffrey of Vinsauf.⁸⁷ While Poetria Nova might have become known in Iceland only in the fourteenth century, as suggested by Peter Foote, it is nonetheless able to explain some of the principles upon which the description of Egill’s poetic endeavours and his performance can be understood. In the part of Poetria Nova that deals with delivery (pronuntiatio), Geoffrey lets it be known that the different rhetorical canons must work together: “Sic simul ergo / Omnia concurrant, inventio commoda, sermo / Continuus, series urbana, retentio firma” (Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova, 1923, p. 260) (“So, then, let all be in harmony: suitable invention, flowing expression, polished development, firm retention in memory”) (Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, 1967, p. 91), a description that seems to cover Egill’s successful creation, memorization and delivery of Hǫfuðlausn. Geoffrey goes deeper into the mnemonic dimensions of poetic invention and deals with elements that seem to be hinted at in the depiction of Egill’s poetic practise. Geoffrey elaborates on a

gehört dagegen offenbar einer späteren Epoche an” (Kreutzer 1977, 251) (The design of this image-pattern in the specific form of an allegorical comparison of poetry with a building in contrast belongs to a later period). I am not quite sure which period Kreutzer refers to, but his comment seems to acknowledge the possibility that assimilations between local and foreign traditions could have been taking place.  Rhetorica ad Herennium was in the Middle Ages ascribed to Cicero, hence the references to Cicero in Geoffrey’s work (see e. g. Nims 1967, 10). Rita Copeland classifies Geoffrey’s work as part of the “twelfth- and thirteenth-century explosion of the ars poetriae” (2016, 225), all of which drew on ancient traditions of grammar and rhetoric.

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craftsman imagery when describing composition and invention, using what has been conceptualized as an ‘architect trope’ or ‘builder-trope’ (Carruthers 1993). He says that a poet acts as someone who lays the foundation for a house, but that, for the poet, this activity is a mental rather than a physical thing (Poetria Nova, 1923, p. 198). The foundation is laid out on a mental chart, which defines the limits of the construction. This premeasuring of the foundation happens in the mind before the structure comes to the tongue and the lips, and the poet’s hand should not be too quick to take up the pen, nor should the tongue be impatient to speak. There is a focus on the importance of internal pondering and on ruminating on a topic before using the tongue or the hand, which underscores that the process of poetic invention follows a procedure where the whole work is carefully prepared in the mind. The poet thus builds, first, with the mind’s hand and, next, with the body’s hand.⁸⁸ It is noteworthy that Geoffrey does not distinguish sharply between oral and written invention; he talks about the tongue and speaking, as well as the hand and the pen, and he seems to direct himself both at those who speak and those who write poetry, an assessment that may be relevant in the environments in which Egils saga Skallagrímssonar was conceived and transmitted, where we can expect that skaldic poetry was becoming as much a written as an oral feature. These points are enlightening and can help us to further interpret the saga’s presentation of Egill as a memory expert. Firstly, we note that Egill’s poetic invention involved inner processing within the breast (which is expressed in a vocabulary that looks somewhat similar to Geoffrey’s, compare Egill’s ‘the hiding place of thought’ to Geoffrey’s ‘the mind’s secret recess’). Secondly, Egill’s poems only come into existence as spoken words after a preliminary stage of careful planning, as when – according to Arinbjarnarkviða (sts. 15 and 25) – the poet begins his creative task by refining the raw timber and only secondarily presents it to his audience (magar Þóris > Thorir’s kinsmen). And thirdly, we notice that Egill’s poetic inventions are expressed using a material imagery that presents him as a craftsman or a builder (in Sonatorek) and his poem as a piece of construction work (in Arinbjarnarkviða). The lofkǫstr mentioned in Arinbjarnarkviða does not compare the poem with a built structure in the form of a house, which is often the case in a Latinate, Christian tradition, but it nonetheless describes the poem by refe-

 Mary Carruthers treats this passage from the prologue of Geoffrey’s work in more than one context. She mentions that Geoffrey evokes metaphors of memory, ‘the mind’s secret recess’ and ‘the breast’s stronghold’ when describing poetic activities (Carruthers 1993, 889), and she and Jan Ziolkowski argue that the material vocabulary used to express poetic composition “[…] – the measuring line, the encircling compass, the map, the fabric of the building – are not just pleasant metaphors, but evoke specific categories of collecting and invention devices” (Carruthers and Ziolkowski 2004, 6).

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rence to a vocabulary that sees the poet as a craftsman or a builder.⁸⁹ I do not necessarily suggest a direct influence from Poetria Nova on Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, but this Latin text still helps us identify ideas about memory that may have influenced the way that Egill is portrayed in the various manuscripts. It is likely that the literary characterization of Egill – i. e. the construction of this mnemonic expert from the past – evokes an intertext that goes beyond the ancient Norse (skaldic) tradition and is inspired by and aligned with ideas from medieval intellectual culture.⁹⁰ At least, the image that is constructed of Egill as a memory expert does not contradict ideas described in a work like Geoffrey’s. In Chapter 2, the literal references to memory (minni) and the activity of remembering (muna) allowed us to draw some of the broad outlines of medieval Norse memory culture, mostly because they document the fact that writers actually talked about this resource and seem to have been concerned with memory and memorization. This chapter has dug deeper and the examination of the metaphorical language in selected texts illustrates in more detail how memory was understood. It is sometimes said that Old Norse-Icelandic texts use a less florid and colourful language than texts that were written in other parts of Europe. Even so, they include both explicit references and indirect allusions to memory, enough to provide us with more information about the perceptions of this resource, its characteristics and contexts as well as its ramified meanings in this particular historical and cultural context. The examples that have been provided here indicate that memory could take on many faces. It emerges that memory is often located in the breast, alternatively in the heart (and more seldom in the brain), where it materializes as domesticated abodes of different kinds, whether taking the form of a field, a spacious location at the bottom of the sea, a hiding place or something else. Semantic patterns, that may at first glance seem far removed from our topic, have been brought into contact with memory. The apian trope, it seems, highlights memory and/as learning, suggesting that studying was compared to bees’ activities and was a matter of collecting knowledge (nectar), of storing and blending it and of producing oral and written discourses (honey) out of this imported knowledge. The alimentary trope suggests that memorization was

 The vocabulary used in Poetria Nova, and the idea that the poet acted like a builder, is evoked more directly in an Old Norse text that is older than Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, namley Leiðarvísan (Guidance) (dated to the second half of the twelfth century). In st. 43, the author, perhaps the abbot at Munkaþverá, Nikulás Bergsson, used the wording “setta grundvǫll” (Leiðarvísan, 2007, p. 138) (establish the foundation) for his poetic endavour.  Torfi Tulinius has pointed to the possible Christian intertext for the second half of Sonatorrek st. 5, suggesting that it alludes to the biblical story of Moses (Numbers, ch. 17) (Torfi Tulinius 2009, 709 – 710).

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a matter of internalizing knowledge through digestion and rumination. One of the important conclusions to be drawn from the memory vocabulary in the texts is that memory was not simply regarded as a storage containing fixed traces of words, things and concepts, but as a voluminous inner space where knowledge could be made familiar and processed, even transformed and reproduced and in which invention could take place.

4 Technologies 4.1 Mnemonic Methods This chapter draws attention to the various technologies that were used to enhance memory. It examines how it was possible to qualify as minnigr (of good memory) and which technologies people with extraordinarily good memories may have used. It is not possible to reconstruct all relevant mnemonic techniques that were known in the learned communities; partly because we cannot enter the minds of the people of the past, partly because mnemonic devices of different types could have merged in a melting pot of not always distinguishable techniques; some would have been used more or less unconsciously while others required special training and focused awareness, some would have deep roots in tradition while others would have been of more recent date. Still, in this chapter, I examine relevant mnemonic devices that were common in European tradition, and I begin with a presentation of principles that are described in a selection of Latin texts from classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. The purpose of this section is to provide a theoretical background upon which we can grasp the operational dimension of memory in medieval Norse culture. The reflections on the Latin traditions will not only help us understand medieval Norse memory cultures in general terms, but also more specifically to locate the mnemonic dimensions of the Old Norse-Icelandic texts, that is, to steer our attention towards places in the texts that reflect or allude to memory. I then return to the learned cultures in Iceland in order to examine medieval Norse engagements with memory in more detail. In this context, I point to historical contacts between the learned environments in the North and those in Europe. Finally, I continue the investigation of the Prose Edda in the light of mnemonic technologies, suggesting that points of intersection exist between the theories explained in the Latin texts and the Norse texts, exemplified through Gylfaginning. The seminal studies of Frances Yates and Mary Carruthers have dealt with the principles and theories of memory that circulated in learned cultures in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Frances Yates has examined the developments and changes in memory cultures from the Greco-Roman world throughout the medieval period and into the Renaissance, when texts that had otherwise existed in scattered form became more widely distributed (Yates 1974, 105). Mary Carruthers has in multiple studies argued that memory and mnemonic competences had a firm position among learned activities in the Middle Ages (Carruthers 1990, 1993, 1998, 2006). As mentioned above, the most important texts from the ancient world in this regard are by Cicero (De oratore and De inventione), Quintilian https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-007

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and the anonymous author of Rhetorica ad Herennium. They consider, first of all, mnemonic principles as tools that can assist the remembrance of oral speeches and as cues that make it possible to record in the mind details of, say, legal cases (Yates 1974, 5 – 6 and 12). But Cicero and Quintilian also widen the perspective and consider memory a resource that can contain all learning areas and all human knowledge, that is, an encompassing storehouse, something that widens the function of memory considerably (Zinn 1974, 216). The treatments of memory by Christian authors, for instance, by Augustine and Hugh of St. Victor are preoccupied with mnemonic technologies, too, but in addition to their interest in memory’s practical dimensions, they viewed memory as being entangled with philosophy and theology and they added to it a contemplative and metaphysical element. Like their predecessors, the medieval writers saw memory as a storeroom of wisdom. The texts by Roman and medieval authors illustrate that memory, which was ingrained in educational activities throughout the period in question, was adapted to different contexts and the growing book culture. But despite having different emphases and contexts, the texts from these different cultures circle around similar key principles; for example, they agree that memory depends upon spaces and strong images and that it relies on orderly organization. These focus areas seem to be universally connected to mnemonic technologies. Moreover, as already indicated in the previous chapters, the metaphors they use presuppose identical assumptions, one of the ideas that transcend the whole period, yet is given different degrees of emphasis, being memory’s comparability to a storehouse of wisdom.

4.1.1 The Place-Image Method So, how is memory described? The texts from classical antiquity make a distinction between two types of memory, ‘natural memory’ and ‘artificial memory’. The first is the memory that an individual is born with, while the other is the product of an art that can be learned through training and discipline. One is natural, while the other requires the acquisition of special skills ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 16, pp. 206 – 207). It is the second type, the one that presupposes that certain methods can strengthen the natural disposition of memory, which is relevant in our case. This art is divided into the two different sorts of memory that have been mentioned already, memoria verborum (memory for words) and memoria rerum (memory for things), of which the first has similarities with rote memory, while the other allows for a creative recall which reassembles or re-collects bundles of information from memory. The existence of one form of memory does not exclude the other, and an attempt to understand

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memory and memorization in the context of medieval Norse literature must take into account both a type of memory that is very precise in word by word repetition and a form of memory that retrieves from the mind clusters of themes, arguments and concepts. The works by Cicero and the anonymous author of Rhetorica ad Herennium are mostly concerned with memoria rerum ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 24, pp. 222– 224. See also Coleman 1992, 40 – 41).⁹¹ Skaldic poetry, as mentioned, may have been considered a word by word form of memory, but the devices that are investigated in the following pages, and of which we see reminiscences in the Norse texts, too, draw attention to a type of memorization that looks more similar to a memoria rerum. But how, more precisely, does a trained memory work? What are the tricks and cues which are able through vivid mental operations to support the natural disposition of memory? Characteristically, according to the rhetorical texts, memory is spatially and visually constituted and evolves around two main principles: places (loci) and images (imagines). Technically speaking, a mnemonic expert first envisages spaces in the mind and next creates mental images that represent the words or things to be remembered, which are then placed at various locations in the spaces in the mind. When the recollection process starts, or when the mnemonic apparatus is activated, the expert returns in his or her mind to these loci which serve as repositories of knowledge. Mnemonic locations can take different forms, such as houses or buildings, with intercolumnar spaces, recesses and arches, they can take the form of travel routes or city topographies, or they can be imagined places ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 16, pp. 208 – 209; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IV, 1959 – 1963, book 11, ch. 2, pp. 222– 223). However, spacious architectonic constructions are preferred: Loca deligunt quam maxime spatiosa, multa varietate signata, domum forte magnam et in multos diductam recessus […] Primum sensum vestibulo quasi adsignant, secundum, puta, atrio, tum impluvia circumeunt, nec cubiculis modo aut exedris, sed statuis etiam similibusque per ordinem committunt. (Some place is chosen of the largest possible extent and characterized by the utmost possible variety, such as a spacious house divided into a number of rooms […] The first thought is placed, as it were, in the forecourt; the second, let us say, in the living room; the remainder are placed in due order all round the impluvium [cistern] and entrusted not merely to bedrooms and parlours, but even to the care of statues and the like.) (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IV, 1959 – 1963, book 11, ch. 2, pp. 220 – 223)

 See, however, Quintilian, who treats the remembrance of words with more care than the others (Zinn 1974, 214).

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The texts give additional instructions. For example, when multiple mnemonic spaces have been installed in the mind, every fifth one of them must be marked out, for instance with a golden hand, as this will make it easier to find a particular location again. The mnemonic spaces must differ in form and nature and there must be an appropriate distance between them. They must be of moderate size; if they are too large, the images will become vague in front of the inner eye, and if they are too small, it will become difficult to arrange the images in the locations without mixing them up. The locations should not be too crowded and a certain distance should be kept between the images; they ought not to be too bright nor too dim, and the amount of light allowed must be to the benefit of vision and make an easy and unhindered visual perception possible ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 19, pp. 212– 213). The person recalling the building that has been prepared in his or her mind opens the door to the first room and can now take an imagined walk through its various rooms and levels. According to Cicero, the order of the places is crucial, as tidy arrangement will preserve the order of the things remembered in the best way possible (Cicero, De oratore, I, 1959, book 2, ch. 86, pp. 466 – 467). But a well-functioning memory is more than orderly organized places, it requires the ability to associate from each location to the next and to move from one to the other. Tellingly, and hinting at its preference of built constructions, the place-image method has been called ‘architectural mnemonics’ (Carruthers 1990, 71). The other key feature of a trained memory, the mnemonic image, is described as well. Such images need not be realistic visual representations – quite the contrary, the more extraordinary an image is, the more successfully it will become fixed in memory and the more effectively it will support the recollecting process. It is an advantage if an image is striking, bizarre or dramatic, and the texts mention that imagines agentes (images that move) are particularly effective: Nam si quas res in vita videmus parvas, usitatas, cotidianas, meminisse non solemus, propterea quod nulla nova nec admirabili re commovetur animus; at si quid videmus aut audimus egregie turpe, inhonestum, inusitatum, magnum, incredibile, ridiculum, id diu meminisse consuevimus […] Imagines igitur nos in eo genere constituere oportebit quod genus in memoria diutissime potest haerere. Id accidet si quam maxime notatas similitudines constituemus; si non multas nec vagas, sed aliquid agentes imagines ponemus; si egregiam pulcritudinem aut unicam turpitudinem eis adtribuemus; si aliquas exornabimus, ut si coronis aut veste purpurea, quo nobis notatior sit similitudo; aut si qua re deformabimus, ut si cruentam aut caeno oblitam aut rubrica delibutam inducamus, quo magis insignita sit forma, aut ridiculas res aliquas imaginibus adtribuamus, nam ea res quoque faciet ut facilius meminisse valeamus. (When we see in everyday life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvellous. But

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if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable, or laughable, that we are likely to remember a long time […] We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the memory. And we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks, for example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily.) ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 22, pp. 218 – 221)

Essentially, mnemonic images are carefully constructed knots of bundled knowledge from where associations intersect and branch off. The irregularities and disfigurations imbedded into the images guarantee their ability to penetrate the mind with power, evoke affect and call up emotional reactions, all to the benefit of mnemonic association. The character of the images suggests that memory calls on the imagination, and fundamentally, a relocation to memory often implies that attention is turned to a realm in the mind where reality has been tweaked. The ability to visualize images is crucial to mnemonic endeavours; things remembered are essentially perceived visually, even to the extent that memorization and visualization at times conflate and merge into one and the same thing. Strong images can stir emotions, reminding us that the techniques described in the Latin texts are not terse and dry, nor irrelevant to the individual’s own life (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, II, 1959 – 1963, book 6, ch. 2, pp. 432– 435).⁹² The Roman texts have a didactic dimension and give advice on how mnemonic principles can be taught to students. The instructor should tell the student about the general methods only, but not provide the candidate with too many specific examples ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 23, pp. 222– 223). Not everyone makes associations in the same way, and what is distinctive and conspicuous to one is normal and average to another; thus, it should be up to the individual student to create images, that is, to give shape to the mnemonic principles according to his or her own preferences. It is a further advantage if the material that goes into the creation of mnemonic locations and composite images

 A memory is not detached from affects and emotions. The techniques and templates that enhance the mnemonic process can be learned from others, but their efficiency will always be sparked by the individual’s own experiences. Thus, “Memories themselves are affects in the soul and the mind. In ancient philosophy, that property classified memory with emotions and meant that each memory involves some kind of emotion; each memory is thus to an important degree a physiological, bodily phenomenon” (Carruthers and Ziolkowski 2004, 8). The recognition that memory is a bodily and emotional phenomenon goes back to ancient Greek tradition.

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stems from well-known surroundings. A personal engagement is – it seems – necessary for a successful administration of this kind of mnemonic technology, and a basic principle seems to be that activating the student’s own experiences is to the benefit of the associative process. The texts note as well that, although theoretical knowledge about the methods is important, exercise, industry and devotion are crucial for someone wishing to learn this method. As I discuss later in this chapter, a text such as the Prose Edda provides us with literary renderings of, not only one singular locus, but several different ones and it contains what I call large-scale mnemonic topographies, which present to its readers various mnemonic locations, all decorated with images. I anticipate this analytic section with a short reference to the detailed and carefully described story about the mead of poetry, which – as mentioned in the previous chapter – includes many visually striking, and basically odd, elements. This myth conjures up a colourful image of Óðinn in front of the reader’s eyes, presenting him in the transformed form of a spitting and excreting flying eagle. This eagle image looks extraordinary, it is actively moving and, due to its bizarre details, it has the power to emblazon itself on the mind. Contemplation upon this image enables remembrance of the numerous details that are associated with this particular story. It is likely that – in this composite image – we find a literary representation of a mnemonic image. It is noteworthy that the flying eagle moves through a spatial structure, and that its movements are kept within the limits of this structure, which takes the form of different lands and their borders, that is, a mythic geography that consists of, for example, mountains inhabited by giants and the land of the Æsir. This geography functions as a grid upon which the image is located; it is a spatial structure that demarcates its operations.⁹³ Returning to the Latin texts, to someone not acquainted with the place-image method, the principles may seem complicated and difficult to handle, an opinion expressed already by the rhetoricians’ own contemporaries (Cicero, De oratore, I, 1959, book 2, ch. 88, pp. 470 – 471).⁹⁴ But according to Cicero and the author of

 The Prose Edda’s version of the myth of the mead of poetry lists some of the poetry-kennings that are explained by this myth (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 5). Kennings can in themselves be considered as mnemonic devices, or as verbal knots of knowledge and composites of stories that people can associate from.  Cicero’s methods were criticized by some. Julius Victor says about the main principles of memoria (loci and imagines) that they were not of any use to him. Centuries later, Alcuin neglects memoria and describes it only very briefly and, when asked how memory can improve, his first, very laconic, answer is that the students must avoid drunkenness (Yates 1974, 19 and 53).

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Rhetorica ad Herennium, the process whereby an individual re-collects images from spatial locations in the mind is comparable to the process of reading: Quemadmodum igitur qui litteras sciunt possunt id quod dictator eis scribere, et recitare quod scripserunt, item qui mnemonica didicerunt possunt quod audierunt in locis conlocare et ex his memoriter pronuntiare. Nam loci cerae aut chartae simillimi sunt, imagines litteris, dispositio et conlocatio imaginum scripturae, pronuntiatio lectioni. (Those who know the letters of the alphabet can thereby write out what is dictated to them and read aloud what they have written. Likewise, those who have learned mnemonics can set in backgrounds what they have heard, and from these backgrounds deliver it by memory. For the backgrounds are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading.) ([Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1954, book 3, ch. 17, pp. 208 – 209)

The spaces (loci) fulfil the same function as tablets or parchment and mnemonic images (imagines) are comparable to the letters inscribed on this surface. It thus appears that, when images are arranged properly, they can be ‘read’ in the same way as a literate person will decode letters written on a tablet or on parchment. This comparison reminds us that the place-image method was used in a context where people were also aware of the technology of writing. The mnemonic principles described in the Roman texts are not unique to their culture, nor can can they be considered a European phenomenon only. Such methods as carefully organized spatialization and inner preparation of images have a much wider application (Lyle 1993; Gísli Sigurðsson 2018b). The main achievement of the authors of classical antiquity, who presented universal principles in the particular context, or straight-jacket, of rhetoric, is that they described and explained mnemonic methods (and lived in a culture that prioritized and valued them), not that they invented them. When everything is considered, these texts are useful for our purposes because they are early, and in later times influential, written sources to traditions of memory in European cultures. Also, the Roman rhetoricians themselves do not make any claims to be the inventors of these principles. In De oratore Cicero refers to sources of inspiration among Greek predecessors and mentions Simonides of Ceos as the founder of the art of memory (Cicero, De oratore, I, 1959, book 2, ch. 88, pp. 464– 469).⁹⁵ Quintilian, for his part,

 It has been argued that ideas about memory changed in the transition from Greek to Roman culture. While writers in the ancient Greek world saw memory as a resource that pervaded multiple spheres of human life and thinking (including ideas about divinely inspired memory, poetic access to the divine truth through and by memory and so on) (Pruchnic and Lacey 2011, 3), Roman writers were inclined to see memory more narrowly in the light of the art of memory, that is, as a technology. For this development of memory from the Greek to the Roman

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refers to the universality of the mnemonic principles and mentions that it is a general inclination of people to attach memory to spaces, a comment that indicates that memory is constituted spatially, so to speak, by its nature, not because a particular culture has this preference: Ex hoc Simonides facto notatum videtur, iuvari memoriam signatis animo sedibus, idque credere suo quisque experimento potest. Nam cum in loca aliqua post tempus reversi sumus, non ipsa agnoscimus tantum, sed etiam, quae in his fecerimus, reminiscimur personaeque subeunt, nonnunquam tacitae quoque cogitationes in mentem revertuntur. Nata est igitur, ut in plerisque, ars ab experimento. (This achievement of Simonides appears to have given rise to the observation that it is an assistance to the memory if localities are sharply impressed upon the mind, a view the truth of which everyone may realise by practical experiment. For when we return to a place after a considerable absence, we not merely recognise the place itself, but remember things that we did there, and recall the persons whom we met and even the unuttered thoughts which passed through our minds when we were there before. Thus, as in most cases, art originates in experiment.) (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IV, 1959 – 1963, book 11, ch. 2, pp. 220 – 221)

This passage touches on memory’s position between nature and art, suggesting that whatever is done to stretch and enhance memory, these attempts will build upon natural dispositions. On another note, this passage by Quintilian suggests the possibility that, when someone returns to a place where he or she has been before, it is not only the deliberately stored things and words that are recalled, also ‘unuttered thoughts’ may appear in the mind. This opens up a dimension of memory that is otherwise not elaborated on in the Roman texts, namely the possibility that thoughts and memories that have not yet been consciously formed can appear at the mere sight of a specific location. It indicates an awareness of the fact that places function as triggers of memories (including memories that an individual has forgotten or is unaware of).

4.1.2 Early Christian and Medieval Mnemonics The Church Father Augustine represents the transition from antiquity to the Christian world. He reflects on memory, too, and it is not least his work Confessiones (Confessions) that is a rich source to medieval memory cultures. Otto Gerhard Oexle says that: “Memoria ist das durchgehende Grundthema dieses Buchs. Augustins Confessiones sammeln wie in einem Brennpunkt alles, was in world (where memory changed from an all-encompassing cultural resource to a technologized craft), see Detienne 1996, 110 – 111.

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der christlichen und nicht-christlichen Spätantike zu diesem Thema gesagt werden konnte” (1994, 303) (Memoria is the recurring main theme of this book. Augustine’s Confessiones gathers as in one focal point all that in Christian and nonChristian late antiquity could be said). How closely Augustine depended on the rhetorical text books’ treatments of memory is debated (see Coleman 1992, 13 and 90 – 91).⁹⁶ But his ideas about memory’s basic constitution leave the same overall impression as do the Roman texts; he, too, for instance, is concerned with memory’s spatial dimensions. But Augustine’s intentions are different from those of the rhetoricians; while they focus on how to be able to deliver eloquent speeches from memory in public, Augustine regarded memory, at one and the same time, as a very personal and a metaphysical and philosophical resource. With him, memory becomes a theological matter. Here follows a passage from Confessiones, which bundles together much useful information about memory: […] et venio in campos et lata praetoria memoriae, ubi sunt thesauri innumerabilium imaginum de cuiuscemodi rebus sensis invectarum. ibi reconditum est, quidquid etiam cogitamus, vel augendo vel minuendo vel utcumque variando ea quae sensus attigerit, et si quid aliud commendatum et repositum est, quod nondum absorbuit et sepelivit oblivio. ibi quando sum, posco, ut proferatur quidquid volo, et quaedam statim prodeunt, quaedam requiruntur diutius et tamquam de abstrusioribus quibusdam receptaculis eruuntur, quaedam catervatim se proruunt et, dum aliud petitur et quaeritur, prosiliunt in medium quasi dicentia: “ne forte nos sumus?” et abigo ea manu cordis a facie recordationis meae, donec enubiletur quod volo atque in conspectum prodeat ex abditis. alia faciliter atque inperturbata serie sicut poscuntur suggeruntur, et cedunt praecedentia consequentibus, et cedendo conduntur, iterum cum voluero processura. quod totum fit, cum aliquid narro memoriter. Vbi sunt omnia distincte generatimque servata […] (And I come into these fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where the treasures of innumerable forms brought into it from these things that have been perceived by the senses be hoarded up. There is laid up whatsoever besides we think, either by way of enlarging or diminishing, or any other ways varying of those things which the senses hath come at: yea, and if there be anything recommended to it and there laid up, which forgetfulness hath not swallowed up and buried. To this treasury whenever I have recourse, I demand to have anything brought forth whatsoever I will: whereupon some things come out presently, and others must be longer enquired after, which are fetched, as it were, out of some more secret receptacles: other things rush out in troops; and while a quite contrary thing is desired and required, they start forth, as who should say: Lest peradventure it should be we that are called for. These I drive away with the hand of my heart from the face of my remembrance; until that at last be discovered which I desire, appearing in sight out of its hidden cells. Other things are supplied more easily and without disorder, just as they are desired: former notions giving way to the following, by which giving way are they laid up again, to be forthcoming

 On Augustine’s debt to classical philosophy and the Latin rhetorical tradition, see Hochschild 2012, 2– 3 and 11– 66.

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whenever I will have them.Which takes place all together, whenas I repeat anything by heart. Where are all things distinctly and under general heads preserved […]) (Augustinus Aurelius, Confessions, II, 1961, book 10, ch. 8, pp. 92– 95)

This quotation revolves around topics already well-known to this book, such as the relationship between memory and the heart (cf. the phrase ‘the hand of the heart’ (manu cordis)) and the metaphor of the storeroom (thesaurus). Augustine envisages memory as containing fields and spacious palaces – and later he talks about memory as a huge court – where images in the form of sense impressions exist in abundance. His description very illustratively insinuates how he enters and places himself within these locations and from this position actively calls on the things stored there, giving the impression that he searches both remote and nearby places, and that some information appears with more ease than other. He also repeats the necessity of organizing things in separate and orderly organized sections, confirming that order is a key feature of memory. As indicated in the passage, his memory storage, on the one hand, takes the form of a recognizable and, for him as an individual, well-known location. But on the other hand, when he says that some things are stored in ‘hidden cells’ and ‘secret receptacles’, memory is presented as an almost mysterious space, which becomes even more obvious elsewhere in the text (see Augustinus Aurelius, Confessions, II, 1961, book 10, ch. 10, pp. 104– 105). Apart from being a storage resource of things that are knowingly and deliberately allowed to enter the personal storage, some items, including abstract concepts that cannot be grasped by the senses, have entered this thinker’s memory without him being aware of it, which indicates that human memory intersects with the metaphysical world (see Oexle 1994, 303 – 306). Early medieval ways of thinking about memory are perhaps best illustrated with reference to Hugh of St.Victor, whose texts give crucial insights into medieval memory theories. The works from his hand that are of greatest interest from a memory perspective are De archa Noe mystica (known as Libellus de formatione arche (A Little Book About Constructing Noah’s Ark)), the preface to De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum and sections in the encyclopaedic work Didascalicon. Hugh’s debt to the classical art of memory is debated. Grover Zinn has suggested tentatively that, despite the general conviction that the works by Cicero and Quintilian on mnemonics were not widely known at this time, there are strong arguments that Hugh was one of the first authors after the fourth century to adapt the classical art to medieval uses (Zinn 1974). Mary Carruthers treats Hugh’s mnemonic writings in detail, however, suggesting that such key elements as the space-image method, i. e. ‘architectural mnemonics’, saw a revival only in the

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thirteenth century (Carruthers 1990, 71).⁹⁷ In any case, Hugh’s intentions differed from those of the Roman authors. He was concerned with remembrance of the scriptures and placed in a situation where learning was deeply concerned with remembrance of this type of book knowledge.⁹⁸ Of importance here is that Hugh emphasizes the relevance of orderly organization and the usefulness of dividing memory into compartments, just as he repeats the storehouse-metaphor. He writes: In thesauris sapientiae variae sunt opum species et in archa cordis tui conditoria multa. Alibi aurum et alibi argentum, alibi lapides preciosi disponuntur. Dispositio ordinis illustratio est cognitionis. Dispone et distingue singula locis suis, seorsum ista et seorsum illa, ut scias quid ibi et quid ibi collocatum sit. Confusio ignorantiae et oblivionis mater est, discretio autem intelligentiam illuminat et memoriam confirmat. (Hugh of St.Victor, De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, 1943, p. 488) (In the treasure house of wisdom are various sorts of wealth, and many filling-places in the storehouse of your heart. In one place is put gold, in another silver, in another precious jewels. Their orderly arrangement is clarity of knowledge. Dispose and separate each single thing into its own place, this into its and that into its, so that you may know what has been placed here and what there. Confusion is the mother of ignorance and forgetfulness, but orderly arrangement illuminates the intelligence and secures memory.) (Hugh of St. Victor, The Three Best Memory Aids for Learning History, 2004, p. 33)

The passage declares that the wealth of material kept in memory requires systematization, and it emphasizes that an effective and operational memory is never undifferentiated. Confusion is a real threat to memory. Also, in line with Augustine (who talks about the ‘hand of the heart’), Hugh places this storeroom, memory, in the heart, giving a peek into the wider background on which the cardiac tradition that is documented in the Old Norse-Icelandic texts rests. Moreover, Hugh combines memory to a storeroom of wisdom (cf. the Latin the-

 Rita Copeland has argued that the French and Parisian schools revisited works by Cicero and Rhetorica ad Herennium in the twelfth century. She says: “The twelfth century witnessed the first major re-evaluations of the Ciceronian rhetoric, the De inventio and the Rhetorica ad Herennium, since the fourth century. Rhetoric figured prominently in the expanded curricula of the northern cathedral schools, first in Rhineland and then in the French cathedrals of Rheims, Laon, Chartres, and Paris” (2016, 221). Copeland’s study does not specifically concentrate on Hugh of St. Victor’s, nor on the French schools’, interest in memoria. It nevertheless calls attention to the distribution of texts that, among other topics, contain treatments of mnemonic principles.  As noted by Grover Zinn, Hugh’s writings mark a point of transition where memory is no longer so intimately connected to orators and oral contexts only (as in the texts from classical antiquity) but becomes linked to contexts where people had to remember what was written in books (see Zinn 1974, 218 – 219).

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saurus sapientiae), emphasizing that memory is not only a repository from where arguments of relevance in a single matter or case can be recollected; its very object and reason for being is wisdom in a much wider sense. Reminding us of the religious-moral layers that are attached to memory, to Hugh the search for wisdom aims at knowledge of divine realities and is, as expressed by Grover Zinn, a pursuit for the Good. To remember is to be transformed, as to “impress wisdom on the mind is to participate in the goodness, immortality, and incorruptibility of Wisdom” (Zinn 1974, 216). One of the differences between ancient Roman and medieval mnemonic cultures is that medieval writers are more inclined to evoke mnemonic locations that are imaginative and based on their book knowledge (see e. g. Carruthers and Ziolkowski 2004, 20).⁹⁹ Hugh of St. Victor’s use of Noah’s ark is an excellent example of how an imaginative spatial model deriving from the Bible can function as a mnemonic location. We note that the ark has a double-sided purpose; it is a technical-practical aid, a mnemonic location that will support memory, and at the same time it is a meditational cue that will facilitate a spiritual experience and help to impress divine wisdom on the mind. Hugh underlines that there is no need to learn unless this learning is remembered, and in Libellus de formatione arche he lifts the veil on the structure that he carries in his own mind. He mentions lines, geometrical forms and colours, he describes the interior structure of this location, the bow, the walls, the columns, the rooms and the twelve ladders – each with ten steps – that is placed in its corners. Noticeably, the ark does not stand on its own, but is combined with other graphics. First, it is inserted onto a circular structure, which displays graphics known from the tradition of the mappa mundi (world map), and next – in the last part of the Libellus de formatione arche – the whole complex is enclosed by concentric circles, which represent the air and the ether, that is, the whole universe (see Zinn 1974, 229; Carruthers and Weiss 2004, 41; Kupfer 2016, 62). A construction such as this one is more complex than the mnemonic spaces that are described in the classical texts, in part because it is multi-layered and combines different formats and graphics. But it also has a different purpose, because it is constructed to help the comprehension of a vastness of divine knowledge, ranging from biblical stories over world history and

 Mary Carruthers points out another change from the classical world to the Middle Ages as well, namely that the conceptualization of the locus changes from being a space “in which perspective changes as one ‘walks’ through it mentally, to a two-dimensional cell within a grid on a flat surface” (Carruthers 1990, 129). In line with this, medieval thinkers are inclined more often to use abstract or graphic structures, such as diagrams and geometrical forms, as mnemonic aids. A difference arises here between mnemonic locations that have depth and graphics or diagrams that are viewed frontally.

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world geography to the whole universe. It illustrates that memory is at times considered a container of all things. When it comes to the educational aspect, we get the same impression here as we get from the texts from the classical world, and Hugh’s wording, too, suggests that the mnemonic locations are personal and not always consistent (Carruthers 1990, 233 – 234; Carruthers and Ziolkowski 2004, 42). Thus, mnemonic locations and structures were not meant to be tediously copied, but served as models that could be elaborated upon or adapted according to personal preferences. Hugh of St.Victor’s image of the ark has been seen as an example of the genre of the Latin pictura (picture), which was an important component of medieval mnemonic practices (Carruthers 1990, 231– 239; 1998, 81).¹⁰⁰ A ‘picture’ is a structure that makes it easier to gather knowledge, to file it and to organize it in an orderly manner. It can take the form of a naturalistic representation of a physical space or object – for instance an architectural building or a yard, or a ladder or a certain room in a building – or it can represent purely imagined locations, just as it can take form as a diagram or cartographic structure. Its form, in other words, can range from relatively simple locations (such as a building) over diagrams to complex and composed imaginative locations (as, for instance, Hugh of St. Victor’s ark). A ‘picture’ is not necessarily truly representational, nor is it static. It is a dynamic composite of stories, discourses and arguments, which serves not only memory but learning in a broad sense. The one who handles it acts like an engineer working with a machine: […] there are moments in the verbal pictura when the picture itself is said to move or is required to be mentally manipulated by the viewer in the same way that an instrument or engine, a machine, is manipulated for a particular task [which] makes of the author a kind of engineer and builder, engaging in mental previsualization exercises as a deliberate instrument of invention. (Carruthers 2006, 291– 292)

Thus, a ‘picture’ has wide-ranging functions; essentially, it is a rhetorical aid that can be used as an instrument of invention.

 Hugh of St. Victor adheres to this genre when he uses the word ‘picture’ (pictura) to define the ark and later manuscripts feature rubrics calling it ‘De picture Arche’, which indicate an awareness among medieval scribes of this genre, see Carruthers 2006, 292; Kupfer 2016, 62.

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4.1.3 From Roman to Norse Mnemonics The principles that I have focused on here suggest that mnemonic locations can be thought about partly as loci, i. e. as integral parts of a place-image method that are inspired by real buildings, city topographies, travel routes and so on, partly as picturae, which more often evoke also imaginative locations and graphic structures. Of these, the latter ones in particular serve wider learning purposes. The previous pages also suggest that mnemonic structures and locations, their formats, graphics and so on, were actually shared by people at the same time as they allowed for a personal touch. In other words, mnemonic structures belonged to the memory banks of individuals and they were assets of a collectively shared memory.What is more, both loci (as they are described by the Roman rhetoricians) and picturae (such as Hugh of St. Victor’s image of the ark) (and the images attached to them) draw attention to what the beholders see in front of the mind’s eye, indicating that visualization is a key aspect in these technologies. If Old Norse-Icelandic literature is approached with such mnemonic principles in mind we can be guided through the text corpus and home in on the various places where reflections of, or references to, similar features exist. Broadly speaking, literary depictions of spaces may recall what we will conceptualize as ‘mnemonic locations’, just like awkward or bizarre occurrences in the texts may draw attention to ‘mnemonic images’. Obviously, the mnemonic locations that the Norse authors used, and shared with each other, would not have been inspired by architectures and city-topographies of the ancient world but instead created from locally known constructions, such as houses, halls and churches, as well as from local environments, i. e. the experienced landscape and the travel routes and pathways that ran through it. Mnemonics cannot be seen in isolation nor as an aspect of the human mind only; they will always be coloured by and interact with a given social or cultural context. The inner spaces, or the constellation of compartments and grids in memory, are often reflections of the outside world. The memory palaces of the classical world, as well as the Roman houses’ forecourts, living rooms, cisterns, bedrooms, parlours and statues, would have been substituted by spaces well known to the Norse world. When exploited for mnemonic purposes, for instance, the various rooms in or the areas around a house, such as the farmstead (bær), the hall (hǫll or skáli), the firehouse (eldhús), the sitting room (stofa), the basement (kjallari) and so on, would offer spacious and varied background structures to which knowledge or details of a story could be attached. Importantly, the mnemonic locations that are employed in Old Norse-Icelandic texts go beyond architectures, landscapes and other naturalistic elements, featuring also imaginary and graphic structures, some of which suggest an alignment with medieval applications of the classical tradition and with the developments in

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medieval memory traditions. For instance, in the texts that deal with Norse mythology, such structures as the impressively large world tree, Yggdrasill, and the body of the primordial being, Ymir, are applied as mnemonic structures, and in some cases, graphics belonging to the medieval mappa mundi tradition are combined with mnemonic endeavours. The implementation of this type of structures in the narratives reveals a striving among the Norse authors to grasp the wisdom of the world. This tells us that they did, indeed, see mnemonic technologies as more than an aid to remember stories and bits of information but also considered memory a storehouse of wisdom, a resource that helped to synthesize a massive amount of knowledge relating to time, space and cosmology.¹⁰¹

4.2 Channels of Communication Before I apply these ideas to the Prose Edda, it is relevant to return for a moment to the learned environments in Iceland to ask whether the Norse authors knew about the theories and the advice offered in the Latin texts, and to consider whether the explanations in these texts were part of their learned baggage. Even if the Latinate texts are evoked here first and foremost as a theoretical background, and no attempt is made to define textual connections and direct loans, it does make the Latin texts and the ideas they contain even more pertinent to our investigation that the Norse authors could actually have known about some of them. To give tentative answers to this question, such issues as distribution of book knowledge,

 As already mentioned, the basic principles described in the Roman and later medieval texts are not invented by people of those periods, who elaborate on and explain artificial means that can assist a ‘natural memory’, and who insert universal principles into frameworks that are relevant in each their case. This also means that some of the techniques that are treated in this book, and which are here interpreted on the basis of the intellectual idea world of the Middle Ages, arguably have a long prehistory and might have been useful mnemonic strategies since early on. It cannot, for example, be ruled out that the images and techniques from the Roman world could already have been familiar to the Norsemen prior to the advent of Christianity, where historical contacts might have caused influences from Roman culture to have gone directly into the Nordic cultures. Another way to approach early layers of Norse memory cultures would be through comparativism and examination of international analogues. Some of the forms that are here considered to have been functioning mnemonic structures in the Middle Ages, for instance the tree Yggdrasill and the body of the primeval being Ymir, show, it has been argued, similarities with structures in other traditions (mainly European and Asian but arguably also others) (see, for instance, Andrén 2014, 34; Witzel 2017). Such historical and comparative perspectives, however, lie outside the scope of this book.

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the medieval school system and Norse visits to European schools will be touched upon. Among the important channels through which ideas of memory could have reached the North were, of course, books. We cannot know for sure which books were available in Iceland, and it is impossible to gain a full and complete overview of the Latin texts that existed in that part of the North in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Church registers, such as máldagar, give us some insights into the books that were kept in libraries and households. Otherwise, we very much have to rely on the surviving text corpus, which includes vernacular translations of Latin texts, and on scattered comments in the texts that signal knowledge of foreign book learning. Altogether, the text corpus reveals a broad knowledge of foreign books, and multiple connections with foreign literary (Latin and vernacular) traditions exist. It seems, indeed, as if Old Norse-Iceland literature was from the outset dependent upon Latin traditions (Lassen 2017). However, most often the Norse authors were neither overt nor explicit about their sources, and direct quoting and referencing were not among the literary ideals strived for, a circumstance that complicates any attempts to define source texts. What complicates this issue even more is that – compared to foreign colleagues – the Norse authors tend to express themselves in a relatively restrained discourse and their texts are often less verbose than their assumed sources. This has lead Lars Lönnroth to comment that “the absence of religious rhetoric […] does not preclude the presence of religious ideas” (1969, 12). What is said here about religious expression is true for other topics, including memory, as well, and even if there are no explicit references to a section about memory in a specific text this does not necessarily mean that the authors did not know about it. There is, to take an example, no hard evidence that texts by Cicero and Quintilian, nor the Rhetorica ad Herennium, existed in physical form in Icelandic libraries. Still, it has been suggested that Snorri Sturluson knew works by Quintilian (Halldór Halldórsson 1975, 11– 12, with notes; Foote 1984a, 257; Faulkes 1993, 66 – 67). A recent contribution to this debate has come from Mats Malm, who argues that Snorri Sturluson may have systematized the kennings of the homely tradition with an eye to some of the principles mentioned by Quintilian, most dominantly the rhetorical term nota (sign), which emphasizes the relevance of visualization and association from images (Malm 2016, 2018a; see also Malm 2009).¹⁰² In a discussion like this, we must count on the possibility that the au-

 On a related note, and based on a combination of memory theory and cognitive studies, Bergsveinn Birgisson has suggested that the bizarre imagery involved in skaldic kennings can be regarded as mnemonic in nature (2018, 652).

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thors could have known parts of these rhetorical works (and other memory-relevant texts) indirectly, that is, from other books that commented on, summarized or copied from them. Norse authors could have known about classical memoria, and the place-image method, from later rhetorical treatises or from works about poetry that referenced these principles. The texts by Cicero, Quintilian and Rhetorica ad Herennium were quoted and discussed by Martianus Capella and Fortunatianus, and the circulation of the Roman mnemonic principles in the Middle Ages often depends upon such later treatments (Yates 1974, 50; Copeland 1991, 42).¹⁰³ Just as importantly, book knowledge travelled orally within the medieval educational system and was sparked by exchanges between international institutions. Jóns saga helga, as we saw, speaks of the foreign teachers who came to the cathedral school in Hólar to teach the local priests, a task that could imply ‘teaching from the breast’, that is, the communication to others of memorized knowledge. The Latin Gesta Danorum, a text that belongs to another Nordic cathedral, namely Lund in Denmark, confirms that memorized knowledge was relied upon in learned environments. Here, Saxo Grammaticus takes for granted that book knowledge was kept in, and carried from, one geographical place to another by means of memory. Saxo uses the term breast (Latin pectus) when he talks about memory and, in the prologue, he lets it be known that he collected knowledge from, among other informants, Bishop Anders Sunesen, who had gathered a store of learning on his travels in France, Italy and Britain and carried this with him in his breast, that is, in memory (Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum. The History of the Danes, 2015, p. 5).We can envisage that people carried with them at all times ‘inner libraries’ in the form of mnemonic loci. This reference is made in a literary context where the history writer describes his sources, and – even if it may have been intended to praise and glorify the bishop and all his qualities – it reveals the fact that physical libraries containing concrete books were not the only valued resources. In actuality, many so-called foreign influences in the Old Norse text corpus may owe their existence to oral communication and access to learned people’s ‘inner libraries’.

 A later medieval work that references the classical texts’ descriptions of memoria, yet treats them quite freely, is the aforementioned Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria Nova (Poetria Nova, 1923, pp. 257– 259). Works of poetry may have been crucial for the circulation of mnemonic technologies as they often treated not only grammatica, but also the art of rhetoric (and with that possibly elements from memoria); as Ryder Patzuk-Russell says: “the extremely influential corpus of thirteenth-century poetic treatises known as the ars poetriae are fundamentally a mix of grammatical and rhetorical discourse” (Patzuk-Russell 2021, 181).

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The medieval school system, organized around the septem artes liberales (seven liberal arts) is another possible channel for the introduction of knowledge about memory theories, including classical memoria, in Iceland. Due to its relatively late integration into the textual community of the Christian Church, and due to its lack of urban environments, no major schools like those found in Europe existed in Iceland. But – as we have seen – educational centres were implemented and developed also in this part of the North, the most central ones being the schools at the cathedrals of Hólar and Skálholt. By the middle of the twelfth century, cathedrals, monasteries and churches were well established in Iceland (Frank 1909, 140; Patzuk-Russell 2021, 5). There is reason to believe that education in Iceland was in general terms carried out much as in other Christian countries (Sverrir Tómasson 1988, 34– 35; Ommundsen 2016), but that it was at the same time also adapted to local conditions (Patzuk-Russell 2021, 8 – 10, 107 and 144).¹⁰⁴ The medieval school system helped to secure a wide circulation of formalized learning connected to the trivium and the quadrivium, the first covering the arts of rhetoric, grammar and dialectics, where Cicero’s books were used as textbooks. In practice, we cannot expect that Icelandic education covered all corners of the curriculum equally well, and some of the teaching would probably have taken place without direct access to text books. Still, as Mats Malm has argued: “[…] it would be very difficult to think that Latin education in Iceland has not introduced memory and its techniques, […] as a vital prerequisite of learning” (Malm 2018a, 328). It is perhaps relevant to think about memory not foremost and only as an art or a technology that was closely connected to a specific curriculum or school, but as a competence that, in one form or the other, pervaded all types of learning situations, formalized as well as less formalized ones. As I argued in the first chapters of this book, memory and its techniques seem often to have accompanied authorship, and there is reason to believe that it was a precondition for the acquisition of nearly any kind of knowledge. This possibility is particularly relevant in the light of Mary Carruthers’ studies, which repeatedly draw attention to memory’s relevance for medieval learning activities in a broad sense (e. g. Carruthers 1990, 146). Thus, it may prove fruitful to consider memory as a widely integrated skill or craft, perhaps taught and handed on to others not only in institutional contexts (cathedral schools and monasteries) but also in less forma-

 For the implementation of the medieval educational system in schools in cathedrals and monasteries in Iceland, see Patzuk-Russell 2021, 159 – 211.

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lized learning situations, for example, within families or in other groups, where people worked with a more loosely combined set of devices.¹⁰⁵ Lastly, and to conclude the reflections on the possible channels through which knowledge about Latin memory theory broadly understood may have reached the Norse authors, I point to travelling and networks. Despite its position on the geographical periphery of Christian Europe, the Scandinavian region was connected to the wider world through travel and exchange. This reality applies to Iceland as well, which was particularly strong on international connections in the twelfth century (Gunnar Harðarson 2016a, 40 – 41). Connections existed between Icelandic learning centres and foreign environments, among others in Norway (Nidaros), Denmark (Lund), England (Lincoln) and France (Paris). Likewise, students from Iceland went to the major centres of learning in Europe. The saintbishop of Skálholt, Þorlákr Þórhallsson, who was a man of “góðrar minningar” (Þorláks saga, A-version, 2002, ch. 19, p. 85) (of good memories), studied both in Lincoln and in Paris. It is debatable which school in Paris he visited, but it is likely that he went to the cathedral school of St. Victor (Ármann Jakobsson and Clark 2013, xiii). Such a connection between Norse environments and St.Victor, a centre of medieval memory theory, is of undeniable interest. That Victorine ideas influenced Norse milieux has been recognized for a long time.¹⁰⁶ Recently, this French-Norse connection has been further scrutinized, and it has been suggested that the bishops of the Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim served as important links between Iceland and France (Eriksen 2016; Gunnar Harðarson 2016b, 133 – 136; Johansson 2018). The memory theories that derive from Parisian schools have not been targeted in these studies, but it is likely that ideas about memory that stem from these environments had an impact on the Norse groups. Victorine influence in Iceland is likely to be found in envionments that Þorlákr Þórhallsson belonged to, given his stay in Paris.¹⁰⁷ Skálholt was closely connected to another Icelandic seat of learning, namely the one at Oddi, which was owned by the powerful political leader Jón Loptsson, a sponsor of activities in the cathedral.

 Training within families and the handing over of certain competences from one generation to the next are testified for lawspeakers and poets, for whom mnemonic skills would have been crucial (see e. g. Burrows 2009, 216 with references).  Hans Bekker-Nielsen suggests that close connections existed between Norwegian and Icelandic learning centres and this school, and mentions, among other things, Hugh’s influence on homiletic literature. Hugh’s death year is mentioned in the Icelandic annals, which indicates that he was considered an authority (Bekker-Nielsen 1982, 61– 63).  Before he became bishop of Skálholt Þorlákr Þórhallsson was the first abbot of the monastery at Þykkvabœr. See Gunnar Harðarson’s discussion of the monasteries Þykkvabœr and Helgafell and their affiliation with the Order of St. Victor (2016b, 136 – 142).

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Snorri Sturluson (who was a young contemporary of Þorlákr Þórhallsson) was brought up by Jón Loptson at Oddi, a position that offered optimal conditions for exchange of knowledge inspired by these international connections.¹⁰⁸ These few reflections on the various ways in which knowledge about medieval memory theories could potentially have reached the Norse authors add further details to the characteristics of medieval Norse memory cultures. For this study, which is mainly concerned with broader theoretical issues, it is sufficient, in the end, to approach the Norse texts from a conceptual angle and to show how ideas similar to those described in foreign texts seem to have informed Old NorseIcelandic texts. However, despite not being conclusive in any way, these reflections point out that connectedness is not only a theoretical option but in fact has some root in historical reality.¹⁰⁹

4.3 Gylfaginning The Prose Edda deals with memory on several levels. It includes meta-reflections on memory in the culture of the book and it uses a metaphorical language to express how memory works. Moreover, as we shall see in the following examination of Gylfaginning, it brings together a variety of mnemonic technologies, and its literary design calls attention to, as well as elaborates at great length on, central features of mnemonic principles – both ones that we recognize as mnemonic locations and images and others that relate more closely to so-called mnemonic pictures. The multiple ways in which the text refers to memory and mnemonic techniques speak to the fact that it comes out of an environment where people were aware of, and interested in, mnemonic principles.

 Anne Holtsmark takes for granted that Snorri Sturluson knew literature from and about the Skálholt cathedral, including Hungrvaka in a version that is now lost (Holtsmark 1964, 6).  When considering points of contact and international analogues, I am content to work with notions of ‘influence’ and ‘shared ideas’, see Joseph Harris’ distinction between ‘source’ (hard evidence) and ‘influence’ (i. e. from oral communication) (Harris 2016, 45 and 48). This approach is not uncontested, and some scholars have been reluctant to accept the influence of mere ideas, preferring instead concrete evidence in the form of texts. See, for example, Frederic Amory, who did not favour studies of “the mysterious offices of the Zeitgeist” (Amory 1990, 335).

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4.3.1 A Hall of Memory: Háva hǫll The didactic purpose of the book is taken at face value in Gylfaginning, where the content, a version of pagan Norse mythology, is communicated in a dialogical form suitable for instruction books.¹¹⁰ The fictional dialogue takes place between – on the one hand – three Æsir, who pretend to be kings by the names of Hár (High), Jafnhár (Just-as-High) and Þriði (Third), and – on the other hand – the Swedish king Gylfi, who is disguised as a poor wanderer calling himself Gangleri.¹¹¹ Gangleri alias Gylfi asks the questions and the wise Æsir alias Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði provide the answers about the mythological world and the events that have happened in it, starting off with details about the creation of the world and concluding with a description of the end of the world, ragnarøkr (twilight of the powers). This dialogue constitutes a framework within which a version of the whole pagan cosmos is contained. Gylfaginning’s framework accentuates architectonic space. The dialogue is taking place in a hǫll (hall, palace), which is called Háva hǫll (the High one’s hall), a building that is placed within a borg (city, castle). It is said that Gylfi enters the city first, then the hall, which is decorated with shields and which is so huge that he can hardly look over it: “En er hann kom inn í borgina þá sá hann þar háva hǫll, svá at varla mátti hann sjá yfir hana. Þak hennar var lagt gyltum skjǫldum svá sem spánþak” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 7) (“When he got into the city he saw there a high hall, so that he could scarcely see over it. Its roof was covered with gilded shields like tiles”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 7). Gylfi enters the hall by crossing a doorway where a man is juggling knives, keeping several in the air at the same time, and the door then closes behind him. Inside the hall, Gylfi faces many daises, where he sees people occupied with games, fights and feasts. In this location he approaches Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði, who sit above each other on a three-seated throne. This framework, which hints at a built environment in the form of a city and at an impressive architectonic space in the form of a hall,  Anne Holtsmark has argued that Snorri Sturluson used as a source for this format Elucidarius, a text that existed in Iceland and was translated into Old Norse (Holtsmark 1964, passim). But the dialogical form was used in other texts that were known in Iceland, too, for instance in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great (Gunnar Harðarson 2016a, 59 – 61) and in the Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá. Having said that, it was an established genre by the time of the Prose Edda and is found in multiple other Norse texts, including those that deal with ancient Norse traditions (eddic poems).  The strange threesome (Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði) has been explained as a three-sided hypostasis of Óðinn, which is supported by the Óðinn-names that are found in other textual sources, for instance, all three names, Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði, are used for this god in Grímnismál. The constellation may have been inspired by the Christian trinity; see Weber 1986.

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resembles the mnemonic spaces (loci) described in the texts from classical antiquity, and the Háva hǫll can be seen as a literary representation of a hall of memory (Hermann 2017c, 2018a). The hall is a three-dimensional space, which Gylfi enters and moves around in. It is spacious, it has room divisions and the ladderlike throne gives it a characteristic appearance; the assumed kings are seated one above the other, not on benches located separately in the room, as might have been expected. The location is alive and animated, the juggler keeps multiple knives in the air and groups of people are actively moving around in each their rooms. It seems as if some effort has been made on behalf of the author to present the hall as a dynamic rather than a static location, which calls to mind the preferred device of imagines agentes. The text emphasizes how Gylfi is affected by what he sees and, in a fictional passage that gives access to his thoughts, the reader is told that he: “litaðisk hann umb ok þótti margir hlutir ótrúligir þeir er hann sá” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 8) (“looked around and thought many of the things he saw were incredible”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 8). Gylfi’s response to this location, which is immensely huge and holds many different activities, appears similar to Augustine’s enthusiastic and emotional utterances about the memory castles and memory caves that he knew of, and which he believed to be powerful due to their profound and infinite multiplicity (Augustinus Aurelius, Confessions, II, 1961, book 10, ch. 7, pp. 98 – 99 and ch. 17, pp. 120 – 123). The word ótrúligir (incredible) is used in Gylfaginning to express Gylfi’s reaction, and it is not unlikely that the author made use of the trope ‘expression of wonder’, which is found in Gregory the Great’s Dialogues and in Hugh of St. Victor’s Libellus de formatione arche. In the first case, the trope implies that the one who gazes at the mirabilia (marvellous) must wonder (see Kupfer 2016, 55 – 56 and 62) and, in the latter case, the trope expresses the marvel of God’s design, which the individual can perceive through mnemonic contemplation. When this episode in Gylfaginning is seen in isolation from its wider literary context (the other parts of the Prose Edda), Gylfi’s reaction does not seem to be triggered by his view of God’s marvels, because what the Æsir present to him seemingly pertains to the experience of the forn fræði (ancient knowledge) and the forn minni (ancient memory) of the Norse world. But basically, as I reassess below the various parts of the Prose Edda, especially its prologue, Gylfi’s gazing at the things he is presented with may actually be considered a sort of world historical contemplation, recognizing God’s marvels in a broad sense (see Chapter 7). More spatial structures of mnemonic relevance feature in Gylfaginning, but first it is important to explain the conspicuous title Gylfaginning (Gylfi’s illusion). The word accentuates delusion and deception, themes that are also integrated into this section’s framework, firstly since neither the Æsir nor Gylfi are who they

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pretend to be when they meet each other (they are, in fact, hiding their real identities behind false names), secondly since the hall (in the concluding frame) disappears with a loud boom and leaves Gylfi standing alone on an empty field. The spacious and amazing hall, it turns out, was nothing but an illusion and what Gylfi saw were sjónhverfingar (visual illusions). The deceptive character of the hall can be connected to a Christian mythographer’s wish to distance himself and the community that he represents from the particular sort of learning (about pagan mythology) that is preserved in the Háva hǫll, an interpretation that does not contradict the fact that the hall should be seen as a representation of a mnemonic space. Another explanation, which is more closely related to the book’s interest in memory, concerns the motif of disappearing halls, or, more broadly, trembling spatial structures, which feature in other literary contexts concerned with memory as well. It is likely that this emphasis is part of the text’s message to its readers, i. e. those who learn by studying the book, and that the message points to the fragility of the mnemonic locations that preserve the pagan mythological knowledge. Despite the hall’s disappearance, the frame story maintains the focus on transmission of mythic narratives, and says that Gylfi, after the hall has disappeared, communicates the knowledge that was revealed to him while he was in the hall to his people: “Gengr hann þá leið sína braut ok kemr heim í ríki sitt ok segir þau tíðindi er hann hefir sét ok heyrt. Ok eptir honum sagði hverr maðr ǫðrum þessar sǫgur” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 54) (“Then he went off on his way and came back to his kingdom and told of the events he had seen and heard about. And from his account these stories passed from one person to another”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 57). Thus, Gylfi is established as the carrier and the ultimate source of the mythic stories, and, it is implied, one who was able to recollect the knowledge that he had seen and heard in the hall, that is, to reconstruct the imaginary, mnemonic location in his mind, to enter it in order to take out knowledge from it, which he finally communicated to his people.¹¹² Gylfi is a means through which the author can distance himself from the pagan story world, a world in which a fictional king is established as the main informant of the mythological knowledge, as its authority and its source. Moreover, the frame story installs Gylfi as a prototype of a memory expert, who uses mnemonic structures to communicate his knowledge. In this respect, the narrated

 It has been argued that Gylfi’s sjónhverfingar are a comment on the uncertainty of sensory perception (Glauser 2009, 300). Christopher Abrams interprets the illusion theme in the context of conversion narratives, and he argues that a wish to reveal the illusions and absurdities of the pagan stories is an integral part of the educational purpose of the book: “While the pagans to whom Gylfi passes on the Æsir’s stories seem to accept them uncritically, Snorra Edda’s audiences should see them for what they are” (Abrams 2009, 19), namely mere sǫgur or fabulae.

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world in the text mirrors the metanarrative level where the author of the book communicates myths as well as the mnemonic structures that preserve them to the readers. There may not have been theoretical explanations of mnemonic technologies in the Norse text corpus, yet a book such as the Prose Edda incorporates mnemonic technologies into the narrative, and Gylfaginning’s framework demonstrates what mnemonic locations could look like. This section of the Prose Edda not only shows students and readers how to store knowledge in hall-constructions in the mind, but also reminds them that such structures are crucial for the transmission of knowledge.

4.3.2 Mnemonic Topographies and Graphics Mnemonic structures are not just integrated into Gylfaginning’s frame: a look at what is contained within it confirms that mnemonic technologies of different kinds were important for the preservation and the organization of the mythological knowledge. The mythological knowledge that the Æsir reveal to their attentive listener, Gylfi, is spatially anchored. Three different structures and grids arguably co-exist in the text – namely the topography of Ásgarðr, which consists of multiple different architectonic constructions, the tree Yggdrasill, to which a multitude of compartments are connected, and the earth, which is depicted as having the shape of a circle. Ásgarðr, the land of the gods – in Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði’s description – is placed in heaven and for the most part consists of multiple buildings and architectonic constructions (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 15 and p. 20. See Hermann 2022). These locations are called by names like Iðavǫllr, Glaðsheimr, Vingólf, Breiðablik, Glitnir, Himinbjǫrg and Valaskjálf. The material look of these staðir (places, abodes) is described in some detail, with a focus on their size and the material they are made of. Enough information is provided to conjure images of Ásgarðr’s constitution in the mind of the listener, Gylfi (and the reader of the text). This is so, for instance, when Glaðsheimr is described as a hof (cult house, temple) made of gold with thirteen thrones contained in it; when Glitnir is said to have walls, pillars and beams of red gold and silvered roof; and when Valaskjálf is described as a spacious place with a silver roof and a hall with a throne or a high seat. The Æsir also tell Gylfi about the bridge, Bifrǫst, which links Ásgarðr, which is placed in heaven, with the earth, detailing its colours, strength and artistic details. Hár summarizes this multiplicity when he says that: “Margir staðir eru á himni fagrir ok er þar allt guðlig vǫrn fyrir” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 18) (“There are many beautiful places in heaven and everywhere there has divine protections around it”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 18). We should allow for

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the possibility that the world described by the Æsir is a mnemonic topography, where each place refers to a location that functions as a reservoir of knowledge. The topography of Ásgarðr meets the demands that are set forth in the texts from classical antiquity: The places are not confused with each other, but noticeable and clearly distinguishable, and ready to access for someone who wishes to recollect the knowledge that has been divided between, and is stored in, these loci. In between the enumeration of the various locations in Ásgarðr, the Æsir dwell on and give many details about yet another assumed mnemonic structure, namely the ash, Yggdrasill, which – as already anticipated in Chapter 3 – is presented as a major construction, which transcends and binds together multiple worlds and locations. The tree is described as a spacious staðr (place): Askrinn er allra tréa mestr ok beztr. Limar hans dreifask yfir heim allan ok standa yfir himni. Þrjár rætr trésins halda því upp ok standa afar breitt. Ein er með Ásum, en ǫnnur með hrímþursum, þar sem forðum var Ginnungagap. In þriðja stendr yfir Niflheimi, ok undir þeiri rót er Hvergelmir. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 17) (The ash is of all trees the biggest and best. Its branches spread out over all the world and extend across the sky. Three of the tree’s roots support it and extend very, very far. One is among the Æsir, the second among the frost giants, where Ginnungagap once was. The third extends over Niflheim, and under that root is Hvergelmir.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 17)

The tree’s branches extend over the whole world (heim allan) and into the sky, and its roots reach far and wide beneath the sky. The passage mentions Niflheimr and the well Hvergelmir, but the text continues to mention other places that are organized around the tree’s roots, namely brunnar (wells) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 17) and salir (halls). Thus, for instance, the text says: “Þar stendr salr einn fagr undir askinum við brunninn” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 18) (“There stands there one beautiful hall under the ash by the well” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 18).¹¹³ The tree, with its upright trunk, its branches and roots, as well as the halls and wells placed around it, constitutes a structure that makes organization, not only of individual stories, but of multiple worlds possible, and which allows for detailed levels of classification, as when mnemonic compartments other than the trunk, branches and roots are added to it. While a mnemonic topography consisting of different (mostly architectonic) locations allows access to details  Gísli Sigurðsson has noticed the recurrent use in Gylfaginning of the description á himni (in the sky) and the text’s inclination to locate in the heavens mythological places (staðir) and halls (salir), including Yggdrasill (which is said to have one root in the skies). This has led him to argue that the Northern sky was used as a mnemonic aid and that mythological stories were preserved in constellations in the night sky (Gísli Sigurðsson 2018a).

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about one part of the world, Ásgarðr, the tree structure holds the whole world and multiple places together. It offers the skeleton for a more wide-ranging mnemonic construction, one that is complex enough to include both heaven and earth and all the locations in them. This tree, which is in itself a strong image, confirms that mnemonic structures were not limited to architectonic buildings, but could be based on other models as well. Moreover, its existence reveals a desire to access the mythological world by and with a single all-encompassing structure, calling to mind the idea that mnemonic technologies did not only relate to the remembrance of single stories, but was exploited so they could preserve in essence all wisdom about the world.¹¹⁴ A mnemonic structure like Yggdrasill could have had the same function as a book, which contains several sections, chapters and lines.Yet for the one who saw the tree in front of his or her inner eye, there would have been no demand for a linear reading, as is the case with chapters in a book, the tree could be grasped with one glance and its compartments could be directly accessed according to relevance, priorities and interests, that is, without the necessity of browsing through previous compartments first. We should allow for the possibility that the Yggdrasill constellation functioned as a mnemonic picture that helped to gather and sort knowledge, a structure that could also have functioned as an instrument for mental exercises and literary invention.¹¹⁵ A significant aspect of the description of Yggdrasill is that it suffers from the bites of various animals: “Níðhǫggr gnagar neðan rótna” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 17) (“Nidhogg gnaws the bottom of the root”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 17). In addition to Níðhǫggr biting its root, the Æsir also tell Gylfi that stags feed on the tree’s branches. Like the hall Gylfi entered, this template’s existence must also be regarded as uncertain and in danger of erosion. While the greedy animals call attention to the possibility of a collapse or a crash of the structure that preserves the whole mythological cosmos, other information divulged by the Æsir reveals that the tree is actually protected and taken care of. The norns treat

 It is relevant in this context that in the poem Fjǫlsvinnsmál the tree is called Mímameiðr > Mímir’s tree (often translated as ‘the tree of memory’). This poem is young, presumably postmedieval; still, this kenning testifies to a tradition that saw a connection between Yggdrasill and memory.  Anders Andrén considers Yggdrasill a “distinct but complex figure of thought” (Andrén 2014, 32) belonging to a set of different trees in Old Norse mythology. I regard it as a prominent example of a mnemonic structure, which, however, does not contradict its relation to thinking; as we have seen, memory/remembering and thought/thinking are closely combined categories in the Norse tradition. I agree with Andrén that the tree can vary according to context, yet will continue to be distinct and recognizable.

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Yggdrasill with a mixture of water and mud from Urðar brunnr (Weird’s well), and potential collapse or decay is prevented by their careful preservation. This mythological situation thus speaks of the necessity of attentiveness, instructing that such activities are needed to secure the mnemonic structures’ existence. A third mnemonic structure in Gylfaginning helped to preserve and organize the knowledge that is revealed to Gylfi; however, it does not take the form of a building or an impressively large tree. Rather, it consists of the graphic design of a circle, which appears from the adjective kringlóttr (round, circular). This structure is mixed with references to the primeval giant Ymir, whose body parts provide the building blocks for the world. The Æsir conclude the cosmogony story, told at the beginning of Gylfaginning, with a description of the mythological jǫrð (earth) which consists not only of Ásgarðr, which we already heard about in some detail above, but also of Miðgarðr and the lands of giants: Hon er kringlótt útan, ok þar útan um liggr hinn djúpi sjár, ok með þeiri sjávar strǫndu gáfu þeir lǫnd til bygðar jǫtna ættum. En fyrir innan á jǫrðunni gerðu þeir borg […] ok kǫlluðu þá borg Miðgarð […] Þar næst gerðu þeir sér borg í miðjum heimi er kallaðr er Ásgarðr. Þat kǫllum vér Troja. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, pp. 12– 13) (It [the earth] is circular round the edge, and around it lies the deep sea, and along the shore of this sea they gave lands to live in to the races of giants. But on the earth on the inner side they made a fortification round the world […] and they called the fortification Midgard […] After that they made themselves a city in the middle of the world which is known as Asgard. We call it Troy.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, pp. 12– 13)

The earth is encircled by the ocean, and the lǫnd (lands) and borgir (cities or castles) within it are organized in concentric circles, having Ásgarðr in the centre. The adjective kringlóttr, which describes the earth’s form, calls to mind the geographical conception of the Latin orbis terrarum (the circle of lands), which is known from medieval geographical and cartographic learning, and which is depicted graphically in circular world maps (see for instance Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago Mundi, 2008, p. 108).¹¹⁶ The comment by Hár that the three

 Honorius Augustodunensis’ Imago Mundi (early twelfth century) compiled knowledge of the world and the universe. The work was translated into Icelandic, perhaps as early as in the thirteenth century, albeit with some changes from the original. According to Rudolf Simek, these changes may relate to the fact that the translator used another work than the original, or that the original had been cited from memory (Simek 1990, 75). The work is introduced thus: “Ad instructionem itaque multorum quibus deest copia librorum, hic libellus edatur. Nomenque ei Imago Mundi indatur, eo quod dispositio totius orbis in eo quasi in speculo conspiciatur […]. Nichil autem in eo pono nisi quod maiorum commendat traditio” (“This little book has been produced for the instruction of the many who lack an abundance of books. And it has been

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Æsir themselves call the place in the middle of the world Troja (Troy) further conveys the impression that the description of the earth is inspired by knowledge about world geography. It is significant that the mythological earth is introduced only as a part of a larger universe (containing the clouds, the sky and the stars (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 13)), which – on the one hand is made out of Ymir’s brains, skull and so on – but which also coincides with geographical learning about the universe. The dialogical framework, maintained with much consistency throughout Gylfaginning, leaves room for reflection on this wide-ranging structure. After the design of the sky with the sun and the stars has been explained to Gylfi, he exclaims: “Furðu mikil smíð er þat ok hagliga gert” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 12) (“That is an amazingly large construction and skilfully made”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 12). This response is similar to Gylfi’s reaction when he first enters the Háva hǫll and meets the Æsir, at which time he likewise expresses his fascination with what he sees there. His response to the skilfully made and large construction of the earth and the sky thus creates an intertextual link to the opening frame of Gylfaginning, and the trope ‘expression of wonder’ is repeated. It adds support to the fact that the visions that are presented to Gylfi are so impressive that they cause him to wonder. The design of the mythological world, as it is revealed to Gylfi by the Æsir, indicates that geographic knowledge informed the mnemonic templates that preserved the mythology. Such a connection is not as far removed from mnemonic endeavours as one might expect. As already mentioned, Hugh of St.Victor’s image of the ark, this complex mental construction, was attached to a mappa mundistructure. Hugh’s massive construction extended far beyond what was needed to preserve arguments or story details for a singular discourse, a task that could have been accomplished by use of small-scale mnemonic loci. The use of a graphic design like this one in Gylfaginning points to a similar goal, namely the preservation of vast amounts of knowledge, which once again calls to mind memory’s function as a storehouse of wisdom. Gylfaginning bears witness to the fact that the mythology was perceived and grasped visually and graphically, and that spaces and images were underlying concepts through which the stories and mythic details could be expressed. A text that transforms visuals to verbal information only gives us a scant insight into these underlying concepts, albeit enough to enable us

presented the name Imago Mundi, because the arrangement of the whole world is in it, as if it may be observed in a mirror […] I put nothing in it, except that which the tradition of great men designates”) (Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago Mundi, 2008, p. 103).

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to get a sense of the mnemonic graphics that were important for the preservation of the mythology.¹¹⁷

4.3.3 A Three-Seated Throne The world that gradually takes form as the dialogue between Gylfi and the three Æsir unfolds reveals a sample of varied and spacious constructions, where different combinations of mnemonic locations exist together, each allowing access to different areas of mythological learning, from single stories to complete cosmic knowledge. While, for instance, the various architectonic buildings in Ásgarðr, such as Glaðsheimr and Valaskjálf, when approached independently, may have been helpful for someone who wished to access individual stories or clusters of knowledge, other structures (for example Yggdrasill) helped to synthesize all the existing wisdom of the (mythological) universe. The fact that these constructions are put into the mouths (and minds) of fictive persons, three Æsir disguised as kings, does not affect this argument. Like Gylfi, who could memorize and take knowledge from the hall of memory, Háva hǫll, and who was able to pass this acquired knowledge on, these characters are also given roles as mnemonic experts, who communicate the knowledge they safeguard. In anticipation of topics that will be treated in the next chapter, and which home in on the visualization strategies that are relevant for mnemonic processing, it should be noted that their presumed function as memory experts is underscored by the way in which they are seated (on a high throne with three levels) and from their position within the hall (see fig. 3). The meaning behind their spectacular seating arrangement is not obvious at all. But – when seen from a memory perspective – it cannot be ignored that Gylfi’s dialogue partners, who master knowledge and have wisdom, are placed in an elevated position, which – as suggested by Latinate texts – is an advantageous position for someone who resorts to memory and as an aspect of that activates an inner seeing. The three Æsir present their knowledge while being seated high

 In a survey of nineteenth-century scholarship’s interest in visualizing the component parts of Norse mythology, Margaret Clunies Ross has touched upon these important issues. She has pointed to the existence of concepts that are inherent to the written texts and has mentioned the medieval inclination to express spatial and relational concepts visually and graphically in images, signs and diagrams rather than in words alone. In this context, she has argued that nineteenth-century scholars were inspired by medieval learning that used diagrams to depict heaven and earth (as found in Isidore of Seville) when they created graphic and visual representations of Old Norse mythology (Clunies Ross 2011, 53 and 62).

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Fig. 3: Gylfi/Gangleri in dialogue with Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði, who sit on a high three-seated throne (Uppsala Edda, DG 11 4to, f. 26v). Metaphorically speaking such a position high up is advantageous for someone who is engaged with mnemonic activities. The three Æsir’s hand gestures suggest that hands were evoked as a mnemonic aid. Printed with the permission of Uppsala University Library.

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above, and this position, literally ‘high up’, may mirror a metaphorical ascent in the mind, an ascent that facilitates a panoramic view over the mnemonic topographies and structures they survey and navigate in their minds. It suggests that mnemonic abilities were helped by such an imaginative visualization strategy. The text indicates that the three Æsir reveal to Gylfi what they see, not before their literal, corporal eyes, but before their inner eyes. This concentration on memory and mental processing is confirmed by the throne’s position inside the hall, which naturally prevents them from having a view over landscapes in a physical sense. In other words, what we see here may very well be a medieval author’s depiction of memory experts, whose mnemonic skills are expressed by alluding to the motif of the Latin specula (watchtower, lookout), which combines elevated positions, inner visualization and the acquisition of wisdom.¹¹⁸ According to Hugh of St. Victor inner vision provides a viewpoint without limitations and when aided by elevated positions it allows for wide-ranging spatial and temporal perspectives that give access to a cosmic vision; it makes it possible to “look at the past, the present, and the future all at once” (Kupfer 2016, 61).¹¹⁹ This motif – which presents a position in the heights – appears more than once in our sources, often in contexts where reference is made to memory in other ways, too.¹²⁰ Frances Yates has suggested that a given society’s mnemonic technologies will influence the literature (and other artforms) that emanate from this same society. She says that: “The art of memory was a creator of an imagery, which must surely have flowed out into creative works of art and literature” (Yates 1974, 91). This assumption holds true for a text such as the Prose Edda, which most vividly demonstrates that a given mnemonic culture interacts with and puts its stamp on this society’s literature. The Prose Edda offers insights into, or faint echoes of, the mnemonic technologies that authors and readers could relate to, and which

 The motif of the specula features in Norse vision literature and a lookout (in the metaphorical sense) is found in the Old Norse translation of Visio Tnugdali (Old Norse Leiðzla Duggals). This text speaks about a wall made of jewels from where it is possible to see the whole world and by so doing to gain knowledge and wisdom (Leiðzla Duggals, II, 1877, p. 360) (see Holtsmark 1964, 41). Also, Gregory the Great (in Dialogues) used the view from above, emphasizing the spiritual transformation that this view allowed for (Kupfer 2016, 55). For a presentation of this motif, see Kupfer 2016, 53 – 66.  From this favourable imaginary position, i. e. in a watchtower or another elevated position, attention can be turned to all dwellings of the world and a mental representation of the world can be conjured in front of the inner eyes. Importantly, Hugh of St. Victor (in De vanitate mundi) combines ascent and a gaze with the mind’s eye with the experience of God’s marvels (Kupfer 2016, 53 and 60).  For another study that introduces the specula-motif in an examination of the Prose Edda, see Hermann 2022.

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were useful to someone who memorized and communicated mythological knowledge, orally and in writing. The very presence of various mnemonic structures in Gylfaginning suggests that the invention of this work may in part have been based upon, and intertwined with, memory. Gylfaginning directs the attention to memory in the form of a memoria rerum (memory for things). At least, so it seems if we accept that, for instance, the Háva hǫll mentioned in Gylfaginning’s beginning has similarities to the loci described in the classical texts, methods that according to the classical writers are most useful for the recollection of clusters of themes (not exact recall of words). We can supplement the argument made by Mats Malm – that Quintilian’s nota could have influenced the presentation of the kennings in the Prose Edda – by adding that also the concept of the loci might have helped to shape the Prose Edda’s version of the mythology. But different technologies are employed and other mnemonic features have influenced the text as well, for instance when the description of the interlocutors Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði is formed around the specula-trope, which I count among the mnemonic features of the texts. The Prose Edda constitutes an important link between a mnemonic culture and the culture of literacy. We cannot rule out the possibility that structures such as those of which we see reminiscences in the Prose Edda existed in the minds of people and were actively used. Yet, literary sources are quoted in Gylfaginning – and in the Prose Edda in general – such as Vǫluspá (which also mentions the mnemonic structure of the world tree), and this indicates that the coming into being of this book took place in a dialogue with written texts as well. In a culture where orality, memory and literacy co-existed, authorial work would have been helped along by different means. Because of its rather insistent focus on mnemonic technologies – and assuming that the Prose Edda is an educational work – the author may have made an attempt to safeguard and communicate these structures to the readers of the book, perhaps wishing to encourage them to continue to create such structures in their minds, to learn them and to use them.

4.4 Hand Mnemonics There is another locus, which – just like buildings and other imaginary structures – seems to have been considered relevant for the transmission of the mythological stories told in Gylfaginning. The manuscript Codex Upsaliensis (DG 11 4to) contains not just one of the medieval versions of the Prose Edda but also framing devices in the form of illustrations and marginalia, which make this manuscript particularly pertinent to an examination of mnemonic strategies in bookish cul-

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ture.¹²¹ The text in the manuscript is dated to 1300 – 1325, but the illustrations and marginal comments may have been added later. In any case, the illustrations support the fact that a range of mnemonic aids were considered relevant in connection with the mediation of the stories contained in the manuscript, suggesting, among other things, that the hand was a helpful mnemonic tool. Several of the Codex Upsaliensis illustrations depict this body part and thereby call attention to a bodily orientated mnemonic aid that functioned in the same way as, for instance, buildings and money-sacks, inasmuch as hands offer a structure that can easily be divided into small compartments and thus can assist mnemonic organization. The hand’s functionality as an instrument for the intellect has been treated, among others, by Aristotle, Isidore of Seville and Bede and is evidenced in numerous visual representations from the Latin Middle Ages and the Early Modern period (Sherman 2000). Also, later scholarship has dealt with the hand and mnemonics. Hand mnemonics have been explicitly compared with the placeimage method, and it has been shown how the hand could serve as a locus, a template or a spatialized location containing several compartments around which images could be organized (see Berger 1981, 102– 103; Wenzel 1995, 72– 89).¹²² Both right and left hands, front and palm, as well as hand movements, can be utilized in this multi-dimensional mnemonic instrument, and “Anatomically, the hand has a fixed number of parts with distinctive characteristics that follow easily divisible ordering systems, sequences and subdivisions. For example, the five fingers, their tips, nails and joints constitute a consistent but surprisingly variable series of mnemonic places in which to deploy letters, words, numbers, images and/or associated concepts” (Sherman 2000, 14). That the hand was used for mnemonic purposes among the Norse authors is indicated in Codex Upsaliensis, and it is first of all the spectacular drawing of Gylfi talking to Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði that is relevant here (DG 11 4to, f. 26v) (see fig. 3). The full-page image has been considered the oldest of the drawings in the manuscript and has been dated to the fourteenth century (Thorell 1977, xviii). This illustration, depicting the central situation of Gylfaginning, which is the dialogue in which the mythological knowledge is communicated, may very well (like other

 For an introduction, edition and translation of Codex Upsaliensis, see Heimir Pálsson 2012. For the illustrations and comments on the text/illustration-interfaces in the manuscript, see Thorell 1977, xviii; Glauser 2013; Hermann 2017b.  There are a few references to suggest an awareness in Rhetorica ad Herennium of hand mnemonics; for instance, it says that every fifth of the mnemonic loci can – for the sake of systematization – be marked with a golden hand, the number five obviously corresponding to the five fingers on the hand.

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manuscript drawings) have served as a visual aid that illuminated the text and helped its transportation into the memory of the users of the manuscripts. As Douwe Draaisma has said: “Miniatures and marginal drawings were more than a simple alternative for words; they were intended to do what is implicit in the etymology of ‘illustration’. Illuminate the text […]” (Draaisma 2000, 33). Regarding the hand, the drawing seemingly focuses on exactly this part of the body and on hand gestures, which suggests that it encourages people to be aware of the possibilities offered by the hand. Most likely, a ‘rhetoric of gesture’ has inspired the stylized drawing.¹²³ Gylfi’s high-held right arm, his pointing thumb and forefinger as well as his open mouth stress that he is asking questions and that the transmission of the mythology is anchored in an oral communication situation. The depiction of the three Æsir, too, underlines the oral nature of the dialogue, although their gestures are stylized differently and with more variation. Especially the depiction of Hár (sitting at the throne’s lowest seat) indicates that the hands were a mnemonic device. His left hand is held up in a way, which indicates that he is using it as a template to look at and from where information could be decoded. Also Þriði (sitting at the top) seems to actively evoke his hand while speaking, as three fingers are spread out in a way that indicates finger movements or counting by the fingers. Altogether, the image suggests that the Æsir, these experts of memory, used their hands as devices that could help them remember the information they told to Gylfi. Also other figures depicted in Codex Upsaliensis suggest that an awareness of a rhetoric of gestures lies behind the drawing just as they indicate that the hand served as a mnemonic device. This is the case, for instance, in the images that accompany Skáldatal (List of Poets), a text that is inserted between the different parts of the Prose Edda (see fig. 4).¹²⁴ Here three figures are depicted, two of whom have carefully depicted hand gestures. Skáldatal enumerates a long list of poets, and it is likely that the illustrations are visual representations of poetic performances. The male figure depicted at the bottom of the page has pointed fingers, and he holds a stick or a staff, which may indicate that not only the hand but also physical objects were used to support the remembrance of verse. The figure at the top of the page has been interpreted as a female dancer whose dance involves the recitation of verse or chant (Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir 2009, 15). In that case,

 Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria provides an insight into a ‘rhetoric of gesture’ when it emphasizes that points can be underscored with the use of the hands. He writes: “Nam ceterae partes loquentem adiuvant, hae, prope est ut dicam, ipsae loquuntur” (“For other portions of the body merely help the speaker, whereas the hands may almost be said to speak”) (IV, 1959 – 1963, book 11, ch. 3, pp. 288 – 289).  For a treatment of Skáldatal in a memory perspective, see Solovyeva 2019.

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the illustration seems to emphasize that hand gestures and rhythmic body movements were intertwined with mnemonics. A last example from Codex Upsaliensis to be mentioned here is a drawing of a fist found in the part of the manuscript that features Skáldskaparmál (see fig. 5). This particular page quotes verses by such poets as Einarr skálaglamm and Einarr Skúlason and it lists several kennings, all information that – should it be memorized and learned by the reader – would have required an awareness of mnemonic strategies and benefited from various aids. It is remarkable as well that the page is introduced with a reference to the ravens Huginn and Muninn, which calls to mind the required faculties of thought and memory.

Fig. 4: The last part of Skáldatal (List of Poets) accompanied by drawings of figures with marked hand gestures (Uppsala Edda, DG 11 4to, f. 24v – 25r). Printed with the permission of Uppsala University Library.

A look at other manuscripts and other marginal notes confirms that the hand was most likely used instrumentally in learned culture and that counting on fingers together with ‘inscriptions on’ and ‘readings of’ hands helped people to memorize information that was inscribed on manuscript pages. In this connection, Lena Rohrbach has pointed out that manuscripts that contain law texts bear evidence of hand mnemonics as well, and a manuscript such as Skálholtsbók yngri

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Fig. 5: A fist in the margin (Uppsala Edda, DG 11 4to, f. 41v). Printed with the permission of Uppsala University Library.

(c. 1400) has several drawings of hands placed systematically in the margin of the text (Rohrbach 2018a, 213 and 1092) (see figs. 6 and 7). In this chapter I have gathered information about memory and its techniques in Latin texts. Such Latinate ideas may serve only theoretical purposes, helping us

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Fig. 6: Hands drawn in the margin of the text, presumably to help systematization and memorization (Skálholtsbók the younger, AM 354, f. 20r). Printed with the permission of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

Fig. 7: Pointing fingers in margin of the text (Jónsbók the younger, AM 134 4to, f. 9r). Printed with the permission of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

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to pinpoint ‘mnemonic topoi’, that is, places in the texts that relate to memory. But the option was also suggested that such learning might more directly have influenced how people trained their memories, understood quite practically, and how authors described people with good memories in their texts. The Norse authors, who had one leg in a memory culture and another in bookish culture, could have looked to such books for instruction. When texts such as the Prose Edda depict ‘beings’, who have superior memories, among them Gylfi and the triad Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði, these literary descriptions may have been inspired by such contemporary knowledge. In any case, these descriptions and other information in the manuscripts indicate that the writers were interested in and used a wide range of mnemonic techniques. Generally speaking, and as has been indicated, to talk about mnemonic structures is not simply to talk about the memory of an individual. Both classical and medieval texts suggest that people talked about and exchanged knowledge about mnemonic structures, and these formats existed not only within the minds of individuals, but also between people. They are, on the one hand, individualized, in the sense that each person will colour mnemonic strutures according to his or her own preferences and experiences, and each individual will manipulate the mental machinery in his or her own way. On the other hand, they are part of a collective memory. Merlin Donald’s ideas about the intersections between the individual brain and the collective brain (2018) are compelling in this context. He has defined cultural memory as a “shared storehouse of collective experience, skill, and knowledge”, which is different from biological memory inasmuch as it exists in a “population of organisms rather than in a single organism”, that is, it is not kept in a single brain but distributed across many brains (2018, 39). This theory explains how the variant of, say, a mnemonic structure within the individual brain will be influenced by the experiences and skills that are shared collectively – provided, of course, that communication occurs between these individuals. According to Donald, cultural memory systems can transmit memories from the deep past, but will transform them in agreement with present mindsets, meaning that they are interactive and open systems that will change over time. This way of reasoning has similarities to Jan Assmann’s notions of cultural memory, yet it differs insofar as Donald’s focus is not on the objectivizations and physical materializations of a cultural memory (in literature, images and so on), but on its mental and cognitive dimensions.

5 The Senses 5.1 To See and to Remember To see is to remember and to remember is to see. This concise statement quite precisely summarizes the close connection that exists between memory and visual perception. The mnemonic gaze has vast implications. It makes it possible to retrieve knowledge and stories from locations in the mind. As we have seen, inner seeing is the very precondition for the art of memory, a technology where both locations (loci) and images (imagines) are present in the mind as intense visual impressions. But mnemonic seeing goes deeper than that and at times it is intertwined with human understanding of the world, that is, with the perception of material and spiritual realities. It appears that, while the corporal eye is limited, the mind’s eye can pave the way to a nearly endless array of realities and fields of wisdom. Sometimes it is even a doorway to the truth. This chapter draws attention to memory’s reliance on vision and investigates the various ways in which this relationship of dependence is expressed in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. The reflections in this chapter begin with a discussion of inner vision and memory in (and around) texts with a close connection to foreign genres, namely the Stave Church Homilies and the Old Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá. Following this review, I turn to the question of vision and visualization strategies in the Prose Edda, and, finally, conclude with an examination of the conflation between inner vision and memory in the eddic poems Vǫluspá and Grímnismál. All these texts, despite their generic differences, speak as if with one voice when they emphasize the importance of inner visualization for memory, just as they unambiguously suggest that memory experts were aided by spatial locations (buildings, landscapes and other structures) as a part of their mnemonic activities. According to Cicero, the sense of sight has prominence over all other senses, and things and words that are registered by other senses than vision are most strongly stored in the mind if they are also mediated visually: Vidit enim hoc prudenter sive Simonides sive alius quis invenit, ea maxime animis effingi nostris quae essent a sensu tradita atque impressa; acerrimum autem ex omnibus nostris sensibus esse sensum videndi; quare facillime animo teneri posse ea quae perciperentur auribus aut cogitatione si etiam commendatione oculorum animis traderentur. (It has been sagaciously discerned by Simonides or else discovered by some other person, that the most complete pictures are formed in our minds of the things that have been conveyed to them and imprinted on them by the senses, but that the keenest of all our senses is the sense of sight, and that consequently perceptions received by the ears or by the reflexion

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-008

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can be most easily retained in the mind if they are also conveyed to our minds by the meditation of the eyes.) (Cicero, De oratore, I, 1959, book 2, ch. 87, pp. 468 – 469)

Cicero is paying close attention to a transformation process where all sense experiences – including those that come into the mind through the ear, mouth, nose or skin – are eventually transformed into a mental image that can be accessed through vision.¹²⁵ Cicero traces this recognition back to Simonides of Ceos, which confirms that the partnership between vision and memory had been recognized since early on in the history of memory. Immediately following the passage quoted here, Cicero writes that things that are neither seen nor lie within the field of visual discernment cannot be embraced by an act of thought at all, which means that visuality is a crucial instrument of human cognition. According to Cicero, spatiality has the same function, things must be anchored spatially in order to be perceived at all. He moreover maintains that all things that fall under our gaze require an abode, stating that an object without a locality is inconceivable (Cicero, De oratore, I, 1959, book 2, ch. 88, pp. 468 – 469). It thus appears that the two main principles of the art of memory, vision and spatiality, have wide-ranging epistemological implications. Similarly, Augustine considers very carefully memory’s sensory dimension and confirms that remembrance is the same as inner seeing. All things enter the mind through one of the senses and, after having passed these gateways of the body, the sense impressions are stored in mnemonic locations. Augustine is keen to emphasize that it is not the senses themselves, but the impressions of the senses that can be recalled from memory at any given time (Augustinus Aurelius, Confessions, II, 1961, pp. 96– 101). Augustine, along with other ancient and medieval writers, organizes the senses into a hierarchy. Vision and hearing are at the top of this order and considered to be closest to the spiritual realm, while taste, smell and touch hold lower positions and are closer to, and more relevant for, perception of the material world. At the high level of the hierarchy, the world is perceived from a distance and without direct contact between the observer and the observed, or the hearer and what is heard, whereas at the simple level, the world is perceived through direct bodily contact and understanding is acquired by proximity (through smell, taste and touch) (see e. g. Vance 2008, 16 – 17). This

 The relevance of the mental image (simulacrum or imago) for memory is traced back to Greek traditions where sensory perceptions are said to take form in the mind as phantasmata (representation) or eikón (copy) seen or scanned by the mind’s eye. On the relationship between vision and memory, and on memory as a mental image, see Carruthers 1990, 16 – 17. On the relationship between memory and visual culture in pre-modern Nordic materials, see Laugerud 2018.

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hierarchy corresponds to a mind/body dichotomy, where vision (connected to the mind) is ranked at the top and where touch (connected to the body) has the lowest position. This grading structure lies behind much medieval reflection on sensory experience, but scholars have been increasingly aware of the fact that the medieval conception of senses constitute “a stubbornly centrifugal topic” and a “field of often conflicting forces” (Gumbrecht 2008, 2– 3). Seen in this light, we can expect that also sensory-dependent mnemonic activities will evoke a register that goes beyond a narrow focus on vision. The senses have the power to evoke involuntary or hidden memories. This function was explained much later in the history of memory than the time of thinkers such as Cicero and Augustine, namely by the French author Marcel Proust (1871– 1922). Despite the leap in time from classical antiquity to the early twentieth century, Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) (1913 – 1927) is illustrative of the relationship that exists between memory and the senses. In Proust’s novel, a taste of a Madeleine-cookie stimulates the main character’s memory and brings back recollections that have otherwise been hidden in his mind. In the novel, the memories, which are not deliberately searched for or intentionally enhanced, appear suddenly and with great power, being both overwhelming and forceful. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Latin texts by Roman authors include occasional references to such involuntary, or unintentionally enhanced, memory, namely when Quintilian mentions the unuttered thoughts that can appear when someone returns to a place after some time (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IV, 1959 – 1963, book 11, ch. 2, pp. 220 – 221). The memory theorists of Roman antiquity and the Middle Ages were, however, not so much concerned with an unintentional memory as they were concerned with a deliberately controlled memory, where the senses were used instrumentally to facilitate remembrance and to help the recollection of things and words that had been stored the mind. In Proust’s novel memory is sparked by the gustatory sense, which reminds us that other sensory modalities than vision can, indeed, call forth memories. The Norse tradition, as noted above, expresses memory-dependent poetic abilities with reference to the intake of mead, an imagery that spotlights the mouth, the lips and the tongue, body parts that indicate that taste could be an important trigger of memory. In the Norse texts the entanglement of memory and vision is confirmed linguistically because the lexeme mynd (image) is connected to muna (to remember) and minni (memory) (Bergsveinn Birgisson 2012, 2018, 647; Glauser, Hermann and Mitchell 2018, 15 – 16), suggesting that the act of remembering and memory are linked to vision and the ability to access images. Moreover, many texts (historical and mythological) combine and treat vision and memory together. For instance, Bishop Jón Ǫgmundarson, who was discussed previously in connection with Jóns

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saga helga, is talked about not only as a student with a well-functioning memory (as explained in the expression that knowledge grew well in the ‘field of his heart’) (Jóns saga helga, L-recension, 2003, ch. 6, p. 61), but also as the “eygðr manna bezt” (best eyed of men) (Jóns saga helga, S-recension, 2003, ch. 2, p. 6). This emphasis on the bishop’s eyesight should not be seen as a reference to his physical state, it rather hints at his ability to see inwards, that is, to remember. The mythological texts likewise feature beings who, at one and the same time, have exceptional sensory abilities and an extraordinary memory. Prominent examples are, as will be demonstrated below, the god Óðinn, whose eyesight is a tool for remembering, and the vǫlva in Vǫluspá, who also – at one and the same time – remembers and sees.

5.2 The Mind’s Eye The motif of the mind’s eye, which goes back to Greco-Roman tradition and is mentioned both by Plato and Cicero, illustrates the prominent position of sight for memory (Vogt-Spira 2008, 53).When used in the medieval sources this motif is not only a metaphor but must be understood literally and as part and parcel of an epistemological context where subject (the individual) and object (nature) are closely intertwined. As such, the motif points to “a capacity believed to be inherent to the soul or the spirit, which in spite of belonging to the interior realm of the body, was supposed to enable humans to perceive […] the material world in particularly intense ways” (Gumbrecht 2008, 3). In this context the subject, helped by a divinely infused ability, could obtain direct contact with objects of the world (Gumbrecht 2008, 5 – 6). The motif made its way into the vernacular Norse tradition through foreign influences, and it has a marked presence in religious and translated texts. Very tellingly, the mind’s eye is used in Jóns saga helga together with its many other references to memory (Jóns saga helga, L‐recension, 2003, ch. 6, p. 61). Stjórn is another example of a text that contains references to this motif (1862, ch. 1, p. 3; ch. 7, p. 20; ch. 26, p. 101 and ch. 40, p. 132). In Old Norse the mind’s eye is described with variations of the compound hugskotsauga, which corresponds to the Latin acies mentis (Bandle et al. 2002, 1049). The word hugr (as mentioned) has a broad range of meanings, among them ‘thought’ and ‘mind’, and the term can be translated as the ‘eye of thinking’ or the ‘eye of the mind’. The word hugskot means either mind’s recess (from skot ‘a recess’) or mind-shooting (Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1969, 292). The first meaning, the mind’s recess, repeats the tendency to express the mind and memory with reference to human dwelling places or terminology concerned with buildings.

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The meanings that attach themselves to this motif have an even broader presence than the explicit references in religious and translated texts indicate, and texts such as the Prose Edda, Vǫluspá and Grímnismál, which deal with preChristian Norse myths, share some of the key aspects that attach themselves to the motif of the mind’s eye. These texts confirm the close relationship between memory and inner vision, and they reveal that inner vision is not only about accessing and recollecting stored knowledge, it is also a channel for understanding. Moreover, the texts show a relatively consistent pattern, where memory and inner vision feature together with spatial templates. Each component of the triangular pattern memory/vision/space may be given different emphasis and prominence, but the texts, whether their affinities are to foreign genres or Norse tradition, all speak in favour of their interconnectedness.

5.2.1 The Stave Church Homily Our first text example is the Stave Church Homily, which is preserved in both Icelandic and Norwegian manuscripts.¹²⁶ These manuscripts, the so-called Homily Books, contain various texts of religious and educational character. Despite being referred to as homilies, they in fact contain different texts, among them, sermons, that is, oratory pieces meant to be read aloud in the church (BekkerNielsen 1965, 19 – 20). Some of the texts concern persuasion and instruction, being didactic and pedagogical texts that could tell lay people how to act and perform (Gunnar Harðarson 2016a, 51– 56). Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir and Kirsten Berg have pointed out that we cannot know whether the Homily Books were actually used for preaching, or whether they served as handbooks for clergymen or were used in educational activities (Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir 2007, 341; Berg 2010). The Stave Church Homily was meant to be used on the church’s consecration day. It is an enlightening source when it comes to the memory culture of its time and to mnemonic technologies. It mentions the mind’s eye and thereby calls attention to inner seeing; it speaks about the evocation of mnemonic templates and informs about the mnemonic function of the physical church building, stating

 The Icelandic Stave Church Homily is preserved in fragments in AM 237 a fol. (c. 1150), in Sthm Perg. 15 4to (c. 1200) and in AM 624, 4to (fifteenth century), which makes it one of the oldest preserved texts in the Norse language (Bekker-Nielsen 1965, 17, 22). The Norwegian counterpart is preserved in AM 619, 4to from around 1200. For a background on the texts and the relations between the Icelandic and Norwegian versions, see Turville-Petre 1972; de Leeuw van Weenen 1993, 3 – 19; Berg 2010, 38 – 39. I refer to Sthm Perg. 15 4to (for the Old Icelandic text) and to AM 619, 4to (for the Norwegian text).

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that church buildings served as models for mnemonic structures (see fig. 8). People are encouraged to see through their mind’s eyes (hugskotsauga), that is, to see in and with memory (Jørgensen and Laugerud 2018).¹²⁷ It says: “A þeſſo brióſtþile ero mikil dyʀ ſvat ꜵll tíþeɴde ma ſiá i ſꜵnghuſ ýr kirkio. þuiat hveʀ er fiþr miſcuɴar dyʀ heilagſ anda ma líta hugſkotſ ꜵgom marga himneſka hlute” (The Stave Church Homily, 1993, 45v) (In this front wall is a big door so that one can see from the church all that happens in the choir, for all who find the Holy Ghost’s gate of grace see much divine with the eyes of the mind). By gazing with the mind’s eyes it will be possible to reach the Holy Ghost’s gate of grace, symbolically speaking, to come closer to an understanding of the divine. The gaze with the inner eye is thus a cognitive practice used in the search for God and, as the text reveals, it allows the subject to reach a particularly intense contact with the spiritual world. It is remarkable that contemplating with the mind’s eye is combined with the creation of a model of the church building in the mind. At the same time as the reader, and – if the text was read alound in the church – the members of the congregation, are encouraged to see with their inner eye, they are expected to create in their minds a mnemonic location, inspired by the physical church building. In this way, as Henning Laugerud has argued, this text quite neatly demonstrates how the art of memory works (Laugerud 2010, 44). The text mentions such architectonic elements of the wooden church as the front wall, the door, the choir, the gate and so on, underscoring that the creation of a mental image of the church will enable remembrance and make it possible to hold on to the information provided.¹²⁸ The Stave Church Homily belongs to a European homiletic tradition (BekkerNielsen 1965, 22; Turville-Petre 1972). According to Mary Carruthers, homilies very often involve the creation of picturae, which were regarded as useful rhetorical tools: Preachers thought of such ‘pictures’ in terms of a rhetorical disposito, as an arrangement of images in a structure. Rhetorically, pictura functioned as a means for securing the divisio essential to rhetorical memoria, supplying to a listening audience the essential visual schematic within which to organize and thus retain what they were about to hear. (Carruthers 2006, 288)

 The texts in the Homily Books do not only refer to hugskotsauga (the eye of the mind) but also to hugskotseyra (the ear of the mind) and hugskotshǫnd (the hand of the mind) (de Leeuw van Weenen 1993, 69r and 86r). This focus on the inner senses (relating to vision, hearing and touch) not only stresses the homilies’ interest in activities of the mind but also suggests that mnemonic activities evoked a wide sensory register.  For a treatment of visual strategies in the Norwegian homily book, see Aavitsland 2010.

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Fig. 8: Heddal Stave Church, Notodden, Norway. Photo: Micha L. Rieser. Attribution https://commons.wikimedia.org

This statement helps us understand the Stave Church Homily’s adjacent memory culture and the function of mnemonic pictures within this culture. With reference not only to preachers and their audiences, but also to authors, it has been argued that the value of such picturae “lies in their usefulness to a person, whether acting as author or as audience, during a procedure of thought” (Carruthers 2006, 288). More specifically pictures make it possible to remember as well as to think creatively about knowledge that is heard or read. The Stave Church Homily helps us to explain in more detail how people memorized knowledge and which techniques they used. It presupposes a situation where people recreated in their minds architectonic structures that were helpful during processes of remembering and thinking. The method, as it is described in the Stave Church Homily, may very well have been common among studious clerics who used it to communicate biblical knowledge, but also in other types of educational activities and in the transmis-

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sion of learning more generally. If the Stave Church Homily was used for preaching, the method would have been communicated to a broader lay audience, too, which would indicate that the tradition of visualizing pictures in the mind was relatively widespread and not only a tool for learned church-people.

5.2.2 Mnemonics and Beyond It is appropriate here to add to these comments on the Stave Church Homily some words about its biblical intertext and the wider symbolic meanings that are attached to the church building. The text is about much more than mnemonics, because various intertwined layers of religious meaning are elicited in the image of the building. Firstly, the text foregrounds the biblical imagery of the master builder and creates an intertextual connection to Pauline texts (Romans and Corinthians). Here Paul is depicted as a master builder, who is responsible for laying the foundations of the church (Christendom), while the community around him is responsible for the walls, the ceiling and so on, that is, for continuing the work that he started (Derrett 1997). These texts give additional meaning to the situation described in the Stave Church Homily. The Pauline trope is an apt metaphor for describing the mnemonic activity of people of the church. When they build structures in their minds they preserve the biblical stories and prevent the collapse of the building (Christendom). Or, to use a vocabulary from memory studies: their mnemonic endeavours keep the cultural memory of the church intact. Additionally, the Stave Church Homily attaches multiple symbolic meanings to the church building. At the same time as this text helps us clarify mnemonic practises, it demonstrates how, in the religious community, the material world – more specifically the church building – was infused with a sensus spiritualis (Jørgensen and Laugerud 2018). The building itself and the interior sections of the church (the entrance, the pillars, the altar) should – it is explained – be understood in an allegorical and moral sense (by an evocation of sensus allegoricus and sensus tropologicus). The building parts refer, firstly, to biblical stories and evangelists, secondly, to the deeds every individual Christian holds within him- or herself. For instance, the four corner posts, which contain the strongest support for belief, represent the four gospels and the four cardinal virtues (wisdom, justice, strength and moderation) that each congregation member holds within (The Stave Church Homily, 1993, pp. 45v – 46r). The mnemonic method of creating inner buildings, which is described so vividly in the Stave Church Homily, has similarities to Hugh of St. Victor’s image of the ark, which is used mnemonically at the same times as virtues are attached to the various locations contained within the

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ark. This tendency to evoke a moral level also goes back to Pauline Letters, which describe the congregation members as the holy temples of God (Corinthians). This imagery is echoed quite clearly in a passage of the Norwegian version of the text (AM 619 4to), which reads like this: “En ſva ſem vér ſægium kirkio merkia allan criſtin lyð. ſva man hon merkia ſér hvern criſtin mann. þann er ſanlega gereſc myſtere hæilags anda í góðum ſiðum. Đvi at hvær maðr ſcal ſmiða andlega kirkio í ſér” (Gamal norsk homiliebok, 1931, p. 97) (But in the same way as we say that the church signifies all Christendom, so can it signify each Christian, who from a pure life becomes a true temple, thus will each man build a holy church within himself). We are first of all interested in mnemonic practices and technologies, and only secondarily in religious culture and spirituality, but these layers are tightly entangled, and it is clear that the mnemonic methods described in the Stave Church Homily are interwoven with Christian doctrine.¹²⁹

5.2.3 Instruments of Memory and Learning The Stave Church Homily indicates that the cultural memory of the Christian church (a memory founded on biblical stories) depended on mnemonic configurations that were carried in the minds of people, i. e. that the mnemonic technologies helped to preserve their shared memory. Furthermore, the text leaves the impression that a relatively direct relationship could exist between a mnemonic structure and the object that served as its model (in this case a stave church), and this suggests that real buildings could be used as sources of inspiration for mnemonic loci and picturae. Before directing my attention to the motif of the mind’s eye in Konungs Skuggsjá, a few additional comments regarding mnemonic structures should be mentioned. I have two examples. The first one supports the idea that medieval authors and their audiences implicitly took for granted that mnemonic locations in the form of church buildings were used in learned environments. The second example points to the multitude of sensory modalities that could be involved in the creation of mnemonic locations and it

 Hugh of St. Victor elaborates on the builder trope and alludes to Pauline texts; in Didascalicon Hugh explains that the student, like the mason, builds a superstructure upon the foundation that has been learned (Carruthers 1998, 20). Hugh also refers to the house that each individual builds inside (A little Book About Constructing Noah’s Ark, 2004, pp. 45 – 46). Gabriel Turville-Petre connects the Stave Church Homily to the flourishing symbolism of the twelfth century (of which Hugh of St. Victor was a representative) saying that: “parts of church buildings [were used] to symbolize religious objects or truths which were felt to be more lasting and more real than the building itself” (1972, 81).

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suggests that such locations worked most effectively if they could speak to the senses. The first example involves, once again, Jóns saga helga, this time a passage about a craftsman, Þóroddr (Ásdís Egilsdóttir 2006, 221; Hermann 2017c). This man did physical construction work on the church at Hólar and at the same time he listened to the teaching that was going on in the school nearby. The episode runs as follows: Hann valði þann mann til kirkjugerðarinnar er þá þótti einnhverr hagastr vera. Sá hét Þóroddr Gamlason, ok var bæði at inn helgi Jón sparði eigi at reiða honum kaupit mikit ok gott, enda leysti hann ok sína sýslu vel ok góðmannliga. Þat er sagt frá þessum manni at hann var svá næmr, þá er hann var í smíðinni, þá heyrði hann til er prestlingum var kennd íþrótt sú er grammatica heitir, en svá loddi honum þat vel í eyrum af miklum næmleik ok athuga at hann gerðisk inn mesti íþróttamaðr í þess konar námi. (Jóns saga ins helga, 2003, ch. 8, p. 204) (He chose the man for the church building that was then thought to be the most skilful. His name was Þóroddr Gamlason, and it was so that the Holy Jón did not spare to pay him great and good wages, and he did his work well and honestly. It is told of this man that he was so quick at learning that, when he was at his work, he listened to the priestlings being taught the accomplishment which is called grammatica, and it stuck so well in his ears, by reason of his great quickness in learning and attention or application, that he became the most accomplished man in this kind of learning.) (S. John of Holar’s life, 1905, ch. 9, p. 551, with modifications)

Jón Ǫgmundarson, the bishop, had hired an accomplished man to build a new church. The emphasis on this man’s mastery initially refers to his skills as a craftsman doing concrete physical work, but the focus soon moves to his superior skills as a student. Given the nearby teaching situation and the reference to how well he received this learning, it is tempting to read the description metaphorically, as if it alludes to the practice of memorizing knowledge by evocation of building structures. It opens up the possibility that the intelligent craftsman simultaneously constructs a physical church and a mnemonic location in his mind. Þóroddr’s building skills may very well have been understood both literally and metaphorically. Such an allusion would have been grasped by the readers of the saga, who may have taken for granted that learning was attached to locations in the mind. The episode most likely idealizes the learning environment in Hólar and should be seen as an element in the construction of the memory of the saintly bishop and the environment he lived in. But it may very well also speak into a situation where people were accustomed to think along these lines and where the art of memory was entangled with the ‘art of building’ (see Lohfert Jørgensen and Laugerud 2018, 166 with reference to Carruthers 1993).

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The episode about Þóroddr points to the sensory aspect of memory as well, when it says that the learning stuck well in Þóroddr’s ears (“svá loddi honum þat vel í eyrum”). The passage emphasizes that the ear was regarded as an entrance to memory. We note that in some cases, such as the Homily Books and Guðmundar saga biskups (1878, p. 56), references are made to hugskotseyra (the mind’s ear), which tells us that the mind’s eye and the faculty of vision are not the only ways to express mnemonic processing. A focus on the ear does not as such challenge the primacy of the eye and the sense of sight when it comes to memory. Theoretically speaking, it may presuppose the idea that – after having entered the mind through the gateway of the ear – words and things would be transformed into visual cues that were then attached to a mnemonic structure. The second example is from Þorvalds þáttr víðfǫrla (The Tale of Thorvald the Far-Travelled) (c. 1230).¹³⁰ It tells of a situation in the past when the Icelander Koðrán (who was still a heathen) was looking at a Christian ritual from the sidelines. The episode evokes features of relevance for memory, inasmuch as it points to the importance of sensory stimuli and the way they can arouse affect: Á nǫkkurri hátíð þá er Friðrekr byskup með sínum klerkum framði tíðagørð ok guðligt embætti var Koðrán nær staddr, meirr sakir forvitni en hann ætlaði sér at samþykkjask at sinni þeira siðferði. En er hann heyrði klokknahljóð ok fagran klerkasǫng ok kenndi sætan reykelsis ilm, en sá byskup vegligum skrúða skrýddan ok alla þá er honum þjónuðu klædda hvítum klæðum með bjǫrtu yfirbragði ok þar með birti mikla um allt húsit af fǫgru vaxkerta ljósi ok aðra þá hluti sem til heyrðu því hátíðarhaldi, þá þóknuðusk honum allir þessir hlutir heldr vel. (Þorvalds þáttr víðfǫrla, 2003, ch. 3, p. 61) (At a certain festival, when bishop Fridrek and his clerics were performing the holy service and their priestly duties, Kodran was standing nearby, more out of curiosity than out of any intention to agree with their religion at that time. When he heard the sound of the bells and the beautiful singing of the clerics, and smelt the sweet scent of the incense, and saw the bishop dressed in splendid clothes, and all those who were serving him dressed in white clothes with bright faces, and the great brightness in the whole house from the light of the beautiful wax tapers, and the other things which pertained to the celebration of the feast, then all these things pleased him very greatly.) (The Tale of Thorvald the Far-Travelled, 1997, ch. 3, p. 360)

The holy service is a multi-sensory experience: Koðrán hears the sound from the bells and the singing, he smells the sweet scents and candles and he sees images on wax tapers, beautiful clothes and so on. The holy service creates a space that is defined by a multitude of sensory modalities, and aural, visual, olfactory and

 This text is preserved in Óláfs saga Tryggvason (AM 61 fol.) (c. 1350 – 1375) and in Flateyjarbók.

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tactile signals add to the intensity of the situation. The response from Koðrán (who is pleased with it all) shows that he is affected by what he experiences and perceives. It is common to argue that the main medium of the Christian church is the book. Undoubtedly, the medium of the book was decisive for the textual community of the church, which (even more than other institutions of society in the period considered here) made extensive use of the written word for liturgical as well as administrative purposes. But we note that this depiction of a service does not mention the Holy Scripture at all; in fact, only other media are foregrounded, perhaps because they were considered to be just as appealing to the new, embryonic congregation as the book would be. Of course, this literary description tells of the experience of a physical space and it does not depict a mnemonic location envisaged in Koðrán’s mind, nor is it likely from the context that it should be read metaphorically, like the example above. Still, the passage illustrates principles that are important for, and support the operational value of, mnemonic locations. Firstly, it points to the relevance of the senses, which Augustine among others describes as stored in memory and ready to be recalled at any given time. Even if things held in memory do not smell or sound in themselves, the human psyche is at all times ready to recall smells or sounds and so on, all to the benefit of the mnemonic process.¹³¹ The delineated religious space (and the activities that take place in it) is an excellent source of inspiration for mnemonic buildings, not least because it speaks to the senses: Not

 Augustine explains how the senses function as gateways to memory in the following way: “Vbi sunt omnia distincte generatimque servata, quae suo quaeque aditu ingesta sunt, sicut lux atque omnes colores formaeque corporum per oculos, per aures autem omnia genera sonorum omnesque odores per aditum narium, omnes sapores per oris aditum, a sensu autem totius corporis, quid durum, quid molle, quid calidum frigidumve, lene aut asperum, grave seu leve sive extrinsecus sive intrinsecus corpori. haec omnia recipit recolenda, cum opus est, et retractanda grandis memoriae recessus et nescio qui secreti atque ineffabiles sinus eius: quae omnia suis quaeque foribus intrant ad eam et reponuntur in ea. nec ipsa tamen intrant, sed rerum sensarum imagines illic praesto sunt cogitationi reminiscentis eas” (“Where [in memory] are all things distinctly and under general heads preserved, according to the several gates that each notion hath been brought in at? as, (for example) light and all colours and forms of bodies brought in by the eyes: and by the ears all sorts of sounds: and all smells by the nostrils; all tastes by the gate of the mouth: and by the sense which belongs to the whole body, is brought in whatsoever is hard or soft: whatsoever is hot or cold: whatsoever is smooth or rugged, heavy or light, in respect of the body either outwardly or inwardly; all these doth that great receipt of the memory receive in her many secret and inexpressible windings, to be forthcoming, and to be called for again, whenas need so requireth, each entering in by his own port, and there laid up in it. And yet do not the things themselves enter the memory; only the images of the things perceived by the senses are ready there at hand, whenever the thoughts will recall them”) (Augustinus Aurelius, Confessions, II, 1961, book 10, ch. 8, pp. 94– 97).

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only does it look spectacular, it sounds and smells in a particular way, all of which will help to call forth and jog memories. As I have discussed, the more lively a mnemonic space is and the more characteristic the inventory and the interior decoration, the better this location and its images will fasten in one’s memory. Therefore, we can envisage that mnemonic spaces could have been full of sounds and smells, too, and that memory was boosted by such recreated sensory stimuli. One last point to be made about this passage: the entire scene is bright and portrayed as well lit, with terms such as ‘lightness’ and ‘whiteness’ being mentioned more than once. It requires no leap of imagination in this connection to interpret the light as a metaphysical phenomenon and a divine attribute, suggesting the presence of God. But light is also a prerequisite for mnemonic seeing, the very precondition that makes it possible to gaze over or look into all the corners and recesses of a mnemonic space. Koðrán views the full scene from a nearby position, his gaze is unhindered and he has an overview of all the proceedings from a perfect distance. In fact, his situation mirrors an ideal position for someone who gazes at a mnemonic location with a clear and undisturbed sight. The passage recalls an important aspect of mnemonic seeing, namely the position of the beholder, which in turn leads to the question: From where are mnemonic locations viewed?

5.2.4 Konungs skuggsjá The Old Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá (The King’s Mirror) (middle of the thirteenth century) will serve as the next example of the motif of the mind’s eye and as another situation where memory, vision and space appear together. Konungs skuggsjá, a book about politics and morals, belongs to the speculum-tradition, a genre that includes instruction manuals and has an encyclopaedic character. It was written in the court of the Norwegian King Hákon Hákonarson, in part to educate young princes, perhaps the king’s sons, Hákon Hákonarson the younger and Magnús Hákonarson, but its contents have a general application, which suggests that the book was meant to educate a larger audience as well. Laurence Marcellus Larson suggests that the “purpose of the work is to provide a certain kind of knowledge which will be of use to young men who are looking forward to a career in the higher professions” (Larson 1917, 6). In a more recent study Karl G. Johansson and Elise Kleivane have concluded that Konungs skuggsjá had “a wider audience than the princes, even wider than the nobles surrounding the king. The immediate and fast dissemination of the work indicates that the intended audience was both wider and more dispersed than the king’s court” (2018, 20). The high number of preserved manuscripts suggests that the text was distributed

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widely, and Johansson and Kleivane acknowledge that the work’s function when it was first written differed from its function later on.¹³² At all events, the text has an educational purpose, and – as is the case with the Prose Edda – it conveys its message in a didactic way, namely in a fictional dialogue between a father and a son. Konungs skuggsjá is another source for the large-scale cultural process whereby knowledge was transported from human memory to the external storehouse of writing. In the prologue, the first-person narrator, the son, explains why he commits the conversation that he has had with his father to writing. He lets it be known that he records in writing the knowledge that he gained so that it will persist; in other words, this book (like several others that we have encountered hitherto) is presented as an aid to memory. The son reveals that he has pondered in his memory on the matter that he has learned: Enn þá er eg hafdi feingit gnog andsuor og viturlig af munne mijns fodurs vm alla þá hluti er eg spurda þá voru nær staddir gofgir menn og spakir. þeir er heyrdu mijna spurningu og hans viturlig og sannlig andsuor. þá bádu þeir þess at eg skillda alla ockra rædu skrifa og i bok setia at eigi yrdi su ræda svo skiott med tionum sem vier þognudum. helldur væri hun þá morgum sijdan nytsamligt gamann. er eigi mætti hallda skemtan af oss sialfum er nær yrdi staddir þeiri rædu og heyrdu. Enn eg giorda bædi eptir bæn þeira og rádum. og studderadi eg mykit i þeim ollum rædum med athugasamligu minne og setta eg allar þær rædur i eina bok. eigi at eins til eyrna gamanns og skiotrar skemtanar þeim er heyrdi helldur til margfalldrar nytsemdar ollum þeim er med riettum athuga nema þessa bok og fylgia þvi ollu vel er bydr i bokinni. Enn bokinn er svo gior at þo mun frodleikur i þikia og skiemtan. enn þo mikit gagn at þat sie vel numit og giætt eptir þvi er ritat er i bokinni. (Konungs skuggsjá. Speculum Regale, 1920, pp. 2– 3) (But when my father had given wise and sufficient replies to all the questions that I had asked, certain wise and worthy men, who, being present, had heard my questions and his wise and truthful answers, requested me to note down all our conversations and set them in a book, so that our discussions should not perish as soon as we ceased speaking, but prove useful and enjoyable to many who could derive no pastime from us who were present at these conversations. So I did as they advised and requested. I searched my memory and pondered deeply upon the speeches and set them all in a book, not only for the amusement or the fleeting pastime of those who may hear them, but for the help which the book will offer in many ways to all who read it with proper attention and observe carefully everything that it prescribes. It is written in such a way as to furnish information and entertainment, as well as

 There are both (early) Norwegian and (later) Icelandic manuscripts containing Konungs skuggsjá, the oldest fragments of the text are from Norway from the third quarter of the thirteenth century, see Holm-Olsen 1952; Johansson and Kleivane 2018, 27– 34. In this context, I refer exclusively to the text’s prologue, which is preserved only in Icelandic manuscripts, among them AM 243 a fol. from the fifteenth century. It is debated whether the prologue was an original part of the text or a later addition, see Hamer 2000; Johansson and Kleivane 2018, 11– 17.

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much practical knowledge, if the contents are carefully learned and remembered.) (The King’s Mirror, 1917, ch. 1, pp. 73 – 74)

The wording confirms, and makes even more explicit, what was indicated in some of the texts that I have pointed to in the previous chapters, namely that authorship involved mnemonic preparation and a pre-stage of organization and mediation of the contents, that is, a search in memory, before it was all set down in written form. Furthermore, as I argued above, for instance in the case of Hungrvaka, the vocabulary in this passage demonstrates the book’s transitional position in between sensory modalities and media. It refers to hearing (heyra) and writing (skrifa), to the activity of setting knowledge into the book (í bók setja) and to the processing of knowledge in memory (minni). The wording goes against the conviction that book culture was isolated from memory culture, and the passage does not leave the impression that the book was meant to substitute memory as such, nor does it indicate that the book itself was the transmission’s final goal. In the concluding section the reader is invited to participate in the preservation and transmission process and encouraged to entertain him- or herself with the book. The words nema (to learn) and gǽta eftir (to take care of, to mind) (as the translation above also indicates) show that the reader is expected to learn from it and to remember the contents. Thus, the learning that it contains ideally travels back and forth between the book and people’s memory.

5.2.5 Seeing in and with Memory But how does Konungs skuggsjá treat the motif of the mind’s eye? In contrast to the Stave Church Homily, where the inner eye (in correspondence with the genre of the work and its religious context) gives access to a theological truth and essentially expresses the ability of the congregation members to behold a spiritual world, the motif is employed in Konungs skuggsjá to give an insight into the state of affairs among human beings in the material world. Thus, the motif is adapted to its immediate literary context, which focuses on politics and moral advice for a ruler, aspects of relevance for royal or elite education. These are the opening words of the book: Þá er eg leidda allar iþrottir firi augu hugar og rannsakadi eg med athygli alla sidu huerrar iþrottar þá sá eg mikinn fiolda mædast i villistijgum þeim er frá holludu sidligum þiodgotum og leiddu i villiattir usida og tyndust allir i obyggiligum dolum. þeir er þá stigu giengu er mest lágu forbreckis þviat þeir þreyttust af langri mædu runnins vegar og hofdu eigi brecku megin til uppgongu og eigi fundu þeir gagnstigu þá er þá mætti leida til þiodvegar sidar. (Konungs skuggsjá. Speculum Regale, 1920, p. 1)

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(I passed all the crafts before my mind’s eye and studied intently all the practices belonging to each craft; and I saw a vast multitude walking wearily along the paths that slope downward from the highways of virtue into error and vice. Some of these were very steep, and those who followed them perished in desolate ravines; for the long, wearisome road had fatigued them, and they had not enough strength left to climb up the hillside, nor were they able to find the by-paths that led back to the highways of virtue.) (The King’s Mirror, 1917, ch. 1, p. 72)

When gazing with the mind’s eye (augu hugar), this inward lens, the son becomes aware that people have turned away from the virtuous ways of living. This recognition, revealed at the very beginning of the book, suits the theme of the book as a whole, which aims to guide its readers of society’s constitution and in various aspects of a virtous life. What is of interest here is how the mind’s eye is used and what the motif brings with it. What lies in front of the inner eye in this case is a topographical structure consisting of paths and highways, upon which dynamic scenery and activity takes place. The cognitive metaphors of ‘up’ (good) and ‘down’ (bad) express the meaning of this portrait, the movements that have an upward direction are linked to virtues, while downward movements are connected to errors.We note that it is a contemplation on this structure that allows the son to grasp the truth. The topography is, however, more than a metaphorical demonstration of vices and errors, and it arguably bears resemblances to mnemonic locations, which help to store and organize the contents they keep. As noted above, a clear and undisturbed field of vision is a critical component within the art of memory, making it relevant to consider the visualization strategies that are implied in inwards seeing. In the case of the son in Konungs skuggsjá, gazing with the mind’s eye, that is, seeing in and through memory, facilitates a condensation of large-scale activities, or as it is expressed in the passage itself, it allows for a bundling together of an abundance of knowledge. A discourse that concentrates on a multitude of different types of knowledge undeniably points to one of the wider objects of memory, namely wisdom. The son grasps it all in one intense look, which suggests that his angle of vision provides him with an unhindered gaze. The passage does not clarify the son’s position. It is, for example, left unexplained whether he is in an elevated position from which he gazes down at this topography, or whether the topography has the size of a miniature that is easy to oversee because of its small size. But both of these visualization strategies would enable him to take in the state of world affairs without any disturbances and in one quick glimpse. Konungs skuggsjá’s reference to the mind’s eye – and its mention of what is seen through it and by it – indicates that mnemonic seeing involves imaginary angles of vision. Arguably, it hints at motifs that centre on positions at some height, which allow for a bird’s eye or a god’s eye perspective. Such a motif has

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already been presented, namely the specula, which in the Latinate tradition refers to imaginary watchtowers or other lookouts that are helpful for contemplation, or – it can be added – for mnemonic activities. The motif is also expressed by means of the Greek term kataskopos, which means a ‘view from above’. According to Anya Burgon this motif, or topos, as she calls it, has been dealt with in various historical contexts: Since antiquity, theologians, artists, poets and philosophers have engaged with the notion of an all-encompassing view of the world, a ‘view from above’, or what is often known as kataskopos (kata – downward; skopos – view, or target). This topos or ‘spiritual exercise’ (as it was termed by Pierre Hadot) encapsulates a fundamental human urge: to see the world in toto, from beyond the confines of the body and geography. (Burgon 2019)

The view from above is used, for instance, in Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (The Dream of Scipio) (in the last part of the sixth book of De republica), a work that was transmitted into the Middle Ages thorough Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio). Here it is told how, in his dream, Scipio flies among the stars, from which perspective he gains an all-encompassing prospect both on the world and on the whole universe, which seems diminutive to him. In ancient philosophy such an imaginative prospect allows, among other things, for a moralizing reflection on human folly (Kupfer 2016, 55). This, it turns out, is also the case for the son in Konungs skuggsjá, who, when he gazes over the wide topography, gains an insight into (erroneous) human behaviour. The kataskopos device is particularly relevant to mention in this context because there are indications that Konungs skuggsjá may refer to Macrobius’ commentary (see The King’s Mirror, 1917, pp. 147n and 154– 155n).¹³³ But it is also possible that the prologue of Konungs skuggsjá refers to the diminutio, a motif that implies that the object gazed at takes the form of a miniature. Also this stratagem is helpful for someone who wishes to gather a vastness of data, as it makes it possible to grasp a multitude of impressions all at once.¹³⁴

 Macrobius’ work was known in both Norway and Iceland (Frank 1909, 151).  There are hints at this diminutio device in geographical texts, for instance in Honorius Augustodunensis’ Imago Mundi. This text reads: “Terrae forma est rotunda, unde et orbis est dicta. Si enim quis in aere positus eam desuper inspiceret, tota enormitas montium et concavitas vallium minus in ea appareret quam digitus alicuius si pilam pregrandem in manu teneret” (“The shape of the earth is round, whence it is called an ‘orb’. Indeed if it was examined from the sky, the whole immensity of the mountains, and the depths of the valleys in it would appear small, like the finger of someone if he were holding a huge ball in his hand”) (Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago Mundi, 2008, p. 108).

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In the two examples mentioned so far, the mind’s eye gives access to divine truth and worldly affairs, respectively, but in both cases this lens allows the observer to gain an intense view of reality, whether this reality is spiritual or material. In both cases, it is implied that the inner eye gives access to a reality that lies beyond what can be grasped with the corporal eye. In the Stave Church Homily and Konungs skuggsjá alike, the motif is combined with spatial structures, one is architectonic (in the Stave Church Homily), the other is topographic (in Konungs skuggsjá). The texts hint at an important feature of mnemonic activities, namely the perspective of the beholder. The Stave Church Homily gives the impression that the one who is observing is placed in the church itself and gazes at the church interior from floor level, so to speak. Konungs skuggsjá, on the other hand, hints at the presence of another perspective. It indicates that a vast amount of wisdom and the ability to seize the truth were obtained with an elevated view from above or, alternatively, with the envisioning of miniature structures. The latter text suggests that the manipulation of scale and reversal of dimensions were integral to inner seeing, which raises the issue of whether ‘high-up’ perspectives, expressed through the conflating devices of the specula and the kataskopos, were at times used instrumentally in mnemonic technologies.

5.3 Visualization Strategies Moving away from overtly Latinate genres, my focus will shift to the Prose Edda (Gylfaginning), Vǫluspá and Grímnismál, texts which do not to the same degree as the Stave Church Homily and Konungs skuggsjá aim at Christian learning, and this provides me with an opportunity to investigate memory and visuality in different literary contexts. Like the two previously mentioned texts, these three sources elaborate on the ternary ingredients of memory, vision and space. Even if they do not use a phrase such as ‘the mind’s eye’ directly, they confirm that inner sight conflates with mnemonic supremacy and allows for cognitive proficiency, always helped by the evocation of spatial structures.

5.3.1 The One-Eyed God Once again, with new focal points, the Prose Edda will serve as an example. The Prose Edda shares certain key similarities with the Stave Church Homily and Konungs skuggsjá. The Stave Church Homily, for example, suggests that mnemonic seeing presupposes an angle of vision from within the mnemonic building itself. A similar perspective seems to lie behind Gylfaginning’s depiction of Hava hǫll and

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the way in which Gylfi approaches, enters and walks through this edifice: His motions suggest that, in this case, mnemonic recollection is obtained simultaneously with a movement from one place to another within a building. But we will see that this text presents other angles of vision, too. Like Konungs skuggsjá, the Prose Edda is an educational text, and it uses a fictional dialogue to present knowledge. In its case the verbal exchange is not between a son and a father, but between the Swedish king Gylfi and three Æsir. It is noteworthy that both of these texts, at different textual levels, presuppose a situation where knowledge is transmitted from one generation to another, in Konungs skuggsjá this relationship is embedded into the dialogical frame (a conversation between a son and his father), and in the Prose Edda it is suggested in the meta-reflection, which refers to the young generation of poets who will learn from the book. Moreover, both of these texts touch on a theme that seems to have been prevalent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, namely how the book can aid memory and help to prevent forgetting. The Prose Edda attaches numerous functions to the god Óðinn, one of the primary ones is his role as the god of wisdom. Also memory is connected to this god, and John Lindow has written that: “Memory is something valued and especially understood by Odin […] It stands at the very centre of the Odinic universe” (Lindow 2001, 232). A view over the complete set of sources about pagan Norse gods, material and textual, reveals that Óðinn’s function is not unambiguous, and this god’s ubiquitous presence in the Prose Edda, this literary and selfconscious text, must be seen as a result of authorial priorities and a wish to adapt the material at hand to the book’s immediate purposes. One of the outspoken aims of the book is to educate young people in the art of poetry; another, related, aim is arguably to explain the mnemonic structures that assisted the preservation of mythological knowledge. In the stories told to Gylfi by the three Æsir, Óðinn is presented as an expert who masters mnemonic technologies.¹³⁵ As became clear

 The Prose Edda installs memory experts at different textual levels, in the framework (Gylfi and the three Æsir) as well as in the narrated world (most conspicuously Óðinn). In general, the Prose Edda is a book of high narratological complexity. The constellation of Hár/Jafnhár/Þriði, which is imbedded in Gylfaginning’s framework as external narrators, can be seen as an expression of Óðinn, a figure, however, who also acts in the narrated world, or in the story within the story. A creative use of narrators is characteristic for the text, which apart from mixing external and internal narrators, uses multiple levels of focalization, imbedded narration and so on, and one of the effects of this is the creation of uncertainty about the responsible transmitting voice. This manifold narratological perspective is well chosen by an author who wishes to distance himself from the pagan material contained in the book. For relevant readings in this context, see Sandra Schneeberger’s on ‘textual performativity’ and the creation of the Norse cosmos by way of the narrative (Schneeberger 2018), and Pete Sandberg’s on the unpersonal

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from the eagle image in the myth about the mead of poetry, Óðinn’s memory is expressed with reference to the stomach metaphor, but there are other indications to suggest that this god is portrayed with an eye to mnemonic technologies that prevailed in the medieval period. It is especially his extraordinarily good eyesight, the seat Hliðskjálf and the ravens Huginn and Muninn that emphasize Óðinn’s mnemonic abilities. What was hinted at in Konungs skuggsjá, namely that imaginative elevated positions support mnemonic activities, likewise becomes clear in Gylfaginning’s portrayal of the god of wisdom. Óðinn’s eyesight attracts some interest in Gylfaginning. Already the various Óðinn-names call attention to this trait. Þriði tells Gylfi that Óðinn is called Helblindi (All-blind) and Blindi (Blind), information that is backed up with a reference to the poem Grímnismál. Blindness, however, should not be seen as a disabling hindrance for this god.¹³⁶ Quite to the contrary, it will be argued here, this blindness signals an inversion of corporal seeing and highlights the ability to see with the inner eye. The focus on eyesight is followed up in the myth about Mímis brunnr (Mímir’s well), which tells of how Óðinn lost his eye and became the oneeyed god. It says that Óðinn gave his eye to the guard of the well, Mímir, in order to be able to acquire the resources contained there, namely wisdom and intelligence (“þar er Mímis brunnr, er spekð ok mannvit er í fólgit” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 17) (“there is where Mimir’s well is, which has wisdom and intelligence contained in it”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 17). Óðinn exchanges his eye for wisdom and intelligence, which reveals that the faculty of sight is, indeed, central for the acquisition of sagacity. At the literal level, the myth indicates just how far this god will go to achieve this coveted quality, but at the metaphorical level, it reveals that the eye is the very medium which gives access to insight. It points out that it is the eye, the act of seeing, that constitutes the very foundation of his wisdom. The story about Mímis brunnr connects Óðinn with memory in another way, too. It has been suggested that the name Mímir (or the related forms Mímr and Mimi) means ‘the rememberer, the wise one’ and that it is related to the Latin adjective memor (see e. g. de Vries 1961; Simek 2006, 216), which signify ‘[to be]

authorial voice of Gylfaginning and the argument that Gylfaginning presents a type of knowledge dissemination where personality is taken out of the text, where personal interactions are superseded and where a “bureaucratic spirit” prevails (Sandberg 2021, 210).  Óðinn’s blindness has been connected to a mythic ability to access knowledge that is hidden to others (Lassen 2003, 88). Other explanations have been given for his blindness; Lotte Motz, who understands the word blindr to refer to ‘[to be] hidden, obscure or concealed’, has combined blindness with the circumstance that Óðinn often appears with a hidden identity or uses masks (1998).

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mindful, remembering’ and ‘[to be] of good memory’. Also, keeping in mind the narrative semantics of the stories in the mythology wherein Mímir appears, it has been argued that this being can be seen as a personification of memory (cf. Clunies Ross 1994, 96 and 212– 15).¹³⁷ There are uncertainties related to the assumption that the name Mímir denotes memory (see Heslop 2018, 76 – 77), but it may actually have been obvious (for an author or a redactor with an interest in memory) to reinforce this meaning and to connect the Old Norse word with the qualities implied in the Latin phrase.¹³⁸ The story reflects on Latin traditions in other ways, too; Mímis brunnr is called spektar brunnr which may hint at the Latin fons sapientiae (source of wisdom) (Holtsmark 1964, 46), a connection that underscores that this being acts in a context where wisdom and intelligence prevail. Given the close connection between memory and wisdom (illustrated most strongly in the metaphorical expression of memory as a storeroom of wisdom), the story is likely to give concrete shape to abstract ideas about memory (Mímir) and its purpose, wisdom (the well).

5.3.2 A High Seat with a View Óðinn’s excellent eye-sight is further facilitated by his high seat. This elevated place calls attention to a mnemonic visualization strategy that favours a panoramic view from high up. The first time the high seat is mentioned it is explained as follows: Þar næst gerðu þeir sér borg í miðjum heimi er kallaðr er Ásgarðr […] Þar er einn staðr er Hliðskjálf heitir, ok þá er Óðinn settisk þar í hásæti þá sá hann of alla heima ok hvers manns athœfi ok vissi alla hluti þá er hann sá. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 13) (After that they made themselves a city in the middle of the world which is known as Asgard […] There is a place which is called Hlidskialf, and when Odin sat there in the throne he saw over all worlds and every man’s activity and understood everything he saw.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 13, with modifications)

 It has also been suggested that Mímir, who appears in the Prose Edda, in Ynglinga saga (p. 13) and in Vǫluspá (sts. 28 and 45), is one side of the pair Mímir/Hœnir (as described in Ynglinga saga), which can arguably be seen as a parallel to Huginn/Muninn, assuming that Hœnir represents ‘thought’ and Mímir ‘memory’. See Clunies Ross 1994, 96.  The strategy of creating (false) etymologies is not uncommon in medieval culture and there are other examples of it in the Prose Edda. For instance, the connection that is established between the Old Norse word áss (god) and Asíamenn (men from Asia) (see Chapter 7).

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We notice, firstly, that the throne, or the high seat, is located in the middle of the world, namely in Ásgarðr, which according to the mnemonic topography that the three Æsir explain to Gylfi, is located in the sky, thus, the seat is placed in the middle of and high above the world. Secondly, the high seat provides Óðinn with a wide view that enables him to see into all worlds and observe every man’s activities, underscoring his sweeping field of vision. And thirdly – when gazing at the worlds from the high seat – he gains understanding, underscoring that the view which he obtains from this particular position supports his cognitive abilities. It so seems that the high seat functions as an elevated vantage point, or a lookout, that enables him to achieve knowledge about the whole world. The high seat is mentioned a second time in Gylfaginning as well and also in this case it helps Óðinn to see far and wide: Þann gerðu guðin ok þǫkðu skíru silfri, ok þar er Hliðskjálfin í þessum sal, þat hásæti er svá heitir. Ok þá er Alfǫðr sitr í því sæti þá sér hann of allan heim. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 20) (The gods built it [Valaskialf] and roofed it with pure silver, and it is there in this hall that Hlidskialf is, the throne of that name. And when All-father sits on that throne he can see over all the world.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 20)¹³⁹

There is a difference between the two references, however, which relates to the way in which the word Hliðskjálf is explained. While the first passage defines Hliðskjálf as a staðr (a place, an abode), the second one defines it as a hásæti (a throne, a high seat). Lukas Rösli has argued that the change from staðr to hásæti implies a spatial concretization and a change in Óðinn’s focalization from a position in a non-specified place in Ásgarðr to a specific position within a hall. This switch has implications for the kind of vision that is facilitated from the high seat – while the first position could in principle allow Óðinn to look at the outer world, the high seat’s position within the hall in the building Valaskjálf prevents this type of physical seeing, which in turn suggests that his eyesight takes the form of an inner seeing. This opinion has been formulated by Rösli as follows: “Der Rund-

 Hliðskjálf is mentioned on two other occasions outside of the Prose Edda, too, namely in the prose introductions of the eddic poems Grímnismál and Skírnismál in Codex Regius (GKS 2365 4to). In Grímnismál Óðinn and Frigg are placed in Hliðskjálf and look out over all worlds (of heima alla) and in Skírnismál it is Frey who is placed there and looks out over all the worlds and all the way into the land of giants. Neither of these passages explicitly combines Hliðskjálf with a high seat. Lukas Rösli has questioned whether Hliðskjálf can univocally be considered a high seat (which has become the most common interpretation of the word) and argues instead for a broader meaning (2015, 132).

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umblick auf die Welt, der vom Hochsitz in der Halle im Himmel aus aber dennoch möglich ist, wird somit zwangsläufig zu einem inneren und geistigen Sehen” (Rösli 2015, 132) (The all-round view on the world, from the high seat in the hall in the sky is still possible, yet it will necessarily have become an inner and spiritual vision). It seems as if the text, with this change of meaning, deliberately draws the attention to the way of seeing that involves the inner eye, that is, seeing in and with memory.¹⁴⁰ The name Hliðskjálf, which means something like ‘doorway-bench’ or ‘watchtower’, is interesting in this context (Elgqvist 1944, 61– 63; Lindow 2001, 176; Simek 2006, 152), and it can be seen as a vernacular equivalent to the Latin specula. ¹⁴¹ The literal meaning of this term refers to lookouts that are placed at strategical locations in a city or a stronghold, as may actually be indicated in the first passage quoted above, where Hliðskjálf refers to a staðr. But when used metaphorically, this motif expresses the ideal position for someone who wishes to obtain a view over a wide scenery or strives for a cosmic vision. Already the claim that Óðinn looks out over all worlds indicates that his position in the high seat gives access to more than what the corporal eye makes possible, but when Hliðskjálf becomes a high seat that is placed within a hall, the text’s interest in the potentials of the inner eye becomes even more obvious. Thus, the transfer of meaning that occurs with Hliðskjálf – from denoting ‘a city’ to ‘a high seat’ – arguably accentuates inner seeing and a complex of meaning that belongs to the specula-motif, a perspective that, as was maintained by Hugh of St. Victor among others, combines positions high above with cognitive abilities. This perspective allows both broad temporal and spatial perspectives. In this case, the text keeps its focus on the spatial potentials of inner vision (Óðinn’s sweeping look out over the whole world), while the temporal potentials of the gaze through the inner eye is not dealt with; nothing is said here about his ability to look into different times, the past or the future. Yet, a bringing together of both spatial and temporal perspectives is evident in other texts, most clearly in Vǫluspá which will be treated below. The Odinic traits emphasized here reveal yet other similarities with the section in Konungs skuggsjá, where the son – using his inward eye – looks over a vast

 Anne Holtmark is also aware of this implication, but she combines the episode with magic vision, not spiritual (1964, 40).  The first part of the word, hlið-, has a clear meaning (door-opening, gate), but the second part, skjálf, is more complicated (Elgqvist 1944, 44– 56). Elgqvist traces its meaning to “speculae, fristående vakttorn, längs gränslinjer och viktigare vägar uppförda på vida omkring synliga höjder” (1944, 53) (speculae, free-standing watchtowers, along borderlines and important roads built on areas around visible high-level areas).

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multitude of materials (comprised in a topographic structure) and by doing so understands human ways of life. But Óðinn’s position can be described with even greater precision, as the text states that his seat is placed in the centre of the world, Ásgarðr, and that he sees from a position ‘high above and in the middle of it all’. It is from this privileged position that he gazes out over all worlds and is able to see every man’s activities, and it is this particular position that facilitates his cognitive superiority.

5.3.3 Huginn and Muninn Óðinn’s mnemonic abilities also finds expression in Huginn and Muninn (see fig. 9). When presented in Gylfaginning, this image of the collaborative faculties of thought and memory stresses Óðinn’s sensory abilities: Hrafnar tveir sitja á ǫxlum honum ok segja í eyru honum ǫll tíðindi þau er þeir sjá eða heyra. Þeir heita svá: Huginn ok Muninn. Þá sendir hann í dagan at fljúgja um allan heim ok koma þeir aptr at dǫgurðarmáli. Þar af verðr hann margra tíðinda víss. Því kalla menn hann hrafna guð. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 32) (Two ravens sit on his shoulders and speak into his ear all the news they see or hear. Their names are Hugin and Munin. He sends them out at dawn to fly over all the world and they return at dinner-time. As a result he gets to find out about many events. From this he gets the name raven-god.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 33)

Two things are noteworthy here. Firstly, that the ravens function as Óðinn’s extended senses. They relate to Óðinn what they see (sjá) and hear (heyra), which specify how extraordinarily alert his sensory perception (his hearing and vison) is (Hermann 2014, 16). These two senses, according to medieval thinkers, including Gregory the Great, are the two main gateways to memory (Draaisma 2000, 33). Secondly, these mind-resources, which are detached from the body, fly out over the world, a flight that, if we accept that they represent Óðinn’s thought and memory, symbolizes his mental journey. The flight allows for the god’s contemplation on the world’s many events, and the description makes it relevant to consider whether the device of the kataskopos has informed this description. Just as Scipio’s soul leaves his body to explore the universe from high above in the Milky Way, Óðinn’s mind-resources fly out over the world, providing a panoramic view or, quite literally, giving him the bird’s eye view that allows him to collect knowledge and obtain the insights that he strives for. According to Marcia Kupfer, the kataskopos, or the view from above, reveals the ambition of a “totalizing cosmological aspiration” (Kupfer 2016, 8), which is exactly what Óðinn achieves through the ravens’ flight over the whole world. Scholars have combined the

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flying of the ravens with shamanistic rituals, where the mind and the soul leave the body (Strömbäck 1975), an argument that has found support in the hugrkenning vindr trǫllkvinna (wind of the troll-woman) (see Clunies Ross 2005, 94). This book suggests another source of inspiration, which takes into consideration the tropes that prevailed in, or can be combined with, medieval discussions about memory and wisdom. When someone flies or in other ways moves through the world to collect knowledge, shapeshifting and shamanism are not the only possible explanations; in the medieval imagination, this may just as well be connected to mnemonic techniques and to the ability to move (either by walking or flying) through mnemonic locations. A bit of attention should be paid to the meanings of the names Huginn and Muninn. Like the story about Mímis brunnr, which recalls medieval ideas about the intertwined qualities of memory and wisdom, the raven-pair can be understood in line with medieval terminologies and classifications. For instance, in De trinitate Augustine does not as such separate the resources of the mind and the soul (the intellect, memory and the will), but says that these three operations are all one and the same (see Hochschild 2012). Already nineteenth-century Old Norse scholars suggested that the ravens may constitute a (reduced) analogue to Augustine’s schematic representation of the mind as a tripartite system of overlapping resources, consisting of thought/memory/will (intellectus/memoria/voluntas) (Meyer 1891, 232). I agree with these critics of the nineteenth century, as well as with those of recent times, among them Stephen Mitchell (2018), who have argued that it would have been a natural conclusion for people with an interest in the mind to interpret the vernacular names Huginn and Muninn in correspondence with ideas that prevailed in the (learned) traditions that circulated at that time.¹⁴² In contrast to the historical texts, which depict memory as enclosed within the body, i. e., in the inner recesses of the heart and the breast, the language of the mythology allows for further concretizations of abstract phenomena in the form of disembodiments and personifications, an option that was fully utilized in Gylfaginning’s depiction of the god of wisdom.

 Norse adaptations of theological ideas from Latin texts often simplified the sources and attempts were not necessarily made to translate terminologies in any exact way (see e. g. Eriksen 2016, 423). A reduction of the tripartite system may thus be entirely in line with the common way of translating Latin terminologies into the vernacular tradition. On the other hand, the reduction from a trio to a pair of mind-activities may also be related to the available Norse sources, visual as well as verbal, that depict certain figures with two accompanying birds, and to an attempt to combine new learning with traditional material.

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Fig. 9: Óðinn with the birds Huginn and Muninn in SÁM 66, 77r. Printed with the permission of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

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5.3.4 High Above from the Rainbow It is important to note that Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði refer in their dialogue with Gylfi to other memory specialists than Óðinn, just as they pay attention to other sensory abilities than eyesight, in particular hearing. One of the interesting figures in this context, who shares similarities with Óðinn, is Heimdallr (Hermann 2022). This god has extremely good eyesight and in addition to that he has extraordinary hearing ability: Hann sér jafnt nótt sem dag hundrað rasta frá sér. Hann heyrir ok þat er gras vex á jǫrðu eða ull á sauðum ok allt þat er hæra lætr. Hann hefir lúðr þann er Gjallarhorn heitir ok heyrir blástr hans í alla heima. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, pp. 25 – 26) (He can see, by night just as well as by day, a distance of a hundred leagues. He can also hear grass growing on the earth and wool on sheep and everything that sounds louder than that. He has a trumpet called Giallarhorn and its blast can be heard in all worlds.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 25)

Like Óðinn, Heimdallr is also linked to Mímir, whom I understand as representing memory. Jafnhár tells Gylfi that Mímir uses Heimdallr’s horn, Gjallarhorn (Screaming horn), to drink from the well (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 17), a story suggesting that an encounter has taken place between Mímir and Heimdallr, where the latter gave away the object that is otherwise said to belong to him.¹⁴³ The parallels in these stories, and the encounters of Óðinn and Heimdallr with Mímir, suggest that both the eye (seeing) and the ear (hearing) give access to the wisdom that attaches itself to memory. The stories of Óðinn and Heimdallr, both of which more or less directly involve disembodied sense organs, indicate that an eye of the mind as well as an ear of the mind are significant sensory modalities in mnemonic activities. There is another similarity between Óðinn and Heimdallr, too, namely their positions aloft in the sky. With regard to Óðinn, his elevated position in Ásgarðr in the sky is accentuated with the mentioning of his high seat and his ravens, which allow the author to allude to the tropes of the specula and the kataskopos. Heimdallr, for his part, is the gods’ watchman whose home is high up by the bridge Bifrǫst, from where he watches over the world (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 25). The Æsir stress that he, too, occupies a high position in the universe: “Þar er enn sá staðr er Himinbjǫrg heita. Sá stendr á himins enda við

 This assumption is confirmed in Vǫluspá (st. 27), where the vǫlva says that Heimdallr’s hearing, i.e. his ear, is hidden (in a well) under Yggdrasill, information followed up on in the next stanza, when she reveals to Óðinn that she knows that he gave away one of his eyes to Mímir (st. 28).

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brúar sporð, þar er Bifrǫst kemr til himins” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 20) (“There also is a place called Himinbiorg. It stands at the edge of heaven at the bridge’s end where Bifrost reaches heaven”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 20). Thus, in the case of Heimdallr an elevated position at the vault of the sky appears conjointly with extraordinary sensory awareness, and Gylfaginning’s presentation of Heimdallr moreover has affinities to the ideals that connect to memory and/as an inner seeing over vast areas or even over the whole universe. The depiction in Gylfaginning of Óðinn (and other mythological beings, such as Heimdallr) brings with it useful information about mnemonic technologies, pointing to two operational inner perspectives, both of which we can assume were beneficial for memory – one implies a fixed position in a high position above the earth, the other a flying above the world. The first one literally expresses the god’s eye view, the other the bird’s eye view, but they both call attention to ideal positions at some height, as expressed in the kataskopos and the specula-motifs. Both perspectives indicate that – when preserved in memory – the mythological world is sometimes seen from above. If Óðinn’s methods mirror techniques known in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they remind the readers of Gylfaginning of how they, if they place themselves in a position similar to Óðinn’s, will be able to enhance their vision, to expand their mind and by doing so to spark their mnemonic efficiency. If we accept that the Prose Edda as a whole reveals an interest in memory and mnemonic cues, this perspective would have been not at all irrelevant for its author (or later redactors), quite the contrary, a focus on elevated positions and on inner vision may well have been significant methods to pass on to later generations. The examples from Gylfaginning give the impression that devices like those described in the texts from classical antiquity were merging with medieval ideas. The mnemonic locations in Gylfaginning are in part formed in a way similar to the schemes that we hear about in the Roman art of memory, but the classical elements, such as the place-image method, are combined, for instance with advantageous positions high above, where the purpose is to grasp wisdom and cosmic completeness, a strategy that seems to have been more tightly connected to a medieval Christian art of memory.¹⁴⁴ As such Gylfaginning, or any other Norse

 In this sort of mind-activity, recollection happens by looking down at the world like God, a position which can be linked with theological thinking and the idea that God created human beings in his image and imbedded into them a kind of divinity that enabled the God’s eye view (Yates 1974, 147). This way of thinking about memory implies a change away from the expectation that human beings must acquire and learn technologies to help their memory and points instead to a development towards the conviction that human beings hold within themselves (god-given) powers, which enable them to perceive the world in all its completeness.

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text treated here, arguably contain a conglomerate of different mnemonic strategies and document the existence of various impulses from different mnemonic traditions.

5.4 Mnemonic Performances The mnemonic hall that Gylfi found himself in, the architectures and terrains that Hár/Jafnhár/Þriði gazed out over and the world that Óðinn and Heimdallr looked upon from their positions high above in the sky all suggest that the mythological world, as it was envisaged by the medieval writers, was full of spectacular mnemonic sceneries. These settings evoke a sensory register of seeing and hearing, in particular, and – as Heimdallr’s position suggests – they contain sounds of different volumes, ranging from vague noises that can barely be heard (the growth of grass and of wool on sheep) to loud noises (the sound of a trumpet). Another genre, namely eddic poetry, adds more detail to the characteristics of such mnemonic locations. Some of the eddic poems indicate that when memory experts enter the locations that they have created in their minds, or when they concentrate on the technologies they have learned, they relocate themselves to imagined spaces where animated sceneries and soundscapes that are beyond reality help to trigger the recollection process. Two poems, Vǫluspá and Grímnismál, are particularly interesting in this context. Mnemonic techniques are treated in considerable detail in these poems, to the extent, in fact, that the contents of these poems are presented within the frames of so-called ‘mnemonic performances’. Both poems illustrate how an individual can disclose to an audience the underlying structures and images that he or she holds in memory and which help them to remember many details. Vǫluspá and Grímnismál are preserved in Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda (GKS 2365 4to), which is dated to c. 1270, but they seem to have existed in written form earlier than that, as is attested by, for instance, the Prose Edda, which quotes earlier versions of both poems. It is commonly assumed that the anonymous eddic poems collected in Codex Regius existed orally prior to their written manifestations, and that elements of the poems are likely to go back to pre-Christian times or to the period when Christianity was only nascent in the North. Even so, in the thirteenth century these poems had become part of the culture of the book and had been filtered through the minds and the pens of medieval writers.¹⁴⁵ The

 A recent and useful outline of the historiography of eddic poetry, or ‘traditions of eddic scholarship’, which considers both orality and literacy is found in Harris 2016. One of the

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collection of poems in Codex Regius testifies to the writers’ interest in gathering and preserving traditions. The recording of these poems in manuscripts must be seen as an integral part of the widespread preservation attempts that secured the memorable lore of society an existence in cultural memory. This preservation process cannot be regarded simply as an antiquarian wish to preserve ancient relics for the sake of preservation itself, but as a construction process concerned with relatability and relevance.¹⁴⁶ One of the implications of the poems’ transfer into bookish culture is that they became adapted to the interests of writers and audiences of the thirteenth century. This also means that medieval ideas of memory could have influenced the poems, structurally as well as content-wise. Many studies have dealt with the formal devices of the eddic poems, a multimetric genre (most often composed in fornyrðislag or ljóðaháttr) that also uses tools of repetition, parallel structures, contrasts, formulaic expressions and so on (Dubois 2016; Larrington 2006, 273). The metrics would have been part and parcel of the package of the aides-mémoire that helped the preservation of the poems, especially when they were transmitted orally, and association based on alliteration, rhyme and assonance without doubt helped to prompt words, arguments and concepts. However, these devices – and the efficiency with which they helped encode knowledge and retrieve it from memory – will not be dealt with here, where the focus is on the mnemonic strategies that are central to the present investigation, namely visionality and spatiality. While the other major poetic genre of the Norse world, skaldic poetry, may relate to a memoria verborum (memory for words), the eddic poems reveal an interest in, and the uses of, principles of memory that the Roman texts connect with a memoria rerum (memory for things)

recurring debates in scholarship is concerned with the dating of eddic poems. Attempts have been made to determine the time of individual poems’ original (oral) composition (see Fidjestøl 1999; Thorvaldsen 2016), a task that is proving difficult, if not impossible, due to the nature of oral transmission (see e. g. Meulengracht 1991; Gísli Sigurðsson 2013).  This process can be related to the formation of a canon and to an ‘active memory’ (A. Assmann 2008).

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5.4.1 Vǫluspá: Accessing Mnemonic Spaces Vǫluspá (Seeress’s Prophecy) depicts the performance of a vǫlva (staff-bearer).¹⁴⁷ The performance takes place in a space that she shares with an audience (Lönnroth 1978). More than once she calls for attention from her audience, and these repeated calls have a suggestive effect, which creates an intense atmosphere around the vǫlva’s recital. From this setting it becomes clear that she must concentrate carefully. Her audience is – as we hear in st. 1 – Óðinn (Valfǫðr > father of the Slain) and human beings (mǫgu Heimdalar > Heimdallr’s offspring): Hljóðs bið ek allar helgar kindir, meiri ok minni mǫgu Heimdalar; vildu at ek, Valfǫðr, vel fram telja forn spjǫll fira, þau er fremst um man. (Vǫluspá, 2014, st. 1, p. 291) (Hearing I ask from all the tribes, greater and lesser, the offspring of Heimdall; Father of the Slain, you wished me well to declare living beings’ ancient stories, those I remember from furthest back.) (Seeress’s Prophecy, 2014, st. 1, p. 4)

Not only throughout the performance (as in sts. 16 and 22), but already in its very beginning, the vǫlva makes a point of what she is actually doing: she is remembering (Lindow 2014; Larrington and Quinn 2021). This is obvious not only from the first stanza but also from st. 2, where she repeatedly refers to the activity of remembering (muna), using this verb twice and implying it a third time: Ek man jǫtna ár um borna, þá er forðum mik fædda hǫfðu; níu man ek heima, níu íviðjur, mjǫtvið mæran

 Besides the version found in Codex Regius, which is quoted here, Vǫluspá is also preserved in a complete form in Hauksbók. Quotations from the poem are likewise found in the Prose Edda.

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fyr mold neðan. (Vǫluspá, 2014, st. 2, p. 291) (I remember giants born early in time those nurtured me long ago; I remember nine worlds, I remember nine giant women, the mighty Measuring-Tree below the earth.) (Seeress’s Prophecy, 2014, st. 2, p. 4)

It is sometimes emphasized in scholarship that the vǫlva is a sorceress with supernatural foresight, but the poem’s beginning in fact stipulates that her performance is not based on the art of magic but on the art of memory, and the poem (in the form we have it) actually says more about mnemonic methods than about the use of magic.¹⁴⁸ Stanza 2 gives a rough outline of the space that the vǫlva looks into. She refers first to nine heimar (worlds) and next to mjǫtvið mæran > a mighty measuring-tree (Yggdrasill). The reference to nine worlds is immediately followed by a mentioning of nine iviðjur (giant woman), which suggests that these nine iviðjur are distributed across the nine worlds, perhaps they are placed in each their world. Such an organization indicates a state of order and harmony, as does the numerical principle suggested by the number nine. The reference to Yggdrasill that now follows indicates that the nine worlds exist in combination with, or perhaps even conflate with, this large tree-structure, suggesting that the vǫlva is looking into an ordered yet complex space. The word neðan (from below) mentioned in connection with Yggdrasill involves motion and suggests that she either calls forth the tree from below or looks down onto it as it appears before her eyes. It is the vǫlva’s ability to operate and utilize this deep and profound space, consisting of nine worlds in combination with a mighty tree, that allows her to remember all the data that she is about to reveal.¹⁴⁹

 Much has been written about the vǫlva and this figure’s functions in pre-Christian Scandinavia, for instance on the similarities between the vǫlva and the seiðkonur (seið-woman) (see, for instance, Halvorsen 1976; Price 2002, 111– 119). Transmission may very well have caused a change in the vǫlva’s characteristics, from being a pagan seer or sorceress to becoming an expert in mnemonic technologies (as understood by medieval writers and their audiences), something about which we cannot, of course, draw any firm conclusions. It is remarkable, though, and perhaps telling for the poem’s debt to the time of writing, that it tends to focus on and spell out the mnemonic devices that she uses rather than any magic cues. The poem does not present the vǫlva as a sorceress, who changes or controls things outside of herself; she is depicted more ‘passively’ as a witness to the mythological sceneries and events.  As in Gylfaginning, also Vǫluspá’s depiction of Yggdrasill emphasizes both its presence as an upright and majestic structure and its fragility, which suggests that this mnemonic structure

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When the vǫlva remembers nine worlds, it is at the same time implied that she sees these worlds. The text repeatedly refers to the optic modality (sjá), either by using the first person: ek sá (I saw) or the third person: sá hon (she saw) (sts. 27, 29, 30, 31, 34, 37, 38, 57 and 62), making it clear that the performance is a matter of recollecting visually based knowledge from memory. The performance depicted in the poem thus confirms that to remember is to see. Furthermore, remembrance and seeing are combined with knowing (vita) (sts. 19, 27, 28 and 43), as is suggested by the use of formulas such as veit ek (I know) and veit hon (she knows), which emphasize the fact that with remembrance and extraordinary eyesight comes understanding. In the previous chapters we have seen how the eye of the mind – as explained by Hugh of St. Victor – allows for an expanded spatial perspective. It traverses breadth, length and width, just as it allows for a sweep across huge timespans. In correspondence with this, the vǫlva’s sight allows for a synchronous vision of multiple times and spaces. It gives access to a vast store of knowledge that goes far beyond what can be seen with the corporal eye.What the vǫlva conjures in front of her mind’s eye are lively and dynamic situations, located in different spaces and different times. Regarding time, she remembers both the past, the present and the future, temporal areas which exist as a continuum in which she moves effortlessly. Such an understanding of time is embedded in Augustine’s thoughts about memory in Confessiones, where he argues against an existence of separate temporal units (past, present, future) and relies instead on three types of present, that is to say, the present of the future, the present and the present of the past (Oexle 1994, 304– 305). Regarding space, the vǫlva – like those learning from the devices explained in the Stave Church Homily, the son in Konungs skuggsjá and the memory experts presented in Gylfaginning – picks up knowledge that is anchored spatially in front of her mind’s eyes. At times she has a wide perspective, looking at things and events from a position at a distance, for instance when she sees out over all worlds: “sá hon vítt ok um vítt, of verǫld hverja” (Vǫluspá, 2014, st. 29, p. 298) (“she saw widely, widely about every world”) (Seeress’s Prophecy, 2014, st. 30, p. 7) or when she sees a new earth coming: “Sér hon upp koma / ǫðru sinni / jǫrð ór ægi / iðjagrœna” (Vǫluspá, 2014, st. 57, p. 306) (“She sees, coming up a second time / earth from the ocean, eternally green”) (Seeress’s Prophecy, 2014,

is in danger of falling apart. Besides its function as a mnemonic location and a device used in the vǫlva’s mnemonic performance, the tree constitutes a structural device which is mentioned in the beginning, the middle and towards the end of the poem (sts. 2, 19 and 46). The reference to the creaking tree in st. 46 leads up to the world’s end, emphasizing that the world cannot exist without the tree, which also means, vice versa, that the mythological cosmos cannot exist without the underlying structure that carries it.

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st. 56, p. 11). At other times she zooms in on specific locations, on vellir (plains), tún (meadows), lǫnd (lands), brunnar (wells) and so on (sts. 7, 8, 17 and 19), all of which reveal more of the spaces that she gazes over. The vǫlva’s view out over all of these locations, where images of powers, beings and events materialize in front of her eyes, is sustained by changing perspectives, and sometimes she moves in close, as when she sees Loki lying in a grove (st. 34). The treatises about classical and medieval memory technologies teach us that recollection often implies some sort of motion on the part of the viewer (as suggested by the classical loci), or – at other times – it may rather be the picture (pictura) that moves, as suggested in medieval arts of memory. It is likely that the vǫlva moves around in the mnemonic sceneries. In that case the order in which she presents her knowledge suggests that she follows a special route through the mnemonic topography, while picking up things in her memory, and the wellstructured information, which follows a chronological order, does not suggest that she is wandering or flying restlessly about. In that sense, the spaces that she passes by on her mind-journey (meadows, wells and so on) may be considered signposts that help her to navigate and to find her way through the worlds and to track down the information that she communicates to her audience. Here a comparison can be made between mnemonic recollection and the reading of books. Firstly, we can compare the complex mnemonic structure presented in stanza 2, which consists of nine worlds and Yggdrasill, with a library that can be entered and from where knowledge can be collected. Next, we can infer that the vǫlva, when moving through the mnemonic locations that she has created, does the same as a literate person who finds his or her way through a text by help of textual markers in the form of topoi or perhaps visual markers in the margin. Mary Carruthers has pointed out that compositional activities are perceived as journeys through a number of linked spaces, with each their characteristics, which is expressed in Latin in the rhetorical concept ductus (way). She writes: “[…] the rhetorical concept of ductus emphasizes the way-finding by organizing the structure of any composition as a journey through a linked series of stages … Every composition, visual or aural, needs to be experienced as a journey, in and through whose paths one must constantly move” (Carruthers 1998, 80 – 81). Vǫluspá does not include a Norse term that is equivalent to the Latin word ductus, and I do not necessarily suggest that rhetorical theory would have been an essential constituent for this poem. Nevertheless, the term is helpful for understanding the characteristics of mnemonic re-collection, and this comparison with bookish culture reminds us that a journey through mnemonic locations may follow rules and methods that are not completely different from those pertaining to the reading of a text; in other words, mnemonic skills and literacy skills are not incomparable.

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Since the vǫlva views and gathers knowledge from a vast swath of locations, it becomes relevant to ask whether her vision is helped along by a position at some height. The very last line of the poem may give an answer to this question. The poem concludes in the following way: “Nú mun hon søkkvask” (Vǫluspá, 2014, st. 63, p. 307) (“now she will sink down”) (Seeress’s Prophecy, 2014, st. 62, p. 12). It may be that the vǫlva is seated on a throne and placed above her audience, an argument that finds support in the description of another vǫlva, namely Þorbjǫrg lítil-vǫlva (little seeress), who according to Eiríks saga rauða sits in a hásæti (Eiríks saga rauða, 1935, ch. 4, p. 206). It is possible that the information in Vǫluspá that the vǫlva sinks refers to her physical position in the space where – as indicated by the poem’s beginning – the mnemonic vision is performed, and that it should be taken to mean that she is placed in an elevated position, e. g. in a high seat or a throne. However, such a literal position may also have a metaphorical meaning and reflect on the position of someone who, as part of his or her mnemonic endeavour, is placed in an imaginary spot. If this is the case, the circumstance that our vǫlva sinks after having disclosed her knowledge indicates that her mnemonic abilities require and depend upon her having a perspective from ‘high up’. A similar connection between a physically elevated position and a mental rise, or between literal and metaphorical meaning, is – as we have seen – involved in other descriptions of mnemonic activities.

5.4.2 Grímnismál: Navigating Mnemonic Spaces As a final illustration of the convoluted relationship between memory, inner seeing and spatiality, I now take up the case of Grímnismál. ¹⁵⁰ Like Vǫluspá, this eddic poem depicts a mnemonic performance. The poem contains the image wherein Óðinn fears that he will lose his mind, personified as Huginn and Muninn. The presence of this image already indicates a concern with mental faculties, but it is not the only reference to memory in the poem, which we can define as a veritable catalogue of mnemonic principles that are seen through the lens of the memory expert par excellence, Óðinn. Grímnismál contains so many memory references that Carolyne Larrington has said that it is “in fundamental ways a poem about remembering” (Larrington 2006, 273). The focus on Huginn and Muninn and these other devices suggests that Grímnismál is thematically

 Besides Codex Regius Grímnismál is preserved also in AM 748 4to (from between 1300 and 1325) as well as (in fragmentary form) in the Prose Edda. The Codex Regius-version is used here. For an overview of the scholarly discussion of Grímnismál, see Starý 2012, 10 – 19.

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concerned with mind activities and that part of its aim is to show the potentials of, or to explain key features of, memory. The large amount of arcane knowledge contained in the poem has led scholars to believe that it is an old poem, which – despite having been changed during transmission –“contains few if any signs of Christian influence” (Gunnell 2016, 105). As is the case with most eddic poems, there is no consensus about this and – as I show here – the poem, in some of its aspects (the way it presents mnemonic technologies), is actually typical of the thirteenth century.¹⁵¹ The poem says that Óðinn, disguised as Grímnir (the masked one), visits king Geirrøðr and his son Agnarr. He is taken as the king’s hostage and for eight nights he is deprived of food and drink. He sits between fierce fires that are coming so close to him that his fur mantel is about to catch fire.¹⁵² At this point the king’s son gives Grímnir a drink, an act that sets off the mnemonic performance (st. 3), suggesting that the drink is in itself a trigger of memory. This opening scene indicates that the real recipient is Agnarr and that the knowledge revealed is his reward for having relieved Grímnir’s thirst. The scene takes place in the king’s hall, where Geirrøðr is sitting in front of Grímnir, drinking and holding a sword. When the séance begins, Grímnir, like the vǫlva, moves (in his mind) from this performance space to the mnemonic locations that he alone has access to (in st. 4). After the performance is concluded (in st. 45), Grímnir reveals his real identity. While the king’s hall is not described in any detail, the particularities of the mnemonic locations are spelled out and Grímnir gives an insight into an array of mnemonic architectures, landscapes and topographies. The two fundamental principles of the place-image method interact when Grímnir remembers. The performance begins in st. 4 with a reference to seeing. Grímnir conjurs up knowledge in front of his own eyes and sees a land lying there

 It cannot be ruled out that the poem as contained in medieval manuscripts is informed about ideas circulating at this time and perhaps deriving from learned culture. It must be recalled, however, that the theories of memory described by classical and medieval writers are based on natural procedures of memory, such as the common inclination to affiliate memory with spatial structures and images. These writers concentrate on and develop different strategies and thus constitute different sub-categories of the many arts of memory that exists. We can expect that the pre-literate Norse tradition had developed its own sub-set of mnemonic tools, which – by the time of the texts from the High Middle Ages – would have been merging with impulses from classical and medieval traditions.  Grímnismál’s prose frame states that Grímnir alias Óðinn has been tortured, a situation that has led scholars to suggest that the poem is inspired by shamanistic rituals involving methods of torture (see Schröder 1958; Buchholz 1971). This has also been discussed in relation to Hávamál (sts. 138 – 142), where Óðinn gains access to runes, spells and other crucial techniques while experiencing extreme somatic pain.

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in front of him: “Land er heilagt / er ek liggja sé” (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 4, p. 368) (“The land is sacred which I see lying”) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 4, p. 49). The performance is likewise concluded with a reference to seeing, when Grímnir says: “Svipum hefi ek nú yppt / fyr sigtíva sonum” (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 45, p. 377) (“Fleeting visions I have now revealed before the victory-gods’ sons”) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 45, p. 55). The word svipr refers to vision in the form of glimpses and suggests that his seeing in and with memory has allowed him access to the knowledge in short bursts.¹⁵³ The first part of the vision (sts. 5 – 17) reveals multiple mythological places, Þrúðheimr, Ýdalir, Álfheimr, Valaskjálf, Søkkvabekkr, Glaðsheimr, Valhǫll, Þrymheimr, Breiðablik, Himinbjǫrg, Fólkvangr, Glitnir, Nóatún and the unnamed dwelling of Víðarr.¹⁵⁴ The name of a god is attached to each of these places; Þórr is linked to Þrúðheimr, Ullr to Ýdalir, Freyr to Álfheimr and so on. The land (land) referred to in st. 4 is seemingly divided into smaller units or estates, or chopped into pieces, a method of organization that, as we know from the theoretical support materials (the Latin treatises about memory), is a great help to memory. A numbering principle, which is another mnemonic device, is also evoked together with this division into units, and the homes of the gods are counted as well (there is some inconsistency in the poem’s system but the principle is clear when the homes are labelled the third, the fourth, the fifth and so on). The fact that each location is given a number further facilitates a segmentation of the contents into smaller units. Hugh of St.Victor is one of the authors who has explained numerical mnemonic principles. According to him each number is a discrete locus, ordered in a series which allows for a succession of pieces of information. In the numerical division scheme that he talks about, numbers seem almost to take on a concrete spatialized form where they – like the architectural loci – are lined up next to each other, each of them waiting to be accessed by someone who by means of association move from one to the other

 There are different interpretations of the first part of this line, and svipr is sometimes interpreted as ‘face’, a reading that weights the circumstance that Grímnir has just revealed his true identity, i. e. shown his face (see Schröder 1958, 354). Both options are indeed possible but since the poem elaborates on what Grímnir sees in front of his mind’s eye, I find it likely that the word refers to the visions that he has revealed to the audience.  Elizabeth Jackson has analysed ‘framing methods’, ‘listing techniques’, ‘patterning’, ‘verbal echoing’ and ‘thematic linking’ in Grímnismál, with a particular focus on this so-called catalogue of the homes of the gods (sts. 4– 17). While others have seen inconsistencies in this catalogue, Jackson’s analysis shows that it is consistent and carefully organized. Based on a distinction between two meanings of the term land, as territory (in a broad geographical sense) and estate (in a narrow sense), she argues that sts. 5 and 17 mark the frame of the catalogue (Jackson 1995).

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(Hugh of St.Victor, De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, 1943, p. 489; Hugh of St. Victor, The Three Best Memory Aids for Learning History, 2004, p. 36).¹⁵⁵ The lands in Grímnismál are characterized differently, some of them by natural features (such as, hrís (brushwood) and gras (grass)), others with reference to building structures, in particular halls, and such interior features as the bench (bekkr), the door (dyrr) and the dais (golf) are mentioned. Some of the locations in the mnemonic topography are indeed spacious, as revealed by indications of their breath and height (as when Valhǫll is said to extend out broadly (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 8, p. 369) and when Nóatún is described as “hátimbryðum hǫrgi” (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 16, p. 371) (“a high-timbered temple”) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 16, p. 50). In some cases, the halls’ construction parts and furniture are specified, giving the impression that the buildings are not only seen from the outside, but also are entered and looked at from the inside. This impression is confirmed in, for instance, st. 9 where Óðinn’s hall is described thus: “skǫptum er rann rept / skjǫldum er salr þakiðr / brynjum um bekki strát” (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 9, pp. 369 – 370) (“spear-shafts the building has for rafters, it’s roofed with shields, / mail-coats are strewn on the benches”) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 9, p. 50). The loci are described with reference to sensory modalities, too, for instance on the basis of how they sound, such as Søkkvabekkr (st. 7) where the sound of waves is heard everywhere, showing that this may very well have been imagined as a home in the sea or an underwater dwelling-place. In some cases, the names of the places offer visual cues, as, for example, Ullr’s home, Ýdalir (Yewdale), which leaves the impression of a place where evergreen trees grow (st. 5), or Vidar’s dwelling which is said to be covered by shrubs and grass, conjuring up an image of a wilderness landscape (st. 17). Furthermore, Þrymheimr (st. 11) means the ‘noisy home’ (from þrymr (an alarm, a noise)), which suggests that it is filled with loud noises, and Himinbjǫrg (st. 13), which means heaven mountain (from himinn (heaven)), is likely to be placed in a high-level, perhaps mountainous, area. Grímnir’s mnemonic locations are indeed diverse, they not only look but also sound different from each other, just as they are seemingly spread across a varied topography, ranging from the depth of the sea over forested areas to mountain regions. In all their variety these locations are suited for being conjured in front of the mind’s eye, and they recall the advice given in the Latin treatises, that each mnemonic location must be easily distinguishable from the others. Later in the  As Grover A. Zinn says: “Hugh’s line of numbers and corresponding loci parallels Quintilians’s places, which the ancient rhetor declares may be established by visualizing a house, a public building, a long journey, a picture or a place that the individual imagines for himself. Hugh’s scheme is constructed with the rather abstract form of a series of numbers; its closest analogy in Quintilian would be the journey with its linear sequence of places” (Zinn 1974, 222).

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performance, Grímnir enumerates a large number of rivers (sts. 21, 27 and 28). He states that rivers flow around the land of the gods and close to men, indicating that water runs from the world of gods to the world of men and further on to the realm of hell. This addition to the mnemonic topography suggests that natural features in the landscape delineate worlds and realms while also giving shape to the mnemonic scenery.¹⁵⁶ Grímnismál’s depiction of Huginn and Muninn, which was quoted at the very beginning of this book, is often treated in isolation from its literary context. But what can be made of this reference when the poem as a whole is taken into consideration? The reference to the birds is uttered in the midst of Grímnir’s performance, when he is actively engaged in recollecting the esoteric knowledge that he has stored in locations and topographies in his mind. A mnemonic performance requires control over the mind; the mnemonic view over the homes of the gods is behind him and now he pauses to reflect on the danger that his mind will disappear, that is, he is struck by the fear of dementia. The fear of forgetting appears at a point when Óðinn is standing in front of the river Þund (st. 21), which seems to mark a border within the mnemonic topography that is difficult to overcome (see Larrington 2002). With its roaring sound and strong current, it blocks his senses as well as his path and momentarily prevents him from continuing his movement through these mnemonic locations. Here we get an indication of how he moves around, namely by walking, as he utters that the river seems to him to huge to wade through: “þykkir ofmikill / valglaumi at vaða” (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 21, p. 372) (“the river’s current seems too strong for / the slaughter-horse to wade”) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 21, p. 51). Another border appears immediately after he has crossed Þund, namely when he encounters Valgrind (st. 22), the huge gate that leads into Valhǫll, which is presented as a majestic location: Valgrind heitir er stendr velli á heilǫg fyr helgum durum; forn er sú grind, en þat fáir vitu,

 In an analysis of Grímnismál, Terry Gunnell has suggested that the poem makes deliberate use of sound as a way of evoking images. These observations support his argument that the poem was performed dramatically in front of an audience (Gunnell 2016). While Gunnell explains the poem’s evocation of a sensory register from the performance context and audience participation, I relate it to the inner visions of a memory expert. These views, however, are not necessarily in opposition, but could be complementary.

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hvé hon er í lás lokin. (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 22, p. 372) (Valgrind it’s called, standing on the plain, sacred before the sacred door: ancient is that gate, but few men know how it is closed up with a lock.) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 22, p. 51)

That the gate is locked and that only few people know how to open it are factors that stress the responsibility that comes with an advanced memory, just as they indicate the difficulties it entails to access mnemonic locations.Valgrind, which is presented as another border, shows how deep an involvement and how many skills are required to be able to enter and to navigate through a mnemonic topography. But the next two stanzas reveal that the difficulties are overcome by Grímnir and that his fear of forgetting was without reason. His mnemonic tour is continued when he locks himself into the greatest halls of them all, Valhǫll and Bilskirnir which have more than five hundred doors and a similar number of daises, immensely large locations and indicative of just how impressive the mnemonic locations kept in his mind are. After this reflective pause, Grímnir effortlessly continues to access a massive amount of ancient and cosmological knowledge, all of which is attached to different mnemonic locations. In addition to spatial anchoring, visualization and the numbering technique that was used in the first part, Grímnir now employs other devices, such as listing, and he focuses his attention on Yggdrasill. That he moves on to this tree-construction suggests (as was also the case in Vǫluspá) that different mnemonic locations intersect and function together systemically, as it were. An image of the world tree is present in the mind of Grímnir (as it was for the three Æsir in Gylfaginning and the vǫlva in Vǫluspá), and he gives quite detailed information about this structure: Þrjár rætr standa á þrjá vega undan aski Yggdrasils; Hel býr undir einni, annarri hrímþursar, þriðju mennskir menn. Askr Yggdrasils drýgir erfiði meira en menn viti: hjǫrtr bítr ofan, en á hliðu fúnar,

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skerðir Níðhǫggr neðan. (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 31, p. 374 and st. 35, p. 375) (Three roots there grow in three directions under Yggdrasill’s ash; Hel lives under one, under the second, the frost-giants, under the third, humankind. Yggdrasill’s ash suffers agony more than men know: a stag nibbles it above, but at its side it’s decaying, and Nidhogg rends it beneath.) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, sts. 31 and 35, p. 53)

The tree’s roots (arranged in numbers) organize the worlds below, and the references to what is above it, to its sides and beneath it reveals that the tree is a visually perceived structure that aids organization. However, threatening forces challenge the continued existence of the world tree, proposing the possibility that the mnemonic template that holds all the worlds together will collapse and leave all the knowledge contained within each of the many sections in an unorganized heap of details. This mnemonic structure very consistently (in Gylfaginning, in Vǫluspá and here in Grímnismál) brings with it a fear of potential collapse. As the analysis above demonstrates, there are multiple indirect references to mnemonic devices in the poem. But there is only one explicit reference to the word for remembering (muna). It appears in a comment by Grímnir who, after having concluded his journey through the mnemonic spaces, turns his attention to the hall where the performance has taken place and where his audience is present (Hermann 2017c). During the séance, king Geirrøðr has been drinking too much, which causes Grímnir to comment on the king’s missed opportunity: “Fjǫlð ek þér sagða / en þú fátt um mant” (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 52, p. 378) (“Much I told you but little you remember”) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 52, p. 56). Intake of alcoholic drinks and intoxication is not to Geirrøðr’s advantage, the drinking has dulled his senses and he fails to remember Grímnir’s words. The prose frame that surrounds the poem says that Geirrøðr dies, and that his son, Agnarr, the one who initially causes Grímnir to lay all of his knowledge out into the open, takes over the kingship and remains king for a long time.Were it not for him, transmission would have failed. Agnarr is able to fulfil this new role as king, in part because he has been attentive to Grímnir’s mnemonic recital. Not only has he become aware of a huge amount of arcane knowledge, but he has also learnt the technologies that make it possible to remember this knowledge.¹⁵⁷ – It is relevant here, where  It has been suggested that the story in Grímnismál should be interpreted in the light of pre-

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drinking causes Geirrøðr’s unattentiveness, to mention the kenning óminnis hegri (heron of forgetfulness), mentioned in Hávamál 13. Óminnis hegri is mentioned in a context where people are warned against drinking too much: “Óminnishegri heitir / sá er yfir ǫlðrum þrumir / hann stelr geði guma” (Hávamál, 2014, st. 13, p. 324) (“The forgetfulness-heron it’s called / who hovers over ale-drinking / he steals a man’s mind”) (Sayings of the High One, 2014, st. 13, p. 15).¹⁵⁸ This personification of oblivion (Heslop 2014, 83) steals the wits of men, and the heron’s presence is a reminder of memory’s counterpart, forgetting, which is expressed here through minni’s antonym óminni (un-memory).¹⁵⁹ Vǫluspá and Grímnismál depict imaginative figures, an attentive vǫlva and an alert god, Óðinn (in disguise and behind a mask), who possess highly developed and refined mnemonic skills and extraordinary eyesight. These poems confirm that inner seeing is paramount for memory and that it allows for an expansion of the mind that makes it possible to access a great number of details. They allow for further insights into the different imaginative prospects and angles of vision that assist memory and recollection, thus confirming the impression that mnemonic specialists can switch between panoramic views and close-up perspectives just as they can look at locations from the outside as well as from the inside. Both poems suggest that a conglomerate of various coexisting locations can create deep and complex mnemonic spaces. The mnemonic abilities that are used by these prototypical memory experts, agents placed in a mythological world of the past, may very well represent an ideal state rather than the average skills of someone with a trained memory, or they may be hyperbolic descriptions. Whatever the case, they point to the fact that the theme of memory was addressed and that there was a concern with, and quite a detailed knowledge of, mnemonic technologies in the cultures that knew and preserved these poems.

Christian rituals of initiation (Fleck 1971; see however, Schjødt 1988). In that case, the knowledge that is transmitted to the new ruler concentrates not merely on an immense number of arcane details, but, given the focus on the mnemonic background structures, also on the principles and devices that were needed to be able to preserve this knowledge.  The episodes in Grímnismál and Hávamál recall, and find an analogue in, the comments on the arts of memory by Julius Victor and Alcuin who suggest that the one who wants to enhance his memory should avoid drunkenness, see Chapter 3. On the warnings against drink in Hávamál and possible foreign influence, see Harris 2005, 107– 108.  For philological and comparative treatments of óminnis hegri, see Johansson 1996; Sayers 2015.

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5.4.3 To Remember and to Learn Before I conclude this chapter, I want to emphasize that the transmission of knowledge to others is a shared theme in all of the texts dealt with in this chapter, from the Stave Church Homily to Grímnismál. The last example, Grímnismál, illustrates that an attentive attitude and the ability to remember, also on the part of the listener, are necessary for a successful transmission of knowledge. This same theme, transmission of knowledge between generations and an attentive (or not so attentive) audience, is foregrounded in Hávamál as well. This eddic poem, which is preserved in Codex Regius (GKS 2365 4to) only, has a heterogeneous structure, which has led critics to suggest that it consists of several separate poems which were combined into one sequence by a medieval compiler.¹⁶⁰ I only mention a few passages (sts. 111, 136 and 164), which indicate that the transmission and communication of knowledge relies on memory and furthermore demonstrate that a successful transmission of knowledge requires an attentive audience. In Hávamál st. 111, a first-person speaker (ek) addresses an audience. Most scholars have been of the opinion that this ek (I) is Hávi (alias Óðinn), who, in general, is the speaker in all sections of the poem; but it has also been suggested that it might be another speaker, who reports the speeches of Óðinn.¹⁶¹ This ek speaks from a special position, namely the seat of a þulr (þularstóll). He traces his knowledge back to Háva hǫll and emphasizes that he transmits what he has seen and heard there and what he has been thinking about and pondered afterwards. The poem thus highlights the hall as an important memory space, which in principle can refer both to a physical hall where he was once present or to a mnemonic location in the mind to which he can return: “sá ek ok þagðak / sá ek ok hugðak / hlýdda ek á manna mál / of rúnar heyrða ek dæma, né um ráðum þǫgðu / Háva hǫllu a / Háva hǫllu í / heyrða ek segja svá” (Hávamál, 2014, st. 111, p. 344) (“I saw and was silent, I saw and I considered, / I heard the speech of men; / I heard talk of runes nor were they silent about interpretation, / at the High One’s hall, in the High One’s hall; / thus I heard them speak”) (Sayings of the High One, 2014, st. 111, p. 27). In any case, the speaker here seemingly presupposes a situation where knowledge has been acquired and processed before it is com-

 For scholarship on Hávamál, see von See 1972; Harris 2005, 147– 148; for studies on Hávamál and memory, see Lindow 2014, 45 – 46, 51; Nygaard 2019, 45; Heslop 2021, 247– 250.  Scholars, including Elizabeth Jackson (1994), have suggested that sts. 111 and 164 make up a frame for all the stanzas in between, a section that most other critics have divided into three independent parts consisting of Loddfáfnismál (sts. 111– 137), Rúnatal (sts. 138 – 145) and Ljóðatal (sts. 146 – 164). The present, short, comment on Hávamál does not contradict this suggestion.

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municated to the audience. The situation recalls elements of other literary contexts where mnemonic performances take place. One thing is that he speaks to his audience from a special seat (as, for example, the three Æsir in Gylfaginning’s framework also do), another thing is that his ability to remember gives him access to much wisdom – something that is underlined by the continuous use of the phrase ek veit (I know) (in sts. 146 – 163), an anaphoric repetition in the poem which suggests that the speaker’s mnemonic abilities are combined with understanding and sagacity. Moreover, his presentation is structured on a numeric principle (counting from one to eighteen) (also in sts. 146 – 163), which indicates that association from numbers supports his memory. In st. 134, the speaker questions whether the man, Loddfáfnir, to whom he directs his speech, has learned anything: Ráðumk þér, Loddfáfnir, en þú ráð nemir, njóta mundu ef þú nemr, þér munu góð ef þú getr: at hárum þul hlæ þú aldregi, opt er gott þat er gamlir kveða; opt ór skǫrpum belg skilin orð koma, þeim er hangir með hám ok skollir með skrám ok váfir með vilmǫgum. (Hávamál, 2014, st. 134, pp. 348 – 349) (I advise you, Loddfafnir, to take this advice, it will be useful if you learn it, do you good, if you have it: at a grey-haired sage you should never laugh! Often what the old say is good; often from a wrinkled bag come judicious words, from the one who hangs around with the hides and skulks among the skins and lurks about the low-born.) (Sayings of the High One, 2014, st. 134, p. 31)

The speaker encourages the recipient to make use of what he hears, that is, to learn (from nema (to learn)) and to remember. The speaker assumes that a generational gap exists between the grey-haired sage and the young person who listens. In the concluding stanza (st. 164), the speaker turns his attention directly to the audience once more, this time not only the named interlocutor, Loddfáfnir, but also to a broader group of listeners. The words imply that the knowledge just

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revealed will be useful to some but useless to others, highlighting the point that not everyone will have learned and remembered what has been said. The stanza (and the poem as a whole) concludes when the speaker wishes luck to those who have learned: Nú eru Háva mál kveðin Háva hǫllu í, allþǫrf ýta sonum, óþǫrf jǫtna sonum. Heill sá er kvað! Heill sá er kann! Njóti sá er nam! Heilir þeirs hlýddu! (Hávamál, 2014, st. 164, p. 355) (Now the High One’s song is recited, in the High One’s hall very useful to the sons of men, quite useless to the sons of men, luck to him who recited, luck to him who knows! May he benefit, he who learnt it, luck to those who listened!) (Sayings of the High One, 2014, st. 164, p. 35)

The stanza acknowledges that – like Geirrøðr – the audience may not have paid attention. It thus conjures an unfortunate situation, a situation where, we assume, the mnemonic apparatus is not activated on the part of the listener. Preserving and passing on memorable lore were crucial motivations for authors in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an era when people transferred what they considered to be important knowledge into the enduring form of the book, striving thereby to avoid its loss. Perhaps this inclination explains the narrated worlds’ interest in transmission and mnemonic methods. Like Grímnir and the speaker(s) in Hávamál, the medieval writers could only hope for an attentive audience. The discussion in this chapter has dealt with very different texts, treating such different topics as Christian learning and pagan mythology; however, all these texts deal with memory in one way or other. All the analyses have returned to the depiction of memory as a phenomenon that relies on space and visuality. The texts indicate that spatial structures of different kinds were involved in mnemonic endeavours and that mnemonic seeing entailed different perspectives, which could be reinvigorated by means of imaginative angles of vision and reversal of proportional scales, involving, for instance, arial and celestial views over wideranging topographies. The mind’s eye (and inner seeing in a broader sense) can take the observer from the physical world to mnemonic locations, where the be-

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holder can contemplate and dwell on vast quantities of knowledge or access this knowledge in quick glimpses. The examples show that memory is not simply a matter of recollecting knowledge that belongs to a cluster of topics or one specific argument, but relates to a much wider field and must be understood in connection with a striving for wisdom; a dimension of memory that is expressed in the storeroom of wisdom-metaphor. The mnemonic culture thus comprises two (at times overlapping) dimensions, one which focuses on technologies and that helped to preserve important knowledge of various kinds, and another which leads into a more ideologically based dimension, which connects memory with wisdom, a concept that cannot be cut off from Christian notions about time, space and cosmology. Gazing with, and through, the inner eye gives access to all sorts of wisdom, and it is noticeable that pagan material was transmitted as an integral part of this huge storage. It therefore seems as if methods that were intertwined with spirituality and Christian meditation, and which preserved and organized the wisdom and the foundational stories of Christianity, were expanded to include also mythological material and stories of the pagan world.

6 Buildings and Seating 6.1 Houses, Table Arrangements and Narratives This chapter concentrates on architectonic spaces in particular, a focus point that will not come as a surprise given the central position of this type of location throughout the history of memory. As two specialists commented recently, “Architecture has been the ultimate memory topos, as well as the most common and basic structure of memory techniques from Antiquity to today” (Jørgensen and Laugerud 2018, 159). I focus also on seating arrangements within buildings, a theme that has its own separate history and a long presence in the history of memory. Both buildings, such as houses and their interior rooms, and seating formations form recurrent patterns in Old Norse-Icelandic texts, and I intend to advance the view that these patterns may at times derive from the mnemonic toolbox that helped authors preserve stories and fix narratives in memory. In other words, descriptions of buildings and seating formations are treated here as ‘mnemonic topoi’, that is, as places in the texts that call to mind their affiliation with memory. It is argued that these devices assisted in the organization of details, the progress of the stories, their arguments, plots and so on. The anchoring of details in locations in the mind should not always be seen as a means of static storage, the mnemonic locations could function as compositional vehicles as well. The text examples in this chapter are two sagas of Icelanders, Egils saga Skallagrímssonar and Brennu-Njáls saga, and the eddic poem, Lokasenna. The relationship between memory and seating arrangements goes back to ancient Greece. Both Cicero and Quintilian refer to a story about Simonides of Ceos, which says that he participated in a banquet, but was called away to talk to two people who waited by the door. While Simonides was outside of the building, the roof of the banquet hall collapsed and everyone present was buried in the ruins. After this horrible event, it was impossible to identify the damaged bodies and to recognize the dead. But Simonides was in a position to help and – based on his recollection of the exact order of how the guests had been seated at the banquet – he could walk through the hall and recall the names of all the guests. By relating the identity of the dead to the positions (loci) where they had been seated, he could help the relatives to find their deceased family members (see Yates 1974, 1– 2). The lesson the Roman writers took away from this narrative was that memory works at its very best when it is supported by spatial anchorage. This founding narrative of the Roman art of memory demonstrates the human ability to recreate in the mind what has been lost, just as it illustrates the means by which this restoration can be done. In the story, the banquet hall (first as a https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-009

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standing structure and next as a collapsed heap) plays a role, too. The setting itself underscores the function of the hall as a mnemonic structure and it reminds us that, without a clearly defined (architectonic) structure and the organizing devices within it (such as table arrangements and seating spots), forgetfulness will intervene and confusion will take over. Returning to the Norse materials, it is not a new idea within studies of Old Norse-Icelandic literature to link the narrative culture to buildings. Lars Lönnroth and Terry Gunnell, among others, have maintained that real buildings interacted with the narrative and performative culture of the Middle Ages, and earlier. They have argued how real halls could momentarily be transformed into imaginary spaces and take on meanings from the stories that were told and the dramas that were performed inside of them. As we saw in the previous chapter, a poem such as Vǫluspá indicates the presence of a performer, who directs herself to an audience asking for its attention. Lars Lönnroth has argued that – with this speech act, the audience is transformed from a group of ordinary people into people of godly descent, just as the room momentarily changes into a holy place charged with new meanings (Lönnroth 1978, 40). Terry Gunnell, for his part, has argued that the tangible architecture of the hall could represent elements from the pagan cosmology, for example that “people saw symbolic parallels between the roof of the hall […] and the sky or heavens” (Gunnell 2001, 21). His argument is based on, for instance, the Old Norse word dvergar (lit. dwarfs) which is used for small blocks of wood attached to the rafters of farmhouses, construction parts that are held by the so-called áss which refers to ‘a roof beam’, but literally means ‘a god’. The meaning of dvergr as a wood block calls attention to the four dwarves, Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri, who hold up the mythological sky, as is told in Gylfaginning (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 12). In the Icelandic Homily Book, which – as we saw – testifies to mnemonic practises in a Christian context, the words dvergr and áss are used to describe the church’s architecture. But Gunnell focuses on the persistency of the meaning of the words through time and their relevance for pagan ritual spaces, arguing that the inclination to align architectonic space and foundational stories occurred not only in the Christian world but also in preChristian Scandinavia (2001, 23 – 24). The two studies mentioned here are concerned with the oral performance of poetry and narratives, and the arenas wherein these performances were carried out, not specifically with memory. But from the argumentation made in these studies, it is only a small step to consider the hof (the hall) as a space of memory, both in the sense that the interior of the building functioned as a mnemonic aid that helped to preserve stories, and in the sense that the halls were arenas of cultural memory, that is, places where people carried out ceremonies and where stories were safeguarded.

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In the following, I am concerned with slightly different, yet related, matters, and I continue to focus on imaginative structures in the mind, rather than on outwards, physical sites of memory, trying to grasp more specifically the mnemonic technologies that a minningarmaðr could have used. The reflections from the previous chapters will be continued and focus will be on the assumed internalized and imaginary spaces that authors handled and the deposited images that they travelled across in their minds, that is, on the inner spaces (loci) and the images (imagines) that were constructed, retrieved and decoded as part of the invention and the memorization of the narratives. Table arrangements, which is a pattern that occurs in several texts (see e. g. Guerrero 2014), will be viewed as an integral part of the mnemonic spaces and they are treated as cues to help divide details, names in particular, into small segments, making it easier to remember each one. That seating arrangements is a recurrent motif in Old Norse-Icelandic texts has not been overlooked by critics. However, when scholars have turned their attention to seating arrangements, they have often focused on status and honour. The texts’ elaborations on seating arrangements often serve to describe the social hierarchies of the people involved in the narratives. For example, the hásæti is the place for the host or the guest of honour and this particular place at the table forms a central point from which the other people present are placed according to status, gender and age. The ǫndvegi (the seat opposite the high seat) is reserved for the socially privileged as well, while others are placed on, for instance, the bekkr (bench) and the pallr (elevated platform). Conflicts are very often the engines that set off the plot in the sagas and seating arrangements can activate such conflicts, especially when people are placed in ways that do not correspond to their (own ideas of their) status. As such, what I treat here as mnemonic topoi tend to conflate with narrative devices.

6.1.1 Brennu-Njáls saga: Searching the Ruins There was a renewed interest in thirteenth-century Europe in the classical art of memory; whether or not the Norse authors were directly inspired by these tendencies is hard to say, but a saga such as Brennu-Njáls saga (c. 1280) features some of the mnemonic devices that were revisted at that time. This saga is widely regarded as the epitome of the sagas of Icelanders, and it has been argued that its author managed to combine native lore and storytelling with book learning in unique ways. It has likewise been suggested that the author was not only repeating and mastering generic features and traditional narrative patterns, but was

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also inverting and parodying them, revealing a distanced view onto the tradition of saga-writing (Andersson 2006, 183 – 203).¹⁶² But what do the mnemonic topoi in Brennu-Njáls saga look like? The saga contains relatively many and often quite explicit and elaborate references to mnemonic technologies. Our first example is the episode, which tells of the wedding feast of some of the main characters, Gunnarr Hámundarson and Hallgerðr Hǫskuldsdóttir, an episode which suggests that anchoring to seats was a helpful mnemonic tool (see Hermann 2014, 28; 2018b, 667). The episode contains detailed references to the interior of the house where the wedding takes place and it specifies exactly where the guests, all of whom are mentioned by name, were seated, involving such descriptions as the bekkr (bench) and the pallr (raised platform). The organization of the seating is spelled out with a mention of spatial markers specifying people’s positions, whether they were placed in the middle of a bench, on the inside of someone, towards the door or at the outer edge and so on: Hann sat á miðjan bekk, en innar frá Þráinn Sigfússon, þá Úlfr aurgoði, þá Valgarðr inn grái, þá Mǫrðr ok Runólfr, þá Sigfússynir; Lambi sat innstr. It næsta Gunnari utar frá sat Njáll, þá Skarpheðinn, þá Helgi, þá Grímr, þá Hǫskuldr, þá Hafr inn spaki, þá Ingjaldr frá Keldum, þá synir Þóris austan ór Holti. Þórir vildi sitja yztr virðingamanna, því at þá þótti hverjum gott þar, sem sat. Hǫskuldr sat á miðjan bekk, en synir hans innar frá honum; Hrútr sat utar frá Hǫskuldi. En þá er eigi frá sagt, hversu ǫðrum var skipat. Brúðr sat á miðjum palli, en til annarrar handar henni sat Þorgerðr, dóttir hennar, en til annarrar handar Þórhalla, dóttir Ásgríms Elliða-Grímssonar. (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 34, pp. 88 – 89) ((Gunnar) himself sat in the middle of the bench, and next to him, on the inside, sat Thrain Sigfusson, then Ulf Aur-Godi, Valgard the Grey, Mord Valgardsson, Runolf, and the sons of Sigfus, with Lambi all the way in. On the other side of Gunnar, toward the door, sat Njal, then Skarphedin, then Helgi, then Grim, then Hoskuld, then Haf the Wise, then Ingjald from Keldur, then the sons of Thorir of Holt over in the east. Thorir himself wanted to sit at the outer edge of the men of worth, for then everyone would think himself well seated. Hoskuld Dala-Kollsson sat in the middle of the opposite bench, with his sons to the inside of him. Hrut sat on the other side of Hoskuld, toward the door. There is no report of how the others were seated. The bride sat in the middle of the cross-bench. On one side of her sat her daughter Thorgerd, and on the other Thorhalla, the daughter of Asgrim Ellida-Grimsson.) (Njal’s Saga, 1997, ch. 34, p. 39)

The passage suggests that spatial anchoring guaranteed remembrance. Important to my argument is the narrator’s remark which seems to recognize that the names

 For the saga’s manuscript situation, see note 18. Critics have persistently pointed out that Brennu-Njáls saga is a high point of saga writing, see, for instance, Ker 1931; Allen 1971; Lönnroth 1976; Andersson 2006; Miller 2014.

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of those who do not have a specific seat are not included in the story, namely the following words: “En þá er eigi frá sagt, hversu ǫðrum var skipat” (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 34, p. 89) (“There is no report of how the others were seated”) (Njal’s saga, 1997, ch. 34, p. 39). This comment has been understood to mean that the author lacked knowledge of who participated in this event in the past (Andersson 1966, 14), but it may also reveal that spatial anchoring through seating was considered beneficial for the recollection process, as we heard in the foundation story of the art of memory. The situation here may acknowledge the fact that if a name is not linked to a spatial structure (for example in the form of seating arrangements by the table), then the person is likely to be forgotten. It is significant that the people who are remembered are the family members of the two conflicting parties in the saga, indicating the interweaving of ‘remembering through seating’ with narrativization and plot structure. Richard Allen sees the description quoted above as part of the narrator’s focalization, and even if Allen does not mention anything about memory, his interpretation of the impact of the seating arrangement for the narrative ties in neatly with the present considerations. Allen observes that the information “presents in tableau the sides whose strife will fill the second half of the saga, the Njálssons and their kinsmen, the Sigfússons and theirs” (1971, 102). Lars Lönnroth has argued that the saga was concerned with the honour and prestige of the people involved (Lönnroth 1976, 196 – 197), an interpretation that does not contradict the idea that the narrator resorted to, and used, principles of seating to be able to remember and organize the narrative. This particular distribution of people in the room and in various seats does indeed signal status, and it reminds us that both the mnemonic devices and the cultural memory that the texts construct are likely to have been interrelated with issues of, and claims to, social power. Jürg Glauser points out that the ideas inherent in the foundational narrative of Simonides of Ceos are alluded to in Brennu-Njáls saga, namely in the situation where Njáll’s farm, Bergþórshváll, burns and is left as a ruin. At this point in the saga, Njáll shows his foreman specifically where he will lay down inside the house before it is burned down; this way Njáll can be assured that his body will later be found in the ruins: “Nú skaltú sjá, hvar vit leggjumsk niðr” (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 129, p. 330) (“Now you must see where we lie down”) (Njal’s saga, 1997, ch. 129, p. 156). As Glauser comments: “Although this small scene is only mentioned in passing as the attack unfolds and the text itself does not comment any further on it, Njáll seems virtually to be alluding here to the founding anecdote of classical memorial technology” (Glauser 2007, 18 – 19). This example can be unfolded further. Later in the narrative when the farmstead has burned to the ground, it is possible for the survivors to find Njáll’s remains. The saga says that the witnesses to the event, Hjalti Skeggjason and Kári Sǫlmundarson, walk a-

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round in the ruins, clear the ash away and find the exact spot where Njáll, his wife Bergþóra and their grandson lie. They are covered by a protecting oxhide and untouched by the fire – apart from the grandson’s finger, which had been burned as it stuck out from under the cover. The witnesses to this sight agree that Njáll’s body is particularly well preserved, looking radiant, despite being located in the midst of the ruins and ashes (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 132, p. 343). Hjalti and Kári move around the ruins and, helped by servants, they clear more ash away to find more bodies. First, they uncover the sons of Njáll, first of all Skarpheðinn, who is found “við gaflaðit” (by the gable), and after that Grímr, who is lying “í miðjum skálanum” (in the middle of the hall). Then they find Þorðr leysingja (freed-man), who is placed “undir hliðveggin” (under the side wall) and finally the old woman Sæunn and three men who were “í vefjarstufunni” (in the weaving room) (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 132, pp. 343 – 344). The house-space makes up a structure to which the dead bodies are attached, and the saga characters virtually act as the heirs of Simonides, practising the art of memory by following his example. Supporting the notion that an interest in mnemonics lies behind the narrative, a numeric principle is evoked when the narrator specifies that Hjalti and Kári find eleven bodies at various spots within the ruins. Thus, spatial anchoring and numbering co-exist, suggesting that more techniques are involved at one and the same time. The finding of Njáll’s son Skarpheðinn is spelled out and many details are provided about his place of death and his bodily remains: Þá leituðu þeir Skarpheðins. Þar vísuðu heimamenn til, sem þeir Flosi hǫfðu vísuna heyrt kveðna, ok var þar þekjan fallin at gaflaðinu, ok þar mælti Hjalti, at til skyldi grafa. Siðan gerðu þeir svá ok fundu þar líkama Skarpheðins, ok hafði hann staðit upp við gaflaðit, ok váru brunnir fœtr af honum mjǫk svá neðan til knjá, en allt annat óbrunnit á honum. Hann hafði bitit á kampi sínum. Augu hans váru opin ok óþrútin. Hann hafði rekit øxina í gaflaðit svá fast, at gengit hafði allt upp á miðjan fetann, ok var ekki dignuð. (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 132, p. 343) (Then they searched for Skarphedin. The servants showed them where Flosi and his men had heard the verse spoken, where the roof had collapsed next to the gable wall, and Hjalti said they should dig there. They did and found the body of Skarphedin, and he had been standing up against the gable wall, and his legs were burned off almost up to the knees, but the rest of him was unburned. He had bitten into his upper lip. His eyes were open and not swollen. He had driven his axe into the gable wall so hard that half of the blade was buried and it had not lost its temper.) (Njal’s saga, 1997, ch. 132, pp. 162– 163)

The passage demonstrates memory’s preference for striking images. The dead body has spectacular characteristics and odd details associated with it: Skarpheðinn is standing up despite his burned-off legs, looking as if he is still active and has never stopped fighting; clearly the spectators in the narrative are struck by

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what they see. Skarpheðinn stands in what would in reality be an impossible posture, but it nevertheless makes sense within a mnemonic system that is inclined towards the extraordinary. Traits that contradict the real and the factual are excellent means by which to conjure lasting images in the mind. We can envisage that these images were, not only to the witnesses in the narrative, but also to the authors and readers, helpful means that could bring the memorized past to life in front of their eyes (Hermann 2015). Njáll’s remains are spectacular, too, since – as mentioned – his radiant and shining body was untouched by the fire, and the text specifies that the people gathering at the ruins were struck by what they saw. In this image of the dead Njáll, the grandson’s burned finger constitutes a contrast, which inserts into the image a conspicuous detail that ensures it will stick to memory. The effects and the implications of the mnemonic devices deserve attention. The spaces and images that guarantee the remembrance of Njáll and Skarpheðinn create a certain memory; father and son are presented as nearly super-human beings, one as a saintlike man and the other as a strong and persistent hero. The art of memory has the power to preserve a certain version of the past, that is, to construct a cultural memory that the authors and the audiences can adhere to and sympathize with. As stated by Jan Assmann: “No memory can preserve the past” (1995, 130), which in this context basically means that a remembered past is not an exact reproduction of a reality but a construction of it. What a saga like BrennuNjáls saga communicates to its audience is a past that is relatable and which was formed within this society’s expectations, which in our case here suggests a wish to present at one and the same time a glorious forefather (in the image of Njáll) and a heroic past (in the image of Skarpheðinn). Evidence from other parts of Europe shows that the thirteenth-century interest in the combined principles of space and vision (the loci and imaginesmethod), as well as other mnemonic technologies, adopted the methods relatively freely. This is exemplified by Boncompagno da Signa, a contemporary of the earliest saga writers, who revisited and took up elements treated in the Roman texts.¹⁶³ Boncompagno da Signa combined the classical art with moralistic theology and the search for paradise and avoidance of hell, that is, with the remembrance of virtues and vices (Yates 1974, 57– 60). But a look beneath this theological veneer reveals his interest in such issues as natural and artificial  Boncompagno da Signa belongs to a university environment, and his example shows that the innovations and changes of the place-image method happened as part of university learning (for this shift from monasteries to universities, see Doležalová 2019, 215). In contrast to Boncompagno da Signa, the slightly later Albertus Magnus (1206 – 1280) based his ideas more directly on classical memoria (Yates 1974, 70).

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memory as well as images placed in memorized locations. He describes how to construct a house of learning and how extraordinary features, i. e. personal offenses and the unexpected, maintain themselves better in memory than ordinary ones do. He also advises that one should establish main categories and subcategories as a way of organizing things and words in memory. Particularly noteworthy in our context is the fact that he takes up the thread from the Simonides story and links memory and seating, explaining that structured seating facilitates the remembrance of names. He emphasizes that, for the one who wishes to remember many names, the view over an imagined room should not be blocked or disturbed, just as the more significant people should have the most honourable places, people from the same region should sit together in their own clusters, variation should be avoided, and the same place should always be occupied by the same person (Boncompagno da Signa, Rhetorica novissima, 1892, pp. 275 – 280). He also lists characteristics and properties, so-called ‘mnemonic signs’ or memorial notes, that are helpful for someone who wishes to remember names. I quote one among several relevant passages from Rhetorica novissima (c. 1230), namely the beginning of a very long list of tools that help incise names in memory: Prenomina, cognomina, agnomina, forme turpitudo, longitudo, brevitas, pinguedo, marcedo, calvities, etatum diversitates et colorum, magnitude vocis, raucitas, loquela, idioma, velocitas, tarditas, nasi curvitas, monstruositas, multilatio, nevi, cicatrices, claudicatio, cecitas, tortuositas oculorum, gibbositas, lippitudo, lepra, indumentorum varietas. extranea vel derisibilis nuncupatio, officium, ordo, excellentia virium vel scientie, sapientia, ignorantia, sagacitas, imprudentia, sanctitas, perversitas, benignitas, […] (Boncompagno da Signa, Rhetorica novissima, 1892, p. 280) (First names, family names, places of origin, ugliness of figure, height, shortness, fatness, feebleness, baldness, diversity of ages and complexions, volume of voice, hoarseness, speech, peculiarity in language, speed, slowness, curve of the nose, deformity, mutilation, moles, scars, limping, blindness, crossed eyes, humpback, running eyes, leprosy, variety of clothing, outlandish or ridiculous appellation, job, rank, excellence of strength or knowledge, wisdom, ignorance, keenness, imprudence, holiness, wickedness, kindness […]) (Boncompagno da Signa, On Memory, 2004, p. 116)

The list is concluded with an explanation that such memorial signs are able to direct the one who remembers onto the path of remembering. Boncompagno’s aim was to simplify the rhetoric of the texts from classical antiquity and to make it work in practice. In this context, he was aware of the role played by the imagination: Boncompagno […] emphazises the ars, the ‘craft’ of memory, which cannot be learned by generalized rules alone but requires the active use of an individual’s imagination. In the terms of classical rhetoric, this mingling of memory and imagination may seem to amount to

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a confusion of memoria with inventio. This ‘confusion’, however, reflects a broader medieval understanding of the process of recollection, as exemplified in the type of meditative invention practiced by monks as they read and prayed over biblical texts. (Carruthers and Gallagher 2004, 104)

The Bologna-school that Boncompagno belonged to was influential in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, but the Norse authors might not have known this particular text. Boncompagno da Signa’s work nevertheless collects in one place many of the mnemonic principles that seem to have played a role in Norse texts, which indicates that similar mnemonic techniques were advocated for in various parts of medieval Europe. Many Old Norse-Icelandic texts, in particular the sagas of Icelanders, feature a rich number of similar mnemonic signs and markers, indicating that their authors may have trained their memory by way of principles similar to those described by Boncompagno da Signa. This Latin writer is relevant as his work illustrates how, at least in his environment, the Roman art of memory was managed quite freely. Like this teacher of rhetoric so, too, the Norse authors may have deployed the techniques they knew about, not always as tediously as they are described in the Roman texts, but in ways that allowed for a looser adaptation. To return to Brennu-Njáls saga, it appears that this text presents a veritable catalogue of the types of mnemonic characteristics mentioned in Boncompagno da Signa’s text. The people who are dealt with in the saga may be anchored to a particular seat or to rooms in a farmhouse, just as places of origin frequently attach themselves to people, who are very often also associated with a particular geographical area – a spatial anchoring that is just as helpful as an architectonic building can be. The saga is excessive in elaborations on physical characteristics and personal properties (as are many of the other texts of this sub-genre), and it often goes into great detail in such descriptions. At times, the physical characteristics of a person hold together narrative threads (see Hermann 2015, 336 – 338). For example, Njáll is introduced as karl inn skegglausi (the beardless man) and his enemies call his sons taðskegglingar (dung-beardlings), which in an offensive manner suggests that the men of this family not only fertilize the hay on the field with dung but also try to make their beards grow by this method. A series of conflicts in the saga is caused by this insult and one of the plot threads centres around Njáll’s (lack of) beard and the accusations against his sons that they cannot grow beards, which in the world of the narrative is an attack on their masculinity (see Sayers 1994; Ármann Jakobsson 2013). In other cases, the physical descriptions are not as clearly connected to the plot; nevertheless, the saga provides very detailed descriptions of the main characters. Gunnarr has thick, blond and well-combed hair and a straight nose,

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which turns up at its tip (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 19, pp. 52– 53), while Skarpheðinn has reddish-brown and curly hair, a pale and sharp-featured face with a bent nose and an ugly mouth with a broad row of upper teeth (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 25, p. 70). While these characterizations serve to contrast the two men, Gunnarr and Skarpheðinn, they also point to the role of visuality, that is, they indicate that when images of a person are conjured in front of the mind’s eye, they help the author and the readers remember the characters and define their roles within the narrative. The description of Skarpheðinn’s looks renders him a somewhat bizarre-looking character, which is supported by other descriptions of him. At a scene that plays out at the alþingi he is distinguished from others in terms of his height, dress and looks and he is called trǫllsligr (troll-like) (BrennuNjáls saga, 1954, ch. 56, p. 141). His properties in different ways attract, or are surrounded by, mnemonic details.¹⁶⁴ We note that in this relatively densely told episode, which takes place at the alþingi, references are made to numbers as well. Here, Skarpheðinn is singled out from the crowd by a reference to his position as the fifth in a line of men. It has already been mentioned that organization by numbers is a device that surfaces in other passages of relevance for memory as well, as we saw in other episodes of Brennu-Njáls saga as well as in most of the other texts treated in this book, such as the eddic poems Vǫluspá, Grímnismál and Hávamál. And – just to mention another example – it also occurs in the beginning of Gylfaginning when High tells Gylfi that, in Ásgarðr, Alfǫðr (Óðinn) had “tólf nǫfn” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 8) (twelve names). These many examples refer to different numbers, and do not indicate that only one number was used; rather, they indicate that it is an advantage that this principle can be expanded and adopted to suit a given narrative material. Yet, the number five, which is mentioned here in Brennu-Njáls saga, may have a special relevance to mnemonics, and we recall that Quintilian suggests the organization of mnemonic locations on the basis of this particular number – which, as noted above, corresponds to the five fingers on the hand, too. To Boncompagno natural memory can be helped by a wide variety of artificial means, ranging from physical monuments over technologies (such as the al-

 Lars Lönnroth connects the rhetoric of portrayals of saga characters to foreign influences from, for example, ecclesiastical biographies, Roman history writing and medical tracts (1965). This spectrum of Latin texts can be widened to include treatises and books dealing with memory, since such texts, too, may have influenced the way in which the saga characters are presented. However, I do not claim that Latin texts were necessary preconditions for the creation of visually striking portrayals, the techniques that underlie these descriptions may already have been familiar by the time medieval book culture comes along. It is possible, though, that ideas described in Latinate texts would have provoked a renewed interest in already existing devices.

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phabet) and sounds to body movements and even slaps. To illustrate that slaps, and their result, pain, can support memory, he lists among the mnemonic devices the punches that bishops give to adults during sacraments to help them to remember and the blows given to boys that help them to preserve learning in memory (Carruthers and Gallagher 2004, 111). Bodily pain plays a role in terms of memory in Brennu-Njáls saga, too, for example when a box on the ear (kinnhestr) and remembrance (muna) are combined in a conflict between the couple Gunnarr and Hallgerðr, whose marriage causes several of the conflicts in the saga. Gunnarr gets angry: “ok lýstr hana kinnhest. Hon kvazk þann hest muna skuldu ok launa, ef hon mætti” (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 48, p. 124) (“and he slapped her on the face. Hallgerd said she would remember this slap and pay it back if she could”) (Njál’s saga, 1997, ch. 48, p. 57). The slap is recalled by Hallgerðr later in the saga, when she reminds Gunnarr of it and refuses to help him against his enemies (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954, ch. 77, p. 189). This mnemonic method is incorporated into the narrative, where it functions as a “leitmotif” (Glauser 2018, 239 – 240), helpful not only to the characters’ remembrance, but also to that of the audience. Its very presence in the narrative indicates that yet another artificial mnemonic device was elaborated on by a Norse author, albeit not in a theoretical treatise but in narrative form.¹⁶⁵ These examples indicate that Brennu-Njáls saga includes much mnemonic material. It is preoccupied with spatial locations and seating, just as it is concerned with properties and characteristics that are remarkable and singular, at times elaborating on the narrative by pursuing associations that cling to such properties. The episode in the saga where Njáll defines the spot where he will lay down, and the following episode where Hjalti and Kári recover the dead bodies, may give the impression that these mnemonic technologies were known to the people of the past. Yet, such descriptions are also likely to have taken form from ideas that were current at the time when the saga was recorded in writing, thus pointing to an author with a keen interest in mnemonic technologies (and who may have been acquainted with some of the principles through his learning). Theodore Andersson has suggested that the author of Brennu-Njáls saga, who wrote at a time when sagas of Icelanders had been produced for several decades, inverted some of the traditional patterns of this type of saga (Andersson 2006, 183 – 203). This perspective opens up the possibility that the episodes that I treat here as mnemonic topoi, that is, as textual references to a memory culture and  The combination of remembrance and bodily pain has a presence in the history of memory. Working from the thesis that pain is an important mnemo-technical aid, Friedrich Nietzsche draws attention to so-called ‘cultural scripts’ that are written on the exterior of the body (see A. Assmann 2011, 230 – 237).

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prevailing mnemonic technologies, may derive from an author who – as part of a creative approach to a literary form well known to him – exaggerates and hyperbolizes the mnemonic devices that were part of this traditional pattern.

6.1.2 Egils saga Skallagrímssonar: Grotesque Images In contrast to Brennu-Njáls saga, Egils saga Skallagrímssonar is regarded as one of the early sagas of Icelanders. I already argued that this saga involves different aspects of memory, for instance in the presentation of Egill’s poetry, but it echoes mnemonic culture in other ways, too. The saga, as it looks in its reconstructed form, has a bipartite structure and it has been argued that it consists of a pre-saga and a main saga (see e. g. Clover 1982, 46; Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir 2015; Torfi Tulinius 2015).¹⁶⁶ Seating episodes are central in the saga’s first part, and this sort of spatial anchoring encapsulates the narrative thread of this section in a compressed form (see Hermann 2018b, 668 – 669). The so-called pre-saga takes place in Norway and focuses on Kveld-Úlfr and his son, Þórólfr, and their complicated relationship with king Haraldr, who claims power over Norway. After Þórólfr’s death, the conflict eventually leads to the family’s exodus from Norway and their emigration to Iceland, from which point the narrative concentrates on Þórólfr’s brother, Skallagrímr. The important characters in the pre-saga are introduced, and the conflicting parties to-be are captured in the order in which the involved persons, including Þórólfr, are seated in the king’s hall: Af ǫllum hirðmǫnnum virði konungr mest skáld sín; þeir skipuðu annat ǫndvegi. Þeira sat innast Auðun illskælda; hann var elztr þeira, ok hann hafði verit skáld Hálfdanar svarta, fǫður Haralds konungs. Þar næst sat Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, en þar næst sat Ǫlvir hnúfa, en honum it næsta var skipat Bárði; hann var þar kallaðr Bárðr hvíti eða Bárðr sterki … Þórólfr var með konungi, ok vísaði konungr honum til sætis milli þeira Ǫlvis hnúfu ok Bárðar. (Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, 1933, ch. 8, pp. 19 – 20) (Of all his followers, the king held his poets in highest regard, and let them sit on the bench opposite his high seat. Farthest inside sat Audun the Uninspired, who was the oldest and had been poet to King Harald’s father, Halfdan the Black. Next to him sat Thorbjorn Raven, and then Olvir Hump. Bard was given the seat next to him and was nicknamed Bard the White or

 Torfi Tulinius makes an interesting literary reading of structural patterns in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, which shows how a repeated use of names gives coherence and can help to “create a definite infrastructure for the construction of the saga” (Torfi Tulinius 2015, 29). In the same article, which also shows that the saga is organized and structured around numbers, Torfi Tulinius touches on themes that are highly relevant for an investigation of this particular saga’s mnemonic dimensions.

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Bard the Strong. He was popular with everyone and become a close companion of Olvir’s. … Thorolf stayed with the king, who gave him a seat between Olvir Hump and Bard.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 8, pp. 39 – 40)

The scene shows that prestige and status are signalled through seating and it emphasizes the high esteem of the poet at the king’s court, but at the same time the seating serves as mnemonic anchoring for narrative purposes. The table arrangements make it possible to remember the names and the relationships between the people involved. When the newcomer Þórólfr is seated between Ǫlvir and Bárðr, this indicates his position as a member of the group. Ǫlvir and Bárðr have important functions for the narrative: Ǫlvir is Þórólfr’s friend and the king’s messenger, and Bárðr, when he is nearing death, makes Þórólfr his heir, thus enabling him to increase his wealth, and this financial support helps him obtain a status equal to that of the king. We note how mnemonic signs are added to the people so as to better remember their names; the narrative focuses on particularities in skin colours, such as hvíti (the white), on posture, such as hnúfu (the hump), and so on. The story about Þórólfr involves other architectonic locations as well. Firstly, his high status is expressed through a banquet that he gives for the king. The (otherwise great) house is not big enough to house all of his own supporters (five hundred men) plus the king’s men (almost three hundred), and so a large arrangement with benches is set up in a sizeable barn nearby. The house-space is thus expanded, and this may have served as a mnemonic cue in terms of the narrative run. A reference is then made to the seating arrangements in the barn, which stresses the king’s dissatisfaction: “Konungr settisk í hásæti; en er alskipat var it efra ok it fremra, þá sásk konungr um ok roðnaði ok mælti ekki, ok þóttusk menn finna, at hann var reiðr” (Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, 1933, ch. 11, p. 29) (“The king sat in the high-seat, and when the upper and lower benches were both filled he looked around, very red in the face. He did not speak a word, but it seemed obvious he was angry”) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 11, p. 44). Secondly, the conflict between Þórólfr and Haraldr is settled in the most effective way possible: the king burns down the house where Þórólfr is staying, Þórólfr manages to escape from the main room (stofa) by first breaking down the balk between this room and the entrance and then the wall itself. Even so, he is eventually killed by the king (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 22, p. 53). The episode here is not as elaborate as the burning scene in Brennu-Njáls saga with regard to spatial anchoring, but it still hints at the idea that house-spaces could serve mnemonic purposes. Taken together, the seating-episode at the initial banquet, the episode in Þórólfr’s barn and the final burning of the house indicate that the narrative pays attention to spatial locations, which – when they are combined in a sequence –

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constitute an archiving method and organizational tool around which the narrative can evolve. When such architectonic locations are recalled in the mind and visualized in front of the mind’s eye, they will assist the remembering of details and names that are important for the narrative, just as the move from one spatial location to another will create a temporal progression. Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (like Brennu-Njáls saga) shows that people were remembered through noticeable characteristics that carried stories with them, indicating that the use of this type of mnemonic sign was relatively widespread. The main characters are remembered by way of certain properties, for example Þórólfr’s father, whose name Kveld-Úlfr (evening-wolf) suggests that his nature lies in between the human and the non-human, man and wolf, and his brother Skallagrímr, whose name conjures the image of a bald-headed man. The emphasis that the text puts on such properties is not (only) a rude or scornful way of exposing people to public ridicule; first and foremost, such descriptions are mnemonic cues that secure the remembrance of the characters and their actions. The properties or characteristics may not even relate to real physical traits; as Boncompagno da Signa and other memory-theorists mention, mnemonic efficiency requires an active use of the imagination. More often than not, the descriptions will be exaggerated representations created by the imagination, which, exactly because of such twists and even counter-factual elements, have the power to fix the names and the stories connected to them in memory. Of course, we must allow for other spatial structures than architectonic buildings to have functioned as mnemonic locations. Egils saga Skallagrímssonar shows that (hierarchical) seating on ships likewise plays a role for mnemonic organization. There is an example of that in the saga’s first part, where two ships sail together. The king is onboard his own ship while Þórólfr and his companions are on another, and here the main characters are seated at the front: “Þórólfr Kveld-Úlfsson ok Bárðr hvíti ok synir Berðlu-Kára, Ǫlvir hnúfa ok Eyvindr lambi, en berserkir konungs tólf váru í sǫxum” (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 9, p. 22) (“Thorolf, son of Kveldulf, Bard the White, and Olvir Hump and Eyvind Lamb, the sons of Kari from Berle, were at the prow, while the king’s twelve berserks manned the gunwales”) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 9, p. 41). The alþingi and other assembly sites (which have a prominent role in Brennu-Njáls saga) offer yet other background structures, where the booths at the assembly site could serve as an inherent organizational feature with the same function as the seats that are integral to the house-templates, i. e. as boxes or compartments that allow for the remembrances of names and groups of people and consequently help to store segments of knowledge and story-elements. These few additional examples indicate that narratives may have been organized around several different spatial structures, such as buildings, ships and assembly sites, which allows the authors

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to gaze at such settings with the inner eye and travel through them on their paths of remembrance. Some structures may have been fairly commonly used, but they would not have been the only ones. There are two other house scenes in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (from the second part of the saga) that deserve attention and which further confirm that the preservation of the saga presupposed the visualization of buildings in front of the mind’s eye, namely Egill’s visits to the homes of Atleyjar-Bárðr (Bárðr from Atløy) and Ármóðr skegg (Ármóðr the bearded). These instances contain many details, and this wealth of details shows how much information could be stored in such mnemonic repositories. They moreover confirm that odd and unusual – even grotesque – images were helpful mnemonic tools. Both of these episodes involve descriptions of excessive drinking. They are related to the íþrótt-tradition, where competing in various disciplines, including drinking, defines who the strongest man is. Both examples serve to characterize Egill as an uncompromising person who stands up for his honour. To create this image, the text refers not only to his ability with weapons but also to his superior poetic skills. It underscores that he defends himself with weapons as well as with rhymed words. The first episode takes place in Atleyjar-Bárðr’s house. The events are anchored to two different spaces in the house, the eldhús (fire-room) and the stofa (main room), and reference is made to the seating arrangements. Egill is one of the young followers in Ǫlvir’s company. When they arrive, they are placed in the eldhús and fobbed off with poor quality food. In the meantime the Norwegian king Eiríkr and his queen Gunnhildr, who are also visiting Bárðr, are treated in the main room, where the victuals are of a high standard. Later, at the request of the king, Bárðr and his followers are invited into the main room; Bárðr is welcomed by the king and placed opposite him (on the ǫndvegi), Egill next to him and the other followers are seated further down the room (“fagnar konungr vel Ǫlvi ok bað hann sitja gagnvert sér í ǫndvegi ok þar fǫrunauta hans útar frá. Þeir gerðu svá; sat Egill næstr Ǫlvi”) (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 44, p. 108). A banquet begins, where much drinking is going on, some men vomit in the main room, others out through the door. Egill, whose honour was offended by the poor treatment they were first met with, drinks unstoppably and his exaggerated consumption of mead becomes an insult to his host. The conflict escalates and towards the end of the banquet Egill intensifies his revenge. Ǫlvir is about to pass out and Egill follows him to the door, where the host provokes the drunk Ǫlvir by asking him to drink a farewell-toast. Thus standing in the doorway (at durunum), Egill turns towards Atleyjar-Bárðr and composes this verse: Ǫlvar mik, þvít Ǫlvi ǫl gervir nú fǫlvan,

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atgeira lætk ýrar ýring of grǫn skýra; ǫllungis kannt illa, oddskýs, fyr þér nýsa, rigna getr at regni, regnbjóðr, Hávars þegna. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 44, p. 110)¹⁶⁷ (I’m feeling drunk, and the ale has left Olvir pale in the gills, I let the spray of ox-spears [drinking horns] foam over my beard Your wits have gone, inviter of showers onto shields: now the rain of the high god [rain of spears, rain of poetry (perhaps vomit)] starts pouring on you.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 44, p. 82)

The wording rigna getr at regni > the rain of the high god can refer to both ‘spears’ and ‘poetry materialized as spit or vomit’. Neither meaning excludes the other, ambiguity is one of the characteristics of the skaldic language, where a double meaning is often intended. As is made clear from several episodes of insult in the sagas, a verbal attack has the same implication as a physical one, and not only spears but also words can be used to regain respect after an offence. In any case, the context of the kenning ‘the rain of the high god’ suggests that more than one meaning is intended. The kenning is likely to refer to ‘spears’, because immediately after Egill has made the poem, he draws his sword and kills Bárðr, trusting the sword into his stomach (miðja). At the same time as Bárðr falls to the ground, the immensely drunk Ǫlvir vomits all over the floor and passes out, the two of them lying on the floor in the blood and vomit. Egill, for his part, leaves the room and goes out into the dark night. But the other meaning, which combines ‘the rain of the high god’ with poetry (in the form of spit or vomit) is relevant as well. It alludes quite obviously to the myth about the mead of poetry told in the Prose Edda, where Óðinn drank the precious mead and spat it out, and this in turn suggests that the metaphor of poetry materializing as spit or vomit is more or less latently present in this epi-

 Guðrún Nordal examines this verse in relation to poetic theory of the time of the saga’s conception, and she has specifically pointed to the style, the dunhent (echoing rhyme-type), which is treated in the Prose Edda (in Háttatal) and The Third Grammatical Treatise (2015, 46 – 47).

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sode.¹⁶⁸ It confirms – as Margaret Clunies Ross has said – that it is not uncommon that Norse poets appear in the texts as “spewers of what had once been vomited by the god himself” (Clunies Ross 1987, 113), i. e. as followers of Óðinn. In the Prose Edda, Óðinn spits out the mead, a carefully prepared drink, into a container, which indicates control and intentionality, whereas the vomit/spit that Egill ejects is limitless and poured out over his host. The excessiveness of the whole situation is further underlined when the people surrounding him, for instance Ǫlvir, eject vomit as well. The exaggerated depiction of the body liquids/the poetic ability creates a grotesque situation which exploits the poetic metaphor to the extreme. But, even so, it portrays Egill as an excellent poet, who continues the poetic tradition founded in the past. The focus on Egill’s intake and fierce ejection calls to mind the story of Óðinn’s transformation into a flying eagle, crossing the sky while digesting the mead, and it signals that poetic skills were based on mnemonic processing. Thus, as in the examples mentioned in Chapter 3, also this episode presents Egill as a man with an excellent memory. The next example deals with Egill’s stay in the farmhouse that belongs to Ármóðr skegg. Also this episode depicts Egill as a man who is much concerned with his honour and, once again, drinking abilities are used to show who the strongest man is. This situation is tightly anchored to a house-space (stofa) as well, here the main room, where people are seated by the table: Ármóðr setti Egil í ǫndvegi á inn óœðra bekk, ok þar fǫrunautar hans útar frá … húsfreyja sat á þverpalli ok þar konur hjá henni, dóttir bónda var á gólfinu, tíu vetra eða ellifu. […] ok váru borð upp tekin um alla stofu, ok sett á vist: því næst kómu inn sendingar. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 71, pp. 224– 225) (Armod gave Egil a seat [opposite the high seat] on the lower bench and seated his companions farther down the table […] The farmer’s wife sat on a cross-bench with some other women beside her. Their daughter, aged ten or eleven, was on the floor […] Tables were laid across the whole room and the food was spread out on it.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 72, pp. 139 – 140)

At first Egill and his followers are served curd, but it becomes known that Ármóðr has ale in his storage and he is compelled to bring it in. He keeps asking the guests to drink and pushes more and more ale onto Egill and his men. Egill is insulted by the poor treatment they were met with at first and he is equally insulted by the exaggerated provisions that follow; food provision without limits is as insulting as no provision at all. Yet, he overcomes the disrespectful reception in the house by proving himself the best drinker, superior to his host.

 Regarding the intertextual connection between these episodes and the Prose Edda, see also Mitchell 2001, 177; Schnall 2004.

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In this episode, the same parallel as in the previous example is established between spitting vomit and spitting poetry. At some point of the evening, Egill stands up and walks across the floor, grabs hold of his host and pushes him against a wall-post, and from that close distance he throws up on him with such power that vomit is filling Ármóðr’s face, eyes, nostrils and mouth. Right after, Egill asks for another drink and “blares out a poem” (“Þá kvað Egill við raust”): Títt erum verð at vátta, vætti berk at hættak þung til þessar gǫngu, þinn kinnalǫ minni; margr velr gestr, þars gistir, gjǫld, finnumsk vér sjaldan, Ármóði liggr, æðri, ǫlðra dregg í skeggi. (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, 1933, ch. 71, p. 226) (With my cheeks’ swell I repaid the compliment you served. I had heavy cause to venture my steps across the floor. Many guests thank favours with sweater-flavoured rewards. But we meet rarely. Armod’s beard is awash with dregs of ale.) (Egil’s saga, 1997, ch. 72, p. 141)

Egill’s ‘thank you’ to his host is expressed by way of two parallel and conflated means, vomit and poetry, a metaphorical hyperbolization that underscores how serious is his desire to restore his honour. The insulting verse specifically relates that Egill vomited in his host’s beard (by means of the kenning kinnalǫ > cheeksurge > vomit). Ármóðr, it was noticed, is called Ármóðr skegg, and the trait that gives the host his nickname (his beard) thus plays a central role in the story, functioning as a mnemonic cue that carries the story with it. That Ármóðr’s beard is a focal point in the encounter between Egill and Ármóðr is further confirmed when Egill cements his superior position the next morning by cutting it off. So, what to make of these two examples from a memory perspective? Firstly, they confirm that mnemonic abilities are linked to the portrait of Egill, and that a certain understanding of memory prevailed at the time when the saga was written. The analogue between poetry and vomit, which is evident in both episodes, suggests that poetry is internalized and processed in the stomach, i. e. memory. The two episodes reveal an exuberant attitude towards literal and metaphorical meaning (poetry and vomit), and a willingness to present the art of ancient Norse

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poetry as well as mnemonic skills in a way that would probably have aroused laughter or disgust on the part of its audiences; the side-effects of either of these responses would be that the story could stick better to memory. The details with which Egils saga Skallagrímssonar treats Egill, his family, his honour and poetic abilities, as well as the saga’s intertextual relationship with the Prose Edda (a text that, if any, is interested in memory) confirms that this saga is, indeed, preoccupied with this faculty. We may ask whether a skilled poet could be remembered in any better way than through images where he and those around him are covered in vomit, that is, in a physical materialization of poetry? Moreover, these two episodes may unveil a mnemonic recollection, that is, they disclose what was seen in front of the author’s and the reader’s inner eyes. Egill’s actions are attached to buildings and their various rooms (stofa and eldhús) which serve as mnemonic loci, and the episodes furthermore involve seating arrangements and gatherings by the table, cues of spatial anchoring which help to remember names. The houses and the rooms within them function as a repository. Elements of this repository – such as the door (dyrr) and the wall-post (stafr) – divide and segment it, creating compartments wherein details can be stored and where certain compartments are reserved for particular figures and actions. In the case involving Atleyjar-Bárðr the king is in the stofa, Egill in the eldhús; everyone is placed in specific spots on the benches; Egill is standing by the door, and so on. At the same time as they are spatially anchored, the encounters between Egill and Bárðr and Ármóðr live up to the requirements of mnemonic imagines, being exaggerated, grotesque and peculiar.When dramatic movement is embedded into these images it further helps memory. So-called imagines agentes (active images) inform particularly the latter example where Egill changes his position in the room and walks across the floor. That Egill’s poem was delivered in a loud voice (raust) indicates that the verse/vomit comes out of his mouth with great force, which adds to the dynamic impression of the episode. It is remarkable that these episodes have a dramatic gist to them, and the mnemonic locations (houses and their rooms) function practically as delineated performance areas. This impression is supported, for instance, in the episode in Atleyjar-Bárðr’s house where Egill leaves the house as if he were leaving a performance area or walking off the stage. This impression is further supported inasmuch as the episodes seem to presuppose an angle of vision that allows the active images to be seen frontally, as if the person recollecting this knowledge were a spectator to a performance. Thus, knowledge that was recollected visually from memory was at times so vivid and so animated that it could look similar to dramatic performances.¹⁶⁹

 Frances Yates has dealt with ‘theatre memory systems’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth

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6.2 Recollection, Rhetoric and Persuasion Brennu-Njáls saga and Egils saga Skallagrímssonar indicate that sagas involved a type of recollection that depended on locations, images and mnemonic signs, such as epithets. Mary Carruthers has defined memory as a re-collection and has emphasized that the invention of a text in a mnemonic culture relied on a search in various localities in memory: Re-collection was essentially a task of composition, literally bringing together matters found in the various places where they are stored to be reassembled in a new place. […] Far from being passive and thus (at least possibly) neutral, memory-making was regarded as active; it was even a craft with techniques and tools, all designed to make an ethical, useful product. (Carruthers and Ziolkowski 2004, 1– 2)

This passage reminds us that recollection is not a neutral activity, but involves choices and priorities, even moral values. The bits and pieces that are put together in texts that derive from memory have been deliberately organized and created in accordance with the wishes, ethics and uses of the individual author and his or her audience. The sagas are rhetorical in a very basic sense, namely inasmuch as they persuade the audience to accept the version of the past that they construct and the truthfulness of the things and events that they present; for instance when Njáll is portrayed as a heathen of the past who possesses nearly saintlike, Christian characteristics, and when Egill is depicted as a poet with an extraordinarily good memory and a heroic character. Saga scholars have frequently dealt with the specific rhetoric of the sagas of Icelanders, and Theodore Andersson has suggested a rhetorical terminology and discussed how recurrent devices that relate to the dramatic moments in the sagas “are designed to make the story tense and telling, to catch the readers interest while the plot is being unraveled” (1967, 64).¹⁷⁰

centuries, when the place-image method of classical antiquity was combined with theatres, or more precisely with stages, round or square, and where doors and columns of different colours created segmented areas were combined with mnemonics (Yates 1974, e. g. 335 – 340). I am not suggesting that a systematic use of such ‘theatrical memory’ was prevalent in the Norse Middle Ages at all; such institutions were literally non-existent there. Still, some of the episodes do suggest that visual recollection was combined with dramatized images attached to or organized in delineated areas or on stage-like locations.  He argues that such aspects as ‘unity’, ‘scaffolding’, ‘escalation’, ‘retardation’, ‘symmetry’, ‘foreshadowing’, ‘staging’, ‘shift of scene’, ‘necrology’ and ‘posturing’ are typical for the style of sagas and heroic poetry (Andersson 1967, 31– 64 and 83 – 91). For a modification of this system and an analysis of rhetorical persuasion in Brennu-Njáls saga more specifically, see also Lönnroth 1989.

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Richard Allen has dealt with ‘commentary’, ‘guidance’ and ‘architectonics’ as devices that articulate the value systems of the saga. In his study “Architectonics refer to the positioning and structuring of the larger episodes and divisions of the sagas. Commentary and guidance refer to the pervasive assistance the audience receives about the values and the judgements as they occur one after the other” (Allen 1971, 99). These studies, along with others that have dealt with issues such as narratological persuasion (see e. g. Lönnroth 1976, 82– 103), show that the sagas are not objectively communicating events and situations, but are instead communicating certain norms and values that guide and control the reactions of the audiences. Allen’s idiomatic use of the word ‘architectonic’ for the structure of the sagas can be associated vaguely with the connection that Roman rhetoric establishes between verbal discourses and architectural mnemonics, but none of the studies mentioned are directly concerned with the link that Roman writers establish between rhetoric and memory. It would nonetheless prove useful to further examine mnemonic recollection as an aspect of the sagas’ rhetoric and to investigate the function of different types of mnemonic locations and images in the context of rhetorical persuasion. The strategies that guide the audience’s reactions have broad implications, some of which relate to the sagas’ function within cultural memory, that is, their ability to communicate and construct a past that people find relevant. Jeff Pruchnic and Kim Lacey have dealt with so-called ‘rhetorical memory’, which takes into account the relationship between memory and persuasion in contexts where forms of ‘externalized memory’ communicate the past. Their ideas can be applied in the present case, where the sagas (besides the circumstance that they depict echoes of mnemonic technologies that belonged to a Norse art of memory) are seen as media of cultural memory, that is, of the collectively shared and externalized memory of authors and readers. Pruchnic and Lacey write the following about rhetorical memory: Rhetorical memory is similarly bound up with broader questions of persuasion (how we are persuaded or motivated to adopt particular beliefs or perform certain actions), ethics (who we ‘are’ and the communities we are part of), and politics (how we are implicated in or integrated into large processes of social power). (Pruchnic and Lacey 2011, 4)

This aspect reminds us of the fact that these texts, and the cultural memory that they create, are intertwined with certain beliefs, ethics and processes of social power – basically, that they are narratives of persuasion.

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6.2.1 Literary Representation and Mnemonic Devices An increased focus on the mnemonic dimensions of Old Norse-Icelandic texts will make it possible to nuance scholarly discussions about the representational status of the texts and to clarify in more detail whether they represent history or fiction – or whether they represent memory (understood both as mnemonic technologies and cultural memory). This discussion has been particularly concerned with the sagas of Icelanders, so allow me to add a comment to this facet before I turn to the theme of seating devices in mythological texts. Among the critical ongoing research questions in saga scholarship is the discussion about the saga’s background in oral tradition and medieval literary culture, a theme that was touched on in the introduction to this book with a reference to the bookprose/free-prose debate. Another aspect of this debate concerns the question of whether the sagas should be regarded as fictional or factual texts, that is, as works of literature or of history. Jenny Jochens maintains that “In the Icelandic saga, literature and history have always been joined in a unique way” (Jochens 1993, 199), which reminds us that it is only with great difficulty that sagas can be captured in an either-or matrix, and that they might be best regarded as both history and literature. Preben Meulengracht Sørensen writes poignantly on the implications of the dichotomizing tendencies that have been inherent to the book-prose/freeprose debate and on the methodological challenges that it has caused in the disciplines of history and literature respectively: The debate about how the texts should be read has exhausted itself without any new consensus having emerged. The gap that historical investigation left when it gave up on the sagas as useable sources, literary scholarship has yet been unable to fill, apparently because the available hermeneutic strategies are inadequate. (Meulengracht Sørensen 1993a, 149)

The scholarly limbo that Meulengracht Sørensen expressed in 1993 has gradually been overcome by the introduction of new methods and theories, one of them being Memory Studies. One of the advantages of Memory Studies is that it brings in a third option, namely that medieval texts do not only represent fact and fiction, but also memory. Memory – understood in the broadest sense as a phenomenon that works both within the individual’s mind and also (in a metaphorical sense) exists externally and is transmitted by various media – relies on and is aided by the imagination. For instance, with regard to mnemonic devices, I have argued that mnemonic locations are not only inspired by real spaces (even if they sometimes are), neither can the names in the texts be expected to represent real people, or to represent people as they really looked or behaved. What is contained

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in the texts is very often representations of mnemonic appearances, so to speak, and what they provide is an insight into imagined spaces, images and people.Very often the texts say more about the imagination of those who used the mnemonic techniques than about the reality of the past. An increased awareness of the possibility that Old Norse-Icelandic texts represent memory will explain some of the unexplained situations that appear in them. The peculiar and unexpected stand out and become noticeable especially in realistic texts like the sagas of Icelanders. Such features as geographical displacements and anachronisms have attracted some attention by scholars. Geographic displacements, i. e. the lack of exact correspondence between the real geography that the narratives refer to and the narrated space in the texts, have been dismissed as a mere lack of knowledge or simply as misunderstandings on behalf of the authors. In, for instance, Hœnsa-Þóris saga where two of the characters travel a distance that is not realistic in terms of real geography and real time, we can – rather than seeing this as authorial ignorance – imagine an author who visualizes locations in front of his or her mind’s eye, allowing for progress of the plot along with the relocation from one mnemonic location to another one by way of association.¹⁷¹ Geographical displacements can thus be explained not only as the results of a narrated, but also as a memorized geography. Likewise, the question of anachronisms in the sagas has been brought up now and then. It has, for instance, been noted that the descriptions of weaponry and clothing in Brennu-Njáls saga bear similarities to the time of the writing of the saga rather than the time of the events (Lönnroth 1976, 117). Another case in point is Hrafnkels saga, where people are said to travel to Mikligarðr (Constantinople), even if such travels are not likely to have happened at that time (Hermann Pálsson 1971, 19). Such incidents show that authors formed their mnemonic locations and images in accordance with what they knew at their own time and from what lay within their own horizons. Memory Studies thus make it possible to approach the sagas in new ways and to emphasize that – besides facts and fictions – they also represent various types and forms of memory. However, it must be kept in mind that a focus on memory tends to pull more in the direction of the sagas’ affiliation with (what in a modern understanding is) literature and fiction than to their connectedness with history writing and factuality. A conflation between memory and the imaginary is not uncommon in the rhetorical tradition of classical antiquity, nor in the medieval tradition. To Cicero and Quintilian, the word imago has a double meaning and is used both as “an image of memory and as the product of imagination” (Lachmann

 See the discussion about Hœnsa-Þóris saga in Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, 321– 325.

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2008, 303), a terminology that points to the close affiliation between mnemonics and the imagination. Renate Lachmann, who deals with the relationship between the art of memory and literature, has pointed out that exactly the use of images is one of the issues that binds memory and literature together. Another point of intersection between memory and literature – and another feature that suggests that a memory perspective leans towards literature more than history – is their shared focus on visuality in a wider sense. The rhetorical treatises of classical antiquity underscore the relevance of sensory perception, especially visuality, not only for memory but for orators’ verbal inventions more generally. Ideally things must be represented so clearly, even graphically, that recipients see them in front of their inner eye, a strategy that implies that, for instance, speeches must appeal not only to the ears, but also to the eyes (and preferably to the other senses as well). According to Quintilian a combination of phantasia (fantasy, imagination, power of imagination) and (inner) vision can conjure before the mind’s eye things that are absent or do not exist in reality. He writes that: “Temptabo etiam de hoc dicere […] per quas imagines rerum absentium ita repraesentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere videamur” (“There are certain experiences […] whereby things absent are presented to our imagination with such extreme vividness that they seem actually to be before our very eyes”) (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, II, 1959 – 1963, book 7, ch. 2, pp. 432– 435). Scenes must thus be described in such a vivid manner that the listener or the reader is able to imagine even more details than the orator gives (see Vogt-Spira 2008, 54– 55). If we lift these ideas out of their context within Roman rhetoric and apply them to verbal discourses more broadly, then they tell us about an ideal that orators and authors could strive for, an ideal that concerns the ability of verbal discourses (oral as well as written ones) to evoke the sensory apparatus of the recipients, who should feel incited to see, to hear, to smell and so on, what is presented to them; the recipients ideally conjure up even more details and images before their inner eyes, ears and noses than what they are told. The latter point reveals that not only the authors but also the readers were aided by the senses when they were actively partaking in literary communication. Thus, passages that are treated as mnemonic topoi in this book, such as those of a strong visual character, may relate not only to the existing mnemonic technologies, but may also in a wider sense fuse with the authors’ literary ideals.¹⁷²  Gregor Vogt-Spira has argued that sensory perception plays a significant role in observations pertaining to literary creation and he has argued for a more intense focus on a pre-modern rhetorical-poetical textual model that is based on the intertwined ideas of imago, phantasia and visuality. For this textual model and its epistemological implications, see Vogt-Spira 2008.

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6.3 Seating Devices in Mythological Texts It is not only the sagas of Icelanders that refer to buildings and seating formations; so, too, do narratives and poems concerned with the legendary or mythological past, and I now turn to texts about Norse mythology. First an example from the Prose Edda. Skáldskaparmál is introduced with the depiction of a hǫll (which is perhaps another depiction of the Hava hǫll that we hear about in Gylfaginning). The Æsir are gathered there while waiting for their guest, Ægir, to arrive. Upon his arrival, Ægir is seated among the gods and a banquet can begin. The insistency on spatial framing (which is evident in both Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál) confirms that it was considered important to present not only the poetic vocabulary and the stories on which it was based, but also the locations that helped to preserve this knowledge.¹⁷³ In the Codex Regius-version, Skáldskaparmál’s framework is modelled on similar principles as Gylfaginning’s. Both frames present a hall inside of which a guest (the king Gylfi and the giant Ægir, respectively) learns knowledge from the Æsir, and in both cases the learning is presented to the guest in a dialogical form. In both sections, the guests are surprised by what they see and hear, which draws attention to the impressive size and spectacular look of the hall. Skáldskaparmál says that the wall panels are decorated with shields and that: “Ægi þótti gǫfugligt þar um at sjásk” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 1) (“Everything there seemed to Ægir magnificent to look at”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 59). What is more, the frameworks have in common an emphasis on illusion and deception. The text of Skáldskaparmál says that many things in Ásgarðr have deceptive appearances (sjónhverfingum), an utterance that casts an aura of illusion over the material preserved in this locale. Again, we sense that some amount of caution is required when a Christian writer treats knowledge about the pagan gods. The banquet described in the beginning of Skáldskaparmál recalls some of the mnemonic features that I have already mentioned. It is described as follows: Ok um kveldit er drekka skyldi, þá lét Óðinn bera inn í hǫllina sverð, ok váru svá bjǫrt at þar af lýsti, ok var ekki haft ljós annat meðan við drykkju var setit. Þá gengu Æsir at gildi sínu ok settusk í hásæti tólf Æsir, þeir er dómendr skyldu vera ok svá váru nefndir: Þórr, Njǫrðr, Freyr, Týr, Heimdallr, Bragi,Viðarr,Váli, Ullr, Hœnir, Forseti, Loki; slíkt sama Ásynjur: Frigg, Freyja, Gefjun, Iðunn, Gerðr, Sigyn, Fulla, Nanna [….] Næsti maðr Ægi sat Bragi, ok áttusk þeir við

 The divisions between the different parts of the Prose Edda are not all clear, and they differ between the manuscripts. For example, the Upsaliensis-version integrates Ægir’s visit in the Æsir’s hall (as well as several other stories) into Gylfaginning (Snorri Sturluson, The Uppsala Edda, 2012, p. 86). For an insight into the (different) organization of the material in the various manuscripts, see e. g. Guðrún Nordal 2001, 44– 72; Heimir Pálsson 2012, xcii – xciii.

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drykkju ok orðaskipti. Sagði Bragi Ægi frá mǫrgum tíðindum þeim er Æsir hǫfðu átt. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 1) (And in the evening when they were about to start the drinking, Odin had swords brought into the hall and they were so bright that light shone from them, and no other light was used while they sat drinking. Then the Æsir instituted their banquet and twelve Æsir who were to be judges took their places in their thrones and their names are as follows: Thor, Niord, Freyr, Tyr, Heimdall, Bragi,Vidar,Vali, Ull, Hænir, Forseti, Loki, similarly the Asyniur, Frigg, Freyia, Gefiun, Idunn, Gerd, Sigyn, Fulla, Nanna. […] The person sitting next to Ægir was Bragi, and they drank and conversed together. Bragi related to Ægir many events in which the Æsir had been involved.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 59)

The hall that is evoked before Ægir’s (and the reader’s) eye meets the requirements of a well-functioning mnemonic location, inasmuch as it is lit up (see Hermann 2017c, 2018b). The glowing swords make sure that the gaze out over the spacious setting is not hindered, reminding us that the one who re-collects knowledge from mnemonic buildings quite literally sees this construction in front of the inner eye. The description draws attention to the seating, too, and this time the gods and goddesses are seated in thrones placed beside each other in the room (not on top of each other, which was the case in Gylfaginning). This organization of the individual gods on different seats creates a neat and orderly situation, which is further expanded on when a hint at a numbering principle is made, that is, when it is said that the gods are twelve in numbers. In Grímnismál, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, the gods were distributed across areas of land and associated with their respective homes, but in this case, they are each connected with a hásæti. While the means are different, the purpose of this spatial division is the same.When the names of the twelve gods and goddesses (and the stories that are associated with each of these names) are anchored in separate compartments, they are more easily distinguishable and thus easier to remember; with order follows clarity. When each thing is lodged in its own place, remembering become possible. The repeated hints in the Old Norse texts at various organizing devices indicate that the authors recognized this principle and were aware that knowledge that was stored as bunches of unorganized material would not last but only lead to ignorance and forgetting.

6.3.1 Lokasenna: A Seat in Ægis hǫll One of the most obvious texts to look at in an examination of buildings and seating is Lokasenna (Loki’s Flyting). The poem presents a banquet where nearly all the Norse gods are gathered in Ægis hǫll (Ægir’s hall). Loki forces himself into the hall and uses the gathering as an opportunity to insult each of the gods and to

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present them in a negative light.¹⁷⁴ The poem bears evidence of an environment where people were attentive to, and commented on, mnemonic technologies, and it alludes to memory and mnemonics in more than one way. It reflects on mnemonic devices (such as mnemonic loci and the relevance of seating); it touches on memory’s counterpart, the danger of forgetting; finally, it stirs up confusion about which stories about the gods should be remembered. It cannot be ruled out that – in an environment where it was common to preserve learning and knowledge in spatial structures held in the mind, and where there was an interest in mnemonic technologies – both writers and readers would have perceived Lokasenna as a poem about memory. The poem has a strong focus on the hall and on the seating within it, and it arguably presents yet another mnemonic location, namely Ægis hǫll. This may indicate that mnemonic techniques (specifically a so-called architectonic memory) has secured the poem’s transmission through time. Here, however, I regard the poem (in its extant form) as a reflection of the memory culture that existed at the time of Codex Regius, and the analysis below is based on the supposition that the poem presents notions of memory and mnemonic technologies that prevailed at that time. Considering forms of recollection, it gives the impression that a spectator (someone actively using memory tools) gazes into Ægis hǫll and uses the table arrangements as a device around which the chain of events, or the exchanges between the numerous persons, can be organized. First, it should be mentioned that Ægir and Ægis hǫll are referred to several times in the mythological texts. In Old Norse Ægir means ‘sea-giant’ or simply ‘the sea’, and skaldic kennings associate Ægir with the sea. This connection is backed up in Skáldskaparmál where it is said that Ægir lived on the island of Hlesey (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 1). It is tempting to assume that Ægis hǫll was located in or by the sea, even if Lokasenna, which is the text that gives the most elaborate description of the location, says nothing about this. Only once (in the passage from Skáldskaparmál discussed above) do the Æsir host Ægir; whenever else we hear about meetings between the gods and Ægir the gatherings take place in Ægis hǫll. This hall is also mentioned in Grímnismál and Hymiskviða (Poem about Hymir) and the latter poem suggests that Ægir is a frequent host to the gods because it concludes with a comment that the gods drink ale at Ægir’s place every winter (Hymiskviða, 2014, p. 407). The motif of the gods’ repeated visits to Ægis hǫll

 Lokasenna is preserved in Codex Regius and otherwise only (apart from one stanza in Gylfaginning) in late paper manuscripts, one of which gives the poem the title Ægisdrekka (Ægir’s drinking party). Lokasenna has caused much scholarly debate, not least because it contains insults of the gods and has a burlesque tone; likewise, opinions differ regarding its time of composition, with some scholars maintaining that the poem belongs to heathen times, while others hold that it is a Christian and thus relatively young poem. See Harris 2005, 99 – 101.

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may signal cosmic stability, and their recurrent meetings may be indicative of a world in balance. From this perspective, the ritualized act of eating and drinking together in the hall points to a world in equilibrium. In the minds of thirteenth century authors and readers such a cosmic stability may have mirrored the ideal situation of social balance and stability.¹⁷⁵ Several sagas, for instance Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, deal with the theme of hosting guests, and they reveal how certain rules of conduct were to be followed in order to maintain peace and balance in society. In actuality, they equally often show (as in the episodes of Egils saga Skallagrímssonar discussed above) that neglecting the rules was a potential trigger of conflicts and a threat to societal balance.¹⁷⁶ Along those lines of thinking, Preben Meulengracht Sørensen has argued that – to writers and audiences – Ægis hǫll (as depicted in Lokasenna) was a symbol of social order and Loki’s intrusion into the peaceful gathering of host and guests was considered a challenge to that order (Meulengracht Sørensen 1988, 106). At all times throughout the sixty-five stanzas that Lokasenna consists of, we are reminded that the events take place in Ægis hǫll, and Meulengracht Sørensen has noted just how much this location is foregrounded in the poem: The emphasis placed on the setting throughout the entire course of the poem renders this setting much more than merely a framework for the senna. There are a string number of references to Ægis hǫll to various locations in relation to it, to mead, and to the banquet itself […] The frequent repetition in Lokasenna of expressions for the setting itself underlines the significance of the hall for the theme. (Meulengracht Sørensen 1988, 249 and 252)

The present reading will not neglect the fact that Ægis hǫll is a symbol of stability and order and that Loki’s intrusion into the hall reflects a threat to this order. However, the insistency with which the poem directs attention to the hall (and to the seating in it) can also be explained from the poem’s interest in and concern with the theme of memory.¹⁷⁷ We note that already the prose frame gives away an important mnemonic clue when it says that Ægis hǫll was lit up by shining gold  The mythic narratives that are transmitted in the medieval texts (as prose or poetry) often reflect on the norms of the Norse societies in the Middle Ages, an opinion which presupposes that the stories were adapted to their contemporary contexts in ways that rendered them meaningful well into the Christian period. With this in mind, Margaret Clunies Ross has argued that mythic details and stories continued to serve as cognitive tools that helped to make sense of human experience (1998). See also Lindow 1994.  In a treatment of the motif of the banquet, and with reference to rituals of competition, status and so on, Diego Poli writes that: “The sagas referring to the social dynamism are the producers of the cosmic ontology of the society represented by the banquet of the gods” (Poli 1990, 310).  For a similar interpretation of Lokasenna, see Hermann 2018b, 670 – 671.

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(Lokasenna, 2014, p. 408), a comment that may recall the advice given in the texts from classical antiquity, namely that mnemonic locations that are seen in front of the inner eye must be easy to access visually. The poem is structured on the basis of the way in which the gods and other guests are seated or placed in the hall. After having forced himself into the hall, Loki approaches the gods one by one, giving the impression that he looks at and concentrates on one after the other as they are placed by the table. That the gods and goddesses are placed on the benches is made clear, for instance, when Loki directs himself to Bragi, who appears to be sitting furthest in on one of the benches: “nema sá einn áss / er innarr sitr / Bragi, bekkjum á” (Lokasenna, 2014, st. 11, p. 410) (“except for that one god who sits further in, / Bragi, on the benches”) (Loki’s Quarrel, 2014, st. 11, p. 82). Loki further says that Bragi is brave when placed in his seat: “Snjallr ertu í sessi” (Lokasenna, 2014, st. 15, p. 411), but that he is a “bekkskrautuðr” (“bench-ornament”) (Lokasenna, 2014, st. 15, p. 411), who does not have the courage to get up and confront Loki in a physical fight. Also the immediate response from Bragi to Loki, when the latter asks to be seated in the hall, calls attention to the particular spots were the gods are seated: “Sessa ok staði / velja þér sumbli at / æsir aldregi” (Lokasenna, 2014, st. 8, p. 410) (“A place to sit at the feast / the Æsir will never assign you”) (Loki’s Quarrel, 2014, st. 8, p. 82). Bragi’s answer clearly demonstrates that the gods do not welcome Loki at the feast and that they have reserved no seat for him. The way Loki approaches the gods is likely to be an allusion to Simonides, who activates his memory by recalling people’s seating positions.¹⁷⁸ Loki evokes not only loci but also imagines. At times he attaches vivid elements and colourful details to those present, indicating that his recollection is aided by strong images. This happens, for example, when Óðinn is likened to a drumming vǫlva (st. 24), or when one of those present in the hall, Beyla, is talked about as a deigja dritin (dung-showered dairymaid) (st. 56). However, when Loki turns his attention from one god to the next, he brings forth characteristics of each individual deity with a focus on their morally unacceptable and promiscuous behaviour. He mentions actions or agreements of

 The poem has other features in common with Greco-Roman materials. The motif of a conflict occurring at a feast has been compared to the symposium genre, which was treated by Menippos, Seneca, Lucian and Julian (see Schröder 1952; Poli 1990). In Lokasenna, the various features of this genre, ‘the host’, ‘the uninvited guest’ and ‘the late guest’ (as described by Lucian), are represented by Ægir, Loki and Þórr, respectively. Also, inasmuch as the poem portrays the seamy side of the Norse gods, it shares similarities with the Lucianesque chronique scandaleuse. Such analogues have been opposed by some, see Harris 2005, 98 and – for a modification of this view – Harris 2016, 47.

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the past that were made in secret and later erased, sidelined or forgotten, but which now become publicly known among the gods and others who are present in the hall. At the diegetic level, Loki’s words of insult sow confusion among the gods, making them angry and defensive and eager to protect their reputations. At a meta-level, among the writers and the recipients of the poem, this new focus might have undermined the seriousness of the mythological stories, questioning their relevance and presenting a possibly new memory of the gods. In other words, the version of the past that is put into the mouth of Loki, given its dubious contents, creates confusion about its relatability. Here we suppose that stories about the pagan gods were considered to be a meaningful frame of reference at the time of Codex Regius, i. e. that the stories had an explanatory or foundational function and were helpful in making sense of the world. Or, put differently, that they were integral parts of the cultural memory of this society (Hermann 2017a, 2018a, 83 – 84). – Adding to this confusion, Loki’s presence among the gods in the hall is in itself an aspect of instability. If – as argued above – to have a seat is to be remembered, Loki’s forced entry into Ægis hǫll secures the remembrance of this god, who is a destabilizing element in several mythic stories and a major agent of confusion, a function that is conspicuously strongly emphasized in Lokasenna. Lokasenna also shares another theme with the Simonides narrative when it calls attention to the possibility that Ægis hǫll will collapse. Towards the end of the poem, Þórr, the only god who is not participating in the banquet, arrives in the hall and defends the gods against Loki with his hammer. Loki flees, but his last words imply that Ægis hǫll may be set on fire: Ǫl gørðir þú, Ægir, En þú aldri munt síðan sumbl um gøra; eiga þín ǫll, er hér inni er, leikiyfir logi ok brenni þér á baki. (Lokasenna, 2014, st. 65, p. 421) (Ale you brewed, Ægir, but you’ll never again prepare a feast; all your possessions that are here inside – may flame play over them, and your back be burnt!) (Loki’s Quarrel, 2014, st. 65, p. 91)

The reference to fire may allude to Vǫluspá, where it is stated that at ragna røk fire will burn up the whole world (Vǫluspá, 2014, st. 56, p. 306). To the attentive reader or audience, this emphasizes just how devastating the situation is. Loki’s words

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that Ægir will never have a feast again and that all possessions inside will be burned are significant. The first comment expresses a possible end to the peaceful encounters between Ægir and the gods (the collapse of social order). The second one signals the total destruction of everything the hall contains, and considering the fact that, in Lokasenna, the whole group of Norse gods are gathered together, it hints at their end. The poem may very well have been understood as an elaboration on the danger of oblivion and a comment on the critical situation that the mythological stories, along with the structures that preserved them, were in danger of being forgotten. This is underlined by the numerous contentious actions that are recalled by Loki and which suggest that the stories that had once been held in esteem are now dissolving. That the mythic stories were in danger of being forgotten is indicated in the Prose Edda as well, in the comment which says that this book will make sure that these stories are not consigned to oblivion. If Ægis hǫll is considered a literary representation of a hall of memory, Lokasenna reminds the audience of the function and relevance of mnemonic structures. It gives the impression that the collapse of Ægir’s hall, this mnemonic location, will be identical to the collapse of the mythological world; if Ægir’s hall, with its benches, walls and doorways, falls apart, the ability to access the mythological stories through and by memory will disappear. The outcome of Lokasenna is not spelled out, and the hall’s disappearance in flames is perhaps intended as a scary prospect only. Even so, the poem’s conclusion points to the vexed relationship between memory and forgetting (see Hermann 2018b). The poem expresses the power of mnemonic technologies by presenting the art of memory as formative and decisive for the way in which the past is recalled. The existence of the stories that are associated with the gods depends upon the words spoken or written and on the ability of someone to, metaphorically speaking, walk through the halls of memory to recall these stories. Loki, acting in the poem as an expert of memory who excels at mnemonic technologies, subverts the hegemonic memory, when he associates the gods with alternative pasts, challenging the existing memory and creating an alternative one. The poem, essentially, illustrates that cultural memory is in flux. Other eddic poems refer to similar seating devices, albeit in less direct ways than Lokasenna. Grímnismál calls attention to benches and seating twice, firstly when it is said that Freyja, in her realm of Fólkvangr, is in charge of allocating seats (sessur) to the slain in her hall, a task that she and Óðinn have divided between them (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 14, p. 370). This brief reference indicates that the seating device is relevant also for the conceptualization of realms of the dead and for remembrance of the dead, and it points out that those who have a seat will be remembered and honoured. Similarly, when Grímnir (alias Óðinn) concludes his mnemonic performance in Grímnismál, he says that the knowledge he has now

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shared with humans will become known to the Æsir on Ægir’s benches: “Ægis bekki á / Ægis drekku at (Grímnismál, 2014, st. 45, p. 377) (“on Ægir’s benches / at Ægir’s feast”) (Grimnir’s Sayings, 2014, st. 45, p. 55), suggesting that Ægis hǫll (when it is not interrupted) is, indeed, thought of as a space where things are preserved and by means of which learning is transmitted. Stories are always happening somewhere, and there are many spaces in our texts that cannot be identified as mnemonic locations, nor be said to relate to the memory culture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; very often they are constructed for the sake of the plot and must be considered as literary spaces.¹⁷⁹ However, in this chapter I argue that a certain pattern nonetheless exists, one which foregrounds buildings and seating, and which arguably reflects the texts’ mnemonic background. I have also advanced the opinion that the stories that are transmitted in the sagas may be organized around and unfold in such spaces. The narrator’s comment in Brennu-Njáls saga, that those who are not specified as sitting in a particular seat are not mentioned at all, indicates an awareness within the text that seating and remembering go together. The dialogue in Lokasenna, where Loki and Bragi argue over a seat and where Bragi says that no seat is reserved for Loki, likewise indicates an awareness of, perhaps even a comment on, this pattern. We can assume that some of the methods exemplified in the texts were practised by the authors, even if this is difficult to prove with any certainty (and even more certain is the fact that these principles were given literary treatment, as the examples provided show). Spatiality may very well have attached itself to mnemonic procedures and traditions much earlier than the time when bookish culture developed in Iceland, but the argument is made here that, given the access to book learning and the renewed interest in classical architectural memory in general in the thirteenth century, the Old Norse-Icelandic texts’ concern with mnemonic technologies may also be seen as a result of contemporary developments within the Norse memory culture and in medieval intellectual environments more generally. I have pointed out that the mnemonic techniques that were used by authors do not preserve the past in a factual or an unbiased way; a recollection involves the imagination and is influenced by authors’ and audiences’ shared values. The memory-derived texts thus tell one side of the events and construct a certain version of the past. This point means that the two forms of memory dealt with in this book, mnemonics and cultural memory, are closely related to each other. Aleida Assmann describes points of intersection between what she calls “the arts of memory in general” and cultural memory. She explains that the arts of memory

 Narrativized spaces are dealt with in, for instance, Rohrbach 2017.

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in a society, a category that includes the Roman art of memory together with other mnemonic cues and media: “are responsible for constructing, transforming, observing, and critiquing the cultural memory of the society” (A. Assmann 2011, xi). I take this to imply that the multitude of mnemonic technologies employed by individuals – as well as the alphabet that was used as a memory aid – made it possible not only to safeguard the knowledge of a society but also to observe, to influence and to construct its cultural memory.

7 Cartography 7.1 Geographical Abstractions Do maps have anything to do with medieval memory cultures? Could the graphic structures of maps be used as mnemonic aids? And in that case – what would the mnemonic advantages of such materials be? This final chapter shows that medieval mappae mundi (world maps) were included among the mnemonic aids that the medieval Norse authors used. World maps could serve the same functions as buildings; they, too, could be recreated in the mind and serve as mental structures upon which knowledge could be fastened. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Gylfaginning’s description of the mythological world was in part based on an underlying structure that has affinities with world maps, and it seems that also Old Norse-Icelandic history writing found inspiration in such materials. This chapter gives examples from the literary record where reminiscences of maps occur and where stories and knowledge were organized in dialogue with cartography. I argue that maps were a crucial instrument through which Icelandic history could be constructed and aligned with world history. The main texts in this chapter are the prologue to the Prose Edda and the first part of Ynglinga saga, as well as the book about the settlement of Iceland, Landnámabók. The Old Norse literary record reveals a relatively intense preoccupation with the natural environments in which the stories take place. The sagas of Icelanders prominently contain much information about Icelandic geography and very often references are made to specific mountains, heaths, fields, rivers and so on. Several scholars have examined this spatial interest, and the relationship between sagas, geography and memory has been investigated from both cultural-historical and literary perspectives. The sagas of Icelanders have been used to demonstrate how, in the pre-Christian world, sites in the landscape functioned as mnemonic cues that helped people to remember their past and how events and activities were ‘recorded’ in geographical features (e. g. Brink 2001). It has been argued, too, that over the centuries, Icelandic landscape and geography have been as important means of preserving and transmitting stories as medieval manuscripts (Lethbridge 2016, 52). Other more literarily orientated studies have been concerned with narrative patterns that refer to the landscape or physical sites. Islands, and encounters between people on islands, it has been argued, have been important media for the transmission of cultural memory (Zilmer 2008), just as descriptions of burial sites have been seen as “fictionalized ‘remains’ of the past” that preserved a communal memory (Bennett 2014, 47). Yet others have dealt with the “semioticization of the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-010

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landscape” in the sagas and have argued that these texts express a “transformation of nature into culture”, showing how the texts’ “descriptive record of the landscape and nature” became an integral part of the construction of cultural memory in the Middle Ages (Glauser 2000, 209). The latter point of view is particularly relevant for texts such as the sagas of Icelanders and Landnámabók, which describe the beginning of a society, that is, settlements in a previously empty landscape, and which therefore can be seen as foundational narratives that – through landscape references – express an affective and lasting bond between people and their place of habitation (Hermann 2010). These studies have shown how the sagas and related genres used the landscape, geography and nature in the construction of a past that was meaningful to people in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Birgit Neumann contends that, in general, literary representation of space: […] conjure up innumerable echoes and undertones of a community’s past. Hence, space serves to symbolically mediate past events, underlining the constant, physical presence of the multilayered cultural past, which is even inscribed in the landscape and in the architecture. (Neumann 2008, 340)

This is indeed the case in many Old Norse texts, which demonstrate that both the landscape and architecture, when described in the texts, are crucial elements in the construction of the past. In this chapter, I have a slightly different focus than the scholars just mentioned, all of whom have dealt with geographical features and the landscape as physical categories experienced by the people and the narrators in the texts, as well as by their authors and readers. The main interests here are, firstly, mnemonic structures and, secondly, maps and cartography, the latter being abstractions of geographical space rather than realistic representations. I investigate how maps and learning about geography may be intertwined with mnemonic devices, that is, how the mnemonic structures that helped to preserve the past were inspired by this kind of learning. Gísli Sigurðsson’s studies of the mental maps of the Vínland region touch on related questions (Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, 284; 2018b). His work, however, does not deal with the learned worldview that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century authors acquired from graphic illustrations of the world in the form of maps and from book knowledge of geography, but instead highlights the relevance of local oral traditions for the creation of mental maps. Gísli Sigurðsson suggests that an accumulation of oral stories resulted in the creation of mental maps that were precise enough to guide travel and navigation.

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7.1.1 World Maps and Mnemonics That maps are relevant in mnemonic cultures is exemplified in Boncompagno da Signa’s explanations of memory, namely when he says that someone who wishes to remember the names of places and geographic phenomena should inspect a mappa mundi (Boncompagno da Signa, Rhetorica novissima, 1892, p. 279). Maps are useful mnemonic aids because they are easy to visualize. World maps, such as the so-called T-O maps, have a graphic structure, which can be overlooked and surveyed relatively easily. They depict the world of the northern hemisphere as a circle (forming an O) with three sections (in the shape of a T within the circle), hence the name. Each of the sections represents one of the known continents, Asia, Africa and Europe. The places on the maps are often organized in a centreperiphery model with the most highly regarded (religious) locations in the middle of the world. The graphic form of world maps fits well with the mnemonic inclination to gather, divide and organize material on a grid with clear borders that set limits for the contents. Even a rudimentary diagram consisting of a circle with few sections can be an immensely helpful mnemonic tool. Rudolf Simek has described Old Norse cosmography in the light of the medieval European mappa mundi-tradition. He points to the advantages of the strong visual element of these maps, which made “die Welt mit all ihren Erscheinungen greifbar […] und zwar auf einen Blick und nicht erst bei Durcharbeitung, Lesen oder Hören wie bei einer in Prosa abgefassten Kosmographie” (Simek 1990, 56) (the world with all its appearances tangible […] and that at one glance and not only by thorough work, reading or listening, as is the case with a cosmography written in prose). The quotation rightly points out that prose texts are approached and apprehended with much greater difficulty than the graphic depiction of a map. Moreover, the mappa mundi-tradition calls for the same visualization strategies and imaginative perspectives as mnemonic traditions, and the tendency to manipulate scale and perspective forms a point of intersection between mnemonics and cartography. In the text examples in the earlier chapters I have argued that visualization in front of the mind’s eye, that is, seeing in and with memory, could involve the view from above and other fictional angles of vision. According to Marcia Kupfer: “Maps by definition represent the world from an imaginary prospect on high, the ‘god’s eye’ view (kataskopos) assumed in Graeco-Roman traditions of philosophical meditation and inherited by Christian authors”, and she continues by saying that: “The mappa mundi fully embraced the fiction of the celestial or divine vantage point on which the authority of cartographic representation depends” (Kupfer 2016, 8). Importantly, the mappa mundi-tradition allows for contemplation not only of world geography, mountains and floods, peoples and places, but also of world

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history. Maps produced at different places in Europe very often feature verbal or visual notes on crucial events, which makes a map “an effective tool for the visualization of salvation history” (Kupfer 2016, 8).¹⁸⁰ In a way, the maps represent yet another variant of the space-image method; while the Roman thinkers compared this method with the writing of letters (imagines) on tablets (loci), in the mappa mundi-tradition the circular form functions as a loci and the verbal notes and the visual drawings on it as imagines. That maps could help not only to remember geographical names and places, but also historical events, was – as we saw – hinted at in Hugh of St. Victor’s Libellus de formatione arche, where the ark itself is attached to a mappa mundi, indicating that all the stories contained in the ark should be aligned with events of world history. In that case, it is entirely obvious that world maps were useful for the organization of events in both time and space. Icelanders were acquainted with European cartography as a part of their learning, and they themselves produced maps in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that is, in the same period as the vernacular literary tradition developed. The Icelandic maps follow European ideas about geography and cosmography, ideas that were also described in encyclopaedic works by Isidore of Seville, Honorius Augustodunensis and Vincent of Beauvais, texts that were known in Iceland and in some cases translated into Old Norse (Simek 1990, 25 – 30). The most detailed world map produced in Iceland in the thirteenth century is found in the manuscript GKS 1812 (see fig. 10). It contains several names (in Latin and Old Norse) of countries and cities of the world, but lacks the drawings that exist on some of the European maps; the names are organized within the T-O map’s structure, which includes the three continents of the known world. On this world map, Island (Iceland) is placed together with Tile (Thule) on the very periphery of the European continent. Compared to some of the world maps produced in other places in Europe, the GKS 1812-map is relatively rough and sketchy, but it could serve as a helpful device even so. The production of maps and the literary record in Iceland most likely influenced each other. We see, for instance, that the connection between Iceland and Thule, which is documented on the GKS 1812-map, features in the textual culture as well, for instance in Landnámabók. The GKS 1812-map illustrates that common knowledge was not directly copied by the Icelanders but rather underwent a cultural translation, which was guided by attempts among learned people in this part of the world to add their own geographical space and their own history

 The English Hereford map from c. 1300 is an impressive example of an artful, thoroughly decorated and densely narrativized medieval world map (Kupfer 2016).

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Fig. 10: An Icelandic T-O map of the Orbis terrarum (the circle of lands) divided into Europe, Asia and Africa (GKS 1812 4to, 5v – 6r). From the way in which the notes are structured on the map, we sense that the map is to be read from a position in the middle, even if there are some inconsistences in this perspective. Printed with the permission of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

to the wider world (Simek 1990). In a more recent study, Dale Kedwards has shown that the cartographic medium helped Icelanders living in the Middle Ages to consider Iceland’s place in the world. He notes that: “assembled evidence shows that Icelanders knew about maps, and understood their singular value as tools with which to show and think alike” (Kedwards 2020, 18). Such a recognition of maps as vehicles to show and think with is of interest to the present argument as well, which suggests that cartographic learning intertwined with mnemonic technologies. Maps offer diagrams and graphic structures that can function not only as preservation devices but also as engines of thinking which, in turn, may encourage authorial invention.

7.1.2 The Prose Edda Prologue and Ynglinga saga: Visualizing Time and Space Icelandic history was conceived with an awareness of a spatial perspective inspired by world history and world geography (see e.g Sverrir Jakobsson 2007, 20;

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2017a; Hermann 2007). In many cases, however, there are only relatively short references or vague evidence to suggest that world maps could have served as underlying structures for the texts. A quick sample of more or less randomly chosen texts can exemplify this: Egils saga Skallagrímssonar shows knowledge of England, Landnámabók about the areas in the North Atlantic and Knýtlinga saga of Denmark. Eiríks saga rauða and Grænlendinga saga document knowledge of the west, in that they deal with European frontiers and the areas around Vínland, and a saga such as Yngvars saga relates knowledge about the east and Grettis saga about Constantinople. The Prose Edda and Ynglinga saga are special inasmuch as they include references that recall world maps much more directly than many other texts. In these cases, it becomes obvious that the writers were not only preoccupied with landscape and geography as an experienced category but also with abstract and non-realistic representations of the world. Let me take the Prose Edda first. In a previous chapter I mentioned that Gylfaginning describes the world as kringlóttr (round, circular). It conjures up the contours of a circular structure, which shares similarities with the circular mappa mundi. Ásgarðr is placed in the centre and the worlds of human beings and giants constitute expanding circles around this centre. Moreover, the text depicts Óðinn as placed in a high seat in the centre of the world from which point he has a panoramic view out over the whole world. It is possible that this constellation (where a divine figure gazes out over the world) is inspired by a cartographic tradition, which organizes world maps around a divine gaze and the perspectives it allows for (see Kupfer 2016, 7– 10). That such a tradition was known in Iceland is illustrated in the Icelandic manuscript Teiknibókin (AM 673a III 4to fol.) (from c. 1450 – 75), which depicts Christ with a T-O map at his feet (see fig. 11). That a world-map template is used in, or lies behind, sections of the Prose Edda, however, becomes even more obvious when attention is turned to its prologue, which adds a learned prehistory to Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál. ¹⁸¹ This section of the text has the most direct connection to philosophy, theology and other forms of learning, and several Latin sources and analogues have been suggested as having inspired it. Not least influences from twelfth-century Platonists such as William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, Bernard Silvestris and Alan of Lille have been pointed out. Also Hugh of St. Victor has been mentioned in this context, albeit not specifically in connection with an interest in his ideas about

 Much has been written about the learned prehistory of the North and the learned strategies that are used in the Prose Edda’s prologue, see among others Heusler 1908; Lönnroth 1969; Weber 1981, 1986; Abrams 2009.

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Fig. 11: Christ in Majesty seated on a throne and depicted as the ruler of the world, who looks over a T-O map placed by his feet. This position suggests that Christ has a panoptic aerial view over the whole world. From Teiknibókin (AM 673 a III 4to fol., 16r). Printed with the permission of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

memory (Dronke and Dronke 1977, 168 – 169; see also Lönnroth 1969).¹⁸² It seems likely that the author could have referred to a world map when depicting the distant past. A map would have been a useful model that made it possible to organize events in time and space, not least would it offer a grid upon which important milestones in history could be fastened.

 Ursula Dronke and Peter Dronke (1977) suggest an inspiration from neo-Platonic authors rather than an Aristotelic tradition represented by, for instance, Albertus Magnus who belongs to thirteenth-century universities rather than monastic cultures. With regard to memory, a difference between the two cultures lies in the circumstance that the first tradition dealt with memoria as a part of rhetoric, while the second one saw memory as a part of logic (Carruthers 1990, 153 – 154).

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The prologue presupposes a circular world divided in three parts, which are specified with an explicit mention of Asia, Europe and Africa.¹⁸³ This description has a focus on the most splendid middle part of the world: Verǫldin var greind í þrjár hálfur. Frá suðri í vestr ok inn at Miðjarðarsjá, sá hlutr var kallaðr Affrica. Hinn syðri hlutr þeirar deildar er heitr ok brunninn af sólu. Annarr hlutr frá vestri ok til norðrs ok inn til hafsins, er sá kallaðr Evropa eða Enea. Hinn nyrðri hlutr er þar kaldr svá at eigi vex gras ok eigi má byggja. Frá norðri ok um austrhálfur allt til suðrs, þat er kallat Asia. Í þeim hlut veraldar er ǫll fegrð ok prýði ok eign jarðar ávaxtar, gull ok gimsteinar. Þar er ok mið verǫldin; ok svá sem þar er jǫrðin fegri ok betri at ǫllum kostum en í ǫðrum stǫðum, svá var ok mannfólkit þar mest tignat af ǫllum giptum, spekinni ok aflinu, fegrðinni ok alls kostar kunnustu. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 4) (The world was divided into three regions. From south to west and in up to the Mediterranean sea, this part was called Africa. The southern part of this section is hot and burned up by the sun. The second part from west and to the north and in up to the sea, this is called Europe or Enea. The northern part there is cold so that vegetation does not grow and habitation is impossible. From the north and over the eastern regions right to the south, that is called Asia. In that part of the world is all beauty and splendor and wealth of earthly produce, gold and jewels. The middle of the world is there too; and just as the earth there is more beautiful and better in all respects than in other places, so too mankind there was most honoured with all blessings, wisdom and strength, beauty and every kind of skill.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 2)

The literary context of this passage, actually the whole prologue, is concerned, not only with such a spatial perspective, but also with historical events. References are given to events of world history that were commonly referred to on world maps. The very first words of the prologue mention God’s creation of the world whereafter references are made to the flood and Noah’s ark, crucial events in salvation history. The text continues by relating that people fall away from the true God and believe instead in nature and false gods. Then, following the presentation of the tripartite world, a migration story is told, which explains how Óðinn and his people migrated from the centre of the world, located in Asia, to the North, where they assimilated with the Norse and established a culture based on their

 The prologue is preserved in all four main manuscripts of the Prose Edda, but with variation and in some cases only in fragmented form. The Codex Regius-prologue lacks the first leaf and Faulkes’ edition (which is the source here) is supplied from postmedieval manuscripts, which arguably derive from Codex Regius when it was complete, see Faulkes 1979, 2005, xxxi. See also Heimir Pálsson 2012, lxx – lxxiii; Rösli 2015, 57– 59. It has been questioned, since the early nineteenth century, whether the prologue was part of the original version of the Prose Edda (for recent arguments against the prologue as part of this work, see von See 1999; Beck 2004). However, the fact that all extant manuscripts include the prologue suggests that it was an integral part of the text.

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own traditions.¹⁸⁴ This migration story allows the author to euhemerize the pagan gods. It is specified that the immigrants from Asia are called Æsir: “þeira Asiamanna er Æsir váru kallaðir” (Faulkes 2005, 6), which is the plural form of áss (god) but which is here interpreted as ‘people from Asia’.¹⁸⁵ If a world map is, indeed, behind this description, it is clearly modelled in a way that makes it fit for a Norse perspective; for instance, the idea of placing Troy in Asia in the middle of the world makes it possible to expand and to elaborate on the Old Norse word áss and to create a foundation story that merges local and foreign traditions. Of course, when texts include names of places in the world, they may be referencing books about medieval cosmology, such as those mentioned above by Isidore of Seville, Honorius Augustodunensis or Vincent of Beauvais, or they may be referencing real physical maps that the authors had access to. Which of these options may have been relevant in the case of the Prose Edda cannot be determined from the existing evidence. It is also possible, even quite likely, that its prologue rested upon memorized learning (from books and maps alike). This possibility has been pointed out by Rudolf Simek, who comments that: […] the memorised contents serve as an anchor for Snorri’s description of the world, both in context and in content: the context is that of many prologues and introductions to historical chronicles, cosmological treatises and even encyclopaedic collections and therefore recalls the (Latin) text of these widespread genres. The content, closely following the structure of Isidore and other texts, recalls and evokes to memory a picture of the earth and its continents. (Simek 2018, 577)

More specifically, the prologue of the Prose Edda might have been invented from a mnemonic picture, inspired by the graphics of world maps, where an author, in the manner of an engineer, manipulated such a picture (pictura) and used it creatively to create a story about the distant past, that is, for an authorial inventio. There is not enough information in or around the Prose Edda to draw any firm

 Codex Regius and Codex Upsaliensis do not completely agree on the details of the world’s centre, which they specify as, respectively, Tyrkland (Turkey, land of the Turks) and Rómaborg (Rome). Codex Regius reads: “Nær miðri verǫldunni var gǫrt þat hús ok herbergi er ágætast hefir verit, er kallat var Troja. Þat kǫllum vér Tyrkland” (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 2005, p. 4) (“Near the middle of the world was constructed that building and dwelling which has been the most splendid ever, which was called Troy. We call the land there Turkey”) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, p. 3). Codex Upsaliensis reads: “Þar var sett Rómaborg er vér kǫllum Tróju” (“There the city of Rome was situated, which we call Troy”) (Snorri Sturluson, The Uppsala Edda DG 11 4to, 2012, pp. 8 – 9).  The elaboration of etymologies may have been inspired by the encyclopaedic work Etymologiae (The Etymologies), also called Origines (Origins), by Isidore of Seville, which explains the etymological method.

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conclusions. Still, the prologue’s themes and stories leave the impression that (also) this section of the text can have evolved from, or unfolded, mnemonic structures and elaborated on images that were incised onto a mental structure. Importantly, this possibility does not mean that a physical map necessarily existed that depicted visually what the Prose Edda prologue describes in words. In the case of the exemplary pictura, Hugh of St. Victor’s memorized ark, there is no indication that any physical representations ever existed of this mnemonic structure, and “the reception history of the Libellus suggests that readers did not require the material production of a visual image” (Kupfer 2016, 63; see also Zinn 1974). In contexts where people worked with and exchanged mnemonic structures of various kinds, there was no need specifically for physical images or drawings to exist, that is, for physical materializations of these aids. The prologue is a paratext that reveals the intention of the Prose Edda as a whole, and it makes it clear that it must be understood within a historical discourse. The reader is from the outset reminded that the stories about pagan mythology contained in the book belong to a world-historical scheme. The prologue situates the mythology as a stage in the development of mankind, which has moved from God’s creation of the world to mankind’s loss of sight of the true God, a period of apostacy in which the Northerners obeyed the Æsir, who were, however, not gods but people from Asia. This same perspective is emphasized in Skáldskaparmál, which contains this comment: En eigi skulu kristnir menn trúa á heiðin goð ok eigi á sannyndi þessar sagnar annan veg en svá sem hér finnsk í upphafi bókar er sagt er frá atburðum þeim er mannfólkit viltisk frá réttri trú. (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1998, p. 5) (Yet Christian people must not believe in heathen gods, nor in the truth of this account in any other way than that in which it is presented at the beginning of this book, where it is told what happened when mankind went astray from the true faith.) (Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 1995, pp. 64– 65)

In the light of this, the point I made previously is substantiated, namely that the activities of the Norse gods, as they are presented to Gylfi through the intermediary voices of Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði, are essentially taking place within the confines of world history. This way, it can be inferred that the mnemonic experts depicted in Gylfaginning actually gaze at materials that in the widest sense belong to God’s marvels, and this in turn confirms the notion that the mythic world could be scrutinized together with other sorts of wisdom about the world.

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Ynglinga saga also calls attention to spatial models coming from cartography and cosmography. Like the Prose Edda, Ynglinga saga, the first text in Heimskringla, depicts the prehistory of the North.¹⁸⁶ Ynglinga saga is based primarily on memorydependent skaldic material, and it is structured around Þjóðólfr or Hvini’s poem Ynglingatal, a type of poem which represented a memoria verborum where each brick in the metric puzzle – words, sounds, rhyme and so on – was important in terms of securing an exact transmission. But the text seems to evoke other methods as well, namely mnemonic structures based on the graphic format of the world maps. In the first chapters, Ynglinga saga goes even further back in time than its main source, Ynglingatal, and tells an origin story that connects the Northern part of the world with Troy. The opening words of the text are: kringla heimsins (the world’s round), which very explicitly promise that the events that are about to be told happened within the orbis terrarum (circle of the world). This prospect is supported by the very detailed description of a T-O map that follows soon after and which makes it possible that this part of the text may be invented on the basis of a memorized map-structure. As in the Prose Edda, we do not have enough additional knowledge to make firm conclusions about the text’s context or background, but the amount of cartographic detail conveyed makes it relatively safe to say that it was to some extent intertwined with this type of learning. In comparison to the Prose Edda’s prologue, Ynglinga saga provides an even more careful and detailed geographical description of the world. For instance – in line with European T-O maps – it reveals that natural features, such as seas and rivers, define the borders between the three parts of the world: Er þat kunnigt, at haf gengr frá Nǫrvasundum ok allt út til Jórsalalands. Af hafinu gengr langr hafsbotn til landnorðrs, er heitir Svartahaf. Sá skilr heimsþriðjungana. Heitir fyrir austan Ásíá, en fyrir vestan kalla sumir Európá, en sumir Eneá. En norðan at Svartahafi gengr Svíþjóð in mikla eða in kalda. Svíþjóð ina miklu kalla sumir menn eigi minni en Serkland it mikla, sumir jafna henni við Bláland it mikla. Inn nørðri hlutr Svíþjóðar liggr óbyggðr af frosti ok kulða, svá sem inn syðri hlutr Blálands er auðr af sólarbruna. Í Svíþjóð eru stórheruð mǫrg. Þar eru ok margs konar þjóðir, ok margar tungur. Þar eru risar, ok þar eru dvergar, þar eru blámenn, ok þar eru margs konar undarligar þjóðir. Þar eru ok dýr ok drekar furðuliga stórir. Ór norðri frá fjǫllum þeim, er fyrir útan eru byggð alla, fellr á um Svíþjóð, sú er at réttu heitir Tanais. Hon var forðum kǫlluð Tanakvísl eða Vanakvísl. Hon kømr til sjávar inn í Svartahaf. (Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, I, 1979, ch. 1, pp. 9 – 10) (We know that a sea goes from the Norva Sound all the way to Jórsalaland. From this sea a long arm extends to the northeast which is called the Black Sea. It separates the three parts of the world. The part to the eastward is called Asia; but that which lies to the west of it is called

 Ynglinga saga is preserved in the early modern transcript of Kringla, in AM 39 fol. and in Codex Frisianus (AM 45 fol.). For Ynglinga saga’s sources, see Krag 1991; Finlay 2011, 63 – 82.

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by some Europe, by others Eneá. North of the Black Sea lies Svíthjóth the Great or the Cold. Some men consider Svíthjóth the Great not less in size than Serkland the Great, and some think it is equal in size to Bláland. The northern part of Svíthjóth is uncultivated on account of frost and cold, just as the southern part of Bláland is a desert because of the heat of the sun. In Svíthjóth there are many large provinces. There are also many tribes and many tongues. There are giants and dwarves; there are black men and many kinds of strange tribes. Also there are animals and dragons of marvellous size. Out of the north, from the mountains which are beyond all inhabited districts, a river runs through Svíthjóth whose correct name is Tanais. In olden times it was called Tana Fork or Vana Fork. Its mouth is the Black Sea.) (Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, History of the Kings of Norway, 1964, ch. 1, p. 6)

An underlying graphic structure will allow for a survey of and contemplation on what is located on either side of the rivers, seas and mountains, as well as on the various peoples and monstrous races, like giants, dwarves and strange tribes, who inhabit each part of the world. The story about the past that follows is attached to this structure, which seemingly functions as a creative device by means of which foundational stories were generated. The early history of the Ynglingar is developed on this spatial basis, a story which goes back to the land called Ásaland (Land of the Æsir), lying to the east of the river Tanakvísl: “Fyrir austan Tanakvísl í Ásíá var kallat Ásaland” (Ynglinga saga, 1979, ch. 2, p. 11), whose capital was ruled by a chieftain by the name of Óðinn. Like the Prose Edda, this text also evokes a migration story, and the adventures of this chieftain from Asia takes him, his people and all their skills and qualities to the Northern lands. The story that evolves from this mnemonic structure, or this mental map, reveals that the dynasties of the North were at some point in the past genealogically and culturally connected with people from the centre of the world, and that the origin of this dynasty eventually must be understood within the framework of a wider world. When a past such as that of the Ynglingar family is generated from a map, it becomes clear that history is genuinely spatialized and not solely conceived of in temporal terms, as could perhaps have been expected. These examples from the Prose Edda and Ynglinga saga demonstrate that the remembrance of the past, i. e. the construction of the past, was tightly interwoven with spatial thinking. Likewise, they call to mind the two principles of the art of memory, spatiality and visuality; firstly, they indicate that knowledge was attached to and stories evolved from mnemonic structures, and, secondly, that the operational value of such structures depended on the ability to visualize them in front of the inner eye. When recreated in front of the mind’s eye, world maps helped to preserve knowledge and stories, just as they functioned as instruments that helped to organize events in time and space. Map graphics allow for an omniscient perspective of the world, making it possible to grasp the whole world all at once and to narrow down the focus to one minor location on this grid. The

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examples mentioned, which attach the Northern space and the history of this region to the wider world, are concerned with the formation of tradition and the construction of a past, that is, with cultural memory-processes. The stories that were shaped through these mnemonic aids could inform medieval Icelanders about their place in the world and explain where they came from and who they were. In other words, such stories had significant implications for the shaping of collective identities, a functional value that was not negatively affected by the inherent ideologies (i. e. a markedly Christian worldview and certain ways of thinking about time and space), or the fictional devices that were involved in these mnemonic structures. We see, once again, that the texts are sources of memory in more than once sense; they reveal echoes of mnemonic technologies at the same time as they are media of cultural memory.

7.1.3 Ekphrastic Texts This book gives several examples of mnemonic topoi, which stand as reminders of the possibility that the texts rely on mnemonic structures and are to a greater or lesser extent imbedded in a memory culture. Some of these structures seem to be three-dimensional and have been envisaged as buildings or landscapes that could be entered, others might have taken the form of a dais or a platform that was looked upon from a distance, while yet others seem to have been two-dimensional grids. The Old Norse-Icelandic texts hint at the existence of a mnemonic culture where such structures (halls, houses, lands, worlds, trees, map graphics and so on) coexisted, as composite and composed constellations. In all cases, these constellations were visualized before the inner eye. Oral and written discourses that in one way or another involve mnemonic structures, or more directly describe them in words, can be defined as ekphrases, that is, verbal descriptions of ‘objects’ (and here it is implied that these ‘objects’ existed only in the mind and not in the physical world). This can be illustrated with the textual references to map graphics that are sometimes found in texts. In his study of Icelandic maps, Dale Kedwards distinguishes between what he calls “cartographic ekphrasis”, which he defines as “literary descriptions of map artifacts”, and on the other hand “verbal reminiscences of map images, descriptions that are not ekphrases but only imply their authors’ familiarity with maps” (Kedwards 2020, 12). Of the first type Kedwards finds very few in Icelandic manuscripts, among them Alexanders saga, while there are more examples of the second type, among which he includes the passages from the Prose Edda prologue and Ynglinga saga’s beginning. I allow the term ekphrasis to cover more broadly and leave open the possibility that texts such as the Prose Edda and Ynglinga saga, which display an obvious ‘familiarity’

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with world maps, are (in part) ekphrastic texts (as are other texts that describe mnemonic structures). This in the sense that an author has described with words structures that were visualized in front of his or her inner eye.¹⁸⁷ However, mnemonic structures and graphics, which are dynamic and flexible, can only with difficulty be captured in a fixed drawing or with words on a manuscript page; they work “as a mental encyclopedia, whose lineaments can merge and separate and shuffle about in the way that mental images do, but two-dimensional ones fixed on a page cannot” (Carruthers 1990, 232). Attempts to describe by means of words such complex structures, one must expect, will only provide a vague impression of what they looked like.

7.2 Remembering a Vastness of Names The Prose Edda and Ynglinga saga are concerned with worldwide perspectives and the distant past, and with the integration of the Nordic past into this wider context. Landnámabók gives the impression of being concerned with local perspectives and with a more recent past, namely the time of the settlement of Iceland. However, a closer look reveals that this text presupposes a broad geographical perspective, too, and – as will be investigated on the pages below – it is likely that knowledge about (world) maps helped organize the information contained in this book. Like the other texts treated in the previous chapters, Landnámabók was placed in an intermediary position between oral culture and book culture. It presupposed different media contexts, and formulations in the text situate it variously in the context of auditory perception and orality, or in the context of written culture. The authors and redactors of the text recorded what they had heard (heyra) and what had been said (segja), as well as what had been written down (skrifa) (Landnamabók, 1986, pp. 395 – 396). The following reflections will not treat all details of this very complicated text, but concentrate on its debt to mnemonic culture, which is manifold and, I believe, far-reaching. The book’s rather puzzling form may relate to the fact that, at some point of its transmission, it existed as an aid to memory rather than as a self-contained text.¹⁸⁸

 The discussion of ekphrasis in Old Norse studies has for the most part dealt with the particular genre of skaldic poetry, see Clunies Ross 2007; Horn Fuglesang 2007; Olsen 2009. As indicated here, this literary strategy can be used more broadly to describe particularities of texts belonging to other genres as well.  For discussions that deal with Landnámabók and (cultural) memory, see Hermann 2010; Gade Jensen 2012; Wamhoff 2016; Long 2017.

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A focus on memory will not solve all the open questions that surround Landnámabók, a text whose origin, purpose and manuscript-transmission have perplexed many scholars. But an increased awareness of the text’s mnemonic dimensions may nevertheless help us to understand some of its particularities. The text calls to mind several mnemonic devices that seem to have circulated in the Middle Ages, including the method of listing, a method that has overlaps with numbering principles. It makes widespread use of mnemonic signs (in the form of names) as these are described by Boncompagno da Signa. The text may also have been influenced by spatial formats that allowed people to remember and recollect large amounts of knowledge, such as maps and the panoramic and panoptic angles of vision they imply. What if, for instance, the many areas of Iceland that are enumerated in the book were seen from above? Would such an elevated and abstract view over Iceland and its geographic features facilitate remembrance of, and make it possible to recollect, knowledge about a multitude of names?

7.2.1 Landnámabók: Listing Knowledge Landnámabók exists in several redactions, most completely in Sturlubók (from c. 1275 – 1280) and Hauksbók (first decade of the fourteenth century).¹⁸⁹ A comment in Hauksbók lets it be known that Landnámabók was first written by “Ari prestr hinn fróði Þorgilsson” (Landnámabók, 1986, pp. 395 and 397), the twelfthcentury priest who was also considered the author of Íslendingabók, and who in later texts (e. g. the prologue to Heimskringla) was described as minnigr. If this is true, the first version of the text can be dated to the first third of the twelfth century. The text’s transmission, contents and form, as well as its uses, have been much debated and – adding to the complexity of the text – these issues are all likely to have changed from the first recordings in the twelfth century to the later redactions. There is reason to believe that the text was adapted to not only new media contexts and modalities (and presupposed both orality/literacy/memory and hearing/seeing) but also to new literary, cultural and societal contexts. The text has no models in foreign literature and is thus difficult to define generically, which has led Anders Gade Jensen to suggest that it is a hybrid text placed in between history writing, geography and literature (Gade Jensen 2012, 104). The text has most often been treated among works of history, it has frequently been paired with Íslendingabók and together these two books have represented the

 For the redactions and the differences between them, see Jón Jóhannesson 1941; Sveinbjörn Rafnsson 1974; Bruhn 1999, 155 – 205.

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earliest history writing in Iceland. It has been dealt with in connection with the sagas of Icelanders, too. These sagas mention many of the same names and places as Landnámabók, but expand and elaborate on its sparse information in long narratives. To what extent the sagas have influenced the redactions of Landnámabók and vice versa has been hotly debated (Bruhn 1999, 177, with reference to Björn M. Ólsen). The text contains information about the settlement of Iceland, an event that represents the origin of a new society. It lists so-called ‘entries’ with the names of individual first settlers (more than four hundred), the places where they settled and the names of their descendants. At times, this basic pattern (name/place/ descendants) is supplemented with additional information and in such cases the otherwise fairly short entries become more elaborate.¹⁹⁰ One of the particularities of the book is its lack of chronology, a common structuring principle of history writing. In the main text, no attempt is made to establish a linear or chronological organization of the information it conveys. But the first section of the book (perhaps an addition from the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century redactions), which describes the geographical location of Iceland and the discovery of this part of the world, adds a chronological perspective to the material. The main body of the text, however, organizes the many settlements geographically, gradually moving around the country, and it takes the reader from one settlement area to the next until the entire country is fully mapped with names. The long list of entries is broken down and divided into four sections, which follow the political division of Iceland into quarters, and the book starts with an enumeration of the settlements in the west quarter, then moves on to the north quarter, the east quarter and finally to the south quarter until in the end it has come full circle: “Nú er yfir farit um landnám þau, er vér hǫfum heyrt, at verit hafi á Íslandi” (Landnámabók, 1986, S397, p. 394) (“now we’ve surveyed the settlements in Iceland, according to what we’ve heard about them”) (The Book of Settlements, 1972, p. 146, with modifications).¹⁹¹ The enumeration of settlements and the many entries make it relevant to compare the book with lists (Sveinbjörn Rafnsson 1974, 127). Lists, both simple ones which enumerate single words or numbers, and more elaborate ones which include longer items, have a conspicuously prominent presence in medieval texts and must be considered among the mnemonic devices that authors made use of. Such lists of different types, in other words, are likely to refer to the texts’ mne The entries have a stereotypical character that bears signs of having been harmonized (Sveinbjörn Rafnsson 1974, 129 – 132).  Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, in a discussion of the learned and rhetorical background of Landnámabók, has focused on these comments (1974, 93 – 107).

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monic background and can be treated among the various mnemonic topoi that appear in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. The tendency to list information is apparent in the textual corpus. The Prose Edda contains lists of kennings and heiti, Vǫluspá contains lists of names of dwarfs and Grímnismál lists, among other things, the homes and lands of the gods.¹⁹² Listed entries can look quite different from one another and they may be organized according to sounds, letters of the alphabet, numbers or – as in Landnámabók – from the repetition of a certain pattern of information (the name, the place and the descendants of a settler).¹⁹³ In a culture of memory, lists and registers are mnemonic cues and organizing devices, which – once they are established – allow the one who remembers to browse through, to move back and forth and to stop at any given place to contemplate a specific entry. Lucie Doležalová says about lists in early book culture that: “Their point is to order information and make it easily accessible: readers should be able to scan a list quickly in order to note or to retrieve its elements – they are not expected to read it but rather to use it” (Doležalová 2019, 205). Landnámabók’s list-structure is broken down into four parts, providing essentially four lists, each of which corresponds to one quarter of the land. Despite this attempt at organization, and the rhetorical intervention that the brief systematic comments represent, the text is not exactly a pleasant reading experience for anyone who reads it from beginning to end; even a trained reader would probably get tired after a while and perhaps even confused by the many names and places contained in the book. Seen this way, and taking into account Doležalová’s explanation that lists are not meant to be read but used, Landnámabók can be viewed neither as a chronologically structured work of history with causality between the events, nor as a narrative where events are organized temporally, i. e. with a beginning, middle and end. Instead, it is a work which contains as many beginnings as it has entries; a book whose main function is to aid memory. From this perspective, each entry would have functioned as an access gate to a set of details that could be grasped without necessarily looking at the entries placed before or after; each one is a direct entrance to the material searched for. Actually, this function is comparable to mnemonic buildings, where multiple doorways or entrances allow direct access to a given set of details. To this, it can be added that Landnámabók’s manuscripts sometimes indicate that an attempt was made to highlight where the beginnings of the various entries  Also of relevance are, for instance, the so-called þulur, which are preserved in the same manuscripts as the Prose Edda, indicating their usefulness for poets (see Guðrún Nordal 2001, 232– 235). Another list, Skáldatal (list of poets), also preserved together with the Prose Edda (in Codex Upsaliensis), indicates that lists could have had mnemonic functions, see Solovyeva 2019.  For a definition of lists, see Doležalová 2019, 202– 204.

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were to be found on the actual page (just as we can image that mnemonic buildings would have contained markers of different kinds to help navigation in them). In the Hauksbók-redaction, the capital letters of a new entry are often coloured (red, green, brown), and sometimes the initial letter of a settler’s name is what is singled out. These colours give the impression that the book was organized with an eye to mnemonic techniques (see fig. 12). In Hugh’s De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum he gives the advice that such ‘intrinsic’ devices as the colour, form, position of letters and the very layout of a page should be impressed on memory. He also mentions the value of ‘extrinsic’ devices of memory, letting it be known that details pertaining to the surroundings and situation in which the book is presented, read or handed over will be useful mnemonic aids (see Zinn 1974, 223). While intrinsic devices are still present in some of the extant manuscripts, the extrinsic strategies are obviously very difficult to reconstruct.We lack knowledge of the actual situations in which people engaged with the manuscripts, copied, talked about and exchanged them, but these situations were without doubt crucial for an individual’s ability to remember the content of a given text or a book, too.

7.2.2 Geographical Organization Landnámabók is spectacular insofar as each entry is organized spatially and linked to a geographical area; in other words, entries are not merely listed one after the other but also arranged, or plotted, onto the island, that is, the geographical area that defines Iceland. Each of the entries provides a local perspective onto the history of the settlement. But taking all of them together as they are gathered in the book, they provide a trans-local, that is, a regional perspective that covers all settlements and the entire island. This latter perspective involves an abstraction which suggests that it is not only the real, experienced landscape and its natural features, but also a schematic perception about this geographical space that lies behind the text and helps to give some shape to the massive amounts of details about the settlement. In the light of the reflections in this chapter is becomes relevant to ask whether learning from cartography, and the visualization strategies that attach themselves to maps and mnemonics alike (such as panoramic vision over vast areas), could lie behind Landnámabók. Admittedly, the existence of a mental map is much more blurred in the case of Landnámabók than in the cases of the Prose Edda and Ynglinga saga, both of which give more explicit references to such a mnemonic structure, but there are nevertheless hints that suggest a similar context for Landnámabók. The kataskopos, which – as mentioned earlier – in its medieval adaptation conflates with the

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Fig. 12: Pages from the Hauksbók-redaction of Landnámabók (AM 371 4to, 10v – 11r) where colouring and other strategies serve to highlight certain places in the text, suggesting that book learning was combined with mnemonic strategies. Printed with the permission of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

Latin specula, was employed in ramified frameworks. The prologue to Konungs skuggsjá and parts of Gylfaginning indicate that these devices were merging with the particular type of mnemonic activity that relates to the mind’s eye. Marcia Kupfer illustrates how these strategies were not only relevant in quests for spirituality (as in works by Gregory the Great) and for meditative purposes (as for Hugh of St. Victor), but also – in a tradition going back to late antiquity – had an impact on history writing and geography (as in Orosius’ works) (see Kupfer 2016, 55 – 66). On this theoretical background, it is possible that Landnámabók refers to a variety of mnemonic aids and involves not only listing, but also structures that were visualized in front of the mind’s eye, taking their form from maps. That way, what to the corporal eye would be insurmountably huge and impossible to oversee would become possible to survey all at once. From such a panoptic aerial view, the one who looked for information could perceive, at one and the same time, the whole island and zoom in on individual sections to take out the information associated with each single one.

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But how, more specifically, do the entries in Landnámabók look? The settlement areas are sometimes defined on the basis of geographical features, and the entries provide a detailed view over rivers, river mouths, the sea, cliffs and so on. This is the case, for instance, when the settler Haraldr hringr’s land area is defined according to geographical features: “Hann nam Vatsnes allt útan til Ambáttarár fyrir vestan, allt inn til Þverár ok þar yfir af þveru til Bjargaóss ok allt þann vegar bjarga út til sjóvar” (Landnamabók, 1986, H141, p. 215) (“He took possession of the whole of Vatnsness, north of Ambattar River on the west side, and on the east as far south as Thver River and from there straight across over to Bjarga Estuary, all the land on that side of the cliffs right down to the sea”) (The Book of Settlements, 1972, p. 82). As on world maps, where geography (seas, lakes and so on) mark the boundaries between continents, so in Landnámabók geographical features delineate each (settlement) area from the others. The text adds a cultural layer on top of these natural features, namely when places are named after the settlers. This is the case in the following passage: Herrøðr hvítaský var gǫfugr maðr; hann var drepinn af ráðum Haralds konungs, en synir hans þrír fóru til Íslands ok námu land á Strǫndum: Eyvindr Eyvindarfjǫrð, Ófeigr Ófeigsfjǫrð, Ingólfr Ingólfsfjǫrð; þeir bjǫggu þar síðan. (Landnamabók, 1986, S159/H128, pp. 197– 198) (There was a famous man called Herrod White-Cloud. King Harald had him put to death, but his three sons went to Iceland and took possession of land in the Strands: Eyvind settled at Eyvindarfjord, Ofeig at Ofeigsfjord, and Ingolf at Ingolfsfjord. They farmed there for the rest of their lives.) (The Book of Settlements, 1972, p. 75)

The first example shows that natural features help define borders and break down the land into smaller, more readily graspable compartments. The second example reveals how names are attached to these sections, reminding us that a name is more easily remembered when it is attached to a place. The method used in Landnámabók, in fact, is not so different from the methods that are demonstrated in Grímnismál, where the mythological geography is defined by rivers and where the gods are remembered by means of each their easily recognizable land areas. Besides conjuring up a spatial structure, Landnámabók includes a large number of other mnemonic signs. Several of the many pieces of mnemonic advice given in Boncompagno da Signa’s discourse on memory feature in Landnámabók’s entries, a dominant one being the presentation of particularities of figures and physical traits. One of the many entries can serve as an example: Ketill ilbreiðr nam Berufjǫrð, son Þorbjarnar tálkna. Hans dóttur var Þórarna, er átti Hergils hnappraz son Þrándar mjóbeins; Ingjaldr hét son þeira; hann var faðir Þórarins, er átti Þorgerði dóttir Glúms Geirasonar; þeira son var Helgu-Steinarr. Þrándr mjóbeinn átti dóttur

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Gils skeiðarnefs; þeira dóttir var Þórarna, er átti Hrólfr son Helga ens magra. Þorbjǫrg knarrarbringa var ǫnnur dóttir Gils skeiðarnefs. Herfiðr hét son hans, er bjó í Króksfirði. (Landnámabók, 1986, S121/H93, p. 161) (Ketil Broad-Sole, son of Thorbjorn Talkni, took possession of Berufjord. His daughter Thorarna married Hergils Knob-Buttocks, son of Thrand Slender-Leg, and their son was Ingjald, father of Thorarin who married Thorgerd, daughter of Glum Geirason. Their son in turn was Helgu-Steinar. Thrand Slender-Leg married the daughter of Gils Ship-Nose, and their daughter was Thorarna who married Hrolf, Helgi the Lean’s son. Thorbjorg Ship-Breast was another daughter of Gils Ship-Nose. He also had a son called Herfinn, who lived at Kroksfjord.) (The Book of Settlements, 1972, pp. 60 – 61)

What goes for Ketill ilbreiðr (broad-sole), Hergils hnappraz (knob-buttocks), Þrándr mjóbeinn (slender-leg) and Gils skeiðarnefs (ship-nose) is relevant also for many other settlers, who are remembered through exaggerations or details of visually striking characteristics of their figure, posture and the like. These visually striking characteristics conjure images of a substantial number of names, which – when they are organized spatially on the map-structure – become easier to remember. Again, we recognize elements of the place-image method, where lively and colourful images organized in a spatial location trigger knowledge and details of things to be remembered. It is possible that such places and images were ready to be accessed by those who engaged in remembrance of the settlers. This argument finds support when we turn to the first part of Landnámabók (Landnámabók, 1986, pp. 31– 46) which indicates that cartographic knowledge may have been involved in the Landnáma-tradition. We cannot know whether this part of the text, which is included in both Sturlubók and Hauksbók, was part of the twelfth-century book ascribed to Ari Þorgilsson, or whether it was a later addition. It has been argued that this part was added in the thirteenth century with the intention of giving the geographically structured book a more Christian outlook, that is, a chronological frame (see the discussion in Gade Jensen 2012, 27, 35 and 175 – 176). While I agree that it may have been added to these redactions (perhaps inspired by a growing interest in world geography and Iceland’s position in the wider world), I do not think that a chronologically orientated introduction would provide the book with a more Christian slant. It is just as common for Christian history writing to anchor events in space (geographically and cartographically) as it is to structure them in time (chronologically). What is more, the first sections of the book do not merely focus on chronology but also (in line with the main text) emphasize space.¹⁹⁴

 Hauksbók gives the impression that its redactor was gathering together texts that were preoccupied with Iceland’s place in the world. Sverrir Jakobsson argues that this manuscript as a

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The text opens with a comment that places the settlement of Iceland in a broad, geographical perspective; it refers to the island of Thile (Thule), which is depicted on world maps as lying in the farthest north of the world (see Kedwards 2015), and it conflates Thile with Iceland. It refers to the British historiographer Bede and his work De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time) and says that: “Í Aldarfarsbók þeiri, er Beda prestr heilagr gerði, er getit eylands þess, er Thile heitir ok á bókum er sagt, at liggi sex dœgra sigling í norðr frá Bretlandi” (Landnámabók, 1986, p. 31) (“In his book On Times the Venerable Priest Bede mentions an island called Thule, said in other books to lie six days’ sailing to the north of Britain”) (The Book of Settlements, 1972, p. 15). In Greco-Roman traditions, Thile was an imaginary island to the far north, which in the Middle Ages (as we saw in the Icelandic T-O map GKS 1812) became associated with Iceland. Also, the author, or the redactor, further defines the country’s position on the map in relation to Britain (as was done by Isidore of Seville). As if to confirm the conflation between Thile and the geographical area of Iceland, a reference is made to the shape and form of the country, stating that one of the early discoverers, Garðarr Svávarsson, sailed around the land and realized that it was an island: “Garðarr sigldi umhverfis landit ok vissi, at þat var eyland” (Landnámabók, 1986, H31, p. 35) (“Gardar sailed right round the country and proved it to be an island”) (The Book of Settlements, 1972, p. 17). This interest in geography features in a literary context, where descriptions are provided of the country’s mountains, ice caps and so on. The first part of Landnámabók thus suggests that the people behind this passage were interested in including Iceland in the world’s geography, placing it in the far North of the known world. With this type of geographical learning incorporated into Iceland’s origin story, it becomes clear that Landnámabók does not only refer to a physical and experienced landscape but also involves spatial abstractions relating to cartographic and cosmological learning, i. e. various forms of ‘spatialized history’ (see also fig. 13). Landnámabók’s manuscript transmission has, indeed, blurred the picture, but traces of its mnemonic context are still evident. The list structure suggests that this book was not meant to be read from beginning to end, but could be consulted to assist memory, and a possible underlying spatial structure indicates that it presupposed the visualization of a grid with many names attached to it. In combination with listing, a mnemonic structure with similarities to (world) maps whole is “occupied with tracing the course of history in a spatial as well as a temporal sense, from the origins in the Near East towards the settlement of Iceland and Greenland” and he continues to say that “the historical narrative in Hauksbók seems shaped by two principal concepts, that the centre of the world was in the East and that the Icelandic and Scandinavian élite was connected to that centre through historical migrations” (Sverrir Jakobsson 2007, 28).

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Fig. 13: Hauksbók contains texts that deal with world history, and its redactor seems to have been preoccupied with Iceland’s connections to the wider world. The interest in the wider world is also expressed visually, and the manuscript contains a plan of Jerusalem with drawings of churches and temples. Like the mappa mundi-tradition, this visualization of a prominent place in the world is perceived in a circular form. Printed with the permission of The Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, University of Copenhagen, AM 544 4to, 19r. Photo: Suzanne Reitz.

would have been an immensely helpful memory aid, one that would make it possible to condense huge amounts of material (several hundreds of names) in one place. Such a structure may very well look awkward and cumbersome when it has been transferred to writing and represented verbally, whereas it would have been efficient when it existed in the form of a visual encyclopaedic structure in the mind, one which was alive, dynamic and adaptable. This chapter has pointed to one of the formats that was introduced into the mnemonic tradition during the Middle Ages, namely world maps. Such formats were multifunctional devices that made it possible to remember, to organize and to invent knowledge and stories. The Prose Edda and Ynglinga saga suggest that

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world maps, and the learning they brought with them, were used mnemonically and that stories could be generated on the basis of such structures; Ynglinga saga indicates that, alongside skaldic poetry, which offered a background for the majority of the text, other mnemonic structures were also utilized and these, too, influenced the text. Landnámabók indicates the existence of mnemonic structures that could preserve huge amounts of names. The stories and the knowledge generated from such templates were ideologically loaded but nevertheless had an impact on the construction of cultural memory. The stories qualify as “fundierende Geschichten” (founding narratives) (J. Assmann 2005, 76), that is, narratives that transcend the dichotomy between history and fiction, between true and false. Their real meaning lies in the fact that they are considered relevant for people and respond to “eine Wahrheit höherer Ordnung” (a truth of a higher order). It is their symbolic meaning that is their rationale – their ability to offer people orientation.

8 Conclusion 8.1 Literary Communication between Orality, Literacy and Memory “Memoria unites written with oral transmission, eye with ear, and helps to account for the highly ‘mixed’ oral-literate nature of medieval cultures” (Carruthers 1990, 122). These words prove true for medieval Norse societies where memory was a partner to oral and written texts, respectively, as well as an intermediary between these types of communication. This book has focused on a period of time when knowledge, often in the form of poetry and narrative, was transferred from memory to books, that is, to a medium where it could remain, in principle forever. The interim moment that the texts bear evidence of (between orality, writing and memory) marks a milestone not only in literary history, but in the history of memory and in media history. New media technologies influence mnemonic cultures. In Iceland, it seems as if the technology of writing (in the form of the Latin alphabet) was welcomed as an aid to memory. Without doubt, however, writing altered the existing memory culture and paved the way for external storage possibilities of greater complexity than had been seen before. It is sometimes claimed that changes in media will affect the sensory modalities that are involved in literary communication, and some scholars have argued that the shift from orality to literacy is accompanied by a shift in the sensory perception. Based on the conviction that the reading of books depends on eyesight, this would involve a switch from hearing (using the ear) to visual perception (using the eye). But, as this book has argued, such a development from ‘aural-oral’ to ‘visual-written’ is much too narrow to properly capture the literary situation in the Nordic Middle Ages. Old Norse-Icelandic texts often emphasize that the authors recorded in writing what they had heard from others, which already points to the aural modality as an important vehicle for literary production and suggests that literature depended upon both hearing and seeing, the ear and the eye. As several examples in this book have indicated, literary production in the Middle Ages seemingly took into consideration different sensory modalities, just as it presupposed a dialogue between oral culture, book culture and memory culture. Ruth Finnegan, among others, has suggested that, when it comes to literature in the Middle Ages, hearing and seeing, orality and writing, should be seen as a continuum rather than as

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sharply distinguished modalities and media.¹⁹⁵ Along similar lines, and including considerations about the memory culture that surrounds manuscript culture, Walter Ong has expressed in general terms what is true for literary communication in medieval Iceland, too: Manuscript cultures remained largely oral-aural even in retrieval of material preserved in texts. Manuscripts were not easy to read, by later typographic standards, and what readers found in manuscripts they tended to commit at least somewhat to memory. Relocating material in a manuscript was not always easy. Memorization was encouraged and facilitated also by the fact that in highly oral manuscript cultures, the verbalization one encountered even in written texts often continued the oral mnemonic patterning that made for ready recall. (Ong 1999, 119)

The passage points to a variety of relevant issues, most importantly it embeds manuscripts in an oral and a mnemonic culture rather than contrasting these cultures with each other, just as it talks about the existence of ‘highly oral manuscript cultures’, a designation that early Icelandic book culture is a candidate for. If bookish culture interacts with not only orality, but also mnemonic culture, then the visual aspect gains a new and expanded meaning, which goes beyond the mere visual perception of alphabetic symbols on the manuscript page and involves retrieving images from memory, that is, a visually based decoding of spaces and images in the mind. Our texts suggest that such a decoding of visually perceived knowledge is an accompanying partner to literary production.

8.2 Literature and Memory This book has pinpointed mnemonic elements in a selection of Old Norse-Icelandic texts and has argued that this particular literary tradition – in various ways – carries with it reminiscences of memory. That theories of memory can be brought into contact with Old Norse-Icelandic literature in different ways and the fact that such theories can offer a conceptual framework for a more detailed understanding of the points of intersection that exist between medieval memory cultures and the literature of that time are all aspects that have been examined. It has been illustrated that texts that belong to the Old Norse-Icelandic literary tradition give an insight, firstly, into memory as a craft. Secondly, I have suggested that memory should be comprehended in a wider sense, namely as a collectively

 For a survey and a revisiting of these approaches, as well as an application of them to Old Norse-Icelandic and Slavic literature, see Ranković 2010.

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shared phenomenon that is mediated in literature as cultural memory. The examples and cases provided in this book have added substance to the idea put forward by Aleida Assmann, which is that the literature of a given society is an ample source to this society’s concepts of and ideas about memory, and they have substantiated the proposal made by Frances Yates that literature and other art forms will mirror the mnemonic structures and imagery that are prevalent in a given society. I have provided examples of traces of the mnemonic devices that prevailed in the societies that influenced Old Norse-Icelandic texts and I have shown that these texts offer a wealth of so-called ‘mnemonic topoi’, which illustrate their connection with memory. Indeed, medieval authors of the North would gradually have become less inclined to practice memory themselves and would more and more often have orientated themselves towards manuscripts and literary culture, that is, towards written symbols on the manuscript page rather than rely on images within mental templates. However, even if the texts themselves lost their direct link to mnemonic technologies, they continued to be part and parcel of a memory culture in a broader sense, namely as media of cultural memory. The ‘memory-derived’ character of the texts and the mnemonic topoi that they carry with them remind us of the fact that orality and literacy, both of which have been widely studied in Old Norse scholarship nearly since its beginnings, are not the only relevant aspects, but that we also need to include more focused debates on the texts’ debt to the memory cultures that they were a part of. Such debates will supplement the discussion about the generic background and the representational status of the texts, and will more explicitly than previously acknowledge the texts’ dependency on, interaction with and ability to construct memories. One of the issues that has come up in this book is the possibility that these so-called memory-derived texts have an ekphrastic character. It is suggested that the narratives and poems may at times represent structures that were visualized before the inner eye. The extent to which this visual background is a generic feature of a text must be argued in each case, and – even if this cannot very often be determined with certainty – it is relevant to examine the texts in this light. In a situation where authorship is attentive to mnemonic devices, it is likely that a strong visual aspect is part and parcel of the texts’ background.

8.3 Perceptions of Memory The so-called mnemonic aspects of the texts differ greatly, and the various texts take us in several directions. Each text, and each genre, deserves more attention than they have been given here, but evidence has been added to the assumption that a memory culture constituted an important context for Old Norse literature.

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The texts explain what memory is and they unveil important technologies of memory. Some texts define memory as a resource that is located in the breast, where it takes the form of an abode or dwelling place, while others, the mythological ones, have detached this resource from the body and personified it in divine beings (with Muninn and Mímir as the most conspicuous ones), which shows that symbolic expressions were used to explain memory. The texts use direct as well as figurative language and explain memory with, for instance, reference to digestion and rumination and by mentioning of the gathering of nectar and producing of honey – two images which indicate that memory is, respectively, a matter of personalizing and internalizing knowledge, and very often a matter of producing new knowledge on that background. Memory is portrayed as an inner space where discourses are prepared and pondered upon, where, metaphorically speaking, they are premeasured and built. There may seem at first glance to be insurmountable differences between, say, the Stave Church Homily, the Prose Edda and Lokasenna, because these texts vary greatly in form, content and function; but they nonetheless share a clear interest in memory and mnemonic technologies. The Stave Church Homily, essentially an ekphrastic text that describes a wooden church, shows us that mnemonic structures (based on buildings) were crucial learning tools; the Prose Edda elaborates at length on such mnemonic structures, it combines different types of loci and picturae and inserts them into the text’s literary design, indicating a wish to communicate these useful structures to its readers; and Lokasenna attaches mnemonic abilities to the god Loki and comments on the power of these technologies to construct (and change) the memory of the past. Authorial comments in texts such as Hungrvaka, Þorláks saga, Jóns saga helga and Sverris saga tell us that the authors engaged in memory and counted on their own and their audiences’ mnemonic abilities, while literary characterizations in such texts as Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, Brennu-Njáls saga and the eddas elaborate on the how of these technologies, showing which tricks and cues constituted an excellent memory. The texts lay open which mnemonic technologies assisted the remembrance of stories, as in Grímnismál, when Grímnir attaches a long list of gods’ names to specific buildings, giving them numbers and thereby organizing his knowledge in a way that helps him keep much information intact in the repository of his memory. Or in Landnámabók where a huge amount of names are seemingly remembered by way of spatial anchoring onto a mnemonic grid, perhaps in the form of a map decorated with images. The texts give the impression that the Nordic writers, as was the case in other parts of medieval Europe, deployed different forms of spatial anchoring and a variety of visualization strategies and that they held these principles as key to their literary activities.

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I have dealt more with memory as a structure, a form that stores, organizes, processes and in some cases even has the power to transform the information it holds, than with the contents of memory, that is, with ‘the memories’ that are contained within this resource. In terms of defining memory as a structure, the medieval authors’ metaphorical expressions have been helpful as they explain how memory was perceived and explained at this particular time and how it operated formally. But although these structural and formal dimensions of memory have been the prime focus that has guided my choice of examples, it is important to mention that the contents that are kept in memory (in this recess of the breast, this sensory-dependent resource, this stomach, this blending machinery) to a very high extent merge with the very structures. Take, for instance, the world tree Yggdrasill, which represents a mnemonic picture that facilitates organization of the mythological cosmos, which is, so to speak, created from and upheld within the limits and confined locations that this structure allows for, or take the whole mythological geography which is contained around or within a circle that gives shape to the events that happen within this enclosed space. These structures and grids are deeply entangled with the contents they transmit, and the contents can hardly be conceived of outside of or independently of the underlying structures and locations that carry the meaning. In short: It is very difficult to think about the contents of memory independently of these mnemonic structures.

8.4 The Theories The intellectual context within which the authors were situated seems to me to be a relevant theoretical framework for an examination of this literature’s mnemonic dimensions. The Latin texts repeatedly refer to the necessity to anchor things and words to spatial structures, just as they demonstrate that visuality and memory go together. Other routes within the many memory theories could have been followed, as texts from classical antiquity and different parts of medieval Europe offer multiple opportunities to study theories of memory. However, a focus on accounts that elaborate upon spatial anchoring and the necessity of attaching knowledge to real or imagined structures seemed to me to be a particularly relevant starting point for an investigation of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, a literary corpus that very often anchors knowledge and stories spatially. Some of the key aspects of memory that have been emphasized here are not exclusively limited to particular periods or cultures in the past but represent general issues of memory and even universals or stable elements in the history of memory. Carolyne Larrington has summarized results from psychology that are relevant for the understanding of mythological texts (Larrington 2006). She has,

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among other things, pointed to studies outside of the humanities that show that to remember is not to reproduce fixed traces but is closer to an imaginative reconstruction which prefers bizarre occurrences, that remembrance works best when (large amounts of) information is divided into (smaller) chunks or segments and that visualization and evocative imagery are effective strategies for memory (see Miller 1956; Paivio 1969). Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience have become increasingly aware that (biological) memory is constituted by its social and cultural contexts, and such key terms as construction, inter-subjectivity, context, mediation and communication have made their way into these disciplines (see e. g. Wagoner 2018; Donald 2018).¹⁹⁶ Consequently, long-lived assumptions about memory (that a ‘pure memory’ exists, that memory is an individual affair and that it is a fixed storage) have been challenged, and it is now more often recognized that the memory of an individual merges with the memories of other individuals, and that remembering cannot be limited to a static retrieval and a passive recording of a literal reality. Rather, it is a process of interpretation that allows the imagination to interfere, and it is a resource that must be understood within a ‘model of conversation’ (Brockmeier 2018). The conclusions about medieval ideas of memory, thus, do not contradict what is recognized in modern discussions of the phenomenon. More can be said about the construction of cultural memory in the Middle Ages than has been done in this book, where the majority of the analysis has centred around mnemonic technologies and their literary representation. The formation of cultural memory is a complex development, which involves identity politics and issues of power. Aleida Assmann has dealt with some of the processes that are inherent to this development, namely ‘canonization’ and the establishment of ‘archives’ (2008). Cultural canonization implies that certain texts are selected, ascribed with value and preserved for posterity, and the archive is the bank of knowledge that determines what can be said in a society, and – more specifically – what can in the future be said about the past (A. Assmann 2008, 102, with reference to Michel Foucault). According to Aleida Assmann’s theory, cultural memory develops from the engagement of certain powerful groups or institutions and their selective approach to the archive, a resource that, once established, exists as a storage vault from which things believed to be useful and relevant can be retrieved (that is, remembered) or alternatively kept in the background as relics deprived of meaning (that is, forgotten).  For instance, F.C. Bartlett’s ideas about memory as construction, which were presented in the 1930s, are now being revisited, just like recent developments in psychology and neuroscience argue for the relevance of cultural memory-theory (see Bartlett 1932, 1958; Wagoner 2017).

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Archives were established and canonization processes began exactly during the period considered here, when the technology of writing sparked these developments.¹⁹⁷ The production of manuscripts and the compilation of texts functioned as crucial instruments and media for the construction of cultural memory. This aspect of canonization in manuscript culture has been dealt with by Jürg Glauser, who argues that the formation of cultural memory and the production of manuscripts went hand in hand in Iceland. He says: “In the large compendium-manuscripts of the fourteenth century […] this literary construction of the past is subjected to a further process of selection and codification” (Glauser 2000, 211). Also Lena Rohrbach has discussed the relevance of manuscripts and the book for the construction of cultural memory, stating that: “From a material perspective […] the selection and arrangement of texts in a book might be approached as material manifestations of organization of this storehouse [i. e. the Norse textual corpus] that allow insight into underlying conceptualisations of cultural memory” (Rohrbach 2018b, 399). These points of intersection between the production of manuscripts, canon formation and cultural memory deserve more scrutiny than this book has been able to devote to them.

8.5 A Leap Forward Allow me as a conclusion to make a leap forward. Memory is affiliated with the imagination, and an examination of the texts’ mnemonic dimensions will take us towards the imaginary rather than the factual aspects of the texts. The texts that were produced in Iceland in the Middle Ages have been met with much interest outside of Iceland and especially in the Romantic period there was an intense interest in them in different parts of Scandinavia and Europe, where these medieval texts became crucial for the construction of the cultural memories and national identities of different countries. Not only classical writers, but also philosophers and poets of later times believed that mnemonic imagination and poetic imagination concurred and, in the eighteenth century, memoria (memory) and phantasia (fantasy) were still believed to be entangled forms (Lachmann 2008, 303 – 304). The long-lived connection between memory and fantasy is documented in a Scandinavian context, too, for example by the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger (1779 – 1850), who around the year 1800 claimed that when  Writing is crucial for these developments; yet, the formation of cultural memory does not as such rely on writing, and cultural memory processes take place in oral cultures as well (J. Assmann 1995, 130; 2005, 87– 103). For the application of the concepts of the ‘archive’ and the ‘canon’ to Old Norse literature, see Hermann 2017a; Heslop 2021; Nygaard and Tirosh 2021.

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the past is not available to us, when it exists as a distant phenomenon, imagination will assist our memory: De svundne Dage tænke vi os – for det meste – altid interessantere, end det nærværende Øieblik, fordi vi glemme det Ubehagelige, som ogsaa de førte med sig, det Behagelige derimod erindre vi, og forstærke det tifold med vor Fantasie, som maa komme Hukommelsen til Hielp […] Vi interessere os for at faae mere at vide om disse Tider, end der staaer i vor Magt, og Indbildningskraften, som altid er rede, skaber os med Fornøielse en nye Verden. (Oehlenschläger 1980, 15) (We usually consider the disappearing days more interesting than the present moment, because we forget the unpleasantness that those days also brought with them, in contrast, we remember the pleasant, and we strengthen it ten times with our fantasy, which helps our memory […] We are interested in knowing more about those times than we are able to, and imagination, which is always ready, provides us with a new world)

This jump through time to the early nineteenth century is relevant in our context, because Oehlenschläger is a representative of the nineteenth-century authors, who were interested in the medieval texts produced in Iceland and secured these texts an existence in the broader Scandinavian cultural memory. He was a key figure for the reintroduction of Norse myths and sagas into Danish literary history (and in wider cultural and political contexts) and represents a landmark in the historiography of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and its reception. His opinion – that “indbildningskraften” (the power of the imagination) and “fantasien” (fantasy) help memory – demonstrates that the retelling of myths and sagas was, not only in the Middle Ages, but also when they were re-discovered in the Romantic period, entangled with the imagination.

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Indexes Personal names Ægir 192–194, 196–199 Agnarr 157, 162 Albertus Magnus 61, 174, 207 Alcuin 89, 163 Ari Þorgilsson 21 f., 31, 40, 215, 221 Aristotle 61, 116, 207 Arngrímr Brandsson 60 Augustine 24, 48, 51 f., 77, 85, 91–94, 105, 123 f., 133, 146, 154 Bede 116, 222 Bergr Sokkason 47 Boncompagno da Signa 203, 215, 220 Bragi 192 f., 196, 199

Isidore of Seville

112, 116, 204, 209, 222

61, 174–177, 181,

Cicero 28, 33, 46 f., 80, 84–90, 93 f., 99– 101, 122–125, 138, 168, 190 Egill Skallagrímsson 71–73, 75, 77 f., 81 f., 183–187 Einarr Hafliðason 31 Einarr Helgason skálaglamm 67, 118 Einarr Skúlason 36, 118 Fortunatianus 100 Freyja 192, 198 Gangleri. See Gylfi Geirrøðr 157, 162 f., 166 Geoffrey of Vinsauf 50, 67 f., 80 f., 100 Grímnir (alias Óðinn) 157–162, 166, 198, 228 Gunnlaugr Leifsson 47 Gylfi (alias Gangleri) 18, 104–107, 109– 114, 116 f., 121, 140 f., 143, 148, 150, 177, 192, 210 Hákon Hákonarson Hallr of Síða 21

Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði 104, 107, 110, 113, 115–117, 121, 140, 148, 150, 210 Hár. See Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði Heimdallr 148–150, 152, 192 Hœnir 142, 192 Honorius Augustodunensis 110 f., 138, 204, 209 Hugh of St. Victor 46, 48, 50, 67, 85, 93– 97, 105, 111, 114, 129 f., 144, 154, 158 f., 204, 206, 210, 219

39, 134

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674958-013

Jafnhár. See Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði Jerome 53, 68 Jón Erlendsson 21 Jón Ǫgmundarson 47, 124, 131 Jón Loptsson 102 f. Julius Victor 89, 163 Karl Jónsson 24 Kvasir 63, 65, 67 f. Loddfáfnir 165 Loki 19, 155, 192 f., 195–199, 228 Martianus Capella 100 Mímir 109, 141 f., 148, 228 Mímr/Mimi 141 Óðinn 1, 14, 59, 63–66, 72, 74, 77, 89, 104, 125, 140–145, 147–150, 152, 156 f., 159 f., 163 f., 177, 183 f., 192, 196, 198, 206, 208, 212 Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskald 29 Petrarca 50, 53 Petrus Comestor 51 Plato 31, 37, 43, 125 Proust, Marcel 124

256

Indexes

Quintilian 28, 46 f., 84–86, 88, 90 f., 93, 99 f., 115, 117, 124, 159, 168, 177, 190 f. Saxo Grammaticus 15 f., 38, 100 Simonides of Ceos 18, 90 f., 122 f., 168, 172 f., 175, 196 f. Snorri Sturluson 22, 24, 32, 39 f., 55–61, 63, 67, 69, 71, 89, 99, 103–111, 141– 143, 145, 148 f., 169, 177, 192–194, 208–212 Sturla Þórðarson 39 f.

Thamus 37, 43 Theodoricus 16 Theuth 37, 43 Þorkell Gellisson 21 Þorlákr Þórhallsson 32, 42, 47, 50, 102 f. Þórr 158, 192, 196 f. Þriði. See Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði Vincent of Beauvais

51, 204, 209

Indexes

257

Texts Arinbjarnarkviða 77 f., 81 Árna saga biskups 23, 30 Bandamanna saga 35 f. Brennu-Njáls saga 19, 23, 61, 168, 170– 174, 176–181, 187, 190, 199, 228 Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Macrobius) 138 Confessiones (Augustine) 91 f., 154 De De De De

inventione (Cicero) 33, 84 oratore (Cicero) 33, 84, 87, 89 f., 123 temporum ratione (Bede) 222 tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum (Hugh of St. Victor) 46 f., 93 f., 159, 218 De vanitate mundi (Hugh of St. Victor) 114 Dialogues (Gregory the Great) 104 f., 114 Didascalicon (Hugh of St. Victor) 67, 93, 130 Egils saga Skallagrímssonar 17, 19, 40, 45, 49, 60 f., 70–78, 81 f., 168, 179–187, 195, 206, 228 First Grammatical Treatise 37, 55, 71 Flateyjarbók 24, 62, 71, 132 Fóstbræðra saga 62, 71 Gautreks saga 36 Gesta Danorum (Saxo Grammaticus) 15, 38, 100 Gísla saga Súrssonar 36 Grímnismál 1 f., 14, 18, 69, 104, 122, 126, 139, 141, 143, 150, 156–164, 177, 193 f., 198 f., 217, 220, 228 Guðmundarkvæði 60, 62 Guðmundar saga biskups 132 Gylfaginning 18, 55, 67, 69, 84, 103–105, 107 f., 110 f., 115 f., 139–141, 143, 145 f., 149, 153 f., 161 f., 165, 169, 177, 192– 194, 201, 206, 210, 219 Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar

39

Hávamál 66 f., 157, 163–166, 177 Heimskringla 22, 32, 38–40, 44, 211–212, 215 Hereford map 204 Hǫfuðlausn 60, 72–76, 80 Hœnsa-Þóris saga 190 Homily Books 126 f., 132 Hrafnkels saga 190 Hungrvaka 5, 26–29, 31 f., 44 f., 52 f., 56, 72 f., 103, 136, 228 Hymiskviða 194 Institutio Oratoria (Quintilian) 86, 88, 91, 117, 124, 191 Íslendingabók 5, 17, 21, 24, 28, 38, 40, 215 Íslendinga saga 39 Jóns saga helga 45, 47–49, 51–53, 56, 58, 61, 69, 72, 100, 125, 131, 228 Katrínardrápa 78 Knýtlinga saga 23, 206 Konungs skuggsjá 15, 104, 122, 130, 134– 141, 144, 154, 219 Landnámabók 19, 39, 201 f., 204, 206, 214–222, 224, 228 Lárentíus saga 31 Laxdæla saga 35 Leiðarvísan 82 Leiðzla Duggals 114 Libellus de formatione arche (Hugh of St. Victor) 93, 95, 105, 204 Lokasenna 19, 168, 193–199, 228 Morkinskinna

36

Njáls saga. See Brennu-Njáls saga Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar Pauline texts 129 f. Phaedrus 37, 43 Physiologus 51

24, 132

258

Indexes

Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar 54 Prose Edda 3, 17–19, 24, 40, 44 f., 49, 55– 63, 65–72, 84, 89, 98, 103–105, 107, 114 f., 117, 121 f., 126, 135, 139 f., 142 f., 149 f., 152, 156, 183 f., 186, 192, 198, 201, 205 f., 208–214, 217, 219, 223, 228 Rhetorica ad Herennium 28, 33, 80, 85– 88, 90, 94, 99 f., 116 Rhetorica novissima (Boncompagno da Signa) 175, 203 Rök-inscription 4 Second Grammatical Treatise 55, 71 Separate Saga of St. Óláf 22, 32, 34, 36, 38 Skáldatal 117 f., 217 Skáldskaparmál 17, 55–61, 67, 74, 76, 118, 192, 194, 206, 210 Snorra Edda. See Prose Edda Somnium Scipionis (Cicero) 138 Sonatorrek 75 f., 82

Speculum Historiale (Vincent of Beauvais) 51 Stave Church Homilies 15, 18, 122, 126– 130, 136, 139, 154, 164, 228 Stjórn 24, 51, 125 Sturlunga saga 39, 54 Sturlu þáttr 39 f. Sverris saga 24–26, 29, 42, 44, 228 Third Grammatical Treatise 29, 55, 71, 77, 79, 183 Þorláks saga 30, 32, 42, 44, 102, 228 Þorvalds þáttr víðfǫrla 132 Vǫluspá 18, 69, 115, 122, 125 f., 139, 142, 144, 148, 150, 152–156, 161–163, 169, 177, 197, 217 Ynglinga saga 19, 67, 142, 201, 205 f., 211–214, 219, 223 Ynglingatal 211

259

Indexes

Manuscripts AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM AM

18 fol. 23 39 fol. 211 47 fol. (Eirspennill) 22 61 fol. 132 110 8vo 26 113 a fol. 21 113 b fol. 21 122 a fol. (Króksfjarðarbók) 54 122 b fol. (Reykjarfjarðarbók) 23, 39, 54 226 fol. 51 237 a fol. 126 242 fol. (Codex Wormianus) 55 243 a fol 135 325 V 4to 22 325 V 4to ‘325 V’ 22 327 4to 24 f. 371 4to (Hauksbók) 219 382 4to 32 383 4to 32 468 4to (Reykjabók) 23 544 4to (Hauksbók) 62, 223 619 4to 126, 130 624 4to 126 673 a III 4to fol. (Teiknibókin) 206 f. 748 4to 156

Codex Academicus (AM 332 4to) 23 Codex Frisianus (AM 45 fol.) 22, 211 Codex Regius of the Elder Edda. See also GKS 2365 4to 143, 150–152, 156, 164, 192, 194, 197 Codex Regius. See also GKS 2367 4to 55, 208 f. Codex Trajectinus (Ms. Traj 1374) 55 Codex Upsaliensis. See also DG 11 4to 18, 55, 113, 115–119, 209, 217 Codex Wormianus (AM 242 fol.). 55

DG 11 4to (Codex Upsaliensis) 115–119, 209, 217

18, 55, 113,

Eirspennill. See also AM 47 fol. 22 GKS 1812 4to 204 f., 222 GKS 2365 4to (Codex Regius of the Elder Edda) 143, 150, 164 GKS 2367 4to (Codex Regius) 55 GKS 2845 4to 35 Hauksbók. See also AM 371 4to and AM 544 4to 62, 152, 215, 218, 221, 223 Ketilsbók (AM 453 4to) 70, 72, 75 Kringla 22, 211 Króksfjarðarbók. See also AM 122 a fol. Möðruvallabók (AM 132 fol.) 70, 75, 77

54

23, 35, 62,

Reykjabók. See also AM 468 4to 23 Reykjarfjarðarbók. See also AM 122 b fol. 23, 39, 54 Sthm Perg. 15 4to 126 Sthm Perg. 5 fol. 32 Teiknibókin. See also AM 673 a III 4to fol. 206 f. Wolfenbüttel (9. 10. Aug. 4to)

70, 72

260

Indexes

General Index Ægis hǫll (Ægir’s hall) 193–195, 197–199 alimentary imagery 45, 53, 65, 67, 82 – stomach metaphor 53, 60, 65, 67, 141 ars memoria 56, 70 ars poetica 55 f., 70 artificial memory 85, 98, 175, 177 f. Ásgarðr 107–110, 112, 142 f., 145, 148, 177, 192, 206 Asíamenn (men from Asia) 142 áss (god) 142, 169, 196, 209 áss (roof beam) 169 bee imagery (apian imagery) 45, 49–51, 53, 68 f., 82 – býflygi (bee-flies) 49, 51 – býstokkr (beehive) 49, 51 – hunangfall (honey-dew) 69 book prose/free prose 13, 189 brain (heili) 61 f., 80 – individual vs. collective 121 breast (brjóst) 45, 47–49, 57 f., 60 f., 72– 76, 80–82, 100, 146, 228 f. – brjóst megin (breast power) 48 – brjóstvit (breast-knowledge) 48 Canonization 41, 151, 230 f. cartography 18 f., 201–204, 210, 219 Christ in Majesty 207 classical rhetoric 28 f., 43, 52 f., 61, 72 f., 80, 90, 92, 94, 99–101, 117, 175 f., 188, 190 f. cosmology 98, 167, 169, 209 craftsman imagery 53, 72, 74, 76–82, 131 ekphrasis 18, 213 f., 227 f. expression of wonder, trope also 114, 210

105, 111. See

forgetting 19, 31–37, 41, 57, 104, 160 f., 163, 193 f., 198 – óminnis hegri (heron of forgetfulness) 163 founding narratives 202, 224 fróðr (knowledgeable) 22, 28, 67, 215

geð (mind) 14, 27, 59 – geð guma (the mind of men)

27, 169

Háva hǫll (the high one’s hall) 104–106, 11 f., 115, 139, 164, 166, 192 heart 24, 47 f., 58, 60–62, 67, 82, 92–94, 125, 146 – i hiartans ackre (in the field of the heart) 48, 125 heiti 57, 59, 217 Hliðskjálf 141–144 Hólar 23, 28, 31, 47–49, 69 f., 100 f., 131 Huginn and Muninn 1, 14 f, 59, 118, 141 f, 145–147, 156, 160, 228 Huginn. See Huginn and Muninn hugr (mind, thought) 14, 57–60, 74, 76, 125 – augu hugar (mind’s eye) 136 f. – hugar fylgsni (hiding-place of thought) 75 f. – hugskotsauga (eye of the mind) 24, 60, 125, 127 – hugskotseyra (ear of the mind) 127, 132 – hugskotshǫnd (hand of the mind) 127 illusions (sjónhverfingar) 105 f., 192 imagines agentes (images that move) 87, 105, 186 imagines (mnemonic images) 86 f., 89 f., 122, 133, 159, 170, 174, 186, 191, 196, 204 kataskopos (view from above) 18, 138 f., 145, 148 f., 203, 219 kennings 57 f., 60 f., 73–75, 89, 99, 115, 118, 194, 217 klerkligar listir (clerical skills) 30 kringlóttr (round, circular) 110, 206 loci (mnemonic places) 11, 86, 89 f., 94, 97, 100, 105, 108, 111, 115 f., 122, 130, 155, 158 f., 168, 170, 174, 186, 194, 196, 204, 228 Lund 59, 62, 100, 102

Indexes

Maps 81, 203 f., 210, 212 f., 219, 221, 228 – mappa mundi (world map) 19, 95, 98, 111, 201, 203 f., 206, 223 – plan of Jerusalem 223 – T-O map 203, 204–207, 211, 222 mead of poetry, Prose Edda’s myth of the 56, 60, 62 f., 65, 72, 89, 141, 183 memoria rerum (memory for things) 33, 85 f., 115, 151 memoria verborum (memory for words) 33 f., 39, 61, 85, 151, 211 memory – (and/as) wisdom 9, 18, 22, 31 f., 46, 58, 67, 77, 85, 94 f., 98, 109, 111 f., 114, 122, 137, 139, 142, 146, 148 f., 165, 175, 208, 210 – collective memory 11, 27, 42, 121 – communicative memory 42, 44 – cultural memory 7, 9–11, 15, 19, 21, 40– 42, 44, 70 f., 121, 129 f., 151, 169, 172, 174, 188 f., 197–202, 212 f., 224, 227, 230–232 – living memory 40, 42, 44, 70 Mímis brunnr (Mímir’s well), Prose Edda’s myth of 141 f., 146 mind’s eye 18 f., 24, 60, 97, 114, 122 f., 125–127, 130, 132, 134, 136 f., 139, 154, 158 f., 166, 177, 181 f., 190 f., 203, 212, 219 minnigr (of good memory) 21–23, 38, 48, 84, 215 – langminnigr (long-remembering) 23 – minnunga mæn and minnugha mæn 23 minni (memory) 2, 4, 22, 24, 26, 31–35, 46, 57–62, 74 f., 82, 124, 136, 152, 163, 185, 211 – falla … ór minni (drop out of memory) 26, 31 f., 34, 46 – festa í minni (fix in memory) 24–26, 31, 34, 46, 73 – forn minni (ancient memory) 3, 22, 24, 26, 105 – í minni halda (to hold in memory) 31 – minnis sjóðr (memory purse) 47 – ór minni … liðit (dropped out of memory) 32, 35, 46

261

mnemonic aids 4, 35, 95, 116, 201, 203, 213, 218 f. – hands 66, 87, 113, 116–120, 177 – lists 118, 216 f., – names 159, 168, 170 f., 175, 177, 180 f., 186, 189, 193, 203 f., 209, 214–217, 220–222, 224, 228 – numbers 116, 158 f., 162, 165, 177, 193, 216 f., 228 – writing 14, 26, 32, 37 f., 41–43, 57, 135, 140, 200 modern/modernus 30, 36 muna (to remember) 2, 14, 36, 57, 82, 124, 152, 162, 178 – rétt muna (to remember correctly) 35 Muninn. See Huginn and Muninn Munkaþverá 47, 82 munr (mind) 14, 59, 61, 74 – munar grunni (debts of the mind) 73 f., 76 natural memory nema (to learn) Nidaros 102

85 f., 91, 98, 157, 174, 177 14, 57, 135 f., 165, 196

Oddi 28, 39, 102 f. óljúgfróð (knowledgeable without lying) 22 orbis terrarum (the circle of lands) 110, 205, 211 orðhof (temple of words) 76 f. pictura/picturae (picture/pictures) 103, 127 f., 129 f., 155, 209 f.

96 f.,

Reykholt 55, 69 f. rhetorical canons 28, 73, 80 sensus spiritualis 129 septem artes liberales (seven liberal arts) 101 shamanism 146, 157 Skálholt 26, 28, 32, 43, 47, 52 f., 70, 101– 103 spakr (wise) 22 specula (watch-tower, look-out) 18, 114 f., 138 f., 144, 148 f., 219 St. Victor 47, 102

262

Indexes

tabula memoriae 24, 46 thesaurus sapientiae 31, 46, 95 f. Thile/Tile (Thule) 204, 222 three-seated throne 104, 112 f., 193 Þingeyrar 24, 47, 60 þularstóll (þulr seat) 164 Þykkvabœr 102

Urðar brunnr

110

Valhǫll 158–161 vindr trǫllkvinna (wind of troll-woman) 59, 146 vǫlva 125, 148, 152–157, 161, 163, 196