{"id":132,"date":"2017-09-17T16:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-17T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=132"},"modified":"2021-08-18T15:19:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:19:19","slug":"the-mark-of-the-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/09\/17\/the-mark-of-the-bear\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mark of the Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year, I am focusing my writing and research on the Vikings and the Nordic mythology and sagas. The pantheon was pretty much limited to the small Scandinavian countries, especially Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and started to die off when Iceland was Christianized, in around 1000 C.E. Oral tales and storytelling are important (or at least present) in almost all the world\u2019s cultures, especially before people could read and write. All of the Norse tales were told orally for many generations, and were mostly written down after <\/em>making contact with Christianity. This turn is something I wish to focus on in my research, especially in relation to two primary texts, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, <\/em>and the famous Beowulf. <\/em>I see multiple similarities in these two texts, and one key difference. I argue that these two tales are actually the same <\/em>story, except Hrolf Kraki <\/em>is very pagan, and the Beowulf <\/em>author attempts to make it a Christian tale. I argue that Beowulf <\/em>is a Christianized version of Hrolf Kraki. <\/em><\/p>\n

The biggest recurring motif in both Beowulf <\/em>and Hrolf Kraki <\/em>is the symbol of the bear. Both heroes (Beowulf, in Beowulf, <\/em>and Bodvar-Bjarki in Hrolf Kraki)<\/em> channel bears in their respective tales. The main similarities between the two heroes are their bravery and unmatchable, ferocious strength. Bodvar\u2019s father is named Bjorn, which literally translates to \u201cBear\u201d in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. Not only that, he is transformed into an actual <\/em>bear by his evil step-mother when he rejects her advances. He roams around as a bear by day, killing the king\u2019s livestock, and is a man at night. The name of his lover, Bodvar\u2019s mother, is Bera, meaning \u201cshe-bear\u201d. When Bjorn is killed and his bear-meat served at a feast in the castle, the evil queen makes Bera eat small pieces of it, even though Bera is warned against doing so. The result of this is that their children, born after the feast, have beast-like features. Bodvar-Bjarki\u2019s two older brothers have the marks of an elk and a hound, but Bodvar has no physical blemish. However, he has the strength and ferocity of a bear, and even gets the nickname \u201cBjarki\u201d, meaning \u201clittle-bear\u201d. Beowulf also has unmatchable strength and prowess in battle, and his name, translated, means \u201cBee-Wolf\u201d, which is a kenning (a phrase which describes a well-known noun in a creative way) for bear. Bodvar grows up, and becomes a great warrior in the hall of King Hrolf Kraki (who, I will argue, is the same character as Beowulf\u2019s <\/em>King Hrothgar), and even shape-shifts into a bear in his final battle. In the coming research and writing, I will discuss why the storytellers chose the bear to be the symbol of the warrior instead of another animal.<\/p>\n

So, if they are the same tale, why doesn\u2019t Beowulf shape-shift into a bear form? I will consider more answers to this question after further research, but as of right now, I think that when the Beowulf <\/em>tale was written down by a Christian writer, the writer sanitized the story, and possibly removed references to inhuman, witchcraft-like pagan magic. However, the writer left enough of the original tale intact that we can draw the connection to a pagan saga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year, I am focusing my writing and research on the Vikings and the Nordic mythology and sagas. The pantheon was pretty much limited to the small Scandinavian countries, especially Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and started to die off when Iceland was Christianized, in around 1000 C.E. Oral tales and storytelling are important (or … Continue reading The Mark of the Bear<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3036,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3036"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}