Ratatoskr

Ratatoskr heitir ikorni,
er renna skal
at aski Yggdrasils;
arnar orđ
hann skal ofan bera
ok segia Niđhöggvi niđr.
(Grímnismál 32)

Back to the main page The Geocities Home Page

The above lines from Grímnismál is the only example of the squirrel Ratatoskr's place in norse mythology. In Snorri's Edda, often referred to as "the new Edda" or "the Prose Edda", the words are roughly the same. Snorri hasn't referred directly to this verse, but it's obvious that he has used it as a source (as indeed most of Snorri's Edda has used the socalled "Old Edda" or "Poetic Edda" as one of the main sources): Ikorni sá er heitir Ratatoskr, renn upp ok niđr eptir askinum ok berr öfundarorđ milli arnarins ok Niđhöggs. (The squirrel called Ratatoskr runs up and down the ash-tree, carrying hateful words between the eagle and Nidhogg).

The main difference between Snorri's explanation of the squirrel's role and the role expressed by the verse in Grímnismál, is that Snorri obviously must have had some idea of what kind of words the squirrel is supposed to carry. Whereas the poem that Snorri used as source merely says that the squirrel is some kind of messenger between the eagle sitting at the top of the tree and the dragon Nidhogg at the bottom, Snorri says that the messages are of a negative nature. The word he uses, öfundarorđ, means something along the lines of "hateful words".

Why did Snorri give this qualitative addition to the original poem? This, of course, is not an easy question to answer. Indeed, we will probably never know. But there are a few possible answers, that will be discusses below.

1. Snorri's role as an author.
First, it's possible that Snorri, being a poet himself, wanted to add something on his own. As the prose version of the mythology in the chapter Gylfaginning is written as a dialog, where one man asks questions and the (mainly two) other answers, it's not unthinkable that Snorri felt compelled to give, if not a reason for the little rodent's expeditions as a messenger (who would be more fit to perform the tedious task of running up and down a tree than a squirrel?), so at least some kind of idea that the relations between the dragon and the eagle were strained. (Why this is so will be explained later).

2. Other historical source material.
As a second reason, it's possible that Snorri had other sources of information than the lines in Grímnismál, in fact it's considered to be relatively certain that Snorri knew other sources than the Poetic Edda. Being a skáld, a poet whose function was not only to be writing poems himself and have knowledge of all the different forms of verse, but also to be able to recite other peoples poems as a source of knowledge and history, he must have had a lot of information that we don't know about. However, as no other sources of our squirrel have been brought to us through the darkness of the years, and Snorri's Gylfaginning generally doesn't give many other sources than the poems found in Codex Regius, No. 2365, 4⁰ (where, among other handwritten documents, Grímnismál can be found, note also that there are many other codices with much of the same content, the Regius 2365, 4⁰ being the "main"), we feel that Snorri's reason for the qualitative addition should be sought in the nature of the mythology itself, as Snorri himself might have read it. This brings us to..

3. Reasons in connection with Snorri's readings of the general mythology. The third reason is to be found in the fact that Snorri must be considered a historian, not quite in the modern scientific sense, but nevertheless with thourough knowledge of his source material. To write his lessons in the old religion (thus mainly giving other skáld's the knowledge needed to write 'correctly', see the article of Snorri's Edda and of skálds), he had examined most poems to be found in the Codex Regius, No. 2365, 4⁰, and probably seen most of the connections between them. Snorri was nearer the times when people were practising the old religion, and in another of his great works, "Heimskringla", a history of the Norwegian kings, he describes how the country was christened, along the way giving examples of how people practised the old religion, so his knowledge of this shouldn't be considered secondary in any way. However, assuming that Snorri didn't use other sources for his Edda than the poems found in Codex Regius, No. 2365, 4⁰ , it's still possible to find reasons for his addition to the contents of Ratatoskr's messages. Let's have a closer look at the contents of the verse in Grímnismál. As mentioned, the lines merely states the presence of a squirrel in the world-ash Yggdrasil, a squirrel whose sole function is to "carry words" between an eagle, sitting at the top of the tree, and a dragon named Nidhogg at the bottom. To this Snorri has added that the words brought by Ratatoskr is "hateful", or negative in content, thus paving the way for the rather popular (mis-)conception that it is the squirrel itself who is the source of this negativism, that the squirrel has the function of splitting relations. This seems to be a case of "shooting the messenger". Snorri, of course, doesn't do that. His addition must be viewed as a reading of the mythology where the senders/recipients of the squirrel's messages (the eagle and the dragon)have some sort of mythological function where they are some kind of opposites. Snorri knew the mythological functions of the eagle and the dragon, and these functions can be found in the poems of the Poetic Edda. The eagle, placed at the top of the world-tree, symbolizes freedom and proudness, a positive approach, whereas the dragon Nidhogg, placed at the bottom, symbolizes destructive powers, gnawing as it does at the roots of Yggdrasil, ultimately bringing Ragnarok, the end of the Worlds, closer. In the poem Völuspá from Codex Regius, also one of Snorri's main sources for his Edda, the symbolism of the opposites good/bad, or eagle/dragon becomes clear. After Ragnarok, a new, balanced world arises, one of it's positive features being that "waterfalls falls, and an eagle flies over it" (falla forsar, flýgr örn yfir,Völuspá 59). And, in the last verse, the dragon Nidhogg, being a horror from the days before Ragnarok, flies past for the last time, "with dead bodies in it's feathers", the last line being "now he will sink" (nú mun hann sřkkvaz('sřkkvaz' is passive, so it's "will be sunk" literally), Völuspá 66). Knowing this, it's no wonder Snorri didn't think the messages between two representantives of opposite sides in the final battle of the worlds, or the old, chaotic world and the new, ordered one, had any positive content at all. The messenger Ratatoskr performs the important task of communication between them, a role Snorri himself was not unfamiliar with, moving as he did between different kings and chiefs, needing to have great skills in diplomacy. As we know, Snorri got killed, this incident showing that his role and position didn't just give him friends. Viewed in this light, the squirrel Ratatoskr's task wasn't performed without danger, and this is probably what Snorri is stressing by adding what the nature of the messages' content were.

Top of page
Explanation of the function of the Skáld in the medieaval age of Scandinavia
About Snorri Sturluson's Edda. Back to the main page
The Geocities Home Page. Get your own home on the web for free!
Write to Ratatoskr.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page

Snorri Sturlusson's Edda.

Snorri Sturluson was a skáld from Iceland, who worked among kings in Norway, and was as close to being a king himself as he could get on Iceland, owning much land and being the head of many men. Among the great corpus of his works, that includes a big history of the Norwegian kings, Heimskringla, the Edda is considered to be one of the strangest works of the Medieval Age. Anyone who wants to gain insight into and write about the mythology of the Norse will have to use this book. The article here is mostly derivations from Anne Holtsmark's introduction in the textbook for students edition of Edda (published from Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm in the series "Nordisk Filologi").

Edda means "great grandmother", the word denoting that it contains tales from the old times. The book is written as a textbook for skalds, to teach this kind of poets the strong rules for rhymes, allitteration, and general metrics that follow the trade. The reason for having all the mythology in Gylfaginning (the chapter on the mythology), is closely connected to this. As Snorri writes, a skáld can use 3 ways to express himself. One way is to call something by it's right name, the other two are using heiti or kenningar, being ways to rename a thing, person or occasion. Snorri collected examples of how the poets used these literary techniques, and systematiced it. But in order to understand many of these, he would have to explain their origins, which often was the poems of gods and heros.

One of the main analyses of Edda, a work by Elias Wessén, is considered to be the one who best explains the composition of Snorri's work. It consists of four parts: 1. Prologue, 2. Gylfaginning, 3. Skáldskaparmál, 4. Háttatal. According to Wessén, the last part was written first. Háttatal is a poem about the Norwegian king Hákon Hákonson and Skule the Earl, whom Snorri came back to Iceland from visiting in the year 1220. The poem was finished the winter 1222-23. To this he wrote a commentary on the metric values of the poem (see above, the '3 ways'), which in content is rather ordinary, but in form is unique, as it consists of 102 verses on 100 different metric rules. When he wrote this he must have gotten the idea to write Gylfaginning, giving the complete heathen mythology. As christianity had been the main religion on Iceland and in Norway for about 200 years, he had to camouflage the story. The paradigm ruling at the time in learned circles was that the heathen gods were human beings who in some way had fooled people into believing they were deitys, giving them a religious cult. So Snorri lets a Swedish king, Gylfi, travel to Ásgard (home of the gods), to ask the ćsir (plural of ás, one type of gods, among them such important ones as Odin and Thor), how they got their powers. The ćsir have magic skills even if they are not gods, and give Gylfi illusions, so he can see a kind of heathen trinity, Hár, Iafnhár and Ţriđi, whom Gylfi asks about the creation of the world, of the gods, and of Ragnarok (the end of the world). All that these people (for they are people, not gods) tell about this, they connect to themselves and their kin, their magic thus giving Snorri the possibility to tell everything about the old religion without violating the Christian belief - it's all lies, made up of these people with magic powers. Most of the stories are built on the poems that we now have some of in the socalled Poetic Edda, but Snorri knew more poems than these.

When Snorri had finished the Prologue and Gylfaginning, he returned to Skáldskaparmál, the chapter on how skálds go about making their poems. In this he also makes a "frame" for the story as in Gylfaginning, having Bragi and Ćgir sitting at the same table at the gods' feast, Ćgir asking Bragi about the literary techniques of skálds, namely kenningar.

Snorri's Edda must have been pretty widespread on Iceland, judging from the amount of handwritten documents, complete, fragments, reworkings and so forth, still present in our time. Even though the writing of skáldpoetry was on it's way down at the time, being under pressure both from the new popular rhymesongs arriving on Iceland at the time, and from the church who didn't like the amount of pagan belief present in the poems. Still, this form of poetry had a renaissance in the 14th century, even though it used a lot of extra metrics.

Back to the Ratatoskr page.
The welcome page of Ratatoskr.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page

The Skáld of the Scandinavian Medieaval Ages.

The skáld of the Scandinavian Medieaval Age was a poet with official functions. Even though they were free as "artists", they used to be part of the high circles of kings and chiefs, telling their stories in poetic form, where the poetry had strong rules for metrics and allitteration. The poems the skálds wrote (or actually, recited, so they should be easy to remember) were often not only serving as the hailing of a specific king, but telling of their deeds especially in battle, thus serving as a way of writing history. For a long while most of the skálds held by the Norwegian kings were Icelandic, and having an Icelandic skáld was almost institutionalised by the kings in the period from 1000 to 12/1300. The importance of these being present at battles to tell the story of it, is shown (among other places) in the saga of king Olav (the saint), who in his final battle put all the skálds present between shields, so they should see everything without running too big a risk of being hurt themselves. Snorri Sturluson, who wrote the saga, was also a skáld himself, and as a historian writing the history of the kings in Norway in Heimskringla, he used the poetry produced by the skálds as sources for the history, as he used the poems in the Poetic Edda as sources for his Prose Edda. Another famous Icelandic skáld, Egill Skallagrímson, was once captured and was supposed to be executed the day after, but he saved his head by making a great poem in honour of the chief who had captured him.

The skálds' poetry was bound by very strong rules. They have many more different forms than can be found in Edda, which consists mainly of two different metric forms known as Hljóđaháttr and Fornyrđislag. The poems also differs much from the poetry in Edda in that the skálds use much more, and more complex, kenningar, a way of using metaphors for everything, making it impossible to understand if you don't have the right knowledge of the background of these kenningar. Thus, this poetry has often served as horror-examples of how complex it can actually be done. However, this complexity might have served as a means of justifying the role the skáld had.

Back to the Ratatoskr page.
The welcome page of Ratatoskr.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page