Iceland in Tolkien's Work?

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by davem

The real point, I think, is that the influence of Saga literature on Tolkien's work has not been sufficiently explored. Tolkien was a member of a group, The Coalbiters, who gathered together to read the Sagas in the original Icelandic, & his love of Saga literature & the way it influenced his work should be taken seriously. Pointing out other influences is to sidetrack the thread. Of course those influences are there, but in order to discover the specific influence of the Sagas on Tolkien's work we have to put them on one side.

The question is, were the Sagas a major influence on Tolkien's Legendarium or not, & if so, how & in what way? To respond to that question with 'Well, there were lots of influences.' misses the point of the question.

You're right here davem but I think also wrong. Your depiction of the story of Túrin in comparison to Egil's saga or parts of the fates of people in Njall's saga I feel compelled to accept and grant you - and Lal - a point here. There really is a similarity in the style and the structure of the narrative here. But whether it goes through all that Tolkien wrote, that I think is another question and brings back the things about other possible influences as well.

I mean it's hard to ask this kind of tightly defined question when any answers to it will so easily go off the limits. What would a comparison with the sagas actually give us if it's tightly defined to not jump outside the sagas themselves?

Were the sagas a major influence on Tolkien's legendarium? You can't answer that question without giving a somewhat grounded explanation what was the part of other mythologies in Tolkien's writing as well... Only then can you compare the relative weight of different mythologies...

Sorry to nit-pick on this.

[Bêthberry]

Much depends upon how the topic is defined and first presented and then how the posters develop and extrapolate the topic.

Myself, reading the first post here, thought that we were being asked to consider how Numenor ressembled the Old Icelanders. All well and good, except I happened at the time to be reading a compilation of old Welsh tales and legends and discovered that sunken cities are prominent in the old Welsh tales. Ah ha, says I, we have a common topic among many cultures of eld.

Now, we all know about Atlantis and we all know about Tolkien's recurrent dream of flooded civilization, and we all know about Tolkien's love of Welsh. So my initial reaction was to say, well, yes, but there's these Welsh possibilities too. So it isn't a question of ignoring the topic but of wondering just how it is to be defined. To say broadly that the Numenoreans could be like the Old Icelanders is to invite responses of 'well, how specific and definite is that similarity'.... It's a bit confusing moving between causation and correlation and simple similarities. It invites other similarities.

Besides, we have Tristram Shandy which starts not just with ancestry and the hero's birth, but with the actual ... well, ... little man as it were.

I would like to see Lalaith elaborate a bit on her post about how 'the feeling' of CoH is closer to the Eddic poems than the Sagas. What are those differences between the Eddas and the sagas? And, frankly, I would enjoy a bit more discussion of just CoH before we jump into the literary forebearers. After all, I want to explore the reading experience before I break it apart.

[Morthoron]

I think it's safe to say that Tolkien horded an immense amount of data from various external sources throughout his career and synthesized this accrued information into various literary forms as it suited him. His tastes changed as he developed his prose, and he regretted some of his decisions after his works were published (taking Dwarvish names directly from the Völuspá comes to mind). Efforts to pinpoint with any accuracy where he derived his source material can be accomplished microcosmically from tract to tract (in some cases, chapter to chapter or sentence to sentence), perhaps, but one really can't achieve this on a macrocosmic level with any degree of certainty.

davem and Lalaith have offered varying views on CoH as represenatative of either the Eddas or the Sagas from a stylistic standpoint; however, as I stated previously, the actual character of Turin in some instances bears such a striking resemblance to Kullervo in the Kalevala, that one must consider if Tolkien didn't lift sequences wholly from the Finnish text. Here is a bit of transcribing offered by Nogrod from this post...http://forum.barrowdowns.com//showpo...&postcount=430

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Shortly and not actually translated but just described...

The first paragraph:
Kullervo, son of Kalervo took his dog with him and went to the wilds. After a short trek he came to the place where he had "marred the maid, spoiled the one her mother had brought to a life".

The second:
The grass was wailing and the flowers were groaning for the misdeed. No young grass would grow or heaths blossom there as it was a dark place where the maid had been marred, the one mother had brought a life was spoiled.

The third:
Kullervo takes his sword and looks at it, turns it around and asks it questrions and thinks. Asking then from it whether it would eat the guilty flesh, drink the vile blood?

The fourth:
The sword thought about the mind of the man, getting into what he was thinking. answered with the words: "Why shouldn't I eat gladly, eat the guilty flesh and drink the vile blood? I eat the flesh of innocents and drink the blood of those with no vice as well."

The fifth:
Kullervo, son of Kalervo set the hilt of the sword to the ground and brought the edge of it to his chest. He threw himself to the sword. There he met his death.

Again, to demand that the discussion be limited to a single source as the wellspring of an entire Tolkien work(s) leaves much to be desired, particularly when whole sections of text cannot be directly ascribed with certainty to any one source, points decidedly towards a different source, or offers a multiplicity of possible sources.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Again, to demand that the discussion be limited to a single source as the wellspring of an entire Tolkien work(s) leaves much to be desired, particularly when whole sections of text cannot be directly ascribed with certainty to any one source, points decidedly towards a different source, or offers a multiplicity of possible sources.

No. If someone started a topic on The Hobbit I don't see what would be gained by loads of people coming on it to point out that Tolkien also wrote Lord of the Rings & Smith of Wooton Major, or one on Tolkien's time at Oxford & having people come on & point out that he also lived at Leeds.

In the same way I realise that one could even find points of similarity with Tristam Shandy, but...

I don't see how that helps us in understanding how the Sagas affected Tolkien's work. Anyone who knows anything about Tolkien knows that the story of Kullervo influenced CoH. Its been discussed many times, as has the influence of Beowulf & Sigurd. I'm not aware that we've spent much (if any) time discussing the Sagas in relation to Tolkien's work. This isn't a thread on 'What influenced Tolkien?' but on 'How did Iceland & its literature affect Tolkien?'

[Lalwendë]

Now play nicely.

I s'pose I have the responsibility to say something as I started the fire...I did start this up to discuss similarities between Icelandic (Norse) Sagas and the life depicted therein to Tolkien's work - specifically Numenor and The Shire, though this does not exclude other Tolkienian cultures if you spot anything interesting there. Mostly as we are reading the Sagas and want to woden (I left the typo in as that's a bit eerie - I meant widen though) discussion beyond oor hoose. Course, a bit of discussion of other associated literature to the Icelandic Sagas can also add to this (things in culture do not exist in a vacuum after all), as can a little discussion of main 'themes' and where else we might better find them (as Bethberry brings up the Atlantean theme which cannot be ignored - now where might this appear in the Sagas?). But the wild horses need some harnesses.

We have got an ace thread somewhere started by Rune about wider Norse influences too: http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...ighlight=norse At the risk of me own thread going cold, some of the mythological stuff might be more fruitfully pursued on Rune's thread.

It's not so useful in terms of a topic for things to get too baggy around the edges so that's why I have interjected - not to stop anyome discussing certain stuff but just to say that there is of course the risk that when looking at an influence someone is going to jump up and say 'but such and such' is also an influence!' We know. But I'm not pretending to say that this is THE influence - just want to have a look at it as its not really been done before.

So, have some fun, this is not a thread intended to 'get at' fixing upon a source or a meaning because we know there isn't a specific one - if you've read any of the sagas or know a little of old Iceland and Norse culture have a pop at it. From Fordim's great post on the style to my meanderings about random stuff I pick up on as I begin to read the Sagas, it's good.

Originally Posted by Bethberry

I would like to see Lalaith elaborate a bit on her post about how 'the feeling' of CoH is closer to the Eddic poems than the Sagas. What are those differences between the Eddas and the sagas? And, frankly, I would enjoy a bit more discussion of just CoH before we jump into the literary forebearers. After all, I want to explore the reading experience before I break it apart.

I would like to see more discussion of CoH too before we go into what influenced it or not, I agree. That might warrant its own thread sometime soon? Maybe a Chapter by Chapter in the near future? Hint. Hint.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

OK, I can't help myself, but I'm going to throw another faggot on the fire here and raise the interesting (to me at least) point of significant differences bewteen the Sagas and Tolkien's tales.

The first thing that comes to mind is the bickering. There's plenty of it in Middle-earth to be sure--and by bickering I don't mean open warfare or the ongoing struggle between good and evil, I mean people arguing with one another endlessly, sometimes letting these arguments get out of hand. In the Sagas such bickering almost inevitably leads to real conflict with someone taking offense, feeling as though his pride or honour has been hurt, doing some killing and then we have a blood feud. In Middle-earth this kind of escalation is relatively rare as, inevitably, someone is able to step in and make peace. In the ON these attempts are always there but they always fail. In M-E these attempts usually work out (Gimli and Legolas become fast friends, for example, instead of trying to kill one another; Frodo is able to keep Gollum and Sam from hurting one another). It makes me consider how in Middle-earth the concept of "honour" is oddly absent. Yes, people do honourable things, but they are not willing to immediately hack off someone's head if they are insulted by them. Compare this to a scene relatively common in the Sagas:

Western Icelander: Your grandfather cheated our family when you sold us that lame pig!

Eastern Icelander: Your grandfather dropped the pig on the way home!

Friendly Icelander: Now now, let's just forget about all that...

Western Icelander (to Eastern Icelander): I hear that the Sninafal Troll uses you as his woman every night!*

Eastern Icelander: That's it! I'm getting my axe!

(*This is an actual insult in some of the Sagas...)

Another big difference is in the notion of heroic action. There are numerous times in the Sagas when a hero behaves in a way that one of Tolkien's heroes never would. My favourite example is Grettir. When he hears of a farmer who is being terrorised by Vikings he says that he'll help the farmer for a price. The farmer agrees and when the Vikings next show up Grettir greets them invites them into the barn then shuts them in and burns them alive. He then collects the reward from the farmer and sails away in the Vikings' ship leaving the farmer without a barn and 12 burned corpses to contend with. Aragorn he ain't.

So despite my earlier post saying that I find the notion of northern heroism to be prevalent in Middle-earth, I think I might have to amend that. "Naked will and courage in the face of inevitable defeat" is there, but (what we would consider) silly hang-ups over matters of honour are not, nor are (to our minds) dubious tactics. So while Frodo and Aragorn are "Icelandic" in some ways I think that they are significantly, well, something else as well. And on this point I refer you back to Hookbill's excellent post and his salient reminder that there are many different ingredients at work in the "cauldron of story" that is Middle-earth...

[Nogrod]

I think I understand well what you mean davem, but if you write:

Originally Posted by davem

The question is, were the Sagas a major influence on Tolkien's Legendarium or not

you can't possibly think that discussing about something being a major (or minor) influence can be done without comparison.

But surely I do agree that it's more to the spirit of this thread to discuss more the influnces of specifically Icelandic mythology to Tolkien's work and not bring everything else in as there seems to be a host of threads that have taken those larger views in consideration.

Just to play nicely.

[Nogrod]

Thanks for an interesting opening Fordim.

Originally Posted by Fordim

It makes me consider how in Middle-earth the concept of "honour" is oddly absent. Yes, people do honourable things, but they are not willing to immediately hack off someone's head if they are insulted by them.

I would say - and this is now painted with a quite large brush I know - that Tolkien's concept of honour is that of the Romans and that of the chivalry while Icelandic sagas have a more Homeric notion of honour.

Compare the viking heroes in tha sagas to Odysseus fex. What does Odysseus do when he finds her wife encircled by the suitors? A chivalric (or Roman) honour-code would insist that he takes his place as the master of the house and insists that the "guests" leave immediately after apologising the master and the lady of the house - maybe leaving some compensation as well. But what would and Icelandic hero do - or what does Odysseus? He will butcher them to the last man with no mercy or making deals as his honour has been wounded and that's the only way to clean it.