I am on a deserted beach that stretches out in every direction. Everything is gray. I’m on my knees on a sofa, looking over the side arm, and the tide is coming in rolling under the sofa, then back out again. When it washes out I see a huge black snake slithering under the sofa in a figure 8. The tide keeps washing in and out, and the snake keeps swimming under the sofa. It’s so big that the edges of the 8 shape are sticking out from under the couch on all four sides. I am terrified of it and cant’t get off the couch. It seems like the dream was really long and this was all that happened in the whole thing, just the snake swimming over and over and me trapped on the couch.

Dream of a 13 year old American girl. With permission of the dreamer.

Alone and scared, she is faced with the mysteries of womanhood. The dream is an outcry for a guiding ritual for the menarcheal girl in a culture which has demonized her flow and thus barred her from accessing her creative power. The snake slithering in a figure 8 is a symbol of the spirit Mercurius, prima materia of the alchemical art which aimed for the attainment of spiritual gold. The horizontal figure 8 is an eternity symbol called lemniscate. It accords with the natural flux and reflux of the tide, with the waxing and waning of the moon and the involution and evolution inherent in the menstrual cycle. If the girl is guided toward engaging her menstrual power consciously, she will reap gold by evolving into her own true self. For this to happen, her menstrual nature needs to be held up to her as the spiritual gift that it is.

Introduction

I experience fairy tales and folk tales as a living substance that deepens my understanding of myself and of human nature in general. As a child I throve on these stories. The risk and the tension felt real and exhilarating. I sided with the hero in every test, was shot through with relief when the giantesses were unmasked and applauded their gruesome death. I saw nothing wrong with the retribution dealt the false queen in the tale of The Giantess on the Stoneboat. You may remember that the king had a hood pulled over her head before she was stoned and attached to wild horses that tore her asunder. If only the ‘hidden’ woman (as we Icelanders call those nature beings whom most of us cannot see with our mortal eyes) in the folktale The ‘Hidden Woman’ in Hafnanúpur had had her head covered, Thorunn, the protagonist of the story, would not have become the victim of her evil eye. I was inoculated with the virtues a good girl should strive for. Thorunn and her likes were ideals held up to young females. Loved and cherished by all, they had everything a man could ask for in a wife. But even if Thorunn was gentleness incarnated, she met with ill fortune. Now I wonder whether it was not precisely because she applied herself to fulfilling the moral demands of her time that her encounter with the ‘hidden woman’ became a curse, for certainly Thorunn was much bigger than the succint and lofty description of her personality would have us believe. But this I did not understand when I was a child. To the adult reader her story shows in a clear light that it is our attitude toward nature that determines whether we experience it as benevolent or malevolent. At first sight Thorunn feels that the 'hidden woman' looks out to her with a friendly mien but when fear takes hold of her, the woman in the mount turns into a noxious being. Nature itself is neutral.

Now someone might ask why I feel driven to dig into this legacy. My tenacious interest is rooted in a personal experience which I feel compelled to share, for everything that follows is an attempt to grasp what lies behind that experience. It is from this standpoint that I approach the seven tales that have accrued around the theme that runs through my interpretation. They have helped me shed light, not solely on my own psychological struggles, but also on the predicament of the culture to which I belong. My interpretation addresses thus both the personal and the collective. While I may refer to scholars who have added to or support my understanding of the material, I want to emphasize that my approach to the stories is above all personal and that I take the liberty to have imagination as my companion on this journey. But let us first look at what prompted the quest.

One night, quite a long time ago, my favorite poet appeared to me in a dream and gave me a silver necklace. Because of my admiration for this poet, I naturally saw the dream as a favorable omen. Shortly before this visitation, I had finished my M.A.-thesis in Icelandic literature in which I dealt with my mythological heritage from the viewpoint of Jungian psychology. Through my studies I became deeply influenced by Jung and at the time of the dream participated in a dream group in New York led by a Jungian analyst. I kept my interest in my nocturnal adventures carefully hidden from family and friends in Iceland, and in particular from my fellow students at the university. Although many scholars had a burning interest in our folkloric past, it seemed clear to me that they considered themselves far removed from the ‘superstition’ that inspired this heritage and was to be attributed to the ancestors’ inability to differentiate between imagination and reality. I thus graduated from this scholarly institution with the feeling that learned knowledge and wisdom garnered from dreams were irreconcilable opposites. In short, I put scholarship on a pedestal. My effort to keep such an important part of myself from getting out into the daylight no doubt prompted my unconscious to send me the dream of the poet and the silver necklace in order to guide me out of the crisis. My secrecy was induced by the fear of being ridiculed by the scholarly community for taking my dreams seriously. Truth is that I had myself been prejudiced against those who did.

One could ask what would have happened if I had not responded to this silent voice that spoke to me from my dephts. I would have kept the hiding game going and been miserable for betraying a part of myself. From Jung I have learned that when we are dominated by an imbalance of this sort, the unconscious tries to redress the balance. If it does not succeed in leading us on the right track by gentle means, it may shake us up by the intrusion of a nightmare like, say, the thirteenth fairy in Sleeping Beauty. In its silent voice it screams: “Now you must change your ways!” But changing a behavior pattern is no easy matter, as can be inferred from the fact that the thirteenth fairy has not yet succeeded in steering us as a collective out of bad habits! We are still awaiting Thorn-Rose's awakening to a more mature reality.

I immediately associated the necklace in my dream with Brísingamen, the necklace of Freyja, Norse goddess of love and fertility. The only existing version of the ancient myth about Freyja’s acquisition of the jewel was written down by medieval Christian scholars who, it goes without saying, had no reverence for the goddess nor for the heathen divinities in general, whom they treated as human beings in the spirit of the Greek writer Euhemerus (4th century B.C.) and placed their capital city, Asgard, in the exotic and far away world of Asia. Following is an excerpt from a text I wrote about Freyja in 2003:

She comes to a stone and finds that it is open. It turns out to be the smithy of four dwarfs who are forging a gold necklace. She is attracted to it, starts to negotiate, she wants it. Taken by her beauty, the dwarfs will let her have it only if she spends one night with each. She surrenders herself and emerges with the treasure. (see link to Freyja below)

The name of the poet whom my dream presented to me as the giver of unexpected treasures is Thorsteinn from Hamar. Steinn means ‘stone’ and Hamar, the name of the farm where the poet grew up and with which he associates himself, means ‘cliff’. There was a definite link between my dream-necklace and that of the goddess. To drive the message home, my name Hall-fríður is a compound the meaning of which is ‘stone’ and ‘she who is loved’. The dream not only lent a new dimension to my name, inherited from my maternal grandmother who bestowed unconditional love on me and whom I have come to see as the ‘fairy godmother’ of my childhood, it also took me to deep and unknown places in myself. The genius of the dream-maker defies comprehension and has me in awe. By name, I am ‘she who is loved in the stone’. The challenge put to me by the dream was to find her in me. Firm in my belief that my dream-necklace was a positive symbol, I was put off by the way male scholars portrayed Freyja. One alluded to the 'rumor' that she had sold her virginity for a gold necklace! I saw her presented as a whore. I was furious at the fathers of Icelandic scholarship for mocking the goddess and showing her in such a negative light. Her behavior was made look repugnant, which meant that it was not to be imitated.

While digging fervently into this dream symbol, I engaged in deep dialogue with my dream self with the result that pendants and necklaces surfaced galore in my dreams. The reason I am telling this story is to emphasize that those archaic symbols are a living reality in our psyches today. Jung defined a symbolic image that moves the dreamer in this way as the best possible expression of a psychic content of which the dreamer is unconscious or not fully conscious but which she or he needs to integrate in order to evolve and fulfill her or his potential. In order to get the message across, the unconscious keeps hammering on it, in different guises if need be, till the dreamer grasps its meaning and integrates it into her way of being in the world. Understanding by itself does not suffice, the individual has to act in accordance with the new understanding. We see repetitions of this kind in fairy tales and folk tales. Often three attempts are needed before the hero attains the treasure, whereby the problem that set the quest in motion is resolved. In The Outcast, e.g., it is the third sister who brings back the fire and lights the way to redemption for a community shackled by materialism and greed.

Gradually I began to understand what all of this had to do with me. Most often the people who appear in our dreams stand for something in ourselves. As far as fairy tales are concerned, Jungian psychology holds that the personages and their interactions reflect a latent tension in the collective psyche at the time of their emergence. Thorsteinn from Hamar represented my desire, my need really, to connect to the poet in myself. It could be argued that I had an intimate relationship with him through his poems by which I was moved and to which I made a deep connection. Hence the communion I had with Thorsteinn was of a spiritual nature. In his poems he frequently talks about silence, the “silent, hidden, archaic, behind all that is...” When I studied his poems at the university, the teacher challenged the class with the question, “what it this silence that he is talking about?” We fell silent. The teacher wisely left it at that, knowing that each had to find the answer for him or herself. But by asking, he had planted a seed.

The threads that I have unravelled here led to a search for the meaning concealed in Freyja’s Brísingamen. For not only did Thorsteinn give me the silver necklace, he also gave me a silver key ring. My task was to find the key. I realized that Freyja’s intercourse with the dwarfs was of a spiritual nature and that her jewel was a symbolic offspring engendered by that spiritual union. The dwarfs are master smiths who mediate images from the creative wellspring to the conscious mind. When we have received the image we can begin the process of realizing it and thus take an active part in the ceaselss shaping and reshaping of Creation.

Freyja stayed four nights in the stone. The number four is a universal symbol of wholeness, as can be inferred from the four phases of the moon, the four directions, seasons, etc. Hence Freyja’s intimate relationship with nature is healing. Every creative person needs to be in relationship with his or her inner nature, and symbolism that induces creation reflects the intercourse of opposites in some form. The intercourse between a man and a woman begets a biological offspring but the intercourse between the ego and the unconscious engenders a symbolic one. Freyja’s Brísingamen is an example of the latter. In essence the symbolic jewel is incarnated by her daughter Hnoss (‘treasure’) whom she begat with her husband Od (Óður) about whom we know nothing save his name. It means ‘poetry’, or the ‘wild’ (i.e. uncivilized) emotions from which it springs. As told by Snorri Sturluson,

[Freyja] married a man named Od. Their daughter is Hnoss. She is so beautiful that that which is beautiful and precious is called ‘hnoss’ after her (Gylfaginning, 35).

In the Eddic poem Völuspá (‘Prophecy of the Seeress’) óður is the noun for ‘soul’. Hnoss I take to represent Freyja’s female descendants, her daughters who each and every one inherits the jewel and what it stands for. Gersemi (‘jewel, treasure’) is another name for Freyja’s daughter. As guardian of the jewel, the daughter was conceived of as a treasure herself. In Hnoss we thus have the maiden as the object of the male’s conquest which is an ever popular theme in myth and fairy tale. The objectification of the female goes back a long way.

It was when I was asked to write about Freyja for a dictionary of symbolism that I came upon the key to Brísingamen and the mysterious locket sprang open. At this crucial point the fragmented mythological account that has come down to us arranged itself into a more complete picture. This is how I saw it at that time:

Brísinga (gen.) means “flames of fire”, men is identical with the “moon-root” men, from which is also derived the “spirit-word” manas (Neumann: 1954, 84/90). As in Norse mythology Sun is feminine and Moon masculine, Freyja’s adventure conjures up an image of the descending sun who abandons herself in the dissolving embrace of the moon in its dark phase, her red embers bleeding from under his coal-black disk, arranged in a flaming necklace. [...] The moon was magic, and so was the menstruating woman, whose period was commonly linked with the new moon, at which time it is conjunct with the sun. The sacred menstrual flow of the goddess trickles through patriarchal myth in obscure poetic language. In the legends of later times we find her fountain of gold turned into a stagnant, but alluring, pit. In those noxious depths lies the key to a woman’s selfhood and creativity (link to Freyja below).

As men means ‘pendant, necklace’ in Icelandic, the natural phenomenon in which Brísingamen is seemingly rooted, i.e., the conjunction of the heavenly bodies of the Sun and the Moon during an eclipse of the sun, has been overlooked. I suggest that Freyja’s acquisition of Brísingamen is an initiation myth inspired by this heavenly spectacle in accordance with the hermetic dictum “as above, so below”. That this celestial display still exerts a powerful attraction on modern man is borne out by a poetic description by Edwin L. Aguirre:

Nothing quite matches the experience of viewing a total eclipse of the Sun. Whether it’s the coal-black disk of the Moon set against the ghostly, pearly white corone, the solar prominences arranged like a necklace of rubies around the lunar limb, or the spectacular diamon ring bursting forth from behind a deep lunar valley, the image of an eclipse will remain forever etched in a viewer’s mind (“Imaging a Solar Eclipse” at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/astrophotography/3070066.html).

This impressive nature phenomenon engendered the symbol of the ‘sacred marriage’ which played an important part in medieval alchemy. According to Jung the sacred marriage, or coniunctio, is an archetype that bridges the conscious and the unconscious and brings about the creative union of opposites. The result is transformation which entails death of the old self and birth of a new understanding that changes the worldview and behavior of an individual or the collective.

For the poets of old, Freyja’s tears were a metaphor for gold. And there are those who project the eye of God onto the solar eclipse. One can speculate whether it was this celestial image that gave rise to the identification of Freyja’s tear with red gold, as told by Snorri Sturluson:

Od went far away, but Freyja stays behind and cries, but her tear is red gold (Gylfaginning, 35).

Interestingly, Biedermann informs us that “for psychoanalysts the eye (like the mouth) as a dream image is often a veiled symbol for the female sexual orifice” (123). And Schapira refers to the truth-seeing third eye as “the dark vaginal eye of the goddess” (111). It is therefore tempting to read the above quote from Snorri as a euphemistic description of menstrual bleeding. Freyja was a völva (cf. Lat. volva, vulva =’womb’), a denomination that refers to her role as a ‘seeress’. Her attribute, Brísingamen, would have emphasized this role.

As a fertility goddess Freyja personified the Sun and in ancient poetic language the Moon is presented as a personage belonging to the race of giants (Simek, 166). Another term for giant is thurs (þurs). In the Eddic poem Lay of Alvís the god Thor bestows the pejorative attribute thurs on a dwarf who has come to abduct the god’s daughter as his bride (st. 2). Here no differentiation is made between giant and dwarf. Also, as noted by Simek (56-57), there is no evidence that dwarfs were originally conceived of as beings of very small stature like the tiny figures we encounter in fairy tales. It would be hard to imagine the latter holding up the sky like the four dwarfs associated with the four cardinal directions in Norse mythology! The encounter between Thor, who is better known for brawn than brains, and the omniscient dwarf in the Lay of Alvís is a comic allusion to Freyja’s bridal episode in the stone. Thurs is the name attributed to the þ-rune which corresponds to a letter called 'thorn' in the modern alphabet.

From Tarot of Northern Shadows Note the Thurs rune on the Devil's bracelet

A Norwegian rune poem from the 12th century explains that “thurs causes the sickness of women” and an Icelandic poem from the 15th century states that “thurs is the torment of women / and an inhabitant of rocks.” The indications are that thurs was associated with menstruation. In the Lay of Hárbard, Thor is again preoccupied with the bride in the stone. Comparing exploits with Odin who is disguised as the ferryman Hárbard, Thor prides himself of having gone east and “battered giants / evil brides, / who went to the rock” (st. 23). The rune poems show that the oppressor’s aggressive hammering against the female’s intimate communion with her ‘lunar other’ has had its intended effect. What before was conceived of as a precious gift in the broadest sense of the word, had by now become a suffering caused by evil. The oppressor had planted himself in the female psyche... Writing this, the gift from my dream poet takes on a new meaning for me. I know it has been brewing in me but it is only now that the message comes through, loud and clear. The poet’s name is a compound: Thor-steinn. He is thus the namesake of Thor and associated with ‘stone’. This is a revelation. All of a sudden I see his gift as the oppressor’s offer of reconciliation. As an attempt to bring about a union between contending parts of myself.

In an entry on “Menstruation” for The Book of Symbols I wrote:

In primitive view the embryo of a new life is “built up” from the blood, which ceases to flow during pregnancy (Neumann: 1991, 31). By the same token, menstruation spells death and dissolution of structure. It thus becomes the germinating soil of a new cycle of possibilities. It carries an evolutionary force which mythology gives us reason to believe thrust humanity out of a state of unconsciousness. (see link to "Menstruation" below)

In my fantasy, the story that has come down to us about Freyja’s acquisition of Brísingamen is a Christian rendering of a ritual reenactment of the original episode, the first flow as experienced and envisioned by our ancestresses at the dawn of day. An apt metaphor used by the Chinese for menstruation is “the first tide”, implying an incipient movement (Eberhard, 186). As from the Jungian perspective a dream holds up to the dreamer a process that has already run its course but may take the individual a lifetime to work through, so Freyja’s going down to the underworld to acquire the gold necklace reflects the potential to reach the spiritual perfection symbolized by the gold. This potential is inherent in her daughters who, if receptive of the gift bestowed on them, come closer to the goal with each cycle, for cyclicity is also reflected in the necklace which is frequently represented as a gold ring. As an archetypal symbol, Brísingamen is the emotive force that drives the initiate toward the fulfilment of her potential. Going down into the mineral world means going deep into matter and speaks of primal engagement with the body. It is an approach that runs counter to the Christian yearning for Heaven and fear of the sinful body. Hence “going into rocks” was an engagement with evil and a sure path to Hell.

Our ancestresses responded to the call of the blood by withdrawing from their mundain tasks during their periods and devoted themselves to artistic endevours, poetry, song, and dreaming. We see this in the tale about Freyja and the dwarfs:

She had her own bower. She was both beautiful and strong, so that it is said that if the door was closed and locked, no man was allowed into the bower without Freyja’s consent (Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda, I, 367).

Immediately afterwards, like a dream, follows the account of Freyja’s descent into the stone and her return with Brísingamen. Seclusion of the menstruating woman has been widely practiced since time immemorial, be it in a special outhouse or a dark corner of the house. The general belief, that menstrual seclusion was forced upon woman by man because she was unclean, is giving way to scholarly research which suggests that ritual seclusion was initiated by the women themselves. Attuned to the lunar rhythm, they withdrew to their bower when the moon withdrew from the sky, either by themselves or in groups, and devoted themselves to spiritual and creative tasks. The above description of Freyja supports that view. It also intimates that woman had to defend her sovereignty over her body!

But what of the silver necklace and the silver key ring given to me by a poet, symbolic dream images that have led me to this project? It has occurred to me that woman goes through a second initiation during menopause, this time into her crone-hood. Traditionally the crone becomes a teacher and a guide for younger women. The staging of my dream was in the cafeteria at the university, where I was a student and the poet the vendor or salesclerk. In retrospect I realize that so preoccupied was I with the gift and the giver that I paid no attention to the setting which is highly relevant in a dream. If the message was about my initiation into crone-hood, the dream presented me in a role that I needed to grow out of, that of a student. And by putting the poet whom I had such a lofty admiration for in the role of a salesclerk, the dream brought him down to earth and by so doing made my inner poet more accessible for me. My oversight nothwithstanding, it is clear that in order to fulfill my function as a crone, I had to find the key to the meaning of Brísingamen.

At the beginning of my reflections, I touched on the elevated description of Thorunn’s personality in The Hidden Woman in Hafnanúpur and the powerful influence such stereotypes effectuate. An ode to Freyja has been dedicated as a toast to Icelandic women, implying that each of us, old and young, incarnates the goddess. On festive occasions the male population rises in our honor and sings with inspired vigor (in my loose translation):

You Freyja of the fosterland, you beautiful Goddess of the Vanir, mother, wife, and maiden, accept our acclaim and praise. Blessed be your gentle smile and golden tear. You’ve been for our land and folk a light for thousand years. Matthías Jochumsson (1835-1920)

This eulogy to a gently smiling goddess who cries golden tears, composed by a Christian minister one thousand years after the settlement in 874 of the Norse Vikings in Iceland, is in odd contrast to the denunciation of Freyja as “a bitch” by one of the proponents of Christianity at the Icelandic Althing in 999:

“I do not wish to vilify the gods, but I think Freyja is a bitch.”

It seems fair to assume that since the time of Christianization the goddess has been softened and domesticated to better serve as inspiration for women to fulfill the roles paid homage to in the poem. The important question is whether this development has taken place on women’s own premises.

In the rare glimpses we catch of the goddess in the myths, she is by no means always gentle and smiling. In The Lay of Thrym, the fuming Freyja bears a closer resemblance to the farmer’s daughter in the folktale The Farmer at Fossvellir than the description of the nineteenth century minister. And in the account From Freyja and the Dwarfs, she comes across as a firm, strong woman who sets her boundaries. The farmer’s daughter in the folk tale is an example of the power that resides in woman. She is a threat to the ministers in the tale who resort to shutting her up in a cave in the company of four giants. We recognize the theme. Only here the oppressor does not wield a hammer but a wand. The folk tale reveals that not only did man fear outer nature but also the menstrual nature of woman which he has restrained and controlled with questionable means and ridicule.

We can react to suppression with furious anger like the farmer’s daughter in the tale or subject ourselves to it with detrimental consequences for our body and soul like Thorunn in The Hidden Woman in Hafnanúpur. What we desire is to be ourselves, to find our own rhythm, and flower on our own terms. In order to achieve this we need to be connected to our roots and grounded in our bodies, and we need to be aware that we are not only dealing with cultural stereotypes but also with forces in our psyches that our gods and goddesses have come to personify. If every woman carries Freyja within like our minister poet upholds, then we need to understand what Freyja represents so that we know how to channel that engergy in a conscious and constructive manner. Of course Freyja is present in men, too, and the problem we women come up against is that the image we get of her in the myths, and in the above poem, is presented from the point of view of Christian males. She was slandered as a bitch by the lawmaker and Christian missionary at the juncture of heathendom and Christianity and praised as a gentle creature who smiles through golden tears by a Christian minister nine centuries later. Is it any wonder that we ask: who was Freyja? At this time when alienation seems to reign rampant, I believe that it is of vital importance that we reconnect to the goddess of love and fertility. What follows is a quest for such a reunion.

Thorn-Rose

From the Fairytale Book of Steingrímur Thorsteinsson

Once upon a time there were a king and a queen. Every day they said: “If only we had a child!” But their prayer was not answered. Then one day, when the queen was bathing, a crab crawled on land from the water’s edge and said: “Your wish will be fulfilled and you will have a daughter.”

The crab’s prophecy came true, and the queen gave birth to a girl child so beautiful that the king was beside himself with joy and called for a a public celebration. He not only invited relatives and friends to that celebration, he also invited wise women, so that they would all be loyal and well disposed toward the child. There were thirteen in his kingdom, but as he owned only twelve gold plates to serve them on, he could not invite the thirteenth. Now those who were invited arrived, and as the feast came to an end, they bestowed their miraculous gifts on the child. One gave her chastity, another beauty, the third wealth, and thus one after the other they gave to the child everything that was of greatest value in the world. But as eleven had pronounced their wishes, the thirteenth, who had not been invited, came with the intention of avenging herself. She called out and said: “In her fifteenth year the princess shall prick herself on a spindle and drop dead.”

Then the twelfth, who had not yet pronounced her wish, stepped forth; she could not erase the evil doom, but temper it she could, and so she said: “Yet the princess shall not die but lie asleep for a hundred years.

”The king, hoping that he would nonetheless be able to protect his child from this evil doom, ordered that all the spindles in the kingdom be destroyed. But everything the wise women had said manifested in the princess, for so beautiful, virtuous, kind and wise was she, that everyone who laid eyes on her was bound to love her dearly.

Then it happened one day that the king and the queen were away from home but their daughter, who was fully fifteen at the time, was left by herself in the palace. She walked about hither and thither as she pleased, exploring parlors and rooms. Finally she came to an old tower. She ascended a narrow staircase and came upon a small door. There was a gold key in the lock. She turned the key and the door swung open. She then came into a small room where an old woman busied herself with spinning flax. “What are you doing here, mother dear!” says the princess. – “I am spinning flax,” replies the old woman nodding her head. – “How fast it spins around, the poor wretch!” said the princess, took the spindle from her and intended to start spinning. But no sooner had she touched the spindle than the wise woman’s prophecy came true, and she pricked her finger.

She immediately fell to the ground and heavy sleep came over her. The king and the queen now came home and they, too, fell asleep along with the entire court. The horses fell asleep in the stable and the dogs in the garden, the pigeons on the roof and the flies on the wall. The fire that burned in the hearth slowed down and fell asleep; the sizzling frying-sound fell silent and the meat stopped cooking; the cook was about to tear the kitchen boy’s hair out for he had made some mistake, but that came to nought. He let go of him and fell asleep. Thus sleep and dead silence spread over everything that lived and breathed.

A thornhedge then began to grow around the palace, and it continued to grow from one year to the next, till it reached around and above it, so nothing was to be seen of it, not even the weathercocks on the roof. But all over the country people told the tale of the beautiful, sleeping Thorn-Rose, for that was what the princess was called, and from time to time princes ventured to break through the hedge to get into the palace. But it was an endeavour doomed to fail, for it was as if the thorns grabbed each other by claws. The princes thus became stuck between them and suffered a pitiful death.

Now many, many years went by and a certain prince passed through the country. An old man told him about the thornhedge and mentioned that people believed there was a palace behind it, and asleep in this palace was a beautiful princess whose name was Thorn-Rose, and along with her the entire court. He also told him, as he himself had been told by his grandfather, that the princes who had tried to break through the thornhedge had become stuck in it and suffered a torturous death.

“This will not deter me ,” said the young prince, “I am going to break through the hedge and see the beautiful Thorn-Rose.” The old man tried in every way to discourage him, but it was to no avail.

But now it so happened that on the day the prince arrived the one hundred years had passed. When he came to the thornhedge, it had turned into big and beautiful flowers which disentangled by themselves so that he passed through safe and sound, but everything closed again on his heels and became a hedge as before. He now came into the palace. Horses and speckled deerhounds slept in the palace garden but on the roof sat pigeons with their heads stuck under their wings. As he came in, he saw the flies asleep on the walls. The cook in the kitchen had his hand still aloft, the kitchen maid was in the midst of plucking a black hen. The prince walked further in and came upon the people of the court sleeping in a heap and the king with his queen on top. He went further still and finally came to the tower and opened the door to the little room in which Thorn-Rose was sleeping.

She lay there and was so lovely that he could not take his eyes of her, and he bent over her and kissed her. But when he had given her the kiss, she opened her eyes, awakened from her sleep and smiled to him. They now went down together, and the king and the queen along with all the people of the court woke up and looked at each other in wonder. The horses in the garden stood up and shook themselves, the deerhounds engaged in play and wiggled their tails, the pigeons pulled their heads from under their wings and flew into the fields. The flies started to crawl on the wall, the fire came alive and blazing in the kitchen so the food got cooked and the roast crackled; the cook smacked the kitchen boy so that he screamed and the kitchen maid finished plucking the hen. The prince now drank his wedding (see note below) to Thorn-Rose and they lived happily together for the rest of their lives.

This archaic expression has its roots in a celtic ritual in which a new king weds himself to the goddess of the land, Lady Sovereignty, by drinking from a cup offered him by her mortal representative. Thorn-Rose is thus an incarnation of the goddess from whom the prince accepts his rulership as a new king who brings a new order to the collective. Icelandic writer Svava Jakobsdottir has illustrated this sacred custom in her novel The Saga of Gunnlöd, a work inspired by Odin’s legendary theft of the mead of poetry from Gunnlöd, who was its guardian.

Thorn-Rose

Interpretation

Menstruation has long been veiled by a mysterious silence in our culture. In fairy tales, myths and folk tales this subject is treated sub rosa. In the six volumes of Icelandic Fairy Tales and Folk Tales there is only one tale that deals with menstruation in plain terms. It is called The Witch’s Ride and presents menstruation in a sarcastic and negative light. Because of the secrecy surrounding menstrual blood in our lives and culture, scholars who dedicated themselves to making our heritage accessible to us, and who for the most part were males, overlooked this important part of female experience in their interpretation of these old stories. Today it is commonly agreed upon that the dramatic highpoint of Thorn-Rose revolves around a young woman’s first bleeding. In the context of this tale, it is interesting to note the euphemism ‘aunt Rose is on visit’ used by young Icelandic women when they are having their period.

In this discussion I will attempt to unwrap the gift of the 13th Wise Woman and explore its meaning for women. As paradoxical as it may seem, the story suggests that it is something precious. Gift is the same as talent. We do not see Thorn-Rose make use of the talents menstruation bestows on woman, rather are we likely to see her primarily as a lovely young girl whom many men desire and a courageous prince finally releases from an evil spell. At first sight it might seem that the tale confirms the traditional gender roles that no longer fit our modern life style. But if we approach the story on a deeper level, we will realize that there is more to this familiar tale than meets the eye.

Thorn-Rose as Archetype of Female Initiation

Fairy tales are not anchored in a definite time or place: “Once upon a time there were a king and queen...” This is how the story of Thorn-Rose begins. Their plot takes place in timeless eternity and reveals dramatic events in the human psyche at the time of their emergence on the communal stage. Although those stories have roots in an archaic past, they reflect to us the same fundamental problems as we are dealing with today. On the surface they seem infinitely distant from our familiar reality, but they have been shown to contain the purest presentation of the human psyche’s fundamental patterns. They are a mirror in which we can see our very soul. Thorn-Rose represents the biological and psychological reality of all young women. She is an archetype as Carl Jung called those fundamental patterns shared by humanity. Every young girl goes through initiation into womanhood at the time of her first bleeding. It however depends on the cultural code of her environment how she experiences the profound changes that take place in her at this juncture in her life.

In many traditional societies female initiation is channeled through certain rituals. In our Christian culture it is the confirmation at age thirteen to fourteen that marks a young person’s entry into the community of adults. But the confirmation ritual has no direct bearing on the physical and psychological changes a young girl is undergoing at this time. It is not the newly discovered blood trickling from her body that is being celebrated at the altar but that of the male Christ, which He shed on the cross for our sins as corporeal beings. Although the onset of menstruation is increasingly regarded as an occasion for celebration in our fast-paced, materialist culture, young women may not be fully aware of its power and spiritual dimension. The story of Thorn-Rose may help shed light on this.

Messenger from the Deep Blue Sea

As is true of every fairy tale, there is something missing at the beginning. The royal couple cannot conceive. This means that the collective is stagnated and needs new blood to evolve. It is a crab that sets evolution in motion. And where do we encounter a talking crab? In dreams. Fairy tales have their origin in dreams and visions of people who were in close relationship with nature and to whom inner and outer reality were of equal importance, dreams and waking experiences equally real. They lived in a unified world and might find it completely legitimate to relate the events of the night without specifying that it was a dream.

It is not uncommon that animals visit us in dreams, and usually we sense their message even if it is not put into words. These dream animals are symbols for instincts and propensities in ourselves of which we are unconscious. If we dream of a dog we would reflect on the specific characteristics of that animal, like for instance its keen sense of smell and hearing, its instinctive ability to find its way, which has led to its widespread symbolic meaning as a guide to the other world. From our interaction with the animal in the dream, and the feelings associated with it, we can infer how we relate to this nature in ourselves. Dreams have the practical function of alerting us to something of which we are not aware and would be better off knowing.

As a domesticated animal the dog has a close relationship with man who is its undisputed master. As a cold blooded sea creature, the crab on the other hand is a symbol for something that is alien to human consciousness. Yet it is part of the queen’s psyche. Encased in its shell it points to an inscrutable mystery. This theme is echoed in the locked little room in the tower where Thorn-Rose encounters the mysterious spinster. The gold key that allows her to enter the room implies that menstruation grants the girl access to mystery. The theme is again repeated in the thornhedge that rises and encloses Thorn-Rose, who has become part of the mystery and a ‘treasure hard to attain’ whom princes desire and risk their lives for.

The crab is a primitive sea creature and the sea, science tells us, was the cradle of life. As a symbol the crab points to our origin, to our very roots to which we need to be connected in order to evolve and fulfill our potential. The prophesying crab emerges from the depths and announces to the queen that she will give birth to a daughter. Inevitably we are reminded of the celestial messenger Gabriel who announced to Mary that she would give birth to a son.

The Divine Daughter

We mentioned before that it is a lack that sets the story in motion. Thorn-Rose is one of the tales collected by the brothers Grimm. As reported by the Jungian analyst, Marie-Louise von Franz, it was a “religious search for something which seemed lacking in official Christian teaching that first induced the famous brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm to collect folktales” (1996, 4). If we look at our tale in this light, we realize that what is lacking in Christian teaching is the divine mother-daughter pair, represented here by the spinster and Thorn-Rose who addresses the old woman as ‘mother’. The queen is Thorn-Rose’s earthly mother but the spinster, she who spins the thread of life, is Eternity incarnated. And significantly she is spinning flax.

One of the names attributed to Freyja, Norse goddess of love and fertility, is Hörn, derived from hör which means ‘flax’. This betrays a connection between Freyja and the spinster. In the Introduction we saw that leading up to the Christianization of Iceland in the year 1000, the goddess and feminine face of divine Love was publicly decried as a ‘bitch’ by lawmaker and Christian missionary Hjalti Skeggjason. Freyja’s important stature can be inferred from the fact that the missionary was subjected to three years of exile for the blasphemy. With the advent of Christianity, love poetry, said to be favored by Freyja, became forbidden by law, and a man who serenaded a woman risked a lifelong expulsion from human society. To the proponents of the new religion, the submissive Mary was no doubt a preferable model for womenfolk than was the unruly and independent goddess. Also, if we take a close look, do we not see in Thorn-Rose’s high-flown character description qualities attributed to the saintly Virgin?

As touched upon in the Introduction, Freyja had a daughter called Hnoss (‘treasure’) by her husband Od (Óður), who is hidden from view in the myths and of whom we know nothing but the name, the binary meaning of which is ‘wild’ and ‘poetry, poem’. It was mentioned also that in the context of the creation of man and woman as described in the Prophecy of the Seeress, the noun óður is taken to mean ‘soul’, or as put by Nordal, “the divine spark in man which is influenced by higher powers. [...] That is why poetry is called óð[u]r” (73). In like manner the daughter Hnoss is but a name which stands for something precious and sought after. And now we are getting close to Thorn-Rose. The spinster and the treasured young heroine of the folk tale seemingly embody the same archetypes as the goddess Freyja and her divine daughter Hnoss. And we can imagine that the 13th Wise Woman incarnates the goddess’s ire for having been exiled in our culture.

By gleaning shards of our ancestors’ repressed religion from the treasure trove of fairy tales, we gain a more complete picture of our psychological heritage and an enhanced ability to differentiate between the genuine and the false in ourselves and the culture. When the new religion replaced the old one, elements of the latter that did not serve the new order were demonized and repressed. The tale of Thorn-Rose shows however that what was ‘once upon a time’ lives on in our psyches. If it is a question of a vital link in our psychological make-up, the repressed reality turns into dis-ease (consider crab as glyph for the zodiacal sign Cancer). Repression absorbs energy and blocks creativity. Such was the state of affairs in the sterile kingdom at the outset.

Etymology shows an intimate relationship between the moon (derived from IE. *mēn- =‘month, moon’, whence Lat. mensis, Gr. mēn=‘month’ and mēne=‘moon’) and menstruation. In the Germanic languages moon is masculine. ‘Once upon a time’ it was widely believed, and still is in some traditional societies, that menstruation was caused by the moon in the guise of a male, or a ‘dream husband’, who had sexual intercourse with the woman at her period. Hence first bleeding would be referred to as a deflowering. This tradition would explain Freyja’s ‘hidden’ husband and father of her precious daughter, i.e., herself cleansed, reborn and ever renewed through her female descendants emerging from their seclusion along with the crescent moon.

The Hermaphroditic Rose

We must not overlook that Thorn-Rose allegedly pricks her finger, which bleeds. The finger is a phallic symbol. This implies that menstruation has a phallic connotation. The finger is a displacement from the bleeding cervix, Thorn-Rose’s ‘hidden’ or invisible inner phallus. Shuttle and Redgrove point out that “what is most like a phallus inside the woman is the cervix of the womb, particularly at menstruation, when it ejaculates blood” (102). Sharon Olds in her poem Am and Am not likens the vagina to a snake: “Central inside me this one I am and am not, [...] / like a snake’s reticulated body, rings of muscle- / like the penis outside-in, its twin” (87). Olds’ metaphor evokes woman’s legendary relationship with the snake, most notably her awakening to consciousness in the Garden of Eden where the Lord established enmity between the two. A trait shared by the womb and the snake is their rejuvenating shedding of skin.

In the two quotations above we have on the one hand an image of the female genitalia as an ejaculating phallus and on the other as a receiving vessel. In this, woman’s sexual make-up is akin to the hermaphroditic rose. This twofold nature accords with the observed difference in modern woman’s sexual expression at the two poles of her sexual peaks, menstruation and ovulation. In the latter instance she feels most ‘loving’ and ‘receptive’ while around the time of flow her feelings express themselves in an ‘impatient demand’ for sex. Also it is a period filled with ‘extroverted activity and urgency’. These findings led to the conclusion that the latter period of sexuality was more ‘masculine’ in character (Weideger, pp. 121; Shuttle, pp. 84). Not quite the image we get of sweet Thorn-Rose. And certainly not an ideal for a compliant wife!

Rather than define woman’s sexual expression at the time of her period as ‘masculine’, thereby implying that her more passive attitude at ovulation is ‘womanly’, a more open approach qualifies her experience at this time as ‘another dimension of female sexuality.’ As opposed to the desire to ‘surrender’ felt at the time of ovulation, a desire to ‘capture and envelop’ is more likely to be experienced at the menstrual period (ibid.). It is as if the opposite poles of phallic and receptive energies are aroused in woman at this time. This is her fertile moment of spiritual conception, of the sacred marriage within, the seeds of which lead to her blossoming as a complete and creative individual. In the tale of Thorn-Rose, this maturation process is hidden within the tower beyond the thornhedge. As this part of woman’s nature became demonized and repressed in patriarchal culture, many women are at war with themselves during their period, without really knowing why. They have come to accept the pains and tribulations accompanying their periods as the natural state of affairs. The ideal embodied by sweet Thorn-Rose that they strive to meet, constellates the murderous rebel in them embodied by the 13th Wise Woman, who has to be repressed.

Moon as Foundation of Consciousness

But what about the crab? In astrology the Moon rules the sign of Cancer. Those who know tarot will recognize the Moon-card in the initial scene of Thorn-Rose.

From the Rider-Waite Tarot

We see a crustacean crawling out of the water under a conjunct sun and moon. Something is stirring in the unconscious and evolution is set in motion, the tortuous path of which lies between the wild (wolf) and the tame (dog) and leads from the mineral forms of life, through lush green fields toward distant blue mountain-tops of spiritual attainment. The implication is that awareness of the moon and its cycles were instrumental in laying the foundation of human consciousness. The Moon-card thus reflects a new beginning, while at the same time reminding us that every new beginning contains the seed of death as is manifested in the moon’s cycles. The fairy tale confirms this in that Thorn-Rose and the prince, whose marriage inaugurates a new ruling principle in the individual or collective psyche, are mortal beings. “They lived happily together for the rest of their lives.” No ruling principle is everlasting, that is the optimistic note struck by the tale. The old king will die, if only symbolically, in yielding his power to the prince. The greatest inhibitor on our evolutionary path is our fear of death. The 13th Wise Woman holds this fear up to us. What she is really saying is that the image of the ideal maiden has to die and the whole of female experience needs to be embraced.

The Prolonged Sleep

Thorn-Rose’s prolonged sleep implies that the processing period from the moment an idea alien to the ruling mindset takes root till the actualization of a radical transformation is a long one. If cut off from her roots, a person cannot evolve towards the fulfillment of her potential. She becomes stuck in a predictible pattern, a vicious cycle. This is also true of our culture which to a great extent controls our mindset, without our being conscious of the artificial limitations it imposes on us. This vicious cycle is portrayed in the repeated attempts of the princes who tried to break through the wicked thornhedge. What was required was a new and radically different approach. By becoming conscious, we contribute to the evolution and growth of the whole of which we are a part.

It is when the queen is relaxing in her bath that her unconscious lunar nature gains access to her solar consciousness and something new comes into being. This is why it is important to listen to our dreams which all too often we dismiss as ‘just a dream’. Their guidance helps us get out of the rut and correct our course if we are led astray. An upsetting nightmare like the intrusion of the 13th Wise Woman is an indication that we are acting against our nature and best interests. It urges us to reassess our approach toward life and ourselves.

Let us take a closer look at what triggered the fury of the 13th Wise Woman. Her exclusion from the table at Thorn-Rose’s natal feast smacks of the exclusion of menstruating women from the communion table of the early Christian Church (Weideger, 89). Considering that in earlier times menstrual blood was regarded as a source of divine wisdom, fertility and healing, her spite becomes understandable. First the king attempts to deprive his daughter of this gift and then to eradicate it altogether by having all the spindles in his kingdom destroyed, a measure somewhat reminiscent of the medieval witch hunt when wise women were burned at the stake by the masses. But woman’s menstrual cycle is subjected to the laws of nature and not to the will of man, even if he is a king. The war against the dangerous intruder is still going on, though, and has now taken on the modern guise of a pill. Patriarchal culture’s negative attitude toward menstruation continues to make women an easy prey for exploitation.

In her interpretation of Sleeping Beauty, Annette Høst associates the 12 gold plates with the solar principle and the unlucky number 13 with the moon (“Blessed by the Moon” at http://www.shamanism.dk). The solar calendar that we live by has 12 months in the year while that of our agriculturist ancestors was lunar, with 13 twenty eight day cycles (plus a day), the length of which accords with woman’s average menstrual cycle. The belief that Friday the 13th will bring us bad luck persists to this day. This would be the day the 13th Wise Woman brings disaster on us! Friday derives its name from Freyja, just as the Romans named this weekday dies Veneris for the goddess Venus. It is telling of the dramatic shift from heathendom to Christianity that the day previously associated with Love in the Icelandic language, frjádagur (the verb frjá means ‘to love’), was changed to föstudagur which implies fasting and hence a chastening of the flesh. The implication is that we should not love our body which was deemed an obstruction rather than a vehicle towards spiritual growth. We can also speculate whether it is a coincidence that Christ was crucified on a Friday.

In a culture that does not value menstruation, a woman is likely to experience it as a curse. The king within her, her chastising superego, will resist its power with all his might. The Lord’s decree that she should be victim of her feminine nature will continue unconsciously to work its magic. By fighting it, she is likely to be victimized by the premenstrual syndrom, irritated and irascible due to her wrestle with the vengeful 13th Wise Woman who represents menstrual power gone destructive. Høst, herself a shaman as was Freyja, exhorts women to welcome this wild, untamable power that comes uninvited every month, to tune into it and be receptive to Nature and her spirits in a conscious and cooperative manner. By so doing, the curse will be transformed into a blessing.

The wildness of the untamable power is reflected in the thornhedge which grows without restraint, reminiscent of a virgin forest. The image may be a vestige of menstrual seclusion practiced by Germanic women ‘once upon a time’ and from which men, jealous of their wives’ erotic affair with the wild and poetic moon spirit, were excluded. By excluding the 13th Wise Woman from Thorn-Rose’s natal feast the king attempts to turn the tables. If before menstrual seclusion was initiated by the women themselves as many believe, then the king’s measure may reflect its becoming enforced by the male dominated culture that feared its revolutionary power. Today this primal fear often takes on the expression of ridicule and feigned commisseration induced by her impossible temper tantrums around the time of flow.

Informed by the same archtype as the thornhedge is the wall of flickering flames that encircles the virginal bower in myths and legends, an image seemingly derived from the solar prominences whirling around the black lunar limb during an eclipse of the sun. Another metaphor of the same order is the virulent serpent that bites its tail and girdles the bower. The circle form echoes the menstrual cycle which reflects in a nutshell the cyclical death and rebirth of the moon and the seasons.

The duration of sleep in menstrual tales is generally three or four days, i.e., the length of the period, and points to the attraction the body exerts on the mind which is envisioned as sleeping. The implication is that her rational mind is not in control during the period. At this time woman is pulled into her primal nature which speaks to her in a language quite different from that of the culture where the validity of feelings and sensations is consistently put down. It speaks to her about wonders yet to be uncovered, of things repressed. In the absense of words to express that which lies outside the limits of the civilized mind, her inner self conveys its messages to her in images. Nature cannot but speak Truth. Also the poets of old equated the speech of giants with gold. It is the civilized human who knows how to trick and lie. If attended to consciously, this letting go of rationality with its indoctrinated ideas is a golden opportunity for a radical change. By the same token, woman became a dangerous subverter in the eyes of the ruling powers of patriarchy. She needed to be held in check and controlled. The means used toward this end were, and still are, far from pretty. The witch hunt is a classic example from the past, and today we abhor the genital mutilation vented on millions of women for reasons like “cultural ideals of femininity and modesty, which include the notion that girls are ‘clean’ and ‘beautiful’ after removal of body parts that are considered ‘male’ or ‘unclean’” (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/).

Thorn-Rose’s prolonged sleep is a gestation period which allows the seed planted by the crab to flower, unperturbed by ceaseless intrusions from the rapacious masculine that covets and exploits the treasures of feminine nature. With anticipation, we await her awakening to new times where androgynous Love reigns supreme.

The Prince as Incarnation of a New Masculine Principle

We cannot leave Thorn-Rose without mentioning the prince, for this is his initiation tale also. The old man incarnates the archetype of the wise old man who guides the prince on his spiritual path. He is the masculine counterpart of the spinster who attends to Thorn-Rose’s crossing over into adulthood in the tower. He kindles the curiosity of the young man who is seized by uncontrollable desire to see the beautiful princess. To behold her. The old man’s dissuation only intensifies the spirit of the courageous hero who is prepared to engage the thornhedge in order to lay eyes on Thorn-Rose. The prince’s intent towards Thorn-Rose has the feel of reverence rather than the will to victory that typifies the mythical hero’s conquest of the maiden who dwells within the boundaries of her sacred sanctuary. An example of the latter approach would be Skírnir’s wooing of Gerd on behalf of the fertility god Freyr which will be discussed later in connection with Katla’s Dream. The prince who awakens Thorn-Rose incarnates a new masculine principle that has evolved out of a long period of trials and errors as manifested by the vain attempts of those who went before. Now the moment is ripe. The blossoming thornhedge opens up to him and he is led toward the blissful and invigorating source of Love.

In the Icelandic version of the story the prince is said to have “drunk his wedding to Thorn-Rose.” This archaic expression is reflective of a Celtic ritual in which a new king wed himself to the goddess of the land, Lady Sovereignty, by drinking from a cup offered him by a queen who is her representative. Thorn-Rose is thus an incarnation of the goddess from whom the the prince accepts his rulership as a new king who brings a new order to the collective.

It is said that when we follow our conviction wholeheartedly, life supports us. The prince is in the right place at the right time and he dares follow his instinct without hesitation, even if his act seems a folly in the eyes of the world. Sometimes we find ourselves in such a situation and then there is no use reasoning with oneself, “should I, shouldn’t I,” for when we finally come to a conclusion, the magic moment has passed. It is a question of being in a good relationship with one’s instincts and to dare to trust one’s inner voice.

As children, we most likely saw the prince as a savior who released the helpless girl from an evil spell. We understood the story literally and thus it affirmed the familiar myth about the weak and the strong sex. We are the products of a civilization the goal of which has been to lord over nature and its rythms and subject it to the interests of the ruling powers. This is why women have been steered from their creative power source while their role as wives and mothers has been exalted. The story of the valkyrie Brynhildur and that of the giant maiden Gerd illustrate patriarchy’s unyielding effort to subjugate the strong, independent female. Both women were encircled by a wall of fire, both resisted marriage and both were enforced to succumb.

Fairy Tale as Dream

If we approach the fairy tale as a dream, we would say that the personages it puts on stage embody rivaling powers in the dreamer’s psyche. On the one hand is the cultural indoctrination imparted by parents and education but on the other unconscious powers which call for a change, because the present state of affairs has become petrified and blocks the creative evolution of the dreamer. Thorn-Rose and the prince would then be symbolic presentations of the ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ energies that animate every person, male or female. What is called for is a balanced rhythm between those opposite tendencies. We must not forget ourselves in the world of dreams nor should we take control of our nature with mindless cruelty. It is the prince’s reverent attitude toward the feminine that earns him the healing love of his ‘other’. This is a repeated lesson brought to us by fairy tales and folk tales. Whether nature works with or against us, depends on our intent and attitude toward it.

Red Rose

The red rose is a symbol of the love that endows our earthly lives with a poetic dimension. It is a symbol of the passions that drive us along the path toward spiritual growth. The thorns are unavoidable companions on this journey. By opening our hearts to love and by following our hearts in search of spiritual truth rather than submitting blindly to creed, we risk being hurt. In our tale the thornrose is a symbol for the bleeding vulva. In Christian symbolism the red rose stood for the blood shed by Jesus on the cross (Biederman, 289). Jesus was a revolutionary who departed from the ruling principle of his day. His path to spiritual rebirth was marked by a crown of thorns and a bleeding wound, a symbolic vulva through which the church, his bride, was born. As in the menstruating female, we see the androgyny of the rose revealed in the male Christ. The thread that runs consistently between them, as we will see in our next tale also, unveils the spiritual dimension of menstruation. It is the prima materia which the conscious woman can transform into spiritual gold in attunement with her feminine nature.

The 'Hidden Woman' in Hafnanúpur

From Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, III collected by Jón Árnason

The farm Hafnir was a fishing station in earlier times and is located in the northern part of Iceland, more precisely on the northernmost tip of the Skagi-peninsula. Hafnir is a plural word that means ‘ports’. The peak Hafnanúpur and the river Hafnaá derive their names from this location.

In the early 18th century a farmer by the name of Sigurd lived at Hafnir on Skagi. He had a wife by the name of Thuridur. They had four children. Their sons were named Bjarni, Jón and Óttar, and their daughter Thorunn. The brothers were all of a boisterous temper and had a somewhat heathen streak. Their sister was very pretty, courteous and skillful. She was gentle and kind so that everybody loved her dearly, and she was considered to be in every respect endowed with the qualities of an ideal wife.

One autumn, so it is said, she was looking for her father’s lambs. She did not find the lambs, and when night had fallen and darkness set in she wanted to turn back home. She walked along Hafnanúpur, on the eastern side. Looking at a belt of crags in the peak, she sees an open door in the rock. Light burns on a lamp by a bed in this house and a handsome woman, clad in blue, sits on a chair close to the light. She was doing needlework and looked out to Thorunn with a friendly mien, but the maiden was overcome with fear and took to her feet as fast as she could. Nonetheless she glanced back, and then she felt that the woman sent her an evil eye. At that the door closed. Now Thorunn got lost and did not make it home that evening. The next day she was searched for but was not found. On the third day she was finally found by a river called Hafnaá where she lay asleep or in some sort of a trance. She was then transported home. But when she awakened she was half-crazy and deformed in the face. She never became the same as before, neither in looks nor in temperament.

Note: The event related here is said to be true.

The 'Hidden Woman' in Hafnanúpur

Interpretation

Carl Jung discovered that the dreams of his patients contained motifs and symbols which had parallels in religions, myths and tales of ancient and distant cultures that the dreamers could not possibly have any knowledge of. This discovery led to his theory of the archetypes and the collective unconscious, according to which we humans share certain fundamental patterns of instinctive behavior. Jung’s concept of the archetype was not cut in stone and kept evolving throughout his professional life. Basically it is “an inherited tendency of the human mind to form representations of mythological motifs” (http://aras.org/ - see link below). Those representations can vary a great deal without losing their basic pattern. As contents of the collective unconscious, the archetypes connect us to the psychic life of our ancestors as far back as the earliest beginnings. In this lies their great value. Sadly, the protagonist of our tale was not able to embrace and integrate the guidance offered her by the blue-clad woman in the rock. As Jung explained, the archetype “takes its color from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear.”

To understand Thorunn’s experience and reaction, we will have to take her cultural background into consideration. But first let us look briefly at the etiology of folk tales and other archetypal stories.

The Folk Tale

According to one of Jung’s foremost disciples, Marie-Louise von Franz, archetypal stories most frequently originate “through individual experience of an invasion by some unconscious content, either in a dream or in a waking hallucination” (1996, 24). As is exemplified by our folk tale, an invasion of this sort is a numinous and unsettling experience. A supernatural event would have aroused curiosity and been spread by word of mouth, and, as the story circulated, it became amplified by other folkloric material that fit its context. Von Franz likens this development to that of rumors. The ‘Hidden Woman’ in Hafnanúpur accords very well with her description. The tale is grounded in an individual experience but has seemingly been amplified by formulas and mythological motives, maybe in an attempt to explain the incomprehensible change in the young woman’s character.

The folk tale differs from the fairy tale in that it revolves around a personal experience in a defined place and time. In the fairy tale the hero is stereotyped, either black or white, while in the folktale the protagonist is very human and her experience of the uncanny saturated with feeling. We can see this difference in the characters of Thorn-Rose and Thorunn, both of whom I consider to be informed by the archetype of a girl’s initiation into womanhood.

In order to understand Thorunn’s mindset, let us look at the cultural situation in Iceland at the time of her dismal experience. In the History of Icelandic Literature, the 18th century is described thus: “The emphasis in religious books and sermons was on god’s ire. According to those, nature was poisonous and filled with tempations, repulsive and dangerous, prey to satan and his devils” (Sæmundsson, 26). The previous century had been marked by burnings at the stake of sorcerers, and the writings of the Reverend Páll Björnsson (1621-1706), who was in the forefront of carrying out those punishments, are descriptive of the collective and pervasive fear of the devil who ”churns up the lust of our corrupt nature so that, asleep or awake, we might drown in the dirt of our flesh” (81). With this historical stage in mind, we can imagine the terror of a young girl who found herself in the dark, literally and metaphorically, as she came face to face with her feminine nature.

Symbolism of the Lamb

The tale takes us right into the traditional patriarchal society of its time (“In the early 18th century a farmer by the name lived...”) which holds aloft the ideal of the charitable and loving maiden while being threatened by feminine nature. Thorunn’s formulaic character description is almost identical with that of Thorn-Rose’s. Before she met the ‘hidden woman’ she was an exemplary girl, brought up to become a competent and compliant wife.

Thorunn is searching for her father’s lambs the evening of the apparition. She does not find the lambs, gets lost herself, is searched for but is not really found again for she is no longer who she was. There is an underlying parallel between Thorunn and the lambs. The lamb is a virginal image. White, young and graceful it is a symbol of innocence and purity. In the Christian context the lamb is a symbol for Christ. In early Christian iconography the lamb took the place of the body of Christ on the cross, the innocent sacrificed for our sins. Sometimes it appears “stretched on the ground, with blood flowing” (Charbonneau-Lassay, 74). In the shadow of this image, Thorunn, an innocent maiden who has become victim of feminine nature, lies in a coma by a river that bears the name of the ‘hidden woman’s’ peak.

First Sparks of Love

According to Norse mythology, the sea and the lakes were made from the blood of the primordial frost-giant, Ymir, from whose chopped up body Odin and his two brothers created their world. Again I refer to my text about “Menstruation” quoted in the Introduction:

In primitive view the embryo of a new life is “built up” from the blood, which ceases to flow during pregnancy (Neumann: 1991, 31). By the same token, menstruation spells death and dissolution of structure. It thus becomes the germinating soil of a new cycle of possibilities. It carries an evolutionary force which mythology gives us reason to believe thrust humanity out of a state of unconsciousness.(see link below)

The sacrifice, on which Odin’s reign was built, bears a close resemblance to the natural process of menstruation, in which the potential embryo dissolves and flows out of the female body in a stream of blood. The male gods appropriated the natural process inherent in the female body and turned into an act of volition. With this act, a previous worldview founded on the female experience became overridden by that of the hero, whose objective was to conquer and submit nature to his interests.

Let us recall Jung’s definition, that it is to the earliest beginnings of our ancestors’ psychic life that the archetype links us. Female initiation thus connects back to the very first bleeding. According to Snorri Sturluson, the quickening of the primordial Ymir took place in the perfectly still Gap of Ginnungar (‘fools’) and was caused by melting drops, engendered by the meeting of a hot breeze blowing from the fiery world of Muspell in the southern hemisphere and frosty gusts from the cold and dark world of Nifl in the north. I understand this description as a metaphor for the sparking of divine Love in the human heart; the meeting of the opposites in the middle of the unfathomable abyss of human potential as desire awakens the mind and launches human evolution. Love distinguishes us from the animal and makes us human. Yet the name Gap of Ginnungar implies that “falling in Love” was equated with foolishness. Our understanding of this feeling has traditionally been confined to romantic love between two individuals of the opposite sex. Yet it is clear that desire cannot be so narrowly defined. To limit Love to the conventional definition, can in effect inhibit our growth. Desire fuels the pursuit for the fulfillment of our potential. The many tales of the Fool’s quest are testimony to humanity’s drive toward that end.

From The Rider-Waite Tarot About to step into the abyss!

The Fool brings a treasure of some sort back from the unchartered wilderness and thereby moves the collective out of a rut. In Snorri’s description of Freyja we find her in the role of the Fool:

Od went far away, but Freyja stays behind and cries, but her tear is red gold. Freyja has many names, but this is because she assumed various names when she journeyed amongst foreign peoples in search of Od (Gylfaginning, 35).

Here Freyja is the Fool sounding her depths, questing for her original wholeness which encompasses her full potential. In this she is every woman’s guiding star. One scholar remarks that “in this passage Snorri does not explain how Freyja both remains at home and wanders in search of Od” (MacCulloch, 125). I suggest that Freyja’s journeys took place during seclusion in her firmly locked bower at the end of which she bore her insights out into the world! The above remark emphasizes Freyja’s role as a völva or seeress and a healer, a role that was linked with the bleeding vulva and its miraculous healing at the end of the period. Healing was inherent in the original wounding caused by separation from the divine Other.

Blood-Sucking Ymir!

Snorri Sturluson puts the following disavowal of Ymir in the mouth of Odin: “By no means do we acknowledge him as God. He was evil and all his descendants, we call them frost-giants. And it is said that when he slept he got blood” (Gylfaginning, 5). Ymir means ‘twin’. The name implies that Ymir contains the opposites, the quick and active principle of fire and the slow and passive principle of matter (ice). The implication is that every human being, regardless of sex, shares in this androgynous source. I feel again tempted to quote Sharon Olds’ poem Am and Am not: “Central inside me this one I am and am not, [...] / like a snake’s reticulated body, rings of muscle- / like the penis outside-in, its twin” (87). Ymir gets blood while sleeping. The cervix, woman’s inner phallus attributed to her ‘dream husband’ who was associated with the moon, receives blood from the womb. This, it seems clear to me, is the origin of the many deterring horror stories about bloodsucking vampires and the like. We will see a version of this theme in The Witch’s Ride later. The sleep consistently associated with the menstruating woman refers to the surrender of the ego, what is experienced as ‘I’, to the wisdom of the unconscious Self who ‘we are and are not’. At the time of Ymir’s emergence, the Gap of Ginnungar was still, “as if there was no breath of air” (Gylfaginning, 5). Empty of thought, the whole being was open to that which arose from the unconscious.

Myth thus affirms sub rosa that the first bleeding and creation preceded the heroic act of Odin and his brothers who are held aloft as first creators. Somebody had to have been there to witness and channel the emergence of Ymir, whose primal status makes him the cornerstone of human culture. The brothers’ dismemberment of Ymir signifies a dissolution of a pre-existing religious worldview. It symbolizes the solar hero’s initial transgression on his bloody way to dominion over nature on all fronts. In an effort to subject woman to the solar hero, whose divine prototype was Odin All-Father, her spiritual relationship with her lunar nature was made ugly and fearful. But the archetype of female initiation takes us beyond that distortion and denigration. Religion means to ‘link back’, from Lat. religare. Through religion we link back to our divine origin.

Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann shows us how etymology has attempted to separate the ‘moon root’ (men, mensis, etc.) and the ‘spirit root’ (manas, menos, mens, etc.) but finds that both are derived from the Sanskrit root mati-h, which on the one hand means ‘thought, intension’ [sic] and on the other ‘measure, knowing’. From this he concludes that “the single archetypal root underlying these meanings [the various meanings derived from the two roots that come together in the one original Sanskrit root] is the moon-spirit, which expresses itself in all of the diversified branchings, thus revealing to us its nature and its primal meaning” (1954, 85). It is from this one androgynous source that everything unfolds. We do not want to prevent ourselves from accessing this wellspring because of negative propaganda from the ruling powers.

Woman in the Cave

The blue-clad woman in the rock personifies the archetype of the spinster whose unbroken thread leads back to the primal source. She is the spiritual grandmother-figure of countless initiation tales who guides the young woman across the threshold into womanhood. At this moment the girl is in-between worlds as our tale demonstrates. Thorunn stands virtually on the threshold of a door leading into another dimension. She sees a light in the dark. She is being invited into the sacred place of female creativity but she succumbs to fear and does not manage the transition. Some tribal societies will subject the initiate to a solitary quest for a dream or a vision that will point to her path in life. In those societies the community shares in the girl’s experience and helps her channel it. But given the collective fear of a devil possessed nature in Thorunn’s culture, we can assume that she was caught without preparation and positive guideposts. She might have been familiar with the tale of Thorn-Rose, and certainly that of the valkyrie Brynhildur who was skilled with the needle, but the tragic fate of those heroines would have steered her from following in their footsteps.

In her foreword to Women of the World, a companion book to an exhibition featuring art by women from all over the world, Arlene Raven says of Mary Cassatt’s painting Lydia at a Tapestry Frame: “The artist’s sister stands as an example of her gender, class, and time. But Lydia at the spindle or stitching with a needle also holds an implicit symbolic meaning - woman as sacred female creativity, personified as the ancient Spinster” (6). We have already touched on Freyja’s bower and the widespread custom of menstrual seclusion. From the scant insights we get into the bower in the old sagas, we see women engaged in creative work, weaving, embroidery, song and poetry. Frequently we see their activity distorted or made suspicious through the eyes of a male observing through a slit on the roof or not too transparent a window.

It is a dark night when Thorunn stands face to face with the blue-clad woman. Moonlight is not mentioned. We can play with the idea that the encounter takes place at the dark of the moon, the new moon. Etymology and mythology give us reason to believe that in earlier times women’s menstrual cycle was attuned to the moon. In modern society this is no longer the case. It has been shown, though, that female friends who work or live together in close quarters will have the onset of their periods around the same time. In his book Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture, Chris Knight suggests that “under ideal conditions, ovulation should occur at full moon, menstruation at new” (251). His suggestion is based on an experiement with artificial simulation of the effects of the full moon on the female cycle. Knight’s theory is that women’s collective synchronizing of their sexual cycle through the moon was a crucial factor in humankind’s transition from nature to culture.

In The Astrology Sourcebook, Shirley Soffer takes us through the phases of the moon and gives us guidelines as to how we can make conscious and creative use of its cyclic rhythm by tuning into it. About the phase of the new moon she says:

If the new crescent Moon symbolizes birth, then the new Moon is the time of conception. And, although we have placed the new Moon phase at the end of this section, it is symbolically the true beginning of the Moon’s monthly cycle because the Moon is conjoined with the Sun at this stage. It is a time when spirit and soul unite, seeding something new in life – expressed as the birth of the new crescent.[...] The Sun, signifying your will, and the Moon, signifying your emotions, are locked in a symbolic embrace at this time of the month. And whatever they conceive together “in the dark” of the new Moon will “come to light” at the full, when they stand apart and face each other once again (156-157).

Looking Back

The cave was a sacred place to the ancestors, symbolizing our origin and the womb of the earth-mother. Entering the cave implies a primal engagement with oneself and one’s body. The turning point in the tale occurs when Thorunn looks back. The woman’s friendly look has turned hostile and Thorunn gets lost. The Bible holds up to us as a deterrent the story of Lot’s wife who was turned to a pillar of salt for looking back to Sodom. Thorunn is born into a culture that defers to a celestial god. She has been fed on stories of progressive heroes battling perilous nature where the end justified the means. Her very name is testimony to this heritage. In baptism she was consecrated to Thor, a god who was the sworn enemy of giantesses. You will remember Thor’s bragging quoted in the Introduction: “I went east / and I battered giants / evil brides, / who went to the rock” (Lay of Hárbard, st. 23). Further reflecting her culture’s deeply rooted veneration of the heroic, her mother’s name Thuridur means ‘she who is loved by Thor’ and her father was named after ‘the greatest hero of all times’, Sigurd ‘the dragon-slayer’.

It is clear that the Thor we have come to know from mythology would have been no friend of the blue-clad woman in the rock. Nor would he have condoned Thorunn’s lying down on the bed in the cave, which would have been dedicated to the primal scene as symbolized by the union of the divine couple within and the birth of their daughter. In this moment the initiate is both bride and offspring. She is the goddess and her human daughter. Freyja’s dazzling Hnoss, begotten by her spirit-husband who personifies ‘wildness’ and ‘poetry’, is the menarcheal girl born anew as a sexually ripe woman. Although it was hers to own, Thorunn could not accept and integrate this beauty. She became deranged and deformed.

Evil Eye

Does the reason for Thorunn’s ill fate lie in her looking back as intimated by the tale? Or was it caused by a cultural indoctrination that blocked her from linking back to her roots at a crucial moment in her life? She is taken by surprise. There has been no guidance, apart from the church’s denigration of nature intended to steer the flock toward salvation. Might not this very attempt have become Thorunn’s doom? Jung has pointed out that the more severe the repression, the more archaic the unconscious content. We cannot go further back than the cave.

In the Introduction we saw that as a dream image the eye is often a veiled symbol for the vulva. We also wondered whether Freyja’s tears of red gold had been inspired by the celestial image of the red solar prominences that whirl around the black lunar limb during an eclipse of the sun. There is a long tradition of associating the evil eye with menstruating women. When Pliny reports that if they happen to “go over a vessel of wine” it will sour (Elder, 305), we suspect a veiled reference to the vaginal eye. Freyja’s tears celebrated as gold by the poets of old gave way to the fearful evil eye of giantesses who live in rocky mountains, exiled from civilization. Whoever meets the gaze of these powerful females either faints or drops dead. Járngerd (‘she who is enclosed by an ironhedge’) tops them all: “Any creature who comes before her eyes while she expires, will rot alive immediately” (Árnason, I, 241). A monster not easily done away with!

Chaste Bride of Gods

The goddess Skadi (a masculine noun meaning ‘damage’) is the Norse equivalent of the Greek Artemis and Roman Diana, hunter goddesses of the wilderness, associated with the moon and women’s blood mysteries. We can assume that like Artemis, Skadi “protected girls on the threshold of being women” (Bolen, 64). Like so many of the goddesses Skadi is all but hidden from view in the myths. The glimpses we get of her intimate a strong and independent female who knows what she wants. Once married to the fertility god Njord, father of Freyja and her twin brother Freyr, she split up with him and settled in the mountains where she runs on skis and hunts with bow and arrow. The very fact that Skadi is a masculine name for a female goddess hints at her androgynous nature, and its meaning, ‘damage’, reveals that she had qualities that the culture did not appreciate in a woman. The etymology of her name however points to Lat. scătĕre ‘to gush forth’ and scătūrīgo ‘a spring of bubbling water’. This links back to the primal source, the coming into being of the androgynous Ymir through the melting of ice by heat from sparkling fire.

From the Gill Tarot Deck

Skadi was the daughter of a giant. An Eddic poem states that all giants are descended from Ymir (Short Prophecy of the Seeress, st. 5). She was a giantess by heritage, yet she is listed among the goddesses. In one Eddic poem she is called the “chaste bride of gods”. (Grímnismál, st. 11). One of Freyja’s epithet was “bride of the Vanir”. Vanir is a collective name accorded the fertility deities venerated by our agricultural ancestors. It implies impotence, that something is lacking. What was lacking in the Vanir was the aggressiveness of the progressive hero whose attribute was the spear and the sword. The vessel, cauldron or cup, would have been the emblem of the Vanir. Veneration of the Vanir implied surrender to the divine, not heroic conquest. Males who followed the example of women in their quest for divine insight were stigmatitized for sodomy. This was the sin for which the god of the Jews burned down the city Sodom. We know what happened to Lot’s wife on the way out of Sodom. Looking back implies regression. To link back to the primal source meant calling doom on oneself. It could be argued that this is precicely what happens to Thorunn.

Skadi’s ‘spinsterhood’ and lack of interest in physical relations with the opposite sex made her a bad example for young women on the threshold of womanhood. Furthermore, her choice of residence on her father’s domain in snow clad mountains, and her skill with bow and arrow, reflect spiritual aspirations and faithfulness to a religious worldview that antedates the heroic age when domestication of women became an important issue. Her hermitic inclinations and her love of the wild and unchartered was in direct opposition to this trend.

In the introduction to “Giants” in the collection of Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, it is stated that the denomination giantess and its various synonyms, shrew, hag, witch, and the like, are vilifications used about women who are in some way impetuous or unfeminine. This is the underside of the ideal maiden as prospective wife and mother that patriarcy has held up to women through the ages. Although women of today have become emancipated in myriad ways, Skadi is a shadow that we can still mine for gold.

The Virgin and the Valkyrie

As our ‘hidden people’ are generally dressed in blue, so is the Virgin Mary. When I was exploring this tale with a group of women, the blue-clad woman in the cave evoked Mary to some of them. It is certainly true that Mary had gone underground in the religious life of the Icelandic people at this time. When Lutheranism replaced Catholicism in the mid-16th century, it was forbidden to believe in saints, whether it be Peter, Paul, Mary, or any other. Crosses and statues were destroyed, and burning a light in front of a saint was an act of violation. So at the time Thorunn had her encounter with the ‘hidden woman’ seated by a light in a cave, the Mother had been exiled from the church and the flock was held in check by a retributive Father.

But there is an important difference between the blue-clad woman in the cave and the image we have of Mary who is generally presented in the arts with her baby son in her lap. We do not see her engaged in creative work as is the ‘hidden woman’. As touched on above, there is a story that has been a living part of Icelandic culture through the ages and would certainly have been familiar to Thorunn, namely that of the valkyrie Brynhildur. Brynhildur was engaged in needlework when Sigurd ‘the dragon slayer’ happened to see her through the window of the tower in which she had her bower. “She sat by a golden runner onto which she embroidered my past deeds,” the lovesick hero confides to Brynhildur’s brother (Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda, I, 166). Brynhildur’s furious attempt to stand by her truth in the face of patriarchal oppression and deceit led to the hero’s demise and her own suicide. For a young girl in the 18th century Icelandic countryside, the valkyrie within would have been more than she could have embraced and integrated.

The Lunar Mirror

The lunar dimension is like a mirror that reflects our full potential as enlightened beings. Hence its effect can be overpowering. Under normal circumstances our unconscious does not confront us with content that we are not able to suffer and deal with. We may not want to face it, particularly if it runs counter to the ethical codes that have been imprinted on us, even if they impede our growth. But its emergence indicates that the moment is ripe and that something within us wants to get out into the light of day. What is called for is that we listen, wrestle with the images that the lunar mirror holds up to us and integrate them. If we do not heed the call and cooperate, we suffer. This is certainly true of our protagonist.

We could argue that Thorunn squandered the magic moment, the kairos, as experienced by Thorn-Rose’s prince when the blossoming thornhedge opened up to him. That would have been a thorn stuck in her soul. But then Thorunn lived in the real world and not in a fairy tale, and it was a world eccessively hostile to feminine nature. We understand her fear. For her to accept the guidance of the ‘hidden woman’ would have required a heroic approach, not that of a warrior charging forth against an enemy with a brandished sword but that of a surrender to her feminine nature and acceptance of its creative, healing and enriching insights.

Thorunn’s encounter with the ‘hidden woman’ captured the minds of people two centuries ago. The fact that it is being wrestled with here means that it still effectuates an attraction. We remember the princes who through generations had tried to break through the thornhedge surrounding Thorn-Rose but did not succeed until someone with a new approach appeared on the scene. Thorunn’s reality may seem to have little in common with ours but we seem to still buy into the negative propaganda towards menstruation. It pervades our culture and hence may be accepted uncritically, without questioning. By taking a close and informed look at our foremothers’ experiences we might become inspired to approach female menstrual power in a new and more creative way. It might motivate us to replace our negative attitude with reverence for its magnitude, and to trust in the guidance of the woman in the cave.

To sum it up, what would we say was the cause of Thorunn’s misfortune? Her looking back? The ‘hidden woman’s’ evil eye? Þórunn’s flight from her nature and denial of her power? Or was it the misguided indoctrination of her culture? Whatever the answer, it seems fair to conclude that the enmity Thorunn projected on the blue-clad woman brought withering on her budding womanhood. Then we can speculate whether this dismal conclusion was a projection by the spirit of her time on the maiden’s loss of innocence.

Katla's Dream

From Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, I & VI collected by Jón Árnason

This is my retelling of the poem Katla’s Dream in volume VI of the collection with some amplifications and an addition at the end from the prose version of the story in volume I. The poet’s voice comes through as he or she revives people and events from a distant past.

Már was the noblest chieftain who lived at Reykjanes. I believe his wife’s name was Katla. She came from an important family. It is said that they loved each other dearly, were a good match, and never had a quarrel during their entire conjugal life.

One day Már rode to Althing with a flock of valorous men. He left Katla behind and told her to sew him a shirt. One morning, in beautiful weather, Katla went to her bower to carry out her task but no sooner had she sat down than she fell asleep. Other women came to the bower but Katla continued to sleep, undisturbed. Close to noon they tried to awaken her but there was no way they could. They feared that she was dead and told her foster-father. When he came to where she sat, he found breath stirring in her chest, but he could not awaken her. Mournful, he sat by her for full four days. On the fifth day it is said that Katla woke up and was visibly sad, however nobody dared inquire about the reason for her sorrow.

When Már arrived home from Althing he found Katla’s demeanor changed, for neither did she come out to welcome him nor did she bow to him when he came. This had never happened before. Már asked his wife who had caused this change in her. He assured her that she would not come to harm for telling him the reason for her sorrow. Katla said that she would disclose her grievances to him though she kept them secret from others, for she knew that due to his love and other virtues he would prove to be her best support.

“I felt,“ she said, “that a woman came to me in the bower. She had the proud bearing of a mistress. Her words were like unfolding blossoms and sounded like music to my ears. She called me ‘her Katla’ and asked me to go out with her. She said that her spirits would guard my seat so that no one would become alarmed. We walked away from your farm till we came to a river. There I saw a richly equipped ferry. I then decided to ask her name. She told me that I could call her Alvör and said that grief had compelled her to come see me. No sooner did she lift me on board the ferry than I lost command of my will. Alvör plied the oars and the ferry found its way across the rapid stream. I saw a small house by the foaming river. It turned out to be her home. She then laid hands on me and I forgot my ardent love for you.

She led me into a splendidly furnished hall in which were seated elegant ladies, who all acted as if they knew me. Then Alvör quietly touched a man whom she called Kári and asked him to awaken. ‘I have news for you,’ she said to him. ‘Katla is here in the hall.’ The well-mannered, silk-clad man awoke and wished health and good fortune on me for having come to see him, although he himself would come to suffer grief. He called me a dutiful and virtuous woman and said that I had awakened him, ‘that is a gift your love has brought me,’ he said, ‘but I will die when you walk away from here.’

Alvör had a tub-bath prepared for me. She then lifted a cup of wine to my lips before I lay down with her son Kári. She said that disaster would befall me if I refused my love to him who had been in the throes of perilous sorrow for a long time. Her will had to prevail for I was no longer in possession of my senses and so it was the whole time I was away from your farm.

One morning Alvör came to the bed in which we slept together and said that I would have to get dressed though it would grieve her son. Kári moaned aloud and held me tight to his chest when I rose to leave his bed and I myself would have desired to be there longer had fate not parted us. He told me that we would have a son. ‘Name him Kári,’ he said, and added that we would never see each other again during our lifetime on this earth. He gave me a belt, a knive, and a ring which I was to keep for our son till he came of age so that he would remember his father. ‘But to you,’ said Kári, ‘I give a mantle of pure gold, a necklace, and a buckle, all of which will be considered treasures by those who lay eyes on them. I bid you own these till old age.’ Unwilling I had to stand up and put on all my finery, I could linger no longer. Then Alvör came and sternly took both my hands. She led me to the ferry by which we came before, seized the oars and set out across the river again. She escorted me to the house and fetched back her guardian spirits. Nobody knew about my disappearance from the farm nor when I would come back. She exhorted me to hide my sorrows till the end of winter by which time they will become manifested, and told me to lay the blame on her when word gets out.”

Winter passed and shortly before summer Katla gave birth to a son with beautiful eyes. Már was devoted to the boy but his mother was more remote. Már had him named Kári, for he did not want to swerve from what the mother had secretly disclosed to him. Half a year went by and Katla became pregnant again and gave birth to another son. Now she wanted to pick the name and declared that he should be called Ari. The boys grew up together and Már loved them both equally, but to his grief Katla was cool and indifferent towards Kári. “Why do you bear these grudges towards your son, Katla?” he asked. “It hurts me deeply that you hate the child and yet you know how I feel about his origin.” “You are an admirably virtuous man, Már, to be so loving and faithful to someone unrelated to you,” she said. “That is why I ask you to never let the young boy suffer on my account.” “I promise to love your son as if he were begotten by me,” Már readily responded.

Time passed and, as far as everyone knew, harmonious love reigned between Katla and Már. The boys grew up for five or six years and nothing worth reporting happened. Then one morning Már went to work with his farmhands at an early hour because apparently the weather was calm and favorable for fishing. Katla remained blissfully asleep in their conjugal bed when Alvör came imposing to her bedside. “How very different is our situation, Katla. You live in happiness with your husband but I grieve my deceased son and get no amends for this bale. That is why you shall have to make this choice, which no doubt you will find difficult, either to lose Már at sea today or suffer that your son disgrace you by his words.” Faced with such oppressive options, Katla responded tearfully: “I leave the curses up to fate, but to lose Már is the last thing I want.” At that they left their discussion, both with a grieving heart.

When Már came home in the evening he saw that Katla was distressed and asked who had upset her. “Alvör came to cheer me up yet again,” she replied mournfully and told him the whole story. Már responded with valor and told her to let go of her worries. He assured her that he would find a way out of these difficulties and that he would keep all his promises to her. “Let us prepare a feast and invite your brothers,” he said. “Your honor will be restored and you shall not take their words to heart. Be cheerful towards all and do not speak till your turn comes.”

Már rode with many men to welcome the brothers, all of whom were important chieftains. The brothers were appreciating of their sister’s graceful reception. They were shown to the seats of honor and wine was generously served. Katla wore the mantle that Kári gave to her and her necklace was praised as a treasure by all. Then Már addressed the guests and asked that a truce be honored by all who drank at his table. The brothers agreed and emphasized that whoever broke the truce would pay amends. The wine made them merry and cordial toward each other. When Katla had taken her seat and the boys were playing on the floor, Kári asked his mother to lend him her necklace, and so she did. When Ari saw this he became jealous that his mother indulged his brother more than him. “Give me that gold ring, I want to play with it,” he demanded. Kári declined. “You refuse to give it to me, you son of a whore! Our possessions belong to me alone!”

The guests listened in wonder to the boys’ squabble but Katla left her seat, haunted by the old pain. She went to bed with a bursting heart and said that she would rather die than her sorrow become known. But while she mourned in bed, there was no calm where her brothers sat. They picked up on the boy’s words, infuriated that their sister had called shame on their family. They vowed to avenge by the sword, for surely she had been disgraced by someone. The child did not know how to lie, they claimed, therefore there had to be some truth in his words. Már then said valiently: “Listen noblemen, it is absurd to take seriously the words children happen to know and say.” The proud brothers raged at his words and there was no assuaging their anger. They were determined, they said, to find the reason behind the boys’ dispute and accused Már and Katla of having cunningly hidden a crime of which the boys had gotten the scent.

“Listen to me, chieftains,” Már then said. “I have never reproached Katla nor wanted her tainted in any way. But tell me, virtuous noblemen, how can someone who falls into disgrace unwillingly or experiences illusions in sleep be held responsible?” He left the hall in distress and went to see Katla who could barely speak from grief. “In order to remedy your misfortune, take my advice and tell your brothers the whole story or else we will have a bloody battle on our hands,” he said. She agreed that it would be best to follow his advice though she found it difficult to reveal her sorrows and would much prefer death. With a heavy heart she went to her four brothers who received her coolly for hatred was in their minds. “Tell them your story, Katla,” Már encouraged her, “maybe it will ease their minds and abate their compulsion for revenge.” Katla then told them her story from beginning to end. As they listened, they became deeply affected by her plight and concluded that she was innocent of her misfortunes. To Már the brothers said: “You are a wise and noble man. You have kept Katla’s woe from becoming public and for that you will have our lifelong friendship.”

Már and Katla stayed in love till old age took them to the grave. Ari son of Már became an important chieftain and took after his father in most things. He had great many descendants as can be read in old books of knowledge. As to Kári, I have heard that Már had him fostered up in Rennidalur, arranged a good marriage for him and gave him generously of his riches. He became a well-to-do farmer and was held to possess hidden knowledge. Yet he was well liked. He knew the laws of tides and the art of astrology.

Some say that Kári son of Kári often went to see his grandmother when he was growing up and learned from her wisdom that ‘hidden people’ practiced in the days of old. It therefore did not serve people well to wrong him. But then few would be induced to do so, for he was well liked and held in regard by those in authority. When Már had passed away, it is said that Kári took both his mother Katla and his grandmother Alvör under his roof. They however did not get along and Kári frequently had to reconcile them. Once he came upon them in the midst of a quarrel and it is said that he lost his temper, which he was not wont to do. When he had stood there a little while, fire flared up through the floor and his grandmother Alvör burned to ashes on the spot. Whether Kári caused the burning of his grandmother or whether the fire was ignited by the fanaticism of the old hag is not clear. Yet it has been rumored that Kári killed his grandmother.

It is further told that after Alvör had come twice to chagrin Katla as is said before, the latter had the entrance at Reykhólar turned towards the mountain, as it does to this day, contrary to the other farms in the region. This she did in order not to have to see Alvör’s house, which supposedly was visible from her door while it faced south, and thereby have her sorrows re-awakened. It is also said that she did not want to go to the Reykhólar-pool which is located south of the farm, because she felt too close to Alvör’s home. Instead she went a good distance from the farm and bathed in a pool that stands apart and is known to this day as Katla’s Pool.

Katla's Dream

Interpretation

“The artist hits the nail thoroughly on the head when she shows civilization grow out of woman’s womb,” says one male critique about the work of Ishrat Jahan in the exhibit Women of the World (Bjarnason in Morgunbladid, April 5th 2004). Jahan, who is from Bangladesh, states that the theme of her painting is “that civilization flourishes from the womb of a woman, but the world is burdened by civilization and has become sick” (Women of the World, 29). Katla’s Dream engendered by the psyche of the Icelandic people at the time of a religious transition, exemplifies this civilizing role of woman. The Icelandic folk tale, believed to have originated a thousand years ago, and the modern artwork from Bangladesh are rooted in a collective reality which is independent of time and space. In the folk tale Katla personifies the womb as a transforming vessel (her name is derived from ketill which means ‘cauldron’) where the old dissolves to be reborn in a new form that suits a new time. Kári, whose name is synonymous with that of the cold northern storm, is the invisible and unruly wind. In the prose version of the tale Katla reports: “Kári and I were seated together on a bench and Alvör asked that Kári be called bridegroom.” Kári is Katla’s inner bridegroom, a ‘hidden man’ kin to Freyja’s husband Od (see interpretation of Thorn-Rose).

The story as it appears in this collection is my retelling of the poem Katla’s Dream with the addition at the end of a short passage from the prose version of the story. The poem is based on a lost tale, and some have deduced that the latter originated at the time of transition from heathendom to Christianity (around 1000). The poem is believed to have been composed sometime during the last centuries before the conversion from Catholicism to Lutheranism (1550), when the Church fought with increasing ardor against the studies of ancient knowledge and folktales. The prose version of the tale is believed to be derived from the poem. When we read Katla’s Dream we therefore need to keep in mind the cultural situation in both the 10th and the 15th centuries. We detect in Katla’s story a dialogue with Christian doctrine as well as an attempt to counterbalance the one-sidedness of the Church which strove to suppress the ancient heritage. We also see a transition from the retributive mindset that marked the old world to the ideal of love and forgiveness. In fact, Love is at the heart of the tale. It is the optimal good, and it is Alvör, Katla’s dream self, who is instrumental in bringing it to the fore and ensuring its integration into the culture. When Alvör challenges Katla to chose between Már and her own reputation, it is in fact a matter of his life or hers. Katla risks her life for the love of her husband, as does Már risk his life for his love of her by standing firmly by her in the face of an impossible situation. But what may be particularly instructive to us in the now is the cultural attitude revealed in the tale toward women and feminine nature.

The opening of the tale leaves us in no doubt that Már is the principal character in this drama. Its basic theme revolves around the influence Katla’s dream has on the male dominated society. We do not see any comparable transformation in Katla herself. Quite the contrary does her dream throw her into conflict with herself. The tale, I think it is safe to say, does not leave us with a satisfying resolution to Katla’s predicament. It was left to subsequent generations of women to find a constructive solution to the dilemma. Katla’s ‘big dream’ is an archetypal and hence a timeless experience that is charged with energy which may still work its magic if approached with an open mind.

Although the symbolic names of the protagonists indicate that they represent certain powers and values, the tale conveys their feelings with sensitivity, regardless of whether they belong to this world or the one beyond. Katla’s dream brings home what Jung says about our unconscious, that it “is an acting and suffering subject with an inner drama” (vol. 9: 1, par. 8). ‘Grief’ compelled Alvör to ravish Katla into the ‘hidden world’ and necessity drives her to subject Katla to two impossible choices, for otherwise her experience would not have affected the collective and brought about the needed transformation. On that occasion both left the discussion with a “grieving heart”. The reader experiences Katla as a person of flesh and blood, but above all does she represent the feminine and women of her time.

Duties of Married Couples according to St. Paul

At the outset harmony and a clear division of duties characterize the conjugal life at Reykhólar. Katla serves Már with the needle - he tells her to sew him a shirt while he rides off to Althing - and when she does not show him due deference upon arrival - she did not “bow to him” as she was wont to do - he realizes that everything is not as it ought to be. On close inspection, it is as if St. Paul’s prescription of duties to married couples forms the warp into which the tale of Katla and Már is woven:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church; and he is the Saviour of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything (Ephesians 5:22-24).

The body of the wife is likened to the church and this temple is under the lordship of the husband and his path toward God. As Eve was made from the rib of Adam so the church was born from the wound in the side of Christ’s chest. Katla’s story shows woman as the means through which the male perfects himself by cleansing her. Katla carries the projection of Már’s inner woman.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word (5:25-26).

As opposed to Katla’s brothers who react to their sister’s defilement by reaching for the sword, Már brandishes the sword figuratively by applying reason and thereby cleanses her in their eyes by his words. Már is a bird’s name and means ‘seagull’ which emphasizes his mental prowess and oversight, a quality inherited by his son Ari whose name means ‘eagle’. In contrast to the mental agility of her husband, Katla’s earthiness is emphasized by the natural pool that is named after her and in which she bathes. As Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, Már gave himself for Katla. Standing by her could have cost him his life. By the same token he becomes her savior for if it had not been for him, the male society presented by her chieftain brothers would have made her pay dearly. Death seems to have been the expected penalty, for she would rather die than reveal her sin, even if it might save her.

St. Paul points the way toward original oneness through love and specific role playing in the married couple:

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she repects her husband (5:31-33).

As Adam and Eve were one flesh at the outset, so Katla and Kári are “one flesh”, for Kári is Katla’s animus (Lat. for ‘spirit’) as Jung called the woman’s masculine counterpart or inner man. St. Paul prescribes that this inner reality is to be transferred onto the human partner. The tale however reveals ‘betrayal’ of this contract to be a precondition for human progress. Katla’s blissful union with Kári engenders a social transformation towards love and benevolence. But Katla feels that she has committed adultery and experiences herself as a sinner. St. Paul’s exhortation to husbands, who “ought to love their own wives as their own bodies,” and the explanation that follows, “for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church” (5:28-29), read like irony when applied to Katla. She “hates” her son Kári who is flesh of her flesh and she goes to extremes to avoid Alvör who personifies feminine nature. The emphasis on the pool that bears her name, and with which her story closes, implies her need for purification and may hint at the menstrual theme that underlies her experience. She lavishes declarations of love and admiration on Már for his virtues, but we do not get the feeling that Katla loves and cherishes herself.

'Intervention of a Higher Consciousness'

From the Gill Tarot Deck

The above quote is one of the meanings Gill gives to this card. Here the Magician is depicted as a female and her tools, staff (fire), cup (water), sword (air), and pentacle (earth) are white “to indicate the elements in their highest form.” Most traditional decks portray this archetype as male to emphasize the active principle it represents. In Katla’s dream it is embodied by Alvör.

The story is set in motion when Már rides off to Althing which is the domain of wordly law but Katla goes to her bower and tours her inner dimensions where Nature reigns. Alvör invades her consciousness in an effort to establish a balance in a one-sided world which is governed by the might of the sword and in danger of splitting away from its heritage and natural origin. Alvör incarnates law on the subjective level, for she sees to it that Katla does not overstay her welcome in the otherworld. She is allowed four days, the same number of days as Freyja stayed in the stone with the four dwarfs from whom she obtained her legendary Brísingamen. Four is “the number of order in the universe” (http://www.britannica.com). Alvör’s vigilance thus points to an organizing principle in the unconscious.

Alvör is the ‘omniscient’. Katla experiences her as an authoritative figure. She describes her bearing as that of a lady - the term she uses is húsfreyja, ‘lady of the house’ - and her words “like unfolding blossoms” have a healing effect on Katla’s barren soul. The title húsfreyja bestowed on a married woman, or one who runs a household, is a reference to Freyja whose name means ‘lady’, the feminine equivalent of ‘lord’. The paradox in Katla’s description is that she is herself a húsfreyja but in comparison with Alvör’s power, her status is slight. Alvör is the image in the mirror, Katla’s higher self who attempts to shake her out of passivity and steer her toward empowerment. By confronting Katla with two, even if inordinately difficult choices, Alvör brings her free will to the fore.

Magic Circle

The poem is studded with metaphors. Thus the rapid river across which Alvör ferrys Katla is called “blood of the earth”. A common denominator for Katla and Alvör is the poetic periphrase seima Gerd. Gerd is the heroine of an Eddic poem, the Lay of Skírnir. The daughter of a giant, she is surrounded by a wall of fire in the underworld. Skírnir (‘he who purifies’), messenger of the fertility god and Freyja’s twin Freyr (‘lord’), who by now had become incorporated into Odin’s pantheon, rides through the roaring flames and forces Gerd to give herself in marriage to the god. Gerd is portrayed as a strong and independent woman who withstands Skírnir’s intimidations and curses till he threatens to imprison her in the underworld for good and all by means of rune magic. It comes as no surprise that the decisive factor in this duel is the thurs rune (see Introduction). The image of the underworld dungeon Skírnir draws up for Gerd is a ghastly hell that has little in common with Alvör’s opulent domain.

Gerd is ‘she who is enclosed’ (the name is related to gerdi=‘hedge’). Seima is gen. pl. of seimir which means ‘serpent’. In the interpretation of Thorn-Rose who is enclosed by a thornhedge, we mentioned the serpent who bites its tail and girdles the virginal bower. This is a microcosmic reflection of the ouroboros Midgard Serpent who encircles the earth in Norse mythology. Although not girdled by a venomous serpent, Katla is protected for four days by a magic circle of sorts that the household does not manage to break. It seems fair to assume that the metaphor seima Gerd is rooted in the memory of women’s inviolate seclusion during their period. Gerd is the archetypal menstruant. She is on the way from her father’s hall to her bower when she is spotted by Freyr, who had sat himself on Odin’s throne from which all worlds could be observed. The god’s description of Gerd is that of the sun. Her shining arms lighten up the heaven and the sea. His desire for her drives him into depression which prompts his servant, Skírnir, to go on a wooing journey to the underworld on his master’s behalf, equipped with the latter’s sword. When faced with eternal exile in a hellish underworld, Gerd not only relinguishes her sovereignty but also her chalice “filled with ancient mead” (st. 37), an attribute that links her with Lady Sovereignty.

Within the protecting circle cast around Katla, linear time and the timeless intersect. Menstruation links woman back to the original wellspring from which culture unfolds. It is as if during this time a passage opens up between the two seperate hemispheres of the brain, as if Katla’s crossing over takes her out of the left rational part of the brain which is ruled by her husband and the male oriented culture. It is from “his” farm, she repeatedly emphasizes, that Alvör leads her and ferries her over into the other sphere, the land beyond where time is non-existant and unity reigns. In My Stroke of Insight neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, who through a stroke lost the function of her left brain, describes her experience of being caught in the silence of the right hemisphere where image is the mode of expression and where she felt at one with all the energy that is. In this mode of being the notion of ‘we’ prevails as opposed to the ‘I’ of the isolated individual who is ruled by the left hemisphere. Dr. Taylor describes this dimension of interconnectedness as the land of peace and euphoria, a Nirvana. And she claims that we can purposefully choose “to step to the right of our left hemisphere.” By so doing we will contribute to making our world more peaceful. This becomes, in fact, the consequence of Katla’s crossing over. The male oriented society evolves toward more peaceful ways while war rages within Katla herself.

Belonging to Herself

Gerd is a virgin in the sense of a woman who belongs to herself, strong and independent like Skadi of whom we spoke in The ‘Hidden Woman’ in Hafnanúpur. Or, to borrow Rachel Pollack’s definition of the goddess Athena whose love was dedicated to wisdom, virgin denoted a female who “kept her power for herself and followed her personal passions” (2005, 35). Katla has little in common with those strong female figures. But the potential is there incarnated by Alvör, her shadow self with whom she falls out after the consummation of her intrapsychic marriage.

Athena was a goddess of war as well as of wisdom and her shield figured Medusa’s head crowned by snakes. A poem called Lament for a maidenhead by the Greek Sappho brings to mind mortal Medusa’s loss of virginity and her subsequent beheading by Perseus’s sword. Medusa copulated with Poseidon, god of the sea, in Athena’s temple. Infuriated by the desecration of her sanctuary, Athena transformed Medusa’s beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that it turned the onlooker to stone. It was she who guided Perseus in Medusa’s slaying. From Medusa’s blood sprang forth the winged steed Pegasus, symbol of poetic inspiration engendered by her union with Poseidon. Here we should keep in mind that Athena was a patriarchal goddess who sprang in full armor from Zeus’s brow. But even if Athena turned with such vehemence against her shadow sister, her use of Medusa’s head as talisman on her shield betrays a bond between the two that would have enhanced Athena’s courage and enabled her to channel Medusa’s dark energy in a creative and constructive manner. In her relationship with Medusa, Athena has the upper hand. In our story, Katla experiences herself as Alvör’s powerless victim and is, generally speaking, not the hero of her own story.

The Vessel

From the Gill Tarot Deck

It is disputed whether Medusa was raped or whether she consented to the union with Poseidon. If we consider the tale of Freyja and the dwarfs related in the Introduction, Freyja surrenders herself willingly and reaps the reward symbolized by her jewel Brísingamen which we suggested was inspired by the eclipse of the sun. This powerful celestial display has given rise to a host of other symbols, one of them the brimming vessel. We are reminded of Gerd’s hoary chalice filled with ancient mead. In tarot the Cup is a symbol of love, feelings and emotions, of dreams and creative imagination, of healing. It is a uniting symbol in contrast to the sword which sunders. In the sacrament the wine unites the believer with Christ. Katla’s union with Kári is initiated by Alvör’s ministering wine to her.

Central in Norse mythology is Odin’s theft of the mead of poetry from Gunnlöd, a giant maiden who was its guardian. In Snorri Sturluson’s account of the event, Odin tricked his way into Gunnlöd’s rock in the guise of a serpent, lay with her for three nights, for which she was reportedly prepared to pay him with three sips of the precious mead, but he gulped it up to the very last drop and got away with it in the guise of an eagle. Because of this heroic deed, poetry is called “Odin’s acquisition and find, and his drink and his gift and the drink of the gods.” As to Gunnlöd, she disappears from the scene and is but a name and a vehicle for the male in his quest for glory and fame. Not only is this myth reflective of man’s greedy exploitation of nature but it also imprints the deceiving notion on women that poetry and its inherent wisdom is the province of males. This lesson is driven home by the mythological couple Idun, who guards the gold apples of eternal youth in her ashen box, and Bragi, the god of poetry. Idun personifies the ever-renewed source from which Bragi draws inspiration for his art. Without her the gods become old and sterile. What this means is that the poet’s mind gets stuck and his poems no longer provoke an echo in the human heart. On the intrapsychic plane nature is indeed the muse of the rational mind, but our culture has cast woman in the former role and the male in that of the rational mind.

From the Rider-Waite Tarot

If you look closely, you will discern a large vessel or vase behind her, containing golden vulva-shaped pomegranates and flaming phallic palm trees symbolizing the opposites inherent in nature. The High Priestess is the guardian of this vessel, the one who metes out its mysteries in dreams, visions and intuitions to those who are prepared to receive them. In the background we see a glimpse of the unfathomable sky and the ocean of the unconscious. The High Priestess is a unifying force, sitting on her cube between the two pillars of darkness and light, of regressive and progressive tendencies, making sure that we do not lose connection with the shadowy past on our quest for enlightenment. In essence she stands for ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or’. The two pillars are said to be “esoteric symbols of the labia of female genitalia, the portal of initiation into the mysteries” (The Tarot School's Correspondence Course, lesson two, p. 22). The scroll in her lap, sometimes depicted as a book, contains all knowledge. The omniscient Alvör is informed by this archetype.

Poetic Inspiration

“Poet I am not, but the ‘hidden woman’ calls me,” sings one of Iceland’s best loved poets Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-1845). Though sex does not figure in this inspiring encounter, the poet addresses the ‘hidden woman’ as a lover whose kiss he desires, proving yet again that creation is an erotic affair between the conscious mind and the unconscious. “It is not the same Jón and Reverend Jón” is an Icelandic saying descriptive of social discrimination. By the same token Odin’s affair with Gunnlöd and Katla’s union with Kári reveal that “it is not the same female and male” when it comes to relations with spirit. Erich Neumann speculates whether woman’s natural tendency to concretize instead of realizing may count for the smallness of her spiritual achievements as compared with those of men. He says:

Instead of realizing, she concretizes, and, by a natural projection, transposes the creative process of pregnancy onto the external plane. That is to say, woman takes the symbols of this phase of matriarchal consciousness literally; she loves, becomes pregnant, bears, nourishes, cherishes, and so on, and lives her femininity outwardly but not in the inner world. This tendency may explain the smallness of her spiritual achievements as compared to men, her lack of creative productivity. It seems to a woman (rightly or wrongly?) that the source of life in pregnancy and birth is creative enough (1954, 98).

Katla would seem to prove his point. She takes her impregnation by her dream lover literally and invests the potential held up to her by her dream in her biological son. Or rather, her culture does, for her dream stands apart from the rest of the tale. The cultural situation called for a mediator between the old heritage in danger of being lost and new times which would not have welcomed in a woman the qualities attributed to the son, Kári. This is born out by the fate of Alvör who is burnt to ashes. What Neumann does not take into account in his assessment of woman’s spiritual achievements is the inculcated demonizing and repression of her menstrual dimension with its inherent creative potential.

The æsir-gods, headed by Odin, lived in fear of losing Freyja to the giants, the archenemy. This is a projection of the male’s fear of losing his muse and the connection she provides to the living source. Hence the male has endeavoured to tame the female, to domesticate her and subject her to his interests. She has been treated as his raw material which he molds and purifies, like the poet his poem. She was matter to his discriminating mind. On her road to emancipation and freedom, woman has colluded with patriarchy’s mindset and repressive attitude toward her own nature as exemplified by Katla. On the rare occasions that Katla asserts herself, she sides with the masculine. Her decision to name her son Ari stands out in the poem and points to her deference for her husband’s mental agility, and her architectural maneuverings in order not to be reminded of Alvör and her past grievances show a firm intention to oust her feminine power and wisdom. The ethics of the times compelled her to choose between creative exploration of her inner world and her conjugal commitment. She could not have both.

Although Snorri portrays Gunnlöd as an eager party to the union with Odin, the fact that she is deceived and robbed makes his lauded feat a rape. The story reveals a change of paradigm. The vessel previously under the guardianship of the earthbound female is now in the possession of the principal male god. Alvör breaks through from under this layer of myth. She is the one who metes out the drink in Katla’s dream. Katla contains the precious mead as does every woman. Her guilt-ridden conscience reveals however that woman’s access to this creative source has been greatly hampered by repression and the demonizing of her lunar ‘other’.

The Fall

Going back to the question whether Medusa was raped by Poseidon or consented to the union that engendered the winged Pegasus, it seems logical from the standpoint of the ancient belief that a girl’s first bleeding is a deflowering by the moon-spirit - and as god of the ocean Poseidon is closely connected to the moon that rules the tides - that the onset be defined as a rape if she is taken by surprise. Modern pharmaceutical devices aside, woman has no control over her menses. Hence the importance of a ritual. By admitting the menstrual power which, to use Annette Høst’s words, “like the power of the Wind and the Sea [...] will not be tamed or controlled,” woman can make conscious use of it in creative ways (2). That Katla is ravished to the underworld indicates that she was unconscious of or cut off from this power.

The authors of The Wise Wound suggest that Medusa’s snaky hair is an upward displacement to divert attention from the bleeding vulva. In our interpretation of Thorn-Rose we mentioned the rejuvenating shedding of the skin shared by the snake and the womb, a trait likewise shared by the moon. In the biblical tale of Eve’s temptation in the Garden of Eden, woman’s initial impulse towards knowledge is attributed to machinations of the devil in the guise of the serpent. For this transgression, the Lord established enmity between woman and her lunar nature and further decreed: “Your desire shall be for your husband. And he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16). From the Christian standpoint Katla’s love-making with her dream bridegroom Kári is a reenactment of the original sin and her oppressing guilt the consequence of the Lord’s decree. From an earlier standpoint it is a reenactment and sacred celebration of Creation, a ritual which apparently became overridden and denigrated by the Eden myth. This indoctrination might be an unconscious hindrance for many a woman on her way to selfhood and creative freedom.

Relationship between the Dream and the Dreamer's Conscious Attitude

Jung said that “a dream is a theater in which the dreamer is himself the scene, the player, the prompter, the producer, the author, the public, and the critic” (1974, par. 509). He also pointed out that the dream is in compensatory relationship with the dreamer’s waking situation. The dreaming self is striving for balance by guiding the dreamer toward the golden medium. If the dreamer finds herself in a bleak and barren psychological situation, the dream scene might emphasize fertility and opulence. The joy Katla experiences when listening to Alvör’s words that were like unfolding blossoms speaks of her thirst for healing, and the opulence she witnesses in her dream, which is greatly exaggerated in the prose version, points to a deprivation on the psychological plane, irrespective of her wordly status.

If again the dreamer experiences herself as powerless in waking life, her power may be magnified in the dream in order to shake her into awareness. If she is split off from her power she encounters it in another who may hold her enthralled. The dreamer’s task is to withdraw the projection and own what rightly belongs to her, for good or for bad. The result is greater freedom and expansion of the conscious personality. Katla is not able to integrate Alvör’s power. She turns her back on her. The collective attitude toward the power invested in Alvör is reflected in her death by fire. She is a witch who gets what she deserves. We cannot blame Katla for not acknowledging the völva in herself.

As touched on in the introduction, Freyja was a völva (‘wise woman, seeress’; the word is derived from Lat. volva, vulva which means ‘womb’) who taught the art of seidur (seiður), an ecstatic rite of divination and healing to Odin and the gods. Seidur is Dionysian in nature. As defined by Jungian analyst George R. Elder, Dionysos was “the deity of ecstasy caused by drinking wine or of any ecstatic experience, of sex or emotional religion” (334). It is a definition descriptive of Katla’s experience. Through ritual ecstacy the völva connected with the unconscious and brought its guidance into the light for the good of her community. In our tale the message is concealed in the objects that Katla brings back from her dream, just as Freyja brought the gold necklace back from her four day sojourn in the stone. Katla’s prophetic gift comes through in that her dream translates into reality. It is particularly obvious in the latter dream in which she foresees that her son will slander her. The tale demonstrates the healing aspect of the seidur as a religious rite which involves linking back to the divine origin in order to heal the split between the rational mind and the wisdom of the heart through erotic union of the opposites. In the 10th century practicing seidur had become a crime that was severly punished by law. Women who so did were most often stoned to death and somtimes there is mention of burnings at the stake (Árnason: II, xvii-xviii). Adding to this the Bible’s prohibition of “wicked customs” into which category the seidur would have fallen, we need not be surprised that Katla chose to deny her power.

In the Prophecy of the Seeress, which is believed to have been composed around the transition from heathendom to Christianity, the völva is said to be the “treasure of an evil bride.” In some versions this has been changed to “evil folks” (st. 22). Katla does indeed report that she felt cherished by the visiting Alvör who called her “my Katla”. Considering that the Prophecy comes from the mouth of a völva, one wonders whether the text was not tampered with by a Christian scribe! The oldest preserved manuscript of the Prophecy is from the latter part of the 13th century. Some see the ‘evil bride’ as Freyja, one of whose cognomens was Bride of the Vanir. Others suggest giant maidens like Gerd, and Skadi who was called the “chaste bride of gods.” We remember Thor’s boasting of having battered “evil brides, / who went to the rocks.” A quote from the Roman natural philosopher Pliny (23-79 A.D.) reveals that the menstrual side of woman was considered inhuman and uncivilized: “But to come again to women hardly can there be found anything more monstrous than is that flux and course of theirs” (Elder, 305; italics mine). Branding the giant maiden as an ‘evil bride’ would have sanctified Odin’s violation of Gunnlöd from whom he stole the mead of poetry. Credulous like Eve, Gunnlöd was had and got what she deserved. Ridicule came to replace the death penalty as a means to keep female menstrual power in check.

Kári's Gifts

The gifts that Kári bestows on Katla and their son carry the meaning of the dream. In the tale they are concretized rather than read as symbols, the wisdom of which the dreamer should integrate and translate into reality. The belt intended for the son differentiates as well as unites the lower, instinctual part of the body and the upper regions of the mind and feelings. It symbolizes the middle way between heaven and earth embodied by Kári the son and his knowledge of the stars and the tides and currents of the sea. The knife differentiates one thing from another which is a prerequisite for seeing things for what they are. The ring on the other hand is a uniting symbol and denotes eternal cyclicity which in a nutshell is reflected in the moon and the menstrual cycle. The son begotten in the dream is Katla’s psychological child, her awakening masculinity which, if consciously cultivated, would enable her to carry her heritage forth in a wise and balanced manner. But she has learned her lesson and does not want to look back.

The mantle of pure gold that Kári gives to her, the necklace – men – and the clasp, a uniting symbol, refer to the sacred marriage as symbolized by the conjunction of the sun and the moon. Katla rises purified from her otherworldly bridal bed like the radiant sun. The men that Freyja as avatar of the sun received in the bridal rock has come down to Katla. Odin had Brísingamen stolen from Freyja and gave it back to her on the condition that she instigate an eternal war between two kings. In the tale the men becomes a bone of contention once more, now between the two brothers who quarrel over Katla’s necklace. The conflict is surmounted and the men leads to reconciliation and a higher plane of consciousness.

Animus

In The Grail Legend by Emma Jung, we find this interesting observation which reveals the universality of Katla’s dream content:

In the dreams and fantasies of even happily married women, a mysteriously fascinating masculine figure often appears, a demonic or divine dream or shadow lover to which Jung has given the name of animus. Not uncommonly, the woman cherishes a more or less conscious secret idea that one of her children, preferably the oldes or youngest, was fathered by this psychic lover. Superhuman powers will readily be attributed to such a child (46).

It is common knowledge that many a mother desires to see her dreams of fame realized by her offspring instead of cultivating those talents in herself. Our tale certainly endows Kári with supernatural powers, but as far as Katla is concerned the analogy ends there. She does not live through her son as those ambitious mothers do. She shows an aversion for Alvör’s legacy and projects it out, as if purging herself, onto her son.

Marie-Louise von Franz addresses the necessity for woman to develop her animus. She says: “On [the] highest level the inner man acts as a bridge to the Self. He personifies a woman’s capacities of courage, spirit and truth and connects her to the source of her personal creativity” (1988, 215). Just as Katla’s creative activity at the beginning of the tale is undertaken because of an order from her husband to sew him a shirt, so she puts her trust in him to think and act for her. On the rare occasions that she takes an initiative, her actions are turned against her nature and distance her from her nurturing roots. Von Franz points out that “to transform the animus involves immense suffering for it means nothing less than forsaking an old identity for a new one.” Looking at the tale from this point of view, it is indeed true that the transformation that takes place on the collective level costs pain and suffering for Katla and her part personalities, Alvör and Kári. From von Franz’s statement it could be inferred that woman, personified by Katla, forsakes her old identity as völva for that of a wife who devotes herself wholly and completely to her husband as if he were the Lord. Katla’s suffering was not for nought, for it brought about a more humane social conditions under the auspices of Love. From that perspective, Katla is a Christ figure who sacrifices an important part of herself for the good of all. But that very sacrifice prevents woman from developing her animus on her own premises. The prescription comes from outside of her. Her husband should be her Lord and spiritual guide.

Von Franz does not mince her words when she talks about masculinity, or rather the lack of it, in women:

A woman who has no animus has no pep, no enterprise, no intelligence, no initiative. She is a very poor creature. She is just a womb producing children and a hand cooking in the kitchen. A woman without an animus is nothing. So the animus is an exceedingly positive thing. It is intelligence. It is the spiritual longing. The whole spirituality of women is connected with the animus. So you can say that in a woman, the animus, her masculine side extends from Devil to Holy Ghost (Ibid., 285).

It is instructive to contemplate Katla in the light of these words. In union with her animus Kári, who as the cold northern wind is ‘spirit’, the symbolism of her name implies ‘womb’ as a transforming vessel. Yet her procreative function is underlined in the tale. She brings a savior into a world that is splitting away from its heritage. In response to the church’s repressive measures, the collective psyche comes up with a virgin birth that reaches back to its matriarchal roots. The symbolic conception, left to the imagination in the Bible, is portrayed as an erotic act in the tale. The necessity of this interference from the chthonic powers is emphasized. At the same time the tale makes it clear that intercourse with these powers is a finished chapter, not only for Katla, but for women in general. The kindle has been passed on to the male.

As a farmer, the son Kári is heir to the agricultural worldview ruled by Freyja and the vanir-gods. As a chieftain, the younger Ari would be a descendant of Odin and the garrulous æsir-gods who arrived later on the scene and strove for supremacy. The mythological warfare between the two clans of gods comes through in the tension between the brothers over Katla’s necklace. When Ari, a rising star of the ruling class, denounces his mother as a whore, we are reminded of the Christian missionary who slandered Freyja at the Althing in 999 by calling her a bitch. Norse mythology betrays an aggressive intent to alienate woman from her animus who is cast either as the devil or a disgusting giant. In our tale it is Alvör who is the bad influence. She had to be exterminated to prevent the story from repeating itself.

By ousting Alvör, Katla closes the door on her völva aspect. She thereby quenches her spiritual powers and deprives herself of the challenging adventure which involves developing her animus on her own terms rather than following prescriptions and trusting in her husband to think for her. When all is said and done, can we help wondering whether Katla’s sorrow and overwhelming guilt, which runs like a red thread through the story, was not caused by the feeling of having betrayed herself?

The Witch's Ride

From Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, I collected by Jón Árnason

The storyteller’s switching from the past to the present tense has been kept intact.

Once upon a time there was a pastor who was an esteemed and prosperous man. He was newly wed when these events took place and had a young and charming wife whom he loved dearly and whose skills and beauty stood out amongst those of other women in neighboring parishes. There was however one defect in her demeanor which was of grave concern to the pastor: she disappeared every Christmas night and nobody knew what became of her. The pastor kept pressing her for an explanation but she said that it was none of his affair. This was the only thing that came between them.

At some point a vagrant lad engaged himself into the pastor’s services. He was puny and frail but was held to possess knowledge beyond that of common folks. Nothing worth reporting happened till Christmas. But on Christmas Eve the lad is in the stable combing and feeding the pastor’s horses when, without notice, the pastor’s wife comes in and engages him in a conversation about this and that. Suddenly she pulls a bridle from under her apron and puts it on the boy. Such is the magic power of the bridle that the lad suffers his mistress to mount him and immediately darts off like a bird in flight. He dashes over mountains and valleys, rocks and boulders, and whatever else that comes in his way; it feels as if he is wading through heavy smoke. At last they come to a small house. The pastor’s wife dismounts and ties the boy to a peg in the wall. She walks to the door and knocks. A man comes out and gives her a cordial reception whereupon he leads her into the house.

When they have disappeared, the lad unties the bridle from the peg, manages to get it off and puts it in his pocket. He then creeps upon the house and through a slit in the roof observes what goes on inside. He sees twelve women sitting at a table and the man who came out is the thirteenth. He recognizes his mistress in there. He notes that the women have great respect for this man to whom they are describing their skills in magic. Thus the pastor’s wife reports that she came riding on a living man. The master of the house is greatly impressed and remarks that it is an exceptionally powerful witchcraft to ride a living man. He foresees that she will become an outstanding magician, “for this I never knew anyone capable of except myself.” The other women become all excited and ask him to teach them this art. He then lays out a book, grey in color and written with fire or fire-colored letters. A gleam emanated from the letters and this was the only light in the house. The master now starts to teach the content of this book to the women and the boy absorbs everything he demonstrates.

As the day dawns the women say it is time to go. At that the teaching stops but each woman pulls out a glass and hands it to the master. The boy notes that the glasses contain something reddish which the master inbibes and thereupon returns the glasses to the women. They then take leave of him with great affection and exit from the house. The boy sees that each woman has her own bridle and a mount: one has a horse’s leg bone, another a jaw bone, the third a shoulder bone, etc. Each takes her mount and rides away. As to the pastor’s wife, she does not find her mount and is running in wild frenzy around the house when, without a warning, the lad jumps down from the roof and manages to get the bridle on her. He then mounts her and rides back home. After the night’s lesson he is able to steer the pastor’s wife on the right path and nothing worth reporting happened during their journey, till they came back to the stable from which they had set out. There the lad dismounts and ties the pastor’s wife on a stall. He then walks to the house and reports the night’s happenings and the whereabouts of the pastor’s wife. Everybody is startled by his story and not the least the pastor. The pastor’s wife is now fetched and interrogated. She finally admits that for some years she and eleven other pastors’ wives have attended the School of Black Arts where Satan himself has tought them magic, and that they’d had only one more year of study to go. She says that he had claimed their menstrual blood in return for his teaching and this had been the red stuff that the lad saw in the glasses. The pastor’s wife is then subjected to deserved punishment for her evil.

The Witch's Ride

Interpretation

Goddess Frîja riding on a broom stick. Wall painting in the Schleswig Cathedral. Photo from Larousse World Mythology, 1969, p. 388.

In popular belief, the witch’s vehicle is the broom. A wall painting in the Schleswig Cathedral shows the German goddess Frîja riding on a broom-stick. Frîja was the wife of Wodan. In Norse mythology she is known as Frigg, wife of Odin. Frîja was seen as the German parallel to Venus, hence Friday consecrated by the Romans to the goddess of love and called dies Veneris became frîatag in Old High German. But in Norse mythology it is Freyja who is cast in the Venusian role as goddess of love and fertility. In the context of our tale, it is worth noting that both Frigg and Freyja owned a falcon dress and hence were able to fly. Freyja is frequently portrayed as Odin’s mistress while Frigg is the wife and mother of Baldur, Odin’s son. Frigg and Freyja are seemingly two aspects of the one original goddess, the mother of the son and the völva who could not be reconciled in the wife. Katla’s conflict in the previous tale bears witness to this split and the consequent repression of the völva. We see its effect again in The Witch’s Ride where the gifted woman should content herself with the role of being a pastor’s beloved wife.

The tale emphasizes the magic of menstruation as well as the fear of its revolutionary power. The stable boy unveils the menstruants in the eleventh hour. In but one year the pastors’ wives would have become masters of the satanic arts and a threat to the established order. The tale’s thinly disguised sexual overtones evoke a power struggle that reaches back to Adam and his first wife, the legendary Lilith who came to represent the female created at the same time as the male in Genesis 1:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness: let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (26-27).

Adam is said to have favored the missionary position in sex but Lilith pointed out that she was his equal and refused to lie beneath him. In Eve: A Biography, Pamela Norris relates that “when Adam threatened to overpower Lilith by force, she uttered the magic name of God and flew away to the Red Sea [...] where she lived with a horde of lascivious demons and became renowned for her promiscuity” (278). We note that Lilith has an intimate knowledge of God - she utters the sacred name which according to tradition is an unpronounceable mystery and considered by Kabbalists to be a formula of creation (Pollack, 2008, 265), and we also note that she has the ability to fly, and that the Red Sea, as a metaphor for menstrual blood, is a breeding pool for evil. For the alchemists on the other hand, as explained by Jungian psychologist Edward Edinger, “the term ‘our Red Sea’ refers to the aqua permanens, the universal solvent - that is, the liquid form of the Philosopher’s Stone” which was the alchemists’ ultimate goal (72). The implication is that we must let our petrified habits and outdated worldviews dissolve in the dark chaos of the ‘Red Sea’ in order to find our true selves. Woman is thus not to turn her back on the potential inherent in her menstrual flow but to shine light on and transform her demons into guides and helpers. “Know thyself” was written over the entrance to the oracle at Delphi. The thorny path toward that end was recognized by our distant ancestors as the ultimate goal of education.

When we enter a university we are met with an inscription in golden letters which reads “Education is Power.” The Witch’s Ride supports this universal dictum. In spite of its humorous tone, the tale exposes the primitive fear of female wisdom and menstrual power. It also brings to the fore that education sanctioned by the ruling powers is selective and was, at the time of The Witch’s Ride, the province of males. In fact the same applied to magical knowledge, for it is seen as an asset in the case of the stable boy but is regarded as evil in the hands of the women. The latter were the severly repressed race and hence they were feared like dynamite.

The Wolf in the Woods

The expression “riding the rag” is a dethroning of the menstruating female in the spirit of the grotesque philosophy of the middle ages, where laughter became man’s response to that over which he had no power. Jón Árnason explains in an introduction to our tale that a ‘witch’s ride’, in Icelandic gandreid, “has the original meaning of riding wolves, and wolves were ridden by giantesses as is related in both the elder and the younger Edda.” In the Eddic poem Short Prophecy of the Seeress the origin of völvas is traced to Vidólfur, that is, to the ‘wolf in the woods’, a character familiar to us from the initiation tale of Red Ridinghood who comes reborn out of the wolf’s belly. There is an amusing discrepancy in the Icelandic version of the tale: Red Ridinghood is sent with a wheat cake and a jar of butter to grandma, but when the pair of them are out of the wolf’s belly “grandma ate the cake and drank the wine that Red Ridinghood had brought her” (Thorsteinsson, 58-62). Does grandma’s solo celebration call to mind the red stuff imbibed by the teacher in our tale? A further discrepancy arouses the suspicion that, despite the tale’s purging to befit its edifying purpose, remnants of the giantess still adhere to Red Ridinghood when we read that the scared “little” thing went to fetch “large and heavy stones” to put in the wolf’s belly. But Red Ridinghood has learned her lesson and obediently vows never to stray off the road again and run into the woods. And why would she not make such a vow, considering the punishment dealt the pastor’s wife and her wise sisters through the ages?

In the wolf-riding giantesses we have an image of strong female figures who were attuned to their instincts from which they drew strength and who rode their wild power with fearless dignity but were not swallowed by it. One incident related in the prose Edda describes the giantess Hyrrokkin who came to the gods’ rescue at Baldur’s funeral. Baldur ‘the good’ was Odin’s beloved son whose death foreshadowed the end of the latter’s reign. When the gods could not budge Baldur’s great ship on board which his cremation was to take place, they sent for Hyrrokkin who came riding on a wolf bridled with a snake and with one push sent the vessel sailing.

The wolf has an apocalyptic association in Norse mythology. The gods, who feared the wolf, tricked it into letting itself be bound. But in the Prophecy of the Seeress the völva foresees that it will break loose, and as the world goes under Odin will meet his end in the wolf’s gaping jaws. The bearer of bad news, the völva was silenced and forced underground. There is however hope in her prophecy, for she also foresaw that, green and virgin, earth will rise out of the ocean anew.

Jón Árnason continues to say in his introduction that “later gandreid was used not only to denote riding on wild animals but also any journeying where magic was involved.” The word gand-reid is a compound of gandur which means ‘mount’ but also denotes the ‘staff’ which was the attribute of the völva, and reid meaning ‘ride’. What we have is a transition from the natural to the symbolic. The staff is an emblem of power, worldly or spiritual, as in the case of a bishop or a pope. It is a phallic symbol. In the hands of the völva it denotes her masculine energy onto which man at some point projected the image of the savage wolf, an animal commonly associated with the moon. The wolf’s extraordinary sensitivity and aggression is echoed in the staff, which in the divinatory system of tarot is a symbol of intuitive insight, the fiery spark that initiates creation, and assertive enterprise.

In the ecstatic ritual of the seidur the völva journeys between different planes of consciousness. In his article “Woman Carrying a Phallus”, Jungian analyst George R. Elder discusses “the extraordinary power of symbolism to capture an otherwise elusive energy and make it visible, thereby differentiating ego from archetype and providing a humbled ego with a focus for the proper attitude of reverence” (334). This is the function of the völva’s staff, her symbolic gandur. The name given to völvas in the sagas, Heidur (a masculine noun meaning ‘honor’ and as an adjective refers to the ‘cloudless’ sky), bears witness to the high regard in which they were held as a channel for the energy that spoke through them.

Eventually the broom replaced the völva’s staff as the witch’s vehicle, indicating a narrowing of the female sphere of action. In China “riding a horse” is one metaphor for the “month-period” (Eberhard, 186). In our tale the pastors’ wives ride the bones of a chopped up horse. In one sense this imagery implies the dissolving phase of the menstrual flow. It also refers to the horse as a sacrifical animal in Norse heathendom. The horse was sacred and intimately linked with the gods, particularly Odin and Freyr. The mid-winter sacrificial celebration was called yule (Icelandic jól), a denomination that was transferred onto Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Jesus. The timing of the pastors’ wives’ escapade puts menstruation in a religious and spiritual context. The heathen sacrificial celebration took place on a date determined by the lunar calendar which counted thirteen moons. The thirteenth person at the table in the School of Black Arts, the master himself, thus refers to the Moon. What we have is the underside of Jesus and his twelve disciples, who according to tradition were all males.

Menstruation and Sacrifice

Given the allusion to the heathen sacrifical ceremony, it is interesting to explore the connection between menstruation and sacrifice. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica “the term sacrifice derives from the Latin sacrificium, which is a combination of the words sacer, meaning something set apart from the secular or profane for the use of supernatural powers, and facere, meaning ‘to make’”. It is tempting to apply this definition to menstrual seclusion during which woman became an instrument for the supernatural in furthering human evolution and development. Katla’s Dream would be the perfect example.

Descriptions of sacrifical rituals in the sagas bear a striking likeness to women’s bloodshed and point to the womb as the original sacrificial vessel. The sacrificial place was called hof which originally meant ‘mound’ (cf. Venusian mound). The blood of the animal was poured into a cup which stood on a stone altar in the innermost part of the sanctuary. On the altar was also a ring at which oaths were sworn. (I refer to Freyja’s Brísingamen and to the necklace [men] that Kári gave to Katla which is referred to as a ring). Standing in the cup was a rod with which the blood was smeared on the altar and on the inside and outside walls of the hof. Then it was sprinkled on the participants. The meat was cooked and ale was in ample supply. The gods were toasted: Odin, Njord, Freyr... no mention is made of goddesses (The Saga of Hákon the Good, ch. 14; Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 4). The belief that sacrifice releases energy and brings about increased fruitfulness could be deduced from woman’s biological function. It seems logical that man’s sacrificial celebration in mid-winter should be inspired by the ritual established by Freyja and honored by her human daughters who withdrew from the world like the fading sunlight in winter, pulled into the sacred temple of their bodies, and returned cleansed, envigorated and fertile like the virgin soil in spring.

Horse as Symbol

The horse is invested with power that man has been able to harness and make work for him. Symbolically, rider and horse denote ego and instinct where, ideally, the former holds the reins and is in command. Our tale betrays an anxious concern that the ego part be played by the male. “The data of prehistoric archeology shows that the ancient tribes of our part of the world believed that a principle of the divine nature existed in the horse” (Charbonneau-Lassay, 96). This is certainly true of Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged steed who bore the god between the upper and the nether worlds (see link to Sleipnir below). By eating the meat of the sacrificed animal, man partook of its divine nature. When Icelanders adopted Christianity they were permitted to practice, in secret, the heathen custom of eating horse meat. Later, during centuries of hardship and hunger, annals reveal that the population preferred death from starvation rather than resort to eating horse meat. The wine and the bread as symbol of the blood and body of the sacrificed Redeemer had taken root in the psyche and prohibited regression to more primitive customs.

Blood as Sacrament

But what of the cake and the wine eaten by Red Ridinghood’s grandma after their joint journey through the dark grave of the wolf’s belly? This is a symbolic sacrament which is made literal in The Witch’s Ride and by which woman’s regression during her period is emphasized in a negative manner. The divine powers with whom she consorted within the sacred boundaries of her ritual seclusion, have taken on the identity of Satan. It is no doubt meaningful that the pastor’s wife in our tale is not a mother. What is sacrificed in menstruation, according to primitive belief, is the potential child. By juxtaposing the blood offered by the women to Satan and the birth of Jesus, the tale intimates that Christ’s voluntary sacrifice cleansed the human race of the stain of menstrual blood which ushered us into consciousness as a species and with which we come tainted into the world as individuals. The death inherent in the menstrual blood is overridden by the birth of the son who bestowed eternal life on mankind. By surrendering himself to God’s will that he be sacrificed in order to redeem the human race, Christ taught by example and conquered death. It is the fear of death that keeps us from living our full potential. We are afraid to stray away from the path laid out for us lest we should be torn apart by the wolf in the woods. This fear is a potent weapon in the hands of rulers. Christ was a revolutionary sentenced to death by the ruling powers of his time. So was Joan of Arc and countless other wise women in the dark middle ages. The punishment dealt the pastor’s wife in our tale is left to our imagination.

The idea that “through sacrifice, life is returned to its divine source, regenerating the power or life of that source” (Britannica), takes on a sinister meaning in our tale. What is alluded to is that Satan is the source of menstruation. That by tuning into the power and wisdom of her nature, woman sustains the life of the Devil and increases his power. The Witch’s Ride is thus another version of the vampire story, with one important difference though: the women in this tale are agents, not victims in need of being saved from themselves by a hero. Like Eve, they are driven by desire for knowledge.

The Farmer at Fossvellir

From Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, III collected by Jón Árnason

The storyteller’s switching between past and present tense has for the most part been left intact.

Foss means ‘waterfall’ in Icelandic. The name of the farm is derived from its location on fields by a waterfall. The events are believed to have taken place in the eighteenth century.

In earlier times, a farmer lived at Fossvellir on Langanes (‘long-point’). The farm was located a short distance from Saudanes (‘wether-point’), but is now deserted. This farmer had many young children, but one daugher was oldest. She was given the task at night to drive the milch ewes out to the Foss-river which cascades down from the heath, not far away from the farm. In late summer, the girl complained to her father that she had been pursued by a rock giant for two consecutive nights. Crying, she asked him not to make her drive the ewes the third night. The father became angry and accused her of inventing this story in order to avoid tending the ewes. “You will, nonetheless, drive the ewes tonight,” he said. So that is how it had to be and she took the ewes out to the Foss-river that evening.

When, at bedtime, the girl has not returned, the farmer begins to suspect that his daughter has been telling the truth. He sets out to the Foss-river, but the girl is nowhere to be seen, and he returns devastated by sorrow and regret. At dawn the following day he rides over to Saudanes, to see the minister who resided there, and gives him a detailed account of the situation. The reverend says that he cannot free her from the giants to whom she has been bewitched - “and we must, without delay,” says he, “send a messenger up north to Múli (‘projecting mountain’), to the minister there who is my brother. He will be able to have your daughter released.” At that, the minister writes a letter and expedites it with a messenger to his brother. The messenger arrives at Múli and delivers the letter to the minister, along with the Saudanes-minister’s greeting. The minister reads the letter and says: “These are bad news, for the farmer’s daughter is in the hands of the most evil giants here in the north, and if we have not arrived before three suns have set at Saudanes, these evil beings will have bewitched her so potently that it will be beyond repair.” Having said this, the minister prepares in haste to leave with the messenger.

They ride night and day and manage every time to exchange their out-worn horses for fresh ones. Even so, they did not arrive at Saudanes until three days had passed. Then the Múli-minister said it was already too late. They nonetheless gave in to the farmer’s pleading and both clergymen went with him to the Foss-river and to the waterfall that is in the river. The Múli-minister pulls out a wand and strikes on the rock. At that, a large door opens into a cave. The minister conjures the one who is in charge to appear, and immediately a dreadful giant comes to the door. The minister asks if he has abducted the farmer’s daugher. The giant says that this is true. “Let us see her!” the clergyman says. The giants then let her come to the door with an iron chain around her waist.

The clergymen are taken aback by her fearful appearance, she’s become big like a giant and blue like Hel (the goddess of death in Norse mythology who was half blue and half skin color). No human resemblance could be seen except the baptismal-cross on her forhead which was white and with natural skin color. When she sees her father, she asks the giants to allow her to kill him, for he is to blame for all her misfortune. But the Múli-minister orders her to go back into the cave and never again come before the eyes of man.

The Múli-minister then asked the rock-giant: “Are there many giants in your cave and what do they sustain themselves on?” The giant replied: “We are five and get our food from a lake full of fish which is in our cave.” The minister then conjures the giant to go back in. The cave closed on his heels and the minister stepped away from the door.

It is rumored among wise men, that red runestaves are still to be seen on the rock, in the place where the door was. But as he witnessed this whole event, the farmer became overwhelmed by sorrow and lived but a short time afterwards. Following this, farming was discontinued at Fossvellir and nobody has lived there ever since.

The Farmer at Fossvellir

Interpretation

I have come to understand why the fate of the farmer’s daughter in this tale has had such a hold on me. Behind my drive to free her is the need to liberate a daughter in myself whom I locked away in my innermost temple. Intended as punishment for her, it turned against myself, banning my access to the sacred source.

I am a young girl tumbling on the chair in the kitchen nook oblivious of my torn panties when his anger hits me like a slap in the face like a stab in the heart. Indecent girl! He curses me with vehemence with rage I curl up in shame defenseless frozen she sinks underground my young vulva, my enemy I became two. Oh, I hated that girl. The knife turned against myself with vehemence, with rage I screamed every time she stirred up the memory, why did you do it! go away, get lost, go to the bottom of the sea!

My mission to free the daugher of the farmer at Fossvellir is an act of redemption for the cruelty I vented on the girl in myself who stood on the threshold of puberty. The fate of the daughter in this folktale makes me understand that my painful experience is rooted in the collective, driving both him who caused the wound and me, the wounded, who perpetuated it.

When put in the context of myth, The Farmer at Fossvellir teaches me that the pubescent girl is conceived of as a threat. She creates a split in the father who desires to possess his daugher. The daughter is tabu. The father abhors his illegitimate desire and projects his negative feelings on the daughter who becomes the culprit. If the father does not recognize or denies his desire, it goes underground where it becomes magnified and distorted. The daughter will then have to engage in a subjective wrestle with her father’s shadow who gobbles up her libido, her creative energy, while on the surface she has to fulfill the role of a dutiful and obedient daughter. As long as this struggle goes on, she is trapped in her role as the daughter of a father who thwarts her need to discover her talents and blossom into the unique individual that she is meant to be.

Like a dream, the folk tale takes us beyond the rational. If we open ourselves up to it, it speaks to us holistically and we may find it difficult to rationalize the meaning we derive from it. I cannot claim that my understanding of this tale is right. I can only say, that for me it is. I take what is not said in the story to be just as important as that which is. Silencing of that which we despise in ourselves is a defence mechanism, rendered all the more forceful by the demand that we become imitations of the church’s interpretation of the perfected male-Christ. The quest for immortality, granted humanity through Christ’s sacrifice of his bodily existence, was driven mercilessly by the masculine force embodied by the male gods of my ancestors like Odin and Thor, precursors of the Christian god adopted by Icelanders in the year 1000. All those many centuries later, The Farmer at Fossvellir betrays an acute tension between the heathen past and the Christian church. The tale forces me to look my alliance with the repressive powers in the eye. It is not without pain, that I see in the Múli-minister’s banishment the reflection of my own attitude toward the girl in myself, whom I expelled to the bottom of the sea for having accidentally exposed herself in the kitchen nook of my childhood. The Farmer at Fossvellir brings home the message, that the distant reality of the human race still informs the life of modern man.

Cultural Background

As described in The ‘Hidden woman’ in Hafnanúpur, the eighteenth century, when the events in our tale were supposed to have taken place, was a dismal period in the history of the Icelandic people. The previous century, sometimes referred to as the age of witchcraft, had been marked by burnings at the stake. In the pulpits, nature in its broadest sense was reviled as the devil’s playfield and the vigilant eye of a punishing god upheld as a deterrent against the sins of the flesh. In the tale, the daughter becomes a scapegoat for the irreconcilable split between heaven and hell advocated by the servants of the church. The gate between the two worlds was slammed shut with the damned trapped in the world of matter. The aspect of the feminine personified by the farmer’s daughter is deemed beyond redemption by the Múli-minister. I have made it my task to prove him wrong.

The tale presents the father figure on two levels, the earthy farmer on the one hand and the spiritual fathers, representatives of the heavenly father, on the other. The latter decree that the daughter is a victim of enchantment by evil forces. This is emphasized through repetition. Her accusations against her father are silenced by the reverend father who shuts her up in the cave. She is a threat, not only, I suspect, to her own father whom she wants to kill, but also to the churchfathers and to the general image of the Father with all the power invested in it.

Underlying this tale, staged on the human plane, on a specific Icelandic farm, is an archetypal pattern. Just as the mother of Freyja is hidden from view in the myths, so is the mother of the farmer’s daughter in the tale. Freyja’s father, the fertility god Njord, was the archtypal farmer. To emphasize what has been said before, the fertility cult was based on the cyclic rhythm of the moon and the seasons, the cycle of death and rebirth, which is echoed in the menstrual cycle and cast in gold in Freyja’s Brísingamen as a symbol for this feminine reality. As you will recall, Freyja acquired her jewel, as recorded by Christian scholars, by sleeping for four consecutive nights with four dwarfs who had their abode in a rock.

It does not take much ingenuity to see the common motive behind the folk tale The Farmer at Fossvellir and the myth about Freyja’s affair with the dwarfs. Dwarf or giant, both were associated with the moon that was envisioned as the primary source of divine energy before the aggressive æsir-gods, incarnations of the solar principle, won out over the fertility deities of peace and plenty. Consequently Njord and his children, Freyja and Freyr, were adopted into the heavenly household of the æsir presided over by Odin, ‘Father of All’. Odin was jealous of Freyja’s liaison with the dwarfs and had her jewel stolen from her. She was to be his lunar lover mirroring his solar splendor, his muse. He wanted her for himself, completely. No more messing around with the old moon-spirit was an urgent message patriarchy sent out to women. Odin returned Brísingamen to Freyja with conditions that led to internal war for women who became torn between the old order and the new. Katla’s Dream is an expression of this tenacious conflict. The monstrosity of the farmer’s daughter in the eyes of the clergymen in the folktale bespeaks patriarchy’s attitude towards woman’s menstrual nature held sacred by the fertility cults of old. Her gift, symbolized before by a gold necklace, has become a curse, betokened by an iron chain by which she is bound to primitive, mortal nature.

Lake Full of Fish

As Odin stole the treasure from Freyja, you will remember that he also stole the mead of poetry from Gunnlöd, a giant maiden who afterwards disappeared from the scene completely (see interpretation of Katla’s Dream). I was adamant at the injustice I saw in this account which showed no concern for Gunnlöd. Where is she? What happened to her, I kept asking myself. I now wonder whether she is not the farmer’s daughter in the tale and whether the lake full of fish in the giants’ rock is not of the same substance as the precious mead, the living source at the root of our being. The fish is a fertility symbol associated with the origin of life. Before it became a sacramental symbol in the Christian tradition, it was associated with the great goddesses of the fertility cults. Many a folk tale relates how the dream of a sterile queen leads her towards a stream where she is to catch and eat a fish that will restore her fertility. The folk tale points the way for me. I am convinced that liberating the daughter is my key to the living water.

The Cave and the High Priestess

The folk tale takes me beyond the established sanctuary of a church to the cave, held sacred by the ancestors as the symbolic womb from which our species emerged at the dawn of civilization. As the place of our common origin, the cave imparts a feeling of unity and equality. The attitude of the clergymen, on the other hand, is dialectic and exclusive. They oust as evil the unifying feminine power invested in the daughter by shutting her up in the cave which, on a psychological level, lies beyond the limits of the rational mind.

In the divinatory system of tarot, the High Priestess is the source of living water (see images in the interpretations of The Hidden Woman and Katla’s Dream). Clad in blue, with a crucifix at the heart level and crowned with the moon, she sits on a cube in the mouth of a cave or between two stone columns, with behind her the veiled mystery. The image of the farmer’s daughter in the door of the cave as seen through the eyes of the clergymen - huge, blue, awesome and in chains, looks to me like a distortion of the High Priestess on a tarot card. I am struck by the fact that the former has a baptismal cross on the forehead, which to me evokes the thinking function, while the latter bears an even handed cross at the heart level, implying that when we find ourselves at cross roads the feeling heart should be the guide. The central point of the cross signifies the meeting of the mundane (the horizontal line) and the timeless (the vertical line), a moment of a transforming insight that is comprehended by the whole personality, not just the rational mind.

In the Tarot of Northern Shadows, the High Priestess is depicted in the guise of Freyja with a six pointed gold star-pendant at the heart level.

From Tarot of Northern Shadows Freyja as High Priestess with a six pointed gold star-pendant at the heart level. Note also the f-rune on her shield.

The six pointed star signifies the merging of the elements of fire (the upward pointing triangle) and water (the downward pointing one). The coming together of those opposites symbolize the coniunctio, or ‘sacred marriage’, which underlies the seidur, that ecstatic rite of divination and healing, practiced by the völva and taught to Odin by Freyja. It depicts an intercourse between the conscious and the unconscious, between our solar and lunar natures, which is a prerequisite for any original creation and healing to take place.

It does not seem farfetched to surmise that what is at stake for the churchfathers is regression to a belief system in which a priestess, völva or sibyl, played the key role. As I said before, völva (derived from Lat. vulva, volva) means ‘womb’ just as Delphi, where the oracle resided, means ‘womb’ also. The cave, too, is an image of the womb of the earth. Through her biological make-up, woman as völva is the guardian of the secret of creation.

The motive behind the folktale intimates a parallel between the farmer’s daughter and Freyja, daughter of the fertility god. The former becomes a human incarnation of the goddess who, as I keep repeating, was publicly reviled as a bitch by the lawmaker and Christian missionary Hjalti Skeggjason in 999. The Múli-minister takes the missionary’s curse a step further and locks the farmer’s daughter up in the cave. According to rumor, the storyteller reports, the clergyman did so by applying rune magic, the very means for which the church persecuted the oppressed populace by fire. This gives the tale an ironic twist. The hypocrisy of the churchfathers is unmasked. The parish name Saudanes (‘wether-point’) may well be another venomous dart aimed at the servants of the church. Saudur (‘wether’) is a ‘castrated male sheep’, which by way of association would intimate the sterility of the religion the clergymen uphold, while the daugher’s relationship with the milch ewes points to the abundance in nature that nourishes man.

F-Rune and Red Gold

The first rune in the runic alphabet, the f-rune, is called fé which in Icelandic can refer to either livestock, and sheep in particular, or monetary wealth (to be seen on the shield of the High Priestess above). To the ancestors the runic alphabet represented the order of the universe. A rune was not simply a letter, it was also a key to the mystery of creation. On an inner or spiritual level the fé-rune stands for evolutionary power, the fire that drives our growth and development. The key word for this rune in an old Icelandic rune poem is aurum which is Latin for ‘gold’, and more specifically red gold. There is reason to believe, that the incipient movement inherent in the fé-rune was brought about by the menstruation of the human female, aptly referred to by the Chinese as the first tide.

The red gold is the fire that drives a woman along a cyclic spiritual path where she has the possibility to refine her talents, to make of herself a poem in co-creation with her instinctual nature. That patriarchy has made every effort to bar woman from this creative source, is depicted in the folktale The Farmer at Fossvellir. A better known example is the biblical tale of Eve’s temptation in the Garden of Eden, where woman’s initial impulse towards knowledge is attributed to machinations of the devil in the guise of the serpent who, as said before, through it’s rejuvinating shedding of the skin, is mythologically associated with the womb and the moon. She shall be a victim of her feminine nature through suffering, god decrees. The Word has tremendous power, be it in Eden or in the eighteenth century Icelandic countryside. The lesson I take away from these tales is that the pubescent daughter triggered the splitting of the god-image into ruler of the underworld and heavenly father.

The father who desires to possess his daughter projects his subjective feminine side onto his flesh and blood offspring. That the male needs to be in touch with his feminine side is born out by our story. When the churchfather locked the instinctual powers up in the cave, he cut the farmer’s lifeline to the wellspring at the root of his being. As a result he fell into depression and suffered an untimely death. In other words, the farmer’s unconscious feminine nature had the better of him. The moral of the story is, that the repressive diabolization of nature upheld by the servants of the church leads to ruin. Man must own his primitive nature and deal with it consciously.

How Do I Free the Daughter?

The tale is about the farmer as is emphasized by its title. What I am concerned about is the daughter’s fate. How do I free her? What rune will undo the Múli-minister’s spell? I opt for the s-rune that encompasses the power of the sun. I read the sun-rune as the source of life and guiding light of consciousness. I believe that the secret inherent in this rune will melt away the ice of inertia in which the farmer’s daughter is trapped. It will restore the ousted Daughter to her former status as avatar of the sun, equal to the Son, her twin and masculine counterpart. She will shine once more at the heart of being and promote love and peace amongst men and women. I will look to the tarot Queen of Wands as a beacon on my mission to free the captive.

From the Rider-Waite Tarot

In the tarot system, the Queens represent the element of water and Wands the element of fire. What the High Priestess in the guise of Freyja represents on an archetypal level - you remember the six pointed goldstar at her heart level symbolizing the union of the elements of fire and water - the Queen of Wands incarnates on the human scale. Look at her, seated on an elevated throne born up of two sculpted lions. Below her you see mountain tops illuminated by the sun, and behind her a cloudless blue sky. She calls to mind Snorri Sturluson’s description of Freyja: “When she journeys, she sits in a chariot pulled by two cats” (Gylfaginning, 24). The Queen of Wands is crowned with gold and dressed in the yellow of the sun, with a tall sprouting staff in one hand and a sunflower in the other. The most important quality I see in this queen now is her uninhibited awareness of her sexual power. Not only is she conscious of it, it is clear that she also feels totally at home in it. The firm grip she has on her wand shows that she knows how to channel and direct this energy in an enlightened manner. A girl at the age of puberty is unconscious of the power that resides in her, she does not know the value it has for her personal growth. As long as her feminine power is not upheld to her as a gift that she should appropriate and assimilate, she may allow herself to be robbed and exploited in myriad ways.

As we elaborated on in The Witch’s Ride, the staff was the attribute of the völva and so the wand, representing the element of fire, distinguishes this queen from the other queens in the tarot deck. She stands for one aspect of the feminine, as does the völva. Flaming red lions adorn the back of her throne representing wild fiery nature, while golden yellow reigns in the foreground indicating that she has transformed this primitive animal drive into light. She does not shy away from her strong emotions nor does she let herself be overpowered by them. She recognizes them as a power source that begs to be channelled into a creative act or expression. Her distant look tells me that this queen is a visionary, she understands how the past informs the future. A black cat at her feet, alert and facing front, is the mystery in this card, her shadowy guide whom she dares trust and who steers her away from preconceptions toward the essence that lies hidden in the dark.

The Giantess on the Stoneboat

From Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, II collected by Jón Árnason

The storyteller’s idiosyncratic switching between past and present tense to emphasize tension and wonder has been left intact.

Once upon a time there were a king and a queen who had a son named Sigurd. He grew up to become a peerless youth, strong, skilled in athletics, and fine-looking. When age began to slow the king down, he had a talk with his son and said it was about time he found himself a good wife, for there was no knowing how much longer he had to live. The son’s nobility would attain full flower, the father said, if he got a wife worthy of him. Sigurd did not disagree and asked his father where he had in mind for him to look for a wife. The king said that in a foreign country, which he specified, there was a king who had a beautiful and promising daughter. If her father accepted Sigurd’s proposal, he felt that this would be his best match.

Father and son then took leave of each other and the prince prepared his departure. He sailed to the land his father had pointed him to, presented himself to the king and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The king readily agreed, but on the condition that Sigurd stay there as long as he could, for the king was unwell and barely capable of ruling his kingdom. Sigurd accepted, but with the reservation that he be given permission to leave for his country when he received word that his father, who he said was decrepit, had passed away. Sigurd then drank his wedding to the princess and engaged in ruling the state with his father-in-law. Sigurd and his wife loved each other dearly, and even more loving did their relationship become when one year later she gave birth to his fair and fine-looking son. Time passed. When the boy was in his second year, Sigurd received word that his father was deceased. He then prepared his departure along with his wife and son and sailed back home on one ship.

After a few days at sea and with but one day of sailing remaining, they lost the wind and got caught in dead calm. The ship then lay and rocked gently on the tranquil sea. The royal couple were by themselves on the deck, as everybody else had gone down below to sleep. They sat there and conversed for a while and their son was with them. After a while Sigurd was assailed by such drowsiness that he could not keep himself awake, so he went down below and lay down. The queen was left all by herself up above where she played with their son.

When a good while had passed since king Sigurd had gone below, the queen sees a black spot on the sea. She notices that it moves in her direction. As it comes closer to the ship she is able to figure out that this is a boat and that it is propelled by oars. She also detects some sort of a human shape in the boat. Eventually the boat pulls up to the ship and the queen sees that it is a stoneboat. Next an aweful and wicked-looking giantess comes aboard the ship. The queen is terrified beyond words and can neither speak nor move to awaken the king or the crew. The giantess walks towards the queen, lifts the boy from her arms and puts him down on the deck. She then strips the queen of her royal garb and leaves her standing in her underwear. The giantess now puts on the queen’s clothes and with that takes on human shape. Finally she puts the queen in the boat and utters this spell: “Your swift sailing shall not be halted till you arrive at my brother’s in the underworld.” At that, the queen sat as if paralized while the boat under her glided instantly away and within long was out of sight from the ship.

When the boat was no longer to be seen the little prince started to cry. The giantess did not apply herself to consoling him, and even if she had, it would have been to no avail. She went with the boy on her arm down below where the king was asleep and awakens him with harsh accusations for not caring about her well-being, left alone as she has been with their son up on the deck while he sleeps and snores and the entire crew with him. She thinks it most inconsiderate and reckless of him not to have someone stay awake with her on the ship, for there is no knowing what might happen to a person alone. Now she cannot console the boy by any means and would like to get with him to where he is supposed to be, which should be possible if someone showed any drive or deed, for fair wind was blowing.

King Sigurd is taken aback by the impetuosity of his queen who had never before spoken a cross word to him. Nonetheless he reacts kindly to her address and sympathizes with her resentment. He tries to help her console the boy, but it is to no avail. He then awakens the crew and orders sails to be hoisted, for fair wind was blowing straight to harbor. They now sailed at full speed and landed in the kingdom which Sigurd was to rule. He went to his court where everybody was in grief because of his father’s passing, but now they rejoiced at having reclaimed him sound and safe. He was nominated king and became ruler of the land. The young prince hardly ever stopped crying in his mother’s presence since he was left alone with her on the deck though he had been a most tranquil child before. The king therefore had to get a nanny for him from amongst the ladies-in-waiting at the court. When the child came into the nanny’s care, he quickly regained his former calm and peace.

After the voyage the king felt that the queen had changed in many ways and not for the better. In particular he felt that she had become more imposing, testier and less affable than he had expected. Yet she seemed gracious and polite, but soon it came to light that more people than the king sensed her coldness.

There were two boys at the court, one of them eighteen, the other nineteen. They had a liking for chess and spent long hours inside playing. Their chamber was adjacent to that of the queen and frequently, at certain hours of the day, they could hear her. One day they paid more attention than previously to what she was saying. They put their ear to a slit in the wall between the rooms and heard clearly that the queen said: “When I yawn a small yawn I am a little and dainty maiden, when I yawn half a yawn I am like a half-giantess, when I yawn a whole yawn I am like a full-fledged giantess.” No sooner had she uttered these words than she was gripped by such nausea that she yawned tremendously. At this she became so startled that she immediately turned into a wicked-looking giantess. A three-headed thurs (giant) with a bin full of meat now came up through the floor in the queen’s chamber. He greets his sister and puts the bin in front of her. She sits down and does not stop eating until she has gobbled up the very last morsel. The boys witnessed everything that went on but did not hear any conversation between the brother and sister. They were astounded by how greedily the queen devoured the meat and how much of it she could contain and, at the same time, it no longer surprised them how little she ate when she dined with the king. When she had finished the contents of the bin the giant went down with it the same way he had come and the queen resumed human shape.

By this time the young prince had been with the nanny for a while. One evening when she had lit a light and held the prince in her lap, it so happened that in her chamber a few floor boards broke open and a beautiful woman in her underwear came up into the room. She had an iron-ring around her waist and attached to it was a chain that reached down as far as could be seen. The woman walked over to the nanny and took the child from her, hugged him, and handed him over to the nanny again. She then went down the same way she had come and the floor closed over her head. Although the woman did not utter a word the nanny became frightened, yet she kept her calm. The next day everything went as the day before, the white-clad woman came around the same time as the previous day, took the child, caressed him and then gave him back to his nanny. But as she was about to leave she said with a sorrowful mien: “Two are gone and only one remains.” Then she went down the same way again and the floor closed. Now the nanny became even more frightened than before having heard the woman speak those words. She feared that the child might be in some sort of danger, although the unknown woman had seemed kindly and had caressed the child as if he had been severed from her. What haunted the nanny in particular were the words, “and only one remains,” for she thought it might mean that now there remained one of three days, as she had come to visit her for two days. The nanny resolved to go to the king and told him the whole story and asked him by all means to be present in her room the next day, around the time the woman was wont to come. The king promised that he would.

The following day the king came to the nanny’s chamber a little before the appointed time and sat himself on a chair with a drawn sword in hand. The floor boards now broke open as before and the white-clad woman came up with the iron-ring and the chain. The king immediately recognizes his wife and without further ado cuts through the chain that trailed down from the iron-ring. This brought on such thundering bumps underground that the palace shook and trembled and nobody doubted that every house in the city would crash and crumble. When the commotion finally stopped, the king and the queen fell into each other’s arms. Then she told him the whole story.

She told him how the giantess came to the ship when everybody was asleep and stripped her of her queenly garb, what she had said and the spell she cast. She told him that when the boat, which glided on its own account under her, had transported her so far away from the ship that she was no longer able to see it, she had felt as if she went through a certain blackness till the boat landed by a three-headed thurs('giant') who had taken her and right away wanted to sleep with her. She had flatly refused. The thurs then put her in an isolated house and threatened that she would never get out unless she promised him her affection. He had then paid her a visit from time to time. Eventually she had started to puzzle over how she might free herself from the hands of giants. She agreed to sleep with him if she were allowed to see her son above ground for three days in a row. He had consented but girdled her with this iron-ring to which was attached this chain, one end of which he had tied around his waist. The thunderous bumps would have been caused when the king cut the chain and the giant plomped down to the bottom of the tunnel at the sudden slackening of the chain. The tremor had been so intense when he plummeted down because his home was right beneath the town. Most likely he had been killed and his death-convulsions caused the city to tremble. The queen said that she had reserved the right to see her son three days in a row because she felt it would grace her with succor and release, as had now become manifest.

The king now understood why the woman with whom he had lived for some time had been so ungracious. He immediately had a hood pulled over her head and had her beaten to death with stones. Then he had her tied to unbroken colts who tore her to pieces. With her out of the way, the youths, who had witnessed what went on in the queen’s chamber, came forth and told their story. They had not dared to do so before because of her tyranny. The queen now assumes her noble role and is well liked by all. As to the nanny, the king and the queen married her to a high ranking nobleman and provided her with a generous dowry.

The Giantess on the Stoneboat

Interpretation

In the introduction to the fairy tales in his collection, Jón Árnason comments that at first sight it might seem that these were foreign tales, as there had never been a king and a queen in their kingdom in Iceland. He ascertains that these tales are nonetheless the product of the Icelandic people’s poetic fantasy and not at all translations from foreign stories.

King and Queen are archetypes with roots in the hinterland of our mundain reality which we project outside of ourselves or, as happens in our dreams, onto our inner screen. They are the stars of the unfolding unconscious drama of our development as individuals or a collective that finds its outlet in dreams and fairy tales. From the perspective of ego-consciousness they are the “other” into whom we strive to grow. What may not be immediately apparent to us is that King as a male figure and Queen as a female do not coincide with our biological gender as men and women. They stand for opposite energies in our make-up. Generally speaking they represent on the one hand active and outgoing energy, on the other receptive and introverted. The former tends toward differentiation, the latter is unifying. Both are equally important. The King’s rank as the ruling principle reflects the status the rational or discriminating mind has held in our culture. As we become increasingly aware of the fact that we live in a unified world, the vital importance of the Queen’s role is coming to the fore. In order to function as balanced individuals we need to maintain a harmonious royal couple of equal stature within. The stereotyped role casting in these tales, on which we feed from early childhood, affects the way we see ourselves and our world. They thus contribute to maintaining the discrimination between the sexes by which we live.

The opening line leaves us in no doubt as to who is the star of the tale. Sigurd (‘he who has victory’) is the only personage with a name and a name that confirms his descent from the most celebrated solar-hero of all times, Sigurd the dragon-slayer. His child-son, who becomes his mother’s true savior from the shackles of evil, suggests an evolution of the masculine principle. Sigurd the dragon-slayer’s stormy relationship with the valkyrie Brynhildur led to his death and the valkyrie’s suicide. Our tale is an attempt to progress beyond the fatal relationship between the hero and the belligerent and unyielding valkyrie which is described in the poems of the Edda and the Saga of the Völsungs. It is a patriarchal tale, at the heart of which is the taming of female power.

Mythological Background

As in previous tales, mythological themes inform this story. Behind the two kingdoms we detect the two families of gods, the vanir venerated by the cultivators of the earth and the heroic æsir whose main object was conquest of nature and land. These two clans of gods that in the mists of legend were on tense and unfriendly terms, become unified through marriage in this tale. The opposite worldviews come together in the son who incarnates hope for a broader perspective and a more peaceful world. That hope, the story reveals, hinges on woman’s sacrifice of her lunar nature.

The word vanir implies ‘impotence’. The heroic virility manifested in the æsir-conquistators is lacking in the vanir. This is underlined by the fact that the king, father of the princess-bride, is unwell and needs Sigurd’s help to rule his kingdom. We are again reminded of Freyja’s paternity and the absense of her mother in the myths. To repeat what has been said before, Freyja was the daughter of the vanir-god of fertility Njord. The absence of a mother and a wife in this kingdom alludes to the princess’s kinship with Freyja.

The name Njord (Njörður) is etymologically identical with that of a Germanic goddess, Nerthus, who according to the Roman historian Tacitus (56-117) was venerated as Terra mater (‘Mother Earth’) on a Danish island in the first century A.D. Nerthus disappeared from the scene and was replaced by Njord, whose name can be traced to places and myths from the latter part of the heathen period. Looking for an explanation for the change of sex, some suggest that in the Nerthus-religion both a masculine and a feminine deity were venerated as in the case of the twins Freyja and Freyr, children of Njord, others that it was a question of one bisexual deity (Simek, 180). This background explains the Stone Age sister-brother pair in the tale with which the princess is confronted as she is pulled back to her primitive origin on her journey to queendom.

In the spirit of the heroic æsir, Sigurd’s father sends his son out into the world on a wooing journey. The marriage is brought about by a mutual and civilized agreement between the two parties. Here we have come a long way from Odin’s amorous encounters with virgin maidens whom he robbed and raped and even drove mad, and from Skírnir’s wooing journey to the underworld on behalf of Freyr when he forced Gerd to surrender herself to the god, a struggle which may echo Njord’s all but forgotten usurpation of Nerthus’s role (see discussion on Skírnismál in interpretation of Katla’s Dream). In the light of Hilda Ellis Davidson’s claim that “Gerd is one of the names of the goddess Freyja” (177), Skírnir’s ruthless enforcement in the interest of the god, who at this point had been incorporated into Odin’s pantheon, points to the usurpation of Freyja’s status as Lady Sovereignty. Faced with the prospect of eternal exile in an agonizing marriage to a three-headed thurs, Gerd not only surrenders herself, she also relinguishes her chalice “filled with ancient mead” (Skírnismál, st. 37). In Celtic lore, the Cup was the attribute of the Goddess of the Land, Lady Sovereignty. A new king wed himself to the goddess by drinking from the cup offered him by her mortal representative. In our tale, this archaic custom has become a mere figure of speach. Sigurd “drank his wedding to the princess,” but the princess’s role as Sovereignty’s representative is left out.

If we detect the civilizing of the masculine principle in our tale, it also reveals a profound change in the status of the virgin maiden. Unlike Freyja and unlike Gerd, the princess does not have sovereignty over herself. It is not up to her to decide whether or whom she marries but her father, a pattern familiar enough to us even if it is giving way in the Western world. Although she is a married woman and a mother, the princess is still a child living within the protecting walls of her father’s palace. The story permits us to surmise that her father’s reluctance to let go of his princess-daughter has delayed her growing-up process. It is not till she is outside the boundaries of patriarchal order and in the natural domain of the Mother, that her initiation process is instigated. She is playing with her son like a girl with a doll on the ship’s deck when a giantess, seemingly from the Stone Age, pops up from the unconscious and turns her inside out, literally.

The Princess's Shadow Side Comes to the fore

Sigurd’s reaction to the change in his wife “who had never before spoken a cross word to him,” intimates that she has been brought up to be well behaved and agreeable. Once her guard is down, repressed anger breaks forth like an ice-bound river in spring. No longer a passive girl, she takes the initiative to awaken Sigurd and takes him to task. Even if impetuous, there is no denying the truth in her words. Sigurd is seemingly a nice and compliant guy, but from the heroic standpoint he is guilty of having neglected the hero’s ultimate duty: vigilance. He has allowed himself to be caught off guard.

Sigurd and his wife betray signs of immaturity while being on the threshold of assuming collective responsibility. That they lose wind and get caught in dead calm implies stagnation. This is when a primal force stirs in the psyche, proving the dictum that ‘every paradise has its serpent’. The giantess raises havoc in the young couple’s blissful world and becomes the driving force in their maturation process. We can speculate how far Sigurd would have gotten with the obedient and agreeable princess-wife he set out with by his side.

The Chess Players' Role

The game of chess is an ingenious story telling device that mirrors the tale in a nutshell. Like the game, the story revolves around the battle between black and white, between the light and the dark forces. In chess white has the first move. This concurs with the heroic worldview where the solar-hero journeys to another world to obtain ‘the treasure hard to obtain’. Accordingly, Sigurd travels outside the boundaries of his known world to seek his bride. Black’s countermove, in the guise of the underworld powers, thwarts a smooth and easy conquest and thereby initiates his real maturation process through the transformation of his feminine counterpart. The queen is unquestionably the most powerful piece on the chess board and the one who has the greatest mobility. In the tale this aptitude is reflected in the queen’s ability to move both horizontally and vertically. She is in direct communion with another world, while the chess players witness the events from outside. One of them is 18, the other 19. One has to wonder why the age of those boys is specified with such accuracy. Is it a mere coincidence that in the system of tarot, the Moon is Major Arcana card number 18 and the Sun number 19?

From the Rider-Waite Tarot

The progression from 18 to 19, from Moon to Sun, would mean that the unconscious is revealed to consciousness. This is in fact the chess players’ role in the tale. They witness what is hidden inside the queen’s chamber and reveal it to the king. The question is, from what premise do they interpret what they see?

The intrusion of the giantess echoes a mythological theme illustrated in the Prophecy of the Seeress where the völva describes the golden age at Idavellir on the morning of creation. In carefree joy the æsir-gods are sitting over a game of chess when three powerful ‘þursa meyjar’ (maidens who consort with thurses) come from the giant world and usher them out of paradise. As explained in the Introduction, thurs is a pejorative denotation for a giant and was associated with menstruation. Let us consider in its entirety the old Icelandic rune poem containing the secret of the thurs-rune which stands for a letter named ‘thorn’. This is the rune Skírnir threatened to carve for Gerd and with which he broke down her resistance:

Thurs is women’s torment and an inhabitant of rocks and the husband of vardrún. Saturnus --- king.

According to the Icelandic dictionary vardrún denotes a ‘giantess’. The meaning of the word implies that she is the ‘guardian of a secret’. In our tale, thurs is the word used in reference to the giantess’s brother. The poem equates thurs with Saturn, a Roman fertility god whose reign was the Golden Age of early humanity. The Icelandic word for king in the poem is thengill, the meaning of which is ‘he who promotes growth and well-being amongst his subjects” (Blöndal, 1175). It is to this ground that menstruation ties woman, the thread of red gold that links her vulva to the source of life by way of generations gone by.

The thurs in our tale has little in common with Snorri Sturluson’s inspired description of Saturn whom he credits with superhuman strength, beauty and innovative wisdom. He possessed the gift of prophecy and discovered bog iron ore in the earth from which he made gold. His was a time of wealth and prosperity. Eventually Saturn’s son, Jupiter, had his father castrated. Saturn then fled to Italy where he took the name Njord and taught the Romans to plow the earth and cultivate vineyards (Prologus, 5 & 7). The rune poem thus leads us to the brother-sister pair Nerthus / Njord who apparently inform our tale. If that is so, then what is the secret the giantess guards? Does the tale give us a clue? Could it be the essence of the true self symbolized by the queen in her white underwear and stripped of the trappings of the persona? Does she personify the Anima Mundi, the one who animates the world? The giantess certainly animates our tale and it is she who reveals the queen’s true self to us as a desirable goal.

The brother-sister pair is observed by the chess players through a slit in the wall between their room and that of the queen. Of the same significance is the slit in the roof through which the stable boy in The Witch’s Ride observes the commerce between Satan and the pastors’ wives. This imagery is a veiled reference to the female orifice, the vulva, as a gate leading into a mysterious and forbidden realm of superhuman wisdom and power. The black queen, here in the guise of the giantess and our queen’s shadow, is a familiar in this realm, as is the menstruating pastor’s wife in The Witch’s Ride. It is in this realm that the secret lies hidden.

Menstruant as Mother

The game of chess which takes place on a board marked with distinct squares and according to specific rules, is in contrast to the crucible of the unconscious where boundaries are unclear and one thing metamorphoses into another. The queen’s yawning indicates numbness and lack of concentration. She is, as we later learn when the queen tells her story, suspended between worlds. Her energy is tied up in an inner conflict which causes absent-mindedness and lack of feeling in her daily life at the court. She is listless and seemingly in the throes of existential nausea. Could this description fit a menstruating woman in disaccord with her feminine nature? We know what she is dealing with: her lunar ‘other’ on whom patriarchal culture has projected a triple-headed monster. As the telluric counterpart of the celestial trinity, the triple-headed thurs vies for her soul. The isolated house the giant puts her in refers to the all but forgotten menstrual seclusion, initially instigated by women themselves for contemplative and creative purposes. The food the giant brings her reveals the unconscious as a nourishing power source and may be an attempt to explain the giant maiden’s legendary strength.

The woman, who under those circumstances is not able to impart motherly love to her son, is a repeated theme in the fairy tales. In the tale about Mjadveig Mánadóttir (her given name refers to mead, or honey wine, and her paternal name is Moon) the dilemma has been cast in a poem. As the queen in our tale, queen Mjadveig is dispatched into the hands of an ugly giant by a giantess who overtakes her role. Where before flowers had blossomed, cuckoos called and a ram shed its fleece in Mjadveig’s hall, now

“cuckoos do not call, flowers do not blossom and a ram does not shed its fleece and never quiets down the young boy who lies in the cradle

and everything seems to be going askew in the kingdom.” When the giantess has been subjected to a scornful death, equilibrium is restored and

“then cuckoos call, and then flowers blossom and then a ram sheds its fleece then stays quiet the young boy who lies in the cradle. (Árnason, II)

The Nanny and her Vision

The nanny is played against the giantess. The image of her sitting with the prince in her lap by a burning light has a saintly aura. The queen is suspended between the poles of light and darkness. The motherly love is strong and it is bright and beautiful but her creative impulse pulls at her and it is illegitimate, dark and scary. While woman is tied to her lunar other, she is not fit to be the mother of a son. This is the moral of the story. She is to break with her past and devote herself wholly to the sacred role of raising her son. In this lies her redemption.

Although it is Sigurd who cuts the cord between the queen and the giant, and thereby reclaims his wife, it is the nanny who with her insight and courage has prepared the case for him. She is scared but she does not shy away from her experience and tries to decipher its meaning. The thrice repeated vision denotes an urgent attempt on behalf of the unconscious to convey its message to the one-sided conscious mind. Her attitude exemplifies how important it is to listen to the inner voice, whether it speaks to us in dreams or visions. We see how a suspicion is awakened and how it gradually leads to an understanding and transformation. We also see that the resolution of a problem depends on the cooperation of feminine and masculine traits. The nanny personifies insight which has been associated with feminine nature. She is the one who receives messages from another dimension and allows them to brew within her before she mediates them to the king who with his drawn sword stands for the clarity of the rational mind.

The King's Role

It is the king who separates the essence from the husk when he recognizes his wife in her underwear. Thereby he passes the ultimate test of differentiating the true from the false. The king’s role and status underline the prominence of the rational mind over and above natural insight and wisdom. At the same time the tale reveals that without the latter the king would not have reached this apex. It thus confirms the value of feminine nature which has been greatly depreciated in our culture. Even so the tale ranks it considerably lower on the scale of values than that of the masculine. The reward reaped by the nanny, who may well be the hero of this tale, consists in landing a wealthy and powerful husband and a generous dowry.

Because the roles in these stories are gender-bound they contribute to maintaining stereotypes which inevitably clash with our experience of ourselves, for as individuals we are endowed with traits that are associated with feminine nature and masculine discrimination, although the tendency toward one or the other may differ from one person to the next. The twin theme that underlies this tale, that of the underworldy sister and brother, points to an egalitarian origin. It is toward this inborn balance of the opposites that we aim, within and without.

Maturation implies cultivating traits which are underdeveloped in our personality so that we can become whole. As conscious beings we need to control our instincts and feelings but it is also vital that we be in touch with and establish a positive relationship with these powers in ourselves. The king valiantly cuts the chain which binds his wife to her origin. The liberation is double-edged. It is positive in that the woman needs to encounter this inner power consciously and on her own terms but not by compulsion. It is negative in that the attitude to the female power source presented in the tale is hostile. The king’s action seemingly aims at separating the queen from her primitive origin for good and all, yet the fate of the giant is left hanging, for those who span this tale would have known that as the moon continues its cycle through four phases, the thurs will return and visit the woman when the moon’s luminous body disappears from the sky.

The Giantess's Fate

The fate of the ungracious queen is intended as a deterrent for young girls. Women are to be obedient, gentle and polite but not to behave like giantesses. They are not to say what they think, not to raise their voice and take the initiative in their relationship with men but be affable and submissive wives. To protect himself from the giantess’s evil eye, the king had a hood pulled over her head before she was stoned to death and then torn apart by unbroken colts that no doubt were meant to mirror her wild nature. This is the retributive punishment of fairy tales, with which patriarchy washes its hands of its violence against feminine nature.

When the queen has been released, she assumes her noble role and is well liked by all. This is held up as a worthy goal to young girls who all dream of becoming queens! Yet the path leading to this desirable finale is not only depicted as thorny but the sexual-creative pull of the unconscious is demonized to such an extent that few are likely to feel tempted to walk this way on their own accord. Young women are to learn their lesson by way of indoctrination. The queen’s feat consists in resisting the thurs’s amorous advances. What is to be noted is that, in spite of his superhuman power, he does not take her by force but keeps her in suspension till the solution emerges into the light of her consciousness. It is also to be noted that the redeeming idea is accompanied by faith and surrender. It is not for nothing that Saturn (cf. rune poem) is called “the strict task master”!

The conclusion of the tale sums up its core message: to be likeable is a female virtue of the highest rank. The urge to please instilled in young females prevents them from knowing and showing their true selves.

The Outcast

From Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, II collected by Jón Árnason

The storyteller’s switching from the past to the present tense in moments of tension has been left intact.

Once upon a time there was an old couple who lived in a cottage far away from any other human habitation. They had three daughters, Ingibjörg, Sigridur, and Helga. The first two were older than Helga and they were held in far higher regard than the youngest, even though they were neither better nor as gifted as she. Helga was not trusted with anything for supposedly she was not capable of anything.

Thus it came about when one day the fire went out in the cottage that one of the older sisters was asked to fetch fire. She set out on her mission, and when she passed by a mound on her way, she heard someone say inside: “Do you want to have me as your friend or foe?” She imagined that these words were meant for her and said that she did not care. She proceeded till she came to a cave. Here there was no shortage of fire, for meat was cooking in a kettle and there was flatbread in a tray nearby. The girl did not see any person nor was there any sign of life. Being hungry she fanned up the fire under the kettle and baked the cakes, one for herself, and that one she made right, but the others she burned and made them inedible. She then ate the food. But when she has finished her meal, an awfully big dog comes and fawns upon her. She hits it and tries to chase it away. The dog then becomes angry and bites off one of her hands. At that she becomes so terrified that she runs away without taking the fire. She makes it back home and tells her story to the wonder-struck household.

Athough such a journey was considered terribly risky, the other favorite was asked to go. They all feared that the youngest daughter would use the opportunity to run away as she would by no means be leaving a haven but was useful to wait on the rabble. This one went through the same experience as her sister before, except the dog bit the nose off of her. She too returned without bringing her mission to a successful end.

Then the third was ordered to pick up and go. She did as she was told. She came to the mound and was asked the same question as the others. She responded that it was a saying that nothing was so wretched that it was not better to have it as friend than foe and she would be glad to have an ally in whomever was asking. She then proceeded till she came to the cave. Everything was the same as when her sisters arrived, but she was in every way more considerate. She cooked the meat and baked the cakes with thorough care but she did not take any food although she had not eaten for a long time and was overcome by fatigue. Nor did she take the fire, for she wanted the permission of whomever was master of the place. She therefore decided to stay the night although it felt scary.

When she is looking for a place to lie down, a thundering noice rips through the cave and in comes a loathsome giant with a huge dog. She became terrified but felt somewhat reassured when the giant addressed her with these gentle words: “You have attended well and faithfully to what needed to be done and therefore you shall be rewarded for your work and have supper with me. Afterwards you may choose whether to sleep with the dog in its lair or share my bed.” When he had spoken those words, she took a bit of food and then lay down in the dog’s lair, for although the dog seemed dreadful it felt like a better choice than sleeping with the giant. When she had lain there for a while, a formidable quake shook the cave. She became beside herself with fear and terror but to her consolation the giant called out to her and said: “If you are afraid, Helga ‘the old man’s daughter’, you are welcome to creep upon the platform by my bed.” And so she did. There followed another and much stronger quake. He now invited her to sit on his bed and she accepted. At the third and by far the strongest quake, she was invited to lie down by his feet, and when the fourth almost ripped the cave asunder, she picked herself up and lay down between him and the wall. At that the giant shed his shape and by her side was a handsome prince. Her first reaction was to light a fire and burn the slough he had shed. He thanked her passionately for having freed him and they slept for the rest of the night.

When morning came, he told her that he was a prince who had been bewitched and that he would come for her later if she agreed and she was not unwilling to betroth herself to him. He then gave her a gown, a true treasure, and told her to wear it next to her, beneath the rags, so no one could see it. He also gave her a chest filled with jewels and riches. He said that those things she could show but warned her that they would be taken away from her.

When she was ready to leave, the dog came and reached its right forepaw toward her. She took it and found that it held a large gold ring which she accepted. Then she set out home although she was deeply sad to part from the prince. She arrived home safely with the fire, but when the household discovered the chest and treasures, they broke out in jubilation and she was immediately dispossessed of everything they knew she had brought with her. Two sets of women’s clothing had also been in the chest and the elder sisters took one each, so nothing remained for Helga except the gown no one knew about but she alone.

Time passed and nothing changed in the cottage and nothing noteworthy happened, till one day a beautiful and well equipped ship is seen sailing toward land. The old man goes down to shore to spy on who was in charge of the ship, but the old man did not know him. The two talked for a while and the stranger asked how many they were on the farm and how many children he had. The old man said they were five and that he had two daughters. The stranger asked to see his daughters. The old man gladly assented and went to fetch the two older ones. They came decked up in the clothes they had taken from their sister. The stranger said he found them quite good looking but why, he wanted to know, did one have her hand tucked in her bosom and the other her nose covered with a scarf? The sisters were compelled to expose themselves and the stranger felt that their charm was greatly diminished, but he could not get them to disclose how this had come about. He asked whether it was absolutely certain that the old man did not have other daughters. The old man steadfastly refused, but when the stranger questioned him more closely, he admitted that he had one wretch but said that he did not know for sure whether she was a human or a beast. The stranger was eager to see her and the old man went to fetch Helga. She was in her rags, but when the stranger and she had found each other, he rips her rags off of her and she stood there in her dazzling gown that far outshone the ones the sisters wore.

The stranger then turned around and rebuked the father and the sisters for their treatment of Helga. He dispossessed the sisters of their finery, making it clear that it was not theirs, and threw Helga’s rags at them. He then made the old man and his two daughters leave the ship and sailed with Helga to the kingdom he was to inherit. He married Helga and they loved each other well for a long time.

The Outcast

Interpretation

In the Introduction I suggested that the myth about Freyja’s acquisition of Brísingamen reflected a ritual reenactment of the original episode, the first menstrual flow as experienced and envisioned by our ancestresses at the dawn of day. In my text about “Menstruation” in The Book of Symbols I wrote: “The chord struck at a girl’s first flow reverberates through her subsequent cycles. It can become her key to the music of being or throw her into discord with her own self” (402). The Outcast, I venture, reflects an attempt to regain a state of natural harmony that woman senses in the depths of her being. The older sisters represent the discord many menstruating women experience due to the repression and distortion of their menstrual nature. Helga, whose name means ‘holy, whole, wholesome’, incarnates the means by which the desired state can be restored.

The isolated cottage under the rulership of the “old man” in the tale stands for a narrow and outworn worldview. Without fire it is a place of sterility and stagnation. Renewal is called for. In traditional society, every time something new comes into being, there is a creation myth behind it. Creation is repeated in some form. The same is true of the individual psyche as alchemical symbolism suggests. We go through the phase of nigredo as we are pulled into a state of blackness and dissolution before the sun eventually comes up again and something new emerges into consciousness. Regression precedes progression to a more mature worldview. In a sense we are pulled back to the zero-point of the Fool and resume our journey cleansed of prejudgments.

From the Rider-Waite Tarot The Fool setting out on a quest.

With the enticing character of the Fool in mind, let us go back to the Norse creation myth that we discussed in The ‘Hidden Woman’ in Hafnanúpur. As you will remember, sparks of fire met the ice of inertia in the Gap of Ginnungar (‘fools’) and from the melting drops life was kindled in the guise of Ymir whose name means ‘twin’. This naming of the primal being implies that, at this moment, woman became aware of the unconscious self. She awkened to the sense of an ‘other’ within who was experienced as a mystery. Another and lesser known name for this primal being was Aurgelmir, a compound noun that points to menstruation. Aur- means ‘mire’. At the dawn of human consciousness a parallel must have been noted between the mire as a metaphor for the earth-goddess’s menstrual blood and the bleeding vulva. The analogy between the female body and the earth that informs mythological thought is rooted in the concept that man is a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm.

But aur- also refers to ‘gold’ (same as Lat. aurum=’red gold’, cf. Freyja’s tear of red gold), and -gelmir was used in poetic parlance for both ‘snake’ and ‘hawk’. Aurgelmir alludes to the oneness that inheres in creation. Maybe that oneness is nowhere as apparent as in the female’s menstruation when as a conscious being she is pulled down into her body by the superhuman force of nature. Aur is both the prima materia (‘raw material’) and the end result, the philosophical gold of the alchemists. As gold it stands for the potential inherent in the menarcheal girl to be attained through conscious collaboration with her menstrual nature. This was understood by our foremothers. An interesting parallel is Snorri’s account of Saturn who discovered bog iron ore in the earth from which he made gold. I refer you to the old Icelandic rune poem discussed in The Giantess in the Stoneboat, where Saturn is associated with menstruation.

As both a snake and a hawk, gelmir illustrates the dictum “as above, so below”. By the same token the dictum “as without, so within” applies to aur, as is reflected in the correspondence between mire and menstrual blood. The same principle applies to fire. Fire is the primary source of life and culture. It is the Eros in the blood that drives us toward the perfected wholeness from which we originated. This was the ultimate goal of the alchemists, their philosophical gold. Fire cleanses and transforms, and a transformation is needed by the greedy materialist household ruled by the “old man”. Yet again we are faced with the fact that there is nothing new under the sun.

The Spell in the Garden

Eve’s situation before the Fall in the Garden of Eden can be compared to that of a young girl in her father’s house before the onset of menstruation and initiation into womanhood. As the Bible story and numerous other traditional tales reveal, the female is an initiator. Her blossoming womanhood is the temptation that drives the male to deed. What drives the female, according to Biblical tradition, is evil in the guise of the snake. The Eden story seemingly reflects a reversal of values. The curse that the Lord puts on woman implies that pain shall replace its opposite, pleasure. By the same token the enmity He establishes between woman and the serpent indicates that the two were on peaceful terms before. And curiously the serpent is told that it shall crawl on its belly, which can only mean that before it had feet to walk on! Might it have been the moon-spirit who was rumoured to roam the earth in the guise of a male and deflower young girls at the onset of their menstruation? It would seem that the serpent is a bewitched creature if ever there was one! Thus the serpent is a symbol for something beyond its literal meaning and is, as we know, traditionally associated with the Devil of Christian teachings who also goes by the names of Satan and Lucifer. In earlier times, as repeatedly mentioned, the serpent was an attribute of the Goddess, associated with the womb and inherent female wisdom. Both phenomena shed their skin and renew themselves, just as the moon sheds its old self and emerges newborn out of the veiled cauldron in the evening sky, much like the giant turned prince in our story.

The Voice of Nature

The voice in the mound and the unfolding of the story emphasize once again that it is our attitude toward nature that determines whether we experience it as friend or foe. Nature itself is neutral. The same applies to a woman’s attitude toward her menstruation as Annette Høst so beautifully illustrates in her insightful article “Blessed by the Moon” (http://www.shamanism.dk/). If she fights its untamable power, it becomes a nightmare, or “what has been labelled PMS, the premenstrual syndrome, the horrible monster”. But, says Høst, “even if we cannot control the power doesn’t mean that we cannot ‘ride’ its waves and make use of it.” She suggests that we replace PMS with “The Moment of Truth”! If we choose to listen to this power and cooperate with it, we can make creative use of it. Stressing the kinship between her shamanistic work with the power of menstruation and dreamwork, Høst states that the wild power of menstruation speaks from a place of unadulterated truth and that it responds to the woman’s attention and curiosity, as do our dreams. Helga’s respectful attention to the voice in the mound, solicits the alliance of instinct in bringing her quest to a succesful end.

The interaction between the dog and the sisters is of interest in this context. The wolf, its wild relative and ancestor, is designated in Norse mythology as the forefather of all völvas (‘wise women’), and also as the mount of giantesses who fearlessly ride this wild animal power from which they draw strength. Tricked into shackles by the fearful gods, the wolf Fenrir (‘he who lives in quagmires’) is prophesied to become Odin’s bane. “Garmur gays in front of Gnipa-cave, the shackles will break and the wolf will run loose,” is a thrice repeated refrain leading up to the end of Odin’s corrupt reign in the Prophecy of the Seeress. In the Eddic poem Grímnismál, Garmur is said to rank highest among dogs (st. 44). In the Prophecy there is no distinction made between the dog and the wolf. Out of the apocalyptic chaos announced by the baying dog in the poem, the völva sees the earth rise anew, virgin and green. The tidings brought up from the depths by the völva in the Prophecy, are echoed in The Outcast where Helga becomes the trailblazer of a new worldview. According to the dictionary of etymology, the Gnipa-cave, by which the dog is shackled in the Prophecy, may be associated with ‘fire’ (Blöndal, 263). As opposed to the destruction depicted in the Prophecy that is brought about by the gods’ fear and deceiving of the wolf, the dog leads the courageous Helga to ‘the treasure hard to obtain’ in the tale. Curiously, Snorri Sturluson reports that the saliva running from the bound wolf Fenrir’s gaping mouth is a river called Hope (Vón), a name that scholars find perplexing given its dangerous source (Gylfaginning, 34; Simek, 252). I venture that Helga is an incarnation of that hope.

The older sisters all but ignore the voice in the mound. We can imagine that they have learned the lesson imprinted on them, not to emulate Eve and listen to their inner voice lest they be led astray and the whole of humanity with them. As an outsider, Helga is an innocent, much like the Fool in tarot. She is free of social prejudices, hence she is open to the experiences that come her way. She is the undefended heart. Her father’s unkind description of her to the stranger at the end of the tale places her on the fluid boundaries of humanness and nature, of man and beast. She is neither one nor the other but both. As is emphasized by the meaning of her name, ‘whole, holy, wholesome’, Helga is a unifying symbol.

The Silent Self

In my mind, Helga is the silent self who paves the way on our quest for love and never gives up on us, regardless of the abuse we inflict on her. Like her merciless family in the tale, we may fear to lose her. But Helga is a constant, we can depend on her. Her dazzling gown, hidden under her rags, emphasizes our ignorance of the real and the sacred. Such is pretty much our attitude towards menstruation. Menstruation is every woman’s reality, yet it has been an underground issue in our culture. It is woman’s hidden secret. A source of spiritual treasures of which she is guardian. A woman cannot become whole till she has accepted her underground partner, her shadow. And that implies embracing her body and its mortality. Death resides in the body. Death inheres in nature. It is the fear of death that keeps us in shackles. Release of that fear brings the gift of joy and sensuality. The mistreatment of Helga by her community reflects the culture’s attitude toward the menstrual aspect of feminine nature which it has made an outcast. Yet Helga continues to silently serve us and patiently waits for our eyes to open. A servant in the interest of life, she teaches us by example how to interact with nature, within and without. She is a star that lights the way for us so that we, too, can rise above self-interest and contribute to the healing of the world.

Helga knows that we are not masters in our own house and acts accordingly. She is whole in her actions. She accepts but does not take. She is afraid but controls her fear. She is moderate, not greedy like her sisters. And unattached to worldly goods, she takes it lightly that her community robs her of the things she brought back from her journey. The dazzling gown she wears beneath her rags, unbeknownst to all but herself, it alone counts. It stands for her sense of self that nobody can take away from her.

The elder sisters’ attitude is testimony to, on the one hand women’s alienation from feminine nature, and on the other their adjustment to the patriarchal mindset. Their lack of reverence, their self-interest, arrogance and greed are reflective of man’s self-appointed exploitive lordship over nature and its resources. Clearly the sisters need to be taught a lesson for the paradigm to change. So we have a couple of nightmares to shake things up. The tale can be understood to reveal repressed material that is struggling to reemerge in order to create balance in an aggressive patriarchal culture that has divested feminine nature of its sacredness and healing potency. The three sisters would then represent repeated attempts to arrive at a resolution to a pressing problem. And as is wont in fairy tales, it is the youngest sibling who brings home the treasure that lies outside the confinements of the conscious ego.

Cauldron in the Cave

The cave, as the habitat of our ancestors at the dawn of civilization, is the deepest place within, symbolizing our common and humble origin. In this primal sanctuary there is food for the exhausted and hungry. In a literal sense, the kettle or cauldron is used for cooking raw meat to facilitate its digestion. Metaphorically it is a vessel in which raw instincts cook over the inner fire until the individual has transformed them into wholesome nourishment which she or he assimilates and shares in word or deed with the outer world. As a central image, the kettle is symbolic of the alchemical process reflected in the tale. The elder sisters do not pass the giant’s test. Their egocentricity is generated by base instincts that need more cooking till they have come to understand that they are not the center of the universe and that their negligence and lack of concern have consequences for the whole of which they are a part.

Dog as Guide

Helga’s respectful awe of nature is in contrast to the hubris, violence and betrayal that the typical hero of myth and fairy tales vents on its shadowy inhabitants who are experienced as the enemy. The older sisters meet the dog’s friendly greeting with violence and as a result come home un-whole (with missing parts!). Just as we need to access both the right and the left hemispheres of the brain to function holistically, so we need the function of both hands if only to accomplish our daily tasks. The nose signifies sensitivity that the dog possesses to a high degree, enabling it to sniff out danger and find its way to a goal. This heightened sense of smell civilized man has lost. Helga, who encompasses both the human and the animal, receives a gold ring, symbol of wholeness, from the dog’s paw. Due to its extraordinary sensitivity and close relationship to man, many mythologies present the dog as a guide to the other world (see image of The Fool and her ‘guide’ above). In our tale it acts as an intermediary between Helga and the giant / prince. She goes from its lair to the giant’s bed and it is the dog who gives her the ring marking her betrothal to the prince.

In a variation of the tale, the dog’s role as Helga’s guide is even clearer. When the elder sisters have returned home bitten by the dog and without fire, Helga is dispatched on the quest for fire in a fury. She arrives at a mountain where her sisters had been before, sits down on the same stone to rest as they had, and hears a voice calling from the mountain above her: “Lone dweller in a mountain. Lone dweller in a mountain.” Where the elder sisters had replied to this appeal: “Stay the most wretched of men, lone dweller in a mountain,” Helga responds:

“Sit the halest of men, lone dweller in a mountain!” Then the big dog comes and fawns upon Helga and allures her into a cave in the mountain. She stays there the night and shares the dog’s lair. The dog then sheds its slough which Helga burns in the morning. But instead of a dog a handsome prince is lying by her side in the lair.

The Gold Ring

The gold ring evokes Freyja’s Brísingamen. In the context of menstruation, it can be seen as a symbol for woman’s betrothal to her feminine nature which is attuned to the Moon (men) and its cycle. This rythmic relationship is the mysterious ground of her being. Through repeated encounters (here symbolized by the three sisters) with her inhuman ‘other’, i.e. the menstrual flow which is ruled by nature and hence is uncivilized, woman not only gains awareness of her own essence but also transforms that ‘other’ into the ideal soulmate. This mystery is the seeding place of Love. The key to success, the story tells us, is a positive attitude and receptivity towards nature, trust in the rightness of instinct, and restraint of fear.

Curiously the gold ring is never mentioned again, but immediately after Helga has received it the story stresses that she gets home safely with the fire. It is as if the two phenomena are one and the same. As was noted in the Introduction, the word Brísinga-men, name of Freyja’s jewel, is a compound of ‘fire’ and ‘moon’. We also suggested that the image was derived from an eclipse of the sun with reference to the dictum “as above, so below”. The image of a black cauldron in which mysterious food cooks over flames of fire, may derive from the same natural phenomenon. What Helga finds in the ancestral cave, the place of humanity’s origin, is the moon-spirit to whom she betroths herself. She returns home with love and desire in her blood. And this invisible fire, which sustains her in her tribulations, cannot be taken away from her. The persisting dream of being united with one’s soulmate in the outer world seems to be rooted in a pervading suspicion of an ‘other’ within and suggests ancestry in a bisexual primal being. Love, the story says, is the road toward this original wholeness for which we strive.

The World Restored to Its Original Splendor

From the Rider-Waite Tarot

From the Shining Tribe by Rachel Pollack

In step with the rythm of the universe, holding her two magic wands signifying mastery over both hemispheres of the brain, she jumps out of the blue in nude splendor framed by the laurel wreath of her glory. She is the Fool become conscious through her many tribulations on the journey to freedom. Rachel Pollack’s World emphasizes the androgyny traditionally associated with this card as the achieved goal of the seeker. Nature has become an integrated part of the person but is not separate from her. She is at one with the world.

In The Outcast the world is reborn as it were, not through the Word of an external celestial god, but through gestation and internal cyclic processing where trial and error finally lead to a breakthrough as is conveyed by the powerful conception / birthing metaphor of the quakes that shake the cave. This is how I see it: When Helga arrives home safely with the fire and her lover in her heart, she is the morning star heralding a new principle based on Love that will replace the worldview personified by her old father. And let us note that the transition takes place without a killing. An admonition that forces the players to look their evil in the eye and grow up is a more productive punishment and points the way out of the vindictive mindset that poisons the world.

As the Morning Star, Venus is one with Lucifer ‘the lightbearer’. On her quest Helga has gone down to the underworld and redeemed Lucifer who was cast down to Hell for his arrogance. It was his arrogance that brought on him the name of Satan and Devil. Arrogance is what characterizes the behavior of the older sisters in the tale. And their father’s contemptuous words about Helga, whom he treats in an inhuman way, reveal how he prides himself above Nature. By her humble but courageous interaction with the superhuman powers, Helga restores the world to its original splendor. As far as we, her sisters are concerned, we are faced with the challenge of redeeming our shadows and finding Helga in ourselves and thereby to transform the patriarchal principle by which we live into a partnership principle, be it in creation or procreation. Or have you not wondered, as I have, what is the role in this and so many other tales of the ‘hidden’ wife and mother?

Finally a note for reflection. On her quest for the fire, Helga is the paragon of courage. But if we compare her story with that of Freyja and the goddess’s aquisition of Brísingamen, there is a marked difference. Freyja acts on her own desire and not out of obedience. She is attracted toward the sacred union depicted in her myth. She is, as it were, on equal footing with the subterranean powers with whom she makes a deal. And whereas Freyja searches through foreign lands for her wild spirit-husband crying tears of red gold, Helga waits for her soulmate to come and claim her. In that, it would seem that she incarnates the submissive female role of her time. But from another viewpoint, we could also say that Helga has brought the quest that Freyja initiated to a successful end. The latter’s painful separation from her husband Od (Óður) may have been a prerequisite for an eventual reunion on a more mature level. Helga is whole in herself. There is nothing missing. Like attracts like. She is now prepared to enter a relationship with another as an equal.

Postscript

Initiation Tale from the 20th Century

Aunt Rose paid me her first visit around the time of my confirmation. Both occasions marked my entry into adulthood, both are vividly imprinted in my memory. There was however no connecting link between the two in my mind. The official confirmation of my entry into the community of adults was the partaking of the bread and the wine at the altar, the body and blood of Christ who had suffered and died on the cross for our sins. It was a true test, for I feared that I would bring disgrace on myself for not being able to get the wine and the pale, tasteless cookie down. This had been a common apprehension amongst us girls and we had to be careful not to look at each other in order not to burst out laughing. The passion and bloodshed of Christ was totally obfuscated by our effort to keep a solemn and serious face.

The hushed up bleeding from our own bodies was a more immediate preoccupation at this time in our lives. When I crossed over into womanhood, I was attending a sewing club at a friend’s house with my playmates in the street. Our weekly meetings devoted to needlework or knitting was modeled on our mothers’ sewing clubs. In the community I grew up in, most women belonged to one. We had started the evening by making a compote of sour dock picked on the moor below our street. It turned out to be a delicacy that we served proudly with sugar and cream. We were carefree kids playing at being adults, all in a hurry to grow up and become masters of our own lives. I am embroidering brightly colored animals on a pencase. There is laughter and well-being in the air. Then it happened. All of a sudden I notice a dull ache spread over my lower back, like a sense of fatigue. I instantly knew. I feel weighted down, it is as if I am being torn apart at the waist. I sit silent for a while and tune into the unfamiliar sensation. Then I notify my friends. Filled with anticipation we file into the toilet. There is suspense in the air. I have never seen menstrual blood before and... I stare in disbelief at the brown stain in my white panties. “You have begun!” my friends twitter, awe and excitement written on their faces.

The following day I am circling around my mother who is adjusting her beautiful auburn hair in front of the mirror. “You know,” she says, fixing her face in the glass, “that now you have to beware of boys.” That was all. My mother who bore the name of the sacred völva, ‘seer and prophetess’, she had forgotten that the first bleeding does not solely signify that a girl’s womb has become fertile soil for the seed of a man. She had forgotten that her blood is the fertilizer that nourishes her roots and promotes her growth as a creative individual.

My journey through these tales has been undertaken for both of us, and for all of our sisters of kin who have not been encouraged to embrace the healing wisdom inherent in that primal wounding. Let us join hands and together venture across the threshold of our sanctuary where the mead of poetry overflows the rim of the precious vessel and the necklace of red gold radiates the promise of wholeness that we seek.

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Illustrations from the Shining Tribe Tarot reproduced by permission of Rachel Pollack. Rachel Pollack Illustrations from the Gill Tarot and Rider-Waite Tarot Deck®, known also as the Rider Tarot and Waite Tarot, reproduced by permission of U.S. Games Systems, Inc., Stamford, CT 06902 USA. Copyrights © 1991 and 1971 respectively by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. Further reproduction prohibited. The Rider-Waite Tarot Deck® is a registered trademark of U.S. Games Systems, Inc. Illustrations from Tarot of Northern Shadows reproduced by permission of the company © 1997 AGM AGMuller Urania, Switzerland. Further reproduction prohibited. Text: © 2011 Hallfridur Ragnheidardottir.