86 pages • 2 hours read
Edith HamiltonMythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 7: “The Mythology of the Norseman”
Introduction to Norse Mythology Summary
According to Hamilton, Norse mythology’s unique feature is that the gods’ home, Asgard, is not radiant and joyful but “grave and solemn,” a place “over which hangs the threat of an inevitable doom” (425). The gods know that they will eventually be defeated and die and their home destroyed. Heroes “cannot save themselves” but still resist to the end (427). Bravery earns them a place in Valhalla, Asgard’s hall for heroes, but they too will be destroyed in the end. Heroism, then, is the “one pure unsullied good men can hope to attain” (427). There can be no heroism without “lost causes” (427). A hero can be killed but not defeated, since the heroic death is itself “a triumph” (428).
Hamilton writes that the voice “of the whole great Teutonic race” survives primarily through “the poets of Norse mythology” since Christian priests destroyed much else owing to their “bitter hatred for the paganism they had come to destroy” (428). Her two primary sources are the Elder Edda, verse dating to approximately 1300 (Christianity arrived around 1000) and the Younger Edda, prose attributed to a Snorri Sturluson and dated to the end of the 12th century. Hamilton claims the Elder Edda as “much the more important of the two,” having “material for a great epic,” perhaps even greater than the Iliad (429). Stylistically, according to Hamilton, it is lacking, its poets having “had conceptions greater than their skill to put them into words (429).
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Stories of Signy and Sigurd”
Signy’s husband killed her father Volsung and chained his sons to be eaten by wolves. Signy found a way to save her last surviving brother, Sigmund, and they vowed to avenge their family. Signy secretly fathered a son with her brother Sinfiotli, sent him to live with Sigmund, then returned to her husband and had children with him, never revealing that she wanted her family avenged. Eventually, Sigmund and Sinfiotli returned and locked Volsung in a burning house. Having seen her family avenged, Signy herself entered the burning house and died.
The story of Sigurd, who Hamilton claims “is the most famous of Norse heroes,” resembles that of Siegfried from the Germanic Nibelungenlied (430, italics in original). Odin condemns the Valkyrie Brynhild to sleep on a couch surrounded by flames until a hero awakens her. Sigmund’s son Sigurd does so but departs a few days later, leaving her in the same place. Sigurd visits king Gunnar of the Giukungs, and the two swear an oath of brotherhood. Gunnar’s mother feeds Sigurd a potion that causes him to forget Brynhild, and he marries her daughter Gudrun. In the form of Gunnar, he again rescues Brynhild, this time on behalf of Gunnar, who is not brave enough to do it himself. He sleeps beside her for three nights, but with a sword between them. Believing Sigurd was unfaithful to her, Brynhild marries Gunnar but later learns the truth from Gudrun.
Brynhild convinces Gunnar that Sigurd betrayed him, prompting Gunnar to have his brother kill Sigurd. Brynhild then confesses the truth to Sigurd and takes her life. Gudrun is heartbroken but cannot cry until she sees his blood-stained hair and lifeless eyes. Hamilton concludes that the Norse stories are about the pervasiveness of suffering and courage as the only “solution of the problem of life” (436).
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Norse Gods”
Unlike the Olympian gods, who “were immortal and invincible” and thus incapable of heroism, the Norse gods knew that one day they would be defeated by the Giants (436). The gods’ ruler, the “All-Father,” was Odin and was, like Zeus, a sky god. Solemn and aloof, he did not eat, even at feasts. His two ravens, Thought and Memory, brought him news from the world of men. He bore the brunt of the responsibility to forestall Ragnarok, “the day of doom” when “heaven and earth would be destroyed” (438). He gained wisdom by suffering, sacrificing one of his eyes and undergoing suffering to learn how to use Runes, knowledge that he passed on to men, to whom he served as benefactor. His attendants were the Valkyries, who were responsible for choosing victors and vanquished in battle and bringing the brave to Odin and Valhalla.
The “only” other important gods were Balder, Thor, Freyr, Heimdall, and Tyr. Balder was doomed to die (439). His mother tried to save him by extracting an oath from every living thing not to harm him, except mistletoe, which she did not deem important enough to matter. She revealed this detail to Loki, a troublemaking Giant’s son who had sworn an oath of brotherhood with Odin, and Loki contrived for mistletoe to kill Balder. A volunteer traveled to Niflheim, the land of the dead, to attempt to ransom Balder from Hela, goddess of the dead, and she agreed if every living thing wept for his loss. All agreed except a Giantess, and Balder was compelled to remain among the dead. The gods punished Loki severely.
Thor was the god of thunder and Tyr the god of war. Freyr oversaw the earth’s bounties, and Heimdall guarded the bridge to Asgard, the divine realm. Hamilton claims that Norse goddesses were not “as important as they were in Olympus” (442). Odin’s wife Frigga was circumspect, wise but silent and often depicted spinning golden threads for unknown purposes. The goddess of love and beauty was Freya, who claimed half the dead in battle (the rest being carried to Valhalla by the Valkyries). A prophecy in the Elder Edda stated that “a new heaven and a new earth” would flower in which would reign a god “beyond the reach of evil,” but his name dared not be spoken (445).
Part 7 Analysis
Norse mythology for Hamilton provides a fitting conclusion to her Mythology collection because together, Norse and Greek mythologies “give a clear picture of what the people were like from whom comes a major part of our spiritual and intellectual inheritance” (448). Assuming an audience of Northern European ancestry, she believes that “[b]y race we are connected with the Norse” while “our culture goes back to the Greeks” (448). Hamilton provides no elaboration to explain how race and culture intersect in these two mythologies. She does not, for example, explain why the Norse “racial group” would incorporate the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Presumably, she is extrapolating from the pervasive influence of ancient texts on the art, literature, and intellectual movements of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Modern periods.
Hamilton explains that she chose to retell the story of Signy and Sigurd as told in the Elder Edda because she believes it best represents “the Norse character and the Norse point of view” (430, italics in original). A major distinction between the mythologies seems to be that the Norse gods were, like their heroes, doomed to destruction, unlike the Greek and Roman gods, who were presumed to be eternal. Hence, the “grave and solemn” mood that hangs over the Norse myths, both in the description of Asgard and in the characterization of its gods and heroes (425). Hamilton seems further to distinguish Norse mythology by the nature of its heroism: Death does not defeat its heroes because what matters is resisting not winning. Essentially, their heroism is born from the inevitability of their defeat.
Hamilton’s sources are two texts, the Elder Edda (also known as the Poetic Edda) and the Younger Edda (also known as the Prose Edda), dating to the Middle Ages, after the region had been Christianized. She ascribes greater value to the verse Elder Edda because it could have been a great epic, if only the poet’s literary skill matched the quality of the poem’s ideas. Characteristically, Hamilton is concerned with literary merit. Ideas matter, but they are elevated by what Hamilton sees as the excellence of their style, which she seems to assume will be universally recognizable. She suggests Signy’s willingness to die after achieving vengeance elevates her above Clytemnestra, only Clytemnestra’s story was told by a better poet.
The early Edda poems are, like the Homeric epics, believed to have origins in oral poetry. Surviving manuscripts are neither complete nor consistent. Though it is possible that the stories in the text pre-date Christianity, the earliest Edda manuscript dates to the 13th century. Since oral forms that were not written down lie beyond scholars’ reach, it is impossible to know to what extent the myth variants that have survived resemble their earliest incarnations. Hamilton notes the prophecy that defeat of Asgard would be followed by the reign of a god “beyond the reach of evil” whose name dared not be spoken, but she does not consider whether this variant may have been a later version reflective of the new religious belief system (i.e., Christianity) (445).
