Studying old texts using modern climate lenses

In Norse mythology, Ragnarok marks the end of the world. But in modern popular culture, Ragnarok has also been equated with the climate crisis.

Examples of this can be seen in the Netflix series Ragnarok or in the graphic novel Embla.

But what did people in the Middle Ages themselves think about their place in nature? And can they help us to think differently about this in our own time?

Culture and environment

“I don’t think we will find a solution to the climate crisis in Norwegian literature. When we propose a possible climate crisis in Ragnarok-like terms, it says more about what our people fear today than they did in pre-modern times,” says Professor Reinhard Hennig in the Department of Nordic and Media Studies at the University of Agder (UiA).

He believes that an ecocritical perspective on Norse texts can still provide us with new knowledge, including how people in pre-modern times considered sustainability and problematic environmental changes.

Ecocriticism is a research approach within literary studies that looks at the relationship between human culture and the environment around us.

Desire to expand ecocriticism

Hennig is one of the editors of the book “Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies: Nature and the Environment in Old Norse Literature and Culture.” He put it together with Michael Schulte, his UiA colleague, and Emily Lethbridge at the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland.

The study of Norwegian texts from an ecocritical perspective has not been very common, but the editors of the new anthology hope to change that.

“Nature motifs in Norwegian texts have been studied before. But what characterizes the ecocritical approach is the environmental importance — whether the texts have ecological relevance in any way, either for us today or for people in the past,” says Hennig.

Texts from a transitional period

In his own contribution to the anthology, Hennig reads the Icelandic sagas from a modern environmental perspective. It is about invisible dangers that emerge without knowing what or who is behind them.

“In these sagas there are several cases where people suddenly fall ill and die, or where they are attacked by unknown creatures. It is a mixture of nature and culture, a pollution that threatens to destroy entire regions. It can seem strong like modern events like the Chernobyl accident,” he says.

The Icelandic sagas describe the transition from paganism to Christianity as a time characterized by great uncertainty. This uncertainty is evident among people, in the social sphere that is, but also in the form of ominous environmental changes.

Another text in the book addresses how the understanding of concepts such as “wilderness” has changed over time. While today the wilderness is a place for relaxation and beautiful nature experiences, in the Middle Ages it was a dangerous place where both saints and ordinary people were tested.

A third contribution shows how church law adapted to the environment and climate of the Nordic countries – for example by allowing herring fishing on holy days.

“We wanted to show that ecocriticism is not limited to a specific type text or period. Both literary texts, such as the sagas and the Poetic Edda, and other texts, such as laws, are interesting to study from this perspective,” says Hennig.

New ideas and old thoughts

One challenge with ecocriticism is that it can be influenced by current ways of thinking. This makes it important for researchers to have the cultural knowledge of the time in which the texts were produced.

“The concept of sustainability, for example, is from the 18th century, and we only started talking about it sustainable development in the 1980s. But even older societies had to manage natural resources in sustainable ways to preserve livelihoods for their children and grandchildren,” says Hennig.

He adds that if we want to find traces of sustainability thinking in Norse texts, we must consider the texts in the light of the literary tradition, culture and society of which they were a part in pre-modern times.

“In the book we show some possible ways to do this, but also discuss problems and challenges with ecocritical readings of Norwegian texts,” he says.

The anthology Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies is published by Brepols and is available as an open access publication.