Scandinavia
The following is excerpted from The Conversation essay Norse mythology brims with fierce, fabulous women. Here are 5 of my favourites by Lisa Bennett, Flinders University. It is republished under a Creative Commons license.
Angrboða
In Old Norse, Angrboða’s name means “bringer of grief or sorrows” and it’s not hard to see why. This giantess is Loki the trickster-god’s lover and by him she bears three monstrous children.
First comes Jormungand, the sea serpent whose enormous body encircles Midgard, a.k.a. Middle Earth (where we all live and, thanks to Tolkien, also home to wizards, elves, dwarves and hobbits). According to prophecy, when Jormungand stops biting his own tail, the end of the world is nigh.
Next is Fenrir, a gigantic wolf fated to kill Odin (the All-Father, highest of the gods) during Ragnarök, a series of events culminating in a final battle between the gods and giants (and the end of the universe as they know it …).
Youngest is a daughter, Hel, who becomes ruler of the dead. Since all three pose existential threats to the gods, Odin takes them from Angrboða and imprisons them in different places: Jormungand is bound to the sea, Fenrir to a great boulder and Hel to the afterlife.
Angrboða never sees them again.
Literary sources about Angrboða are scant, but the glimpses we get of her in both the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda have left a lasting impression. (The former is a compilation of myths from the early 13th century. The latter are 31 alliterative poems collected in the Codex Regius manuscript, probably recorded in the 1270s.)
Since she is a giant (perpetual enemy of the gods) and paramour of the greatest troublemaker in Asgard, the myths typecast Angrboða as a monster herself and summarily dismiss her. In fact, it’s practically tradition at this point to introduce her as I’ve just done: by mentioning her three terrible progeny and their notorious father and only then discussing her.
Scholars and storytellers alike continue to gravitate towards the children Angrboða has produced, rather than delve deeper into her own story. In my view, the more we read between the lines in these stories, the stronger Angrboða seems – because there is nothing more dangerous than a mother whose kids have been stolen.
Yet She Lives: Fierce and Fantastical Women of Norse Mythology is published by Thames and Hudson
Lisa Bennett, Associate Professor, Flinders University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.