Women and Water: Icelandic Tales and Anglo-Saxon Moorings

Abstract

This collaborative article offers a multidisciplinary dialogue about modern and medieval ways of knowing and understanding water as place and process—as source and resource—and in so doing, explores and unsettles habitual disciplinary associations of place with specific times, identities, and genders. It brings together medieval and modern ideas about water, women, and the monstrous in art, popular culture, poetry, and learned texts to demonstrate how the subject of water connects different times, places, and media. Beginning in modern Iceland, the essay moves through Icelandic and early medieval British tales of the watery, the fishy, and the female, using the work of contemporary American artist Roni Horn, known for her work on place, identity, and Iceland, to focus this criss-crossing of temporalities, cultures, and places.

此一协作文章，提供了有关当代与中世纪认知及理解水作为地方与过程——同时作为源头与资源——的方式之跨领域对话，并藉此探讨和挑战将地方连结至特定时间、认同和性别的惯习式规范。本文聚集中世纪与当代的艺术、流行文化、诗集和学习文本中，有关水、女性和怪物的概念，展现水本身如何连结不同的时间、地点与媒介。本文始于当代的冰岛，随着冰岛和英国中世纪早期有关水、鱼和女性的传说进行，并运用当代美国艺术家罗尼．霍恩（Roni Horn）的作品来聚焦时间性、文化和地方的交错，该艺术家通过有关地方、认同与冰岛的作品为人知晓。

Este artículo de colaboración ofrece un diálogo multidisciplinario sobre las maneras modernas y medievales de conocer y entender el agua como lugar y como proceso ––como fuente y como recurso–– y al hacerlo explora y desarticula asociaciones disciplinarias habituales de lugar con tiempos, identidades y géneros específicos. Con esto se juntan ideas medievales y modernas acerca del agua, las mujeres y lo monstruoso en arte, cultura popular, poesía y textos eruditos, para demostrar cómo el sujeto del agua conecta diferentes tiempos, lugares y medios. Empezando en la Islandia moderna, el ensayo se desplaza a través de las historias islandesas y británicas del medioevo temprano relacionadas con cosas de aguas, pescados y mujeres, usando el trabajo de la artista norteamericana contemporánea Roni Horn, conocida por sus obras sobre lugar, identidad e Islandia, para poner en foco este entrecruzamiento de temporalidades, culturas y lugares.

Key Words:

• art
• contemporary
• medieval
• water, women

• 艺术
• 当代
• 中世纪
• 水
• 女性

• arte
• contemporáneo
• medieval
• agua
• mujeres

Notes

1. Foucault (1972, 192–95) remains important, especially for his account of “other” archaeologies, beyond those by-now familiar ones of sexuality and science.

2. We also used this title for a conference session, “Archaeo-ecologies of the Medieval: Collaborations in Place” (International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2010).

3. The usage is also reflected in English folk myths such as that of the Bamburgh or Laidly Worm of Northumberland, a female serpent or dragon associated with the sea if not living in it.

4. See Skálholts annál 1345 in Storm (1977, 211). See also Sveinsson ([1940] 2003, 84–85, 156–58, 296) for discussion of the historical Icelandic familiarity with the Lagarfljót “serpent” and its connections to other forms of the monstrous or supernatural.

5. The relation of water to Norse conceptual mythic schema, to cosmological emplacement, and to the concept of the “World Serpent” itself all suggest a thoroughgoing and fluid interchange of these places and states of being. As Clunies Ross (1994) noted, “The element of water, in particular, is both a symbol of and a vehicle for the natural forces that cannot be confined. In keeping with its physical properties as a liquid, water in Old Norse myth belongs to both the vertical and horizontal dimensions, for it flows both across and below, wherever containing shapes exist to hold it. The World Serpent’s domicile in a watery medium (whatever its precise geographic location) is thus a symbol of the ubiquity and unavoidability of natural forces” (53). For further discussion of beings who cannot be spatially confined, or categorized, see Clunies Ross (1994, 48–56).

6. There are many variations to this story, even within Icelandic folklore, of a seal woman who comes ashore and sheds her skin. Seeing her naked, a man falls in love with her, and she becomes his wife and bears his children. Years later, she finds her skin again, leaves him, and returns to the sea.

7. The Library is both art installation and archival collection of glacial water from all of Iceland’s existing and disappearing glaciers. See http://www.libraryofwater.is/ (accessed June 2017).

8. One of the most reliable, I have found, for both literal directions and literary and historical references, is Hloðum (1999).

9. Our gratitude to Ann Marie Rasmussen for recalling the details of this famous bathing scene.

10. For the modern, popular association of Nessie (the Loch Ness monster) with this story, see, for example, http://www.nessie.co.uk/htm/about_loch_ness/lochnes.html (accessed June 14, 2017).

11. For The Whale and its linking of the mouth of the sea beast with hell, see Krapp and Dobbie (1936, 171–75). The Irish associations of this beast, called Fastitocolan in the Old English poem, presumably a corruption of Aspidochelone, have long been pondered (see, e.g., Krapp and Dobbie 1936, 136). There are modern celebrations as well (see, e.g., Borges and Guerrero 1957, 61–62). Thanks to James Paz for drawing attention to this version. For the later, tenth-century water beast encountered by St. Brendan, together with other medieval versions of this famous account, see Barron and Burgess (2002). Anglo-Saxon art is credited with its innovative depictions of hell as the mouth of Leviathan, for which see the Tiberius Psalter (BL Cotton Tiberius C VI, fol. 14) and the discussion by Semple (2003).

12. See Sharpe (1995, I.19). In this account, the monk Berach asks Columba for his blessing for a sea voyage to Tiree. Columba recommends that he change his route and sail close to land to avoid a great sea beast (“aliquot monstruoso perterritus prodigio”; Reeves 1857, II.19). The monk ignores the saint’s advice and the huge whale (“cetus”) rises up, open-mouthed, out of the depths, and the sailors turn back. The next day, the prior Baithéne asks for the saint’s blessing for the same voyage, and he predicts the surfacing of the whale a second time. On this occasion, however, Baithéne, having been blessed by Columba, blesses the whale when it appears, and the sea with it. The whale accordingly disappears.

13. See, for example, Ælfric’s famous account of fishing for, or rather hooking, the devil in his First Series homily for Psalm Sunday in Clemoes (1997, 296–97, lines 187–94), which are taken from Gregory (see Godden 2000, 110).

14. In this use of phenomenology, Horn anticipates Ahmed (2006).

15. For details of the installation see http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/1049/roni-horn-recent-work/view/. (accessed June 2017). For the book, see Horn (2011).

16. All references to the Exeter Book riddles are to this edition, by number. The riddle is number 72 in Williamson (1977), where the punctuation is slightly different.

17. It is worth noting in this context that when the terrifying whale in The Life of St. Columba surfaces, the reader is invited to look: “et ecce cetus” (“and lo, a whale”; see Reeves 1857, I. 13).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clare A. Lees

CLARE A. LEES is Professor of Medieval Literature and History of the Language, English Department, King’s College London, London, WC2B 6LE, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include Old English, gender and sexuality studies, and early medieval religion and culture. She edited The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2013). With Gillian Overing, she is coeditor of A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes (Penn State Press, 2006) and coauthor of Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, reprinted by University of Wales Press, 2009).

Gillian R. Overing

GILLIAN R. OVERING is Professor of English in the English Department, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include early medieval literature and culture, cultural geography, and gender studies. She has published various studies of Beowulf, edited collections and articles, and with Clare Lees, she is coeditor of A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes (Penn State Press, 2006) and coauthor of Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, reprinted by University of Wales Press, 2009).