Trees of life in Old English and Old Norse literatures

Abstract

This paper explores religious dimensions of sacred trees in Old English literature and some Old Norse texts which, although preserved in later manuscripts, are broadly contemporaneous with the period in which the former was written down. It begins by exploring representations of the rood tree (i.e., the cross) and other trees with sacral character in Old English texts, before going on to show how trees function as sources of divine sustenance. Human beings, both a product of this world, and apart from it, are themselves compared with and presented as trees and plant life in various contexts, drawing in part on the rich metaphorical stores of Classical and Biblical symbolism, but perhaps also on traditions comparable with those found in Old Norse poetry. In Norse texts, we will consider the appearances of Yggdrasill, a tree embodying the natural world which exists ‘in time’, like the gods: prone to harm, and which will ultimately face the same doom. Yggdrasill embodies the experience of all trees in this way, being subject to physical suffering – an experience shared by humans. Old Norse literature preserves an arboreal creation myth in which wood found upon the seashore is transformed into living human beings, the first man and woman. Elsewhere, a common trope in Eddic and skaldic poetry, through which human beings are equated with trees, suggests conceptions of a common kinship between the two. Ultimately, in both Old English and Old Norse literature, the lines between the human and the vegetal, the sacred and the mundane, are blurred by the appearances of trees, which prove difficult to separate from the worlds of humans. Together, these reflect the complexities of disentangling the vegetal from the human, the sacred from the profane, and the various ways in which Classical and Biblical thought was received and naturalised by those writing in Old English and Old Norse.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Michael D.J. Bintley: orcid.org/0000-0001-7244-6181

Catalogue record

Export record