Skip to main content

IMC 2011: Sessions

Session 1521: Circulation of Wealth

Thursday 14 July 2011, 09.00-10.30

Moderator/Chair:Alaric Hall, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
Paper 1521-aGold Gone to the Wolves, and Children to Gold: Atlakviða and the Dark Side of Wealth Circulation in Old Norse Poetry
(Language: English)
Filip Missuno, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Language and Literature - Scandinavian
Abstract

Paper -a:
In the Old Norse poem Atlakviða, a treasure and its guardians are lost to wolves, snakes and darkness; their avenging sister Guðrún feeds her covetous king morsels of his own children and scatters his own gold. The fates of both treasure(s) and children merge within Guðrún's distortion of the wealth-receiving equation. Structural and thematic parallels in Germanic verse contribute to the interpretation that the poem's echoic semantics of darkness weaves into the heroic frame a liminal, chthonic dimension in which to pervert the social significance of treasure-giving and thematize gold and enrichment as reflective images of doom and death.