Historical Lacunae and Poetic Space

Chapter 2 ‘From Empty Helmets and a Few Bones’ explains what a poetic enactment should bring to a creative understanding of Old Norse poetry through historical lacunae towards new ways to approach the reading of Old Norse poetry. It explores the connection between original drawings of image-texts in the epic and the images on supposed shields said to have inspired ninth- and tenth-century Old Norse court poets Bragi the Old Boddason to write his poem ‘Elegy to Ragnar [Lóðbrók]’ (‘Ragnarsdrápa’) and Þjóðólfr Hvinir in composing ‘Autumn-long’ (‘Haustlong’).

Chapter 3 ‘Who Is the Reader? And How Many of Us Are There?’ introduces the central argument of the book. It considers ways to read texts as a modern reader or as an ancient reader and useful aspects of ancient reading from a Nietzschean point of view. This chapter argues for the existence of the poem as an object as real as a chair in a room where you are sitting and no less so. It argues that observer-readers have similar access to reading objects as composer-readers because a composer’s reading of the objects with which a poem may be created appears from two levels providing a special two-fold method of reading that comprises the whole encounter with indeterminate literary objects.

Chapter 4 ‘Roman Ingarden’s Observer as Composer’ develops the central argument of the book. It extends Ingarden’s propositions on the constituents of the literary work of art, suggesting that the real and the considered-real appear to us in such similar ways we seem to regard them as if those ways were the same. It also proposes that the comprehension of a literary work as one rife with lacunae belongs in the first instance to the composer’s experience rather than to the observer-reader’s, giving the composer-reader access to pre-reading constituted as a double reading.

Chapter 6 ‘Measures of Skaldic Poetry: What Does Metre Mean?’ shows how the sounds of the poem were teased out and arrived at, taking into account questions around provenance, problems with translating Old Norse poetry into English, omissions and philology. It shows how the setting up of the creation of the illusion of authenticity has foundations in the way the poem sounds. This chapter shows, also, how and why I incorporated various metres, fragments and short sequences, substitution-images and periphrases into the poem and how I created three new metres and played with diction and myth.

Chapter 7 ‘The Legibility of Contours’ addresses the place of the image-texts in the central argument of the book and the part they play in defining language and readership of text. The image-texts which appear in the margins of the poem proscribe the legibility of the image-texts for the readers inside the text, framing it and outside it. The topography of the landscape details of the text construct lines of sight which allow the poetic objects to be seen as they move and act. The landscape and language-set introduced by the first voice met in the poem, Dágazar’s, and the development of the re-invention of Muspellsheimr demonstrate how the real world of the poem is sustained. This chapter delineates the application of five types of scripts that offer ways of secret reading to open gaps, a unique role of poetic objects. This chapter also describes the folded scripts of the terrain and explains how the poem endeavours to blur the distinction between the poem’s enactment of critical discourse and the constructed world of the poem as if they were simply two languages where one may be used to read the other. It is here that the role of the poem’s translator of the made-up Late Medieval Norse-Icelandic ‘Gíld-rac Manuscript’ is proved. Gwen Terrane translates the obscurities to which all the variations in things and events in the world of the constructed manuscript give rise.

Chapter 9 ‘A Grammar of Secrets’ concludes the central argument by showing how the poem’s contexts run together towards certain conclusions about reading and composing. Readers seem to stack up the exhibition of objects we comprehend like a shield-wall. This chapter reminds us that the focus of the whole journey is the performance of language, the battle for shape, meaning and generational comprehension of the performance of meaning through layers of reading.

The epic poem calling itself ‘Gíld-rac Manuscript’ is divided into two parts; its aim, to articulate the entire argument of the book as a puzzle in the search for rulership over signs and language in Old Norse poetry. It is set in the period between the beginning of Scandinavian exploration westward to the Americas c. 1050 and the beginning of expansion from Iberia in the same direction c. 1500 ad. The first part of the GMS, ‘The History: Books I to VII’, describes the founding in 1051 of Kerrigarðr, the kingdom lasting four-and-a-half centuries, the rise of its most formidable ruler Queen Skulváði Úlfr and her battles to sustain Kerrigarðr’s borders at the turn of the sixteenth century. As each Book opens with a preamble delivering the narrative focus of that Book, shortened summaries are provided below.

In Book I ‘Dágazar’s Dreams’ Norwegian Earl-poet Dágazar Kerrigánsson relates his dreams of securing land in Vinland or Green Woods on an oath sworn to his dying father Kerrigan Kerrigánsson in 1050. Dágazar’s journey takes him and his fellow Vikings further south than planned, into the Caribbees Sea or into Muspellsheimr as Dágazar sees it. Retreating from a fateful raid on the North American eastern seaboard, the Vikings and three Cherokee captives are plunged into a storm that strands survivors on the shores of the island of Ximayaca (shown as Jamaigua of the Antilhas del Rey de Castella or New Spain on the Cantino World Map (1502)). Survivors take ten years to establish a kingdom and achieve alliances with Ximacan rulers who preceded their arrival on the island.

In Book III ‘Oþýla’s Lays’ aspiring sword-smith Oþýla Anzusdóttir tells her story of being sent by King Logram the Red (r. 1405–1420) on a mission to rescue her cousin Frieda from hills ruled by rebel Kerrigash led by Radnir the Black. Her undertaking introduces her to the most powerful Chief of Ximayaca, Cebanex, and has far-reaching effects for the ruling Houses of Kerrigarðr and Ximayaca, for Logram’s successor, his son Kerrigan, and for Frieda’s child, Skulváði Úlfr.

Book IV ‘Helga’s Lament for Kerrigan’ (c. 1425) written by the young poet, Helga, maps the rise to fame of Logram’s son, Kerrigan, and his complex relationship with Skulváði Úlfr with whom he falls in love. During the first half of his reign, Kerrigan deepens alliances with Ximaca House, headed by Chief Cebanex, and gains a son in the process. But his successes will be remembered in Skulváði’s name.

Book V ‘Kerrigan the Fearless’ is set in the year 1450. After many years as King, Kerrigan Iron Hand turns first to Dragonþing rune stone for answers to the illusiveness of his total rule over Muspell’s Lands, then to his court adviser Íva Sand Reader of the Ívaldi priestess clan. With a cryptic message from the rune stone about a place called ‘Gíld-rac’ and Íva’s revelation of Skulváði’s secret maps of places where ‘treasures … hide the ground’, Kerrigan discovers a way to the under-grounds of Hel, an extensive cave-system beneath the surface of the island. He returns from the journey with experiences which increase his fame and fortune and finally bring him a bride. Part 1 and the first lay of Part 2 appear to have been written by Kerrigan himself; the second lay of Part 2, by Íva. The rest of Part 2 does not reveal its author or authors except for ‘How the Fearless came to Crown the Wolf’ which bears the name of the author of Book IV, Helga. Part 3 is an ancient lay about the historical travels around 1030–1050 of a Swedish adventurer named Nadlan.

Book VII ‘Síswyo’s Songs of the Wolf’ relates events between 1480 and 1504 when the arms of Skulváði Úlfr’s trading empire spread across Muspellsheimr, northwards, to encompass the lands of the Sherakí, Ásatekr, Viro Cochar and Cama Zotzur. In Part 1, Síswyo relates how the Queen’s encounter with the Hulðrac brings her to the remarkable Mœhrn, Amarr, builder and repairer of bridges. In Parts 2 and 3, the Queen tells how the meeting leads her to the discovery of new territories. Parts 4, 5 and 6 tell of the wars to save Kerrigarðr; first, from Móir of Suamox and, second, to support Kerrigash allies, the Meaning-priests of Itzámál, against Móir’s ally Nemenquene of the Bacatá in disguise as Bölverkr. The wars raise the name ‘Skulváði Úlfr’ to ‘Járnsaxa’ (Iron Cutlass). Authorship of Parts 4, 5 and 6 is unknown.

Book IX ‘The Law-suit’ relates how the Queen faces a challenge from Vella and Fafnir, sons of Móir or Bermejo of Sugamuxi (of the Muisca Confederation), who launch a law-suit on behalf of Vella’s son for his right to the ‘Fertile Fields’ or shortest route to Gíld-rac. Referring to his son, Wormling, as ‘nephew’, Vella makes a famous plea to gain property for the child he has with Lagrim, Fafnir’s wife (the child publicly acknowledged as his brother Fafnir’s son). The author of these verses is Eirinðis who refers to herself as a teller of ‘stories of whales’.

Book X ‘Lord of the Route’ gives a detailed account of what led to and followed the Queen’s remarkable journey northwest from Norway, on ‘sparks of flint’, on the way to Greenland. The verses begin with Hyndla, daughter of Skulváði and Otti and now married to Chief Hallmundr the Frail, returning home to Norway after many years away testing routes to the Last Outpost to Gíld-rac. Hallmundr presses his wife, who is best at memory-games, to tell him to the smallest detail how her journey went. Her reply brings pronouncements on the implications of such a detail which, along with her husband’s last wishes, sees Hyndla out King’s Gate again before she has caught her breath. This version of the Book is held to be written by Hyndla with the exception of the verses with titles indicating their authors to be the Brewer (Ólaug) and the Haiða (Gunna).

The epic poem is intended to tell the whole argument of this book. The final test of the poem is in the reading. I encourage readers to attend to the poem first and prepare themselves with their own reading to consider the assertions in the poem’s introductory arguments in its companion reader.