Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend
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A01=John McKinnell
Author_John McKinnell
bereavement
Category=JBGB
Category=QRS
creatures
cross-gendered encounters
dead
dwarves
encounters
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
giantesses
giants
growing up
legends
monsters
Old Norse myths
Other
prophetesses
psychological problems
sexual relationships
social
This World
Product details
- ISBN 9781843840428
- Weight: 602g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 15 May 2005
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Close examination of the significant theme of other-worldly encounters in Norse myth and legend, including giantesses, monsters and the Dead.
A particular, recurring feature of Old Norse myths and legends is an encounter between creatures of This World [gods and human beings] and those of the Other [giants, giantesses, dwarves, prophetesses, monsters and the dead]. Concentrating on cross-gendered encounters, this book analyses these meetings, and the different motifs and situations they encompass, from the consultation of a prophetess by a king or god, to sexual liaisons and return from the dead. It considers the evidence for their pre-Christian origins, discusses how far individual poets and prose writers were free to modify them, and suggests that they survived in medieval Christian society because [like folk-tale] they provide a non-dogmatic way of resolving social and psychological problems connected with growing up, succession from one generation to the next, sexual relationships and bereavement.
John McKinnell is Reader in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, UK.
