Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: Looking across the Baltic Sea and over Linguistic Fences
- Section 1 Mental Maps
- 1 The Northern Part of the Ocean in the Eyes of Ancient Geographers
- 2 Austmarr on the Mental Map of Medieval Scandinavians
- 3 The Connection Between Geographical Space and Collective Memory in Jómsvíkinga saga
- Section 2 Mobility
- 4 Rune Carvers Traversing Austmarr?
- 5 Polish Noble Families and Noblemen of Scandinavian Origin in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Case of the Awdańcy Family: By Which Route did they come to Poland and why?
- 6 A Medieval Trade in Female Slaves from the North along the Volga
- Section 3 Language
- 7 Ahti on the Nydam Strap-ring: On the Possibility of Finnic Elements in Runic Inscriptions
- 8 Low German and Finnish Revisited
- Section 4 Myth and Religion Formation
- 9 Mythic Logic and Meta-discursive Practices in the Scandinavian and Baltic Regions
- 10 The Artificial Bride on Both Sides of the Gulf of Finland: The Golden Maiden in Finno-Karelian and Estonian Folk Poetry
- 11 Local Sámi Bear Ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic Perspective
- 12 Mythologies in Transformation: Symbolic Transfer, Hybridisation, and Creolisation in the Circum-Baltic Arena (Illustrated Through the Changing Roles of *Tīwaz, *Ilma, and Óðinn, the Fishing Adventure of the Thunder God, and a Finno-Karelian Creolisation of North Germanic Religion)
- Contributors
- Indices
9 - Mythic Logic and Meta-discursive Practices in the Scandinavian and Baltic Regions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: Looking across the Baltic Sea and over Linguistic Fences
- Section 1 Mental Maps
- 1 The Northern Part of the Ocean in the Eyes of Ancient Geographers
- 2 Austmarr on the Mental Map of Medieval Scandinavians
- 3 The Connection Between Geographical Space and Collective Memory in Jómsvíkinga saga
- Section 2 Mobility
- 4 Rune Carvers Traversing Austmarr?
- 5 Polish Noble Families and Noblemen of Scandinavian Origin in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Case of the Awdańcy Family: By Which Route did they come to Poland and why?
- 6 A Medieval Trade in Female Slaves from the North along the Volga
- Section 3 Language
- 7 Ahti on the Nydam Strap-ring: On the Possibility of Finnic Elements in Runic Inscriptions
- 8 Low German and Finnish Revisited
- Section 4 Myth and Religion Formation
- 9 Mythic Logic and Meta-discursive Practices in the Scandinavian and Baltic Regions
- 10 The Artificial Bride on Both Sides of the Gulf of Finland: The Golden Maiden in Finno-Karelian and Estonian Folk Poetry
- 11 Local Sámi Bear Ceremonialism in a Circum-Baltic Perspective
- 12 Mythologies in Transformation: Symbolic Transfer, Hybridisation, and Creolisation in the Circum-Baltic Arena (Illustrated Through the Changing Roles of *Tīwaz, *Ilma, and Óðinn, the Fishing Adventure of the Thunder God, and a Finno-Karelian Creolisation of North Germanic Religion)
- Contributors
- Indices
Summary
Abstract
This article aims to explore the logic of mythical thinking conveyed by ethnocultural mythical traditions. I use the term mythical logic to denote a network of phenomena explained as caused by supernatural powers. In exploring the mechanisms of the register of mythical language and thinking, the notion of mythical logic complements the notion of mythic discourse in relation to mythology as a symbolic matrix. Further, I will cast some light to the intercultural contacts and long-term mutual influences between old folk religions and the Christianity. I will reveal meta-discursive practices that have, serving the changing political needs or scholarly paradigms, influenced ideological and scientific interpretations of mythological sources.
Keywords: myth, topos, motif, thunder god, mythical logic, mythical knowledge, metadiscursive practices, interpretatio Romana, interpretatio Christiana
Introduction
Ideological discourses and scholarly paradigms have often forced mythic knowledge into the form of stable and petrified systems consisting of trinities and pantheons of local gods, or constructions that correspond to the systems typical for religions. Charles Briggs uses the notion of meta-discursive practices (Briggs 1993: 387-434) to denote the dominant approaches that have represented the research material in a modified or reconstructed form, according to the prevailing ideological tendencies or political and didactic aims. It is essential to disclose the ideological aims looming in the background of the text in order to evaluate the scholarly, mythological writings (cf. Briggs 1993: 420; Honko 1998: 160 et passim). This article aims to elucidate with some examples the difference between the meanings conveyed by the ethnocultural mythic tradition and the dominant ideological approaches that have attempted to reconstruct and reuse the traditional cultural elements according to prevailing ideological aims and research priorities.
Ethnocultural, mythic discourse does not follow the rational, modern, literary logic. Anna-Leena Siikala emphasises that shamanic mode of thought and mythic consciousness, i.e. the logic of mythic thinking, is not organised into concepts logically interlinked, but as ‘sensory images concerning mythic objects and being’ (Siikala 2002: 48 et passim). In this article I use the term mythic logic to denote a network of ethnocultural expressions of phenomena explained as caused by supernatural powers. In the examples in this article, mythic logic enabled the Sámi shaman (noaide) to send an insect to enter the mouth of the one on whom the noaide had cast a spell.
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- Information
- Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea RegionAustmarr as a Northern Mare Nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD, pp. 187 - 210Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019