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
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)
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 paper explores the concept of ‘Circum-Baltic mythology’ as an outcome of long-term contacts between cultures in the Baltic Sea region. Regional variations in the mythology of a culture are approached as “dialects” and the mythologies of cultures of the Baltic Sea region are approached as “macro-dialects” with both shared features and differences. Case studies mentioned in the title are presented to illustrate different types of contact-based developments in these macro-dialects of mythology.
Keywords: mythology, religion, Circum-Baltic, hybridisation, stratification
Introduction
Some years ago, I posed the question of whether ‘Circum-Baltic’ mythology is a valid concept for approaching mythologies in the Baltic Sea region (Frog 2011a; see also Frog 2014b). I proposed that Circum-Baltic mythology was an outcome of millennia of the complex contact history between different linguistic-cultural groups. Basically, the idea is that a distinct macro-regional system of mythology (Witzel 2012: 65-68) evolved through the long-term interaction of different Indo-European and Uralic cultures as well as the other cultures that these encountered as they arrived and spread through this part of the world. Here, the concept of Circum-Baltic mythology will be illustrated and explored through a variety of cases, some of which I have elaborated in more detail elsewhere. The present article extends the theoretical and methodological framework that I have developed across the course of this research.
I approach mythology through mythic discourse, or mythology as it is used, communicated, and manipulated by people in situated practices. I thus treat it in terms of symbols that can be communicated by language, iconography, and/or performance (see further Frog 2015). Circum-Baltic mythology thus refers to the outcome of cross-culturally shared symbols, frameworks for combining those symbols, and resulting frames of reference. For example, the motif THUNDER STRIKES DEVIL (SMALL CAPITALS indicate minimal symbolic units) was a fundamental symbol of all mythologies in the Baltic Sea region (Uther 1997-1999: 763). This does not mean that the specific forms of mythology are identical across cultures. The image of Thunder would vary by region while names for that image would vary by language and dialect.
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- Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea RegionAustmarr as a Northern Mare Nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD, pp. 263 - 288Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019