This week I've been continuing with my general research into everything bear, and especially bearskins.
Bears and bearskins hold a wide range of associations and meanings in the medieval north and beyond, and I've so far separated my research into six categories, as seen below (the "Types & Locations" banner also including biological and ethological research into bears and their behaviour).
While I've been reading a whole host of publications, the Bear and Human: Facets of a Multi-Layered Relationship from Past to Recent Times, with Emphasis on Northern Europe publication (that I write about here) has of course been an immense resource - and of really up to date, emerging research. I am thoroughly enjoying it, most recently this morning starting 'Bears and the Viking Age transition in Sweden" (Ljungkvist & Lindholm, pp.387-404), which so far looks very exciting. I have also been pleased to read the articles on Old Norse literature, and to consider their discussions in light of my own emerging ideas (more to come on that in the coming weeks).
As mentioned before on the blog, I've been working on a database of bear references in Old Norse texts, and one of the really fun things you can do with this is get an overview of how bears are being written about/remembered/perceived, through asking questions like: "what sorts of interactions are taking place?" and "where are these bears being encountered in texts?"
So in a break from reading, I decided to have a play.
Across the medieval texts included in my corpus (Sagas, histories, laws, poetry, etc.), hunting, conflict and killing made up 43% of the references, with Gifts (12%) and Dream appearances (11%) the other two largest categories.
I then wanted to see whether Interactions with bears varied by type of text - for example, in Gesta Danorum we find a very small and specific set of references to bears, concerned with the bear's son story, bear hunting and killing, and the eating of bear/drinking of bear blood.
Unsurprisingly, in legal texts, while hunting makes up a similarly large proportion of the references, the neglect of livestock and taming of wild animals are more specific and practical concerns than are focussed on in the historical/literary texts:
A much wider range of interactions are seen in the Sagas and Tales of Icelanders, although again conflict and gifts are notably large proportions.
When it comes to the locations of bear-human interactions across the texts I have currently tagged (sagas, laws, histories, poetry), unsurprisingly forested areas loom large in interactions from Norway (largely brown bears), and coastal areas and waterscapes in Iceland (largely polar bears). Notably, perhaps, the only reference to bears being close to livestock comes from a description of bear-human interaction in Norway. We can see even at this early stage (and with an albeit small sample) two distinct models of bear-human interactions between Iceland (and Greenland), and Norway.
But what is a bear doing in the sitting room??
The one reference to the sitting room of the house (stófa) is a reference to a polar bear fylgja (a sort of manifestation of a man's soul) that a man with second sight sees running after a child into the room. I have included the references to fylgja (and dreams, etc.) in the dataset of "bear-human interactions", as the manifestation of bears in such spheres (and where they are imagined appearing), tell us about how these animals were thought about in these narratives. The polar bear in this case betrays the higher-born status of the child it follows into the living room (polar bear fylgja are associated with high status characters), but also - as far as I can recall - this is the only reference to a young fylgja from the texts I have examined so far, and it may be significant both that it is a polar bear cub, and that it appears in the living room. More on the possible links between bears, children, protection, etc. in future weeks, I think!
Next week I'm hoping to do a post on the bear heiti (poetic names), which have fascinated me since I first read Snorra Edda 13 years ago. These poetic names show another facet of the understandings of bears in the northern world.
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