{"id":734,"date":"2023-07-05T16:12:03","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T20:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/?page_id=734"},"modified":"2023-07-06T09:01:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T13:01:08","slug":"sidebar-3-using-science-to-place-the-voluspa","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/voluspa-entangled\/sidebar-3-using-science-to-place-the-voluspa\/","title":{"rendered":"Sidebar 3. Using Science to Place the V\u00f6lusp\u00e1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this section, we focus on thematic connections between the <em>V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em> and political origins in Iceland. But there are those making efforts to draw more tangible connections between the poem and historical, even geological events. In their paper \u201cAre There Echoes of the AD 536 Event in the Viking Ragnarok Myth? A Critical Appraisal,\u201d Mathias Nordvig and Felix Riede create a new method for linking culture and geological time. Using what they term \u201cpaleoenvironmental humanities\u201d and a close-reading of the poem, the writers attempt to link specific images from the <em>V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em> with known natural phenomena. They consider the notion that the Ragnar\u00f6k myth was based upon a geological event in 536, in Scandinavia, before concluding it was more likely based on post-settlement volcanic eruptions: \u201cit would require much more intimate knowledge of volcanic activity than can be experienced by inhabitants of the Scandinavian peninsula; it would require an Icelandic experience of volcanic eruptions\u201d (317). Using science as well as the humanities to place a text like the <em>V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em> is a compelling tactic. Such an argument could do much to displace Hermann P\u00e1lsson&#8217;s assertion that the <em>V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em> is largely Sami in origin, for example. But another scholar, like Sigur\u00f0son, may caution the authors: because the <em>V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em> is an oral text, it is impossible to know precisely when pieces of it begin and end, and thus it is functionally impossible to date properly. Which perspective seems to you most compelling?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/voluspa-entangled\/conflict-and-unity-a-voluspa-of-the-icelandic-settlement\/\">\u00ab Previous<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/voluspa-entangled\/\">Home<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/voluspa-entangled\/other-beliefs-in-the-voluspa-christianity-and-the-strange-beings-of-the-land\/\">Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this section, we focus on thematic connections between the V\u00f6lusp\u00e1 and political origins in Iceland. But there are those making efforts to draw more tangible connections between the poem and historical, even geological events. In their paper \u201cAre There Echoes of the AD 536 Event in the Viking Ragnarok Myth? A Critical Appraisal,\u201d Mathias<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/voluspa-entangled\/sidebar-3-using-science-to-place-the-voluspa\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4492,"featured_media":0,"parent":697,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-nosidebar.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-734","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4492"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":761,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/734\/revisions\/761"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/makingvikings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}