Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 82
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Nevertheless, mythological jötnar are aligned from the earliest times
with forces of chaos in the Old Norse cosmos.14 In the second of two
possibly ninth-century verses in Snorra Edda that describe an exchange
between the poet Bragi Boddason and a tröll, jötnar are listed along with
vǫlur, tröll, and devourers of the moon and cosmos.15 In the mythological
poems of the Codex Regius and in Snorra Edda, jötnar frequently imperil
divine society by attempting to acquire the gods’ women; by stealing the
most powerful items which they possess; and by entering physical and
verbal contests with them. the force most inimical to the Æsir, Loki, is
the son of a jötunn and goes on to produce a monstrous progeny.16 Finally,
it is jötnar who are the chief opponents of the Æsir at ragnarök, the divine
battle which heralds the destruction of the cosmos. When saga authors use
the term jötunn, then, it is already loaded with a range of negative associa-
tions which likely stretch back far into the pre-Christian period.
The negative role which jötnar play in the above mythological nar-
ratives affects the character of these figures in the Old Norse-Icelandic
corpus more widely. In translated texts, which make up some of the earli-
est attested writings in this corpus, the term jötunn is overwhelmingly
applied to negative figures. The earliest non-mythological source in which
jötnar appear is the so-called Niðrstigningar saga, which is a translation
The Viking Collection 7 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 1994): 67 and
Ármann Jakobsson, “Identifying the ogre: the Legendary Saga giants,” Fornaldarsagaerne,
myter og virkelighed: studier i de oldislandske fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, ed. by Annette
Lassen, agneta ney and Ármann Jakobsson (Copenhagen: Museum tusculanum Press,
2009), 189.
14 The earliest extant example of the word jötunn is found on the ninth-century Rök stone,
where the form iatun is given. See Joseph Harris, “Rök Stone,” and “Varin’s Philosophy and
the Rök Stone’s Mythology of Death,” New Perspectives on Myth: Proceedings of the Second
Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, Ravenstein
(the Netherlands), August 19–21, 2008, ed. by Wim M. J. van Binsbergen and Eric Venbrux
(Haarlem: Shikanda, 2010), 91–105.
15 Anonymous Stanzas from Snorra Edda, ed. and trans. by Kari Ellen Gade, Margaret Clunies
Ross and Matthew Townend, in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, Part I, ed. by Kari Ellen
Gade, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 519.
16 Loki is called sonr fárbauta jǫtuns “son of Fárbauti the jötunn” in Snorri’s Gylfaginning.
Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning (London: Viking
Society for Northern Research, 2005), 26. On the perilous nature of Loki’s being fathered
by a jötunn, see Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, “Starkaðr, Loki and Egill Skallagrímsson,”
Sagas of Icelanders: A Book of Essays, ed. by John Tucker (New York: Garland, 1989), 150–3,
and Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, 64–5.