Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum by Grzegorz Bartusik;Radosaw Biskup;Jakub Morawiec;

Author:Grzegorz Bartusik;Radosaw Biskup;Jakub Morawiec; [Morawiec;, Grzegorz Bartusik;Radosaw Biskup;Jakub]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032121031
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

The second reference can be found in scholion 123, where we are additionally told that Anund was sent into Scythia to extend his father’s empire.15 From Adam’s ecclesiastical perspective, Anund’s father Emund cannot be presented as an ardent Christian, because he had rejected missionaries sent from the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen.16 The death of his son can, therefore, be interpreted as God’s punishment for this rejection of Christianity. Several scholars have commented that the localisation of the death in ‘terra feminarum’ must be due to a misunderstanding, with the most likely explanation being that Kvenland (land of the kvenir) was confused with Kvennaland (land of the women).17 From a literary perspective, the existence of ‘Amazons’ or their correct localisation is of secondary importance. The key point appears to be the high appeal that ‘Amazons’ had from the perspective of imagination, which may explain their appearance in texts since antiquity.18

Adam’s short note on how Anund was killed by women is not only paraphrased in Yngvars saga. It most likely also inspired one of its crucial scenes, as Emil Olson suggested.19 Olson focuses on the women as the bringers of death, but the interpretation of the death as divine punishment in Adam’s Gesta might also have been an inspiration for placing Yngvarr’s death within a religious context. In Yngvars saga, the death-by-women motif has overt sexual connotations, and such an association of sexuality, heathenism, and witchcraft with females is also attested in medieval theology.20 The women, who had come to the camp in order to seduce them, embody ‘evil’. Yngvarr asks his men to beware of these women as they would of “hina uersta eiturorma (the most venomous serpents)”, and although Yngvarr brutally stabs one of the women, some of his men still succumb to “þeira blidlæti af diofuligri fiolkyngi (their seductive charms and devilish witchcraft)”.21 The next morning, 18 men are dead, and the sickness that breaks out eventually kills Yngvarr and most of the others. It seems possible that the Anund episode had the potential to inspire the death episode in Yngvars saga, but the fact that it is reworked with the stereotypical figure of the woman as a seductress in the saga blurs this similarity. On his deathbed, Yngvarr interprets this plague as being sent “af rettum Guds domi (by the righteous judgement of God)” and announces that it will subside once he has died.22 Thus, his death will lead to the redemption of at least some of his men. For Haki Antonsson, who has analysed the biblical symbolism and typology in Yngvars saga, three themes are dominant in the saga: […] the search for salvation, the ever-present fear of damnation, and the problem of recognizing sanctity.23 Yngvarr’s last speech is therefore one of the key scenes because it is linked to the issue of whether secular leaders can hope for salvation.

The passage at the end of Yngvars saga, which includes the Anund paraphrase along with its source, Adam’s Gesta, has also been taken up in discussions on the historical Yngvarr, to whom about 25 Viking Age runic inscriptions in central Sweden can be linked.

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