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Oedipus Borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga

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Written by a Professor of English at Gallaudet University and an expert on Germanic languages, literatures, and mythologies, Oedipus Borealis: The Aberrant Body In Old Icelandic Myth And Saga poses the argument that many well known figures in the Icelandic saga are based on mythic prototypes. Drawing commonalities between saga heroes and mythic figures such as a physical deformity linked with sexual deviance and supernatural powers, and noting that modern narratives sharply contrast with the myth and saga by establishing aberrance as the sign of a villain or victim, Oedipus Borealis offers a scholarly and studious study of the symbolism within myths including that Oedipus, tales of gods and giants, Egil Bald-Grim's son, and other characters as well as the saga skalds themselves. A heavily researched and evenly weighed study that succinctly retells myths as needed to espy core similarities within the ancient tales, recommended for academic library mythology study and reference shelves.

A search through the Old Icelandic corpus for instances of the marked-foot/clever-inventor/sexual-deviant/sea-connected/dynasty-founder archetype. I had never heard of such an archetype before, and the first chapter (on Oedipus as an example from classical mythology) was not enough to convince me there was one, but apparently Joseph Campbell has established it as a valid type in the field.

Does Bragg succeed? It depends on what you're looking for: yes, she finds plenty of examples; yes, she gives a complacent old student of the corpus like me several "Huh, never thought about it like that" moments. On the other hand, by blatantly cherry-picking her data (when it's convenient to ignore Snorri's interpretation, she reminds us that he was a Christian writing 250 years after the conversion; other times, much weight is based on his precise turns of phrase), ignoring counter-examples a-plenty, and riding her own pet hobby-horses a bit too hard, she rather fails to convince me there's actually any there there.

Is "sea-connected" really such a special trait among *Viking* myths and legends? Or "dynasty-founder," seeing as every saga ends with a catalogue of famous descendants? Considering that I can think (without getting up to look at a book) of one and a half Eddic poems that are *all about* the Aesir going to the Jotuns for esoteric wisdom, she's awfully proud of having figured that out on her own from other sources. And sometimes, y'know, a foot is just a foot.

For serious students of comparative mythological archetypes, it may be worth more, I can't tell. Seriously discouraged for anyone's first introduction to saga/edda material, as it's way too unbalanced