This is a handsomely presented festschrift honoring John F. Lindow’s forty-year career in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, Scandinavian folklore and mythology, and the broader field of Nordic cultural studies at the University of California at Berkeley. The book is nearly evenly divided between Studies in Old Norse and Nordic Mythology and Studies in Folklore, Belief and Culture. In addition there is, of course, a Tabula Gratulatoria, an introduction, forty pages of references, and an impressive fifteen-page bibliography of John Lindow’s publications. The contributors are former PhD students, his colleagues at Berkeley and elsewhere in the US, and an independent scholar; and there are contributions from Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. As in most festschrifts, some of the articles are more challenging than others while a few read like summaries of fieldwork. Several are translations into English.

The introduction offers a cordial and most informative presentation of John Lindow’s personal and academic life. The bibliography at the end of the book indicates not only how productive the honoree has been, but also just how influential his work was and still is. Some of the articles begin with ideas that were developed in his work but remain open for further research.

Old Norse and Nordic Mythology are much like Classical Studies in that the body of literature under investigation is essentially closed. Only seldom are new sources added to the canon, and thus scholars have long been able to concentrate their research on specific, even isolated lexical items, as in the case of the mysterious reginnaglar. The word only appears fleetingly in the literature, and seems to mean something like “nails driven into the high-seat pillars of a pagan hof.” Is there some relationship to gilded saints’ relics? In another study, a single word is once again investigated: mistilteinn as it appears in the myth of Baldr, who dies when mistletoe is shot through his heart. A lengthy comparison is made between branches in trees, representing offspring and descendants, and the legal concept of “boys too young to make a legally binding oath.” Is Snorri Sturluson symbolically articulating a cultural anxiety about the legal system? Other studies are devoted to specific locations, like Gotland; to Dumézil’s three functions as related to Óðinn, Þórr, and Freyr, and whose “functions” fit imperfectly, even overlap. One study is devoted to a nonexistent saga, that of Thorgils Holluson, which is mentioned only in passing in the Laxdaela saga; another to complicated legal questions concerning death in a burning farmhouse in Njáls saga.

Two most interesting pieces address the question of Norsemen in North America. One is devoted to tales collected in the 1970s in New Iceland, on the banks of Lake Winnipeg, Canada, where male and female repertoires are markedly different, and the other is more of a book review of Rasmus B. Anderson’s America Not Discovered by Columbus: A Historical Sketch of the Discovery of America by Norsemen in the Tenth Century, first published in 1874. While the book is not based on original research by Anderson, it brings together all previous studies and information that made Leifr Eiríksson the discoverer of North America, and that counteracted the reputation of Christopher Columbus. “With respect of Leifr ‘the Lucky,’ Anderson was a mythmaker, and for Columbus he was a mythbreaker.”

The final study in Section A treats translations of national epics, such as the Poetic Edda or the Kalevala, where the translators use “allusions—metrical, verbal and stylistic—to the target language’s epic tradition.” When successful the works become suitable for presentation to foreign dignitaries as an expression of a specific nationality.

Section B in the book is also devoted to various aspects of Nordic folklore, but these articles are intended for a broader readership, not exclusively those in Nordic studies. The range is wide: contemporary life histories which allude to a Viking heritage; three texts of “Our Lady’s Child” (ATU 710) presented in the original—Northern Sámi, Finnish, and Norwegian—and in English translation. These tales help explain culturally and historically based variations. Icelandic “waking the dead” legends are read as local legends, not as “national.” The tale of a family teetering on the verge of financial ruin that decides to sell its last possession, a cow for example, provides an opening into an understanding of the markets in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Denmark. An expansive treatment of the evolution of “what Trolls Really Look Like” in Norway is offered; there is a noteworthy treatment of Thomas Kinkade’s painting of “Solvang” (California), “a painting of a reproduction of an idea of a nation,” and its “performativity” (??).

There is a thoughtful study of the Sámi Seite—which is never really translated but seems to represent some (rocky?) location where spirits resided or visited on occasion. The final study deals with a talent competition in Denmark in which choirs compete, much as individuals or small groups do on “Pop Stars,” “The X Factor,” or “American Idol.” In this case it is a group from Greenland that goes on to win the contest. Their performance is interpreted as a “New Start For Greenland” and its self-governance. The penultimate article is, by the author’s own admission, “orthogonal to the other chapters and the overall theme of the book.” It is based on his dissertation research on UNESCO and explores the problematic of the international community declaring “all vernacular culture [to be] state property.”

The book is well done, and is the first in a planned new series of Research Monographs in Nordic Studies by Wildcat Canyon and Advanced Seminars. The editors say that one of the main goals of the seminar is to produce high-quality monographs that can be subjected to the highest standards of academic review, yet do not have to conform to the marketing goals of university and academic presses. For the most part the scholarship is indeed impressive, and there are studies which are just simply informative and interesting, e.g., the “book review” dealing with how Leifr Eiríksson was a mythmaker, how lively the narrative traditions are among the Sámi, what a wide range of tales were found in New Iceland in Canada. This is not an easy read, and those in Nordic studies will appreciate the first half more, and will certainly cite some of the works in their own studies. Those primarily in folklore studies, with only a passing interest in the Nordic sphere, will find the second half more interesting. The publication list of John Lindow’s work will offer scholars a source for quick reference to his many works, which no doubt will continue to grow in his retirement.

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[Review length: 1094 words • Review posted on January 22, 2014]