Merrill Kaplan's The Paganesque and The Tale of Vǫlsi tackles an issue of long-standing philological, historical, and folkloristic significance, viz. how should modern readers contextualize and understand texts deriving from Christian-dominant medieval contexts which describe, or purport to describe, pre-Christian traditions? Such references to pagan beliefs and practices, invoking the authority of tradition (or of perceived tradition) as they do, represent what Kaplan terms “the paganesque.” Intentionally mirroring and building on the term "folkloresque," paganesque likewise points, with an emphasis on the term's -esque ending, to a meaning that stresses the sense that something is in the style of the concept it modifies (cp. carnivalesque, arabesque). As both an idea and a locution, “the folkloresque” is a term best-known from Michael Dylan Foster’s and Jeffrey A. Tolbert's 2016 The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World, although as a concern within folklore, anthropology, and cultural history, the approach itself has deep and diverse cross-disciplinary roots—one readily thinks of the many treatments of such issues as, i.a., fakelore, authenticity, revitalization, and folklorization by, for example, Wallace, Dorson, Bendix, Šmidchens, and Hafstein in recent decades.
For its part, the paganesque comprises, as Kaplan writes in a brief encapsulation of the concept, “an aesthetic of stigmatized religious alterity," or, more completely, as she later adds, it “articulates that a cultural expression is in the 'style' of paganism, i.e., (1) that it is aesthetically coded as contrasting with the dominant religion; (2) that it is connected to cultural notions about the nature of religious practice beyond the reach (whether temporally or spatially) of the dominant religion; and (3) that such contrastive religious practice is stigmatized” (116). As applied to the Old Norse situation, such a reading means that a portrayal or scene has an air of the pre-Christian heathen world about it, whether or not the elements so portrayed reflect any actual, historical realities. In a more complete explanation of the concept and its consequences, Kaplan argues that an appreciation for the paganesque can assist scholars in treating the distinction between what seems to us to portray a pre-Christian memory and “that element having had a sense of paganism for a medieval audience” (180). And that distinction between what may or may not reflect actual pagan usage versus a narrative device to give a text a pagan feel is, of course, a possibility one encounters in many medieval Nordic texts. Kaplan's careful presentation of the paganesque offers researchers an important and highly serviceable tool to use in exploring this problem.
Having presented and explored the paganesque, Kaplan, and the majority of the book, then turn to a comprehensive examination of one of the most bizarre (or some might say, intriguing) texts to emerge from the Nordic Middle Ages, Vǫlsa þáttr (memorably presented, as I recall hearing in a classroom a half-century ago, as "The Story of Vǫlsi, the Pickled Penis"). Known from the late fourteenth-century Flateyjarbók (as well as the later AM 292 4to and related paper copies), this short story is inserted into the saga of King Óláfr Haraldsson. Presented in prose and verse and making the claim that its narrative follows an existing poem (Eftir því sem í einu fornu kvæði vísar til), its ca. 1500 words relay a ribald tale in which the missionary ruler, King (and later Saint) Óláfr, hears of a pagan household living on a distant headland. There in the process of butchering a horse to be used for food, as heathens did, the farmer's bondman cuts off its member, intending to cast it aside, but the farmer's son grabs it and takes it to his mother, her daughter, and the bondwoman in the house. Shaking the penis at them, he recites a verse (in Kaplan's translation):
Here can be seen
a rather doughty dong
severed from
the stallion's father.
To you, bondwoman,
this rod
will be not at all dull
between your thighs.
The bondwoman laughs, whereas the daughter asks that the thing be taken away. Seizing the penis, the old woman carefully wraps it in linen, together with an onion and other herbs (vefr innan í einum líndúki ok berr hjá lauka ok ǫnnur grǫs) in order to prevent it from rotting, and places it in a little chest. Later that autumn, she would take it out, saying prayers, and assert that it was her god, thereby leading the rest of the household astray. Through diabolical power (með fjandans krafti), the dong becomes so strong it could stand by itself if the woman wanted it to. It became her habit to take the penis into the common room each evening and speak a verse over it, after which it would be passed to the farmer and the others, ending with the bondwoman, each of whom would speak a verse over it.
Forced into exile, King Óláfr hears of these remote pagan practices and makes his way to the headland where, together with two companions, he visits the household in disguise. In a detail-rich scene, they witness the phallocentric ritual of the vǫlsi being passed around and participate in it and its associated serial verse-making, with every verse including the phrase "May mǫrnir / accept this blœti." Finally, the dong is passed to King Óláfr, who similarly creates a verse, but ends it derisively with the command that the family's dog should "take charge of this monster" (en þú, hundr hjóna, / hirtu bákn þetta), after which the king throws the dong on the floor and the dog picks it up. Seeing this, the old woman is thrown into a state and speaks a verse, part of which involves the instruction that she should be lifted "over the hinge / and the door-beam" (Hefi mik of hjarra / ok á hurðása) to see if she might save the blœti. Throwing off his disguise, the King is recognized and through his devotion—and the power of God—the household is converted to "the faith," eventually even the reluctant old woman. The story concludes by noting that this tale shows how eager Óláfr was to rid the kingdom of heathendom, even in some of its most remote areas, and that he did so in a way that pleased God.
A narrative of this sort, with its obvious (or one might say, too obvious) references to pre-Christian ritual beliefs and practices, has naturally attracted a great deal of scholarly scrutiny over the decades, including attention from many of the storied names at the intersection of Old Norse religion, literature, and philology (e.g., Heusler, Olsen, Ström, Turville-Petre), as well as a host of more recent experts (e.g., Heizmann, Steinsland, Tolley). It would be fair to say that all of these works and their complex contributions are examined and given rigorous yet fair reviews under Kaplan's high-powered microscope. Navigating through these academic perspectives—with some scholars leaning toward seeing these cultural goods as survivals and thus echt (authentic), while others gravitate more toward viewing the Vǫlsa þáttr author as, in Clive Tolley's image, a magpie, "a creative deployer of traditional material to meaningful artistic ends" (28)—Kaplan revisits with thoroughness and clarity the various explanations that have been offered about this narrative, topic by topic. Broadly speaking, the areas covered include (following the order of the book's chapters): the place of fertility, phallic cults, and survivals in the history of ideas; the post-medieval tradition in the Faroe Islands of senda drunn (passing the drunnur), its probable Gaelic origins, and other analogous competitive speech events; Mímir's severed head and folk traditions of animated body parts, especially the case of the Icelandic tilberi or snakkur (milk-stealing entities ritually created from stolen body parts), as well as such related creatures as draugur and sendingar; female ritual specialists, divination rituals (such as seiðr), and the troublesome word maurnir/mǫrnir; and finally the semantically multifaceted and charged term blæti and the issue of fetishes in general.
In her meticulous assessment of these varied topics and their rich research histories, Kaplan proves to be an extraordinarily skillful guide. Insightfully, she also recognizes the dynamic tension inherent in her line of inquiry, about which she notes: "Instead of contradictions, I see complex intergeneric effects creating the paganesque" (27). It is important to note as well that Kaplan is by no means suggesting that this þáttr is cut from whole cloth, but rather that we gain an appreciation for how such scenes centered on religious alterity were received by the medieval audience by understanding the selective and inventive techniques of the magpie author. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the value of folklore materials which bear on, but are in evidence only long after, the medieval texts theselves. Sophisticated in its use of theory, original in conception, and brilliant in presentation and execution, Kaplan's The Paganesque and The Tale of Vǫlsi represents an important advance in Old Norse and other pre-modern folklore studies.
--------
[Review length: 1474 words * Review posted on February 8, 2026]