Riders at the Door: The Nordic Legends of the Wild Ride
This lecture will introduce the main types of Nordic folk legend associated with the Wild Ride, noting the differences between the more southerly types (mainly Swedish and Danish) telling of a single Óðinic rider hunting a supernatural woman, and those more north-westerly legends in which the ride, made up of a mixture of troll-like beings and the dead, is commonly led by a female figure who seems to be associated with the mid winter period. As the article will note, these differences seem to have a background in pre-Christian beliefs that once again underline a difference between western Norway and then Sweden and Denmark. If there is space, the article will note how the western Norwegian beliefs are closely connected to, and reinforced by, ancient active beliefs about groups of supernatural riders who would take over farms at Yuletide, killing or stealing anyone who go in their way. These beliefs in turn seem to have been closely connected to the widespread Nordic traditions of groups of disguised young men who went round farms in the same dark period demanding food and drink. The legend gave character to the tradition, and the tradition gave credence to the legend.
Speaker Bio:
Terry Gunnell is Professor emeritus in Folkloristics at the University of Iceland. Author of The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia (1995), he is editor of Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area (2007), Legends and Landscape (2008), and Grimm Ripples: The Legacy of the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagenin Northern Europe (2022), and co-editor of The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to Völuspá and Nordic Days of Judgement (2013); Málarinn og menningarsköpun: Sigurður Guðmundsson og Kvöldfélagið 1858–1874which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Award in 2017; and The Old Norse God Freyr
New Perspectives in Mythology and Religion. He has also written numerous articles and chapters on Old Nordic religions, folk legends and belief, festivals, folk drama and performance, and is behind the creation of the Icelandic folk legend database Sagnagrunnur, and two other digital databases on the creation of national identity and the early collection of folklore in Iceland in the late nineteenth century.
Curated & Hosted by
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
