RECENZIJE IN POROČILA O KNJIGAH / RECENSIONI DI LIBRI / BOOK REVIEWS 293 
Emily lylE (Ed.), myth and history in 
CEltiC and sCandinavian tradition. – 
AmsterdAm: AmsterdAm University
Press, 2021, 304 PAges.
Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian 
Tradition is an edited volume appearing in 
the series The Early Medieval North Atlantic, 
all of which gives some good indications 
of the material, themes, and time periods 
involved. The book title also hints at the 
contents, which are analyses of medieval 
writings which spoke of the past. Situating 
those writings in a particular medieval mom-
ent of composition is the focus of most of 
the chapters, which helps create a feeling 
of a fairly unified whole. Of course, there 
is a rather stark dividing line in the work: 
one half on Celtic material, and one half 
of Scandinavian. The utility of this duality 
seems doubtful: most scholars would work 
in either Norse or Celtic traditions, and 
so the different halves of the book would 
likely appeal to different scholars. Scholars 
interested in the overlap of Norse and Celtic 
materials will find little, here, either. Still, 
for either Norse or Celtic scholars, the 
relevant halves would likely prove very 
valuable. The various scholarship is, for 
the most part, first rate, with very little 
romantic over-generalizing. The “deeper 
past” is not explored, so much as the ideas 
about the deeper past in the medieval periods 
evidenced in these writings. The medieval 
versions are revealed to be situated in specific 
political, religious, and cultural sentiments 
of the day, and the chapters in this volume 
reveal how various characters, stories, and 
motifs were reworked over time, to fit the 
shifting demands placed on the past. 
In the first (Celtic) half, three of the 
seven essays deal with aspects in the Cath 
Maige Tuiread and the “evolving use of 
myth” during the time period of its creation. 
The essay by John Carey deals with the 
various written accounts of the Fomoiri, 
showing how this group appears variously 
in various texts: the mundane, the monstro-
us, the semi-divine. This group is taken up 
again, and contrasted with the Tuatha Dé, 
in Elizabeth A. Grey’s “Tuatha Dé and 
the Fomoiri in Cath Maige Tuired, which 
further documents that the consideration 
of such earlier peoples was not unified, but 
rather present in multiple variations, even 
within one text itself. For Grey, the larger 
point may be in the relationship between the 
two people, perhaps especially salient at the 
time of composition due to the experience 
with the Norse settlers in Ireland. The next 
chapter also pays attention to the writing of 
the Cath Maige Tuired in the late Viking age 
of Ireland, as Iona Tuomala explores this in 
terms of maintaining cultural identity in the 
face of increasing hybridity. The Tuatha Dé 
feature once more in Joseph Falaky Nagy’s 
“How Time Flies in the Cath Maige Tuired”, 
in which Nagy’s notes that the text shows 
that “major changes are taking place in the 
mythic Ireland it has presented, affecting the 
characters who populate it in the narrative 
present and in whatever future may follow 
it.” (111).
Alexandra Bergholm’s essay deals with 
how medieval Irish literature treated their 
ancestors’ worship of pagan deities, centering 
on Crom Cruaich. As the author put it: “the 
medieval Irish thus crafted an iconography of 
idolatry that suited their own understanding 
of Ireland’s historical past: their ancestors 
may have been misled by the devil to adore 
false images, but despite their depravity they 
were not inherently wicked.” (131). 
A further chapter investigates the story 
of Dinn Ríg, as evidenced in multiple texts, 
and Kevin Murray makes the point that while 
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the various narratives “did not always agree 
fully on points of detail” (138), at the same 
time, quoting Seán Ó Coileáin, a “surprising 
degree of unity will be seen to emerge from 
a reconstruction of these often fragmentary 
sources.” In this case, the central mythic 
narrative of a defeat of an ancestor figure 
of the Uí Néill by the Laigin’s ancestor 
figure, was repurposed for then-present 
political purposes, and, further, that these 
increasingly became regarded as historical 
accounts, as earlier written fragments were 
used for later historical claims: in this case, 
the relation between myth and history being 
a fluid one.
The last Celtic chapter deals with a 
hagiographical account of Saint Berach, 
showing how this composition was cru-
cially concerned with property claims of 
ecclesiastical groups. As the author, Ksenia 
Kudenko, puts it “Although the twelfth 
century was characterized by church reform, 
Betha Bearaigh seems to show little interest 
in contemporary religious discourse. Instead, 
the main purpose of the text seems to be 
concern with property, as well as desire to 
forge or revive connections with secular 
dynasties.” (p. 151).
In the Norse half, the authors also pay 
attention to historical detail of the manuscripts 
themselves, rather than seeing them merely 
as muddy windows into the mythic past. 
Karen Bek-Pedersen’s “Baldre’s Achilles’ 
Heel? About the Scandinavian Three-God 
B-Bracteates” is a careful reassessment 
of material items often taken to represent 
the narrative of the death of Baldr, and the 
author concludes that this is unlikely, and 
that they are instead derived from Roman 
coins, detailing some narrative of which we 
have no further understanding. 
A slightly more reconstructive attempt is 
featured in Joshua Rood’s chapter “The Cult 
of Ódinn in the Early Scandinvian Warrior 
Aristocracy” as the author considers some 
of the earlier attestations of Odin, to suggest 
that the divinity was “under construction” 
during the early Viking era, and that the 
deity was formed as part of the warrior 
Viking aristocracy. Such reconstructions are 
intriguing, yet difficult to trust. For example, 
the article relies heavily on the existence of 
“Odin” placenames in Scandinavia, yet many 
of these are far from the coast, and far from 
the maritime Viking culture that the author 
sees as its crucible. The interpretations of 
various motifs and artifacts are also difficult 
to interpret. Still, the author does demonstrate 
that, by paying close attention to particular 
time periods, deities will definitely appear 
in different forms.
Morten Warmind’s “Myth to History in 
Saxo” compares literary accounts, showing 
surprising similarities between separately 
authored versions, suggesting a strong folk 
tradition in maintaining many of these stories, 
or perhaps other unknown literary sources. 
Saxo’s take on relating such past stories is 
compared to Snorri’s, and the author shows 
that Saxo was interested in presenting the 
stories as history, while still mentioning 
mythic elements. In a similar vein, James 
Parkhouse’s chapter “Loki the Slandered 
God? Selective Omission of Skaldic Cita-
tions in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda” examines 
how Snorri left out known kennings which 
presented Loki in a more positive light, 
assumably to emphasize Snorri’s “demo-
nization” of Loki, possibly due to Snorri’s 
exposure to Christian mythos, and the role 
of Loki now being influenced by the role of 
the Devil. Jonas Wellendorf in his chapter 
sees Snorri’s work as recrafting older stories 
in a dramatic fashion: “Like the creation of 
Odinn and his brothers, Snorri’s creation 
is not made ex nihilo, and like them he 
RECENZIJE IN POROČILA O KNJIGAH / RECENSIONI DI LIBRI / BOOK REVIEWS 295 
dismembers his source material in order to 
fashion something which did not exist prior 
to his creative act” (p. 289). Wellendorf 
uses this realization to push back against 
incautious attempts to similarly imagine a 
unified and cohesive mythological world 
outside of Snorri’s writings, using two main 
examples: 1, that Loki as responsible for the 
slaying of Balder, an integral part of many 
mythic interpretations, is only present in the 
Gylfaginning source; and that 2, ideas of a 
theme of kin-slaying spanning the temporal 
arch—from killing of Ymir to the killing 
of Baldr, are likewise unlikely to represent 
anything outside of Snorri’s creation.
There are many valuable essays in this 
work that will be of great interest to scholars 
working in either Norse or Irish medieval 
materials. The authors are for the most 
part very careful not to over-generalize, 
and indeed the point of many of the essays 
seems to be the opposite: to show how the 
context of the written piece helps understand 
a great deal of what is being said. The 
various writings may have used stories of 
long ago to make their point, but it is their 
points being made that are their foci, rather 
than the past itself.
All that said, this reviewer did find a few 
things to critique along the way. Firstly, as 
mentioned, the utility of bringing together 
the Celtic and Norse examples was not 
particularly evident. Secondly, the “Celtic” 
in the title is displayed by Irish materials 
alone, while I would hold that “Norse”, 
rather than “Scandinavian”, would be a 
more appropriate appellation for the other 
half. Lastly, the introduction by Emily Lyle, 
and even more so her chapter, seem to be an 
ill fit for the rest of the work. These entries 
are the only ones to embrace a fanciful 
reconstructive approach, in stark contrast to 
the rest of the submissions. Such outliers, 
however, should not detract from the real 
value in the rest of the essays provided. Many 
of these chapters will be of major interest 
to scholars of Irish and Norse medieval 
writings on the past, and perhaps even to 
scholars working in any field who seeking 
to understand the how the present continu-
ally utilizes the past. Rather than viewing 
medieval writings as “mistaken” about the 
deeper past, these essays show how these 
pieces were constructed according to the 
needs of their present moments, and they 
call scholars to study these as products of 
a particular performance, contextualized in 
a specific time and place.
Tok Thompson, University of 
Southern California