Scandinavian riddles

Riddles (Old Norse, Icelandic and Faroese gáta, pl. gátur; Bokmål and Nynorsk gåte, pl. gåter; Danish gåde, pl. gåder; Swedish gåta, pl. gåtor) are widely attested in post-medieval Scandinavian languages.

See also: Riddles (Finnic)

Medieval period

Few riddles are attested from medieval Scandinavia (by contrast with the numerous Anglo-Saxon riddles in the quite closely connected literature of medieval England), although Norse mythology does attest to a number of other wisdom-contests, usually involving the god Óðinn, and the complex metaphors of the extensive corpus of skaldic verse present an enigmatic aesthetic similar to riddles.[1][2][3][4] A number of riddles from medieval Scandinavia are also attested in Latin.[5]

The majority of the surviving Old Norse riddles occur in one section of the Icelandic Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, in which the god Óðinn propounds around 37 verse riddles (depending on the manuscript), mostly in the ljóðaháttur metre; these are known as the Gátur Gestumblinda. The saga is thought to have been composed in the thirteenth century, but the riddles themselves may not be of uniform date and some could be older or younger.[6] They went on to influence oral riddling in Iceland.[7]: 196 

Eight verse riddles, all in ljóðaháttur, are also attested in an Icelandic manuscript thought to date from between 1490 and 1510;[8] they seem to come from a collection of at least nineteen riddles and to have originated in the East Norse-speaking part of Continental Scandinavia around the twelfth or thirteenth century. Their solutions are steelyard, mould for casting nails, wool-combs, footstool, pot-hook, bell-clapper, fish-hook, and an angelica stalk; one is also attested from oral tradition in Norway and at least three circulated in oral as well as written tradition in Iceland.[9]

Scattered riddles are found elsewhere in medieval Scandinavian sources. Three medieval riddles in verse about birds are known, first attested in a part of the manuscript Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar AM 625 4to from around 1500.[10][11] A riddle also appears in the perhaps fourteenth-century Þjalar-Jóns saga,[12][13] A runic graffito carved in Hopperstad stave-church that can be read as 'Lokarr fal lokar sinn í lokarspónum' and translated as 'Lokarr ("plane") concealed his plane in the plane-shavings' has also been seen as riddlic in sentiment.[14][15][16]

Brynjulf Alver also identified two Scandinavian ballads attested after the Middle Ages and featuring riddle-contests as medieval in origin: På Grønalihei (attested from Norway) and Svend Vonved (attested from Norway, Denmark, and, as Sven Svanevit, Sweden).[17] På Grønalihei opens with three stanzas about two brothers debating how to share their inheritance; they decide to settle the question through a riddle-contest. Eighteen riddles follow, some of them true riddles and some wisdom-questions, including one biblical riddle.[18] In Svend Vonved, the riddle-contest is one episode in a longer story of the hero's quest for vengeance.[19][20]

Modern period

With the advent of print in the West, collections of riddles and similar kinds of questions began to be published. A large number of riddle collections were printed in the German-speaking world and, partly under German influence, in Scandinavia.[21] Scandinavian riddles have also been extensively collected from oral tradition. Key collections and studies include:

  • Bødker, Laurits 1964 in co-operation with Brynjulf Alver, Bengt Holbek and Leea Virtanen. The Nordic Riddle. Terminology and Bibliography. Copenhagen.
  • Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar gátur, skemtanir, vikivakar og Þulur, I (Kaupmannahöfn: Hið Íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1887).
  • Olsson, Helmer 1944. Svenska gåtor 1. Folkgåtor från Bohuslän. Uppsala.
  • Palmenfelt, Ulf 1987. Vad är det som går och går...? Svenska gåtor från alla tider i urval av Ulf Palmenfelt. Stockholm.
  • Peterson, Per 1985. Gåtor och skämt. En undersökning om vardagligt berättande bland skolbarn. Etnolore 4. Skrifter från Etnologiska institutionen vid Uppsala universitet. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet.
  • Ström, Fredrik 1937. Svenska Folkgåtor. Stockholm.
  • Wessman, V.E.V. (red.) 1949. Finlands svenska folktidning IV. Gåtor. Skrifter utg. av Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland 327. Helsingfors.

Demise of tradition

The traditional, oral riddle fell out of widespread use during the later twentieth century, being replaced by other oral-literary forms, and by other tests of wit such as quizzes.[22]

References
  1. Roger Caillois, 'Riddles and Images', trans. by Jeffrey Mehlman, Yale French Studies, 41 (1968), 148-58 [first published Roger Caillois, Art Poétique (Paris: Gallimard, 1958).
  2. John Lindow, 'Riddles, Kennings, and the Complexity of Skaldic Poetry', Scandinavian Studies, 47 (1975), 311-27.
  3. Susanne 'Fela í rúnum eða í skáldskap: Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian Approaches to Riddles and Poetic Disguises', in Riddles, Knights, and Cross-dressing Saints: Essays on Medieval English, ed. by Thomas Honegger, Variations Sammlung/Collection, 5 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 139-64 ISBN 3-03910-392-X.
  4. Karl G. Johansson, 'De gåtfulla texterna', in Bo65: Festskrift till Bo Ralph, ed. by Kristinn Jóhanesson and others, Meijerbergs arkiv för svensk ordforskning, 39 (Gothenburg: Meijerbergs institut för svensk etymologisk forskning, 2010), pp. 50–59; ISBN 978-91-974747-8-8.
  5. Stephen Mitchell, 'Old Norse Riddles and Other Verbal Contests in Performance', in John Miles Foley's World of Oralities: Text, Tradition, and Contemporary Oral Theory, ed. by Mark C. Amodio (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2020), pp. 123-35 (pp. 126-27), ISBN 9781641893381.
  6. Alaric Hall, "Changing Style and Changing Meaning: Icelandic Historiography and the Medieval Redactions of Heiðreks saga", Scandinavian Studies, 77 (2005), 1–30, at pp. 9–10. JSTOR 40920553
  7. Jeffrey Scott Love, The Reception of 'Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks' from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Münchener Nordistische Studien, 14 (Munich: Utz, 2013); ISBN 978-3-8316-4225-0.
  8. AM 687 b 4to, Handrit.is.
  9. Ólafur Halldórsson, 'Því flýgur krákan víða', Fróðskaparrit, 18 (1970), 236–58, doi:10.18602/fsj.v18i.410 [reprinted as Ólafur Halldórsson, 'Því flýgur krákan víða', in Grettisfærsla: Safn ritgerða eftir Ólaf Halldórsson gefið út á sjötugsafmæli hans 18. Apríl 1990 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1990), pp. 111–34].
  10. Íslenzkar gátur, skemtanir, vikivakar og þulur. I. Gátur, ed. by Jón Árnason and Ólafur Davíðsson (Copenhagen: Møller, 1887), p. 29; for a facsimile see http://handrit.is/is/manuscript/view/AM04-0625.
  11. H. M. Burrows, 'Anonymous gátur' in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, ed. by KE Gade & E Marold, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 631-35.
  12. 'Þjalar-Jóns saga', trans. by Philip Lavender, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 46 (2015), 73–113 (p. 79).
  13. See further Laurits Bødker, Brynjulf Alver, Bengt Holbek, Leea Virtanen, The Nordic Riddle: Terminology and Bibliography (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1964).
  14. Norske runeinnskrifter i nummerrekkefølge, nos N390-N412.
  15. N 392, Riksantikvarieämbetet.
  16. Gerd Høst, 'Små runologiske bidrag', Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, 15 (1949), 406-13.
  17. Brynjulf Alver, 'Norrøne gåter fra mellomalderen', Syn og segn, 60 (1954), 29–36 (35–36).
  18. M. B. Landstad, Norske Folkeviser (1853), pp. 369—73.
  19. Sv. Grundtvig, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, nr. 18.
  20. Leiv Heggstad og H. Grüner Nielsen, Utsyn yver gamal norsk folkevisedikting, nr. 68.
  21. Frauke Rademann-Veith, Die skandinavischen Rätselbücher auf der Grundlage der deutschen Rätselbuch-Traditionen (1540–1805) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2010) (PhD thesis, Münster University, 2004).
  22. Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), p. 163 doi:10.21435/sff.10.
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