|
Article Excerpt
THE FICKLENESS OF LUCK is a standing motif in our culture. For many, luck is defined by unpredictability more than anything else. In Norse culture, the case is quite the opposite in that luck had nothing to do with what we would refer to as coincidence or chance. On the contrary, luck was a quality inherent in the man and his lineage, a part of his personality similar to his strength, intelligence, or skill with weapons, at once both the cause and the expression of the success, wealth, and power of a family. Luck expressed itself partially in skills, beauty, and other desirable characteristics, but also in events shaping themselves according to the wishes of the lucky man. One might have luck in specified areas but not in others, such as fishingluck or weatherluck for example. But the so-called "man of luck" was the man who possessed luck generally, not just in one specific area. People possessed luck in different measure and one was helpless against an opponent who had greater luck. Kings especially were great men of luck to the degree that they were able to send forth their luck to assist others. Luck was not a thing to be sought or found by coincidence; one had the luck that one was accorded by fate. Yet, in certain cases luck could be diminished or lost, a phenomenon on which I shall elaborate later.
As to the more specific details of how the notion of luck was perceived, not much is known, and scholarship on the topic has been relatively limited. I find that the view of luck as part of a man's inherent nature sets the Norse concept of luck uniquely apart from a more modern conception, and it is this aspect of luck that I will investigate in this article.
More specifically, I shall attempt to elucidate an aspect of luck that has only been touched upon by a few scholars and not for many decades: the view of Norse society on luck and the lack of it. I find that the concept of luck has certain implications for society's view of the luck-man and his counterpart, the luckless man. If luck is one of a man's personal qualities, it may possibly affect the judgment of his character. Luck may be considered not as a morally neutral factor as in modern Western society, but a requisite part of an ideal personality. Certain Norse texts seem to imply a degree of moral condemnation of the luckless man, and it is this aspect of luck--society's view of the lucky and unlucky man--that I will investigate. Was luck an essential and required part of the personality of the ideal or "heroic" male? Was the luckless man correspondingly considered morally impaired? Was there an element of condemnation attached to lucklessness?
The conception designated in modern English by the word "luck" is highly complex. This fact is reflected in the Norse terminology used to describe the various ideas of luck. The main terms are as follows: gipta, gofa, heill, fylgja, and hamingja. The words audna, sola, and hugr are also used in connection with luck but are less important to the central questions of this article. The meaning of these terms ranges from the "abstract luck-quality, inherent in a man, which he may send forth for the assistance of someone else" to a "guardian goddess of a certain family;" a diversity that witnesses the complexity of the concept of luck.
RESEARCH HISTORY
The various terms for luck figure so frequently and widely in Norse literature--predominantly in sagas--that there is no reason to doubt that luck played an important role in the culture. The question is whether we may consider our sources, which are texts written in a Christian age, to be reliable sources of pre-Christian Norse thought and religion. In this case, one may conclude that the concept at least to some degree accurately reflects a pre-Christian mode of thought since large parts of its content and use clearly do not correspond to Christian ideas and thus cannot derive from them. Though the idea of guardian spirits might be borrowed from Christianity, the idea of luck as a force emanating from a person could hardly be. I refer to Peter Hallberg for further argument that luck is a pre-Christian concept in Scandinavia (Hallberg 144, 168).
Another sign of the complexity of the luck-concept is that the scholarship touching on the subject does not focus around a central problem, but rather deals with a variety of differing questions. Wilhelm Gronbech, the Danish historian of religion, is the only scholar to investigate the concept of luck in its own right in depth. In 1931 in The Culture of the Teutons, he attributes major importance to luck; since his study, few scholars have touched on the subject. Gronbech has had considerable influence on international scholarship--he is referred to in the major reference works on Norse religion (e.g. Turville-Petre 328; de Vries, Religionsgeschichte 174), and Kultur und Religion der Germanen, the German translation of The Culture of the Teutons, was reissued in 1997.
Most recently, Peter Hallberg has touched on certain aspects of the meaning of the luck-terms (he names them "fortune words," an equally suitable translation into English) in an article that is, however, chiefly concerned with establishing fortune/luck as a Norse, pre-Christian concept. His focus is on fortune or luck as an expression of fate rather than the view of luck as part of a man's inherent nature (Hallberg 144, 152-60).
Scholars such as Hilda Ellis Davidson, Ake Strom, Jan de Vries, Ida Blum, Nils Lid, Maj Lagerheim, and others have dealt with luck somewhat peripherally as part of a discussion of the Norse conception of the soul. These scholars are thus chiefly interested in the different guardian beings connected with the luck-terms and their relation to a man's personality as opposed to a discussion of luck as an abstract concept and its social and ideological importance. Gronbech is in fact the only scholar who has seriously investigated this aspect of luck, and a large part of this article will accordingly be occupied with a discussion of his views.
Gronbech is clear on the topic: in dealing with society's judgment of the luck-man and the luckless man, he defines the luck-man as the opposite of a nidingr. A nidingr is the worst possible condemnation in the Norse language. It signifies that the person is a monster, devoid of all honor, and unfit for human company. The emotional connotations of nidingr could perhaps be somewhat similar to how most people today feel about pedophiles. For Gronbech, a luckless man and a nidingr are the same thing: "Villainy, the act and state of the nixing, is identical with lucklessness"; "the word [lucklessness] conveys a strong condemnation of the man who is denounced as being unlucky"; "lucklessness was altogether evil" (Gronbech, Culture 152, 153, 331). "Lucklessness" is Gronbech's English translation of the Norse words for having no luck (ohapp, ohamingja, modern Danish ulykke), and I shall continue to use the same term.
Very few scholars have written about the ideas connected with the negative pole of luck. Jan de Vries briefly discusses it in Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, in which he simply refers to Gronbech and has nothing further to add. He must, thus, have been in complete agreement with Gronbech (de Vries, Religionsgeschichte 174).
Werner Wirth and Walter Gehl have dealt with luck as part of a...
|
