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Location
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Document Type
Presentation
Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-53.htm
Start Date
4-8-2024 3:30 PM
End Date
4-8-2024 4:20 PM
Description
In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis spends quite a bit of time discussing his deep, lifelong love of the stories that are often called “Norse Myth” (even though the majority of these stories were first written down in medieval Iceland. His diaries and letters reveal more about his love of this literature, including discussion of the Kolbitars, the weekly discussion group organized by J.R.R. Tolkien to read aloud the Icelandic sagas and eddas in their original language. In spite of this, little work has been done on Lewis’s own writings and the medieval Icelandic literature that he loved. This paper will explore this relationship, looking at such things as the setting and characters in The Silver Chair (a cold land ruled by giants); the presence of Gudrun from the Volsunga Saga in The Pilgrim’s Regress; and the way that the passage in That Hideous Strength in which Ransom meets Merlin closely resembles the riddle game between Odin and the giant Vafthrudnir in the “Vafthrudnismal” from the Poetic Edda. This is a revised and expanded version of part of a presentation previously given at the first Icelandic C.S. Lewis conference, held in 2019.
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Included in
Narnia and the Norse: The Presence of Medieval Icelandic Literature in C.S. Lewis’s Writings
Minneapolis, Minnesota
In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis spends quite a bit of time discussing his deep, lifelong love of the stories that are often called “Norse Myth” (even though the majority of these stories were first written down in medieval Iceland. His diaries and letters reveal more about his love of this literature, including discussion of the Kolbitars, the weekly discussion group organized by J.R.R. Tolkien to read aloud the Icelandic sagas and eddas in their original language. In spite of this, little work has been done on Lewis’s own writings and the medieval Icelandic literature that he loved. This paper will explore this relationship, looking at such things as the setting and characters in The Silver Chair (a cold land ruled by giants); the presence of Gudrun from the Volsunga Saga in The Pilgrim’s Regress; and the way that the passage in That Hideous Strength in which Ransom meets Merlin closely resembles the riddle game between Odin and the giant Vafthrudnir in the “Vafthrudnismal” from the Poetic Edda. This is a revised and expanded version of part of a presentation previously given at the first Icelandic C.S. Lewis conference, held in 2019.
https://dc.swosu.edu/mythcon/mc53/schedule/46
