6
Tales of Change: Narrative Patterns and Thematic Functions of Transformation
Shapeshifting is a persistent and versatile motif across literary genres in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iceland. Rather than serving merely as a plot device, episodes of change invite audiences to contemplate what happens when boundaries (between human and nonhuman, self and other, body and mind) are breached or remade. They reveal a cultural fascination with boundary transgression, the instability of form and the possibility of becoming otherwise.
Moving beyond the previous chapter’s focus on transformation at the micro-level of language use, this chapter examines transformation more from a macro-level, exploring the recurring structural and functional features of transformation-episodes: What do people transform into, and under what narrative circumstances? What mechanisms enable these changes, and how do they reflect ideas of control, selfhood and embodiment? Equally important are the purposes behind transformation and the agency of those undergoing it: Are transformations voluntary or imposed, desired or resisted? Are they directed toward practical, narrative ends or existential, thematic exploration? In what contexts do transformations become permanent, and how are concerns of autonomy intertwined with notions of humanity?
These ‘morphological’ features of transformation are shadowed by questions of identity.
1 Novotná’s study of the semantic fields of the root ham- traces its divergence into two meanings – mood and surface of the body – reflecting a shift from earlier narratives, where interior and exterior are unified, to later ones, where these aspects are distinct. In the more ‘archaic’ contexts, she argues, questions of identity are anachronistic, whereas later episodes suggest a clearer division, with the physical aspect becoming separable from the core self, making identity more operative (Between Body and Soul, pp. 128–30). While Novotná’s work illuminates the semantic evolution of hamr and its connection to shifting ideas of the body, my analysis focuses on transformation narratives as sites for audiences to explore concepts of identity and ontological change. In turn, given the difficulty of accurately dating Old Norse texts, I examine how transformation-episodes, including those preserving earlier layers of meaning, engage with ideas of selfhood and embodiment. Shapeshifting narratives facilitate exploration of the tension between the fluidity and stability of the self, with radical physical change challenging culturally established ontological categories. The latter half of this chapter discusses the continuity of the self within transformation-episodes, unpacking how transformation narratives configure the relation between mental or cognitive faculties and physical embodiment. I ask, do such episodes imagine harmony or dissonance between these dimensions of a person, and how do they align with – or diverge from – ideas circulating in contemporary learned discourses? To provide a broader frame of reference, I consider theological treatments of the body-soul relationship alongside medical and physiological theories of cognition, affect and corporeality. Attending to these discourses helps clarify the position of Old Norse literary treatments of embodiment and selfhood in relation to theorised concepts of the human, bringing into view the plurality of approaches to identity in medieval Iceland.
2 Religious and medical texts represent only one part of a much wider constellation of potential influences. Other medieval literary cultures, particularly continental romance traditions, developed narrative models of metamorphosis and selfhood that bear consideration alongside Icelandic literary traditions. For recent theses that consider the influence of continental literature on the expression of cultural and literary concepts in Old Norse texts, see, among others, Lee Colwill (‘Gender and Genre in Medieval Chivalric Rímur’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2022)), whose work explores the impact of chivalric romances on discourses of gender in Norse texts, and Minjie Su (‘Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2020)), who draws comparatively on werewolves in the Franco-Latin tradition in her discussion of Old Norse werewolves. Developing such comparative lines of inquiry lies beyond the scope of this chapter, but an examination of different models of selfhood and change in other medieval literary cultures remains a promising avenue for further research.