The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia

However, Gunnell's book includes a chapter of major importance on Scandinavian seasonal customs involving dramatic performances - costumed house-visitings, costumed combats, the "killing" of a hobby-animal, mock marriages - which are directly comparable to our own. He shows that they were firmly established by the sixteenth century, and that oblique but revelatory allusions in Icelandic sagas indicate that midwinter guisers impersonating Yuletide goats or the Gryla (a long-tailed she-monster) were known there in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Since a previous chapter had already surveyed the ample archaeological evidence for Iron Age ritual combats and dances using animal disguise or horned helmets, and added the recent discovery of two actual animal masks in felt from tenth-century Hedeby, the case for a long tradition of "folk drama" in Scandinavia looks remarkably strong.

One common feature in the midwinter performances is a straw costume, sometimes of huge proportions; also straw puppets in human or goat form, either as luck-bringers, or used in mockery. Such puppets have a long history, as shown by an exemplum of c. 1300 about some Danish women who danced with a straw-man which came to life when the Devil entered it. Even more widespread is the "goat" disguise, usually similar in construction to English "mast" hobby animals, though sometimes the performer bends right over, supporting his hands on two short sticks, to mimic a quadruped. Masks are various, but almost always include horns: the real skin of some recently slaughtered beast, a wooden "human" mask with animal hair, a wooden "animal" head with clacking jaws, or merely a blackened face and horns. Bells are common. There are some fascinating local variations, such as the nineteenth century Icelandic finngalkn, crawling on all fours, covered in rags, and hung with rattling shells; or the Faroese Gryla of 1821 in a seaweed cloak and with a dragging seaweed tail. In most instances, the main "monster" figure was accompanied by costumed attendants, sometimes including shemales (in Iceland, these might be called Valkyries!) Apart from one area (Bergen, in the mid-nineteenth century), where a song described the killing, piecemeal selling, and sudden revival of the goat, there was no verbal text to accompany these customs, so the performance was a matter of disguise and, in some cases, aggressive or bawdy behaviour.

Dr Gunnell's book is a treasury of detailed and well-referenced information; quite apart from its importance to Eddaic studies, it will be an essential resource for anyone who wishes to set British guising customs in a European context.

Jacqueline Simpson Folklore Society

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