<em>Beyond the Wall</em>. Epifanie rinascimentali del mito norreno di Freyr
10.13125/2039-6597/5144
Nel rielaborare alcune idee propugnate da J. G. Herder, in polemica con J. Winckelmann, nel 1800 Fredrich Schlegel pubblicava il celebre saggio Gespräch über die Poesie&nbsp;(«Athenäum», III). In quello che divenne un manifesto dell’estetica preromantica, si sottolineava la necessità della poesia tedesca di liberarsi dalla schiavitù del modello classico, per abbracciare nuove fonti di ispirazione mitologica, provenienti dal patrimonio culturale del Medioevo germanico, particolare dalla ricca tradizione mitografica scandinava dei secoli XII e XIII. Le ricadute di quella tradizione, inaugurata da fonti medio latine (ad es. i&nbsp;Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum&nbsp;di Adamo di Brema, ca. 1070) e arricchita dal contributo della letteratura annalistica medio svedese, ridisegnavano l’immaginario religioso nordeuropeo, producendo nuove rappresentazioni di simulacri divini che alimentarono la riflessione politico-identitaria rinascimentale presente nel dibattito antiquario locale, legato in particolare al movimento Goticista. Questo saggio si concentra sulla metamorfosi di alcune immagini di triadi divine della mitologia nordica antica in alcune riscritture dei secoli XVI e XVII, con particolare riferimento al mito della fertilità collegato al dio Freyr.
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<em>Beyond the Wall</em>. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr
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<em>Beyond the Wall</em>. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr
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                     Beyond the Wall.
               Renaissance Embodiments
               of the Old Norse god Freyr

                                Marco Battaglia

Abstract

      In his Gespräch über die Poesie («Athenäum», III, 1800), Fr. Schlegel reworked
some of the ideas put forward years earlier by J. G. Herder – in his controversy
with J. Winckelmann – on the need to recover the mythopoietic dimension in
national artistic creation and to get rid of the influence of the Greek model,
which has been active in German thought for a long time. Schlegel’s work
became the manifesto of an upcoming pre-Romantic aesthetic, which for at
least two centuries had been rediscovering the memorial heritage of old Ger-
manic mythology, best embodied in the XIIth and XIIIth cent. Old Norse litera-
cy. Among the controversial sources conveying that tradition, works like the
early Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum by Adam of Bremen (ca. 1070)
and some historical annals of late medieval Sweden generated unprecedented
and long-lasting representations of divine simulacra, which were able to influ-
ence, both politically and ideologically, the Gothicist movement during the
Renaissance. This essay focuses on the representation of Old Norse divine tri-
ads during the XVIth-and XVIIth centuries, and specifically on the reception of
fertility myths connected with the god Freyr.



Keywords

    Adam of Bremen; Norse Mythology; Freyr; Gothicism; Swedish
Renaissance




Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)
issn: 2039-6597
doi: 10.13125/2039-6597/5144
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr




                     Beyond the Wall.
               Renaissance embodiments
               of the Old Norse god Freyr

                                   Marco Battaglia

                                         Vor einigen Jahren ertönte unten am Parnaß ein
                                         Ruf, daß oben auf dem Parnaß einige Deutsche
                                         Dichter für unsere Nation und Sprache den Ge-
                                         brauch der griechischen Mythologie abschaffen,
                                         dagegen aber die Isländische einführen wollten.
                                         Für Apollo sollte künftig Braga, für Jupiter Thor
                                         oder Odin, für den Olymp Walhalla gelten u. s. f.
                                         (Herder, Iduna...1796: 1)

                                         Klaus Düwel in memoriam




                         Preliminary considerations
      In the year 1800, Fr. Schlegel published Gespräch über die Poesie1. In this
work, as opposed to the contradictory primitivism of Klopstock as reader
of Ossian and the idyllic ‘Parnassus’ of the Hainbund that followed in his
footsteps, the author reworked certain ideas expounded years earlier by J.
G. Herder about the need to recover the mythopoeic dimension in national
artistic creation2 and shake off the influence of the Greek model, which had
long been present in German thought, from Hölderlin to Heidegger to the
aberrations of Aryan ideology. Schlegel’s work soon became the manifesto
of an emerging pre-Romantic aesthetic, where he denounced how German


     1
        Athenäum, III: 58-128, 169-187; Behler, Eichner (1975).
     2
        In the evocative essay Iduna, oder der Apfel der Verjüngung (in Die Horen, V,
1796: 1-28), a natural sequel to Auch eine Philosopbhie der Geschichte zur Bildung der
Menschheit (1774), in which the scholar polemised with J. J. Winckelmann.


54
                                       Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



poetry had lost its benchmark (which the ancients had found in myth). He
advocated the recourse to new sources of mythological inspiration which,
however, were to be understood as spiritual forms of a renewed Naturphi-
losophie (Cometa 1984), perceived as essential for the concept of ‘Universal
Poetry’ shared by the Jena Circle (to which Friedrich belonged, along with
his brother August W., Novalis, Schelling, and others).
     To tell the truth, Schlegel turned mainly to the East as the cradle of
mankind, according to a mainstream view then supported by studies on
the origin of Indo-European cultures and languages. In particular, the focus
was on Persian – already brought into prominence by Th. More and E. S.
Piccolomini, Netherlandish humanists and Leibniz –, but also on Sanskrit,
as revived by the insights of Jesuits Heinrich Roth, Johan E. Hanxleden,
and Gaston Coeurdoux, even before William Jones. Indeed, for at least a
couple of centuries, the new mythological sources extolled by Schlegel had
been gaining wide acceptance throughout Europe. In various areas, they
merged and gave rise to a new political and identity consciousness that
idealised an ancestral freedom which had never entirely vanished, thus
imposing themselves with a longevity unforeseeable at the time. Those
new sources were represented by vestiges of ancient Germanic religion
– continental, insular and especially Scandinavian.
     From the dawn of Christianity until the Renaissance era, the survival
of ancient deities was turned into a weapon to combat superstitions and
practices that were incompatible with the Christian faith, and heed was
payed to the euhemeristic theme3. Drawing on Neostoicism and neo-Pla-
tonic currents, mythology could survive in the Middle Ages thanks to its
allegorical reinterpretation in treatises, homilies, and sermons4. Between
the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in the wake of the extraordi-
nary popularity acquired by astrology from the 12th up to the 14th century
and by the theories on astral conjunctions, the reinterpretation of ancient
myths and figures from mythographic imagery extended to the theme of
the world’s creation or of poetry and the arts, as well as to the rituality of
work and the seasons. This was accompanied by the forging of various
artefacts – from tiny talismans to cathedrals, from paintings to the 15th- and




     3
        Cf., among others, the apocryphal Epistula Jeremiae, Cyprian, De idolorum
vanitate, Tertullian, De idolatria, Commodian, Instructiones adversus gentium.
     4
        E.g., in Macrobius’ Saturnalia and Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, in Lac-
tantius’ Divianae Institutiones, in M. Capella’s De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii.


                                                                                     55
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



16th- century treatises underpinning the canon5. After a necessary process
of religious neutralisation, e.g., through the caveats on superstition in the
Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, the reuse of ancient mythological
imagery (as majestically celebrated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses [ed. 1471])
contributed to the recovery (although not the restoration) of the ideals of
classical antiquity. Inaugurated in the De imaginibus deorum by Albericus
Londoniensis (aka Alexander Neckam, 12th century) and carried out in oth-
er well-known works – the anonymous Ovide moralisé (1315-28), G. Boccac-
cio’s De Genealogiis Deorum gentilium (1360 [ed. 1472]), Giglio G. Giraldi’s
De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia (1548), Johannes Herold’s Heyd-
enweldt und ihrer Götter (1554) or Giacomo Zucchi’s Discorso sopra li dei de’
gentili, e loro imprese [...] (1602)6 –, this recovery took shape in numerous ar-
tistic representations7 commissioned by many patrons (from sovereigns to
pontiffs), even after the Counter-Reformation provisions on art (adherence
to Scripture, clarity and decorum) that condemned the free and easy-going
Mannerism without appeal8.


     5
          Cf. Cassirer (1925), Panofsky, Saxl (1933), Seznec ([1980] 1940), and Panof-
sky (1960). One might also consider, with the due differences, Leon Battista Al-
berti’s De pictura (1435), in light of its almost exclusively mythological examples,
and the equally renowned Iconologia (1593) by Cesare Ripa (illustrated from the
1603 edition), which analytically presented the artistic palingenesis of vices, vir-
tues, and passions of the human soul in alphabetical order.
        6
          Cf. Saxl (1927), Seznec (1980 [1940]: 199-224). The Aeneid was published in
1469 and Cicero’s De natura deorum in 1471, Hesiod’s Theogonia in 1474, and the
Iliad and the Odyssey in 1488. These ‘canonical’ texts were followed by De cogno-
minibus deorum opusculum (1525) by Pietro G. Montefalco, Theologia mythologica
(1532) by Georgius Pictorius, De cognominibus deorum gentilium (1541) by Julianus
A. Haurech, Le imagini colla sposizione degli dei degli antichi (1556) by V. Cartari,
Mythologiae (1567) by Natale Conti. A century later, these were followed by Pan-
theum mythicum, seu fabulosa deorum historia (1659) by François-Amoine Pomey
and the massive De Theologia gentili (1642-68) by J. Gerard Vossius.
      7
          Examples include Venus and Mars and the Birth of Venus (S. Botticelli, 1483;
ca. 1485), the Sleeping Venus (Giorgione, 1508), The Feast of the Gods (Giovanni Bel-
lini, 1514), The Council of Gods (Raphael, 1517-18), Homage to Venus and The Bac-
chanal of the Andrians (Titian, 1518-19; 1523-26), A Bacchanal (Dosso Dossi, 1520),
Jupiter and Io (Correggio, 1533) or the bronzes of Mercury and Minerva by J. G.
van der Schardt (1570-80) and the frescoes in the Galleria Farnese by A. Carracci
(1597-1608); cf. Bull (2005).
      8
          Cf. Carlo Borromeo (Instructiones fabricae et suppellectilis ecclesiasticae, 1577)
and Gabriele Paleotti (Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane, 1582).


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                                        Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



        Barbarian rediscoveries and myths of the North
      Starting with the discovery by Poggio Bracciolini of Tacitus’ Germania
codex in Fulda (1425), its transfer to Rome (1455) and its printing (1470;
1472), and thanks to the scholar-antiquarian movement (at its peak in the
17th century, Momigliano 1950), the recovery of distant (‘barbarian’) an-
tiquities contributed to the patriotic construction of alternative identity
images in the German-speaking cultures of Scandinavia, England and
the German-Netherlandish area. It was to them that the genesis of mod-
ern kingdoms was attributed, consequently looking at the literary heritage
compiled or translated into various vernaculars, including, of course, con-
troversial local mythological traditions.
      Originally attested in petroglyphs, wooden simulacra and runic brac-
teates, the henotheistic religion of ancient Germans is based upon mostly
indirect literary documentation. The earliest, from Roman times, aims to
transfer cultural barbaritas onto the level of religious imagery9; the latter,
from the early Middle Ages, includes abrenuntiatio formulas, legal and
homiletic texts, as well as hagiographic and genealogical written works
(Vitae, Origines gentium). Fragments of censored cultic practices are also
sporadically found in Anglo-Saxon poetry10, whereas the most extensive
documentation concerns Scandinavian mythology, variously described
(depending on local sources) by authors of the Latin late Middle Ages11, or


    9
        «They [the Germans] rank in the number of the gods those alone whom
they behold, and by whose instrumentality they are obviously benefited, name-
ly, the sun, fire, and the moon; they have not heard of the other deities even by
report.», Caesar, Bell.Gall. VI,21,1, William A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn.
(transl.), C. Julius Caesar. Caesar’s Gallic War, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1869;
«Of the gods they worship Mercury above all, whom they consider it right on
specific days to propitiate with human as well as other sacrifices [...] But, in keep-
ing with the greatness of divinities, they think it proper neither to confine their
gods within walls nor to give them any likeness of human appearance [...]», Taci-
tus, Germ. IX, Benario, Herbert W., Tacitus. Germany – Germania (with an Introduc-
tion, Translation and Commentary by –), Warminster, Aris & Phillips, 1999.
     10
        E.g., in Beowulf (vv. 175-176a: hwilum hie geheton æt hærgtrafum / wig-
weorþunga, ‘sometimes they promised honours to idols in heathen temples’,
where the idolatry of the Danes is evoked in connection with the incursions of an
anthropophagous monster, while in Maxims the condemnation is more explicit
(vv. 132-133a: Woden worhte woes, wuldor alwalda ‘Woden wrought idols, the Al-
mighty the glory’).
     11
        Especially Thietmar of Merseburg (Chronicon, ca. 1018), Adam of Bremen


                                                                                      57
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



in scattered references in Anglo-Saxon homiletic or sapiential texts as well
as in Arabic chronicles.
      As far as the more direct representation of idols is concerned, it is
worth giving space to three late quotations, all from Scandinavia:

         At that time there was a man called Odin who was believed
      throughout Europe, though falsely, to be a god; [...] The kings of the
      North [...] created an image of him, his arms thickly encircled with
      heavy bracelets, and as an expression of their devotion sent it with
      the utmost show of piety to Byzantium [the seat of the pagan gods].
      Delighted in his high celebrity, Odin avidly greeted the donors’
      affection. His wife Frigg [...] brought in smiths to strip the statue of its
      gold. Odin had them hanged and then, setting the image on a plinth,
      by marvellous feat of workmanship even made it respond with a voice
      to human touch. Nevertheless, […] Frigg submitted herself to the lusts
      of one of her servants; by his cunning she had the effigy demolished
      and the gold which had been devoted to public idolatry she switched
      to her personal extravagance [...] Stung by this double embarassement,
      he [i.e. Odin] took to exile replete with an honest shame […] (Saxo
      Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, I, VII.1, first quarter of the 13th century;
      Friis Jensen, Fisher 2015: 53).

         He saw three thrones one above the other, and there were three
      men, one sitting in each. Then he asked what the name of their ruler
      was. The man who had brought him in replied that the one that sat
      in the lowest throne was king and was called High, next to him the
      one called Just-as-high, and the one sitting at the top was called Third
      (Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Gylfaginning, 2, first quarter of the 13th century;
      Faulkes (1995: 8).

         In this temple […] the people worship the statues of three gods in
      such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the
      middle of the chamber; Wotan and Fricco have places on either side.
      The significance of these gods is as follows: Thor, they say, presides over
      the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds andrains,
      fair weather and crops. The other, Wotan – that is, the Furious – carries
      on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies. The third
      is Fricco, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals. His likeness,
      too, they fashion with an immense phallus. (Adam of Bremen, 11th



(Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, ca. 1075), Helmold of Bosau (Chronica
Sclavorum, ca. 1170), and Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum, ca. 1217).


58
                                       Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



     century, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, IV.26, last quarter
     of the 11th century; Reuter, Tschan 2002: 207).

      If the first fragment stands out for its defamatory tone towards the
ancient cults, in the second, adhering to the euhemeristic view of the hu-
man origin of the gods, the three imposter magicians posing as deities are
exposed by the pressing questions of their interlocutor and dissolve as de-
mobilized simulacra anticipating the Odin-Mr. Wednesday in Neil Gaiman’s
novel American Gods (2001). The third fragment, the oldest of the three,
was composed by a cleric of the Hamburg-Bremen diocese, tasked with the
evangelisation of Scandinavia, and refers to the great Swedish pagan temple
at Uppsala, to which I will return shortly.
      Since the last decades of the 15th century, Scandinavia had been the
centre of great tensions triggered by the antagonism between the kingdoms
of Denmark-Norway-Iceland and Sweden-Finland, which were involved
in the economic exploitation of the Baltic and North Seas. This conflict,
which broke out in 1520, was fought for over a century and a half as an
armed combat, i.e. through a policy aimed at defending the antiquarian
heritage, and as a literary project exalting a glorious past, archaeological
finds, language and – after their discovery and circulation – ancient literary
documents.
      Particularly in Sweden, thanks to the contamination of Jordanes’ Get-
ica with the book of Genesis (alongside the biblical figures of Gog and
   12

Magog, who were believed to be descendants of Japheth and progenitors
of the Goths), the legendary identification with the glorious Goths became
one with the euphoric affirmation of a proto-nationalism (cf. Mohnike
2020) fostered by the emergence of a ‘national’ historiography that started
with the anonymous Prosaiska kronikan (mid-15th century) and the Chronica
Regni Gothorum by Ericus Olai (see infra).
      If the Paris edition of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus (1514
and 1534, with a prestigious introduction by Erasmus) might be said to rep-
resent a climax for Danish politics, it was thanks to the brothers Johannes
and Olaus Magnus that the celebration of a Swedish legacy gained inter-
national prominence. The former was the Catholic archbishop of Uppsala
and author of the magniloquent Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque
regibus ([1540] 1554, posthumous) and the latter, his secretary and succes-
sor, published the sounder (somewhat less extravagant) Historia de genti-


    12
         Found in 1442 by E. S. Piccolomini and printed by K. Peutinger in 1515.


                                                                                     59
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



bus septentrionalibus (1555; Ruggerini 1999: 261-273). The two works were
testament to a humanistic dedication to the past, advocating the image of
Sweden as a locus amoenus in opposition to the Danish arch-enemy. Depart-
ing from a typically Renaissance context, the two brothers (who were liv-
ing in exile due to the Protestant empowerment under King Gustav Vasa)
extolled the history of their homeland, attempting to get over the barbaric
geo-cultural topos through a pseudo-rationalist approach that was part of
the linear path of the historia salvationis.
      Both works hinted at the pre-Christian Nordic religion and the surviv-
al of superstitions13, which was the result of an ancient debate rekindled by
the Reformation and not immune to esoteric suggestions. In this regard,
the rewriting (and related engravings) of the above-mentioned passage by
Adam of Bremen about the temple at Uppsala deserves special attention,
since, in it, the deities allegedly worshipped in the form of a triad could not
have been unaffected by the influence of a Christian Trinitarian paradigm
that had infiltrated the Norse literary tradition (Böldl 2018: 23-28).

                               Gender stereotypes
      Depictions of local idols by Italian artists in the works of the Magnus
brothers represent an important contribution in the humanistic and Renais-
sance construction process of the European media aetas. Confirming Adam’s
description, possibly already present in the Swedish Tapestry of the Church
of Skog (Hälsinge, 12th century, fig. 1), the rough and uncontrolled Thor of
Icelandic sources is transformed here into a towering model of placid king-
ship wearing a twelve-star diadem. He also wields a sceptre that, as op-
posed to the traditional Mjöllnir hammer – an equivalent to Hercules’ club
and Vedic God Indra’s thunderbolt –, would trace him back to the Romans’
Jupiter Anxur (Auxurum in Johannes). Odin, on the other hand, the tradition-
al supreme god and father of the gods (if a fraudulent magician in Saxo’s
view), plays here the more secondary role of Mars14, standing next to Thor
like a fully armed coeval lansquenet. Most astounding of all, however, is the
image of the third deity, no longer associated with Fricco (as in Adam’s hy-
potext), but appearing in the female guise of Frig(g)a, whom the two works
respectively locate on the right-hand and left-hand side (figs. 2, 3):


     13
       Johannes in chapters VIII-X of book I, Olaus in book III.
     14
       Instead of the traditional Mercury of the interpretation romana, which had
already been rejected by Saxo Grammaticus.


60
                                       Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)




             Fig. 1 – Skog tapestry (Stockholm, Historiska Museet)




Fig. 2 – J. Magnus, Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus (1554, p. 38)




    Fig. 3 – O. Magnus, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555, p. 100)



                                                                                     61
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



         Tertius Frigga pacem voluptatemque moderabatur: cuius etiam
      simulachrum turpitudinem sexus prae se ferebat: et ob id tantum apud
      Gothos, quantum Venus apud Romanos venerabatur. (Olaus 1555: 100)

      This deity apparently mirrors two juxtaposed figures, that is to say,
Freyja (the ‘Lady’), the Norse fertility goddess celebrated like her brother
Freyr and sometimes denigrated as Odin’s lustful lover (being compared
to Venus), and the speechless Frigg15 (Paul Deacon’s Frea and the incestu-
ous Fricge of the Anglo-Saxon homilist Ælfric), a clairvoyant, protectress of
life and the wife of Odin, whose image as a mother grieving over the mur-
der of her son tends to fade over time into that of an elusive divinity with
vague Marian similarities. The surprising metamorphosis that had a god
turn into a goddess in 16th-century iconography was eventually crowned
by means of an unprecedented status as woman-at-arms (with sword and
bow)16, a sort of Diana-Hecate-Proserpina. If, on the one hand, any refer-
ence to Venus is to be excluded, on the other hand this Frigga would echo
the Valkyries of Norse mythology as well as the virgines silvestres of the
Gesta Danorum. In other words, female warriors who – untouched by patri-
archal gender stereotypes – stand as icons of masculine virtus17. An example
of this is to be found in Lathgertha, the valiant heroine of a legendary tra-
dition handed down through Saxo Grammaticus and the post-Elizabethan
theatre, who has recently resurfaced in the television series Vikings (fig. 4)
      Linguistically, however, with the Old German dialectal form ‘Fricco’
(‘impatient, greedy; determined, bold’, also as a masculine proper noun),
in the 11th century Adam of Bremen unambiguously indicated («cum in-
genti priapo») a god of male sexual fecundity, usually compared to the aisl.
Freyr (Old Danish Frø, Old Swedish Frö). In the description of the temple
at Uppsala, Fricco had already been referred to by historian and theologian
Albert Krantz, in whose work Regnorum aquilonarium. Daniae Svetiae, Norva-
giae Chronica (1546†), a source for Johannes Magnus, the attribute of the god
(simulacrum turpitudinis)18 was reminiscent of the Swedish ithyphallic amulet


     15
         Contained in the name ‘Friday’ in Germanic languages, cf. Battaglia (2015).
     16
         «Pingebatur gladio et arcu cum armis, quod in illis terris vterque sexus
semper ad arma promptissimus esset» (ibid.).
      17
         For other examples, in addition to Saxo (Aflhild, Rusla, Vébjörg, Visna) and
the Nibelungen-Völsunga Brynhildr, see the Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks konungs, the
Bósa saga ok Herrauðs, the Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar or the Grænlendinga saga.
    18
         «Tertius Fricco, pacem & voluptatem moderatur. Cuius etiam simulacrum
turpitudinem præ se ferebat» (p. 368).


62
                                           Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)




                  Fig. 4 – Lagertha in the television series Vikings.




Fig. 5 – Ityphallic amulet from Rällinge                    Fig. 6 – Statuette found in
Statens Historiska Musem (Stockholm).                       Lunda Lindquist (1962: 71).

from Rällinge (Södermannland area, fig. 5), and perhaps, albeit less certainly,
of another statuette found in nearby Lunda (Södermannland area, fig. 6).
      The linguistic relation between Freyr and Fricco has extensively been
debated, although without reaching a solution (see Wagner 1989, among
the most important sources). In Adam’s language, the cited Old Swedish
form Frö would have sounded too similar to the Old German noun Frō
used for «Lord, (Christian) God», so much so that the chronicler renamed
the god with a related form recorded in an earlier passage – Gesta IV.9,
concerning the destruction of an opinatissimum simulacrum Fricconis by
Bishop Egino of Dalby-Lund (shortly after 1060) – as well as in a Carolin-
gian capitulary of 802 (Boretius 1883: 97), which denounced the crime of
fornicatio within a women’s convent, committed by a man named Fricco
and depicted as a sort of demon.


                                                                                         63
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr




Fig. 7 – H. Stephanius, Notae uberiores in Historiam Danicam Saxonis Grammatici (1629: 139)

      A little less than a century after the now famous reproduction by the
Magnus brothers, it reappeared in the edition of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum
edited by S. H. Stephanius (Notae uberiores in Historiam Danicam Saxonis
Grammatici, 1629: 139), in which the exchange of positions between Odin
and Frigge suggests dependence on Johannes’ older text. At the same time,
Thor holding a flame in his left hand constitutes the oldest iconographic
evidence to date of the god’s close relationship with thunder and lightning
(fig. 7).The popularity of these images evoking a barbaric North, an alter or-
bis populated by monsters and depicted for the first time in the atlas Carta
marina (1539) by Olaus himself, is confirmed by their echoes in contempo-
rary European culture, from Tudor England to Cervantine Spain. Through
early Petrarchan references to Thile (Familiares III.1, Pacca 2003) – the Thyle
of Pytheas, Virgil, Seneca, and Pliny –, these images naturally extended as
far as Italy, as is confirmed by the references found in the Italian 17th-cen-
tury romances (see, for example, Coralbo, Historia del Cavalier Perduto, La
Donzella Desterrada), or, even earlier, by the significant hints contained in
Book III of L’Alfeo (1593), the unfinished poem by Orazio Ariosti (Ariosto).
Most notable here is the faithful application of Torquato Tasso’s principles
regarding the most suitable setting for heroic poems, i.e. the Northern re-
gions, with their dreary landscapes and anguishing or demonic figures19.




      Cf., in their various aspects, Galealto re di Norvegia (later Re Torrismondo); Il
     19

Messaggiero; Discorsi del poema eroico.


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Importantly, therefore, the debt to the brothers Magnus20 (and in particular
Olaus, III,3) stands out in the description of the temple at Uppsala, where
Frigga again emerges as an icon of male warlike virtues:

         LXXIX
         [...] immenso simulacro in seggio d’oro
         quel tempio ingombra ed è nomato Toro [i.e.: Thor].

         LXXX
         A destra ed a sinistra Otino e Friga
         si veggono di lui statue minori:
         imperio ha l’un d’ogni guerriera briga,
         diva è l’altra dei vezzi e degli amori.
         Quel che con l’armi i popoli castiga,
         armato manifesta i suoi furori:
         ma dà Friga a veder con arco e spada
         che le donne guerriere ha là contrada.

         LXXXI
         Siede Toro nel mezzo, e qui si mira
         di gemmata corona e scettro adorno;
         sovra la testa sua lucido gira
         di chiare stelle un bel ordine intorno.
         A questo ciò ch’intende e ciò che spira,
         ciò che piuma dispiega od alza corno
         fanno i Goti [i.e.: the Swedish] soggetto; e quest’han fede
         ch’ai rei dia pene, ai buoni ampia mercede.

     See also the following excerpt:

         LXXXVI
         Tu, Friga [...]
         Porti arco e spada tu: feri e saetti,
         non pur curi gli amori e gli imenei
                  (Venturini 1982: 106-107)


     One of the first cases of media fake news in the modern era must be


    20
        The translation of Olaus’ text by Remigio Fiorentino (Storia de’ costumi de’
popoli settentrionali) was printed in Venice in 1561.


                                                                                       65
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



traced to the striking testimony of the Dano-Swedish scholar Herman Ped-
ersen ‘Chytræus’. In his chorographic work Monumenta præcipua, quæ in
Scania, Hallandia et Blekingia invenientur [...] (1598)21, he mentions the (highly
improbable) presence in the southern city of Lund of the same temple as in
Uppsala, with the same cults – Thorus, Othinus, Frygga – the last of which
is undoubtedly connected to the sphere of marriage and sexual pleasure:

        Tertium simulcrum fuit Frigga [...] Hoc crinibus passis mira
      pulcritudine virgineam fomam referens, fabricatum fuit. Eam juvenes
      cum virginibus colebant, & omnes, qui nuptiaruim, laetitiarum &
      voluptatum lenociniis & desiderio afficiebantur. (p. 287)

     Less than ten years later, at the time of the Gunpowder Plot22, R. Row-
lands Verstegan, the son of Dutch Catholic immigrants, published a text
that became a milestone for the antiquarian revival in England. This was A
Restitution of the Decayed Intelligence [...] (1605), where he extolled the con-
tinental Germanic origin of Old English institutions, language and even
deities, dismissing the inconsistency of Arthurian legends and the Trojan
myth traditionally linked to them. His work contains strikingly innovative
observations on the mythology of Anglo-Saxon ancestors: in the descrip-
tion of the three «Idols» – Woden, Thor and Friga (figs. 8 a/b/c, pp. 72-77)
– the latter is accompanied by engravings by Verstegan himself that lead
back to the illustrations in O. Magnus (in the Roman edition of 1554, or
possibly in the Basel edition of 1567), as is confirmed in the passage about
her (emphasis added):

         This idol represented both sexes, as wel man as woman, and as an
      Hermaphrodite is said to have had both the members of a man, and the
      members of a woman [...] Some honored her for a God and some for
      a Goddesse, but shee was ordinary taken rather for a Goddesse then
      a God, and was reputed the giuer of peace and plenty, and also the
      causer and maker of loue and amitie, and of the day of her espetiall
      adoration wee yet retain the name of friday, and as in the order of the
      dayes of the week Thursday cometh between wedenesday and friday,
      so (as Olaus magnus noteth) in the septentrionall regions, where they
      made the Idoll Thor sitting or lying in a great hall upon a couered


     21
        Published by S. Lagerbring, Monumenta Scanensium I (1748).
      22
        The Gunpowder Plot (or the Jesuit Treason), a Jesuit conspiracy that soured
the relations between Anglicans and English Catholics for over half a century.


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Figg. 8 a/b/c – Illustrations from A Restitution of the Decayed Intelligence […], 1605: 72, 74, 76.


      bed, they also placed on the one syde of him the Idol Woden, & on the
      other syde the Idol Friga. (ibid.: 76-77)

       Verstegan’s influence also hovers in the various translations of a trea-
tise on comparative mythography entitled πανσεβεια (Pansebeia), or View
of all the Religions in the World (1652) [1655], by Alexander Ross, a Scottish
theologian and translator of the Qur’an much appreciated by Herder and
who showed familiarity with the themes of ancient Germanic religion23. In
section V of his work, he recalls how, as was the case with the Saxons, for
the Danes and Swedes too «Frea or Frico, was Venus, to whom Friday was
dedicated [...]» (ibid.: 149). Ross then proceeds to quote directly from Ver-
stegan, and mentions Friga (emphasis added):

         Their sixth Idol was Friga; from her our Friday is denominated, and
      was the same that Venus among the Romans; she is painted in the habit
      of a man in arms, with a sword in one hand, and a bow in the other;
      so among the Romans she was Venus armata, and barbata, armed
      and bearded; she is called by the Greeks Θεὸς in the masculine, and
      by Aristophanes Ἀφρόδυες, so by Vergil, Deus; descend ac ducente Deo
      flammam inter & hostes. (ibid.: 150-151)


     23
       See on this point various Renaissance treatises such as those by Johannes
Aventinus, Philippus Cluverius, Johannes Pomarius, the aforementioned R. R.
Verstegan, Elias Schedius or Christian Arnold.


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Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



      And again:

         The Danes and Swedes worshipped the same gods that the Saxons
      did. They call upon Thor or Iupiter, when the Pestilence is among them,
      because he ruleth in the ayre: In the time of war they call upon Wodan
      or Mars. In their marriages they invocate Frico or Venus. They had also
      their Heroes or demi-gods; they used to kill nine males of each kind
      of sensitive creatures, and’ (151) ‘to pacifie their gods with the blood
      thereof, then to hang up their bodies in the Grove next the Temple
      called Vbsola. (ibid.: 152)

     All this points out the debt to Adam of Bremen and the related de-
scription of the temple at Uppsala (Gesta Hamm. IV.26-27). At the same
time, however, Ross was endorsing the new pro-feminine vulgate of the
deity, as echoed not only in the diaries of the ambassador to Sweden Bul-
trode Whitelocke (their goddess Freid, so they called Venus)24, but also in Wil-
liam Temple’s Of Heroic Virtue (1690 [1814]: 366), in which Frea is cast as
the goddess of pleasure and is worshipped together with Odin, the god of
law and war, and Thor, the meteorological god. Further echoes famously
reverberate at the end of Act I of John Dryden’s King Arthur or, The British
Worthy (1691), by way of the improbable invocation to the three pagan
‘Saxon’ gods (who, as in Verstegan, are placed on pedestals):

           Thor, Freya, Woden, hear, and spell your Saxons,
           With Sacred Runick Rhimes, from Death in Battle.
           Edge their bright Swords, and blunt the Britons’ Darts. (1691: 6)

      The only exception seems to be Aylett Sammes (Britannia antiqua illus-
trata, 1676), a reader of the Danish historian Pontanus and, especially, of
Adam of Bremen, who describes a generic temple with Thor, Woden and
Fricco. Though unequivocally represented as a male idol – armed with a
bow and arrows, endowed with «a great Priapus» and guaranteeing peace,
pleasure and abundance (p. 445 and cf. infra, fig. 9) – the latter confirms all
the uncertainties surrounding his role and troublesome reception when
one reads the passage that defines him:

           Laſtly, Fricco, who with the Ancient Saxons was taken for Wodens



     24
          A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1663 and 1664 (vol. II, 1722: 19-20).


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                   Fig. 9 – Britannia antiqua illustrata, 1676: 446.

     Wife25, and adored as a Goddeſs only, is now made with a great Priapus,
     and we know not of what Sex to take her, having the Members of both.
     Sometimes they worſhipped her as a God, as ſhe carried a Bow and
     Arrows, ſometimes as a Goddeſs, as ſhe wore a Female Weſture.

     As a matter of fact, all the Middle Swedish historiographical litera-
ture preceding the works of the Magnuses provides a one-sided picture, so
much so that, in the mid-15th century, the anonymous author of the Prosaiska
Krönika still defined the third deity of the sanctuary – a guarantor of peace,
carnal pleasures and fertility and honoured on Fridays – in masculine
terms («han heet frigh», ‘he was called F.’):

        Then tridie thera gudh han heet frigh honom hedrade the om
     fredaghen at han skulle giffwa them fridh kötligan lustha och mangh
     barn [...] Hwilken som brwllöpp wilde göra tha offrade the fright.
     (Fant 1818, I: 242)26


    25
       That is, Frigga, whom Sammes identifies as Woden’s wife and supposed
goddess of love among the Saxons. Here, the text highlights the fusion of An-
glo-Saxon and Scandinavian mythological traditions by reiterating the mistak-
en-identity dynamics involving Frigg and Freyja.
    26
       «The third god is called Frigh, and they worshipped him on Fridays [so]


                                                                                       69
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



      Similarly, the coeval Lilla Rimkrönika (Chronicon rhythmicum minus)
recalled the male god Frigga [sic!] as a bestower of fruit, children, and
pleasure («Frucht, Barn och Lusta» (Fant 1818, I: 252). This concept was
reiterated by the father of Swedish historiography Ericus Olai (Chronica
regni Gothorum, ca. 1470, based in part on ancient material handed down
from the Prosaiska Krönika):

         Tercium quoque, scilicet Frygh, pro fertilitate et abundancia frugum
      et fructuum terre, hominum et iumentorum honorabant et assidue
      venerabantur. (Heuman, Öberg I 1993: 25)

      It was Olaus Petri, the leading Swedish humanist and reformer27, who
officially promoted the unprecedented female image of this deity. In Een
swensk Cröneka (1539-40), a historical work focussing on educational and
moral aspects, after describing the temple at Uppsala (Sahlgren 1917: 10) and
the first two gods, the author dwells on the third figure through a learned
portrayal that draws on his own classical knowledge (emphasis added):

         Then tridhie war en gudhinna och kallades Ffrigga, huilken (som
      noogh troendes är) när the Latiner haffuer hetet Venus, och aff henne
      kallades Frigga dagh, (Sahlgren 1917: 11) [...] Thenna gudhinnan wardt
      dyrkat for then skul, at the skulle fa godh gifftermal, mong barn, och
      fridh oc rolig-heet.28 (ibid: 12)

     As regards her fertility prerogatives, the goddess is complemented by
another unnamed figure, corresponding to the Romans’ Ceres, responsible
for good harvests and rural fertility:




that he may grant [them] peace, sexual pleasure and many children […] Anyone
wishing to marry sacrifices to Frigh» (my translation).
     27
        A scholar and theologian of great depth, translator of the New Testament
(1526) and a large part of the Bible (1541), he was nevertheless critical of the Goth-
icist identity myth, as well as of the process of the formation of the Swedish state
and the new Reformed Church. At the same time, he never gave in to nationalistic
propaganda or Lutheran rhetoric.
     28
         «The third was a goddess called Frigga, who (is still adored) and whom
the Latins called Venus, and from her comes the name of Friday […] This god-
dess was worshipped in the hope that they could get a good marriage, many
children, and peace and prosperity» (my translation).


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         Teslikes warder ock berordt i wor Swenska Cröneke om ena
     gudhinno som när the Latiner kallades Ceres, henne dyrkade the här
     i landet som [och] i annor land, på thet the skulle få godh åår, på korn
     och kierna.29 (ibid: 12)

     Olaus Petri’s approach may therefore have served a twofold purpose:
ennobling the past through a functional parallelism between ancient Ro-
man mythology and local mythology – being unable, in the second case, to
point to a (non-existent) second fertility goddess – and replacing Adam of
Bremen’s scabrous passage concerning the sexual organ of the god Fricco.
In my opinion, the chronicler’s prestige influenced the choice made by the
Magnus brothers, thus paving the way for the wide circulation of this rein-
terpretation of the myth, reiterated about a century later by Johannes Schef-
ferus, an eminent scholar at the court of Christina of Sweden. In his Upsalia,
1666 (chap. VIII ‘De Frigga’: 95-116), by polemically recapitulating previous
interpretations and dismantling the illusions of the Hyperborean school,
Schefferus went so far as to question Adam of Bremen on the grounds of a
hypothetical (linguistic?) misunderstanding (emphasis added):

        Tertium, quod Vpsaliæ colebratur, numen, Fricco est. Adamus:
     Tertius est Fricco. Crantzius: Hinc inde laterea Toronis cingit Wodan &
     Fricco. & mox: tertius Fricco. Ericus Olai non Fricconem nominat, sed
     Friggam. Thor, Oden, & Frigga, inquit, in tricliniis collocate. Ret in hoc
     consentiunt nostri omnes Friggam, non Friggonem, vocant, aut
     Fricconem. Johannes Magni Simulachrum Frigga tertio in loco positum.
     Olaus, Tertius Frigga. Nempe veteres vocabant Frig, aut Frigg. Edda
     in Genealogia Odini Kona hans het Frigida / er vir kallum Frigg. uxor
     eius vocabatur Frigida, quam nos appellamus Frig. Arngrimus in litteris
     ad Stephanium ex antiquis monumentis, sicut ipse testatur, Frigg,
     Odini coniux. Ex eo Frig aut Frigg deinde peregrini, primusque, ut
     opinor Adamus, fecerunt Fricconem, cum dicendum esset Frigga.
     Juvabat, quod sciebant simulachrum eius fingi cum priapo, unde
     masculinum numen esse colligebant. Paulus Warnefridi vocat Fream
     cap. 8 de Gest. Langob. [...] Non aliam hic esse Fream, quam quæ prius
     Frigga est vocata [...] Fuit ergo femininum numen, non masculinum,
     ut putasse videtur Adamus, & Othino junctum matrimonio. (Upsalia,
     1666: 95-96)


    29
       «Likewise, our Swedish Chronicle reports on a goddess, whom the Latins
called Ceres, and on how she is worshipped here as elsewhere in order to get a
good harvest of corn and other fruits» (my translation).


                                                                                     71
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



      The ultimate sanctioning of Frigga as a controversial simulacrum of
the fertility sphere and a renewed model of womanliness can be traced
to the mid-18th century. Paul-Henri Mallet, the main mediator of ancient
Nordic culture in the Enlightenment era, presented the characters of that
distant mythic world in a treatise (Monumens de la Mythologie et de la poésie
des Celtes, et particulièrement des anciens Scandinaves, 1756) that constitut-
ed the ideological premise on which the early pre-Romantic avant-gardes
were based (see Battaglia 2022). The frontispiece of this work, which is
characterized by a typical neo-classical detachment from the barbaric Mid-
dle Ages, shows an image of the humanistic Frigga in arms before the ruins
of a past (and a natural world) outside civilisation (fig. 10).




                                Fig. 10 – Monumens, 1756: 1


      A remarkable condensation of the two most representative texts of me-
dieval culture in the Northern Renaissance – the work of Adam of Bremen
(in the part analysed so far in Chapter IV) and Snorri Sturluson’s Edda
(Chapter Gylfaginning) – is carried out in theologian Trogillus Arnkiel’s
Cimbrische Heyden-Religion (1691). This pioneering history of Germanic
mythology drew on the euhemeristic and demonological interpretation of
myths, as well as on motifs from the patristic repertoire gravitating around
the idea of the revelation of depraved pagan idols following the Great Flood.
After recognizing «Thor, Othin und Freia» as the main triad in the religion
of all Nordic peoples (mistaking Freyja for Frigg), from p. 86 onwards he
resumes the image of the dialogue between Gangleri and the illusory triad
in Snorri’s Edda (cf. supra, point 2 p. 58, and p. 73) as rendered on f. 26v of


72
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Fig. 11 – The dialogue between Gangleri and the deceitful triad in Snorri’s Edda (Cod.
Upsaliensis, DG 11, 4to, f. 26v).



                                                                                      73
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr




       Fig. 12                                        Fig. 13




       Fig. 14                                        Fig. 15
Images from P.A. Baer 2021, ‘The Deluding of Gylfi’, in MyNDIR: My Norse Digital
Image Repository. Edition 2.1. Victoria, B.C. University of Victoria HCMC.



74
                                       Between, vol. XII, n. 24 (novembre/November 2022)



Cod. Upsaliensis, DG 11, 4to (fig. 11). Surprisingly, he substitutes the origi-
nal names of Hár, Jafnhár and Þriði from Snorri’s Norse text (fig. 12) with
those of the deities at the Uppsala temple, a suggestion probably received
through hermeticist O. Rudbeck (Atland eller Manhem, 1679, fig. 29), who,
in turn, was the author of a genre ‘reappraisal’ recovered from the great
Hyperborean theoretician O. Verelius (Gothrici & Rolfi Westrogothiae Regum
Historia, 1664. 43[a]); see infra, figs. 13 and 14 respectively.
      The scope of this rewriting arguably reached its climax in the essay
Die Isländische Edda. Das ist die geheime Gotteslehre (1777, after p. 103) by pas-
tor Jacob Schimmelmann (fig. 15). This was the first German translation of
Snorri’s Edda, which Schimmelmann considered as the oldest text after the
Bible, predating the birth of Christ by a millennium (see pp. 1-2).

                                Conclusions
      Historically and culturally, the manipulation of the images of idols
and the like is a discriminating and functional element among antagonistic
clans, conglomerates or ethnic groups: the Romans accused the ‘barbarians’
of this practice, so did Christian missionaries with individual Germanic
groups as well as Arabs against Viking guilds on the Volga, but, paradox-
ically, similar accusations have been levelled at Catholics too by aniconic
religions such as Islam or Judaism. The Jews, the Templars and even Pope
Boniface VIII have been accused of idolatry.
      Despite an allegedly fluid continuity with the ancient world, the cul-
tural ‘revolution’ brought about by the Renaissance actually marked a sig-
nificant departure from the themes of the past, which were reworked in new
forms. Triggered by profound economic transformations, this departure
brought together the philosophical, religious, and political discourses con-
nected with two major topics within the European debate: the imperative
need for a religious Reformation and for higher standards for an efficient
State. Surprising as it may be, both issues fostered a strong feeling of re-ap-
propriation of the local past, particularly of those intermediate centuries for
which the negative label ‘Middle Ages’ was purposely contrived (Battaglia
2017). One cannot certainly underestimate the Italian Renaissance criticism
of the ancient Germans and their descendants, religion and culture, which
in the 15th century would still find an outlet through E. S. Piccolomini30 (who


    30
       «Ipsa quoque religio barbara, inepta, idolorum cultrix atque adeo demonio-
rum illusionibus labefacta, ut humanis sepe hostium litatum esse apud illos non sit


                                                                                     75
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



censored the German Church, then in ferment) and G. Vasari (about North-
ern European artistic style). However, also thanks to the renewed symbolic
value acquired by mythological imagery in literature as well as art, in a
large part of European culture (and already in Virgil’s Thule) the obscure
seduction of ancient Scandinavian mirabilia gained a popularity and longev-
ity that went far beyond the above-mentioned auspices of Fr. Schlegel.
      The reasons or ideological factors why a god endowed with precise
functions was to become a goddess are still unclear, unless one refers to the
disintegration and re-functionalisation of an archaic universe brought about
by medieval Christianity, along with the evolution of the socio-cultural
meaning of sexuality that began during the Renaissance (Laqueur 1990). As
the era of Gothicist iconography faded away, the allure of those ancient im-
ages seemed to manifest itself again in Georgian England. In the late 1720s,
on the Stowe House estate (Buckinghamshire), Lord Cobham commissioned
John M. Rysbrack to create statues depicting the seven deities after whom
the days of the week are named; these included Odin, Thor and Friga – with
their names significantly transcribed in runic characters (see figs. 16 a/b/c).




Figs 16 a/b/c – J. M. Rysbrack, Odin, Thor and Frigga, Stowe Garden, England (photo
Wikimedia Commons).




ambiguum. Latrocinia laudi fuerunt, omnia feda, omnia tetra, aspera, barbara et,
ut propiis utamur vocabulis, ferina ac brutalia» (Germ. II,6), Fadiga (2009: 184-185).


76
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     There were also other features stemming from a manipulation dating
back to the Renaissance and immortalised in 1732 by Gilbert West, on pp.
18-19 of the poem ‘Stowe. A Poem’ (dedicated to A. Pope), which unfor-
tunately continues to cling to the traditionally elusive character of Friga’s
divine simulacrum (emphasis added):

       First radiant Sunna shews his beamy Head,
       Mona to Him, and scepter’d Tiw succeed;
       Tiw, ancient Monarch of remotest Fame,
        Who led from Babel’s Tow’rs the German Name.
       And warlike Woden, fam’d for martial Deeds,
       From whom great Brunswick’s noble Line proceeds.
       Dread Thuner see! on his Imperial Seat,
       With awful Majesty, and kingly State
       Reclin’d! at his Command black Thunders roll,
       And Storms and fiery Tempests shake the Pole.
       With various Emblem next fair Friga charms,
       In female Coats array’d and manly Arms.
       Expressive Image of that Double Soul,
       Prolifick Spirit that informs the Whole;
       Whose Genial Power throughout exerts its Sway,
       And Earth, and Sea, and Air, its Laws obey.
       Last of the Circle hoary Seatern stands;
       Instructive Emblems fill his mystick Hands.
       In this, a Wheel’s revolving Orb declares
       The never-ending Round of rolling Years,
       That holds a Vessel fill’d with fading Flowers
       And Fruits collected by the ripening Hours.
       Be warn’d from hence, ye Fair Ones! to improve
       The transitory Minutes made for Love,
       E’er yet th’ inexorable Hand of Time
       Robs of its bloomy Sweets your lovely Prime.




                                                                                  77
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



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                                                                                     79
Marco Battaglia, Beyond the Wall. Renaissance Embodiments of the Old Norse god Freyr



                                      The author
      Marco Battaglia is professor of Germanic Philology and Nordic Lit-
erature at the University of Pisa and member of the editorial board of
Studi Germanici, the journal of the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies.
His areas of research include the relationship between ‘barbarians’ and
classical civilisation; Germanic mythology and law, Norse literature; the
Nibelung-Völsung cycle and the reception of Germanic myth through the
centuries. He edited and is co-author of La tradizione nibelungico-volsungica
(ETS, 2010), Le civiltà letterarie del Medioevo germanico (Carocci, 2017), and Ja,
jeg tæller min troe hver time […] (Pisa University Press, 2022); he is author of
the volumes I Germani. Genesi di una cultura europea (Carocci, 2013), Medioevo
volgare germanico (Pisa University Press, 2016), and Snorri Sturluson. Edda
(Meltemi, 2021).

      Email: marco.battaglia@unipi.it



                                       The article
      Date sent: 31/03/2022
      Acceptance date: 31/07/2022
      Date of publication: 30/11/2022



                             How to cite this article
     Battaglia, Marco, “Beyond the Wall. Renaissance embodiments of the
Old Norse god Freyr”, Entering the Simulacra World, Eds. A. Ghezzani -
L. Giovannelli - F. Rossi - C. Savettieri, Between, XII.24 (2022): 53-80, www.
betweenjournal.it




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