Mythic Images

This paper examines the obscure concluding sequence in the Old Norse eddic poem Baldrs draumar. In the poem, the god Odin travels in disguise to the realm of the dead in order to raise a dead sorceress; he interrogates her about the bad dreams of his son Baldr; the sorceress prophesies Baldr's death and the revenge sequence that Odin will orchestrate to follow it.  In the final sequence of the poem, Odin asks a peculiar question identifiable as a riddle for 'waves'; rather than answering the question, the sorceress reveals the identity of Odin as the figure interrogating her, and in response, Odin appears to reveal the identity of the sorceress, who then takes the last word with reference to Ragnarök - the end of the world at which Odin will die.

Building on the premises that the final sequence of stanzas would have reasonable sense to a vernacular audience and engage concepts conventional to the mythology (rather than simply being accepted as obscure or disconnected from broader discourses), this paper proposes the following interpretation: Odin's final question is relevant and engages a mythic image as a means of asking whether Ragnarök will follow from the revenge-cycle of the previous questions; this question enables the other figure to identify him unambiguously as Odin; this identification allows Odin to identify the other figure as someone other than expected, in which case the most probable recognizable figure would probably be Loki; the final response of this figure then both responds to Odin's question as a threat with direct reference to the release of Loki, relevant to the situation.

This paper engages possibilities of variation in the underlying ideas of the mythology found in different sources.  It introduces the observation that the cycle of material associated with the revenge prophesies in this and other sources seems to be rooted in different basic concepts than narrative material associated with Baldr's mother and her attempts to prevent Baldr's death (developed further in _Baldr and Lemminkäinen_).  If the interpretation is correct that the sorceress addressed by Odin is Loki in disguise, the circumstances present the possibility that this poem is engaging models of the mythology somewhat different from what is found in Snorri Sturluson's Edda.

This paper looks at the imaginal identification of features in the naturally occurring landscape with sites in the mythic world when situating ritual performance.  It addresses relationships between visual and verbal aspects of performance in the rites of the tietäjä, a Finno-Karelian ritual specialist, recorded in Archangel Karelia. The focus is on the manipulation of motifs in the activation of mythic images which utilize features of the natural landscape. It will take a ‘thick corpus’ approach, attempting to contextualize these rites and their symbols as much as possible within broader systems of cultural activity. Two examples of ‘power’ gathering (luonto-raising) rites are addressed in detail. The discussions of these examples consider their relationships to ‘tradition’ on the one hand and the understanding of the informant on the other.

"In the article the main aspects of emergence and formation of the entertaining journalism in Ukraine of the 1920s are considered on the example of the illustrated "UZh" ("Universal Magazine") that was issued in Kharkiv (1928–1929). It is found out that hedonist, or entertaining, press was torn between formal experiment, entertaining as such and ideology while also endowed with powerful ludic potential, the complex system of connections between text and image, disposition to active exchange with "high culture" and fiction.

Key words: experiment, entertainment, ideology, formalism, discourse, avant-garde.

У статті розглянуто основні аспекти зародження та становлення розважальної журналістики в Україні 20-х рр. ХХ ст. на прикладі багатоілюстрованого журналу "УЖ" (Харків, 1928–1929). Встановлено, що преса гедоністичного спрямування визначалась розірваністю між формальним експериментом, розважальністю та ідеологією, потужним ігровим потенціалом, складною системою зв'язків між текстом і зображенням, налаштованістю на активний обмін з "високою культурою" і белетристикою.

Ключові слова: експеримент, розважальність, ідеологія, формалізм, дискурс, аванґард."