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12.1. Narrative Power

Narrative motifs, motif-complexes and themes also develop cultural loads according to regular patterns of contextual application within a tradition ecology and broader semiosphere.256 Siikala (1990:188) points out that the meanings of narratives, the values and attitudes which they express, change more quickly than the motifs of which they are comprised. Narrative power can be retained when it is transferred to new contexts and new applications. This is clearly the case in incantation historiolae (see Frankfurter 1995). Just as word power encompasses everything from register to organizational structures of metre and prosody, narrative power extends to strategies for the sequential organization and presentation of motifs and information. These include rite sequences as conventionally organized and established systems which follow sequential principles corresponding to narrative (Frog forthcoming b, cf. Blackburn 1988). Narrative power is bound to presuppositions of coherence and the organization of “significant” elements in the generation and interpretation of sequential structures, including experience (van Dijk 1980; Lotman 1990:121-144; Stark 2006:100-115). The conventional organization of these structures becomes recognizable and develops a cultural load, which may relate to their established ability to be magically (e.g. a healing rite) or rhetorically (e.g. a ghost story) effective or compelling. The APE is cumulative: immanent propositions may become explicit, implicit or negated propositions in the process of sequential progression.257 Narrative power may also be manipulated through the activation of the recognizable structure to generate tensions or conflicts with the “structures of expectation” (Ross 1975, Siikala 1990a:16).

256 _{These loads are so prominent in Apache traditions that wielding narrative power is described through}

the semiotics of hunting: stories are “arrows” which individuals “shoot” at one another (Basso 1996:37ff.).

257

Glosecki‟s (2007:59) proposal that “however threadbare the mythic image may be, it is nonetheless poised over a plotline” emphasizes that images are on the one hand distinguishable from sequential structures, and also that particular constellations of motifs are capable of stimulating or activating sequential structures according to the indexical relationships between elements presented.

Semiotic studies of narrative since Propp have been inclined to concentrate on defining and describing the “lexicon”, “syntax” and “grammar” of individual narrative genres, but syntagmatic analysis does not reflect the meaning and relevance of the structures, elements and their interrelationships which it describes (Suojanen 1993:105). Narrative

power provides an analytical term for the description and discussion of cultural loads

which these carry and how they are manipulated in application. This can then be used to address their relevance and the generation of meaning in communication.

12.2. The Second Merseburg Charm and Mythological Narrative

Narrative power underlies applications of narrative for magical effect. The Old High

German Merseburg Charms were recorded in the 10th century on a blank page of Merseburg Domstiftsbibliothek Codex 136, and have “attracted disproportionate interest” because of the unusual references to ethnic mythic beings in an OHG text (Murdoch 2004:252). The Second Merseburg Charm (quoted in §14.3) consists of eight long lines: five lines present a historiola in which balder-Phol‟s horse is injured and Wodan[Óðinn] heals it, followed by three lines of healing words. The narrative is given prominence over the healing words.

Hauck (1970) argues that the historiola is also depicted on bracteates (cf. Frankfurter 1995:460), while the healing words may belong to the common Indo-European heritage (Watkins 1995:519-536). This mythological narrative exhibits a remarkable history of continuity from its first appearance in a manuscript to variants collected in the 20th century (Christiansen 1915). Frankfurter (1995) emphasizes that manipulations of

narrative power in incantations only require that narrative elements be recognizable as

culturally loaded with “power” for them to be effective. Historiolae need not refer to a more complete mythological narrative, although it participates and develops in that broader system of mythological narratives and their cultural activity. Väinämöinen’s

Knee-Wound, for example, is also a blood-charm historiola. Its cultural activity is almost

exclusively in healing incantations, but it is found occasionally in other contexts (Tarkka 2005:150). These applications of mythological narrative oriented to magical applications are not intended to “tell” the story or explicate it: they are functionally oriented selective

applications of elements. Väinämöinen’s Knee-Wound and the Second Merseburg Charm were both able to persist independent of associations with a specific “myth” – or rather, the historiola was the “myth”. This could be incorporated into a larger cycle (e.g. I2.634) or be performed as an independent narrative (e.g. I2.298). The episode could reflect a single persisting episode of an earlier stratum of the mythology in an application-based context (cf. §11.1). However, the episode itself may have been introduced as a powerfully loaded mythic event with significant value in magic, as Krohn (1924:19-21) argued that Väinämöinen’s Knee-Wound developed from Christian historiola. Most probably it fluctuated in its relationships to other mythological narratives over time, much as variants of the Second Merseburg Charm historiola could be associated with a specific journey of Christ.258 Mansikka (1909:249-250) pointed out that variants could associate the injury of the steed directly with the death of Christ, which was then proposed as the model for the steed‟s injury (see Christiansen 1914:204). However, the Icelandic saga literature reveals the motif of a fall from a horse to be a fateful omen which may specifically have been a death-omen for the rider.259

12.3. The Flood of the Creation and Destruction

In the Christian historiola which he considers the model for Väinämöinen’s Knee-Wound, Krohn (1924:18-19) emphasizes the flood of blood which covers every “hill and high mountain” as a medieval Christian development and identifies the blood of Christ‟s wound with the purging flood of Noah. Hugh Keenan has discussed the typological association of Anglo-Saxon representations of the Christian apocalypse with the Flood.260 Waves and water covering the land appear to be one of the most essential and compelling mythic image associated with Ragnarök (Olrik 1922:22-36; Frog 2006:262-263). Anticipation of this flood at the end of the world would also explain the semiotics of Germanic ship burials in which ships are moored and prepared for departure with the

258 _{Cf. Krohn 1905:128ff.; see further §25.3.1, Christiansen 1914.} 259

E.g. Reginsmál 24; in Grænlendinga saga (Sveinsson & Þórðarson 1935:249), the stumbling horse throws the rider and he refuses to participate in the journey; in Njáls saga (Sveinsson 1954:182), Gunnarr‟s horse stumbles and he falls, inciting events leading directly to his death (for discussion as a literary adaptation associating the fall with pride, see Hamer 2008:141ff.). Hamer (2008:182) points out that examples of a rider‟s loss of control elsewhere in Njáls saga are directly attributable to hostile magic.

260 _{Keenan‟s 1968 PhD dissertation, “The Apocalyptic Vision in Old English Poetry”, has only been}

dead in positions of sleep, apparently anticipating both waking/resurrection and departure.261 The flood of Ragnarök in Völuspá clearly draws on the narrative power of the world-creation from the corpse of Ymir, generating an identity between them. The

image power of this event was carried into Finno-Karelian traditions, generating the

Väinämöinen-World-Creation (§7.2, §25.3). The identification of the apocalypse with a flood is not an accidental fusion of Christian traditions through an arbitrary preoccupation with floods: it appears to be an adaptation of image power and narrative power of the Germanic flood of Ymir‟s blood from the “first wound” and the apocalyptic vision of destruction of the world through the corresponding flood at Ragnarök. This emerges as evidence of the maintenance of image power and narrative power which retained sufficient significance and authority to be adapted and translated through radical changes in various and diverse tradition ecologies.

261 _{Herschend 2001:61-94; on Norse semiotics of death/sleep-resurrection/waking see further Frog}