Description
Odin, ruler of the gods in Norse mythology, was in the eighteenth-century a king from the East. By his introduction into eighteenth-century antiquarianism through works like Northern Antiquities (1770), the ‘Odin migration theory’ took hold in the period’s imagination. The theory posits that the king, defeated by the expansive Roman empire, emigrated North and brought with him the Gothic love of liberty and distain for the ‘Roman yoke’. This proposed paper builds on previous scholarly studies of the migration theory, to discuss how texts and images from the period embody the mythologisation of ancient history for the political present in the figure of Odin.The paper present parts of a chapter from my upcoming doctoral thesis. It begins with an overview of the historicization of Odin in the long eighteenth century, looking particularly at his identification with the Pontian kings Mithridates VI and Pharnaces II. The identification with these historical figures brings together classical, Orientalist, and Gothic antiquarianism within the figure of Odin, who also embodies the importance of migration as a narrative for political change. Both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey wrote about Odin between 1795 and 1796, and the paper will conclude with a discussion of the two authors’ disparate approaches to the figure and the transformation of the ‘historical’ man into a politically malleable cultural memory. Odin, the history of a king turned into a god, is also one of history immortalised into the present.
| Period | 2023 Jul 3 |
|---|---|
| Event title | 16th Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS): Antiquity and the Shaping of the Future in the Age of Enlightenment |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Rome, ItalyShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |
Free keywords
- antiquarianism
- eighteenth-century studies
- Norse mythology