Tag: (E) mōd

(2019) Old Norse-Icelandic – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Mackenzie, Colin (2019). Exploring Old Norse-Icelandic personhood constructs with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 116-145). New York: Routledge.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-5

Abstract:

Old Norse-Icelandic is the only early medieval language to contain lengthy vernacular accounts of the mythology and pre-Christian practices obliquely evidenced in other Germanic languages. Because of this, Old Norse-Icelandic evidence has been used to reconstruct the nature of the ancestral Germanic psychological system and to inform interpretations of personhood constructs in other Germanic languages, whose surviving literatures are far more Christianized. Old Norse-Icelandic material has also been approached from the standpoint of circumpolar shamanistic beliefs; it has been argued that some features of Germanic psychology are the product of early contact with these circumpolar traditions.

This chapter presents a semantic explication of hugr, the principal personhood construct in Old Norse-Icelandic, and is based on linguistic constructions used in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. The explication is framed in NSM to facilitate comparisons with personhood constructs in contemporary languages and cultures, free from the obfuscating terminology of present-day English. It is shown that hugr has less in common with circumpolar personhood constructs than proponents of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism advocate and that it differs in a number of ways from its Old English analogue mōd.

Rating:


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2014) Old Norse-Icelandic, Old English – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Mackenzie, Colin Peter (2014). Vernacular psychologies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Open access

Abstract:

This thesis examines the vernacular psychology presented in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. It focuses on the concept ‘hugr’, generally rendered in English as ‘mind, soul, spirit’, and explores the conceptual relationships between emotion, cognition and the body. It argues that despite broad similarities, Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English vernacular psychology differ more than has previously been acknowledged. Furthermore, it shows that the psychology of Old Norse-Icelandic has less in common with its circumpolar neighbours than proposed by advocates of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism.

The thesis offers a fresh interpretation of Old Norse-Icelandic psychology that does not rely on cross-cultural evidence from other Germanic or circumpolar traditions. It argues that emotion and cognition were not conceived of ‘hydraulically’ as was the case in Old English, and that ‘hugr’ was not thought to leave the body either in animal form or as a person’s breath. Old Norse-Icelandic psychology differs from the Old English tradition; it is argued that the Old English psychological model is a specific elaboration of the shared psychological inheritance of Germanic whose origins require further study. These differences between the two languages have implications for the study of psychological concepts in Proto-Germanic: there are fewer semantic components that can be reliably reconstructed for the common ancestor of the North and West Germanic languages.

As a whole, the thesis applies insights from cross-cultural linguistics and psychology to show how Old Norse-Icelandic psychological concepts differ not only from contemporary Germanic and circumpolar traditions but also from the present-day English concepts used to describe them.

Rating:


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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