Potato crisps for squirrel Ratatosk and hiking equipment for the first settler Ingólfur. Reception of old icelandic culture in poems by Þórarinn Eldjárn

2019

Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Svâto-Tihonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta: Seriâ III. Filologiâ, Vol 60, Iss 60, Pp 45-56 (2019)

Þórarinn Eldjárn is one of the few contemporary Icelandic poets who regularly address the themes of Old Icelandic literature in their poems, including poems for children. In Þórarinn’s poems, one can encounter the saga hero Grettir, the legendary first settler Ingólfur Arnason, the poets Egill Skallagrímsson and Snorri Sturluson, mythological fi gures. However, the connections of such elements and the Old Icelandic texts where they come from is not always strong. The poet refers, fi rst and foremost, to the plots and persons that exist in mass consciousness that are diffi cult to trace back to certain literary sources, i.e. to generally important signposts of Icelandic culture. Some meaningful Old Icelandic paraphernalia appear in his poetry only as ready-made signs and symbols (e.g. monuments) or become the author’s own symbols. As a rule, they are transferred into the modern universe or “modernised” by means of the language use (the most prominent examples of “language modernising” are the translations for children of two Eddic poems into modern Icelandic). In certain cases, only the sound of the names of well-known saga characters is relevant, which helps to attract attention to the fact that notions related to the old literature can come to be sounds devoid of any sense to the contemporary reader. Consequently, in place of this emptiness one can build new senses. Þórarinn’s poems also demonstrate the renewal of those signs that are important for Icelanders’ national identity, which is achieved through non-trivial poetic strategies.

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Russian

St. Tikhon's University, 2019.

тоурарин эльдъяртн, современная исландская поэзия, детская литература, рецепция древнеисландской литературы, интерпретация, переписывание, «старшая эдда», саги об исландцах, Philology. Linguistics, P1-1091, Literature (General), PN1-6790