From Ancient Rocks to Literary Criticism

When Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore Stephen A. Mitchell travelled to Europe one year hoping to learn about medieval culture, he found that all of his hopes had been blown up into 1000 little bits--literally.

The professor, who studies the literature and cultural history of Scandinavia, had hoped to analyze a 1000-year-old runestone, inscribed with ancient writing. However, when he arrived at the field where the rock was located, Mitchell discovered that a local farmer had destroyed his key to the past. "A farmer had loaded a couple of sticks of dynamite onto the runestone and turned it into rubble," Mitchell says. "All medieval historians are frustrated trying to reconstruct a world about which we know very little."

Despite that setback, Mitchell still travels to Scandinavia as often as he can to do field research, the aim of which is to analyze folklore theory and the history of that genre in Northern Europe, he says. "My life is split in two halves, but there is a synergism between them," says Mitchell, who just received tenure from Harvard after eight years of teaching here.

'Transmission and Transmutation'

"A lot of the work I've done focuses on the transmission and transmutation of texts across cultural and genre boundaries--what happens as tales evolve and in what ways are they affected," says Mitchell.

Mitchell's forthcoming book Icelandic Legendary Sagas considers the evolution of some 30 Norse epics from prose texts into ballads. In this text, the literature expert examines the function of the poetic ballad in medieval society and the impact the genre had on society at the time, he says.

"It's an attempt to trace the cultural and literary history of that world," Mitchell says. "Some of [that history] is entirely ignored."

For example, according to Mitchell, nineteenth century composer Richard Wagner's opera "The Ring Cycle" is an artistic effort which owes some of its inspiration to Icelandic sagas, such as Beowulf. "There are aspects of that tale that go back at least a millenium," says Mitchell.

He says the book will take a new approach to analysis of Norse poetry by following the narrative text of an individual ballad as its characteristics alter over time. In this way, he will discover how the plot has or has not remained faithful to the original poetic form, as well as examining the narrative's changing impact on society.

"In a sense, [the book's focus] is an explanation of what tradition means," Mitchell says. "To what extent does communality play a role in tradition?"

The manuscript for Icelandic Legendary Sagas should reach the editor by early next year, the author says.

Swedish Roles

Despite his current focus on Norse literature, Mitchell also says he wishes researchers would pay more attention to Swedish literary tradition, in hopes that academics might attempt to "restore the balance" between emphasis on Norse mythology and Swedish literature.

"Literary history has tended to turn its back on what was happening outside of Iceland in the Middle Ages," he says.

People already tend to know only about the works of Henrik Ibsen, August Strindbert and Kaut Hamsun, but there is still room for study, Mitchell says. "Along with Ibsen, [Strindberg's work] is the most over-researched area of my field, although there are nuggets yet to be discovered."

"There's a sense of mission to get the message out that there are things which aren't written in German and French which are worthwhile," says Mitchell.

The professor says he hopes to focus on Swedish works in the next five or 10 years. "That would be something that hasn't been done," Mitchell says.

Obscured Roles

Mitchell is also concerned with the obscured role of women in Swedish culture. He says, "Women were frozen out of all normal modes of expression in society."

Mitchell's book Job in Female Garb: Studies on the Autobiography of Agneta Horn analyzes the seventeenth-century life story of an aristocratic Swedish woman.

The daughter of a field marshal, Horn wrote about how she was dragged through various battlesites during the Thirty Years' War and was married and widowed by the time she reached her late twenties. In his book, Mitchell makes the point that Horn's biography is actually an "unintentional novel" and "the most interesting work of Swedish literature of that century."

Professor of English and Folklore Joseph Harris says Mitchell's commentary on Horn is "a brilliant piece of literary detective work." Mitchell's insight, says Harris, showed that when Horn wrote her story, she structured it with certain Biblical passages, and in so doing unwittingly wrote the first Swedish novel.

Innovative Teaching

At Harvard, Mitchell teaches a Core course entitled "The Heroic Tradition in Northern Europe," nicknamed "Sub-zero Heroes" by students, and several undergraduate-level courses in the Departments of Scandinavian and Folklore and Mythology, where he is head tutor. Last fall, he taught a course about Strindberg and Ibsen, and in the past he has taught a course on the Scandinavian novel from 1865 to World War I.

Harris says, "Steve is remarkable for combining several different areas fruitfully. He has [also] taken on administrative work. It's not usual for a full professor to be willing to do that."

Professor of Scandinavian and Slavic Literature Albert B. Lord '34 cites an example of the "innovative way [Mitchell] approaches teaching the medieval texts." Lord says that Mitchell gives his students facsimile copies of Beowulf and encourages them to decipher the old text themselves, instead of simply examining a modern English translation.

Lord says Mitchell "is a sound scholar with great erudition, as well as a very lively and dignified presence on the platform."

One idea Mitchell has for a new Core course deals with the literary impact of witchcraft and might begin "all the way back at the golden ass." Mitchell also mentions his idea for the possibility of a "supra-national course on verbal abuse and verbal praise."

Mitchell finished his undergraduate study of anthropology, which he labels his "great original love," at the University of California at Berkeley in 1974 and went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. It was at Berkeley, Mitchell says, that he first learned that he was fascinated by folklore and mythology.

As part of his breadth requirements there, Mitchell had to take a course in Scandinavian mythology and "fell in love with it." He was also interested in socio-linguistics and folklore and mythology as an undergraduate.

After receiving his Ph.D., Mitchell decided to travel to Sweden to study at the University of Lund, which was founded in the 1680s and is "one of the two big old research universities in Sweden."

Mitchell plans to continue his research during his sabbatical and during this summer in Sweden at the Royal Manuscript Library in Stockholm.