A Living Edda

It probably goes without saying that I’ve been waiting for Skyrim since its announcement over a year ago. Set in the Nords’ titular homeland, it has a decidedly Scandinavian feel, and though its Gods are those of the usual Elder Scrolls setting, I squee’d to see the introduction of a Bard’s College, something unique to this iteration of the series.

I knew I had a reason to be excited when I entered the capital city and one of the commoners (another bard) was talking about her contribution to the Edda. Sure enough, when I expressed interest in applying to the college they explained that the Poetic Edda was the history of their homeland, update by the bards of each age to preserve their stories for future generations. Unlike the Poetic Edda of our world, theirs is fluid, changing. And apparently open to revision.

The starting quest has you search for a missing piece of the Edda, one not tampered with by a disgrunted monarchy. At stake is the Bard college-sponsored festival of King Olaf, which includes burning the effigy of a straw king. Things are a little tense politically at the start of the game, so it makes sense that the recently widowed Queen would be a touch sensitive to the idea of burning representations of nobility, given the recent “murder” of her husband.

And so you march off to lay to rest the reanimated corpses of your forebears and win back a missing piece of history in typical video game fashion.

But when you uncover the artifact (the bard’s ghost leads you to a withered skeleton at the bottom of a pit), what you can decipher turns out to be a scandalous retelling of one of the most popular legends of Nordic lore–perhaps Olaf One-Eye was not the dragon-slayer he was remembered as, and so the verses were buried and forgotten for good reason. History is told be the victors. Only the Bard’s college’s annual festival keeps alive the true legacy of King Olaf.

Yet, half of the verses are–surprise!–ravaged by time: illegible, lost forever. What is a student of history to do?

Well, fill in the blanks, of course, and revise it for the times!

I think this side-quest, while seemingly a bastardization of various heathen concepts for popular consumption (and it certainly is that), it is also a meaningful lesson for any pagan seeking to resurrect a “dead” culture. Certainly some traces of Anglo-Saxon culture remain in 21st century America, but given the thousand plus years of blending with Christianity, it’s easy to see why Weber and deTocqueville were right. How much of our reliance on lore is inherited from our upbringing under the religions of the Book? How much of our fierce individualism is Protestant or Pentecostal? How much of the Eddas we know reflect the prejudices of the non-heathen authors who penned them?

So much has been lost over the ages, and so much has changed, that to cut and paste directly without “merging the formatting,” to put it in Word 2010 parlance, makes for, well, an ugly picture. We have to treat our religions as a living, breathing organism, changed everyday by the people who comprise them.

Some gaps must be filled in by those who have inherited them. Kept incomplete, the religion feels lacking as well.

Placed in a new context, the stories must be re-interpreted in light of the times.

And like the Edda in Skyrim, religion changes with each generation’s addition. Every day we are writing our own wyrd, building upon the legacy of our (predominantly Judeo-Christian) ancestors, but weaving our own design in a decidedly modern era.