Ludic Skalds, Odinic Visitors and the Origins of Jorge Luis Borges' Antiguas literaturas germánicas

 

Over the last decade Jorge Luis Borges and Delia Ingenieros' Antiguas literaturas germánicas (in English translation, "Ancient Germanic Literatures") has been the subject of a fair amount of attention.1 The work was first published in Mexico City in 1951 as part of the series "Breviarios del Fondo de cultura económica," but attracted little comment for the next 60 years. Then, in 2011, an article by Vladimir Brljak appeared in Studies in Medievalism entitled "Borges and the North," which lauds this work as "certainly the first book-length Spanish-language study [on the subject of vernacular medieval Germanic literature]" (109). Subsequently, in 2014, M. J. Toswell's translation into English appeared.2 Both of these works have greatly facilitated the study of Borges' early forays into medievalism, which, if it was not already, is now a well-known fact.

In what follows I would like to build on this research, focusing in particular on the genesis of Antiguas literaturas germánicas and potential influences upon that work. Already in 1932 Borges had published "Noticia de los kenningar" ("A note on kennings")—a contemplation and critique of a particularly medieval Nordic type of poetic circumlocution—in a Buenos Aires journal, Sur. This essay was reissued the following year as an independent booklet entitled "Las kennigar" (sic) and reappeared among other essays in Historia de la eternidad in 1935.3 Parts of that discussion made their way into Antiguas literaturas germánicas, thus one source is clear from the outset. Nevertheless, as Brljak observes:

[T]here is not much, then, that can be seen as anticipating the publication in September 1951 of a monograph entitled Antiguas literaturas germánicas...This book is something of a mystery. What were the circumstances of its publication, in Mexico City, as part of the series "Breviarios del Fondo de cultura económica"? Why did Borges decide to write such a book? Why at this time? (107)

Brljak speculates that a desire to reject social realism on more locally Argentinian themes, resulting from Borges' conflict with the ruling Peronist regime, may have inspired him to turn to subjects far from home. Following this partial explanation he moves on to discussing Borges' subsequent denial of the work and the minor changes made before its appearance under a new title in 1966 as Literaturas germánicas medievales. Nevertheless, much of the mystery remains.

There is, however, a work that appeared from the same Mexican publishing house (albeit not in the "breviarios" series) several years prior to Borges' survey which contains numerous references to medieval Germanic literature and thus could have been a spur to Borges to publish further on the subject. That work is the Spanish-language translation of Johan Huizinga's originally Dutch-language Homo ludens (original version 1938). The translation was made by Eugenio Ímaz Echeverría (1900-51), a Spanish exile who had been forced to flee to Mexico at the end of the Spanish Civil War.4 From 1939 on Ímaz Echeverría found himself living in Mexico City and working as a translator for the Fondo de cultura económica (Fund for Economic Culture), a publishing house dedicated to the dissemination of reasonably-priced texts on humanist topics which had been founded in 1934, five years prior to his arrival. Ímaz Echeverría's translation of Huizinga's work appeared in 1943, eight years before Borges and Ingenieros' Antiguas literaturas germánicas. Two years after the appearance of the translation, in 1945, the Fondo de cultura económica opened its Buenos Aires branch.5 Thus we may assume that its publications were readily available to an Argentine audience.

Huizinga's work, which has been described as "the epitomization of a humanist masterpiece," is wide-ranging, touching on occurrences of playfulness or ludic culture from all corners of the globe.6 Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise, given that Huizinga was Dutch, that Germanic examples abound. Chapter 7, for example, which focusses on "Play and Poetry," mentions the following: Kvasir, a divine figure from Nordic mythology who was said to possess great knowledge and was ground up into the mead of poetry (120); the antihero Starkaðr from Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum as an example of the cultic orator or "þulr" (121); face-to-face antagonistic recitation as witnessed in Icelandic sagas (124); the wooing of Brunhild (126); the poetic Tryggðamál "Truce Speeches" passage from Old Icelandic law codes (128); savage and depraved Eddic divinities (130); Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál as examples of mythological playfulness (131); and the kennings as an example of playfulness with words (134-35). 

There is thus much which would have drawn Borges in, assuming he came across this work in the mid to late 1940s. Despite certain of Borges' automythographical accounts which suggest that his fascination for Old Norse came much later, his interest in sagas seems to have been piqued at a young age in response to William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon's saga translations.7 The kenning essay from the 1930s lets us know that Old Icelandic poetry had stayed with him, even if at that time he rejected one of the principal rhetorical devices used in such creations as "frías aberraciones" (Historia de la eternidad 43; "frigid aberrations"). In fact, kennings were a lifelong interest of Borges, as various scholars have shown.8 Borges, moreover, seems to have been well aware of the potentially ludic aspects of skaldic versifying even prior to the appearance of Huizinga's original text, referring to el deliberado goce verbal de una literatura instintiva (Historia de la eternidad 43; "the deliberate verbal delight of an instinctive literature") in his original essay on the kennings. Thus if we want to delve further into the possibility of Borges' potential influence from this text, we would be wise to focus on Huizinga's treatment of skaldic poetry and kennings.

Huizinga dedicates just over a page at the end of the aforementioned chapter in "Poetry and Play" to the kennings. Introducing this final comment of the chapter he states that "the playfulness of poetic language is so obvious that there is hardly any need to illustrate it with examples" but he nevertheless proceeds to provide one, "a single example well fitted to illustrate the connection between poetry and playing at a secret language, viz. the Old Norse kenningar" (134).9 The single example which he gives actually consists of several model kennings, although not nearly as many as Borges gave in his list from 1932. Rather, there are three simple examples followed by five mythological kennings, the latter of which are all used to refer to the Norse god Heimdallr. The three simple examples are spraakdoorn, bodem der windenhal and boomenwolf (Huizinga, Dutch text, 164), which appear in the English translation as "speech-thorn," a kenning for "tongue"; "floor of the hall of winds," a kenning for "earth"; and "tree-wolf," a kenning for "wind" (134). Borges lists kennings for all these referents in his 1932 essay. He mentions espada de la boca "sword of the mouth" (54) for "tongue," piso de las tormentas "floor of storms" (56) for "earth," and both daño de los bosques "harm of forests" (56) and lobo de los cordajes "wolf of rigging" (56) as kennings for "wind." Although both Huizinga and Borges, as was common among many writers of their time, are rather sparing with bibliographical references, it seems that both culled their examples from the same source, namely Snorri Sturluson's Edda, and more specifically the section entitled Skáldskaparmál. Borges, as with his much later translation of Gylfaginning (another section of Snorra Edda), was probably relying on Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur's translation (Lavender 10), while Huizinga may have been using the 1925 German translation by Felix Niedner and Gustav Neckel.10 Slight differences between the examples which the two authors list can be explained by referring back to Snorri's text. In answer to the question, "How shall wind be referred to?": "By calling it ... breaker of tree, harmer and slayer or dog or wolf of tree or sail or rigging" (Snorri Sturluson, Edda 93). From this list Borges derived his two variants and Huizinga would also have been able to arrive at his slightly different "tree-wolf".11 While the kennings listed on both sides are acceptable and comprehensible, the minor variations in the wording of kennings newly translated into the Spanish language might well have got Borges to thinking once again about medieval Germanic literature and its availability to hispanophone readers.

Huizinga's discussion of the kennings fits into a broader discourse on cultural development. One of his main theses is that play precedes culture, but as cultures progress, many of the early ludic modes develop into more serious ones, among those law and religion. Huizinga wonders, however, "How far is the play-quality of poetry preserved when civilization grows more complicated?" (129). In answering this question he tells us that "myth is always poetry" and that "myth and poetry both come from the play sphere" (129). When a culture develops beyond its primitive phase, Huizinga sees myth as undergoing a process of literary redaction and becoming mythology. Then "to the degree that belief in the literal truth of the myth diminishes, the play-element, which had been proper to it from the beginning, will reassert itself with increasing force" and myth thus "still retains the function of expressing the divine in poetical language" (130). I believe this discussion of the potential for playful poetry - such as skaldic poetry and kennings - to preserve ancient myth would have captivated Borges most of all. After all, in his discussion of Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál in Antiguas literaturas germánicas he leaves behind his critique of kennings to dissect a number of them and explain how they refer to Nordic mythology before pronouncing that Snorri's work is a herbario de metáforas "herbarium of metaphors" which exponía una tradición "was putting a tradition on show" (108), that tradition being the pagan culture of the past.

This must all remain speculation, however, for if Borges was influenced by Huizinga's work, I have been unable to find any mention of it among his writings. The bibliography of Antiguas literaturas germánicas lists just under forty books, but more than a paper-trail of all the material used by the author (as a modern academic bibliography is), this section seems rather to be a suggestion of further reading for anyone who has been hooked by the brief descriptions of works provided. Moreover, Borges himself states that the items listed no pretenden ser exhaustivas "do not try to be exhaustive" (173).

It is also difficult to know how much influence Ímaz Echeverría's translation had on other Latin American authors and intellectuals, but there is some evidence that the brief presentation of kennings found in that work made itself felt in unexpected corners. An example of this is a footnote found in an essay entitled "Sierpe de Don Luis de Góngora" ("The Serpent of Don Luis de Góngora") by the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima (1910-76).12 If Borges was a predecessor of the Latin American literary boom, then José Lezama Lima "is considered part of the second wave of the ‘boom,ʼ but his work feeds, stylistically, from the Spanish baroque."13 The "Sierpe" essay is a perfect example of this, taking as its subject the poetry of the Golden Age Spanish poet Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627). Góngora is renowned for having espoused an extremely complex poetic style, and we may remember that Borges, in his early essay on the kennings, commented, in less than favourable terms, on the esotericism of Góngora's contemporary, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-58), that he tiene en su contra unas laboriosas perífrasis, de mecanismo parecido o idéntico al de las kenningar "has against him certain laborious periphrases which make use of a mechanism similar or identical to the kennings" (47).14 Gracián was in fact part of the conceptismo school which favoured directness and simplicity of expression and distanced itself from the more ostentatiously baroque writings of the culteranismo school, of which Góngora was the leading figure. If Borges found Gracián's periphrases laborious, Góngora's would have seemed unbearable to him.15

Lezama Lima, on the other hand, revelled in Góngora's stylings to such a degree that his essay on Góngora becomes "gongorine" in its own right. The footnote referring to Ímaz Echeverría's translation of Huizinga comes at a point when Lezama Lima is discussing a short poem by the name of "A Júpiter" ("To Jupiter") written in 1619 in response to the son of a close friend having been killed by lightning. In the poem Góngora laments the fact that Jupiter has allowed the fine youth to be struck down, alluding to Zeus' previous abduction of another beautiful youth, Ganymede, and referring to the deadly bolt of lightning as a bezahar de otro Pirú "bezoar from another Peru." A bezoar is a kind of hardened mass which forms inside the human body, but was, in times past, used in medicine and believed to have alchemical properties, while Peru was, for seventeenth-century Spaniards, the source of gold. Thus the phrase "bezoar from another Peru" functions similarly to a kenning since a hard, magical thing from a place where golden, shiny things originate is an abstruse way of referring to a lightning bolt.16 Such linguistic somersaults mixed with involved mythological referents more than explain why Lezama Lima makes reference in a footnote to Huizinga's comment: Lo demasiado claro pasa en los Skaldas como falta técnica "Anything which is too transparent is considered lack of technique on the part of the skalds" (25). Lezama Lima is here quoting Ímaz Echeverría's translation of Huizinga.

Moving on from this slight digression and the macro-level discussion of the possible influence of Ímaz Echeverría's translation of Huizinga's magnum opus on Borges' work as a whole, I now want to focus in on one particular section of Antiguas literaturas germánicas and show how we can see Borges treating his unacknowledged sources in a typically idiosyncratic way also on the micro-level. Antiguas literaturas germánicas is divided into three sections, corresponding to the literary traditions of, respectively, Inglaterra germánica "Germanic England," Scandinavia, and Germany. The passage that I will look at occurs in the central portion of the work, where Old Norse-Icelandic writings are subjected to scrutiny.

The chapter on the Nordic material starts with a discussion of how Haraldr hárfagri "Harald Fair-Hair" united Norway and thus, for those who lost out in the unification process, acted as catalyst for emigration and expansion. The Nordic people eventually adopted Christianity, but, we are told, did not become estranged from their pagan past and retained a nostalgia for it. To exemplify this, Borges presents the following for contemplation:

Thus one thinks of how one night there arrived at the court of Olaf Tryggvason, who had converted to the new religion, an old man, enveloped in a dark cape and with the brim of his hat over his eyes. The king asked him if he knew how to do anything; the stranger replied that he knew how to play the harp and tell stories. He played old melodies on the harp, spoke of Gudrun and Gunnar, and, at last, mentioned the birth of Odin. He said that the three Fates came, that the first two promised him great delights and that the third said angrily, "The baby will not live longer than the candle which is burning at his side." The parents then extinguished the light so that Odin would not die. Olaf Tryggvason did not believe the story; the stranger repeated that it was true, took out the candle and lit it. While they watched it burn, the man said it was late and he had to leave. When the candle had consumed itself, they looked for him. A few steps from the house of the king, Odin had died.17

This tale resurfaces on several occasions in Borges' publications. For example, it appeared along with several other anecdotes under the title "Diálogo del asceta y del rey" in the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación in 1953.18 It also appears under the title "Odín" in Cuentos breves y extraordinarios (1955).19 Ten years later it surfaces once again in the revised version Antología de la literatura fantástica (1965).20

This story is certainly reminiscent of a scene from Heimskringla, during the section on the life of King ólafr Tryggvason, where the king receives a mysterious visitor. For comparison I present this scene only slightly abridged:

Svá er sagt, þá er óláfr konungr var á veizlunni á Ǫgvaldsnesi, at þar kom eitt kveld maðr gamall ok orðspakr mjǫk, hafði hǫtt síðan. Hann var einsýnn. Kunni sá maðr segja af ǫllum lǫndum. Hann kom sér í tal við konung. þótti konungi gaman mikit at ræðum hans ok spurði hann margra hluta, en gestrinn fekk órlausn til allra spurninga, ok sat konungr lengi um kveldit ... þá mælti byskup til konungs, segir, at mál væri at sofa. Gerði konungr þá svá, en gestrinn gekk út. Litlu síðar vaknaði konungr ok spurði þá eptir gestinum ok bað hann kalla til sín, en gestr fannsk þá hvergi. Eptir um morgininn lét konungi kalla til sín steikara ok þann, er drykkinn varðveitti, ok spyrr, ef nǫkkurr ókunnr maðr hefði komit til þeira. þeir segja, at þá er þeir skyldu matbúa, kom þar maðr nǫkkurr ok sagði, at furðu ill slátr suðu þeir til konungs borðs. Síðan fekk hann þeim tvær nautsíður digrar ok feitar, ok suðu þeir þær með ǫðru slátri. þá segir konungr, at þá vist alla skyldu ónýta, segir, at þetta myndi engi maðr verit hafa ok þar myndi verit hafa óðinn, sá er heiðnir men hǫfðu lengi á trúat, sagði, at óðinn skyldi þá engu áleiðis koma at svíkja þá.21

[It is said that when King óláfr was at the feast at ögvaldsnes, there came one evening an old man who spoke most eloquently and wore a low-hanging cowl. He was one-eyed. That man was able to tell of many lands. He entered into conversation with the king. The king enjoyed hearing him speak and asked him about many things, and the visitor was able to satisfy his curiosity with regard to all his queries, and the king stayed up late into the evening ... Then the bishop spoke to the king and said that it was time to sleep. The king did so, but the visitor went outside. A little later the king woke and asked after the visitor and ordered for him to be summoned, but the visitor was nowhere to be found. The next morning the king summoned his cook and the man who was in charge of the drink and asked whether any unknown man had come to them. They said that when they were preparing the food, a certain man came up to them and said that they were cooking rather poor meat for a king's table. Then he gave them two thick and fatty sides of beef, and they cooked them with the other meat. Then the king said that all that food would have to be discarded since that must have been no man, but rather Odin must have been there, the one who heathen men had long believed in, and he said that Odin would get nowhere trying to deceive them.]

In particular, the first few lines of this passage are very similar to the tale recounted by Borges, since there we have the description of the stranger turning up at King ólafr's court with a cowl almost covering his face (like the brim of the hat in Borges' version). Even right at the start of this tale it would be clear to a medieval Scandinavian that the visitor (as I have translated gestr, cognate with MdnE "guest") is Odin since this type of garb is often associated with him: hött síðan literally means "long cowl" and Síðhöttur is one of the many nicknames given to Odin.22 Moreover, the fact that he has only one eye and is repeatedly called gestr are also Odinic giveaways: in Hervarar saga, for example, Odin visits a king and uses the pseudonym Gestumblindi "Blind Visitor" before revealing his true identity.23 But following this the passage diverges. In Borges' tale Odin tells stories of ancient Germanic heroes before eventually telling of his own birth and revealing his true identity. He then lights the candle to which his life is intimately connected and dies. In the version from Heimskringla Odin tells tales about ögvaldr, after whom ögvaldsnes, where the feast is being held, is named, and then tries to poison the food before slipping away to cause mischief another day.

The source of the start of Borges' tale is almost certainly William Morris' translation of Heimskringla (314-16). In Morris' translation Odin is described as wearing "a wide slouched hat" (314) which is surely where Borges gets his description of the visitor con el ala del sombrero sobre los ojos "with the brim of his hat over his eyes." It is true that höttur is cognate with Modern English "hat" and can at times refer to a separate garment worn upon the head, but it can also refer to a head covering which forms part of a garment, namely a "cowl" or "hood." When accompanied with the adjective síður it almost always seems to refer to the latter, but not all Victorian translators were aware of this.24

Even if we know the origin of the first couple of lines, the question remains as to where the rest of Borges' tale comes from. The answer, quite simply, is Norna-Gests þáttr "The Tale of Norna-Gestr." This is a short tale which is inserted into ólafs saga Tryggvasonar hin mesta "The Longer Saga of ólafr Tryggvason" which forms part of a large compilation of texts found in the Old Icelandic manuscript named Flateyjarbók "The Book of Flatey." This tale also involves a visitor arriving to the court of King ólafr Tryggvason, this time while he is in Trondheim, beginning thus:

Sva er sagt, at á einum tíma, þá er ólafr konúngr (Tryggvason) sat í Þrándheimi, bar svá til, at einn maðr kom til hans at áliðnum degi, ok kvaddi hann sæmiliga. Konúngr tók honum vel ok spurði, hverr hann væri; en hann sagðist Gestr heita.25

[It is said that on one occasion, when King ólafr Tryggvason was in Trondheim, that it came to pass that a man arrived in his presence at the end of the day and greeted him respectfully. The king received him well and asked who he was. And he said that his name was Gestr.]

Note that in this version no mention of a hat or cowl is made, so that particular detail found in Borges' story cannot have been taken from this tale. But what follows has surely been Borges' inspiration, even if he does not explicitly source it. The edited version is divided into eleven chapters, of which chapters 4 to 10 are something of an embedded narrative with Norna-Gestr recounting his experiences connected with various legendary Germanic kings and heroes. Just prior to these embedded narratives, however, we hear of how Norna-Gestr entertained the court with his musical skills:

Tekr Gestr þá hörpu sína, ok slær vel ok lengi um kveldit, svá at öllum þikkir unat í at heyra, ok slær þó Gunnarsslag bezt; ok at lyktum slær hann Guðrúnarbrögð hinu fornu, þau höfðu menn eigi fyrr heyrt; ok eptir þat svófu menn af um nóttina.26

[Gestr/Visitor now takes his harp and plays it well and late into the evening such that everyone enjoyed listening to it, and best of all is when he plays "Gunnar's Tune." And last of all he played "The Ancient Wiles of Guðrún." People had not heard them previously. And after that the people slept through the night.]

Note that Guðrún (or Gudrun) and Gunnar are the two individuals mentioned by Borges as forming the basis of Odin's melodies. The embedded stories follow: Gestr tells of his time with Sigurðr the Volsung, Sigurðr's revenge upon King Hundingr's sons, how he slew Fáfnir the Dragon and Reginn the Dwarf, how Sigurðr himself was killed through treachery by Gjúki's sons and how Brynhildr immolated herself after his death. Gestr also tells briefly of his time with the sons of Ragnarr loðbrók "Hairy-Breeches" and King Haraldr hárfagri "Fair-Hair." One notable point in these stories is that Odin also makes an appearance, under the pseudonym of Hnikarr.27 Both this and the fact that Norna-Gestr claims to have been prime-signed (a type of primitive half-baptism) while with King Hlöðver (Emperor Louis - maybe the Fat or the Pious) point towards Norna-Gestr not actually being Odin, despite the similarities in his presentation. We must take his word for these facts, and Odin is often portrayed as a master deceiver, but perhaps we should accept it and read with the grain as the tale is presented in a sympathetic and melancholic tone very different to that of the story from Heimskringla which ends with Odin trying to poison the court's food.

Towards the end of Norna-Gests þáttr King ólafr Tryggvason asks Norna-Gestr to tell the story of where his name came from. Norna is the genitive plural form of norn, a word used to designate semi-deities or women with prophetic powers in Old Norse mythology, similar to the fates or sybils. Thus with Gestr meaning "Visitor," the name as a whole translates as something like "Visitor of the Sybils." Norna-Gestr tells how three such women came to his house when he was a child:

ok skyldu þær spá mèr örlaga; lá ek þá í vöggu, er þær skyldu tala um mitt mál; þá brunnu yfir mér tvö kertisljós. þær mæltu þá til mín, ok sögðu mikinn auðnumann verða mundu ok meira, enn aðra mína frændr eðr forellra... Hin ýngsta nornin þóttist oflitils metin hjá hinum tveimr, er þær spurðu hana eigi eptir slíkum spám, er svá voru mikils verðar... kallar hún þá hátt ok reiðuliga, ok bað hinar hætta svá góðum ummælum um mik: þvíat ek skapa honum þat, at hann skal eigi lifa lengr, enn kerti þat brennr, er upp er tendrat hjá sveininum. Eptir þetta tók hin eldri völvan kertit, ok slökti, ok biðr móður mína varðveita, ok kveikja eigi fyrr, enn at síðasta degi lífs míns ... þat var einn dag, at konúngr spyrr Gest: hversu lengi vildir þú nú lifa, ef þú réðir? Gestr svarar: skamma stund héðan af, ef guð vildi svá. Konúngr mælti: hvat mun nú líða, ef þú tekr kerti þitt? Gestr tók kerti sitt úr hörpustokki sínum. Konúngr bað þá kveikja; svá var gjört; ok er kertit var tendrat, brann þat skjótt ... var þat ok jafnskjótt, at kertit var brunnit, ok Gestr andast.28

[and they were supposed to tell my destiny. I lay in in my cradle, when they were to talk about that which concerned me. Two candles burned above me at that time. They then spoke to me and said that I would become a man with great good fortune and more so than my relatives or parents ... the youngest sybil felt that she was underappreciated alongside the other two, when they did not ask her to make similar predictions which were of equal value ... she then called out loudly and angrily and asked the others to stop speaking such good things about me, "because I ordain that he shall not live longer than the candle which stands there lit beside the boy takes to burn." After this the older sybil took the candle and extinguished it and asked my mother to guard it well and not to light it before the last day of my life ... One day the king asked Gestr: "how long would you now choose to live, if it were up to you?" Gestr answered: "only a little while from now, if God wishes it." The king spoke: "what will now come to pass, if you take your candle?" Gestr took his candle out of the upright part of his harp. The king asked that it be lit and that was done and when the candle had been lit it burned quickly ... it was also not long at all before the candle had burnt down and Gestr died.]

As can be seen, the parallel is striking, and thus Norna-Gests þáttr must be the principal source of Borges' tale. A translation into English of Norna-Gests þáttr appeared in Nora Kershaw's Stories and Ballads of the Far Past.29 Could it have been from this work that Borges came to know the story of Norna-Gestr? If so he makes no mention of it in the brief bibliography at the end of the volume, in the same way that, as I mentioned above, the Spanish translation of Huizinga's Homo ludens is not mentioned there."30 Whatever the edition or translation used, however, Borges has clearly made changes which fit with his interest in pre-Christian pagan culture and its survival. Norna-Gests þáttr has a strong emphasis on the change of religion, with Gestr, who was born in a pagan culture, being baptized before he dies alongside the Christian King Ólafr. It may well be that the tale itself was a Christian reinterpretation of an older pagan story, one which may be glimpsed with less intervention in Odin's visit to King ólafr Tryggvason from Heimskringla.31 But Borges himself has intervened and removed any trace of the Christian flavour of this text turning (or reverting) Gestr into a full-blown pagan Odin-figure. Why did he not simply tell the Odin story from Heimskringla instead? Surely it was because the idea of Norna-Gestr, a figure from the pagan past who acts as a conduit for information otherwise to be consigned to oblivion, was too tantalizing to pass up. Odin in Heimskringla does tell stories from the ancient past but not nearly as many and is more interested in poisoning the king's supper than dishing up anecdotes.  

Toswell has pointed out with regard to the short story "The Witness" that by offering "a rereading of the conversion from paganism to Christianity [and telling of] a man who will die before morning as the last soul who remembers the pagan gods ... the story reflects in several directions fascinating to Borges."32 She elicits the similarity to the story of Odin, but, as I have been arguing, we get further insight into the nature of Borges' fascination when we note that Borges, through his modifications, also actively shores up the pagan content. This was not the last time he would do so, as over thirty years later he likewise removed the Christian frame from his co-translation with María Kodama of Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning.33 As I argued earlier, Borges wanted to engage with materials that would allow him to recapture a pagan past; Huizinga's thesis from Homo ludens would have been deeply attractive to him. If medieval literary remains enabled the mythic play element to "reassert itself with increasing force," perhaps it was worthwhile for Borges to go back to the ancient Germanic literatures and make them speak anew to a contemporary Latin American audience. And thus, perhaps, we have a partial answer to Brljak's question of why Antiguas literaturas germánicas appeared when and where it did.

University of Gothenburg