Air in Old Norse Literature: Cultural and Ecological Connotations

The aim of this article is to discuss the element of air and its various cultural connotations as represented in Old Norse literature. In this field, scholars have studied various phenomena that are adjacent to the topic of air, such as philological and linguistic studies of poetic language on air/winds; the link between air, breath and magic; air’s significance in the Christian cosmology and political theology. However, these debates have been conducted separately from each other, and they have not focused on air as an element of the ecology on its own. In this article, I will revisit some of the central sources used in these discussions, in combination with some additional texts, in order to collate the variety of cultural and ecological connotations of air in Old Norse literature. A main topic that emerges in this investigation is the role of air in respectively the pre-Christian and Christian cosmologies, in their creations and ecological dynamics. The article will reveal previously unregistered similarities and differences in the representations of air in these two ecologies and discuss the meaning of their coexistence in Old Norse literature. Ultimately, the article demonstrates that Christianity, with its literature and book-culture, may be seen as a powerful “wind of change,” which redefined not only the local religion, politics and culture, but also the ecology, including the conceptualization of air and the winds.