The Traditional Cosmology Society is proud to present the next in our series of Winter Talks
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines: Typological Perspectives on Wayland and Daedalus
50 George Square, G.01
17:00 - 19:00
Fri 31st January
The myth of the revenge and escape of the master smith Wayland, attested in medieval literature and iconography from England, Scandinvia and Germany, has been noted for its striking resemblance to the Graeco-Roman myth of Daedalus, the architect of the Cretan Labyrinth, who, like Wayland, escapes from captivity by building a set of mechanical wings. The similarity was not lost on medieval Icelanders, who translated the term 'labyrinth' as Vǫlundarhús (House of Wayland) in vernacular adaptations of Classical texts. The question of a genealogical relationship between the two stories has been hotly debated, and details of the date and means of horizontal transmission remain elusive. However, little attention has been paid to ways in which they may be read against each other from a typological perspective, providing useful insights into the worldviews of the societies that transmitted the myths, regardless of any direct relationship between them. This paper will focus on the presentation of the respective myths in the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses VIII (c. 8 CE) and the Old Norse eddic poem Vǫlundarkviða (c. 900 CE), situating each text in its own broader cultural context before considering the theme of dynastic collapse which is common to both traditions. Both texts evince a cultural anxiety concerning technology as a potential threat to social stability, with differences in emphasis evincing contrastive cultural outlooks at the periods in which the respective traditions took shape. Additionally, in the roles assigned to the respective royal women, the two narratives share a gendered pattern of causality through which they assert the importance of patriarchal control over technology and its practitioners for the preservation of social order. I will consider how this gendered structure fits in with the broader gender dynamics of Graeco-Roman and Norse myth respectively, as well as suggesting an analogous connection between metallurgy and patriarchal authority from anthropological fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa.
James Parkhouse is a fourth-year doctoral student in the English Faculty at Oxford University.