Reviewed Work: ​Roles of the Northern Goddess​ by Hilda Ellis Davidson

Review by: ​Sandra Ballif Straubhaar, ​Scandinavian Studies​, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 360-362

There is no question as to the stature of Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson as a long-term and respected
scholar of Scandinavian mythology. Her Penguin overview text (first published in 1964) is standard
for any undergraduate survey course on the subject. Of researchers active in the second half of this
century whose books and articles are listed in John Lindow’s ​Scandinavian Mythology: An Annotated
Bibliography​ (Garland, 1988), Davidson weighs in easily as one of the ten most cited- an honor she
shares with names such as Georges Dumézil, Dag Strömbäck, and Jan de Vries. Dr. Davidson's
welcome latest book is attracting a broader readership than volumes reviewed within these pages
commonly do.

A glance at the Internet informs us that ​Roles of the Northern Goddess​ is currently being discussed
and sold on the Web not only at amazon.com (by book-buyers who, Amazon informs us, have also
recently purchased such titles as ​Northern Mysteries and Magick ​by Freya Aswynn), but also at such
Ásatrú and Wiccan websites as "IrminsÆttúr" ​souljourney.com​ and ​witchs-brew.com.

This is a book whose marketing and potential use, because of its crossover potential between
academia and postmodern neo-paganism, might possibly be of greatest interest from a social-
anthropological point of view, since its content seems to have been carefully selected with that
bifurcated potential audience in mind. Even the title seems to have been crafted with canny
marketing sense: "Roles" to maintain scholarly distance and keep the numinous at bay; but "the
Northern Goddess” (singular) to appeal to those for whom the phrase "The Goddess” has become
invested with a more-than-academic valence.

Davidson notes at the outset of the book that Snorri’s ​Edda ​includes up to sixteen goddess names,
but that (other than in the cases of Freyja and Frigg) there is little specific information on any of
them, in Snorri or anywhere. Faced with this difficulty, Davidson brings together much little-known
material to focus instead on recurrent functions or roles fulfilled by goddesses from a variety of
European traditions: mistress of animals, mistress of grain, mistress of the house and household
arts, and mistress of life and death. She argues intriguingly that the now-standard Dumézilian
tripartite division of deities (king/magician/judge, warrior, producer of goods) loses applicability
entirely when said deities are female, since goddesses often encompass all three functions (188). A
few odd flaws are found in the book, such as "Wallendorf” for "Willendorf” ("the Venus of
Wallendorf”), but these could easily have been caused by global-search-and-replace mistakenly
used and do not diminish the general quality of the work.

We in the 1990s may be the first generation of academics to find enrolled in undergraduate Nordic
myth courses considerable numbers of students whose religious practices are rooted in extrapolated
(re-constructed) pre- Christian ​European​ rituals drawn from twentieth-century writers as diverse as
Gerald Gardner, Aleister Crowley, Starhawk, and Edred Thorsson--students whose interest in Odin
and Freyja, for instance, runs deeper than term-paper level. This on the face of it ​ought​ to be no
more problematic (say) than teaching a course on Benedictine spirituality or Scholastic theology to a
mixed group which includes a subset of practicing Catholics; but a number of volatile and debatable
real-world issues, involving not only religion (specifically: the construction of good and evil), as well
as the construction of race and ethnicity, turn out to be at stake. Davidson’s new book is clearly
being marketed in the hope that dialogue between academic and popular concerns can be opened
and pursued credibly. This reviewer hopes the same, for open discussion is needed.

Sandra Ballif Straubhaar

University of Texas at Austin

Reviewed Work: Roles of the Northern Goddess by Hilda E. Davidson

Review by: Nancy L. Wicker
American Journal of Archaeology
Vol. 106, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), p. 144

Hilda Ellis Davidson gathers information about numerous roles of northern goddesses rather than
seeking their origins or the significance of particular female deities. These goddesses of northern
Europe have received much less attention than either the male gods of the north or the male and
female deities of Mediterranean regions, and the author attempts to rectify this dearth of information.
In many ways, the coverage of this book is much broader than the title indicates. Though known
particularly for her standard overview of Scandinavian mythology, ​Gods and Myths of Northern
Europe​ (Baltimore 1964), Davidson demonstrates extensive knowledge of comparative material from
Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and Rome, as well as farther afield. She seems equally at home
discussing Artemis, Kybele, Diana, Epona, Isis, Inanna, or even Kali in India and Pele in Hawaii, as
she does such Nordic goddesses as Freyja and Frigg.

The author does not set geographic bounds for what she means by "northern." At times it seems
synonymous with Scandinavian, sometimes more broadly Germanic, but also British-both
Anglo-Saxon and Celtic. Besides its sweeping geographic coverage, the work is also more inclusive
than the title connotes because Davidson discusses numerous goddesses rather than just one, and
throughout the book she uses the plural and singular interchangeably. The title seems to be a
conscious yet subtle attempt to draw in an audience attracted to "The Great Goddess," although
right away she refutes the idea of one supreme goddess. Her critique of Marija Gimbutas, who is
mentioned only at the beginning and end of the book, is not heavy-handed. Davidson says, however,
that she wants "to correct the over-emphasis on the goddess as a power hostile to and opposed by
the gods of the Indo-Europeans" (188). She points out that some god- desses were benevolent while
others were destructive, and she stresses that goddesses were important to both men and women.
The book is divided into chapters arranged according to the "occupations and needs of women,"
including the mistresses of animals, grain, textiles, the household, and life and death. Davidson
emphasizes that various female deities and their functions overlap. They tend to be asso- ciated with
liminal aspects of life including birth, death, and destiny, and they have connections with spinning,
dairying, and midwifery that were later carried on by fairy godmothers and female saints. Davidson
appeals to popular readers who want to learn more about the Great Goddess without alienating the
academic audience by demonstrating her vast knowledge and careful scholarship despite the limited
evidence. Al- though the 13th-century Icelandic writer Snorri Sturlu- son mentioned 16 goddesses of
Norse mythology, he pro- vided little information about most of them. Davidson tries to tease out as
much as possible by looking at paral- lels in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, and by
drawing on evidence from mythology, religion, folklore, literature, and archaeology. However, she is
more com- fortable with popular tradition and legends as sources than archaeology where she relies
heavily on secondary literature published in the 1960s and earlier, which was timely then for her
1964 survey but now is dated. In her discussion of goldgubber (small gold foil figures of men and
women), she mentions only finds from Trondheim and Helg6 rather than more recent and substantial
dis- coveries at Sorte Muld, Lundeborg, and Uppakra, and says that their function is still disputed,
citing sources from 1954 and 1909. In addition, her presentation of Furstenberg-type gold bracteates
is inconsistent; she uses out-of-date counts supplied by Mackeprang (1952), but then two pages
later refers to a 1982 discovery from the Danish island of Funen. These flaws in handling material
with which I am familiar lead me to wonder whether oth- er areas suffer from similar problems.
Overall, the quality of editing is very good. Minor mis- takes include "Wallendorf" consistently for
"Willendorf" and omitted diacritics like the umlauts in Helg6 and Ffirstenberg. These mistakes with
special characters are curious since care is taken to use the less accessible Icelandic letters. The
book is a compendium of little-known material, which is both a strength and a weakness. It is
valuable as an encyclopedic gathering of information, but there is little synthesis to tie the parts
together. It is tedious to read straight through, and most readers will likely dip into it for reference. In
spite of deficiencies with recent archaeological literature, Davidson is courageous to bring all this
knowledge together to inform the goddess-seek- er as well as the scholarly reader.

NANCY L. WICKER