This is a total departure for this blog, but archaeology is not active at the moment, so some Norse mythology may be called for because we seem to be living a nightmare of mythic proportion on planet Earth. (Ed.)
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Meet Ratatoskr, mischievous messenger squirrel to the Viking gods
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A depiction of Ratatoskr in a 17th-century illuminated manuscript. (Johanna Olafsdottir) |
By
Columnist
April
13, 2020 at 2:05 p.m. MDT
When
one ponders the case of Ratatoskr, the most celebrated squirrel in
Norse mythology, one must eventually confront a question: Why is there a horn
growing out of his forehead?
You
can see it in a 17th-century illuminated manuscript in the collection of the
Arni Magnusson Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavik. A drawing shows
the symbol around which all Norse mythology is organized: the famed Ygdrasil,
or World Tree. The tree is populated by various fearsome creatures. At the
bottom left is Ratatoskr, looking like a dog with a horn coming straight out of
his noggin.
“We
have no text to explain [this] for us,” said Gisli
Sigurdsson, a professor in the department of folklore at the
University of Iceland’s Magnusson
Institute.
We
will speculate about that horn in a bit, but first, a crash course in Norse
mythology and the role a squirrel plays in it: The Viking age began around A.D.
800 and ended about 300 years later. During that time, Norsemen (and women)
poured forth from Scandinavia, pillaging and colonizing their way across
Britain, through the scattered islands of the North Atlantic, into Iceland and
Greenland and venturing as far as North America.