Pagan and Christian influences on "The Seafarer"

by chickentenders222

Hello everyone, I'm new here and looking for some assistance.

I have to write an essay on how symbolism in the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer" reflects both pagan and Christian influences.

The pagan religions I've roughly listed in the past 2 minutes are:

Norse Religions / Norse Paganism

Anglo-Saxon paganism

Zoroastrianism (Only really because it's regarded as having a large influence onto monotheistic religions period, and regarded as being the 1st monotheistic religion but that's a topic of debate)

My question here being, what pagan religions should I use for this essay? As well as what sources and such should I use? I'm sure many of you are aware, but it's quite arduous to find well-sourced information on the values, ethics, beliefs, principles and practices of the vast denominations of Norse religions, due to the fact that it wasn't written down and the people who wrote it down were priests etc. So it's influenced by Christian bias. I get that I'm not going to get anything concrete obviously, but I would just like decent sources and guidance as there's many interpretations or denominations of Nordic Paganism, and Anglo-Saxon Paganism, that are very similar, but differentiate etc. But really finding sources that, at all seem credible for most of this appears to be a bit of a nightmare.

Also if you guys have read "The Seafarer" and could give advice to what symbolism would be good to use and such here it would be appreciated, as well as what Christian denominations to utilize / or sources for that as well, but I'm sure that's quite easier to find than the pagan religions. I have a lot of the poem annotated and such, but if anyone wants to lend a hand, all help is appreciated. But mostly my issue is with the pagan stuff, I know a bit about it from years prior, reading a lot of research papers and stuff years ago, but finding sources and everything, or any specifics seems quite hard to do. Thanks !

y_sengaku

Honestly speaking, I, though neither an expert in OE literature nor in the 10th century ASE, don't have a strong incentive to interpret the poem in question from a standpoint of possible pagan influence primarily.

  • The poem is a part of the manuscript called Exeter Book, compiled in the third quarter of the 10th century, prior to the beginning of so-called Second Viking Age. It is the only extant manuscript that includes the work, and we cannot ascertain the exact provenance of the work. The alleged date of the extant MS suggests that the manuscript was not influenced under the 'cultural paganism' around the year 1000, inspired by the return of the Viking, in contrast to Beowulf MS. As for the concept of 'Cultural Paganism', please refer to Jesch's article in [Cavill 2004].
  • Exeter book includes many explicitly Christian works like Cynewulf, Daniel, the life of St. Guthlac and so on. From a codicolodical point of view, it is probably more useful to consider the religious symbolism of such works in MS collectively, rather than one by one individually.
  • I checked the state of research in this poem very briefly, and the majority of the literature since Whitelock (originally published in 1950) seem to have focused on the Christian symbolism of voyage.

As for the better understanding of current state of research in Anglo-Saxon 'paganism', I'd recommend Martin Carver et alii (ed.), Signals of Belief in Early England, Oxford: Oxbow, 2010, that focus on how the Anglo-Saxons perceived the natural surroundings around them and interacted them with help of different kind of rituals.

Literature: