Last week's storm of Wagnerian proportions, appropriatyely enough for me, was reaching its peak as I delivered my first public paper (on the Old English interpretation of the Valkyries) to the 'Doing Things with Old Norse Myth: A Research & Cultural Symposium on Mythological Processes', Aarhus Old Norse Mythology conference series, Reykjavík, on 26 November. Whilst seemingly not directly related in any way to this current line of research (the paper is a very abbreviated form of my MFAAH Humanities essay for Old English texts class), I wanted to use this big step into the academic realm as a means to rethink how my many and varied influences and interests cross-pollinate the work I do. Whilst the paper dealt with literary, linguistic and mythological concerns, at its heart still lies my interest in 'non-standard' beings, forms and entities: in this case, a class of female spirits who 'de-sex' themselves to operate in a masculine environment, to the point of 'cross-dressing' into male war-gear, with shields, helms and armour. This radical breaching of social and gendered boundaries is hardly alien to my recent studies of trans, non-binary and queer aesthetics andpersonhood. Several of the other talks, too, intersected my own interests and work (whether in their approach to archaeological human remains, artefact relics or literary/mythological body forms), and I was able to make some very interesting contacts in the field. As a result I'm already thinking about a new paper for next year's Aarhus event: on the topic of the female voice in myth and literature, its sonic use in certain contemporary genres of music (e.g. Viking metal, folk metal), and its tendency to be dissolved negatively into 'noise' by misogynistic concerns with reference to Gnaomi Siemens' notions of the ancient female voice as queer.
All this also gives me the chance to revisit one of my original research proposal questions: why certain non-standard forms, such as the hermaphrodite, the androgyne, the 'queer' or otherwise subversive influence (cf. Loki, in the Lokasenna) persist in mythological, legendary and poetic narratives (existing happily in theory) and yet are marginalized and oppressed in practice.
This is all early-career stuff at the moment, but the most exciting aspect of delivering the paper was how it has managed to re-unite the multiple threads of my source materials and reinvigorate my reference points.
