Werewolves in Norse-Icelandic Literature: Between the Monster and the Man by Minjie Su (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Werewolves in Norse-Icelandic Literature: Between the Monster and the Man by Minjie Su
• Chris White

Su, Minjie, (Borders, Boundaries, Landscapes, 3), Turnhout, Brepols, 2022; hardback; pp. 227; 13 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €80,00; ISBN 9782503596006.

Minjie Su’s presents a compelling argument about the nature and role of werewolves in Norse-Icelandic literature and sagas. Su collects and examines the surviving Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives and approaches them through a number of interesting and varied lenses, leading to a unique and comprehensive analysis.

Su does this throughout the structure of the text, which is divided into analyses of the various motifs that make up the medieval werewolf. These move from the external: ‘The Werewolf’s Skin’, ‘The Werewolf’s Clothing and the She-Wolf’; to the internal: ‘The Werewolf’s Landscape and Mindscape’, ‘The Werewolf’s Purpose’; and, rather adroitly, through the internalising of the external: ‘The Werewolf’s Food and Food Taboo’. This feels like a natural progression and allows the reader to move from what seems so obviously ‘other’ about the werewolf—the physical metamorphosis of man-to-beast—to the more complex internal ‘other’—the mentality of the man-as-wolf.

A particularly intriguing component of Su’s analysis is the juxtaposition of the werewolf and leprosy, using Susan Small and Didier Anzieu’s conceptualisation of the ‘skin-ego’, which Su develops to build a comprehensive examination of the importance of skin and its reflection of internal realities in medieval Norse-Icelandic literature. Su approaches this through the analysis of skin as an identifier through a reading of (. 1330), through which she ably demonstrates the importance of skin in both social acceptance and rejection, showing how ‘the skin channels [End Page 240] information from the inside and gives clues to the outside observers’ in these narratives, which ‘not only alters the individual’s perception of self but also others’ perception of that individual’ (pp. 38–39).

Also important is Su’s adoption of the concept of liminality as a potential explanation for the role of the werewolf in these works, adapting the sociological theories of Arnold van Gennep, Victory Turner, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, tracing the role of emotions in the stories, and what these can reveal about the society and cultures from which these stories sprang. Su also employs Guy Debord’s theories of psychogeography, and Paul S. Langeslag’s research relating to the role that seasons play in the creation of psychogeography. Su’s use of semiotic squares to introduce and summarise the mindscapes of Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives allows for a ready understanding of the uses of pyschogeography in analysing these tales and presents Su’s findings in an easily comprehendible format. Also of note is Su’s approach to the role of the ‘wicked woman’ as a metaphorical wolf, as a monster in beautiful skin, presented as a counterpoint to her (former) husband’s external monstrosity but internal humanity.

My primary criticism of Su’s work lies in one of the arguments she makes in her third chapter, ‘The Werewolf’s Food and Food Taboo’, where she states that werewolves ‘come very close to tasting human blood and flesh […] [which] leads to the problem of cannibalism, an othering act that would implicate the werewolves in complete monstrosity and [emphasis mine]’ (p. 92). This may seem, at first glance, to be a reasonable position in relation to food taboos, and Su points to the words of P. Kenneth Himmelman, who argued that ‘cannibalism which cannot be seen can be deemed morally acceptable’, in order to justify the notion that a man who is a wolf must, by living as the wolf, at some point taste human blood or flesh (p. 92). But in another tale, albeit one that is not Norse-Icelandic in origin, that of Raimbaud de Pouget from Gervase of Tilbury’s (Gervase of Tilbury, , ed. and trans. by S. E. Banks and James W. Binns, Oxford University Press, 2002, iii. 120, ‘Human Beings who Turn into Wolves’), this is shown to not be the case. In this narrative, de Pouget ‘devoured the young, and even mangled the old with savage bites’—Raimbaud de Pouget...