A Note on the Old Norse-Icelandic Verb at dreyma “to dream”

In Old Norse-Icelandic writing, excepting a few outlier cases, the verb at dreyma, “to dream” is accompanied by an accusative noun or pronoun (for example, the first person singular accusative pronoun mik, “me”) and sometimes an accusative object (for example, the singular accusative noun draum, “dream”).1 This morphological feature of the language has led some to claim that the absence of a nominative subject in references to the act of dreaming reflects a certain cultural attitude toward dreams in medieval Norse society. Ronald Grambo, for example, has asserted that the “special structure of the clauses reveals that people in ancient times in the Norse area conceived the dream as a supernatural message, e. g., from enemies, friends or from supernatural powers.”2 Popular writer Jane Smiley, author of the historical novel The Greenlanders (1988), has likewise suggested that this construction represents the medieval Norse view that dreams were “actually coming from without.”3 Similar claims feature throughout and persist in scholarship on the subject.4In a rather detailed analysis, anthropologist Adriënne Heijnen identifies the phrase mik dreymdi draum “I dreamed a dream” as a “double (accusative) object construction.” She suggests that the morphological features of this phrase are indicative of a belief that there is an unidentified agentive entity (the implicit nominative subject of the verb), a “power” exercising a direct influence (marked by the direct objects) on both the dreaming person and the dream.5Heijnen argues, based on the generative grammar approach she adopts in her analysis, that this common construction reflects an understanding that the dreamer both acts and undergoes action simultaneously and that Old Norse-Icelandic speakers must have regarded the act of dreaming as one in which “a complex constellation of entities is involved.”6 Though more thorough and nuanced in her approach than many other scholars, Heijnen nevertheless reiterates the familiar claim that the morphological features typically associated with the verb at dreyma show that medieval Norse people regarded dreams as something that happened to them, at least in part, at the order of some external and frequently paranormal or supernatural power.Readers of Old Norse-Icelandic literature would doubtless agree that such a view is evident in a variety of written works and was likely held by at least some if not a large proportion of medieval Norse people. Yet there are two significant flaws in the argument that the morphological features associated with the verb at dreyma provide evidence of the common existence of this view. The first is that this argument does not take into account the many other Old Norse-Icelandic verbs that exhibit the same or highly similar morphological features. The following nonexhaustive list contains numerous such verbs that, like at dreyma, typically refer to the experiencer of an action, occurrence, or state of being using an accusative noun or pronoun and sometimes take an accusative object as well: at bresta, “to lack, fall short of,” at fýsa, “to wish for,” at gruna, “to suspect, doubt,” at hungra, “to hunger,” at iðra, “to repent of,” at kala, “to freeze,” at langa, “to long for,” at minna, “to recollect, remember,” at sundla, “to be giddy,” at syfja, “to get sleepy,” at ugga, “to fear,” at undra, “to wonder, be astonished,” at vanta, “to want, lack,” at verkja, “to feel pain,” at þrjóta, “to fail, lack, run short of,” at þyrsta, “to be thirsty”7Notably, many of these verbs refer to things that modern readers would associate with different kinds of cognitive or emotional processes. Several others are associated with different kinds of embodied states. Regardless of whether the act of dreaming should fall within either of these categories, following the same line of argument mentioned above, medieval Norse people must have also viewed the activities, occurrences, or states of being described by these verbs as happening at the order of some external and perhaps paranormal or supernatural power.Yet few if any scholars have made such arguments. With this in mind, rather than distinguishing dreams from other kinds of experiences, the typical morphological features of at dreyma group the act of dreaming with a variety of other experiences that modern readers would regard as cognitive or emotional processes or different kinds of bodily states. Furthermore, in a study across several medieval and modern Germanic languages, Þórhallur Eyþórsson and Jóhanna Barðdal have shown that the “nonnominative [sic] subject-like obliques” in such constructions (for example, the first person singular accusative pronoun mik, “me”) behaved syntactically as subjects rather than objects and were likely to be perceived as such by Old Norse-Icelandic speakers.8 Medieval Norse people's understanding of the nature, origins, and causes of dreams was very different from our own modern understanding of the same phenomena, but the morphological features associated with the verb at dreyma do not seem to differentiate the act of dreaming from other actions or experiences, such as those described by the verbs listed above. Moreover, unless the same must also be said of those other actions or experiences described by verbs exhibiting the same or highly similar morphological features, neither do those morphological features associated with the verb at dreyma offer evidence that medieval Norse people regarded dreams as something that happened to them at the order of some external and perhaps paranormal or supernatural power.If drawing attention to this inconsistency is not convincing enough, a second notable flaw in arguments drawing conclusions concerning medieval Norse cultural views based on the verb at dreyma's typical morphological features is one that bears similarity to the so-called etymological fallacy. This fallacy occurs when the meaning of a given word or phrase in a specific time period is automatically thought to be the same as that signified by its etymological origins. Judith Jesch has examined how this kind of fallacy emerges, for example, in both popular and academic discussions of the Old Norse-Icelandic nouns víkingr (masc. sing.) and víking (fem. sing.) as well as the modern English term Viking.9 There are several different theories regarding the etymological origins of these Old Norse-Icelandic terms. They may originate, for example, in the terms vík, “small bay” or vika, “sea-mile,” or perhaps even derive from the name of the Norwegian district of Viken (Víkin) and may have originally referred to people from that area. Yet regardless of which theory one subscribes to, in Old Norse-Icelandic writing the terms víkingr and víking rather refer, respectively, to someone who went on seafaring expeditions, with no specific implications about their regional or even ethnic origins, and the activity undertaken during those expeditions, which could include but was not limited to raiding. Similarly, although the modern English term Viking and its cognates in other modern languages convey certain ethnic connotations or a specific cultural identity, this is not the case for the Old Norse-Icelandic terms from which these modern terms originate.As Jesch explains, “words change or develop in meaning,” and for a given term “there is no guarantee that its original meaning was retained from when the word was first formed, nor can we say for certain when that was.”10 With this in mind and returning to the verb at dreyma, the phrase mik dreymdi (draum) certainly predates the development of writing in medieval Norse society.11 Yet without knowing the phrase's precise origins it remains difficult to assert that its morphological features reveal significant information about broadly held views toward the act of dreaming among medieval Norse people at any specific point or even over an extended period of time. Old Norse-Icelandic speakers in the Middle Ages, including those responsible for the manuscripts that survive from the thirteenth century onwards, were not primarily the creators but more so inheritors of the language they used. The same is, of course, also true for modern Icelandic speakers, and it is worth noting that the typical Old Norse-Icelandic construction used to refer to the act of dreaming has persisted in modern Icelandic in the phrase mig dreymdi (draum).12 Yet, few would suggest that all or most modern Icelandic speakers who use the phrase mig dreymdi (draum) regard dreams as something other than the product of the human body and mind, though undoubtedly some do.13 Likewise, there is no reason to draw such an unambiguous conclusion about medieval Norse people's attitudes toward dreams based on the morphological features associated with the Old Norse-Icelandic verb at dreyma, the roots of which remain unknown and are perhaps irretrievable.All of this is, of course, not to say that medieval Norse people conventionally regarded dreams as the product of the human body and mind rather than as something that happened at the order of some external and perhaps paranormal or supernatural power. In fact, as mentioned above, there is plenty of evidence in Old Norse-Icelandic writing that many and perhaps even a majority of medieval Norse people either held such views themselves or were aware of such views held both by their contemporaries and their ancestors. Some evidence seems to connect such beliefs to pre-Christian traditions and practices including, for example, customs concerning so-called fylgjur, which refer to animals or women that sometimes appear in dreams and bear some kind of connection, often an effective one, with the events of waking life.14 Well-established ideas about the causes of dreams stemming from Christian traditions, including ideas both sanctioned and censured by the church, are also evident in Old Norse-Icelandic writing. The former includes scriptural writing and homilies, local and imported hagiographical traditions, and Old Norse-Icelandic versions of Gregory's Dialogues and the Elucidarius, both of which convey ideas about dreams originating in the divine, the demonic, or simply the events of one's day-to-day life.15 The latter includes medieval dreambooks such as the so-called Somniale Danielis, which were wildly popular but censured in medieval canon law.16 Despite this, for those reasons outlined above, it remains that the morphological features typically associated with the Old Norse-Icelandic verb at dreyma do not offer convincing or even corroborative evidence that medieval Norse people regarded dreams as something that happened to them at the order of some external and frequently paranormal or supernatural power

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