{"title":"Joshua S. Duclos, Wilderness, Morality, and Value","authors":"K. O’Brien","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.24447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24447","url":null,"abstract":"Joshua S. Duclos, Wilderness, Morality, and Value (New York: Lexington Books, 2022), 141 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN: 9781666901368.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45868253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Celia Nyamweru, Some Traditions of the Akamba of Kenya","authors":"Michael Sheridan","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.25203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25203","url":null,"abstract":"Celia Nyamweru, Some Traditions of the Akamba of Kenya (Nairobi: Old Africa Books, 2021), 258 pp., USD $13.47 (pbk), ISBN: 9798753641663.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45410236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, we explore the contexts and appearances of what we argue is a Norwegian version of the Green Man – the Glibb – in vernacular settings. We also discuss the figure’s possible meanings in Norwegian secular culture. Most of the objects are part of the digital artifact collection called DigitaltMuseum (Digital Museum), which is a common database for Norwegian and Swedish museums and collections. Our collection and analysis of this material provides an initial step toward documenting the figure’s appearances and uses beyond the ecclesial material culture; however, it does not represent an exhaustive list of sources. We investigate the appearance of this particular ‘Green Man’ figure, discussing its material form and iconographical features and analysing its placement and occurrence. We argue that the Glibb’s ambiguous and flexible imagery is also a flexible symbol. Over the centuries, such symbols can enter into new constellations and interpretations of meaning with is new generation that continues to use their material forms.
{"title":"Foliate Mask in Vernacular Material Culture from Medieval to Modern Norway","authors":"Karen V Lykke, Ane Ohrvik","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.24300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24300","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we explore the contexts and appearances of what we argue is a Norwegian version of the Green Man – the Glibb – in vernacular settings. We also discuss the figure’s possible meanings in Norwegian secular culture. Most of the objects are part of the digital artifact collection called DigitaltMuseum (Digital Museum), which is a common database for Norwegian and Swedish museums and collections. Our collection and analysis of this material provides an initial step toward documenting the figure’s appearances and uses beyond the ecclesial material culture; however, it does not represent an exhaustive list of sources. We investigate the appearance of this particular ‘Green Man’ figure, discussing its material form and iconographical features and analysing its placement and occurrence. We argue that the Glibb’s ambiguous and flexible imagery is also a flexible symbol. Over the centuries, such symbols can enter into new constellations and interpretations of meaning with is new generation that continues to use their material forms.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46321122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Green Man is a familiar image in British popular culture who is celebrated in a variety of ways, not least in an ever-growing number of festive processions in towns, villages, and cities, particularly around Beltane (May Day). Combining two scholarly voices, this article offers a survey of the Green Man image and related ritual phenomena in what we refer to as the ‘Green Man complex’. Here we address the Green Man’s role in what could be the mobilization of responses to the current ecological crisis, as well as his relationship to growing trends in dark green religion. Last, we turn our attention to the theoretical innovations that current Green Man phenomena invites: more than ‘symbolic’ or ‘representational’, the Green Man is a source for contemporary Pagan ritual religious creativity that is being used in animistic, embodied, territorializing, and reciprocal fashions to direct human attention toward the other-than-human vegetable kingdom.
{"title":"‘We’ll All Dance each Springtime with Jack-in-the-Green’","authors":"Amy Whitehead, Andy Letcher","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.20463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.20463","url":null,"abstract":"The Green Man is a familiar image in British popular culture who is celebrated in a variety of ways, not least in an ever-growing number of festive processions in towns, villages, and cities, particularly around Beltane (May Day). Combining two scholarly voices, this article offers a survey of the Green Man image and related ritual phenomena in what we refer to as the ‘Green Man complex’. Here we address the Green Man’s role in what could be the mobilization of responses to the current ecological crisis, as well as his relationship to growing trends in dark green religion. Last, we turn our attention to the theoretical innovations that current Green Man phenomena invites: more than ‘symbolic’ or ‘representational’, the Green Man is a source for contemporary Pagan ritual religious creativity that is being used in animistic, embodied, territorializing, and reciprocal fashions to direct human attention toward the other-than-human vegetable kingdom.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46228534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern Pagan religions are past-oriented, seeking inspiration and legitimation from the pre-Christian religions that once existed in and around Europe. This has led modern Pagan groups to adopt various ideas about pre-Christian religions and their survival that stem from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship – including the notion of the Green Man. The belief that the foliate heads of medieval ecclesiastical architecture demonstrated evidence for a pre-Christian religion surviving into the High and Late Middle Ages, as articulated in its most complete form by Lady Raglan in 1939, appealed to early Wiccans such as Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, who interpreted these heads as depictions of the Wiccan Horned God. By the 1990s, the Green Man had become arecurring image in the modern Pagan milieu who was increasingly incorporated into ritual, while the 2000s witnessed the growth of modern Pagan literature devoted to this new sylvan god.
{"title":"New God for a New Paganism","authors":"Ethan Doyle White","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.20036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.20036","url":null,"abstract":"Modern Pagan religions are past-oriented, seeking inspiration and legitimation from the pre-Christian religions that once existed in and around Europe. This has led modern Pagan groups to adopt various ideas about pre-Christian religions and their survival that stem from late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship – including the notion of the Green Man. The belief that the foliate heads of medieval ecclesiastical architecture demonstrated evidence for a pre-Christian religion surviving into the High and Late Middle Ages, as articulated in its most complete form by Lady Raglan in 1939, appealed to early Wiccans such as Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, who interpreted these heads as depictions of the Wiccan Horned God. By the 1990s, the Green Man had become arecurring image in the modern Pagan milieu who was increasingly incorporated into ritual, while the 2000s witnessed the growth of modern Pagan literature devoted to this new sylvan god.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42629470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Searching for the Green Man","authors":"Karen V Lykke, Bron Taylor","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.25977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25977","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>.</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45941176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Green Man, a figure usually taken as representing the vivifying and fertilising power of the natural world, and especially of vegetation, has become one of the icons of modern ecology and environmental spirituality. He is often represented visually by a foliate head, gushing leaves from mouth and nose, of the kind found carved in medieval churches, and associated also with the foliate Jack-in-the-Green character in May Day festivities and with dying and returning fertility gods in ancient mythologies. This essay is intended to chart the development of the figure, which gains much of its emotive and creative power from being a twentieth-century construction, drawing on a range of disparate older images. It provides an important case study of the relationship between professional and independent scholarship in the creation of modern ideas, and the manner in which new and powerful iconic motifs can be evolved within modern spirituality.
{"title":"Green Man","authors":"R. Hutton","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.24138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24138","url":null,"abstract":"The Green Man, a figure usually taken as representing the vivifying and fertilising power of the natural world, and especially of vegetation, has become one of the icons of modern ecology and environmental spirituality. He is often represented visually by a foliate head, gushing leaves from mouth and nose, of the kind found carved in medieval churches, and associated also with the foliate Jack-in-the-Green character in May Day festivities and with dying and returning fertility gods in ancient mythologies. This essay is intended to chart the development of the figure, which gains much of its emotive and creative power from being a twentieth-century construction, drawing on a range of disparate older images. It provides an important case study of the relationship between professional and independent scholarship in the creation of modern ideas, and the manner in which new and powerful iconic motifs can be evolved within modern spirituality.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49138552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Explore Green Men (Heart of Albion Press, 2008) the British scholar Mercia MacDermott provided one of the most important and serious works on foliate-human iconography, which has become widely known in common parlance as the Green Man. She graciously agreed to let us reprint the chapter ‘Triple Hares and the Green Men: The Indian Connection’ along with a significantly shortened version of her introductory chapter, ‘In Search of Green Men’. Her introduction provides an important background for understanding Green Man research. The reprinted chapter suggests that Green Man iconography originated in India and subsequently journeyed to Europe with the Vikings. Because two of the articles in this issue of the JSRNC focus on such iconography in Norway, MacDermott’s proposal provides an essential baseline for exploring whether the Green Man was originally a cultural export that journeyed to Europe on a Viking ship. MacDermott’s niece, Dr. Gwen Adshead, assisted us with the editing of the article republished here; she can be contacted at Gwen.Adshead@westlondon.nhs.uk.
{"title":"In Search of Green Men","authors":"Mercia Macdermott","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.25765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.25765","url":null,"abstract":"In Explore Green Men (Heart of Albion Press, 2008) the British scholar Mercia MacDermott provided one of the most important and serious works on foliate-human iconography, which has become widely known in common parlance as the Green Man. She graciously agreed to let us reprint the chapter ‘Triple Hares and the Green Men: The Indian Connection’ along with a significantly shortened version of her introductory chapter, ‘In Search of Green Men’. Her introduction provides an important background for understanding Green Man research. The reprinted chapter suggests that Green Man iconography originated in India and subsequently journeyed to Europe with the Vikings. Because two of the articles in this issue of the JSRNC focus on such iconography in Norway, MacDermott’s proposal provides an essential baseline for exploring whether the Green Man was originally a cultural export that journeyed to Europe on a Viking ship. MacDermott’s niece, Dr. Gwen Adshead, assisted us with the editing of the article republished here; she can be contacted at Gwen.Adshead@westlondon.nhs.uk.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45834994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The foliate head is a common motif in the architectural decoration of Norwegian stave churches. It is commonly used in doorways, where beast’s heads are disgorging foliage or are spewing stems with vine. The artistic style of wooden church decoration in Norway from the eleventh and twelfth centuries clearly shows inspiration from Viking art. This legacy has led to the belief that Christianity inherited the foliate head from a heathen past. This understanding is mainly due to a need for more convincing explanations for this motif. However, it is also due to the high status of trees in Old Norse society, especially Yggdrasill, the great tree that in Norse mythology constituted the center of the world. The article traces the sources for the motif in Norwegian architectural sculpture and the notion of the Green Man in the scholarly tradition in Norway. The Green Man was absent in Viking art, and the motif first appearedin Scandinavia in Romanesque architectural stone sculpture in the early twelfth century.
{"title":"Foliate Head in Medieval Norway","authors":"Kjartan Hauglid","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.23944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23944","url":null,"abstract":"The foliate head is a common motif in the architectural decoration of Norwegian stave churches. It is commonly used in doorways, where beast’s heads are disgorging foliage or are spewing stems with vine. The artistic style of wooden church decoration in Norway from the eleventh and twelfth centuries clearly shows inspiration from Viking art. This legacy has led to the belief that Christianity inherited the foliate head from a heathen past. This understanding is mainly due to a need for more convincing explanations for this motif. However, it is also due to the high status of trees in Old Norse society, especially Yggdrasill, the great tree that in Norse mythology constituted the center of the world. The article traces the sources for the motif in Norwegian architectural sculpture and the notion of the Green Man in the scholarly tradition in Norway. The Green Man was absent in Viking art, and the motif first appearedin Scandinavia in Romanesque architectural stone sculpture in the early twelfth century.","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42940986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review of Courtney Catherine Barajas's Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book","authors":"Donna Beth Ellard","doi":"10.1558/jsrnc.22491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.22491","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43748,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48149438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}