2016/03/01 by Joep Leerssen · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics #Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/685061
openalex publication_date 2016/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
This article traces the scholarly interest in Europe’s non-Classical mythologies, from the rise of Edda studies in late eighteenth-century Denmark to the appropriation of Celtic origin myths in Spanish Galicia, and the flourish of overlapping Baltic mythologies between Tallinn and Vilnius, in the decades before 1900. Mythological studies attracted many important scholars (most notably Jacob Grimm, who published his benchmark Deutsche Mythologie in 1835), reached large readerships and inspired many artists, writers and composers. The progress and spread of this field of knowledge production is, however, extremely difficult to trace because it remained a cultural pursuit and never quite became a scholarly discipline. Its methods were heterogeneous and contradictory, combining the comparatist historicism of the New Philology with a tendency to leap from documentation to fanciful interpretation. The failure of the mythological pursuit to achieve academic consolidation stands in intriguing contrast to its popularity and its successful activation of a multinational repertoire of mythical figures and themes—sometimes reliably documented, often speculative, and always a welcome fuel for nationalist consciousness raising.