Latin and Hebrew Analogues to The Old Norse Leek Riddle

Abstract

It has been thought that of the forty or so surviving Old Norse riddles, only two have close parallels in the wider international riddle tradition. This note shows, however, that the riddle on the leek in the probably thirteenth-century Heiðreks saga has a close parallel in one of the late antique or early medieval Bern Riddles, on garlic. Moreover, the larger conceptual structure of the leek riddle, which positions the leek as an inverted person situated between the earth and the sun, is paralleled by one of the riddles of the tenth-century Hebrew poet Dunash ben Labraṭ ha-Levi, which figures the sun and its light as a tree with its roots in the sky and its branches in the ground. The riddles of Heiðreks saga are more integrated into wider riddle culture than has been realised, and comparison of Dunash’s work with the Old Norse and Latin material helps to settle debate about the solution to Dunash’s riddle.

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