Description: Trish Baer based this needle felting on an illustration in the
first edition of Annie
Keary's The Heroes of Asgard and the Giants of Jotunheim:
Or, the Week and Its Story (1857) illustrated by
Charles
Altamont
Dolye. Keary joined the
details of the myths concerning Freyja´s necklace Brísingamen and the wanderings of
Freyja by inventing a curse attached to the necklace to explain
why Freyja’s husband, Óðr,
can no longer be with her. In Doyle´s illustration, Freyja is
about to enter the wood known as Járnviðr when she encounters the witch who
lives there. The birds and wolves in the forest are the witch´s
children. See Research Notes below for information relevant to
the needle felting. See Doyle's original illustration.
Source: Trish Baer's needle felted rendering of "Freyja at
the Entrance of the Iron Wood"
Folio or Page: This needle felting was
inspired by an illustration on page 150 of the first edition of Annie
Keary's The
Heroes of Asgard and the Giants of Jotunheim: Or, the Week and Its
Story (1857) illustrated by Charles Altamont
Dolye.
Medium: not known
Date: 2025-09-20
Dimensions (mm): 80 x 127
Provenance:
This needle felting piece is from the Collection of P. A.
Baer.
Rights:
All Rights Reserved
Research notes, early print reviews, etc.:
The title page for the The Heroes of
Asgard and the Giants of Jötunheim, Or, The Week and Its Story does
not name an illustrator nor do the Contents pages indicate that the book
contains illustrations. Early print
reviews (included in MyNDIR's "Research notes, early print reviews
etc." for the original illustration) do not identify an illustrator or even
indicate that the book is illustrated. One of MyNDIR's researchers, Ken
Baitsholts, discovcered that the illustrator is credited as Charles Altamont
Doyle in the Publishers' Circular for 1857, i.e., David Bogue. P. A. Baer notes
that David Bogue's Annual Catalogue is included in the
The Heroes of Asgard's back matter and that the
entry for The Heroes of Asgard and the Giants of
Jotunheim cites C. Doyle as the book's illustrator in the listings
for "Juvenille Works" (24).
Baer's research notes for the felting introduce Doyle’s background as an
artist and the cultural basis for several details in his illustration of Freyja.
Doyle’s father was the prominent Victorian political caricaturist, who was known
to the public only by the initials H. E. The family lived in a fashionable house
in Hyde Park. “The seven Doyle children were homeschooled by a tutor and were
instructed by their father in the art of illustration in the manner of his
favourite artist Horace Vernet, who is said to have had a superb if not
photographic memory” (Baer “Under the Influence: Charles Altamont Doyle and ‘“The Fairy’s
Whisper’”
Baer's research notes for the felting highlight that, although, Doyle
was illustrating a Norse myth, he was using birds and trees from his own
environment when creating his vision of the scene. Baer based the birds in the
trees on Eurasian Griffon Vultures. Vultures are not native to England;
therefore, Doyle (1832 – 1893), would only have been familiar with vulltures
only in books such as The History of British Birds Vol.
1 by F. O. Morris (1851). Indeed, Morris places the Griffon Vulture
as the first item in the Table of Contents, with a full-page illustration on
page one, but on page two states, “Only one example of this great addition to
British ornithology, has yet occurred. A single specimen—an adult bird, in a
perfectly wild state, was captured by a youth, the latter end of the year 1843,
on the rocks near Cork harbour.…” Doyle would have been eleven when the vulture
was discovered and twenty when The History of British
Birds was published. Doyle especially enjoyed drawing birds and
choose to illustrate the text’s mention of “many-headed ravenous birds” in the
Iron Wood as single-headed vultures (Keary 151).
Baer's research notes indicate that in regard to the Ironwood forest,
the Tree and
Flower Identification Guide for British plants states that
“the Persian Ironwood Parrotia persica is a small deciduous tree native to
northern Iran. It is a member of the Witch-hazel family. It was introduced to
Britain in 1841. Its wood is extremely hard, hence the name ironwood”
(https://www.treeguideuk.co.uk). Doyle was thirteen when the Ironwood tree was
introduced to English gardens, and it is quite likely that he encountered
Ironwood trees in gardens throughout London.
Bibliography:
Editions
Keary,
Annie, and
Eliza
Keary. The Heroes of Asgard
and the Giants of Jotunheim: Or, the Week and Its Story.
London: Fleet Street: David
Bogue, 1857. Print.
―. The
Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology.
London: Macmillan and Co.
Limited, 1908.
Baer,
Trish (en.)
b. 25th January 1952
Occupation: Adjunct Professor in Medieval Studies; Digital Scholarship
Fellow in the Electronic Texts and Culture Lab; editor and MyNDIR-IDG
(Insight Development Grant) Team Leader
Artifacts
Brísingamen (non.)
The name of the necklace that the dwarves gave to Freyja when she
visited their workshop in a cave. The story is only occurs in Sörla þáttr in the 14-century Flateyjarbók manuscript.
A fertility goddess and one of the Vanir. She is the daughter of
Njörðr and the twin sister of Freyr.
Richard Wagner based
Freia in The Ring Cycle on the Old Norse
goddesses Freyja and Iðunn.
Óðr (non.)
Odur (en.)
Freya's husband. May be a hypostasis of Odin.
Mythological Places
Járnviðr (non.)
Iron Wood (en.)
A wood located to the east of Miðgarðr according to Völuspá (40) and
Gylfaginning (12). A witch lives in the wood who has monsterous children
including a wolf that pursues the moon and will swallow it.
Nouns
Victorian (en.)The
Victorian era began with the reign of Queen Victoria and ended with her
death (June 20, 1837 – January 22, 1901).
needle felted (en.)
A 2D or 3D felted item produced with a barbed needle and unspun
fibre.
Source Materials:
Heroes of Asgard (1857
ed.) (en.)The first edition of The Heroes of
Asgard was published in 1857 and was illustrated by Charles
Altamont Doyle.
Source Persons
Doyle, Charles
Altamont (en.)
b. March 25, 1832
d. October 19, 1893
Nationality: English
Occupation: civil servant, illustrator and water colourist
Keary,
Annie (en.)
b. 3rd March 1825
d. 3rd March 1879
Nationality: English
Occupation: Novelist, poet, and childrens book writer.
Anna Maria Keary, known as Annie Keary, was an English novelist, poet,
and children's writer. Her sister Eliza Keary collaborated with her in
writing “The Heroes of Asgard” that was first published in 1857 and many
times thereafter.
