Legend has it that when renown privateer Klaus Störtebeker (1360–c.1401), captain of the Vitalienbrüder, was captured and sentenced to death by the mayor of Hamburg, he requested that his crew be spared to the extent that his body could walk past them after being decapitated. The townsfolk were in awe when his headless body rose and marched past eleven of his companions, before being tripped by the villainous executioner.
Dismembered heads abound in mythology and folklore, but not all heads are created equal. In this edition of Applied Mythology, I’ll review some of the tropes that heads play in stories after being detached from their bodies. The emphasis will fall on the extraordinary capabilities of the bodyless head and not of the headless body ―like Störtebeker’s―, a trope which is, for the most part, relegated to ghost stories and tales of the supernatural.
Our #TalkingHeads will be assessed by six metrics:
Pain: the gruesomeness of the beheading
Overtime: the duration of the head’s actions after detachment
Dexterity: the head’s ability to command the movements of the body
Eloquence: the head’s capacity to perform
Retribution: the head’s desire for vengeance
Cephalophory: the iconographic value of the body holding its head
Sequenced from having the least to most agency in their respective stories:
The NPC Head
Information only. “The Goose Girl” is one of the Grimm Brother’s tales of usurping doubles, where an evil waiting maid supplants the princess she serves, destroying all the evidence of their original identities; including the faithful talking horse, Falada. Decapitated and nailed to the town entrance, the horse’s head can still talk in Non-Playable Character mode, and repeats a verse testifying to the princess’ misgivings, and leading to the demise of her impersonator.
The GPS Head
Placemaking. Saint Denis, the bishop of Lutetia (now, Paris), boasts the most notorious beheading in Christian martyrdom after John the Baptist. While the latter’s story is meant to be horrid but not miraculous, Denis is said to have picked up his own head ―establishing his trademark cephalophoric stance― and walked for miles while preaching to his devout followers, leading the way to the sacred spot where his Basilica now stands. Denis’ talking head echoes the mythology of city-founding through the divine legitimization of site and property.
The Vengeful Head
Prophecy. While The Arabian Nights often grant us the satisfaction of seeing wrongdoers come to their senses (starting with the uxoricidal Sultan Shahryar), not all characters are able to see their folly in time. Such is the tale of “The Vizier and the Sage Duban”. After healing king Yunan’s leprosy, the travelling sage Duban’s loyalty is called into question by a jealous vizier, who convinces the king to kill him. Outraged by this injustice, Duban threatens that his unearned death will be avenged. Undeterred, Yunan beheads his doctor but is immediately coaxed by his severed head to poison himself, repaying villainy with a death forewarned.
The Esoteric Head
Placemaking and Prophecy. Transfixed by his Sacred Mysteries after failing to recover his beloved Eurydice from the Underworld, the fabled musician Orpheus renounces his past life of joy and becomes so sullen that his companions, the Maenads, rip him to shreds in a fit of madness. Orpheus’ head floated down the river Hebrus ―singing like St Denis’s cephalophoric sermon―, until it was laid to rest in the island of Lesbos, where his oracle was established. Orpheus’ head prophesized to the point where it competed with the god Apollo’s own oracle at Delphi, at which time it was finally silenced.
The Impervious Head
Politics. Having discussed the myth and movie adaptations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during several entries, Sir Bertilak de Hautdesert (aka the Green Knight) makes the cut, representing the common trope in Arthurian mythology where knights can be casually beheaded only to have their heads reattached through magic. Decapitation serves a narrative purpose, presenting moral and political challenges to the story’s heroes with an odd air of nonchalance. The act of beheading is usually depicted as painless, and it only marks the end of a knight’s physical capabilities and the beginning of his companions’ magical ones.
The Counseling Head
Placemaking, Politics and Prophecy. Like Orpheus, the Norse god Mímir is another initiate into divine knowledge. Beheaded after a hostage exchange in the Æsir-Vanir War, Mímir’s head is sent to Asgard where it is treated by Odin with herbs and incantations, and kept as a personal source of information and access to otherworldly secrets. Stationed at a well at one of the roots of the universal tree Yggdrasil, Odin will ride to seek its council at the start of Ragnarök, the end of the world.
Coming up next. We will wrap up the #TalkingHeads trope with a new entry of Parallel Lives: Brân the Blessed and Donald J. Trump.
And a fun fact. It would be remiss of me not to include an example where beheadings are frustrated. In Norse mythology, the trickster god Loki bets his head against the dwarf Brok, and loses. However, when the time comes to collect the head, Loki confounds the dwarves by challenging the limits between their rightful claim to his head and a spurious claim to his neck, resulting in the indefinite postponement of his beheading. This form of sophistry came to be know as Loki’s Wager.