FROM MYTH TO RESISTANCE: ÄTTESTUPA AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN NORSEMEN

O ÄTTESTUPA E A CRÍTICA CULTURAL EM NORSEMEN

Abstract

This article presents an analytical excerpt from a master's dissertation in progress, whose corpus is the series Norsemen. The objective is to analyze the scene from episode 1 of the first season, which portrays the ritual of ättestupa, in order to understand how parodic humor and carnivalization operate in the subversion of normative discourses related to honor, aging, and collective sacrifice. The adopted methodology is qualitative and interpretative, based on Dialogic Discourse Analysis (DDA), according to the theoretical principles of Mikhail Bakhtin and the Circle associated with his work. The scene analysis reveals a tension between the traditional voice that values sacrifice as honor and dissident voices that reject this logic, reframing the myth through the lens of individual resistance. Through laughter, irony, and the disruption of expectations, the series deconstructs ättestupa as a symbol of virtue and repositions it as an allegory of social oppression and control over aging bodies. We conclude that Norsemen transforms the tragic into the grotesque, opening space for a contemporary critique of the marginalization of the elderly and the utilitarian logic that equates value with productivity. Thus, the series' humor emerges as a discursive strategy aimed at questioning foundational myths and proposing new readings of tradition, memory, and exclusion.