Suicide Drowning Episodes in Artwork Depictions

The Open Sports Sciences Journal, 2014

Introduction: Artists have depicted drowning episodes in drawings with a religious, mythological, historical, suicidal, homicidal and military context. We aimed to identify the messages that the paintings with a drowning scene during a military/combat situation deliver to viewers. Method: A criterion sampling method identified paintings that portray drowning episodes during military and combat situations (n=57). Chi-squared tests were used for comparison between categorical variables. Results: Ten statistically significant differences were identified between the bystanders at the time of occurrence (p=0.046), the bystanders by the depiction of military weapons (p=0.010), the bystanders by the number of casualties (p=0.049), the bystanders by the drowning stage of the casualty (p=0.014), the location by the means of transportation (p<0.001), the location by the drowning stage (p<0.001), the water depth during the rescue attempt (p=0.012), the water depth at the time of transpor...

Aim: The purpose of this article was to describe the prevalence of drowning as a cause of death in the mythology of ancient Greek history and under what circumstances it occurred. Method: From all the names and references (n= 40,000) recorded in a database of the ancient and mythological Greek literature (Devouros, 2007), a criterion sampling method (Patton, 1990), based on two criteria (first cases that mentioned drowning were identified and second, a subset of those cases that specifically referred to human drowning was compiled) identified a number of drowning incidents (n=37), 17 males (45.94%), 6 females, (16.22%), and 14 reports of multiple casualties (37.84%). Discussion: The review of the database confirmed that drowning was attributed to ‘acts of demigod’ but was more often due to human initiative or to ‘acts of God’ such as disasters like heavy rain, flooding, or tsunamis. Results: Based on this review, the male: female ratio of this study was 3:1. In Greece today the average is 2.69 per 100,0000 population. Although this number is much lower than the rate in ancient Greece and mythology (57.5 per 100,000 population), however it is still double the average rate in the EU (1.27 per 100,000 population) (World Health Organization, 2002).

Forensic Science International: Reports, 2021

Australasian Psychiatry, 2013

Folklore and Old Norse Mythology, 2021

In the thirteenth-century Vǫlsunga saga, Brynhildr commits suicide after Sigurðr’s death: she stabs herself with a sword and is burned on his funeral pyre. Brynhildr’s suicide appears to be a northern innovation since in the southern version of the legend Brynhildr’s fate is left suspended (Kuhn 1971; Anderson 1980: 35). The episode can nevertheless be seen as a parallel of Nanna’s death in Snorra Edda: at Baldr’s funeral Nanna dies of grief and is burned together with Baldr on his funeral pyre. Brynhildr has also been paralleled with the Laxdoela saga heroine Guðrún Ósvífsdóttir (e.g. Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1934b: xlvi; Andersson 1980: 241, 243; Heinrichs 1986: 110), who is responsible for the death of her beloved, Kjartan, but unlike Brynhildr, she does not commit suicide and lives until old age. In this chapter, I will consider medieval Icelandic conceptions of, attitudes towards, and norms concerning suicide by employing three levels of comparison. I first deal with Nanna’s death in mythic time. Second, I discuss Brynhildr’s suicide in mytho-heroic time, which was situated in the ancient and heroic past where mythic figures such as Óðinn could still occasionally cross the boundary between the world of the humans and the world of the gods. Third, I examine Guðrún Ósvífsdóttir’s life in historical time. The aim of the comparison is to examine whether genre matters; whether the different genres examined here reflect uniform values or not, and, if not, in what ways do the norms, attitudes and conceptions reflected in the sources differ from each other? Are these genres commensurable in general when examining conceptions of, attitudes towards, and norms concerning suicide in the thirteenth-century context where, according to scholarly consensus, the main sources of this study were written? (What) can we benefit from the examination ofdifferent genres when studying suicide in medieval Iceland? Published in Folklore and Old Norse Mythology, ed. Frog and Joonas Ahola. Folklore Fellows’ Communications 323. The Kalevala Society: Helsinki, 549–587.

2016

Suicide is defined as the voluntary, and intentional, act of causing one’s own death. As a topic of scientific study, suicide has continuously been the focus of attention for a multitude of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology and psychiatry, to name a few. The act of suicide has been documented since antiquity. The present study is focused on highlighting suicidal behaviors in Greek mythology as well as on determining the method used and the motive behind each act of suicide. The cases of suicidal behavior presented in this study were drawn from a selection of various Greek myths, and were chosen on the basis of whether or not the mythical figures involved caused their own death either directly or indirectly, according to the main myth or a version of it. The Myth can provide helpful insight into the understanding of suicidal behaviors and of the mechanisms that govern human existence and conscience, inasmuch as mythological cases of suicide constitute important ...

The purpose of this article was to describe the prevalence of drowning as a cause of death in the mythology of ancient Greek history and under what circumstances it occurred. From all the names and references (n= 40,000) recorded in a database of the ancient and mythological Greek literature (Devouros, 2007), the number of drowning incidents was identified (n=37, 17 males (45.94%), 6 females (16.22%), and 14 reports of multiple casualties (37.84%). The review of the database confirmed that drowning was attributed to ‘acts of demigod’ but was more often due to human accidental submersion or to ‘acts of God’ such as disasters like heavy rain, flooding, or tsunamis. Based on this review, the causes and rates of drowning (down from 57.5 to 2.69 per 100,000 population) may have changed through the centuries, but death by drowning remains a major health problem in Greece.

Via Panorâmica, 2018

The theme of the fallen woman finding salvation in death was a popular topic in Victorian art and literature, especially during the mid-Victorian era. From the fiction of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens to realistic paintings, the myth of the fallen woman had a strong presence. In this article, I will focus on artistic representations of the fallen woman, such as John Everett Millais's Ophelia and Augustus Egg's Past and Present triptych and discuss the importance of Williams Shakespeare's Ophelia and Thomas Hood's poem "The Bridge of Sighs" for the conception of this mythical figure. I will also argue that, despite these artists' efforts to mercifully portray the fallen women, in the end, they reinforced a Victorian patriarchal discourse, which regarded women as physically and intellectually weaker than men, while mythologizing this transgressing figure, created in order to remind all women of the fate they could expect if they defied the idealized conception of femininity imposed by society.

2018

Comparative literary essay of the works Beauty and sadness (1965) and The love suicides at Sonezaki (1703) as an example of the romanticization of the figure of Japanese ritual suicide.

ARHEOLOGIJA I PRIRODNE NAUKE ARCHAEOLOGY AND SCIENCE Published by: Center for New Technology Institute of Archaeology, University of Belgrade, vol 16/2020 pp. 9-15., 2020, 2020

Water and underwater activity was not always a fascinating aquatic experience. There have been cases where people suffered, were tortured, and ended their lives below the sea. Beyond accidental drowning cases, the sea became a grave for murderers, mutineers, impious, and piracy victims as well. The aim of the present paper is firstly to shed light on cases where drowning was also used as an act of violence and execution in ancient Greece, and secondly to open space for the further study and research of data which have remained obscure.