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Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Old Norse‑Icelandic Literature
The storyworlds of Old Norse-Icelandic literature are multifaceted and variable ranging from the worlds of heroic poetry and popular romance to the recognizable narrative universe built by the Sagas of Icelanders. Despite this they have rarely been explored and narratological theories of storyworlds or fantasy scholarship have had little impact on the field. Yet given that every story creates its own storyworld it can be assumed that Old Norse-Icelandic literary texts too build worlds — and these worlds are diverse and complex as shown by the contributors in this volume: they constantly engage with one another exploring shaping and expanding while also entering into a dialogue with the primary world from which they draw.
This volume brings together scholars from different areas of Old Norse-Icelandic studies to explore questions related to not only the storyworlds of medieval Icelandic literature but also those of legal and learned texts and to the way that they are built. Together they inquire into the nature of these worlds into their preservation and transmission in manuscripts their transmediality transnarrativity and reception. In doing so these inquiries showcase the breadth of new perspectives on medieval Icelandic literature made possible by the application of narratological theory in its study.
The Legacy of Medieval Scandinavian Encounters with England and the Insular World
The Vikings had a major and lasting impact on the English language. This volume is a unique companion to the study of Anglo-Scandinavian language contact providing expert discussions of its contexts backgrounds and the considerable afterlife of its effects through the Middle Ages and down to the present day. It contains thirteen new articles by leading specialists in the fields of early medieval languages literature and history specially commissioned in order to explore as wide a range as possible of the historical and cultural contexts for Anglo-Scandinavian encounters in the Viking Age and the evidence for them. These essays analyse in detail the Old Norse influence on English offering studies of words and their meanings in their textual and literary contexts and including lexicography dialectology and syntactic research; they explore findings from archaeology inscriptions and place-names; and they situate Anglo-Scandinavian contacts in the larger multilingual multicultural contexts of the North Sea and Irish Sea worlds.
Cultural Models for Emotions in the North Atlantic Vernaculars, 700–1400
While the medieval regions that form modern-day Britain Ireland Iceland and the Scandinavian states were very much like today home to diverse ethnic and linguistic groups it is evident that the peoples who inhabited the north-western Atlantic seaboard at this time were nonetheless connected by key cultural environmental historical and ideological experiences that set them apart from other regions of Europe. This volume is the first to focus specifically on these cultural and linguistic connections from the perspective of the history of emotions. The contributions collected here examine cultural encounters among medieval North Atlantic peoples with regard to the gradual development of shared emotional models and the emergence of early cross-cultural emotional communities in this region. The chapters also explore how the folk psychologies illustrated in the oldest European vernacular writing traditions (Irish English and Scandinavian) bear witness to cultural models for emotions that first took shape in pre-Christian times.
Traumas of 1066 in the Literatures of England, Normandy, and Scandinavia
1066 is one of the most well-known dates in English history: but how far do we understand the mental and emotional lives of those who experienced it? In just over a month England was rocked by two separate invasions multiple pitched battles and the deaths of thousands. The repercussions of these traumatic events would echo through the history and literature of northern Europe for centuries to come.
Drawing on studies of trauma and cultural memory this book examines the cultural repercussions of the year 1066 in medieval England Normandy and Scandinavia. It explores how writers in all three regions celebrated their common heritage and mourned the wars that brought them into conflict. Bringing together texts from an array of languages genres and cultural traditions this study examines the strategies medieval authors employed to work through the traumas of 1066 narrating its events and experiences in different forms. It explores the ways in which history and memory interacted through multiple generations of writers and readers and reveals how the field of trauma studies can help us better understand the mental and emotional lives of medieval people.
The Sisterbook of Master Geert’s House, Deventer
The Lives and Spirituality of the Sisters, c. 1390‑c. 1460
The Sisterbook of Master Geert’s House contains the lives of sixty-four Sisters of the Common Life who died between 1398 and 1456. Founded as an alms-house for destitute women in 1374 by the end of the fourteenth century Master Geert’s House had become a home for women desiring to live a life of humility and penitence as well as in community of goods without vows. The Sisterbook was likely written sometime between 1460 and 1470 at a time when the religious fervour that had characterized the earlier Sisters had begun to wane. It was to incite the readers and hearers of the Sisterbook which would have been read in the refectory during mealtimes to imitate the earlier Sisters who are portrayed as outstanding examples of godliness and Sisters of the Common Life. The opening sentence of the Sisterbook succinctly sums up the author’s reason for writing it: ‘Here begin some edifying points about our earlier Sisters whose lives it behoves us to have before our eyes at all times for in their ways they were truly like a candle on a candlestick’ and who by implication could still illumine the way for her own generation of Sisters. The first foundation of Sisters of the Common Life Master Geert’s House became the ‘mother’ house of numerous other houses in the Low Countries and Germany directly as well as indirectly and served as an inspiration for others.
This book provides a study of the Sisterbook and its significance in the Devotio Moderna and late medieval female religiosity while the accompanying translation introduces this important source to an English audience.
Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies
Nature and the Environment in Old Norse Literature and Culture
Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies is the first anthology to combine environmental humanities approaches and the study of premodern Nordic literature and culture. The chapters gathered here present innovative research based on the most recent developments within ecologically informed literary and cultural studies. Covering a wide variety of sources the volume provides new insights into the Old Norse environmental imagination showing how premodern texts relate to nature and the environment - both the real-world environments of the Viking Age and Middle Ages and the fantastic environments of some parts of saga literature. Collectively the contributions shed new light on the role of cultural contacts textual traditions and intertextuality in the shaping of Old Norse perceptions and representations of nature and the environment as well as on the modern reception and (mis-)use of these ideas. The volume moreover has a contemporary relevance inviting readers to consider the lessons that can be learned from how people perceived their environments and interacted with them in the past as we face environmental crises in our own times.
History, Landscape, and Language in the Northern Isles and Caithness
‘A’m grippit dis laand’. A Gedenkschrift for Doreen Waugh
Doreen Waugh was a native Shetlander and a well-renowned scholar of Old Norse and Gaelic place-names in Northern Scotland and the Northern Isles. Not only did Waugh’s research significantly advance scholarly understanding of the ‘Viking’ settlement of the North Atlantic her generosity with both her time and knowledge inspired and motivated a wide range of scholars from a variety of disciplines from archaeology and history to historical geography linguistics and place-name studies.
Based on - and written in tribute to - Waugh’s work this interdisciplinary volume draws together essays covering Northern Scotland the Northern Isles and beyond both during and after the early medieval period. The contributions gathered here draw on Waugh’s wider-ranging research interests to offer a range of novel insights into the many communities cultures and customs that have characterized and connected the Northern Isles and their North Atlantic neighbours.
New Light on Formulas in Oral Poetry and Prose
During the twentieth century scholars discovered that oral poetry in entirely unrelated cultures in the world share a basic characteristic: the use of verbal formulas more or less fixed word strings which were inherited from tradition. The discovery of formulas revolutionized the understanding of oral tradition and how oral poetry was transmitted. Homer Eddic poems Karelian laments Serbian heroic poetry etc. were suddenly seen in a new light. But the original Oral-Formulaic Theory has also been questioned and revised. New approaches in the study of formulas have been developed among linguists and folklorists.
The present volume discusses new approaches models and interpretations of formulas in traditional poetry and prose. The twenty authors in the volume analyze formulas in a broad context by letting oral traditions from all over the world shed light on each other. The volume aims to deepen our understanding of the function and meaning of these formulas. A unique feature is that the volume focuses as much on formulas in oral prose as in poetry – usually formula studies have focused entirely or mainly on poetry.
Between Body and Soul in Old Norse Literature
Emotions and the Mutability of Form
What did the body mean for inhabitants of the medieval Norse-speaking world? How was the physical body viewed? Where did the boundary lie between corporality and the psychological or spiritual aspects of humanity? And how did such an understanding tie in with popular literary motifs such as shape-shifting? This monograph seeks to engage with these questions by offering the first focused work to delineate a space for ideas about the body within the Old Norse world. The connections between emotions and bodily changes are examined through discussion of the physical manifestations of emotion (tiredness changes in facial colour swelling) while the author offers a detailed analysis of the Old Norse term hamr a word that could variously mean shape form and appearance but also character. Attention is also paid to changes of physical form linked to flight and battle ecstasy as well as to magical shapeshifting. Through this approach diametrically different ways of thinking about the connection between body and soul can be found and the argument made that within the Old Norse world concepts of change within the body rested along a spectrum that ranged from the purely physical through to the psychological. In doing so this volume offers a broader understanding of what physicality and spirituality might have meant in the Middle Ages.
Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature
Between the Monster and the Man
At the heart of any story of metamorphosis lies the issue of identity and the tales of the werwulf (lit. ‘man-wolf’) are just as much about the wolf as about the man. What are the constituents of the human in general? What symbolic significance do they hold? How do they differ for different types of human? How would it affect the individual if one or more of these elements were to be subtracted?
Focusing on a group of Old Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives many of which have hitherto been little studied this insightful book sets out to answer these questions by exploring how these texts understood and conceptualized what it means to be human. At the heart of this investigation are five factors key to the werewolf existence - skin clothing food landscape and purpose - and these are innovatively examined through a cross-disciplinary approach that carefully teases apart the interaction between two polarizations: the external and social and the interior and psychological. Through this approach the volume presents a comprehensive new look at the werewolf not only as a supernatural creature and a literary motif but also as a metaphor that bears on the relationship between human and non-human between Self and Other and that is able to situate the Old-Norse texts into a broader intellectual discourse that extends beyond medieval Iceland and Norway.
Sainthood, Scriptoria, and Secular Erudition in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavia
Essays in Honour of Kirsten Wolf
While medieval Iceland has long been celebrated and studied for its rich tradition of vernacular literature in recent years attention has increasingly been paid to other areas of Old Norse-Icelandic scholarship in particular the production of hagiographical and religious literature. At the same time a similar renaissance has arisen in other fields in particular Old Norse-Icelandic paleography philology and manuscript studies thanks to the development of the so-called ‘new philology’ and its impact on our understanding of manuscripts. Central to these developments has been the scholarship of Kristen Wolf one of the foremost authorities in the fields of Old Norse-Icelandic hagiography biblical literature paleography codicology textual criticism and lexicography who is the honorand of this volume.
Taking Prof. Wolf’s own research interests as its inspiration this volume takes an unprecedented interdisciplinary approach to the theme of Sainthood Scriptoria and Secular Erudition in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavia in order both to celebrate Wolf’s profound career and to illustrate the many ways in which these seemingly different fields overlap and converse with each other in important and productive ways. From sculpture to sagas and from skaldic verse to textual editions and the translation of hitherto unpublished works the contributions gathered here offer new and important insights into our knowledge of medieval and early modern Scandinavian literature history and culture.
Learning to Be Noble in the Middle Ages
Moral Education in North-Western Europe
This book explores for the first time the moral education of the Western European nobility in the high Middle Ages. The medieval nobility created and utilized values and ideals such as chivalry and courtliness to legitimize their exalted position in society and these values were largely the same across Europe. Noble codes of conduct communicated these ideals in everyday interactions and symbolic acts at court that formed the basis of European courtly society. This book asks how noble men and women were taught about morality and good conduct and how the values of their society were disseminated. While a major part of moral education took place in person this period also produced a growing corpus of writing on the subject in both Latin and the vernacular languages addressing audiences that encompassed the lay elites from kings to the knightly class men as well as women. Participation in this teaching became a distinguishing feature of the nobility who actively promoted their moral superiority through their self-fashioning as they evolved into a social class. This book brings together analyses of several major European didactic texts and miscellanies examining the way nobles learned about norms and values. Investigating the didactic writings of the Middle Ages helps us to better understand the role of moral education in the formation of class gender and social identities and its long-term contribution to a shared European aristocratic culture.
Loanwords and Native Words in Old and Middle Icelandic
A Study in the History and Dynamics of the Icelandic Medieval Lexicon, from the Twelfth Century to 1550
Anyone familiar with the Modern Icelandic language will know that the country’s policy is to avoid borrowing lexemes from other languages and instead to draw on their own vocabulary. This often results in the formation of a word pair consisting of a loanword and its respective native equivalent as the process of borrowing systematically eludes the tight tangles of language policy. But how did this phenomenon develop in the Middle Ages before a purist ideology was formed?
This volume offers a unique analysis of a previously unexplored area of Old Norse linguistics by investigating the way in which loanwords and native synonyms interacted in the Middle Ages. Through a linguistic-philological investigation of texts from all medieval Icelandic prose genres the book maps out the strategies by which the variation and interplay between loanwords and native words were manifested in medieval Iceland and suggests that it is possible to identify the same dynamics in other languages with a comparable literary tradition. In doing so new light is shed on language development and usage in the Middle Ages and the gap between case-study and general linguistic theory is bridged over.