Here is MaryAnn R. Adams’ winning advice on how to deal with Norse kings.
Skriðuklaustur monastery: Medical Centre of Medieval East Iceland?
November 5, 2015 By
Skriðuklaustur monastery was the youngest of nine cloisters operated in Iceland during the Catholic period of the Middle Ages.
‘Hann lá eigi kyrr’: Revenants and a Haunted Past in the Sagas of Icelanders
October 28, 2015 By
From Antiquity to the present day, the idea of the dead returning to interact with the living has greatly influenced human imagination, and this has been reflected in literature — the product of that imagination.
Dental Health in Viking Age Icelanders
September 30, 2015 By
The purpose of the study was to evaluate dental health in Iceland 1000 years ago.
30 Sagas in 30 Days on Twitter
September 22, 2015 By
This month, a scholar is using Twitter to tell the stories of thirty lesser known tales written by Icelanders.
Telling the Story of the Ivory Vikings
September 13, 2015 By
One book leads to the next. It’s a truism among writers, and particularly apt for explaining how my latest book, Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them, published by St Martin’s Press in September, came to be.
Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them
September 8, 2015 By
Read an excerpt from the latest book by Nancy Marie Brown
Last Laughs: Torture in Medieval Icelandic Literature
August 29, 2015 By
Medieval Icelandic literature is full of violence, calculated and reasoned violence, narrated in such a way as to focus largely on issues of personal honor and justice, less so on the spectacle of blood so common in the modem Hollywood action film.
Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland
August 18, 2015 By
This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth- and eleventh-century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid-thirteenth century.
A note on the regional distribution of pagan burials in Iceland
July 25, 2015 By
Comparison of the distribution of pagan burials in Iceland with medieval information about the number of farmers in different parts of the country allows a division of the country into three zones of low, medium and high frequency of pagan burials relative to the number of settlements.
Miracles from Medieval Iceland
July 10, 2015 By
The first saint from Iceland was Thorlak Thorhallsson. The saga of his life reveals dozens of the miracles that were attributed to him after his death. Here are ten of these miracles, which reveal much about religion and daily life in medieval Iceland.
Having no Power to Return? Suicide and Posthumous Restlessness in Medieval Iceland
June 18, 2015 By
The purpose of this study is to examine cultural conceptions of the possible afterlives of suicides in medieval (ca. 1200– 1400) Iceland.
Irish and Scots may have been first to settle Iceland, researcher finds
May 25, 2015 By
It has long been believed that the first people to inhabit Iceland were the Norse settlers who arrived around the year 874 AD. However, the discovery of Christian crosses carved into man-made caves in the southern part of the island is offering evidence that Celtic-speaking people from Scotland and Ireland had come to Iceland around the beginning the ninth century.
Ore, Fire, Hammer, Sickle: Iron Production in Viking Age and Early Medieval Iceland
May 6, 2015 By
Iron production may be used as a window through which to view, in part, the economic structure of Icelandic society during the Viking Age (c. AD 870-1000) and Early Medieval (AD 1000-1264) periods.
‘Segja Hvaða!’: Insults in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature
April 1, 2015 By
Often, a single case of níð will fulfill two of these purposes. In the end, they come down to achieving power and station through language, whether spoken or physical.
Local and Traditional on the Millennial Scale: Sustainable Waterfowl Management from Viking Age Iceland
March 9, 2015 By
Inhabited by Vikings since approximately 600 AD, the islands hosts an abundant, but terribly fragile resource, puffins, flightless birds that nest on rocky exposed cliffs, in easy range of the islanders other prime food source, pigs.
From Viking Chiefdoms to Medieval State in Iceland: The Evolution of Social Power Structures in the Mosfell Valley
March 2, 2015 By
Norse settlers from Scandinavia arrived in Iceland in the 9th century AD and encountered an unoccupied and virgin landscape. This dissertation focuses on how these Viking Age migrants interacted with the local environment and with each other to develop a new society, and how that society evolved over the following four centuries.
The Role of the Dead in Medieval Iceland: A Case Study of Eyrbyggja Saga
February 7, 2015 By
In this article I intend to discuss the role of the malevolent restless dead in medieval Iceland by making a case study of the so-called wonders of Fróðá, the Fróðárundr episode in Eyrbyggja saga.
A Hagiographical Reading of Egils saga
February 6, 2015 By
When the literary presentation of the character of Egill is examined carefully with an eye toward the hagiographical paradigm, one can see that it matches the presentation of a bishop’s life and character…
‘Iceland: Land of Fire, Ice and Vikings’ symposium takes place next month
January 27, 2015 By
Those interested in Iceland’s history and future will be gathering at California Lutheran University next month for the 16th Annual Nordic Spirit Symposium. The two-day conference’s theme is ‘Iceland: Land of Fire, Ice and Vikings’.
Trolls in the Middle Ages
January 6, 2015 By
Where did trolls come from? What did medieval and early modern people think of trolls? How did the concept of the modern day troll evolve?
Winter, snow and cold in the life of the Westviking
January 3, 2015 By
The main purpose of this paper is to examine how the Westviking were influenced by winter, snow and cold in their day-to-day life as they were making progress in the West.
Þingvellir: Archaeology of the Althing
January 1, 2015 By
The Norse General Assembly of Iceland, called the Althing at Þingvellir, was central to early Icelandic society in the Viking Age. Not only was it the high point of the annual social calendar, but it was also the focus of their ideals of justice and law-making, which the early Icelanders refined into an art.
Chaucer in Iceland
December 22, 2014 By
My project is called Chaucer in Iceland and its main aim was to take the congress in Iceland as a case study for looking at the impact of Scandinavia identity on contemporary medieval studies.
The Icelandic annals as historical sources
December 6, 2014 By
Could it be that the annals had not been written year by year in an ongoing process after all? Equally important – did there exist other sources to events annotated in the notices which could be studied as exhibits to the annals?
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