Iceland Archive
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Feasting with Early Medieval Chiefs: Locating Political Action through Environmental Archaeology
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis excellent paper was the first given in the session on Early Medieval Europe. It looked at various archaeological excavations in Iceland and Denmark and the political role feasting played in pre-Christian Viking societies. -
Access to the Margins: Outlawry and Narrative spaces in medieval Icelandic outlaw sagas
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsIn a society where social ties and solidarity were needed in order to endure the unwelcoming weather and landscape, exclusion and isolation appear as the worst punishment that man can inflict to man, even worse than death. -
Black Sun, High Flame, and Flood: Volcanic Hazards in Iceland
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsIceland is one of the most volcanically active areas on earth, but were it not for the description of the end of the world in the poem Völuspá, one might think volcanic activity made little impression on Medieval Icelanders. -
Lawyers in the Old Icelandic Family Sagas: Heroes, Villains, and Authors
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsAlong with the accomplishments of skill in arms and verse-making, many a saga hero is credited with a knowledge of law and legal procedure. Many of these heroes are shown duelling with their enemiesin a series of legal disputes forming a series of chapters. -
Novgorod the Great in Baltic Trade before 1300
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsThe information on trade contacts between Novgorod and Scandinavian countries preserved in the works of Old Norse -
The Saga of a Viking Age Longhouse in Iceland
Posted on February 26, 2013 | No CommentsA documentary about the excavation of a Viking Age longhouse in Iceland. Can historical texts and sagas help archaeology. Created by Jesse Byock and Adam Fish. -
The Old English Rune Poem – Semantics, Structure, and Symmetry
Posted on February 17, 2013 | No CommentsThe later runic alphabets do, of course, follow the basic pattern of the earlier Germanic Fupark though considerably modified by the late eighth century, decreasing in the number of runes in Scandinavia whilst increasing in number in the runic alphabets of England. -
The Church and sexuality in medieval Iceland
Posted on February 13, 2013 | No CommentsFrom its earliest days Christianity has attempted to control human sexuality. The letters of Paul and the writings of the Church Fathers praise the state of virginity above that of marriage, and within matrimony permit sex only for procreation. -
Strangers in Icelandic Society, 1100-1400
Posted on February 11, 2013 | No CommentsThe term ‘stranger’ (der Fremde) was defined by Georg Simmel (1858-1918) in a brief excursus (1908, 685–91). Scholars following in the footsteps of Simmel have distinguished at least two different types of stranger. One is the sojourner, who clings to the culture of his own ethnic group. The other is the immigrant, a newly-arrived outsider who has come to stay (see Siu 1952; Wood 1934, 43–44). The merchant Örn is close to the first type... -
Marriage between King Harald Fairhair and Snæfriðr, and their Offspring: Mythological Foundation of the Norwegian Medieval Dynasty?
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsHistorians in Nordic countries since the turn of the twentieth century have become increasingly aware of the problem using these primary sources from earlier times, especially the sagas from the late twelfth- and thirteenth centuries, about three hundred years after Harald assumedly lived. It was Halvdan Koht(1873-1965)who introduced this point of view into Norwegian historiography, although some researchers, including Yngvar Nielsen, had cast doubt on the accuracy of the account before him. -
The Place of Greenland In Medieval Icelandic Saga Narrative
Posted on January 23, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper explores the accounts of Norse Greenland in the medieval Icelandic sagas, looking past the Vínland sagas to examine ways in which Greenlandic settings are employed in the 'post-classical' saga-tradition and other texts. -
The Elder Edda Revisited: Past and Present Performances of the Icelandic Eddic Poems
Posted on January 18, 2013 | No CommentsWhat first struck me when I started my research on the Elder Edda is that, during the past four decades, several theatre practitioners have experimented with presentations of some of the poems and demonstrated that they can be highly effective in dramatic performance. -
Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Nordic Middle Ages: Impotence, Infertility, and Magic
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsThis essay, however, looks to explore, not this seductive form of charm magic, but rather its opposite, ie charm magic that prevents the consumption of a relationship, or that makes a fruitful union impossible. -
The Wilderness of Dragons: The reception of dragons in thirteenth century Iceland
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsIn thirteenth century Iceland, however, the dragon consists of more than the mere imagining of man; it is a creature that is imbued with centuries of history, biology, theology, and mythology synthesized into an oftentimes wholly logical and other times completely fantastical beast. -
Life, Death, Fate and Female Embodiment: Weaving in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsVideo of a lecture on medieval Icelandic textiles. -
TROUBLESOME CHILDREN IN THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsIt must be stressed that the concept of childhood is certainly not an easy one. One is tempted to ask whether any generalisations about medieval or modern attitudes to childhood might not pose problems. -
Inn draugar: The Zombie in the Icelandic Sagas
Posted on December 22, 2012 | No CommentsIt is this humanity in a monster that helps to show why these draugar fascinate us so much. The “others” that exist outside the boundaries of society: the weird old ladies that people label as evil witches, the misshapen, the “freaks” that Tod Browning made famous are funhouse mirror images of ourselves. -
The coming of the Christmas Visitors…Folk legends concerning the attacks on Icelandic farmhouses made by spirits at Christmas
Posted on December 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe motif seems to have ancient roots connected to the ancient beliefs of the first Icelandic settlers that the island was already populated by various forms of spirits, both positive and negative, which unofficially 'permitted' people to take up residence on their territory. -
INTERVIEW: Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths
Posted on December 13, 2012 | No CommentsAn interview with author Nancy Brown on her latest medieval offering: "Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths". -
How Icelandic Legends Reflect the Prohibition on Dancing
Posted on December 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe following article is about repression, and how repressed culture can find expression in legends. -
The Emergence of the North
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsApart from this bipolar system that contrasted North and South, authors writing in the Old Norse-Icelandic language also appear to use the term Norðrlönd within a quadripolar system that held good beyond the immediate region: Norðrlönd, the Vestrlönd (the British Isles), Suðrríki (Germany, the Holy Roman Empire), and Austrríki or Austrvegr (Russia and other lands to the East). -
Adventures far from home: Hanseatic trade with the Faroe Islands
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No Commentshe voyage to Iceland, now a major destina- tion, took about four weeks (gardiner & mehler 2007, 403; Krause 2010, 150). The Faroe Islands are situated more or less in the middle of that distance and provided a fine stop-over. The islands were an additional market for their trade business and in case of storms offered a safe and most welcome shelter. -
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: Ecclesiastical Administration, Literacy, and the Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsIn what follows, therefore, I provide a detailed study of Icelandic clergy and the institutions of the Icelandic Church in the period from 1300 to 1404. -
The Schism that never was: Old Norse views on Byzantium and Russia
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsIt is my contention that, in the general view of Icelanders, the Christian world was united, ’catholic’ in the original meaning of the word. Christianity in the East was thought to have similar roots to Christianity in Iceland and differences between the religions of Nordic and Eastern people were considered insignificant. -
Gender Roles and Symbolic Meaning in Njáls Saga
Posted on November 8, 2012 | No CommentsThere are many examples in Njáls saga of characters who fail to adhere to their assigned gender role and as a result perpetuate the chain of events that leads the saga to its grisly conclusion.
