Where the Middle Ages Begin
The Names of Islands in the Old Norse Faereyinga Saga and Orkeyinga Saga Hilda Radzin (St. John’s University) Literary Onomastics Studies: Volume 5, Article 7 (1978) Abstract In the Old Norse language the word saga denoted any kind of story or history in prose, whether written or oral. Used in this sense, the word saga […]
Thirteenth century Icelanders did not sentimentalize childhood, but rather viewed it as a learning stage, a crucial period for the acquisition of culture.
This dissertation deals with the formation of chiefdoms, communities, ecclesiastical institutions and state, and with production for market, subsistence and tribute in early Iceland in the context of climatic change and ecological succession.
I will examine the role of the restless dead in sagas by focusing on the individuals who are responsible for banishing the malevolent ghosts, or encounter the benevolent or non-harmful living dead.
One can imagine three ways to approach a mediaeval Icelandic draugr, a term which is usually glossed as ‘ghost’ in English.
This study analyses the responses of Icelandic and English individuals in regards to their views on the Viking image as represented within museums and in society.
In the early 20th century, scholars identified two possible Greenlandic assembly sites at Brattahalíð and Garðar respectively. Later scholars, with one exception, have neither refuted nor corroborated this, and research on this topic has therefore not significantly moved forward in the last 100 years. In this article, the two proposed assembly sites are examined in the light of recent research.
The Icelandic family sagas are replete with heroes, fighting men and strong women who stood with their teeth to the wind and carved a life for themselves out of an inhospitable world
The Hávamál (Sayings of the High One) is part of the Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems that survive in a 13th century manuscript.
An important aspect of medieval Icelandic social organization, namely the manor, has been neglected in previous research, and very little research has been undertaken comparing Icelandic manorial organization with other regions. This article focuses on one aspect of manorial organization, namely the manorial demesne or central farm of the manor.
Guðmundr, a powerful goði living in the late 10th and early 11th century, was subjected to sexual insults by his rivals Þorkell hákr and Þórir goði Helgason. These sexual insults described him as effeminate and cowardly, and the thesis shows that the Ljósvetninga saga text follows suit with these slurs.
From the start, Icelandic society operated with well-developed concepts of private property and law, but, in an unusual combination, it lacked most of the formal institutions of government which normally protect ownership and enforce judicial decisions
Thus the language spoken and written in Iceland today is quite close to what has been called Old Norse, such as it appears in the medieval texts.
Saemund Sigfusson is the earliest of the Icelandic wizards. According to the annals he was born in the year 1056. He was educated in France and returned to Iceland in 1076 or 1078.
In order to appreciate how the Norse expansion might have been influenced by climatic fluctuations it is necessary to consider in outline the mechanisms which control weather and climate in the North Atlantic area at the present day, and which also obtained in the past.
The name Surtshellir means, variously, the ‘Black Cave’ or the ‘Cave of Surtur’,a powerful fire giant according to norse mythology. Surtshellir is mentioned several times in icelandic medieval literature and seems to have been well-known as a threatening place, inhabited by giants or outlaws.
Are they broken into for social or religious reason or perhaps for simpler reasons of plunder?
The following essay is intended as a contribution to the current reassessment of the rela- tionship of Old Icelandic saga literature to the European mainstream and of the ways of literary tradition in dealing with oral sources.
With a population of almost 10,000, Bristol was later medieval England’s second or third biggest urban place, and the realm’s second port after London. While not particularly large or wealthy in comparison with the great cities of northern Italy, Flanders or the Rhineland, it was a metropolis in the context of the British Isles.
This work is intended as an exploration of methods of time-reckoning and conception in Medieval Scandinavia. In the main this is tied to the dynamism between a duality: that of the cyclical and linear models of time‟s progression. Involved in this study are sources verbal and pictoral.
This paper proposes the notion that words mirror ideas, perspectives and world- views. Etymologies and meanings of general words for ‘islands’ in a number of languages in North and West Europe are then discussed.
This paper looks at how Orkney figured in Norwegian royal strategies in the west and presents key examples which show its transition from a tool of war to a forum for peace.
Many of these romances deal not merely with love and adventure but also with dwarfs. But how do dwarfs fit in with the romantic idealism of these narratives? What exactly is their function?
For the last two centuries, Leiðarvísir has been the subject of great interest by scholars from a variety of disciplines: not only Old Norse scholars, but also historians, geographers, toponymists and scholars of pilgrimage have studied and analysed this work.
This paper evaluates the story of Auðun from the West Fjords, a þáttr dating from the Sturlunga period of medieval Iceland. It compares the short prose narrative to the much longer sagas in terms of their mutual concerns with kings, peace, and the place of Iceland in a larger Christian world.
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