The Yule Cat of Iceland: A Different Kind of Christmas Tradition
By Minjie Su You know the Christmas Cat, – That cat was enormous. People know not where he came from Nor to what…
What Imported Viking Age and Medieval Artifacts Can Tell Us about Trade and Exchange in Mývatn, Iceland
This article examines how Mývatn Icelanders were able to partially connect to the continental trade in beads, the Baltic trade in flint, and to other European trade networks operating between the 9th and 15th centuries, and to what extent these networks were able to influence the early Mývatn economy.
‘The Limits of my Language mean the Limits of my World’: Multilingualism in Medieval Iceland
In this thesis, I discuss how medieval Icelanders would have considered foreign languages and those people who could speak them.
Messages from the Otherworld: The Roles of the Dead in Medieval Iceland
The ghosts in sagas are no phantoms or incorporeal spirits, but appear to the living in their physical and tangible bodies at a dark time of the day or year. The dead look the same as they used to when they lived, and are thus easily recognized by the living.
Dating the Viking Age Settlement of Iceland
This thesis tackles a globally significant issue in archaeology and palaeoecology that is subject to fierce and long-running debate – how best to synthesize large sets of radiocarbon (14C) dates to determine the most accurate and precise age ranges for key events in history.
Outlawry in the Icelandic Family Sagas
The present study scrutinizes the outlawry and outlaws that appear in the Icelandic Family Sagas.
Medieval PhD Dissertation turned into comic
A doctoral student at the University of Iceland has recreated his dissertation in a novel way – by making it into a comic.
Norse arrival on Iceland led to extinction of its walrus population, study finds
A team of researchers have shown that soon after the Norse arrived in Iceland, that island’s species of walrus went extinct.
The Saga of Jón the Playmate: A ‘Cannibalistic’ Story
At first sight, Jóns saga leikara is but your average chivalric romance, filled with exciting but somewhat generic little adventures.
Spatial Reading: Digital Literary Maps of the Icelandic Outlaw Sagas
Digital literary maps in particular, or maps that produce spatial data from texts that are considered imaginative or creative as opposed to charters or historical records, offer new critical possibilities for visualizing and understanding the interaction between spatial and geographic knowledge in literary texts.
Horror in the Medieval North: The Troll
In the Middle Ages, trolls were not really thought of a race or a species; that was a later development influenced by scientific taxonomy.
The Poetic Edda
Comic, tragic, instructive, grandiose, witty and profound, the poems of the Edda have influenced artists from Wagner to Tolkien and a new generation of video-game and film makers.
A Possible case of Facio-Auriculo-Vertebral sequence (FAVs) in an adult female from medieval Iceland (13th–16th Century)
This paper offers a visually distinct case of an under-represented and under-documented congenital condition for future identification within paleopathology.
Trade in the pre-capitalistic North Atlantic
The paper examines the evidence for international trade in 14th century Iceland based on excavations of a merchants’ camp at Gásir in North Iceland
The Sad Story of the Queen of the Elves: An Icelandic Folktale
Once upon a time, in a mountainous region somewhere in Iceland, something strange took place that was at the same time puzzling and frightening: every year
What was farming like in medieval Iceland?
How did Icelanders build and run farms in the Middle Ages?
Why is Njáls saga the best Icelandic saga?
Brennu-Njáls saga can—and most often is—be translated to The Story of Burnt Njal. But another way of translating it is The Story of Njáll the Burner. And I believe it is exactly this duality of the saga’s main character Njáll that makes the saga so appealing
Between Fiction and Falsehood: The Ethics of Lying in the Sagas of Icelanders
This paper discusses a series of episodes from the Sagas of Icelanders in which one character attempts to deceive another.
Why Icelandic Vikings were buried with horses
Archaeologists in Iceland have for decades examined the remains of more than 350 graves from the Viking Age. In approximately 150 of these, teeth or bones of horses were found.
5 Magic Spells from Medieval Iceland
Here are five spells from the Galdrabók, which range from helpful to cruel!
Big Men During the Icelandic Commonwealth
By comparing chosen cases of ambitious men taken from the Íslendingasögur and the Sturlunga compilation, the applicability of the category to commonwealth Iceland is assessed.
Making a copy of Njáls saga: the story of the Urðabók manuscript
Who scribed Urðabók? And for whom and what? Wawn aims at unveiling the story behind this little, modest manuscript.
Proving Facts in Njáls saga
Clover uncovers the seemingly inadequate evidence-finding process in Njáls saga and discusses how the legal process can be transmitted to the saga’s narrative structure.
Why this is the week to be in Iceland (and learn about sagas)
The scholarly world interested in all things Norse, Viking and saga-related is coming to Iceland this week for the 17th International Saga Conference. Here is a quick guide to what is happening.
