Social Memory and the Sagas: The Case of Egils saga
Born in Iceland around the year 910, Egill is the son of Norwegians who immigrated to Iceland, and his saga is a biography of a warrior poet – who travels throughout the Viking world of the late tenth century.
Modern nationalism and the medieval sagas
Nineteenth-century romanticism had a special interest in both the medieval world and primitive, untainted rural culture. As the nineteenth century progressed and turned into the early twentieth, the Danes fell more and more under the nostalgic spell, tending to look upon the Icelanders through increasingly romantic and patronizing eyes
The orientation of pagan graves in Viking Age Iceland
It is commonly understood that Christian burials traditionally have a west-east orientation, with the head placed at the western end of the grave.
Iceland’s external affairs in the Middle Ages: The shelter of Norwegian sea power
The main aim of this paper is to test the case of Iceland within the framework of small- state theory and answer its key consideration by examining whether Iceland, as a small entity/country, had external shelter or stood on its own during the Middle Ages.
The Folk-Stories of Iceland
The imaginative life of the folk-stories was shaped by an Icelandic rural culture which was homogeneous, simple and poor looked at from the outside, but at the same time enriched by knowledge and practice of poetry, familiarity with a literary tradition and unbroken links with the ancient culture of the country.
‘How Can His Word Be Trusted?’: Speaker and Authority in Old Norse Wisdom Poetry
This dissertation concerns the presentation of compilations of wisdom in Old Norse eddic poetry: how it was that the dozen poems one might classify, however tentatively, as wisdom poetry legitimized and put across their content.
Oar walking, underwater wrestling and horse fighting – historian examines the sports and games of the Vikings
Playing ball games is an activity played by children around the world. But while parents might worry that their sons and daughters might get scrapes and bruises, in the Viking world such a game could end with an axe being driven into an opponents head.
Honor, Verbal Duels, and the New Testament in Medieval Iceland
Honor and shame are considered pivotal values of both early Mediterranean and medieval Scandinavian society.
“Ek Skal Hér Ráða”: Themes of Female Honor in the Icelandic Sagas
A major goal of this thesis is to not only interpret the representations of women from these sagas, but also to place these representations in the context of the time and the writers. Icelanders wrote these sagas a couple centuries after the Viking age ended and are based nearly entirely on oral tradition.
Did the tenth-century Viking Egil Skallagrimsson (c. AD 910–990) have Paget’s disease?
Egil’s Saga provides a perspective of the Viking world in the ninth and tenth centuries. The saga tells the story of a demonic Viking hero, one Egil Skallagrimsson (ie, son of bald Grim)
The World West of Iceland in Medieval Icelandic Oral Tradition
The Greenland of the sagas was a unique and at times strange place, lying somewhere on the boundary between the known, familiar Norse world, and an unfamiliar, exotic sphere beyond.
Mythic Transformations: Tree Symbolism in the Norse Plantation
This thesis explores tree symbolism as interpreted from a selection of Old Norse poetic and prose mythological sources.
Preservation and Immortatlity: The Transition From Oral to Written Culture in Iceland
The Scandinavian peoples had survived for hundreds of years without the advent of the written word, so what made them change? In a word, Christianity.
The Poisoned Arrows of Amor: cases of syphilis from 16th-century Iceland
The number of syphilis cases at the Skriðuklaustur monastery is unexpectedly high, as nine individuals with the disease have been identified in a skeletal assemblage totalling only 198 skeletons. At least two of the cases bear the signs of congenital syphilis. The youngest individual was just an adolescent at death but still showed severe symptoms of congenital syphilis that had developed to the tertiary stage.
The Peace of God in Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries
This article focuses on one of the most strife-ridden periods of Icelandic history, the Age of the Sturlungs (1220–1262) and the Church’s endeavours to bring about peace.
Vikings not alone when they crossed the North Atlantic – mice hitched a ride too
New research has revealed that when the Vikings sailed across the North Atlantic to places like Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, they brought with them the common house mouse.
Ancient Skies of Northern Europe: Stars, Constellations, and the Moon in Nordic Mythology
Nordic mythology from 13th century Iceland contains descriptions that provide traditional depictions of the night sky, constellations, and the Moon. These were not only incorporated within the mythology but also formed the basis for their gods
Feuding in Viking Age Iceland’s Great Village
My premise is that we come closest to understanding early Icelanders through a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, by focusing on their well-documented perception of themselves as a community and, on theother hand, through anthropological and historical analyses of the forces that shaped this perception.
The Sagas of Icelanders as a Historical Source
In the main, the stories are set in Iceland in the 9th through 11th century. This is the period in which Iceland was settled, primarily by Norwegians, and the time in which the Icelanders set up their commonwealth form of government.
The Value of the Icelandic Sagas
When I speak of the value of the Icelandic sagas, it is only natural that I should be asked: From whose point of view?
No Longer a Feuding Society? Legal Practice and Kingship in Late 13th-Century Iceland
The Icelandic Free State (c.930-1262) is well known as a model of ‘a feuding society,’ due to its unique social system based on the principle of feuding without any jurisdiction by a king. Iceland came under the rule of a Norwegian king in the early 1260s, and it is generally thought that feuds in Iceland came to an end as a result of the royal legislation introduced from 1271
The Axed Man of Mosfell: Skeletal Evidence of a Viking Age Homicide and the Icelandic Sagas
The discovery of the skeletal remains of the person described in this chapter is one of many scientific results of the Mosfell Archaeological Project, an ongoing international research effort we began in 1995.
Njáls saga as a novel: four aspects of rewriting
Inspired by Njáls saga and Laxdæla saga, the novel Fire in the Ice by American novelist Dorothy James Roberts is one of numerous modern rewritings of classical and medieval literature.
History or fiction? Truth-claims and defensive narrators in Icelandic romance-sagas
Straining the bounds of credibility was an activity in which many mediaeval Icelandic saga-authors indulged.