The coming of the Christmas Visitors…Folk legends concerning the attacks on Icelandic farmhouses made by spirits at Christmas
The 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.
Tolkien’s Cauldron: Northern Literature and The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien was a scholar of Old Norse literature and much of his work in the Lord of the Rings is informed by his knowledge of old Norse mythology, Eddic poetry, and saga. Tolkien’s use of these sources enriched this complex story of Middle-earth.
INTERVIEW: Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths
An interview with author Nancy Brown on her latest medieval offering: “Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths”.
Horses of Agency, Element, and Godliness in Tolkien and the Germanic Sagas
What is the contract between man and equine that allows a beast ten times our size and one hundred times our strength to willingly serve in our ambitions? What magnetism (and who placed it) is it that draws humanity and horses together?
Gender Roles and Symbolic Meaning in Njáls Saga
There 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.
Monstrosity in Old English and Old Icelandic Literature
In medieval Europe belief in monsters allowed for corresponding acceptance of the possibility of humans transforming into monsters. In medieval Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England the mixture of Christian and pagan world views and beliefs create a situation where the boundaries are not merely fluid but can be transgressed, in either direction.
Early Religious Practice in Norse Greenland
How many Icelanders were Christian at the time of Greenland’s settlement? Were there any pagans? Did Greenland ever officially convert to Christianity and, if so, when?
Iron Smelting in Vinland
Any former iron smelting site presents a special problem for archaeologists. The process of converting iron rich ore into a working iron bar requires a complex series of steps. Each separate function is most likely to be undertaken by heavily modifying the previous equipment set up. Unfortunately for the archaeologist, the evidence of those important earlier stages is certain to be blurred, if not totally obliterated, by later steps. It will be the very last part of the whole process which alone remain as evidence.
Juxtaposing Cogadh Gáedel re Gallaib with Orkneyinga saga
My intent in the following paper is to make a case for the usefulness of comparative analysis in a narrower and more specific context, that is, in examining two fascinating but often marginalized medieval works: the Irish Cogadh Gáedel re Gallaib (modern Irish Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh [“The Battle of the Gaels and the Foreigners”]) and the Icelandic/Orcadian Orkneyinga saga (“The Saga of the Orcadians”).
Vikings were “first to begin criminal profiling”, historian says
The Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson tells the story of a tenth-century Viking warrior who took part in raids in Europe and often fought with his own neighbours in Iceland. When his life’s story was written in the thirteenth-century, was the author using him as an example of the type of man that society had to worry about?
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
“Semiotics of the Cloth”: Reading Medieval Norse Textile Traditions
Reading textiles from medieval Norse society supplements written sources and also provides insight into the voice of the individual who created these textiles.
‘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)
Á Þá Bitu Engi Járn: a brief note on the concept of invulnerability in the Old Norse Sagas
Harald made for Thorir’s ship because he was the greatest berserk, and very brave. There was the fiercest fighting on both sides. Then the king ordered his berserks forward. They were called wolfskins; but iron could not bite on them and when they charged nothing could withstand them
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.
The Mythology of Magic in The Hobbit: Tolkien and Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book “Story of Sigurd”
This paper was part of the Tolkien at Kalamazoo sessions.
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.
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