This article investigates the process of self-fashioning depicted in the medieval Icelandic text Orkneyinga saga, the 'Saga of the Orkney Islanders'. It argues that the character of Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson, Earl of Orkney, is shown to fashion himself in the model of previous Scandinavian rulers as a means of asserting his right to govern, and that the relationship between poetry and prose is key to this process. Through the composition and recitation of verse, the character of Rǫgnvaldr asserts the power to craft his own story and thus to fashion his own identity and that of his subjects. In particular, the article demonstrates that Rǫgnvaldr's expedition to Jerusalem is central to the construction of the earl's story and of his self. It concludes by suggesting that such a depiction of self-fashioning may have been particularly resonant in medieval Iceland, itself a site of hybrid and shifting identities following Norwegian colonisation.
2018, Interfaces 4
2021
The Icelandic sagas describe Icelanders travelling throughout the medieval world. But their stories were also written down during a time of unrest, when Icelandic society was under great pressure from Norwegian political influence. The images of these far-travellers – like the men who went east to serve foreign kings, and the men and women who sailed the dangerous seas to the west, to discover and colonise new lands – can reveal aspects of author intent and values. This thesis explains how stories of far-travellers and journeys provide a literary response by their authors, articulating their sense of an emerging Icelandic identity.
2012, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages Vol. 1
![General Introduction [to the series Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages]](https://0.academia-photos.com/attachment_thumbnails/33796984/mini_magick20190329-12910-rrolf1.png?1553868595)
2021, An Icelandic Literary Florilegium. A Festschrift in Honor of Úlfar Bragason
2014, Sjøfartshistorisk Årbok 2012
In this article, the author attempts to sift out from Old Norse (ON) written sources the early Viking Age terms for ship types and to link them to actual ships and ship depictions from that period. The author argues that knǫrr, beit, skeið, kjóll, askr, and elliði were the main ship types of the early Viking Age in Scandinavia, at least in the west, and that knerrir referred during this period to warships like Oseberg and only later to cargo ships like Skuldelev 1. ‘A ship with a backwards curved stem’ seems to have been the original meaning of knǫrr. Kjólar were heavy, all-round ships like Gokstad, the author argues, and beit were very early ships with angular stems known from depictions. Skeiðar were low, narrow ships like Ladby. Askar were also very early, small, light ships with stitched planking, whereas elliðar were combined inland / sea vessels, originally Eastern European.
1998, Saga-Book of the Viking Society
In recent scholarship, the Icelandic fornaldarsögur – legendary, “mythic-heroic” sagas – have typically been regarded as a locus for literary fiction in medieval Iceland, owing in part to their genetic and generic relation to romance literature. This thesis aims to redirect the debate and argues for the historiographical function of these sagas. Following a discursive introductory chapter, each of the three main chapters analyses the various narrative and rhetorical strategies of individual fornaldarsögur in comparison with contemporaneous historiography, with particular emphasis of their prosimetrical form. In Chapter 2 I analyse how the comic and folktale elements of Gautreks saga serve to historicise its moral exempla, and, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Mikhail Bakhtin, argue that the saga’s representation of geography and space serves to compartmentalise its fictionality in discrete “chronotopes.” I also demonstrate how the quotation of poetry in Gautreks saga, modelled on the konungasögur (‘kings’ sagas’), serves to authenticate the prose narrative. In Chapter 3 I analyse how the author of Vǫlsunga saga drew on genealogical and biographical models of historiography to expand the Poetic Edda’s account of the early Vǫlsung dynasty and Sigurðr Fáfnisbani’s early life. Numerous verses in Vǫlsunga saga are quoted to corroborate the prose, but, I argue, they appeal to the anonymity and continuity of the oral eddic tradition for their authority, in contrast to the skaldic tradition of the konungasögur. In Chapter 4 I analyse how many of the verse quotations of Ragnars saga loðbrókar authenticate the prose narrative, despite their presentation as direct speech. I go on to analyse the significance of the Ragnarr legend in skaldic poetics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – in particular, the remembrance of Ragnarr as a poet himself – and argue that this lent weight to the verse quotations in the saga as direct testimonials. I conclude by analysing the geography and spatial representation, genealogical structures, and the prosimetrum of other fornaldarsögur, demonstrating that studying these texts in relation to medieval historiographical discourse furthers our understanding of the both the genre and thirteenth-century Icelandic literary culture more widely.
2010
The Old Norse sagas that deal with the stories of medieval Norwegian royalty can make a valuable contribution to thanatology, i.e. the study of attitudes towards death, and to the history of medieval thought. The authors of the so-called Synoptic Histories of Norway seem actually to agree about the importance attached to the moment of death in arriving at a final estimate of their characters. They also show that ideas about the final destiny of particular kings in the afterlife could be made political use of after their deaths. The king's death seems to be considered a very delicate moment not only with respect to questions related to the succession and continuity of government. It might also influence the legitimacy of his successors, the dignity of his dynasty, and following events. The synoptic historians were clearly aware of contemporary discussion about the afterlife, and they were involved in the cultural and religious environment of medieval Europe in which the discussion about Purgatory was being developed and changes in burial customs were taking place.
New Norse Studies, edited by Jeffrey Turco, gathers twelve original essays engaging aspects of Old Norse–Icelandic literature that continue to kindle the scholarly imagination in the twenty-first century. The assembled authors examine the arrière-scène of saga literature; the nexus of skaldic poetry and saga narrative; medieval and post-medieval gender roles; and other manifestations of language, time, and place as preserved in Old Norse–Icelandic texts. This volume will be welcomed not only by the specialist and by scholars in adjacent fields but also by the avid general reader, drawn in ever-increasing number to the Icelandic sagas and their world. Table of Contents Preface; Jeffrey Turco, volume editor: Introduction; Andy Orchard: Hereward and Grettir: Brothers from Another Mother?; Richard L. Harris: “Jafnan segir inn ríkri ráð”: Proverbial Allusion and the Implied Proverb in Fóstbrœðra saga; Torfi H. Tulinius: Seeking Death in Njáls saga; Guðrún Nordal: Skaldic Poetics and the Making of the Sagas of Icelanders; Russell Poole: Identity Poetics among the Icelandic Skalds; Jeffrey Turco: Loki, Sneglu-Halla þáttr, and the Case for a Skaldic Prosaics; Thomas D. Hill: Beer, Vomit, Blood and Poetry: Egils saga, Chapters 44-45; Shaun F. D. Hughes: The Old Norse Exempla as Arbiters of Gender Roles in Medieval Iceland; Paul Acker: Performing Gender in the Icelandic Ballads; Joseph Harris: The Rök Inscription, Line 20; Sarah Harlan-Haughey: A Landscape of Conflict: Three Stories of the Faroe Conversions; Kirsten Wolf: Non-Basic Color Terms in Old Norse-Icelandic
2012
The purpose of my paper is to analyse the influence of medieval European literature on the composition of the Icelandic Sagas. The literary production in medieval Iceland becomes especially important when an antimonarchical, anti-courtly faction of intellectuals appears on the mostly monarchical European stage. The search for a cultural identity has a fundamental effect on the world of literary creation. The fundamental question of the invention of tradition in Iceland in the Middle Ages works as a trigger for the observation of the problematic involved in its literary production. Pre-Christian myths, Latin literature, old poetry and beliefs crystallized in the so called by Meulengracht Sørensen “paradox, of a copious and highly developed literature in a remote country” . The explanation given by now to this paradox from a literary and sociological approach is to consider that an exceptional society, formed in exceptional circumstances, as is the case in medieval Iceland, produced an exceptional literature. Beyond the isolating terms implied in this conception, this “exceptional” character will be our actual matter of work. Considering it not as a solitary development rooted in ancient times, but as a “response” to its contemporary European scenery. A courtly literature would have had no reception in a small farming population, organized far from a kingly structure. It is this exceptional sociological and political situation, in contrast to the birth of European kingdoms, a great companion for the creation of a literature in terms of invention of tradition. Challenging the theory of a self-constructed isolated literature, we will reveal within the texts of the sagas how the different voices from the Viking Age are set to dialogue with its contemporary European text-context referent. Bibliography: Meulengrachr Sørensen, Preben, “Social institutions and belief systems of medieval Iceland (c. (70-1400) and their relations to the literary production”, p. 10, in Clunies Ross, M. Old Icelandic Literature and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
2013, Across the Sólundarhaf: Connections between Scotland and the Nordic World
2021, VIKING WARS
The Norwegian Archaeological Society is proud to present the very first special Viking volume: VIKING WARS. The 13 articles presented in this publication represent some of the latest, and most relevant research on Viking warfare from the Viking and early Scandinavian medieval period in Europe. The Vikings fought for power, wealth, and land in many areas of the Northern hemisphere, and left traces of their activities from Canada in the West to the Caucasus in the East. In many parts of Europe visual, literary, and material culture contain influences of past Viking activities. This volume offers new insights on Viking female warriors; local defense systems; a Danish-Obodrite attack on a Frankish fortress; deeply rooted traditions relating to weapon production; viking encampments in Atlantic Europe; rune carvers in campaign; textiles essential for sea journeys, and related warfare; the symbolic power of weapons; the roles of Rus’ captives and slave soldiers; as well as the relationship between Viking and Norse settlers, and the local Picts of the Western Isles. Viking Special Volume 1 is co-funded by the Centre for Viking-Age Studies (ViS) and the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo.
2018, Lund Archaeological Review
This article investigates 11th-13th-century Nordic boatbuilding communities. Using two social science theories, Situated Learning and Communities of Practice, the interplay between the participants within the communities is examined. Case studies of two 11th-century ship finds-Fotevik 1 and Skuldelev 3-are conducted and a selection of written evidence from the Middle Ages, especially the skaldic poetry is scrutinized. The different ways in which an individual participates in a community of practice are based on status, knowledge and skills. The acquisition and loss of status, knowledge and skills is part of an ongoing negotiation process-often expressed in a sense of otherness or agreement among the participants. I propose that the specialized boatbuilding or boat-handling related terms used in the skaldic stanzas can be interpreted as maritime communities constructing agreement among the individuals that understand the terms used, and otherness to the individuals not versed in this detailed vocabulary. Furthermore, I argue that the building of the Fotevik 1 ship can be interpreted as a product of a boatbuilding community where the work conducted was dominated by strictly following agreed guidelines, methods and techniques, whereas the building of the Skuldelev 3 ship was conducted by a boatbuilding community with a higher degree of individual participation-individual choices of the methods and techniques applied-by the boatbuilders building the ship.
2014, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
This paper is the first presentation of four graffiti from the church of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, and a contribution to the study of Viking graffiti of sailing vessels.
2018, Quaestio Insularis, Selected Proceedings of the Annual Cambridge Colloquium on Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic
Print copies available here: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/ideology-and-power-in-norway-and-iceland-1150-1250
2019, Moving Words in the Nordic middle ages: Tracing Literacies, Texts and Verbal Communities
2019, Maria Elena Ruggerini, Veronka Szőke, Morena Deriu (a cura di), Isole settentrionali, isole mediterranee. Letteratura e società, Prometheus, Milano
Guta saga ‘The history of the Gotlanders’, a short historiographic work written in Old Gutnish in the thirteenth century, hands down some of the major turning-points in the history of Gotland, starting with its legendary discovery and settlement. It also includes episodes, partly rooted in historical facts and circumstances and some of which are contemporary with the writing down of the Saga. The selection of the episodes – the first migration from the island, the compact with the Swedish king, the conversion and the relationships with representatives of secular and religious powers – and the strategies adopted by the author bear witness to the intention of building an identity. This representation is characterised by the insistence on the island’s autonomy from external forces, the ability of its inhabitants to deal with the authorities of the age and to successfully promote their interests. Guta saga’s background is an affluent society that derived its resources mainly from its role as a transit zone on the commercial routes that had connected East and West since the Viking Age and as a thriving marketplace well into the Late Middle Ages. The narrative strategies reveal the main facets of islandness and its function in the identity formation of the medieval Gotlandic community, which continue to be prominent even in our age. This portrait challenges and tends to contradict assumptions that establish a causal link between geographic features inherent in islandness and ideas of isolation and economic and commercial backwardness that such a condition would entail. The Saga shows that water is a boundary, but also, and above all, a medium for mobility which allows networks of connectivity and exchanges to be developed, including the importation of a new faith and integration into the Baltic arena. This medieval narrative proved vital in later times, also when new economic and political powers gained a foothold in the Baltic and Gotland itself lived through less successful phases. The gist and heritage of Guta saga have had a momentous impact, for instance, on the tourist industry which so often looks back at the Middle Ages. Indeed, this represents one of the island’s main assets today, just as trade was so essential in the past.
Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader
Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader immerses the learner in the legends, folklore, and myths of the Vikings. The readings are drawn from sagas, runes and eddas. They take the student into the world of Old Norse heroes, gods, and goddesses. There is a separate chapter on the ‘Creation of the World’ and another on ‘The Battle at the World’s End,’ where the gods meet their doom. Other readings and maps focus on Viking Age Iceland, Greenland, and Vínland. A series of chapters tackles eddic and skaldic verse with their ancient stories from the old Scandinavian past. Runic inscriptions and explanations of how to read runes form a major component of the book. Where there are exercises, the answers are given at the end of the chapter. Both Viking Language 1 and 2 are structured as workbooks. Students learns quickly and interactively. More information on our website: vikinglanguage.com
2014
Discussions of genre in Old Norse literature have largely passed Joms vikinga saga by. In 1985 Melissa Berman placed it, alongside Faereyinga saga and Orkneyinga saga, in a group for which she coined the term “political sagas”; while this categorization has not been found to be alto gether convincing, it brought into focus the fact that these early texts, versions of which are believed to have existed as early as 1200, at least have in common their anomalous status outside the major generic groups that developed with the burgeoning of saga writing later in the thirteenth century. Recent discussions of genre, concentrating on issues of historicity, fiction and authorial intention in the sagas, have attempted to reposition at least one anomalous text, Yngvars saga viðfǫrla, within the category of fornaldarsaga. Can a fresh examination of the generic associations of Jomsvikinga saga throw fresh light on the text? Our understanding of the literary genre of Old Norse texts is modern an...
2020, Gripla
Gísla saga Súrssonar (thirteenth century) is famous for the tragic destiny of its main character, the Norwegian settler and outlaw Gísli Súrsson, a destiny that to some extent is predicted by the many dream stanzas Gísli utters in the saga. In one of these stanzas, Gísli refers to himself as Egða andspillir ‘confidant of the Egðir’, i.e. the people of the Norwegian region of Agder. This kenning has puzzled skaldic scholars and editors of Gísla saga, and no satisfactory explanation has so far been proposed. In the present article, this kenning is explained as a við(r)kenning, that is, a description in terms of a person’s attributes, which is based on factual knowledge about the person involved. I evaluate the stanza as authentic, and so implying that Gísli actually was the friend of people in Iceland in the tenth century who could be called Egðir. I show that these Egðir most likely were members of the family of Ingjaldr in Hergilsey, who according to the saga hid Gísli from his enemies for three years, and whom Gísli mentions in one of his other stanzas. Landnámabók tells us that Ingjaldr’s paternal grandfather came to Iceland from Agder together with the chieftain Geirmundr heljarskinn, and that Geirmundr and his men had to flee from Norway because of the new centralized rule of Haraldr hárfagri. The story about Haraldr’s ofríki (‘harsh rule’) is probably exaggerated in the Icelandic tradition, but there is support in the sources for the hypothesis that a retinue of men who lost against Haraldr in the battle of Hafrsfjord (ca. 900) left Agder for Iceland. The fact that Ingjaldr and his family could be considered Egðir two generations and more than sixty years after they had left Agder calls for an explanation. This article argues that the special background of these families in a lost kingdom of Agder may have contributed to strengthening their identity as a special group of people in the recently populated Iceland.
This article argues that eddic poetry, where females are described attending assemblies, swearing oaths, receiv-ing compensation, and taking revenge, can provide some insight into the real “ladies of law” of pre-Christian Scandinavia. In Christian times, when “law” was seen to emanate from the male God, considerable changes were introduced.
2016, Cambridge Archaeological Journal
The use of apotropaic practices, that is, of magic to protect against evil, is sometimes included in archaeological interpretations on the basis of similarities between archaeological objects and objects used in historically documented or present-day apotropaic practices. The present article attempts to develop the archaeological study of apotropaism by focussing on apotropaic ritual, in addition to apotropaic devices. The case study is a burial inad834 of a high-ranking Viking Age woman in the Norwegian Oseberg ship grave. Drawing on cognitive magic ritual theory, the study focuses on identifying both a repeated ritual core and a counter-intuitive, magic element in the series of actions that led to the deposition of five elaborately carved wooden animal heads in the burial, each combined with a rattling device probably related to horse driving. The study demonstrates that apotropaism provides a viable explanation for this rather puzzling aspect of the burial. In a wider perspective...
As is widely known, Skáldatal is a list of court poets and of their aristocratic patrons, from the 9th to the 13th century, i.e. from Starkaðr inn gamli to the Sturlung family. It is recorded twice, in a shorter and in a longer version, respectively, in Kringla (the lost vellum codex of the Norwegian kings’ history) and in Uppsala-Edda. Its textual variability is highly meaningful and reveals different contextual attitudes.
Filologia germanica/ Germanic Philology, 4 (2012), pp. 171-203
The sagas of kings often display grand finales and impressive endings. From time to time, they also display the so called ‘beautiful deaths’, i.e. those deaths that have the immediate advantage of rousing admiration in a secular sense and to convey immortality, at least in the memories of people. The authors of the Kings’ Sagas seem to be fascinated by the ability to endure physical suffering and to maintain a virile and cool attitude at the moment of death, and by glorious and spectacular deaths on the battlefield, as were the poets from whom they took inspiration and information. However, with the conversion to Christianity, the heathen conception of a “beautiful death” interpreted as being a violent death, was gradually replaced by the notion of “good death”, that not only required the fulfilment of the last duties to ensure eternal life but, if it was a violent death, it had to occur while fighting for a just cause. As the Christian faith became firmly established, its insistence that a king should be morally worthy of his role became more important: a king who was thought to be living in a state of mortal sin or to be suffering damnation in Hell after his death was seen as being in fundamental conflict with his royal function. The aim of this paper is to discover, through the methods of literary analysis, the attitudes of thirteenth-century historians towards the death of their royal characters in the light of Christianity, the way they coped with the new dictates of their faith and how they attempted a reconciliation between Gemanic stoicim and Christian piety. 0. Introduction (p. 171) 1. De pugnante in prælio iusto occiso (p. 174) 2. Suspensi in coemeteriis sepeliri possunt (p. 185) 3. De interfectis maleficio in adulterio (p. 191) 4. De vere poenitentibus in caritate decessis (p. 195) 5. Conclusions (p. 199) The paragraph headings of this piece of research (n. 2, 3 and 4) are drawn from Guillame Durand’s Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, written in the late 13th century.
2014, Networks and Neighbours
Strategies of Skaldic Poets for Producing, Protecting, and Profiting from Capitals of Cognition and Recognition, N&N 2.2 (2014), 178-201.
2008, Vikings and their Enemies
From: Vikings and their Enemies ed. Dr Katrina Burge, (Viking Research Network: Melbourne, 2008). On Good Friday, 23 April 1014, the forces of Brian Boru High King of Ireland moved into formation on the field of Clontarf, on the northern bank of the River Liffey outside the Norse-ruled town of Dublin. At the age of seventy-three, Brian Boru was elderly, and his forces were commanded by his son and heir Murchad. The town was defended by a Norse/Leinster alliance, headed by Sigtryggr silkiskegg (Silkbeard), king of Dublin and including Irish of the Leinster province, led by their own king, Maél Mórdha. Among Sigtryggr’s allies was Sigurðr, jarl of the Orkneys, and, through his Irish mother, a kinsman of the Leinster king. Sigurðr and his Orkney men fought under the raven banner. At the battle, an ominous role is ascribed to the raven banner of the Norse forces. Banners played a prominent role in warfare from ancient to early modern times. They were symbols of leadership and enabled warriors to follow their leader, and also to show whether the leader was still in the fight. They also provided a target for the opposing forces, who would seek to destroy the leader and the standard. This paper will seek to explore the sources and context of the raven banner, and show that the description of the raven banner is consistent with mythological ideas strongly connected to the chief god of the Norse world, Óðinn.
2011
This book is an examination of some of the principal issues arising from the study of the kings’ sagas, the main narrative sources for Norwegian history before c. 1200. Providing an overview of the past two decades of scholarship, it discusses the vexed relationship between verse and prose and the reliability as historical sources of the verse alone or the combination of verse and prose; the possibility and extent of non-native influence on the composition of these texts; and the function of the past, in particular given that most of the historiography of Norway was produced in Iceland. This book aims to stimulate studies of medieval Scandinavian historiography with its critical perspective on the texts and the scholarship, while also providing a useful work of reference in order to make this area of research accessible to scholars in cognate fields.
