Scandinavian Studies Commons^™

Refusing Artificial Coherence: Christopher Tolkien's Philology And His Editorial Practice On His Father’S Legendarium, Nicholas Birns

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper was given at The Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference sponsored by the Tolkien Society, held online on 23/24 November 2024.  The paper was given on Zoom on November 24, 2024.

This paper argues that Christopher Tolkien’s 1950s philological essay “The Battle of the Goths and the Huns” anticipates the editorial principles that later governed his presentation of his father, J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium. Analyzing Christopher’s treatment of early medieval legend alongside his handling of the Celeborn and Galadriel materials, the essay argues that he consistently resisted imposing artificial coherence on fragmentary evidence. Whether confronting speculative Gothic history, or …

Archival Notations Of The Norwegian Charter Material, Juliane Tiemann

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This paper explores archival notations, primarily from the early modern and modern periods, found on the dorse of Norwegian charters dating from the 13th to the 17th century. By examining the notation practices of two prominent Norwegian archivists and collectors, the study further highlights individual efforts in documenting and preserving these materials across various collections. The archival efforts are contextualized historically, noting a transition to systematic archival management. The findings reveal the significance of this largely unexplored component of Norwegian charters as additional historical sources, emphasizing the role of dorsal annotations in provenance research. The textual and visual analysis of …

“Pride And Despair”: Denethor’S Struggles Against His Self-Woven Death, Ali Mirzabayati

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper examines Denethor, Steward of Gondor, as a central figure illustrating the interplay of pride, fear, and mortality in The Lord of the Rings. It analyzes how his Númenórean heritage, grief over the loss of his sons, and obsession with control shape his decisions, leading to passivity, mistrust, and self-destruction. Drawing on Northern literary traditions, including the Danes’ prayers to the Gastbona in Beowulf and Boethian reflections on pride and despair, the study situates Denethor’s downfall within a broader cultural and philosophical context. By exploring how his fear of death undermines judgment and heroic potential, the paper highlights …

Secured Through Stone: The Power, Monuments, And Memory Of Thyra Danmarkarbót And The Jelling Dynasty, Jacquelyn Truitt

History ETDs

Sometime in the mid-tenth century on the Jutland peninsula of Denmark, the Viking Age Queen Thyra (d. ca. 958/9) passed away and the epithet Danmarkarbót—Denmark’s Adornment—was skillfully carved onto her memorial runestone. Yet Thyra’s story has been clouded by few and unreliable textual sources, by differing assessments of her familial background that have emerged from those sources, and by misrepresentations of the material culture relating to her. This thesis explores Thyra and her place within the Viking Age Jelling dynasty through textual and material evidence and considers how the construction of both medieval and modern memory work and memorialization …

The Medieval North And Its Afterlife: Essays In Honor Of Heather O’Donoghue, Siân Grønlie, Carl Phelpstead

Northern Medieval World

This book showcases the variety and vitality of contemporary scholarship on Old Norse and related medieval literatures and their modern afterlives. The contents of the volume reflect the range of current research on Old Norse and related literatures, featuring original work on Old Norse poetry and saga; related languages and literatures of medieval north-western Europe; and accounts of the afterlife of Old Norse in modern English literature.

"Beowulf": Interpretation And Supplementation, Abigail Martin

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the various ways in which Beowulf has been interpreted across time, explaining how factors, called paratexts, have played a large part in shaping these interpretations and how, especially in reading the Beowulf manuscript, we inherit the sum of these influences. In order to demonstrate this, I present a variety of arguments and perspectives on the text that have been developed by scholars over the years based on different types of paratexts (physical, intangible, and translational) in the absence of a known author. At each stage of Beowulf’s life, there have been opportunities for individuals with authority …

“…And I Thought That Was A Queer Thing To Do”: Transmasculine Identity In The Lokasenna, Tevye J. Schmidt

The Confluence

This paper seeks to explain the viewing of Loki through a lens of transmasculine identity, focusing on the ways in which gender expression and identity were viewed in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages. The current scholarship on Loki and gender expression, specifically in his interactions with the other gods in the Lokasenna, suggests a reading that is misogynistic on Loki’s part. This reading and translation also suggest homophobia and transphobia from Odin. This paper argues that these translations lack the nuance that a reading of Loki as transmasculine brings, and that this reading is important in breaking down modern …

Anglo-Danish Empire: A Companion To The Reign Of King Cnut The Great, Richard North, Erin Goeres, Alison Finlay

Northern Medieval World

Anglo-Danish Empire is an interdisciplinary handbook for the Danish conquest of England in 1016 and the subsequent reign of King Cnut the Great. Bringing together scholars from the fields of history, literature, archaeology and manuscript studies, the volume offers comprehensive analysis of England's shift from Anglo-Saxon to Danish rule. It follows the history of this complicated transition, from the closing years of the reign of King Æthelred II and the Anglo-Danish wars to Cnut's accession to the throne of England and his consolidation of power at home and abroad. Ruling from 1016 to 1035, Cnut drew England into a Scandinavian …

The Development Of Education In Medieval Iceland, Ryder Patzuk-Russell

Northern Medieval World

This book investigates the institutions and practices of education which lay behind medieval Icelandic literature, as well as behind many other aspects of medieval Icelandic culture and society. By bringing together a broad spectrum of sources, including sagas, law codes, and grammatical treatises, it addresses the history of education in medieval Iceland from multiple perspectives.

Handbook For The Deceased: Re-Evaluating Literature And Folklore In Icelandic Archaeology, Brenda Nicole Prehal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rich medieval Icelandic literary record, comprised of mythology, sagas, poetry, law codes and post-medieval folklore, has provided invaluable source material for previous generations of scholars attempting to reconstruct a pagan Scandinavian Viking Age worldview. In modern Icelandic archaeology, however, the Icelandic literary record, apart from official documents such as censuses, has not been considered a viable source for interpretation since the early 20th century. Although the Icelandic corpus is problematic in several ways, it is a source that should be used in Icelandic archaeological interpretation, if used properly with source criticism.

This dissertation aims to advance Icelandic archaeological theory …

A Literary Analysis Of Magic: A Dissection Of Medieval Icelandic Literature, Jordan T. Williams

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The goal of this project is to understand the realities of how magic was perceived during a Christianized Iceland, specifically during the medieval era when sagas and poems were recorded in Iceland. I accomplish this through literary analysis in conjunction with previous research on runic inscriptions and Old Norse mythology. I reveal that there is much more to be uncovered about the realities of paganism in medieval Iceland, and that the authors of Icelandic sagas had a large misunderstanding of pre-Christian paganism and magic. This argument is manifested through close readings of major Icelandic works, such as Hávamál, Volsunga saga …

No Nazis In Valhalla: Understanding The Use (And Misuse) Of Nordic Cultural Markers In Third Reich Era Germany, Lena Nighswander

International ResearchScape Journal

While medieval concepts are frequently used as a means for the general public to understand emerging global political institutions around the world, they also have immense capability to be purposely misused by political groups due to the generally vague and misguided understanding of these concepts by the masses. At one core of these movements is the legacy of Vikings and the misrepresentation of their history by far-right political groups, especially in mid-20^th century Europe, in order to push a fictitious agenda of a prosperous, all-white race of seafaring warriors. Through the appropriation of medieval Old Norse imagery and mythology, …

The Aesthetics Of Storytelling And Literary Criticism As Mythological Ritual: The Myth Of The Human Tragic Hero, Intertextual Comparisons Between The Heroes And Monsters Of Beowulf And The Anglo-Saxon Exodus, Daniel Stoll

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For thousands of years, people have been hearing, reading, and interpreting stories and myths in light of their own experience. To read a work by a different author living in a different era and setting, people tend to imagine works of literature to be something they are not. To avoid this fateful tendency, I hope to elucidate what it means to read a work of literature and interpret it: love it to the point of wanting to foremost discuss its excellence of being a piece of art. Rather than this being a defense, I would rather call it a musing, …

Paranormal Encounters In Iceland 1150-1400, Ármann Jakobsson, Miriam Mayburd

Northern Medieval World

This anthology of international scholarship offers new critical approaches to the study of the many manifestations of the paranormal in the Middle Ages. The guiding principle of the collection is to depart from symbolic or reductionist readings of the subject matter in favor of focusing on the paranormal as human experience and, essentially, on how these experiences are defined by the sources. The authors work with a variety of medieval Icelandic textual sources, including family sagas, legendary sagas, romances, poetry, hagiography and miracles, exploring the diversity of paranormal activity in the medieval North. This volume questions all previous definitions of …

The Saga Of The Jómsvikings: A Translation For Students, Alison Finlay, Þórdís Edda Jóhannesdóttir

Northern Medieval World

Unique among the Icelandic sagas, part-history, part-fiction, the Saga of the Jómsvikings tells of a legendary band of vikings, originally Danish, who established an island fortress of the Baltic coast and launched and ultimately lost their heroic attack on the pagan ruler of Norway in the late tenth century. The saga's account of their stringent warrior code, fatalistic adherence to their own reckless vows and declarations of extreme courage as they face execution articulates a remarkable account of what it meant to be a viking. This translation presents the longest and earliest text of the saga, never before published in …

Children Of A One-Eyed God: Impairment In The Myth And Memory Of Medieval Scandinavia, Michael David Lawson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the lives of impaired individuals catalogued in the Íslendingasögur as a narrative framework, this study examines medieval Scandinavian social views regarding impairment from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Beginning with the myths and legends of the eddic poetry and prose of Iceland, it investigates impairment in Norse pre-Christian belief; demonstrating how myth and memory informed medieval conceptualizations of the body. This thesis counters scholarly assumptions that the impaired were universally marginalized across medieval Europe. It argues that bodily difference, in the Norse world, was only viewed as a limitation when it prevented an individual from fulfilling roles that …

Ballads Of The North, Medieval To Modern: Essays Inspired By Larry Syndergaard, Sandra Ballif Straubhaar, Richard Firth Green

Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures

This volume is intended as a belated but heartfelt thank-you and Gedenkschrift to the late Larry Syndergaard (1936-2015), long-time professor of English at Western Michigan University and Fellow of the Kommission für Volksdichtung (International Ballad Commission). Larry’s contributions down the decades to ballad studies--particularly Scandinavian and Anglophone--included dozens of papers and articles, as well as his supremely useful book, English Translations of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballads. As David Atkinson and Thomas A. McKean of the Kommission have written (May 2015): “Larry... was a sound scholar with a penetrating mind which he used to support, encourage and befriend others, rather …

Weaponizing Ordinary Objects: Women, Masculine Performance, And The Anxieties Of Men In Medieval Iceland, Steven T. Dunn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis unravels the deeper meanings attributed to ordinary objects, such as clothing and food, in thirteenth-century Icelandic literature and legal records. I argue that women weaponized these ordinary objects to circumvent their social and legal disadvantages by performing acts that medieval Icelandic society deemed masculine. By comparing various literary sources, however, I show that medieval Icelandic society gradually redefined and questioned the acceptability of that behavior, especially during the thirteenth-century. This is particularly evident in the late thirteenth-century Njal’s Saga, wherein a woman named Hallgerd has been villainized for stealing cheese from a troublesome neighbor. If Hallgerd were a …

The Saga Of The Jómsvikings: A Translation With Full Introduction, Alison Finlay, Þórdís Edda Jóhannesdóttir

Northern Medieval World

Unique among the Icelandic sagas, part-history, part-fiction, the Saga of the Jómsvikings tells of a legendary band of vikings, originally Danish, who established an island fortress off the Baltic coast, and launched and ultimately lost their heroic attack on the pagan ruler of Norway in the late tenth century. The saga's account of their stringent warrior code, fatalistic adherence to their own reckless vows, and declarations of extreme courage as they face execution articulates a remarkable account of what it meant to be a viking. This translation presents the longest and earliest text of the saga, never before published in …

Influences Of Pre-Christian Mythology And Christianity On Old Norse Poetry: A Narrative Study Of Vafþrúðnismál, Andrew E. Mcgillivray

Northern Medieval World

In this study, McGillivray explores the cultural environment in which the Eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál was composed and re-examines the relationship between form and content in the poem and the respective influences of pre-Christian beliefs and Christian religion on the text. The poem has a dual aspect, acting as a poetic framework and functioning as a sacred story. It serves both as a representation of early pagan beliefs or myths and also as a myth itself, relating the journey of the Norse god Óðinn to the hall of the ancient and wise giant Vafþrúðnir, where Óðinn craftily engages his adversary in …

New Studies In The Manuscript Tradition Of Njáls Saga: The Historia Mutila Of Njála, Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, Emily Lethbridge

Northern Medieval World

Njáls saga is the best known and most highly regarded of all medieval Icelandic sagas and it occupies a special place in Icelandic cultural history. The manuscript tradition is exceptionally rich and extensive. The oldest extant manuscripts date to only a couple of decades after the saga's composition in the late thirteenth century and the saga was subsequently copied by hand continuously up until the twentieth century, even alongside the circulation of printed text editions in latter centuries. The manuscript corpus as a whole has great socio-historical value, showcasing the myriad ways in which generations of Icelanders interpreted the saga …

Get Thee To A Nunnery: Unruly Women And Christianity In Medieval Europe, Sarah E. Wolfe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will argue that the Beowulf Manuscript, which includes the poem Judith, Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum, and the Old-Norse-Icelandic Laxdæla saga highlight and examine the tension between the female pagan characters and their Christian authors. These texts also demonstrate that Queenship grew fragile after the spread of Christianity, and women’s power waned in the shift between pre-Christian and Christian Europe.

Depending On Sex? Tongue, Sieve, And Ladle Shaped Pendants From Late Iron Age Gotland, Meghan P. Mattsson Mcginnis

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Artifacts of female dress such as brooches and pendants have long been objects of interest to scholars of late Iron Age /early medieval Scandinavia. They figure in dating and tracing stylistic developments, and their presence is often (controversially) used to help assign gender to burials. There are three types of pendants which constitute a type of feminine adornment unique to Viking Age Gotland: the so-called tongue, sieve, and ladle pendants. The purpose of this paper is to examine these pendant types and the possible symbolic and magical functions behind their forms and manner of use, and how these functions intersected …

The Extent Of Indigenous-Norse Contact And Trade Prior To Columbus, Donald E. Warden

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

Norse exploration during the medieval period was widespread and diverse in location. Of the many places visited by the Norse, North America has continued to be surrounded by mystery. The full extent of Norse exploration in North America is a growing field and the extent of their contact and trade with Indigenous Americans is becoming increasingly known. A thorough compilation of the evidence allows for significant, new conclusions to be made about Norse presence in the Americas.

Kings, Wars, And Duck Eggs: Interpretations Of Poetry In Egil’S Saga, James C. Daughton

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

This paper examines the function and cultural implications of poetry in Egil’s Saga, an Icelandic saga written around the thirteenth century A.D. The title character, Egil Skallagrimson, is a renowned warrior and obstinate maverick, but perhaps his most singular trait is his gift for crafting poetry—a talent reflected in the nearly sixty sets of his verse that appear throughout the prose text. Obviously, these poems allow the reader to tap into Egil’s psyche, but they also fulfill the more profound purpose of illuminating the values and experiences of medieval Icelanders. Egil eternalizes the heritage he shares with his countrymen, explores …

Crossing Cultures: The Old Norse Adaptations Of Marie De France’S Lais, Kenna Jacobs

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

The representation of sin and sexuality in Marie de France’s Lais is a topic that continues to be debated among scholars, as the unexpected storylines – including adultery, bestiality, and physical violence – often clash with our preconceived notions concerning the medieval principles of modesty and restraint. The provoking, even disconcerting, nature of this work becomes quite apparent when examined in conjunction with their later adaptations in the thirteenth century, as King Hákon of Norway commissioned the translation of several lais into Old Norse as a means of promoting the courtly codes and conventions within French literature. Focusing on the …

Justice Done: Outlawry Crimes In Medieval Iceland, Sarah Stapleton

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Examining the Grágás and sagas of Medieval Iceland demonstrates that the laws which governed Medieval Iceland were both strict and lawbreakers were punished ruthlessly when those laws were broken. Despite this, the laws protected the injured party and the families, dependents, and mortgagees of outlaws. Outlawry crimes were broken into main categories: honor crimes, violent crimes, and crimes of wealth. By examining the Grágás and sagas one can see how the laws manifested themselves in Icelandic society.

Bridget Of Sweden (1303-1373) As Author, Mark E. Peterson

Libraries

No abstract provided.

Discovering Border Crossings In Pagan Epic Literature, Marian Russell Bland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that border crossings were important to the ancient Celts and Norse as evidenced by the vast quantity of occurrences in their literature,and have remained important themes in literature throughout the ages. Border crossings reflect man's fascination with concepts beyond his immediate existence and understanding. His reactions to such inexplicable phenomena have provided inspiration to writers for hundreds of years. The investigation uncovers examples of border crossings in the epic stories captured in the Ulster and Fenian Cycles, TheTáin, The Eddas, and The Mabinogion.

Border crossings remain important for modern literary scholars to consider …

Laudine: The Old Swedish Herr Ivan Adapts A Character From Chretien's Yvain, Joseph M. Sullivan

New Research: Yearbook for the Society of Medieval Germanic Studies

No abstract provided.