Scandinavian Studies Commons^™

"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 …

Close Mapping Of St. Olav’S Pilgrimage Path Through Gudbrandsdal Norway: Probabilities Of A Designed, Land Surveyed Concept Of A Large-Scale Christianised Landscape, Dennis Doxtater

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This exercise in Norway ‘close-maps’ accurate, existing geometries between thirty-two latitude / longitude points of mostly medieval churches and other sites on the major pilgrimage path through Gudbrandsdal to Trondheimsfjord where the martyr St.Olav was venerated. Site data and basic path routes are taken from the Pilegrimsleden website, popular today with religious or recreational tourists. The inclusion of the largest prehistoric monumental mound in Scandinavia as an important early stop on the pilgrimage provides the first clue to the eventual mapping of a large-scale ‘system’ of land surveyed patterns. This symbolic anchor in the south, is connected to likely ancient …

“…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 …

Georg Brandes And Fin De Siècle Scandinavia As A Cultural Semiperiphery, Stefan Nygård

Artl@s Bulletin

The article centres on the practice of cultural mediation and core-periphery dynamics in Scandinavian cultural life at the turn of the twentieth century. In this period, Copenhagen functioned as a gateway in the circulation of ideas and cultural goods to and from the region, as did individual actors and cultural institutions in Denmark. Similarly, Scandinavia as a whole occupied a transitional position in global intellectual space. With extensive intellectual networks and a strategic role in the literary traffic to and from Scandinavia, the critic and intellectual Georg Brandes provides a starting point for exploring core- periphery relations.

Destination Icaic: Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Documentary Film And The Image Of The Cuban 1960s, Gabriel Arce-Riocabo Rollins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the interaction between foreign intellectuals and ICAIC (Instituto cubano de artes e industrias cinematográficas) in shaping the image of Cuba in the 1960s. I make the case that the idea of Revolution was a product of cosmopolitan intellectual engagement and that in this process documentary film was a privileged medium. By tracing the development of normative stories of commitment, cosmopolitanism, and aesthetic experimentation embodied both in written texts and travel essay films, I argue that such circulation destabilizes fixed ideas of Cuban, Revolutionary or Intellectual. The archive of Danish filmmaker and ICAIC collaborator Theodor Christensen as well …

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 …

Denmark And Sweden: The Collision Between Welfare State Politics And Immigration, Amy Elizabeth Cantrell

Student Publications

The Scandinavian welfare states of Denmark and Sweden have famously similar socio-political and cultural systems, ones which have advanced the common perception of these nations as united in a common humanitarian and progressive global position. However there exists a significant divergence within either nation’s approach to immigration, asylum and integration policy, one indicative of the deeply ingrained deviations in popular understandings of national belonging and perspectives on greater European and global integration. By contextualizing the historical progressions of either nation and juxtaposing their individual responses to both the 2015 European refugee crisis and the contemporary Ukrainian conflict and resulting refugee …

Nato And The Swedish Churches: Dealing With Defence Policy In The Midst Of A European Crisis, Erik Sidenvall

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Excerpt: "Just like the rest of the population, Swedish Christians remain fundamentally divided in their opinions about the best way to arrange Sweden’s relationship to NATO. But the responses on the part of the churches also seem to hark back to bygone ages. National defense and foreign policy remain, in a country for centuries fundamentally shaped by Lutheran doctrine concerning the division between faith and politics, a matter for the political realm. A tense and potentially threatening geopolitical situation tends to reinforce long cherished views."

Ecstasy, Confession, Image, And Silence In Buber, Bergman, And Godard, Karl E. Toepfer

Open Educational Resources

This essay discusses the contrasting attitudes toward ecstatic experience as described in Martin Buber's book Ekstatische Konfessionen (1909). Ingmar Bergman's film Persona (1966), and Jean-Luc Godard's film Weekend (1967). The attitude toward ecstasy depends heavily on the use of language and confidence in language to represent ecstatic experience. Buber, Bergman. and Godard share little, if any, perception on the relation between language, speech, and ecstasy.

Across The West And Toward The North: Norwegian And American Landscape Photography, Shannon Egan, Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography examines images from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a historical moment when once remote wildernesses were first surveyed, catalogued, photographed, and developed on both sides of the Atlantic. The exhibition demonstrates how photographers in the two countries provided new ways of seeing the effects of mapping and exploration: infrastructure changes, the exploitation of natural resources, and the influx of tourism. As tourists and immigrants entered “new” lands—seemingly unsettled areas that had long been inhabited and utilized by Indigenous people in both countries—they “discovered” beautifully remote landscapes …

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 …

Landscape Theology: Exploring The Outfields Of The Telemarkian Dream Song, Thomas Arentzen

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The article explores the Norwegian ‘national ballad’ Draumkvæde (the Dream Song) in Maren Ramskeid’s version. This work has traditionally been interpreted as a folklore adaptation of medieval visionary literature such as the Vision of Tundale, related to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The ballad, however, lacks demons and devils and infernal torture – it is even almost completely devoid of human beings. Instead it tells of a corporeal encounter with an imagined natural landscape. This dreamscape of the song is intimately intertwined with the local terrain of the singer. Maren Ramskeid engaged her own landscape in Telemark, the …

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 …

Strategies To Implement Social Media Marketing In Small Businesses, Theodora Ijang Nyamboli

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The lack of consumer engagement can have adverse effects on business outcomes. Small business managers (SBMs) and owners who fail to engage consumers are at a higher risk of failure. Rooted in the theory of diffusion of innovation theory, the purpose of this qualitative exploratory multiple case study was to explore strategies SBMs use to develop and effectively implement marketing strategies to improve consumers' engagement. The participants comprised six business managers of six successful small businesses in Maryland who effectively used social media marketing strategies to engage consumers for at least 5 years. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews and …

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, …

Tinderbox: Danish-Russian Relations, 1989-2019, Maddy Ghose

Master's Theses

This thesis documents and analyzes the major trends of the military, political, economic, and cultural relationships between Denmark and Russia from 1989 to 2019. I document the relationship from the Danish perspective, using primary sources, with the aim to conduct analysis of Danish politicians’ speeches and activities during this period. The outcome is a comprehensive image of the Danish-Russian bilateral relationship at the present time. This relationship has fluctuated widely during the time period under study. Shared economic development interests in the 1990s contributed to a positive relationship; controversy surrounding the war in Chechnya and an assertive Danish prime minister …

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, …

Passing Down The Rolling Pin: Lefse, Memory, And A Norwegian-American Identity, Rebecca Garbe

Scandinavian Studies Student Award

This paper explores the intersections between memory and food-making and how they inform a Norwegian-American cultural identity. Based on fieldwork done in June and July of 2019 in Fosston, Minnesota, I use lefse, a Norwegian potato-based flatbread, as a focal point, for analysis. I argue that lefse-making in Fosston acts as a medium through which residents engage with a collective memory of an immigrant heritage. This traditional food-making, I assert, relies on knowledge passed down through and across family lines allowing food-makers and eaters to experience an embodied connection to their cultural past. Investigating my own Norwegian heritage, I draw …

Marching Straight In Sweden: The Parade Of A Queer Swedish Utopia Or False Hope?, Ainslie Lounsbury

Scandinavian Studies Student Award

Sweden is considered to be one of the most open, welcoming countries in the world. Often, the country is viewed as a shining example of inclusion, especially in regards to their support of the LGBTQ+ community. When analyzing various media from the country, however, many questions arise. Are the groups creating these advertisements doing so for the benefit of the LGBTQ+ community? Or are they for boosting sales, tourism, and recruitment? What if these advertisements actually harm the LGBTQ+ community through stereotyping? Through the analysis of Swedish military and corporate images supporting the LGBTQ+ community, Lounsbury explores possible ideas about …

The Dead Actually Tell Many Tales: How Archaeologists Have Used Scientific Analysis To Study Scandinavian Burials, Claire F. Benstead

Student Publications

Archaeologists often employ techniques from scientific fields to better analyze historical and prehistorical sites. Here we explore how developments in scientific analysis have changed and improved our understanding of past societies. With a specific focus on the study of Scandinavian burials, we review the history of Scandinavian archaeology and how the field is constantly changing as a result of new and more nuanced analysis. From the Bronze Age to the Viking Age, we analyze how new information challenges previous assumptions about Scandinavian societies.

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 Musical Poetics Of Witness: Two Anthropocene Journeys, Heidi Hart

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Kerstin Ekman’s The Forest of Hours (first published in Swedish in 1988) and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation(published in German as Heimsuchung in 2008) span two decades and two countries, but both novels reach across far larger epochs, in their respective journeys from Europe’s glacial prehistory through the Dark Ages and the Thirty Years War, and through the twentieth century’s collective trauma. Though disagreement persists on when the Anthropocene began to leave its mark in stone, contemporary fiction often registers its traces through a marginally human witness who somehow survives generation after generation, recording in word or action what he or …

Factors Supporting Turkey’S Policy To Purchase Russian S-400 Anti-Air Strike Defense Units, Chendika Yonanda, Maryam Jamila, Zulkifli Harza, Ilman Syarif Masri

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Turkey is a member of the NATO military alliance since 1952, as a member of NATO, cooperation between Turkey and Russia invites counterparts from other NATO alliance countries. But even with criticism, Turkey continues purchasing S-400 from Russia . Therefore, this study aims to analyze the factors that support Turkey's policy on purchasing S-400.This research is a descriptive research through internet-based literature.Turkey's policy in purchasing S-400 analyzed using the concepts of Arms, Alliances and Security Tradeoffs proposed by James D. Morrow. James stated that there are three factors that influence the state to conduct arming; economic & military technological factors, …

The Echo Of Odin: Norse Mythology And Human Consciousness By Edward W.L. Smith, Emily E. Auger

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This review briefly describes and assesses the chapter by chapter content of the book and the author's argument regarding the content of Norse mythology as representing a map of human consciousness.

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 …

Gregerson, Uggla, And Wyllers' "Reformation Theology For A Post-Secular Age: Logstrup, Prenta, Wingren, And The Future Of Scandinavian Creation Theology" (Book Review), Samuel S. Richardson

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

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 …