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Author: Stefan Figenschow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503588230
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
The history of the Far North is tinged by dark fantasies. A remote location, harsh climate, a boundless and often mountainous wasteland, complex ethnic composition, and strange ways of life: all contributed to how the edge of Europe was misunderstood by outsiders. Since ancient times, the North has been considered as a place that exuded evil: it was the end of the world, the abode of monsters and supernatural beings, of magicians and sorcerers. It was Europe's last bastion of recalcitrant paganism. Many weird tales of the North even came from within the region itself, and when newly literate Scandinavians began to re-work their oral traditions into written form after 1100 AD, these myths of their past underlay newer legends and stories serving to support the development to Christian national monarchies. The essays in this volume engage closely with these stories, questioning how and why such traditions developed, and exploring their meaning. Through this approach, the volume also examines how historiographical traditions were shaped by authors pursuing agendas of nation-building and Christianization, at the same time that myths surrounding and originating among the multi-ethnic populations of the Far North continued to dominate the perception of the region and its people, and to define their place in Norwegian medieval history.
Author: Stefan Figenschow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782503588230
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Get Book Here
Book Description
The history of the Far North is tinged by dark fantasies. A remote location, harsh climate, a boundless and often mountainous wasteland, complex ethnic composition, and strange ways of life: all contributed to how the edge of Europe was misunderstood by outsiders. Since ancient times, the North has been considered as a place that exuded evil: it was the end of the world, the abode of monsters and supernatural beings, of magicians and sorcerers. It was Europe's last bastion of recalcitrant paganism. Many weird tales of the North even came from within the region itself, and when newly literate Scandinavians began to re-work their oral traditions into written form after 1100 AD, these myths of their past underlay newer legends and stories serving to support the development to Christian national monarchies. The essays in this volume engage closely with these stories, questioning how and why such traditions developed, and exploring their meaning. Through this approach, the volume also examines how historiographical traditions were shaped by authors pursuing agendas of nation-building and Christianization, at the same time that myths surrounding and originating among the multi-ethnic populations of the Far North continued to dominate the perception of the region and its people, and to define their place in Norwegian medieval history.
Author: Cordelia Heß, Solveig Marie Wang, Erik Wolf
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111386759
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
Author: Solveig Marie Wang
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110784300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
The interdisciplinary study investigates the relationship between Norse and Saami peoples in the medieval period and focuses on the multifaceted portrayal of Saami peoples in medieval texts. The investigative analysis is anchored in postcolonial methodologies and argues for the inherent need to decolonise the medieval source-material as well as recent historiography. This is achieved by presenting the historiographic and political background of research into Norse-Saami relations, before introducing an overview of textual sources discussing Saami peoples from the classical period to the late 1400s, an analysis of the textual motifs associated with the Saami in medieval literature (their relevance and prevalence), geo-political affairs, trading relations, personal relations and Saami presence in the south. By using decolonising tools to read Norse-Saami relations in medieval texts, influenced by archaeological material and postcolonial frameworks, the study challenges lingering colonial assumptions about the role of the Saami in Norse society. The current research episteme is re-adjusted to offer alternative readings of Saami characters and emphasis is put on agency, fluidity and the dynamic realities of the Saami medieval pasts.
Author: Edward Pettit
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1800647751
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 730
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Book Description
This book is an edition and translation of one of the most important and celebrated sources of Old Norse-Icelandic mythology and heroic legend, namely the medieval poems now known collectively as the Poetic Edda or Elder Edda. Included are thirty-six texts, which are mostly preserved in medieval manuscripts, especially the thirteenth-century Icelandic codex traditionally known as the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. The poems cover diverse subjects, including the creation, destruction and rebirth of the world, the dealings of gods such as Óðinn, Þórr and Loki with giants and each other, and the more intimate, personal tragedies of the hero Sigurðr, his wife Guðrún and the valkyrie Brynhildr. Each poem is provided with an introduction, synopsis and suggestions for further reading. The Old Norse texts are furnished with a textual apparatus recording the manuscript readings behind this edition’s emendations, as well as select variant readings. The accompanying translations, informed by the latest scholarship, are concisely annotated to make them as accessible as possible. As the first open-access, single-volume parallel Old Norse edition and English translation of the Poetic Edda, this book will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars of Old Norse literature. It will also interest those researching other fields of medieval literature (especially Old English and Middle High German), and appeal to a wider general audience drawn to the myths and legends of the Viking Age and subsequent centuries.
Author: Andrew Lang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poets, English
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
Author: Pernille Hermann
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503549101
Category : Civilization, Medieval, in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This volume consists of articles about terms for, concepts of and functions of memory. The articles deal with medieval Norse texts, such as sagas, myths, skaldic poems, laws and historiographical writings, and they refer to theoretical insights from international memory studies that have developed recently. In recent years, various branches of memory studies have provided useful tools of analysis that offer new ways of understanding medieval cultures. The articles in this collection draw on these new theoretical tools for studying - and conceptualizing - memory, in order to reassess the function of memory in medieval Nordic culture. Despite its interdisciplinary and comparative basis, the volume remains very much an empirical study of memory and memory-dependent issues as these took form in the Nordic world.
Author: Terry Gunnell
Publisher: Brepols Pub
ISBN: 9782503541822
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
This book, with roots in a conference held in Iceland in May 2008, contains a series of articles reflecting modern approaches to the text, context, and performance of the Old Norse poem Voluspa, perhaps the best known and most discussed of all the Eddic poems. Rather than attempting to cover Eddic or Skaldic poetry as a genre, the main aim of this book is to present an overview of the 'state of the art' with regard to one particular Eddic poem. It focuses especially on the poem's possible context within the apocalyptic tradition of Northern Europe in the early medieval period. The approaches of the articles range from placing the poem within the pre-Christian oral tradition to placing it within the written and liturgical context of Christianity. Two other chapters offer a possible context for the poem by examining the nature and background of the early medieval image of the Apocalypse known to have been on display in the Cathedral of Holar in northern Iceland. While the approaches are focused on one specific poem, they are nonetheless applicable to many other Eddic works.
Author: Nancy Marie Brown
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1137073713
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
“A wonderfully evocative biography of the . . . 13th century Icelandic writer and chieftain” who wrote the immortal stories of Thor, Odin, Valhalla, and Ragnarök (Guardian, UK). Much like Greek and Roman mythology, Norse myths are still with us. Famous storytellers from JRR Tolkien to Neil Gaiman have drawn their inspiration from the long-haired, mead-drinking, marauding and pillaging Vikings. But few of us know much about the creator of these immortal heroes: a thirteenth-century Icelandic chieftain by the name of Snorri Sturluson. Like Homer, Snorri was a bard, writing down and embellishing the folklore and pagan legends of medieval Scandinavia. Unlike Homer, Snorri was a man of the world—a wily political power player, one of the richest men in Iceland who came close to ruling it, and even closer to betraying it. In Song of the Vikings, award-winning author Nancy Marie Brown brings Snorri Sturluson’s story to life in a richly textured narrative that draws on newly available sources.
Author: Clive Tolley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mythology, Norse
Languages : is
Pages : 332
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Book Description
" ... presents the main features of Siberian shamanism, as they are relevant for comparison with Norse sources, and examines the Norse texts in detail to determine how far it is reasonable to assign a label of "shamanism" to the human and divine magical practices of pre-Christian Scandinavia, whose existence, it is argued, in many cases resides mainly in the imaginative tradition of the poets." -- Back cover.
Author: David M. Krueger
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452945438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 181
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Book Description
What do our myths say about us? Why do we choose to believe stories that have been disproven? David M. Krueger takes an in-depth look at a legend that held tremendous power in one corner of Minnesota, helping to define both a community’s and a state’s identity for decades. In 1898, a Swedish immigrant farmer claimed to have discovered a large rock with writing carved into its surface in a field near Kensington, Minnesota. The writing told a North American origin story, predating Christopher Columbus’s exploration, in which Viking missionaries reached what is now Minnesota in 1362 only to be massacred by Indians. The tale’s credibility was quickly challenged and ultimately undermined by experts, but the myth took hold. Faith in the authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone was a crucial part of the local Nordic identity. Accepted and proclaimed as truth, the story of the Rune Stone recast Native Americans as villains. The community used the account as the basis for civic celebrations for years, and advocates for the stone continue to promote its validity despite the overwhelming evidence that it was a hoax. Krueger puts this stubborn conviction in context and shows how confidence in the legitimacy of the stone has deep implications for a wide variety of Minnesotans who embraced it, including Scandinavian immigrants, Catholics, small-town boosters, and those who desired to commemorate the white settlers who died in the Dakota War of 1862. Krueger demonstrates how the resilient belief in the Rune Stone is a form of civil religion, with aspects that defy logic but illustrate how communities characterize themselves. He reveals something unique about America’s preoccupation with divine right and its troubled way of coming to terms with the history of the continent’s first residents. By considering who is included, who is left out, and how heroes and villains are created in the stories we tell about the past, Myths of the Rune Stone offers an enlightening perspective on not just Minnesota but the United States as well.
