Medieval Iceland

Medieval Iceland PDF Author: Jesse L. Byock
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520069541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Gift of Joan Wall. Includes index. Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-248) and index. * glr 20090610.

Medieval Iceland

Medieval Iceland PDF Author: Jesse L. Byock
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520069541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Gift of Joan Wall. Includes index. Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-248) and index. * glr 20090610.

A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth

A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth PDF Author: Jon Johannesson
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
ISBN: 0887553311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
The founding of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth in 930 A.D. is one of the most significant events in the history of early Western Europe. This pioneering work of historiography provides a comprehensive history of Iceland from 870 A.D. to the end of the Commonwealth in 1262.

The Last of the Icelandic Commonwealth

The Last of the Icelandic Commonwealth PDF Author: Eiríkr Magnússon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description


Viking Friendship

Viking Friendship PDF Author: Jon Vidar Sigurdsson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501708473
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
"To a faithful friend, straight are the roads and short."—Odin, from the Hávamál (c. 1000) Friendship was the most important social bond in Iceland and Norway during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages. Far more significantly than kinship ties, it defined relations between chieftains, and between chieftains and householders. In Viking Friendship, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson explores the various ways in which friendship tied Icelandic and Norwegian societies together, its role in power struggles and ending conflicts, and how it shaped religious beliefs and practices both before and after the introduction of Christianity. Drawing on a wide range of Icelandic sagas and other sources, Sigurðsson details how loyalties between friends were established and maintained. The key elements of Viking friendship, he shows, were protection and generosity, which was most often expressed through gift giving and feasting. In a society without institutions that could guarantee support and security, these were crucial means of structuring mutual assistance. As a political force, friendship was essential in the decentralized Free State period in Iceland’s history (from its settlement about 800 until it came under Norwegian control in the years 1262–1264) as local chieftains vied for power and peace. In Norway, where authority was more centralized, kings attempted to use friendship to secure the loyalty of their subjects. The strong reciprocal demands of Viking friendship also informed the relationship that individuals had both with the Old Norse gods and, after 1000, with Christianity’s God and saints. Addressing such other aspects as the possibility of friendship between women and the relationship between friendship and kinship, Sigurðsson concludes by tracing the decline of friendship as the fundamental social bond in Iceland as a consequence of Norwegian rule.

Islendingabok

Islendingabok PDF Author: Ari Thorgilsson Frodi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Iceland
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description


The Icelandic Saga

The Icelandic Saga PDF Author: Peter Hallberg
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803250826
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
In this stimulating and reliable introduction to the Icelandic saga, Peter Hallberg correctly designates the genre as "Scandinavia's sole, collective original contribution to world literature." These prose narratives dating from the thirteenth century are characterized by a psychological realism which sets them apart from all other contemporary forms of European literature. Mr. Hallberg's emphasis is on the branch of saga literature which deals with the native heroes--with the settlement of Iceland by Norse chieftains and with the lives of these settlers and their descendants. After disposing of the controversial "free-prose" theory of the origin and transmission of these stories, the author treats such problems as style and character portrayal, dreams and destinies, values and ideals, humor and irony. Several of the major sagas are studied in some detail. The concluding discussion concerns the decline of saga writing and the role played by the Sagas in modern Scandinavian life and literature. Paul Schach's introduction and copious annotation furnish additional background material and bibliographical references to English translations of the individual sagas and to significant studies on the major problems of saga research. Although intended primarily for the layman, The Icelandic Saga is of value to the specialist since it judiciously evaluates and incorporates the revolutionary findings of the so-called "Icelandic school" of saga study.

Icelanders in the Viking Age

Icelanders in the Viking Age PDF Author: William R. Short
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786447273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The Sagas of Icelanders are enduring stories from Viking-age Iceland filled with love and romance, battles and feuds, tragedy and comedy. Yet these tales are little read today, even by lovers of literature. The culture and history of the people depicted in the Sagas are often unfamiliar to the modern reader, though the audience for whom the tales were intended would have had an intimate understanding of the material. This text introduces the modern reader to the daily lives and material culture of the Vikings. Topics covered include religion, housing, social customs, the settlement of disputes, and the early history of Iceland. Issues of dispute among scholars, such as the nature of settlement and the division of land, are addressed in the text.

The History of Iceland

The History of Iceland PDF Author: Gunnar Karlsson
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816635894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Iceland is unique among European societies in having been founded as late as the Viking Age and in having copious written and archaeological sources about its origin. Gunnar Karlsson, that country's premier historian, chronicles the age of the Sagas, consulting them to describe an era without a monarch or central authority. Equating this prosperous time with the golden age of antiquity in world history, Karlsson then marks a correspondence between the Dark Ages of Europe and Iceland's "dreary period", which started with the loss of political independence in the late thirteenth century and culminated with an epoch of poverty and humility, especially during the early Modern Age. Iceland's renaissance came about with the successful struggle for independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and with the industrial and technical modernization of the first half of the twentieth century. Karlsson describes the rise of nationalism as Iceland's mostly poor peasants set about breaking with Denmark, and he shows how Iceland in the twentieth century slowly caught up economically with its European neighbors.

Saga-book of the Viking Club

Saga-book of the Viking Club PDF Author: Viking Society for Northern Research
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Icelandic literature
Languages : en
Pages : 946

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Book Description
List of members in v. 3, 5.

The Christianization of Iceland

The Christianization of Iceland PDF Author: Orri Vesteinsson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191543020
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In this first historical study of High-Medieval Iceland to be published in English, Dr Vesteinsson investigates the influence of the Christian Church on the formation of the earliest state structures in Iceland, from the conversion in 1000 to the union with Norway in 1262. In the history of mankind states and state structures have usually been established before the advent of written records. As a result historians are rarely able to trace with certainty the early development of complex structures of government. In Iceland, literacy and the practice of native history writing had been established by the beginning of the twelfth century; whereas the formation of a centralised government did not occur until more than a hundred years later. The early development of statelike structures has therefore been unusually well chronicled, in the Icelandic Sagas, and in the historical records of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Based on this wealth of material,The Christianization of Iceland is an important contribution to the discussion on the formation of states.