Author: Terry Gunnell
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 9780859914581
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 446
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Book Description
A fresh look at early dramatic activity in Scandinavia, using archaeological, historical and literary evidence.
Author: Ármann Jakobsson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317041461
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 516
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Book Description
The last fifty years have seen a significant change in the focus of saga studies, from a preoccupation with origins and development to a renewed interest in other topics, such as the nature of the sagas and their value as sources to medieval ideologies and mentalities. The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas presents a detailed interdisciplinary examination of saga scholarship over the last fifty years, sometimes juxtaposing it with earlier views and examining the sagas both as works of art and as source materials. This volume will be of interest to Old Norse and medieval Scandinavian scholars and accessible to medievalists in general.
Author: Narve Fulsås
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316992799
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
Henrik Ibsen's drama is the most prominent and lasting contribution of the cultural surge seen in Scandinavian literature in the later nineteenth century. When he made his debut in Norway in 1850, the nation's literary presence was negligible, yet by 1890 Ibsen had become one of Europe's most famous authors. Contrary to the standard narrative of his move from restrictive provincial origins to liberating European exile, Narve Fulsås and Tore Rem show how Ibsen's trajectory was preconditioned on his continued embeddedness in Scandinavian society and culture, and that he experienced great success in his home markets. This volume traces how Ibsen's works first travelled outside Scandinavia and studies the mechanisms of his appropriation in Germany, Britain and France. Engaging with theories of book dissemination and world literature, and re-assessing the emergence of 'peripheral' literary nations, this book provides new perspectives on the work of this major figure of European literature and theatre.
Author: Leszek Garde?a
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789259541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1062
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Book Description
Old Norse literature abounds with descriptions of magic acts that allow ritual specialists of various kinds to manipulate the world around them, see into the future or the distant past, change weather conditions, influence the outcomes of battles, and more. While magic practitioners are known under myriad terms, the most iconic of them is the völva. As the central figure of the famous mythological poem Völuspá (The Prophecy of the Völva), the völva commands both respect and fear. In non-mythological texts similar women are portrayed as crucial albeit somewhat peculiar members of society. Always veiled in mystery, the völur and their kind have captured the academic and popular imagination for centuries. Bringing together scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, this volume aims to provide new insights into the reality of magic and its agents in the Viking world, beyond the pages of medieval texts. It explores new trajectories for the study of past mentalities, beliefs, and rituals as well as the tools employed in these practices and the individuals who wielded them. In doing so, the volume engages with several topical issues of Viking Age research, including the complex entanglements of mind and materiality, the cultural attitudes to animals and the natural world, and the cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. By addressing these complex themes, it offers a nuanced image of the völva and related magic workers in their cultural context. The volume is intended for a broad, diverse, and international audience, including experts in the field of Viking and Old Norse studies but also various non-professional history enthusiasts. The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World is a key output of the project Tanken bag Tingene (Thoughts behind Things) conducted at the National Museum of Denmark from 2020 to 2023 and funded by the Krogager Foundation.
Author: Ann Schmiesing
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838641071
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
Norway's struggle to assert an independent cultural and political identity in the nineteenth century was played out with particular fervor at the Christiania Theatre in Christiania (now Oslo). Until the 1860s the Danish actors and directors dominated the Christiania Theatre, and even plays written by Norwegian authors were performed in Danish. This study examines the intellectual campaigns that transformed the Christiania Theatre from a Danish stage into the forerunner of Norway's National Theatre. It focuses on the culture wars between the Norwegian nationalists and the so-called Danomanians in the 1830s; the promotion of the Hegelian and national romantic cultural agenda in the 1840s and 1850s; Bjornson's and Ibsen's rejection of both radical nationalism and the entrenched Danishness of the theater in the 1850s' and Bjornson's ambitious attempt to reform the theater in the mid-1860s. It is illustrated. Ann Schmiesing is an Associate Professor of Scandinavian and German literature and culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Author: William C. McDonald
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571130778
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
Founded in 1977 as the publication organ for the Fifteenth-Century Symposium, Fifteenth-Century Studies has appeared annually since then. It publishes essays on all aspects of life in the fifteenth century, including medicine, philosophy, painting, religion, science, philology, history, theater, ritual and custom, music, and poetry. The editors strive to do justice to the most contested medieval century, a period that is the stepchild of research. The period defies consensus on fundamental issues: some dispute, in fact, whether the fifteenth century belonged to the Middle Ages at all, arguing that it was a period of transition, a passage to modern times. At issue, therefore, is the very tenor of an age that stood under the tripartite influence of Gutenberg, the Turks, and Columbus. Volume 25 offers a rich palette of art, theology, literature, and aesthetics of the 15th century, ranging geographically from the British Isles to Tibet, and thematically from witch trials and beast epic to early modern science and a definition of courtliness. Four studies on theatre make dramatic art the point of emphasis in volume 25: Clifford Davidson's on mystery plays, Jörn Bockmann and Judith Klinger's on the English Secunda pastorum, Michelle M. Butler's on the York and Townley pageants, and Jean Marc Pastré's on the carneval plays. Included as standard features are Edelgard DuBruck's article on the current state of fifteenth-century research and a book review section. William C. McDonald is professor of German at the University of Virginia. Edelgard E. DuBruck is professor in the Modern Languages Department at Marygrove College, Detroit, Michigan.
Author: Roderick Dale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429650361
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
The viking berserkr is an iconic warrior normally associated with violent fits of temper and the notorious berserksgangr or berserker frenzy. This book challenges the orthodox view that these men went ‘berserk’ in the modern English sense of the word. It examines all the evidence for medieval perceptions of berserkir and builds a model of how the medieval audience would have viewed them. Then, it extrapolates a Viking Age model of berserkir from this model, and supports the analysis with anthropological and archaeological evidence, to create a new and more accurate paradigm of the Viking Age berserkr and his place in society. This shows that berserkir were the champions of lords and kings, members of the social elite, and that much of what is believed about them is based on 17th-century and later scholarship and mythologizing: the medieval audience would have had a very different understanding of the Old Norse berserkr from that which people have now. The book sets out a challenge to rethink and reframe our perceptions of the past in a way that is less influenced by our own modern ideas. The Myths and Realities of the Viking berserkr will appeal to researchers and students alike studying the Viking Age, Medieval History and Old Norse Literature.
Author: John Lindow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199839697
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 383
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Book Description
Norse Mythology explores the magical myths and legends of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Viking-Age Greenland and outlines the way the prehistoric tales and beliefs from these regions that have remained embedded in the imagination of the world. The book begins with an Introduction that helps put Scandinavian mythology in place in history, followed by a chapter that explains the meaning of mythic time, and a third section that presents in-depth explanations of each mythological term. These fascinating entries identify particular deities and giants, as well as the places where they dwell and the varied and wily means by which they forge their existence and battle one another. We meet Thor, one of the most powerful gods, who specializes in killing giants using a hammer made for him by dwarfs, not to mention myriad trolls, ogres, humans and strange animals. We learn of the ongoing struggle between the gods, who create the cosmos, and the jötnar, or giants, who aim to destroy it. In the enchanted world where this mythology takes place, we encounter turbulent rivers, majestic mountains, dense forests, storms, fierce winters, eagles, ravens, salmon and snakes in a landscape closely resembling Scandinavia. Beings travel on ships and on horseback; they eat slaughtered meat and drink mead. Spanning from the inception of the universe and the birth of human beings to the universe's destruction and the mythic future, these sparkling tales of creation and destruction, death and rebirth, gods and heroes will entertain readers and offer insight into the relationship between Scandinavian myth, history, and culture.
Author: Nely Keinänen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350251267
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
Examining the changing reception of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries between 1870 and 1940, this follow-up volume to Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries focuses on the broad movements of national revivalism that took place around the turn of the century as Finland and Norway, and later Iceland, were gaining their independence. The first part of the book demonstrates how translations and productions of Shakespeare were key in such movements, as Shakespeare was appropriated for national and political purposes. The second part explores how the role of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries was partly transformed in the 1920s and 1930s as a new social system emerged, and then as the rise of fascism meant that European politics cast a long shadow on the Nordic countries and substantially affected the reception of Shakespeare. Contributors trace the impact of early translations of Shakespeare's works into Icelandic, the role of women in the early transmission of Shakespeare in Finland and the first Shakespeare production at the Finnish Theatre, and the productions of Shakespeare's plays at the Norwegian National Theatre between 1899 and the outbreak of the Great War. In Part Two, they examine the political overtones of the 1916 Shakespeare celebrations in Hamlet's 'hometown' of Elsinore, Henrik Rytter's translations of 23 Shakespeare plays into Norwegian to assess their role in his poetics and in Scandinavian literature, the importance of the 1937 production of Hamlet in Kronborg Castle starring Laurence Olivier, and the role of Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular in Swedish Nobel laureate Eyvind Johnson's early work where it became a symbol of post-war passivity and rootlessness.
Author: Courtney Marie Burrell
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111032914
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
Otto Höfler (1901–1987) was an Austrian Germanist and Scandinavist. His research on ‘Germanic culture’, in particular on Germanic Männerbünde (men’s bands), was controversial and remains a topic of academic debate. In modern discourse, Höfler’s theories are often fundamentally rejected on account of his involvement in the National Socialist movement and his contribution to the research initiatives of the SS Ahnenerbe, or they are adopted by scholars who ignore his problematic methodologies and the ideological and political elements of his work. The present study takes a comprehensive approach to Höfler’s research on ‘Germanic culture’ and analyses his characterisation of the ‘Germanic peoples’, contextualising his research in the backdrop of German philological studies of the early twentieth century and highlighting elements of his theories that are still the topic of modern academic discourse. A thorough analysis of his main research theses, focusing on his Männerbund-research, reveals that his concept of ‘Germanic culture’ is underscored by a belief in the deep-seated religiosity of the ‘Germanic peoples’ formed through sacred-daemonic forces.
