Cultural Legacies of Old Norse Literature: New Perspectives

Description

The "Viking Age" of medieval Scandinavia, with its heathen religion and heroic literature, continues to fascinate readers, writers, students, scholars, poets, artists, and creators of all kinds around the world. This cultural legacy is preserved in Old Norse literature, much of it composed and produced in Iceland, an island with a unique position in relation to the ebb and flow of religions, institutions, and empires. The chapters in this book examine many topics in Old Norse literature: the mysterious personas of the god Odin, the strange origins of poetry and scholarship, the cryptic lore of the elusive dwarfs, the fame of the dragon-slayer Sigurd and the defiant "Sworn Brothers", the early settlement of Iceland, trade in the medieval north, and the history of literary production. Several contributors upend traditional interpretations of their topics, while others offer new insights into the rich modern artistic reception of Norse myth. These studies reveal the striking resilience and adaptability of Old Norse narrative traditions, which retain their timeless appeal through a startling variety of contexts and changes in form. Front cover Table of Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Foreword: Old Norse and the Porous Boundaries of Medievalism Acknowledgements Note on the Text Introduction 1. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in Medieval Iceland 2. Íslendingabók as Narrative History 3. Women’s Work and Material Culture in Medieval Iceland 4. Vafþrúðnismál, from Parchment to Print 5. The Odinic Motif: The Wanderer in the Mist 6. Shapeshifting, God, and Nature in the ‘Great Story of the North’ 7. Günter Grass’s Transformation of Old Norse Myth in The Tin Drum 8. Transforming Myth in Gerður Kristný’s Blóðhófnir and the Eddic Poem Skírnismál Afterword: Ethnographic Medievalisms Bibliography Index