Old Norse News

From Alexandra Sanmark:

The Centre for Nordic Studies UHI invites you and your colleagues to
submit abstracts for the Inaugural St Magnus Conference, Orkney 2011 at the Centre for Nordic Studies, UHI Millennium Institute, Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 14-15th April, 2011.

The 2-day international conference will feature presentations on cultural and geographical connections between Scotland and the Nordic World, fostering dialogue and knowledge exchange between academia, government and the public. The theme of this event concerns cultural, geographical and historical links between Scotland and the Nordic World. However, we welcome talks on all Nordic and maritime topics, particularly comparative studies. Abstracts are due by 30/11/10. Read more »

When Professor Peter Foote died last autumn, he most generously left his large library to the Viking Society for Northern Research, with the instructions that his books should be sold to raise funds for the society. After quite a lengthy process of packing and cataloguing the books–there are some three thousand volumes–the Society has now opened the auction to bidders. Everybody is welcome to bid, whether they’re members of the Society or not. Here’s how the process works:

1. Download the catalogue from the Society’s website. [It's also available as a pdf file.]

2. Choose which books you’d like to bid on, and the amount you’d be prepared to pay.

3. Send a list of your bids to Alison Finlay at a.finlay@bbk.ac.uk by 31 July.

4. In August, the people who bid the highest amount for each book (you don’t get to see what others have bid, and you can’t revise your initial bids) will be contacted and invoiced for the books and price of postage. Please bear in mind that the cost of postage may be substantial if you win several books or live overseas.

5. Wait for your books! (It may take some time for them to be delivered, owing to the sheer volume of orders to be processed.)

All proceeds from the sale will go towards the Peter Foote Memorial Fund, which has been established to support postgraduate students in the field of Medieval Scandinavian Studies through the provision of bursaries and prizes.

There are lots of really special items in the list, all of them made much more special by their association with Peter. So please do take a look at the catalogue, and happy bidding!

News of an exciting and potentially extremely useful new book from University of Toronto Press:

The Viking Age: A Reader

Edited by Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald

April 2010 / 450pp / 6×9 paperback / ISBN 9781442601482 / $39.95

Drawing on a wide range of original sources, and tracing the astonishing development of the Viking Age from the first foreign raids to the rise and fall of Viking empires, this comprehensive reader is essential to an understanding of Viking history.

There’s a much more detailed account of the contents available at the UTP website. To me, this looks like filling a really important gap in the market, and I’m sure Professors Somerville and McDonald’s book will find its way onto plenty of university reading lists.

It’s out now in North America and will officially be launched in the UK in June, although it seems that it’s already possible to order a copy.

There will be a one-day seminar on Runes in Context: Runes, Runic Inscriptions, Early Scandinavian Society and Early Germanic Languages at the University of Aberdeen on 3 May. I don’t have very much information about it, but the speakers have been confirmed–assuming the volcano stops doing its dirty work–as:

Dr Marie Stoklund, Curator Emerita and Senior Researcher at the National Museum, Copenhagen

Prof. Hans Frede Nielsen, Dept. of English, University of Southern Denmark, Odense

Prof. Henrik Williams, Dept. of Scandinavian Languages and Director of the Centre for Runology, University of Uppsala

MA Irene García Losquino, Centre for Scandinavian Studies, University of Aberdeen

Prof. Stefan Brink, Centre for Scandinavian Studies, University of Aberdeen

Dr Tarrin Wills, Centre for Scandinavian Studies, University of Aberdeen

All are welcome–if you’re interested in attending please contact Stefan Brink directly at s.brink@abdn.ac.uk

[Apologies for the long hiatus between posts -- now that the semester is over in London I hope to resume more regular updates.]

François-Xavier Dillmann has written to inform us that the latest issue of the excellent French-language journal of Medieval Scandinavian Studies, Proxima Thulé, has now been published. Here is the list of contents, followed by details of how to order a copy:

Éditée depuis 1994 par le professeur François-Xavier Dillmann, corres­pondant de l’Institut, directeur d’études à l’École pratique des Hautes Études, la revue Proxima Thulé est le seul périodique de langue française entièrement consacré à la Scandinavie ancienne et médiévale.

Le volume VI de Proxima Thulé (automne 2009, 192 pages, une trentaine d’illustrations) vient d’être publié en ce début du mois de mars 2010. Il comprend les études suivantes :

Anders Hultgård, Fimbulvetr ou le Grand Hiver. Étude comparative d’un aspect du mythe eschatologique des anciens Scandinaves.

François-Xavier Dillmann, « Brûler ses vaisseaux ». Remarques compa­ratives sur un épisode de l’Histoire des rois de Norvège de Snorri Sturlu­son.

Jan Ragnar Hagland, Les inscriptions runiques d’Irlande.

Lennart Elmevik, « Il était hospitalier et éloquent ». Sur les épithètes laudatives dans les inscriptions runiques de Suède à l’époque viking.

Elena Balzamo, Olaus Magnus savait-il dessiner ? Quelques réflexions et hypothèses au sujet des vignettes de l’Historia de gentibus septen­trionalibus.

Marie-Christine Skuncke, Gustave III de Suède et l’Opéra.

Les commandes du volume VI (et des volumes antérieurs) de Proxima Thulé (au prix de 30 euros l’exemplaire) sont à adresser — directement ou par l’intermédiaire d’un libraire — à De Boccard Édition-Diffusion

11, rue Médicis. 75006 Paris

Téléphone : 01 43 26 00 37  Télécopie : 01 43 54 85 83

Adresse de messagerie électronique : deboccard@wanadoo.fr

Site Internet : www.deboccard.com

Details of this year’s summer school in Medieval Scandinavian Manuscript Studies, to be held in Copenhagen, have now been published. It will take place on 12-20 August 2010. This event has been amazingly successful, and usually gets booked up quickly, so if you’re interested it would be a good idea to register as soon as possible.

Good news from the University of Aberdeen, where–despite the economic difficulties that are smiting higher education in Britain–the Centre for Scandinavian Studies is offering four funded PhD places for 2010/11 and a further four for the next academic year. They are looking for qualified candidates in the following subject areas:  Nordic medieval law and policy, Old Norse sagas and poetry, the pre-Christian religion and mythology of Scandinavia, Christianization of Scandinavia, Viking Studies, early landscape studies or related fields.

These studentships are fees-only, although they say that they may also be able to contribute to students’ maintenance. Three posts each year are for British or EU students with the other one open to candidates from anywhere in the world. See the advertisement for details or the Centre’s own website.