Old Norse News

Dr Cathy Swift has written to inform us that Irish Conference of Medievalists is running an 11-Day Introduction to Old Norse Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland, from 20-30 July.

This summer school, which is based on the successful format in which Old Irish has been taught at Limerick for the past few years, will be taught by Dr Katrina Burge of the University of Melbourne. Students will spend about 60 hours learning Old Norse over the course of the eleven days

They offer Bed &  Breakfast accommodation at 25 euros per night  and a taxi service to sights of Norse interest in the mid-west of Ireland whenever the teacher allows us to take a break. Price for the course is 300 euros.

The course is open to all. If you’re interested, please contact Cathy directly by email at Catherine.Swift@mic.ul.ie.

There’s no doubt about it: Open-Access publishing is the coming thing, and Medieval Scandinavian Studies are gradually starting to reap the benefits. The latest e-publishing initiative in the field is Cornell University Press’s decision to publish all future volumes in the famous Islandica series on the internet, as well as in print. Volume 53, Joseph Harris’s collected essays, is now available free to anybody with a computer. Readers will also be able to order volumes over the net on a print-on-demand basis.

Without wishing to be greedy, I just hope that they’ll also decide to digitize the first fifty-two volumes in the series as well!

Jon Julius Sandal’s Heimskringla website is undoubtedly one of the most useful Norse e-resources out there, and has been of great use in compiling the database of Old Norse Texts Online. Now Heimskringla has got even better, with a new design (which seems very clear and user-friendly), new resources, and a new logo. As the press release says:

The Nordic internet project “Heimskringla”, also known as “Old Norse texts and poetry”, expands its collection of texts and opens a new database today. The new database uses the wiki technology, and the project has got a clearer and a more user-friendly layout. The project, that aims to provide Old Norse literature on the internet is based on voluntary collaborations and is developed without official support.

In addition to source texts in the original language readers will find several texts translated into the later Scandinavian languages, classical scholarly works and other background material, in particular from before 1900. The project has a digital mailbox where the public can place relevant questions. New projects under development are, among others, Finnur Jónsson’s «Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning» and a Norwegian translation of the Eddic poems published by Gustav Antonio Gjessing in 1899, together with a biographic overview. Already present in the project are both the Prose Edda and the Eddic poems in several Scandinavian translations, in addition to an important assortment of Old Norse skaldic poems, rímur, sagas of the Icelanders, sagas of ancient times and the king’s sagas. Nearly 1700 unique texts. The database contains also rich overview over external web resources, a so-called e-library.

One of the new features of the site is a series of brief biographies of some of the great scholars who produced the editions and translations of the texts in the Heimskringla collection, which I think is a great idea. I’m pretty sure I’d never seen a picture of Albert Ulrik Bååth before!

Many thanks to all those involved in producing this wonderful resource.

Tolkien fans will hardly need Old Norse News to make them aware of this, but J.R.R. Tolkien’s previously unpublished Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún comes out next week.

Details from the jacket blurb:

Many years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien composed his own version, now published for the first time, of the great legend of Northern antiquity, in two closely related poems to which he gave the titles The New Lay of the Völsungs and The New Lay of Gudrún.

In the Lay of the Völsungs is told the ancestry of the great hero Sigurd, the slayer of Fáfnir most celebrated of dragons, whose treasure he took for his own; of his awakening of the Valkyrie Brynhild who slept surrounded by a wall of fire, and of their betrothal; and of his coming to the court of the great princes who were named the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered into blood-brotherhood. In that court there sprang great love but also great hate, brought about by the power of the enchantress, mother of the Niflungs, skilled in the arts of magic, of shape-changing and potions of forgetfulness.

In scenes of dramatic intensity, of confusion of identity, thwarted passion, jealousy and bitter strife, the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrún his sister, mounts to its end in the murder of Sigurd at the hands of his blood-brothers, the suicide of Brynhild, and the despair of Gudrún. In the Lay of Gudrún her fate after the death of Sigurd is told, her marriage against her will to the mighty Atli, ruler of the Huns (the Attila of history), his murder of her brothers the Niflung lords, and her hideous revenge.

Deriving his version primarily from his close study of the ancient poetry of Norway and Iceland known as the Poetic Edda (and where no old poetry exists, from the later prose work the Völsunga Saga), J.R.R. Tolkien employed a verse-form of short stanzas whose lines embody in English the exacting alliterative rhythms and the concentrated energy of the poems of the Edda.

It will be fascinating to see the Great Man’s take on the legend (though I have to confess to finding his poetry only bearable in small doses!)

[Apologies for the long gap between posts -- I've been away.]

Chris Callow writes to give us the very heartening news that Old Norse language is returning to the syllabus at the University of Birmingham, after a few year’s hiatus. Chris will be teaching an introductory level course in the School of History and Cultures. He hopes to extend the teaching to more advanced levels in the future.

Chris also thought that Old Norse News readers might be interested in Birmingham’s new  MA in Medieval History, which has its first
intake in September 2009:
http://www.postgraduate.bham.ac.uk/prog2009/taught/arts/medieval-history.shtml.

It is expected that this will be the precursor to a series of other taught, graduate-level programmes in medieval studies and Late Antiquity which will become available over the next few years.

Finally, he mentions that Old Norse and Viking-Age scholars will be more than welcome at the annual Gender and Medieval Studies conference held in Birmingham on 7th-10th January 2010 (see http://www.medievalgender.co.uk/). The theme of the conference next year will be the family.

Obviously exciting times for medievalists at Birmingham, and I’m grateful to Chris for letting us know about them.

Visiting Scholar in Old Norse Studies for Spring 2010

The Department of English and The Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico have sponsored an annual stipend for a visiting Scholar in Medieval Scandinavian Studies for some years.

The Visiting Scholar in Medieval Scandinavian Studies is open to scholars who have published in Old Norse language and literature. The position carries with it visiting scholar status at the University of New Mexico and a stipend of $10,000. The successful candidate will teach a class in Scandinavian Mythology. We are seeking candidates for this position for Spring 2010. Please reply by May 1, 2009.

Those interested may apply to:

Professor Helen Damico

UNM Presidential Teaching Fellow

Director, Medieval Graduate Studies in English
Department of English Language and Literature

http.//www.unm.edu/hdamico.unm.edu
hdamico@unm.edu

Some time ago I announced our plans to ‘publish a directory of all Old Norse texts available on the Web’. It’s fair to say that this has taken longer to accomplish than I thought it would. But anyway, this list is now available at our new site:

• Old Norse Texts Online

At present, it simply takes the form of an alphabetical list of texts, drawn from the Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, with links to all the online editions and translations that I’ve found of each. At some point in the future, I hope to convert this data into a properly searchable format. It excludes poetry, pretty much all of which is available at the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages project website.

The list will grow over time; at present I can’t pretend it’s anything like comprehensive, but I hope people will find it useful to have a one-stop central location to help them find the texts and translations they need to consult.

Do let me know what you think … all suggestions gratefully received. And, of course, I’ll be particularly pleased to hear about any online texts that are currently missing from the directory.