Old Norse News

From time to time, we’ll be surveying the latest periodicals in the field to help people keep their bibliographical information up-to-date. We will also be building up a list of journals that publish on Norse topics, to give authors an idea of where they might submit articles, and readers an idea of what might be worth their subscribing to / tracking down in libraries.

Today we have the latest issues of Maal og Minne, Speculum, JEGP and the 2008 edition of Gripla.

• Maal og Minne 2008, part 1. The latest issue of the Norwegian journal M og M (as I’m sure nobody calls it) concentrates mainly on linguistic matters, rather than specifically medieval topics, but it does contain a provocative article by Lasse C. A. Sonne: ‘Hallfreðr’s hellige bryllup – Udgivelse og tolkning af et skjaldedigt’ (36-49). Sonne argues that the poem by Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld which is conventionally known as Hákonardrápa is not in fact about Hákon jarl, but might instead have been composed in honour of Óláfr Tryggvason or Eiríkr jarl Hákonarson.  (N.B. The Maal og Minne website doesn’t appear to have been updated for some time.)
• It’s been a while since Speculum, the august journal of the Medieval Academy, published an article of purely or even mainly Scandinavian interest. Vol. 83, No. 3 (July 2008) doesn’t buck this trend, but it does include a (favourable, if not glowing) review of Margaret Clunies Ross’s History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics (Cambridge 2005) [by Gísli Sigurðsson].
• JEGP is one of my favourite general medieval journals, and has recently been publishing a lot of interesting stuff on Old Norse literature. Alas, there’s nothing of the sort for me to tell you about in Vol 107, No. 3: Andrew Scheil’s ‘Historiographic Dimensions of Beowulf‘ (281- 302) is well worth reading, but it talks about Anglo-Saxon traditions rather than the poem’s possible sub-strata of Scandinavian lore. There are reviews of Runes and their Secrets: Studies in Runology, edited by Marie Stocklund et al. (Copenhagen 2006) [by Elmer Antonsen] and vols. 4 and 5 of the Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, by Klaus von See et al. (Heidelberg 2004, 2006) [by Margaret Clunies Ross].
• Gripla XVIII (2008) has actually been out since late February, but as ever it’s full of excellent articles on Medieval Icelandic literature and philology. I’ve taken this description of the contents straight from the Árnastofnun’s website, to save you from my ham-fisted typing of Icelandic.
  • Vésteinn Ólason skrifar greinina, The Fantastic Element in Fourteenth Century Íslendingasögur.
  • Ólafur Halldórsson gefur út texta ævintýris sem varðveist hefur í handritsbrotinu AM 240 fol XV.
  • Robin Waugh ritar um sagnaklif og skáldskap í greininni, Antiquarianism, Poetry and Word of Mouth Fame in the Icelandic Family Sagas.
  • Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson á hér greinina, AM 561 4to og Ljósvetninga saga.
  • Sigurjón Páll Ísaksson fjallar um þýðingar Gísla Brynjólfssonar úr fornensku og birtir þýðingu hans á hómilíu á hinn þriðja sunnudag í föstu.
  • Einar G. Pétursson skrifar um Akrabók, handrit sem nýlega komst í eigu Stofnunar Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum.
  • Birtar eru andmælaræður Einars Sigurbjörnssonar og Jürgs Glauser við doktorsvörn Margrétar Eggertsdóttur og svör hennar.
  • Loks eru birt tvö bréf frá Helga biskupi Thordarsen til Gísla Brynjólfssonar en Aðalgeir Kristjánsson bjó þau til prentunar.

  Vésteinn’s article is a version of his plenary lecture from the Durham Saga Conference. Otherwise, I found Sigurjón’s discussion and edition of Gísli Brynjúlfsson’s translations of Old English homilies into (modern) Icelandic especially fascinating, and Einar Gunnar’s report of the rediscovery of another early modern eddic manuscript (which has returned to Iceland via Israel, of all places) typically thorough and illuminating.

And that’s it for our first Journal Round-Up. Please do let me know of any other periodicals that we might cover in this section!