Old Norse News

After a slightly longer delay than planned, here is the second of our surveys of what is going on in recent periodical literature in the field of Medieval Scandinavian Studies. There’s something of a historical slant to today’s selection, which includes no fewer than three historiske tidsskrifter and the Norwegian journal Collegium Medievale. Finally, we have a recent edition of Skírnir from Iceland. In a second post we’ll have details — hot off the press — of the 2008 numbers of Saga-Book from the Viking Society for Northern Research and its Scottish equivalent, Northern Studies. Don’t forget that these journals are listed with their web addresses and publication details on our links > journals page.

• The Danish Historisk Tidsskrift, vol. 108, part 1.
  Only one article on a medieval topic in this issue, and that a rather late one: in ‘En ukendt diplomatisk udveksling mellem Sten Sture og Ivan III’, Carsten Pape re-examines the ‘Swedish connection’ in diplomacy between the Habsburg and Muscovite dynasties in the period 1488-93 (English summary). Historisk Tidskrift also publishes several short notes per issue, and readers of ONN may find one by Thomaas Høvsgaard (on the question of whether the Black Death reached Greenland) particularly interesting. Niels Lund also provides a combined review of two recent archaeological publications: Knud J. Krogh’s Gåden om Kong Gorms grav and Hedensk ok kristent: Fundene fra den kongelige gravhøj i Jelling, also by Krogh together with Bodil Leth-Larsen.
• The Norwegian Historisk Tidsskrift, vol. 87, no. 2.
  A medieval-focused issue begins with Sverre Bagge’s article ‘«Salvo semper regio iure» Kampen om sættargjerden 1277-1290′. Bagge revisits J. A. Seip’s discussion of the nature of the conflict between the Norwegian regency and the Church in the 1280s, arguing that the concordat of 1277 between the two sides was more of a compromise than Seip would allow. He shows how the regency’s ideas of church rights relate to Roman Law, Aristotle, and contemporary medieval philosophy.

  In ‘Munkeliv klosters jordegods frem til 1463: Kilder og realiteter’, Audun Dybdahl traces the changing fortunes of Munkeliv in Bergen, drawing on property lists drawn up in ca. 1175 and 1427. Although these registers imply a good deal about the monastery’s aquisitions and sales of land in this period, Dybdahl suggests that a retrospective approach to this subject — starting with a Reformation-era land register and working backwards — throws up several important methodological problems for the monastic historian.

  Finally, Tor Weidling offers a reassessment of the manor of Tomb in the parish of Råde across the Reformation. Although the earliest documentary source for this manor is from no earlier than 1624, Weidling has been able to identify traces of a medieval estate in this location, which was dissolved in about 1400.

  The articles all have English summaries, and there is a review (by Kristian Hunskaar) of Knut Johannessen’s book Den glemte skriften. Gotisk håndskrift i Norge.

• Although for reasons of inclusivity and comprehensiveness I certainly meant to mention the Swedish Historisk Tidskrift as well, looking at vol. 128, no. 2 I discover no substantial medieval content!¹ Oh well… on to …
• Collegium Medievale, vol. 21.
  I’ve no idea how widely distributed Collegium Medievale is outside Norway, but I think it’s an excellent journal that deserves a broad readership. It has a general remit on the whole of Medieval Scandinavia, but tends towards historical rather than literary subjects. In the present issue, we find:

  Frederik Charpentier Ljungqvist, ‘Bannlyst kung av Guds nåde. Maktlegitimering och kungaideologi i Sverris saga’: a long and detailed investigation of attitudes towards power in Sverris saga that explores the ways in which the saga presents King Sverrir of Norway (1177-1202) as a rex justus, as part of a strategy to legitimize his rulership and to refute suggestions that the Church was beyond the king’s jurisdiction.

  In ‘Stilanalytisk metode og norsk middelaldermaleri’, Erla Bergendahl Hohler draws on her earlier work in cataloguing medieval Norwegian altar-fronts to offer new perspectives on the concepts of ’style’ and ’stylistic analysis’ as applied to medieval painting. Lots of excellently-reproduced illustrations provide examples in support of her theoretical discussion.

  Church history and relations between Scandinavia and the papacy are studied in Eldbjørgn Haug’s article ‘Minor Papal Penitentiaries of Dacia, their Lives and Careers in Context’. At the heart of this study are nine penetentiaries for the province of Dacia between 1263 and 1391 who went on to become bishops in the Baltic Sea region. Haug hypothesises that ‘the Scandinavian papal penitentiaries were intermediates between a geographic periphery of Christendom and the papacy, and contributed to a further centralisation of the universal church’.

  Finally, Olav Tveito takes us back to the early eleventh century, and the youth of Óláfr Haraldsson. In ‘Olav Haraldssons unge år og relasjonen til engelsk kongemakt. Momenter til et crux interpretum‘, Tveito suggests that Óláfr may have formed an alliance with the English king Aethelred in 1014/15, and that his alliance would have prevented his forming ties to Aethelred’s successor, Cnut. As for the other articles, an English summary is provided.

  I don’t know much about runology, but I know what I like: I always find Terje Spurkland’s work on the subject persuasive, provocative, and engaging. Here he provides a review article entitled ‘Den eldre fusþark — produkt av germansk kleptokrasi?’ The volume concludes with four book reviews.

• Skírnir (Spring 2008) has an article by Gísli Sigurðsson entitled ‘*Hin almælta saga af Guðmundi ríka’, in which Gísli revisits the question of the Sagas of Icelanders’ potential oral forms. By means of an ingenious survey of all the appearances of Guðmundr ríkr Eyjólfsson from Eyjafjörður in saga-narratives, he postulates the existence of an oral *Guðmundar saga, of which the extant written texts all still bear traces.