Old Norse News

Thanks to Stefano Mazza for bringing another recent publication on Old Norse mythology to my attention:

Analyzing Ten Poems from the Poetic Edda: Oral Formula and Mythic Patterns
by Scott A. Mellor, with a foreword by Stephen A. Mitchell.

Description

This work investigates the syntax of ten poems from the Poetic Edda, a medieval Icelandic text, offering data that reveals some of the composition processes and the remnants of the oral tradition from which poetry came. This work demonstrates that the Icelandic poet not only employed verbatim and variable formulae when composing, but also that the structure of the half-lines are formulaic and that their semantic function aids a poet in composition. Read more »

Viking Society for Northern Research: General Meeting

Speaker: Jens-Peter Schjødt, ‘Reflections on dealing with pre-Christian religion in Scandinavia. The limits of philology’

Birkbeck, University of London.

Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies 2009

Location: University College London, UK

Speaker: Professor Richard Perkins

Title: The poetry of Eric the Red’s saga; and again medieval Norse visits to America

Location: Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Theme: Between the Islands: Interaction with Vikings in Ireland and Britain in the Early Medieval Period

Time: Friday 09.15 – Sunday 15.30 | Website: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/567/

Read more »

Theme: “Hidden Depths”

Location: Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Time: TBA | Website: http://www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/ccasnc.htm

Call for Papers

The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge invites paper proposals for its annual interdisciplinary postgraduate conference, the theme of which is: “Hidden Depths.”

We are pleased to announce that this year’s keynote speaker shall be Michael Winterbottom, Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Oxford. Professor Winterbottom will be discussing ‘The Style of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica: How Simple is it?’

Papers should take no more than twenty minutes to deliver. Please submit a 250-word abstract of your paper by 9 January 2009 to ccasnc@yahoo.co.uk

The call for papers has gone out for the fourth symposium run under the aegis of the Viking Identities Network, entitled ‘Language, Texts, and Gender in the Viking Diaspora’. It will take place at the University of Leicester on 30-31 March 2009. The full text of the call for papers follows: Read more »