Old Norse News

[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.

Part II of our series of summer 2009 Conference Previews.

It didn’t take very long to find the Scandinavian content in the programme for the 2009 Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, which will be in Chicago from 26-29 March. It looks like there’s just one paper:

16.15 on Friday: Marianne Kalinke, ‘The Arthurian Legend in Breta sögur: Historiography on the Cusp of Romance’

The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies’ meeting in Madison, Wisconsin (30 April-2 May) unsurprisingly has a stronger medieval Scandinavian component. It looks like being a strong strand in the programme this year: Read more »

The arrival of the programmes for the big summer conferences is one of the surest signs that spring is upon us. As a service to you, the reader, Old Norse News brings you a summary digest of the Scandinavian-interest sessions and papers at the biggest of them all: the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan (7-9 May). We’ll follow this up by looking at the Medieval Academy, SASS, and Leeds over the coming weeks.

It looks like being a fairly good year: I count ten sessions devoted solely to the Norse world, and a total of 49 papers on Scandinavian topics. It’s still perhaps not enough, considering that there are over 1500 papers delivered each year at Kalamazoo, but it’s a healthy number. Also encouraging is the interesting spread of sub-disciplines between the papers. Literature predominates, but people are talking about an interesting range of texts, including some less commonly studied ones: the session on biskupa sögur and the two papers on Tristans saga stand out, for example. There isn’t, however, very much on poetry this year. As usual, medieval Scandinavian history — even the Vikings — is a bit thin on the ground, although the titles of the individual history papers sound very interesting. It’s a shame there aren’t any sessions devoted entirely to Scandinavian history, though. There’s also a sprinkling of archaeology, and even some linguistic topics. It also looks as there are none of the major clashes between Norse sessions that annoyed some of us so much last year.

Alas, I can’t make it to Kalamazoo this year, but I shall be trying to persuade people to update Old Norse News  on what’s going on. In the meantime, there follows the digest of Scandinavian Studies sessions and papers at Kalamazoo this year; you’ll see that it will almost be possible to go to every session of the conference and only to hear papers on Scandinavia! Apologies if I’ve missed anything out. Read more »

Thanks to Máire Ní Mhaonaigh for sending details of the following conference:

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

Location: Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Friday 13 – Sunday 15 March 2009

Website: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/567/

Read more »

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 »