Old Norse News

The second week in November looks like being a busy one in the Old Norse world. The Århus myth conference takes place then, as does the Viking Society meeting in London, where Matthew Driscoll is giving a lecture. Then, on the 17-19 November, the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bergen is holding a conference entitled Tradition and the Individual Talent: Modes of Authorship in the Middle Ages. Not all the papers are on Scandinavian topics, but several are, and the speakers include Else Mundal, Jonas Wellendorf, Gísli Sigurðsson, Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, Bernt Øyvind Thorvaldsen, Åslaug Ommundsen, Emily Lethbridge and Kristel Zilmer. The full programme is available by clicking the following link: Bergen Authorship Conference Programme. The CMS at Bergen is a fantastic place to visit, and I wish I could go (teaching commitments are going to get in the way of this one for me). Old Norse News will try to get a full report.

Alison Finlay writes:

This year the Viking Society sponsored a successful session at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo. Next year we are hoping to organize a session in collaboration with St Louis University, and I am writing to invite offers of papers on any area of Old Norse studies. The dates of the Congress are May 7-10, 2009. The deadline for submission of the session is imminent, so proposals should reach me by next Friday – 12th September. No abstract needed in the first instance – just a title (and a few lines of expanation if the
title is not self-explanatory).

As usual, the Viking Society will also sponsor and organize one or more sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds (13-16 July 2009). For once I am hoping to meet the deadline of 30th September, so please send any proposals (again, a title is sufficient) by 25th September. Unfortunately the term ‘sponsor’ does not imply that the Society is able to pay expenses. Graduate students and others in need of support may note that the conferences themselves offer limited bursaries to participants in need.

You can contact Alison for further information or to submit a paper title at: a.finlay[at]bbk.ac.uk

This year’s Aarhus conference on matters mythological will take place on 20-21 November, with the theme ‘Myth and Memory in Old Norse Culture’. The programme looks excellent, with the likes of Stefan Brink, John McKinnell, Gísli Sigurðsson, Stephen Mitchell, and Jürg Glauser alongside some of the most up-and-coming younger mythologians. Click on the picture above for details and registration information. Old Norse News certainly plans to send its correspondents to provide a full report!

The Call for Papers has gone out for next year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies at dear old Kalamazoo, MI. Scandinavian interest among the sponsored/special sessions seems a bit slight, which is a shame after this year’s bumper crop of well-attended Norse presentations, but the following highlights jump out: Read more »

A quick and all too last-minute reminder that abstracts for papers at next year’s Saga Conference in Uppsala are due in on Friday. As Agneta Ney writes:

Dear colleagues and friends, we would like to remind you that abstracts of proposed papers must be submitted no later than 1st August 2008 to be considered. They should be either uploaded to the conference’s web server (see login information below) or e-mailed to saga@nordiska.uu.se. Since the abstracts will be placed on our web site, we appreciate if they can be submitted in an editable text-format (e.g. .doc, .rtf, .txt etc; no pdf-files) without formatting other than bold, italics and underlined. Special fonts should be avoided, but if that is not possible, please use Reykjavík Times (http://medlem.spray.se/sprakon/fonter.htm). We have great pleasure in announcing that there are already more than 200 participants (180 with paper) and 35 guests registered at the Conference.

We wish you all a pleasant summer,

Agneta Ney for the organizing committee

You can upload your abstract and revise your registration here.

As the conference is still a whole year away, personally I’m finding it rather difficult to formulate a concrete paper proposal — does the Saga Conference need to be quite so well-organized? — but I’ll come up with something, since it’s undoubtedly going to be the highlight of next summer!