Old Norse News

Scandinavica is an established and well-respected journal published by Norvik Press, a small specialist publisher that has recently relocated from the University of East Anglia to University College London. At the same time, the editorial team of Scandinavica has changed (and I’ve become Deputy Editor), and the journal is going to be relaunched with a new look and a slightly different focus in 2009.

Hitherto, Scandinavica has specialized mainly in modern Nordic literatures and cultures.  We intend to build on these traditional strengths by expanding the chronological scope of the journal to include more work on the Scandinavian Middle Ages.  Read more »

October’s Journal Round-Up concludes with Saga-Book, Northern Studies, and the latest number of JEGP.

The new edition of the Viking Society’s Saga-Book has just been sent out to members. (If you’re not a member, might I urge you to consider joining?) Volume 32 contains three articles and no fewer than 17 reviews:
Read more »

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.

• Read more »

I’ve been working for a scholarly publisher for almost a year, and so a question that I’ve been mulling over recently is how one could promote Old Norse Studies from a publishing standpoint. For example, as my former advisor at Cornell University, Tom Hill, pointed out to me, there seems to be a definite dearth of English-language journals that cater to Old Norse-Icelandic Studies (compare that to all the 20 or 30 journals out there devoted to Old English), and there is no place to publish short notes or English translations of Scandinavian-language articles or prefaces.

So how could a publisher best promote Old Norse Studies? What are the publication needs of the Old Norse academic community? Where are the gaps in the overall existing publication framework?

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. Read more »