François-Xavier Dillmann has written to inform us that the latest issue of the excellent French-language journal of Medieval Scandinavian Studies, Proxima Thulé, has now been published. Here is the list of contents, followed by details of how to order a copy:

Éditée depuis 1994 par le professeur François-Xavier Dillmann, corres­pondant de l’Institut, directeur d’études à l’École pratique des Hautes Études, la revue Proxima Thulé est le seul périodique de langue française entièrement consacré à la Scandinavie ancienne et médiévale.

Le volume VI de Proxima Thulé (automne 2009, 192 pages, une trentaine d’illustrations) vient d’être publié en ce début du mois de mars 2010. Il comprend les études suivantes :

Anders Hultgård, Fimbulvetr ou le Grand Hiver. Étude comparative d’un aspect du mythe eschatologique des anciens Scandinaves.

François-Xavier Dillmann, « Brûler ses vaisseaux ». Remarques compa­ratives sur un épisode de l’Histoire des rois de Norvège de Snorri Sturlu­son.

Jan Ragnar Hagland, Les inscriptions runiques d’Irlande.

Lennart Elmevik, « Il était hospitalier et éloquent ». Sur les épithètes laudatives dans les inscriptions runiques de Suède à l’époque viking.

Elena Balzamo, Olaus Magnus savait-il dessiner ? Quelques réflexions et hypothèses au sujet des vignettes de l’Historia de gentibus septen­trionalibus.

Marie-Christine Skuncke, Gustave III de Suède et l’Opéra.

Les commandes du volume VI (et des volumes antérieurs) de Proxima Thulé (au prix de 30 euros l’exemplaire) sont à adresser — directement ou par l’intermédiaire d’un libraire — à De Boccard Édition-Diffusion

11, rue Médicis. 75006 Paris

Téléphone : 01 43 26 00 37  Télécopie : 01 43 54 85 83

Adresse de messagerie électronique : deboccard@wanadoo.fr

Site Internet : www.deboccard.com

Scandinavica

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.  The editor, Claire Thomson, describes the plan for the journal’s new direction as follows:

From May 2009 Scandinavica, which is published twice a year, in May and November,  will have three sections: (i) four or five scholarly articles, (ii) a ‘middle section’ featuring work that is not research-based but relevant to the discipline (e.g. high-quality work by students, topical essays and debates, perhaps even photo-essays…funding permitting!) and (iii) a reviews section, with reviews of new books as well as pieces that revisit classic works of scholarship. The November issue will normally be a theme issue, often with a guest editor, and proposals for theme issues are also very welcome.

If you, or your graduate students, would like to submit work to Scandinavica, please let me know. We are very happy to discuss ideas informally by email. Articles should be 6-7000 words in length and use the Harvard referencing system. Scholarly articles will be anonymously peer reviewed by two or three readers. Please send contributions in the first instance as an email attachment in Word format to claire.thomson@ucl.ac.uk and/or c.abram@ucl.ac.uk.

Medievalists are particularly encouraged to submit articles or to propose ideas for a special issue on a medieval theme. There is still some space in the May 2009 issue, and we’d be pleased to hear from authors interested in contributing as soon as possible. For inclusion in the next issue, articles would have to be received by the end of February. Please do contact me if you’d like further information, or to discuss a possible submission.

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:

• Theodore M. Andersson, ‘The Oral Sources of Óláfs saga helga in Heimskringla‘
• Ármann Jakobsson, ‘The Trollish Acts of Þorgrímr the Witch: the Meanings of troll and ergi in Medieval Iceland’
• Conrad van Dijk, ‘Amused by Death? Humour in Tristrams saga ok Ísoddar‘
• The reviews are of the following books:
  Jón Hilmar Magnússon, Íslenzk-færeysk orðabók
  Sara M. Ponz-Sans, Norse-derived Vocabulary in Late Old English Texts. Wulfstan’s Works: a Case Study
  Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects
  Pernille Hermann et al., ed., Reflections on Old Norse Myths
  Ingunn Ásdísardóttir, Frigg og Freyja – kvenleg goðmögn í heiðnum sið
  Tom Shippey, ed., The Shadow-Walkers. Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous
  Haki Antonsson, St Magnús of Orkney. A Scandinavian Martyr-Cult in Context
  Ólafur Halldórsson, ed., Færeyinga saga. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason
  Janet Bately and Anton Englert, ed., Ohthere’s Voyages. A Late 9^th-Century Account of Voyages along the Coasts of Norway and Denmark and its Cultural Context
  Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070
  Clare Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland. The Dynasty of Ívarr to A. D. 1014
  R. Andrew McDonald, Manx Kingship in its Irish Sea Setting, 1187-1229. Rögnvaldr and the Crovan Dynasty
  Beverly Ballin Smith et al., ed., West Over Sea. Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement before 1300. A Festschrift in Honour of Dr Barbara Crawford
  Judy Quinn et al., ed., Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World. Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross
  M. J. Driscoll, ed., Fjórar sögur frá hendi Jóns Oddssonar Hjaltalín. Sagan af Marroni sterka, Ágrip af Heiðarvíga sögu, sagan af Zadig, Fimmbræðra saga
  Jóna E. Hammer, Memoirs of an Icelandic Bookworm
  Robert E. Bjork, trans., A Viking Slave’s Saga. Jan Fridegård’s Trilogy of Novels about the Viking Age: Land of Wooden Gods, People of the Dawn and Sacrificial Smoke
• Northern Studies is the journal of Scotland’s equivalent to the Viking Society, the Scottish Society for Northern Studies, although its chronological scope is somewhat broader than Saga-Book‘s and centres particularly on Scottish matters. In the current issue (vol. 40) there is but one medieval article: Ian Beuermann’s account of ‘King John’s Attack on Man in 1210′, and a review by David Sellar of Patricia Pires Boulhosa’s book Icelanders and the Kings of Norway.
• JEGP 107/4 has two Norse-related articles: Sara M. Pons-Sanz discusses ‘Norse-derived Terms and Structures in The Battle of Maldon‘ and Merrill Kaplan has a piece entitled ‘Out-Thoring Thor in the Longest Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason: Akkerisfrakki, Rauðr inn rammi and Hir Rauða Skegg’. I think this is an expanded version of the paper Merrill gave to the Saga Conference in 2006, and I’m particularly looking forward to reading it.
  This volume also contains reviews of:
  Odd Einar Haugen, Altnordische Philologie: Norwegen und Island
  Martin Arnold, The Vikings: Wolves of War
  Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180-1280)
  Michael Chesnutt, ed., Egils saga Skallagrímssonar III: C-Redaktionen
  John Kennedy, Translating the Sagas: Two Hundred Years of Challenge and Response

• 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.

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?

Today we have the latest issues of Maal og Minne, Speculum, JEGP and the 2008 edition of Gripla.

• Maal og Minne 2008, part 1. The latest issue of the Norwegian journal M og M (as I’m sure nobody calls it) concentrates mainly on linguistic matters, rather than specifically medieval topics, but it does contain a provocative article by Lasse C. A. Sonne: ‘Hallfreðr’s hellige bryllup – Udgivelse og tolkning af et skjaldedigt’ (36-49). Sonne argues that the poem by Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld which is conventionally known as Hákonardrápa is not in fact about Hákon jarl, but might instead have been composed in honour of Óláfr Tryggvason or Eiríkr jarl Hákonarson.  (N.B. The Maal og Minne website doesn’t appear to have been updated for some time.)
• It’s been a while since Speculum, the august journal of the Medieval Academy, published an article of purely or even mainly Scandinavian interest. Vol. 83, No. 3 (July 2008) doesn’t buck this trend, but it does include a (favourable, if not glowing) review of Margaret Clunies Ross’s History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics (Cambridge 2005) [by Gísli Sigurðsson].
• JEGP is one of my favourite general medieval journals, and has recently been publishing a lot of interesting stuff on Old Norse literature. Alas, there’s nothing of the sort for me to tell you about in Vol 107, No. 3: Andrew Scheil’s ‘Historiographic Dimensions of Beowulf‘ (281- 302) is well worth reading, but it talks about Anglo-Saxon traditions rather than the poem’s possible sub-strata of Scandinavian lore. There are reviews of Runes and their Secrets: Studies in Runology, edited by Marie Stocklund et al. (Copenhagen 2006) [by Elmer Antonsen] and vols. 4 and 5 of the Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, by Klaus von See et al. (Heidelberg 2004, 2006) [by Margaret Clunies Ross].
• Gripla XVIII (2008) has actually been out since late February, but as ever it’s full of excellent articles on Medieval Icelandic literature and philology. I’ve taken this description of the contents straight from the Árnastofnun’s website, to save you from my ham-fisted typing of Icelandic.
  • Vésteinn Ólason skrifar greinina, The Fantastic Element in Fourteenth Century Íslendingasögur.
  • Ólafur Halldórsson gefur út texta ævintýris sem varðveist hefur í handritsbrotinu AM 240 fol XV.
  • Robin Waugh ritar um sagnaklif og skáldskap í greininni, Antiquarianism, Poetry and Word of Mouth Fame in the Icelandic Family Sagas.
  • Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson á hér greinina, AM 561 4to og Ljósvetninga saga.
  • Sigurjón Páll Ísaksson fjallar um þýðingar Gísla Brynjólfssonar úr fornensku og birtir þýðingu hans á hómilíu á hinn þriðja sunnudag í föstu.
  • Einar G. Pétursson skrifar um Akrabók, handrit sem nýlega komst í eigu Stofnunar Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum.
  • Birtar eru andmælaræður Einars Sigurbjörnssonar og Jürgs Glauser við doktorsvörn Margrétar Eggertsdóttur og svör hennar.
  • Loks eru birt tvö bréf frá Helga biskupi Thordarsen til Gísla Brynjólfssonar en Aðalgeir Kristjánsson bjó þau til prentunar.

  Vésteinn’s article is a version of his plenary lecture from the Durham Saga Conference. Otherwise, I found Sigurjón’s discussion and edition of Gísli Brynjúlfsson’s translations of Old English homilies into (modern) Icelandic especially fascinating, and Einar Gunnar’s report of the rediscovery of another early modern eddic manuscript (which has returned to Iceland via Israel, of all places) typically thorough and illuminating.

And that’s it for our first Journal Round-Up. Please do let me know of any other periodicals that we might cover in this section!