Old Norse News

The Viking World, edited by Stefan Brink with Neil Price, looks like being a very significant contribution to the field. It’s a comprehensive guide to all aspects of Viking-Age history and culture with contributions from many of the field’s leading experts. (Click here for full table of contents.) The publisher’s blurb describes it as follows:

Filling a gap in the literature for an academically oriented volume on the Viking period, this unique book is a one-stop authoritative introduction to all the latest research in the field.

Bringing together today’s leading scholars, both established seniors and younger, cutting-edge academics, Stefan Brink, in collaboration with Neil Price, have constructed the first single work to gather innovative research from a spectrum of disciplines (including archaeology, history, philology, comparative religion, numismatics and cultural geography) to create the most comprehensive Viking Age book of its kind ever attempted.

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 »
  

Irmeli Valtonen sends details of her new book, The North in the Old English Orosius: A Geographical Narrative in Context, which has been published in the series Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki.

The description of the North in the Old English Orosius in the form of the travel accounts by Ohthere and Wulfstan and a catalogue of northern people are examined in this study in the context of ancient and medieval textual descriptions of the North, with special emphasis on Anglo-Saxon sources and the reign of King Alfred. This is the first time that these sources, an interdisciplinary approach and second literature, also from Scandinavia and Finland, have been brought together.

Please click the following link for full details of this important and most welcome contribution to the field: The North in the Old English Orosius.

A new–and I think rather important–volume in the Toronto Old Norse-Icelandic Studies series is out now (at least in Canada: it might take a while longer to be distributed elsewhere). Kevin J. Wanner’s Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medieval Scandinavia revitalises author-centred criticism of Snorra Edda, and makes a persuasive case for its unity and purpose within the context of what we know about Snorri’s life, career, and interests. As the publisher’s blurb describes it:

Why would Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179-1241), the most powerful and rapacious Icelander of his generation, dedicate so much time and effort to producing the “Edda”, a text that is widely recognized as the most significant medieval source for pre-Christian Norse myth and poetics? Kevin J. Wanner brings us a new account of the interests that motivated the production of this text, and resolves the mystery of its genesis by demonstrating the intersection of Snorri’s political and cultural concerns and practices.The author argues that the “Edda” is best understood not as an antiquarian labour of cultural conservation, but as a present-centered effort to preserve skaldic poetry’s capacity for conversion into material and symbolic benefits in exchanges between elite Icelanders and the Norwegian court. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s economic theory of practice, Wanner shows how modern sociological theory can be used to illuminate the cultural practices of the European Middle Ages. In doing so, he provides the most detailed analysis to-date of how the “Edda” relates to Snorri’s biography, while shedding light on the arenas of social interaction and competition that he negotiated.A fascinating look at the intersections of political interest and cultural production, “Snorri Sturluson and the Edda” is a detailed portrait of both an important man and the society of his times.

I had the good fortune to read a pre-publication copy, and I found the book enormously interesting, even if I didn’t agree with all its arguments. I think it certainly provides the best biography of Snorri presently available in English, and it’s very well written indeed. Something to recommend your local library to purchase?

Thor Ewing writes to let us know that his brand new book, Gods and Worshippers in the Viking and Germanic World, is out now. The following description comes from Thor’s website:

What was paganism really like? Who were the gods and how were they worshipped? These are the questions Thor Ewing addresses in this fresh perspective on the pagan beliefs and rituals of the Viking and the Germanic world, a world which encompasses not only Scandinavia and Germany, but also Anglo-Saxon England.

Gods and Worshippers explores ancient cult sites and religious gatherings, as well as burial customs and the rites of the dead, and it reveals the intimate links between religious and secular power. Using the surviving archaeological evidence as well as the recorded myths and poetry from the various regions, Ewing explores the realities of day-to-day worship, such as sacrifices and sacred space, as well as arguing that traditional magical-religious societies operated in parallel to mainstream society, according to their own distinctive morality and laws.

The picture that emerges is that of a complex pattern of powers which are respected, honoured, propitiated or even cajoled. It is in this relationship between powers and people that the religion exists, and though it takes many forms it is fundamentally one of respect, honour and worship – a relationship between gods and worshippers.

It sounds like a timely new approach to the subject with many interesting and original angles, and I’m looking forward to seeing a copy.

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 »