So: where do (or can) you study Old Norse literature, language, and Medieval Scandinavian history/archaeology in North America (Canada is certainly to be included). Please leave a comment or use the contact page to let us know.

The information that would be most useful is:

• What courses are available?
• Which departments offer them?
• Are they undergraduate or postgraduate level?
• Are there opportunities for PhD research in these disciplines?

Once we’ve built up a database of North American institutions, we’ll move on to the rest of the world. Thanks for your help!

1. Viking Age Scandinavia – Transformation and Expansion

The University of Aarhus Summer School on Viking Age Scandinavia is an intensive short-session course designed to meet the needs of students interested in a brief but challenging educational experience during the summer.

Teaching takes place in a museum environment and brings together Danish and foreign students and staff. The course is open to BA and MA students in archaeology, history, literature and related disciplines from Denmark and elsewhere, as well as to other foreign students in Denmark and history teachers in secondary schools. The language of teaching is English.

Lecturers include Else Roesdahl, Unn Pedersen, and James Graham-Campbell.

2. From Greenland to Hell – Worldly, Mythological and Visionary Travels in Old Norse Literature

This summer school course focuses on travelling and encounters with the Other, themes that are widespread in a variety of Old Norse genres, both in historical, mythological and religious literature. The Old Norse texts will be studied primarily from a literary perspective, but will also be regarded as documents of a culture encountering the unknown.

The course allows you access to the latest knowledge in the field of international Old Norse studies. It is an intensive short session course designed to meet the needs of students interested in a challenging educational experience during the summer. Teaching takes place in a multinational environment, which brings together students and staff from different countries in Europe an abroad. The course provides you with an excellent opportunity to meet international lecturers and fellow students and to earn credit during the summer.

This course will be led by Pernille Hermann and Rolf Stavnem. Full details will be posted on the above website later this month.

Of course, one learns strategies for coping with the uninterested or poorly prepared student, but it’s led me to think a bit more about how we start beginners on the path towards learning Old Norse. And one aspect of the proccess that I return to is the adequacy or otherwise of the resources at our disposal. And by this I mean the books: I use the Viking Society’s New Introduction to Old Norse (ed. Barnes, Faulkes, et al.). Or more precisely, I use the Reader and Glossary in class, strongly suggest to students that they also purchase the Grammar, and then sit back and watch as most of them never look inside the ‘red book’. Second-hand copies of the NION Grammar that float around my department always tend to be pristine, since the students who do use it would never part with it.

Perhaps it’s my own fault: I find Barnes’s Grammar incredibly useful as a reference resource, but highly frustrating to use when teaching. There’s no index, and the programmatic aspects of the work never seem to be pitched at the right level. I know plenty of people use it for independent study, but I wouldn’t like to do so myself.  So I made a simplified digest of the grammar, a Barnes-Lite perhaps, which is pinned more closely to the structure of the course as I like to teach it. And nowadays I do lots of PowerPoint alongside it, which can be a useful tool.

But what I want is a single-volume all purpose Introduction to Old Norse that students can use as grammatical reference, text reader, and progressive course book all at once. I do not think that such a thing exists. (I’m thinking along the lines of Peter Baker’s Introduction to Old English, which I think is very good and would always be my first choice for an Old English text book.) There are rumours floating around that Jesse Byock has something in the works, and I know that our colleagues at Durham are also working on such a project. But is there anything out there already that I’ve missed? Should I already be using a different text book? What do other people do?

To answer this last question, I’ve prepared a little survey, and I’d be delighted if you took the time to complete it. And then, please use the comments to, well, comment on how you see the state of the pedagogical resources in the field. In particular, I’d be glad if people could let me know of any books that I’ve missed out from the survey. And please leave your comments below!

Quick Survey: Old Norse Text Books

This summer school, which is based on the successful format in which Old Irish has been taught at Limerick for the past few years, will be taught by Dr Katrina Burge of the University of Melbourne. Students will spend about 60 hours learning Old Norse over the course of the eleven days

They offer Bed &  Breakfast accommodation at 25 euros per night  and a taxi service to sights of Norse interest in the mid-west of Ireland whenever the teacher allows us to take a break. Price for the course is 300 euros.

The course is open to all. If you’re interested, please contact Cathy directly by email at Catherine.Swift@mic.ul.ie.

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.

MA in Medieval Icelandic Studies
University of Iceland in cooperation with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies Reykjavík, Iceland

The programme is aimed at providing postgraduate students with the necessary tools to study Old/Medieval Icelandic Texts in the original and in their manuscript context, with a special emphasis on interdisciplinary study.

Deadline for application is March 15th each year.

For more information visit:
Háskóli Íslands: MA in Medieval Icelandic Studies

Unfortunately, the article ends on a melancholy note, since the Viking Studies programme at Melbourne was shut down last year, ending more than half a century’s tradition and achievement. It’s an all-too-familiar story: despite Viking Studies apparently pressing many of the correct buttons for modern university administrators — interdisciplinarity, cross-cultural approaches, collaborative teaching and healthy and growing enrollments — internal politics and budget restrictions appear to have sealed its fate. A great shame.

It seems impossible: the fundamentals of Old Norse grammar on one sheet of A4 paper. But that’s what Alaric Hall of the University of Leeds has produced in the form of his ‘magic sheet’ of basic paradigms!¹ It’s an ideal supplement and reference aid to one of the standard grammar books, and I’m going to be using it (with Alaric’s permission) in my introductory classes this autumn.

Alaric makes this resource available freely, and he says he’d be delighted for anybody to download it, print it, and share it. He’d appreciate it if you’d drop him a line though to let him know if you choose to use it, though.

(Oh, and he apologises that he couldn’t fit the ‘middle’ verbal voice on the sheet: he might produce a second page at a later date…)

Anything that makes Old Norse grammar more user-friendly (which is where Michael Barnes’s generally excellent introduction falls down, in my opinion) is much to be welcomed. Thanks to Alaric for sharing it with us.