Old Norse News

Some very sad news: Professor Peter Foote died on Tuesday 29 September. Peter was undoubtedly one of the seminal figures in twentieth-century medieval Scandinavian studies. Perhaps best known to a wide readership for The Viking Achievement, which he wrote with David Wilson, Peter’s contributions to the field were many and varied and continued late into his long life. His editions are masterful, and his critical work full of knowledge, good jugdement, wit and style. He will be missed by his many friends in Iceland and Scandinavia, but particularly so in London, where he was first Professor of Scandinavian Studies at University College London (where he continued to teach now and then until 2006, over twenty years after his retirement)  and a doyen of the Viking Society for Northern Research. Although I only got to know him in the last five years, I shall remember him with great fondness and gratitude for his generosity and sage advice. It is undoubtedly the end of an era.

The new academic year is kicking into gear now, and that means that all around the world a gratifying number of brand new students will be opening Old Norse textbooks for the first time, and getting stuck into the declensions. As ever, I’m feeling nervous about the prospect of facing an unknown class, full of people with radically different expectations and levels of experience–particularly in language-learning. I usually am very lucky with my classes, but I’m in the (probably very unusual position) of teaching in a department where Norse is a compulsory first-year course, so I always have some students who would rather be doing something else and for whom learning a dead language is difficult, boring, and superficially pointless. Not many, but one or two. Read more »

News of another exciting conference, this time at the University of Aberdeen:

22-23 October 2009

Myth and Theory in the Old Norse World

Background to the Conference (from the conference website)

In 2005 Scandinavian scholars assembled in Aarhus, Denmark to discuss progress in the study of Old Norse mythology.  The reason for this gathering was a fresh interest in this field (and in particular in the reassessment of its theoretical-methodological foundations), which has recently resulted in new research projects, PhD theses and academic articles.  This has generated a new fascination for the topic amongst the general public, leading to several museum exhibitions and newspaper articles.  All this has taken scholars by surprise.  In response, leading academics have decided to meet and discuss methodological foundations, sources and current issutes in the field of Old Norse mythology at an annual conference.  The aim is to construct a new theoretical foundation for future study, through discussion of a vital aspect of Early Scandinavian culture, history and religion:  namely our pagan mythology.

In 2008 it was decided that the 2009 conference should take place in Aberdeen, organised by the Centre for Scandinavian Studies (www.abdn.ac.uk/cfss).  The theme for this conference in Aberdeen is Myth and Theory in the Old Norse World, with contributions from Literary Historians, Linguists, Historians, Historians of Religions, Archaeologists and Ethnologists.

Participant speakers will reassess and qualify current scholarly opinion, and papers are expected to provoke lively debate.  Speakers will include many leading international scholars as can bee seen in the programme.

It looks like another excellent conference in a series that has already produced some highly stimulating results.  Speakers will include Robert Segal, Margaret Clunies Ross, John Lindow, Terry Gunnell, Rudolf Simek, and many more…

Next year’s annual Medieval Studies conference at Fordham University, New York has just been announced. Excitingly, the theme is New Directions in Medieval Scandinavian Studies. It will take place on 27-28 March 2010.  Key-note speakers will include Lesley Abrams, Martin Chase, Matthew Driscoll, Roberta Frank, Vésteinn Ólason, Kirsten Seaver, and Kirsten Wolf. I think this sort of event is just what the field needs, and I’ll certainly be there.

The Call for Papers has been issued, and is available at the Conference Website. Deadline for paper proposals is 2 October There aren’t many details on the site as yet, so keep checking back.

First, apologies for the very long gap between posts. I can only plead pressure of (other)  work! I hope that regular posting will now resume. Apologies also to anybody who sent me an announcement that I’ve missed during my time away from the site.

To get things going again, here are a few new books that have come to my attention over the past couple of months.

First, we have the festschrift for Marianne Kalinke, Romance and Love in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iceland, edited by Kirsten Wolf and Johanna Denzin, Islandica 54 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2008) ISBN 978-0-935995-15-2. Read more »

Dr Cathy Swift has written to inform us that Irish Conference of Medievalists is running an 11-Day Introduction to Old Norse Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland, from 20-30 July.

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.

There’s no doubt about it: Open-Access publishing is the coming thing, and Medieval Scandinavian Studies are gradually starting to reap the benefits. The latest e-publishing initiative in the field is Cornell University Press’s decision to publish all future volumes in the famous Islandica series on the internet, as well as in print. Volume 53, Joseph Harris’s collected essays, is now available free to anybody with a computer. Readers will also be able to order volumes over the net on a print-on-demand basis.

Without wishing to be greedy, I just hope that they’ll also decide to digitize the first fifty-two volumes in the series as well!