Author: Birgit Sawyer Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 9780816617395 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
The study of Scandinavia has been, and still is, deeply influenced by the interpretation of its earliest history that was developed in the 19th century by political, legal, and literary historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists. Scandinavia figured prominently in discussions of early medieval Europe, not only as the homeland of the Vikings, but also as the region in which Germanic society remained uncontaminated by Christianity and other influences longer than anywhere else. In "Medieval Scandinavia", Birgit and Peter Sawyer question assumptions about early Scandinavian history, including the supposed leading role of free and equal peasants and their position in founding churches. They meticulously trace the development of Scandinavia from the early ninth century through the second and third decades of the 16th century, when rulers of Scandinavia rejected the authority of the Papacy and the attempt to establish a united Scandinavian monarchy finally collapsed. The authors include a discussion of medieval history writing and comment on the use of history in the 16th century and modern attitudes to medieval history which differ in various parts of Scandinavia. They ultimately conclude that historic Scandinavia held greater similarities to other European regions than has been commonly supposed. Birgit Sawyer is one of the founders of the biennial interdisciplinary conferences on women in medieval Scandinavia. Peter Sawyer's previous books include "Kings and Vikings" and "The Age of the Vikings".
Author: Phillip Pulsiano Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 9780824047870 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 838
Book Description
With full-page maps and supplementary photos, this encyclopedia covers every aspect of Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, including rulers and saints, overviews of the countries, religion, education, politics and law, culture and material life, history, literature, and art.
Author: Stefka Georgieva Eriksen Publisher: Brepols Publishers ISBN: 9782503553078 Category : Civilization, Medieval Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This book investigates the nature of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages from the perspective of medieval Scandinavia by discussing how a multimodal and multilingual Scandinavian culture emerged through the dynamic interchange of foreign and local impulses in the minds of creative intellectuals. By deploying cognitive theory, this volume conceptualizes intellectual culture as the result of the individual's cognition, which incorporates physical perceptions of the world, memory and creation, rationality, emotionality and spirituality, and decision making. In doing so, it elucidates the diversity of social roles that could be assumed by people engaged in the activity of thinking. Attention is paid in particular to the key intellectual activities of negotiating secular and religious authority and identity; to thinking and learning through verbal and visual means; and to ruminating on worldly existence and heavenly salvation. These processes are explored in a series of essays that focus on various visual and textual artefacts, among them Church art and sculptures, manuscript fragments, and texts of both different languages (Latin and Old Norse) and genres (sagas, poetry and grammatical treatises, laws, liturgical explanations and theological texts). The variety of intellectual and ideational processes connected to the textual and material culture of medieval Scandinavia forms the focal point of this study. As a result, this book actively seeks to transcend the traditional cultural dichotomies of written versus oral material, Latin versus vernacular, lay versus secular, or European versus Nordic by foregrounding the cognitive and creative agency of intellectuals in medieval Scandinavia.
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812203712 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.
Author: Jakub Morawiec Publisher: ARC Humanities Press ISBN: 9781641892407 Category : Scandinavia Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
New research methods allow us to explore how relics of the material culture of the medieval north can confront, corroborate, or disprove the depiction of social norms in the Old Norse-Icelandic literary corpus, which remains the most important source of our present-day knowledge of social development in the Viking Age and medieval Scandinavia. This interdisciplinary volume considers in depth how social values such as reputation, honour, and friendship, were integral to the development of rituals, customs, religion, literature, and language in the medieval North.
Author: Jonas Wellendorf Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108680410 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 221
Book Description
The coming of Christianity to Northern Europe resulted in profound cultural changes. In the course of a few generations, new answers were given to fundamental existential questions and older notions were invalidated. Jonas Wellendorf's study, the first monograph in English on this subject, explores the medieval Scandinavian reception and re-interpretation of pre-Christian Scandinavian religion. This original work draws on a range of primary sources ranging from Prose Edda and Saxo Grammaticus' History of the Danes to less well known literary works including the Saga of Barlaam and the Hauksbók manuscript (c.1300). By providing an in-depth analysis of often overlooked mythological materials, along with translations of all textual passages, Wellendorf delivers an accessible work that sheds new light on the ways in which the old gods were integrated into the Christian worldview of medieval Scandinavia.
Author: Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 900422159X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 387
Book Description
In Scandinavia the study of disputes is still a relatively new topic: The papers offered here discuss how conflicts were handled in Scandinavian societies in the Middle Ages before the emergence of strong centralized states. What strategies did people use to contest power, property, rights, honour, and other kinds of material or symbolic assets? Seven essays by Scandinavian scholars are supplemented by contributions from Stephen White, John Hudson and Gerd Althoff, to provide a new baseline for discussing both the strategies pursued in the political game and those used to settle local disputes. Using practice and process as key analytical concepts, these authors explore formal law and litigation in conjunction with non-formal legal proceedings such as out-of-court mediation, rituals, emotional posturing, and feuding. Their insights place the Northern medieval world in a European context of dispute studies. With introductory sections on social structure, sources materials, and the historiography of Scandinavian dispute studies. Contributors are Gerd Althoff, Catharina Andersson, Kim Esmark, Lars Ivar Hansen, Lars Hermanson, John Hudson, Auður G. Magnúsdóttir, Hans Jacob Orning, Helle Vogt and Stephen D. White.
Author: Phillip Pulsiano Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351665014 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 791
Book Description
First published in 1993, Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia covers every aspect of the region during the Middle Ages, including rulers and saints, overviews of the countries, religion, education, politics and law, culture and material life, history, literature, and art. Written by a team of expert contributors, the encyclopedia offers those who lack command of the various Scandinavian languages a basic tool for the study of Medieval Scandinavia from roughly the Migration Period to the Reformation. With full-page maps, useful supplementary photos, cross-references and a comprehensive index, this work will be a valuable and absorbing volume for students of the Norse sagas, the Viking age, and Old English history and literature, and for anyone interested in the cultural and historical heritage of Scandinavia.
Author: Birgit Sawyer
Author: Phillip Pulsiano
Author: Stefka Georgieva Eriksen
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell
Author: Jeffrey Love
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Author: Jakub Morawiec
Author: Jonas Wellendorf
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Author: Phillip Pulsiano