Scandinavian-Canadian Studies/Études Scandinaves au Canada
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The Afterlives of an Icelandic “Foremother of Us All”: Auðr djúpauðga and the Making of Cultural Memory
Get PDFABSTRACT: During the last few decades an increasing number of Old Norse scholars have
drawn from memory studies in their analyses of texts. Yet, so far, these studies have
not sufficiently considered other genres of literature besides the Íslendingasögur,
such as post-medieval poetry and folk literature, in the discussion of memory. This
article looks at the relation between genre and the ways in which the foremother figure
Auðr djúpauðga is remembered in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century forms
of popular culture as diverse as rímur, popular poetry, such as kappakvæði, vikivakakvæði, and other types of folk poetry, prayers, and þjóðsögur. The article demonstrates how various authors have created and recreated the foremother
figure Auðr djúpauðga in accordance with their chosen genres
Memory of Iron: Object Rhetoric and Collective Memory in Laxdæla saga
Get PDFABSTRACT: This article proposes the term “object rhetoric” to describe the extralinguistic capacity of material things to create meaning in
the human mind. This kind of rhetoric also challenges the concepts of subject and
object, or more specifically personhood and objecthood. The article explores the social
utility of object rhetoric for structuring collective memory in medieval Iceland by
studying the named weapons of Laxdæla saga. The first section examines several texts’ depiction of the sword Skǫfnungr to illustrate
how it possesses both personhood and objecthood simultaneously. The second section
situates Skǫfnungr as one of five named weapons in Laxdæla saga. The saga makes coherent rhetorical use of these objects to reshape Icelandic collective
memory and thus sense of self in the face of the Norwegian annexation and other social
changes in the thirteenth century
Remembering Heathen Women in Medieval Icelandic Literature
Get PDFABSTRACT: Several Icelandic texts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries depict
female characters from the pre-Christian past. In both poetry and prose, these heathen
women are often portrayed as recalling the old, pre-Christian religion or the magical
practices associated with it. Within this literature, different genres correlate with
strata of cultural memory that are associated with different periods in Norse history
and pre-history. This link between genre and era is largely independent of the actual
dates of composition of the texts or the historicity of the events they describe.
An analysis of illustrative examples from this corpus reveals how the evaluation and
representation of heathen women depend on how deeply in the past they are situated
by the narratives that describe them
The Fimbulvetr Myth as Medicine against Cultural Amnesia and Hybris
Get PDFABSTRACT: An increasing number of scholars has associated the Fimbulvetr myth with
the dust veil event of 536 CE, due to several apparent consistencies between its representations
in eddic tradition, contemporary historical accounts, and modern scientific evidence.
In this article such consistencies are first summarized, with the aim of enhancing
the debate and explaining why recording the dust veil event could have been important
to its witnesses and to the creation of their cultural memory. Dendrochronological
and archaeological evidence suggests that the 536 CE event was probably catastrophic,
and this article argues that its memory may have been preserved and recorded in myth.
The related myth may have had the purpose of handing down important teachings to future
generations: the awareness that life is cyclically threatened by natural disasters,
the value of humbleness before nature, and the hope that, no matter what happens,
humankind is going to survive
Saga-Sites of Memory: Jónas Hallgrímsson, Icelandic Nationalism, and the Íslendingasögur
Get PDFABSTRACT: This article examines the cultivation of saga-sites as lieux de mémoire by Icelandic national poet Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807–1845) and its ideological impact
on the Icelandic nationalist movement. Fusing saga and landscape, cultural memory
and place, in his poetry, Hallgrímsson reimagines sites from the Íslendingasögur as encapsulations of an Icelandic national spirit, access points to a past golden
age, and catalysts of revitalization and political change. In doing so, Hallgrímsson
contributed to the nationalist ideology that garnered widespread support for Icelandic
nationalism and furnished Icelandic politicians with justifications for increased
autonomy. Danish nationalists felt that the cultural past embedded within Iceland
crossed national boundaries. The Danish state’s indebtedness to distinctly Icelandic
contributions for their own nation-building arguably made Danish politicians amenable
to arguments for greater Icelandic sovereignty
ein lǫg ok einn siðr: Law, Religion, and their Role in the Cultivation of Cultural Memory in Pre-Christian Icelandic Society
Get PDFABSTRACT: The transmission of law in pre-Christian Iceland was an oral process in
an oral society. In oral societies, such transmission processes may be characterized
as a cultivation of cultural memory, which suggests that it was transmitted through
a ritualized performance by a memory specialist. In the Icelandic context, this specialist
was in all likelihood the lǫgsǫgumaðr. However, the connection between the transmission of law by the lǫgsǫgumaðr and ritual
and religion has not yet been established explicitly. This is the subject of the present
article, which first views the intricate relationship between law and religion in
pre-Christian Iceland through the lens of Max Weber’s theory of value spheres and
subsequently treats the transmission of early Icelandic law as a cultivation of cultural
memory
Personal Memory, Family Memory, Collective Memory? The Parting Gifts in Egils saga, chapter 61
Get PDFABSTRACT: The aim of this article is to discuss the uses of memory focusing on a scene
in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, a long prose text written in Iceland in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Both the theoretical background and current trends of memory and gift studies as applied
to saga scholarship are examined and then used to analyze the role of a detailed exchange
of goods between two of the central characters in the saga, Egill and Arinbjǫrn. The
final part of the article focuses on studying the scene in its historical context
of production, arguing that the saga uses gift exchange to memorialize the lineage
of prominent Icelanders likely related to the writing of the saga
Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, and Stephen A. Mitchell, eds. Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Get PDFOld Norse Studies and Collective Memory: An Introduction
Get PDFABSTRACT: This special issue of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada is the result of a number of sessions organized by guest editors Yoav Tirosh and
Simon Nygaard for the 2018 International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds and supported
by the Memory and the Pre-Modern North network. This introduction serves to contextualize
the study of collective memory within the field of Old Norse as well as introduce
some of the key theoretical concepts discussed in the issue. The formation and transmission
of collective memory in pre-literate and literate societies are explained, with an
eye towards the cognitive elements at play. Finally, the issueʼs articles are discussed,
as is the logic of the compilation. This special issue hopes to expand the already
thriving field of collective memory studies in Old Norse, building upon the work already
done and offering new directions forward