Sagas and Space: the 16th International Saga Conference, Universities of Zürich and Basel

Every three years the Old Norse community descends upon a city (or two) for the International Saga Conference. This summer brought us to the universities of Zürich and Basel for a week’s worth of papers and discussion on a variety of subjects across the field, from 9–15 August. The title given to this year’s conference was ‘Sagas and Space’, inviting submissions to thematic strands ‘Constructing Space’, ‘Mediality’, ‘Textuality and Manuscript Transmission’, ‘Reception of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature’, ‘Continental Europe and Medieval Scandinavia’, ‘Literatures of Eastern Scandinavia’, ‘Bodies and Senses in the Scandinavian Middle Ages’ and a wide range of other topics. Between Cambridge scholars present and past, representatives of the ASNaC department could be found in every one of these thematic strands.

Monday saw doctoral student Maria Theresa Ramandi present on the Legend of St Agnes in Old Icelandic translation as well as a roundtable discussion on eddic poetry led by Dr Judy Quinn and featuring Dr Brittany Schorn. In Basel on Tuesday both presented additional papers on eddic material (on the artifice of intimacy in eddic dialogues and modes of poetry in prosimetric sagas) and doctoral students Rebecca Merkelbach and Joanne Shortt Butler represented the Íslendingasögur with papers on mediality and monstrosity, and on characterisation in Eyrbyggja saga respectively. On Wednesday Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe presented her current research on the Icelandic annals, offering a tantalising glimpse of forthcoming publications on these neglected texts. After a day off for trekking in the Alps, exploring the manuscript collection of Saint Gallen abbey, cruising on Lake Lucerne or just getting better acquainted with Zürich, the conference wrapped up on Friday. Doctoral student Caitlin Ellis mapped out the political geographies of eleventh-century kings Knútr Sveinsson (Cnut the Great) and Óláfr Haraldsson, whilst Dr Paul Gazzoli explained the manuscript tradition and re-interpretations of the Latin Life of St Anskar, a missionary saint associated with the conversion of Scandinavia. 

ASNaC alumni from around Europe added to the representation of the department, with papers and contributions by Drs Rosalind Bonté (Brepols publishers), Eleanor Heans-Glogowska, Emily Lethbridge (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík) and Jeffrey Love (Stockholm University). Doctoral students Katherine Olley, Jonathan Hui and Victoria Cribb also swelled the ranks of Cambridge delegates, partaking of discussions, developments and opportunities to meet colleagues old and new. The week was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with friends and peers from all around the globe, as well as those from collaborative projects such as the Languages, Myths and Finds network, Árni Magnússon Institute Manuscript Master Classes, Skaldic Poetry Project — and even to form brand new research networks! Rebecca Merkelbach led the formation of an Old Norse Network of Otherness (ONNO), comprised largely of early-career scholars from around the world whose work focusses on the marginal and medial aspects of Old Norse literature. The interests of the network include “the breaking-down of binaries, the development of spectrums and continuities [and] the de-marginalisation of otherness”. This is but one example of how the conference successfully fostered enthusiasm, creativity and new ideas amongst everyone who attended. 

Saga Conference 2015

At this, the 16th International Saga Conference, we also received reminders of conferences past and of the important legacy of these academic gatherings that were begun by Professor Hermann Pálsson at Edinburgh in 1971. Under the enthusiastic guidance of Judy Quinn, the first coffee-break in Basel was taken up by delegates participating in a series of sixteen photographs recording the history of the saga conference since its inception. From the cheers of support, it was worth forgoing coffee to see how important this meeting has been to the field, ensuring contact and discussion between members of the community (both senior and junior) throughout the years. Appropriately, this year’s photoshoot coincided with the launch of a website archiving all available saga conference papers and abstracts. It will doubtless prove an invaluable asset to the ongoing research of many of us.

Finally, Friday afternoon confirmed the location and date of the next meeting in 2018: Reykjavík, Iceland, 12–18 August. Previous conferences have focussed on many genres of saga, but never yet on the genre that has perhaps contributed most to bringing people to the field: the Íslendingasögur. How appropriate that we should return to Reykjavík for this theme. Roll on 2018 and the 17th International Saga Conference!

 

Joanne Shortt Butler

With thanks to Judy Quinn for additional information.

Report: The Orkney Viking Heritage Project Field School

Dr Brittany Schorn writes:

From April 14 to April 20, Kirkwall hosted the field school of The Orkney Viking Heritage Project. Eight current (and three former) members of the ASNC Department travelled to Orkney together with fellow students and colleagues from the universities of the Highlands and Islands, Oxford, Nottingham, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff, York and Kings College London. The Orkney Viking Heritage Project is an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary training programme. It brings together scholars and heritage professionals to explore the literature, history and material culture of Viking Orkney and provide hands-on experience of a heritage landscape.

[photo credit: Nicola Lugosch]

During the course of the week, we saw viking grafitti on neolithic monuments at the Ring of Brodgar and the spectacular burial chamber of Maeshowe, and visited the ruin of St Magnus Kirk on the small island of Egilsay where Earl Magnús was killed, along with the imposing St Magnus Cathedral, which St Rögnvaldr established on the Mainland.

[St Magnus Kirk, photo credit: Bernadette McCooey]

Through presentations, discussions and excursions, we reconsidered medieval texts and artefacts in situ in order to contextualise our understanding of the past within the reality of the physical landscape. With the help of local academics, heritage professionals and Orkney residents, we also explored how this past, and modern perceptions of it, continue to inform the way current islanders define and relate to the landscape around them.

For more information on the project, including our blog, photos, podcasts and other resources, see the Orkney Project website. You can also find information about our travelling exhibition, which made its first stop at the Midlands Viking Symposium at the University of Nottingham on April 27.

Kennings in the Community and Poets on Viking Poetry

Dr Judy Quinn and Dr Debbie Potts have been awarded funding to run two cultural engagement projects from February–April 2013 as part of an AHRC pilot scheme. The projects – Kennings in the Community and Modern Poets on Viking Poetry – are aimed at nurturing a wider public interest in the aesthetics of skaldic poetry through creative writing workshops and collaborative cultural translation. As Debbie Potts elaborates…

At a workshop last weekend, I fell into conversation with a poet about kennings. To my surprise and gratification, she not only knew what kennings were, but was able to relate an interesting little anecdote about them. A colleague of hers had recently conducted a workshop on kennings with school children. The exercise involved developing ways of referring to family members using items and actions associated with their character or behaviour. A certain precocious child came up with a wonderfully original kenning for his father: sofa-farter.

Some of the most linguistically dexterous of skalds, experts in the rhetoric of defamation, would have found it hard to respond with a kenning equally as cutting. The idea behind sofa-farter is simple, but it carries with it a great deal of cultural resonance (irrespective of whether we would describe our own fathers in such terms). It plays on a cultural stereotype that is both gender and class specific – i.e. the working-class male couch potato (which is in itself a kenning) – and could only emerge from a social milieu in which it is acceptable to occasionally make fun of one’s parents rather than holding them in a perpetual state of reverence.

I think this story provides an excellent illustration of the kenning’s universal cognitive appeal, its capacity to accommodate the mindset of a given individual or particular speech community. The project Kennings in the Community seeks to produce resources for creative writing workshops based on the kenning. My aim is not only to nurture a wider public interest in skaldic metaphor, but to encourage people to create their own kennings relevant to their everyday experience, thereby prompting them to question and re-imagine the way our culture conceptualises the world.

I’m excited to be working with three practicing word-smiths: Lucy Hamilton, Emma Hammond and Jane Monson. These habitual quaffers of Odinnic mead will be applying their creative writing expertise to the development of the workshop materials. Some ‘test’ workshops will take place at the beginning of April and the resources will be made available on the ASNC website before May, so watch this space! If you simply can’t wait until then to try your hand at creating kennings, you can take a look at an exercise I wrote for the Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network here.

(from Wikimedia Commons)

The sister project Modern Poets on Viking Poetry is all about extending the skaldic aesthetic into the creative consciousness of contemporary poets. My intention is to encourage a dialogue between academic research and modern poetic practice.

In the wake of the Poetry Parnassus – the largest ever international poetry festival, hosted by London’s Southbank Centre last summer – it seems an opportune moment to be tapping into the poetry world’s enthusiasm for cultural exchange. Poets will be encouraged to engage with basic translations and commentaries provided by skaldic scholars; they will have complete creative freedom in the way they choose to interact with the poetry, and may produce anything from a poem that seeks to replicate the phonic qualities of skaldic metre to a multimedia art-piece…I’m intrigued to see what they come up with! Selected poems will be published on a blog attached to the ASNC website, and two events will take place (in Cambridge and London) at the end of April where poets will be invited to read or perform their translations.

Debbie and Snorri

It must be acknowledged that neither project would be possible without the boundless curiosity of poets, who are constantly looking for new ways of understanding and expressing the world around us, however bizarre and alien (so much the better). And, of course, the open-mindedness and intellectual generosity of skaldic scholars, who are happily rather less mercenary than Mímir when it comes to offering a drink from the well of knowledge.

https://www.facebook.com/modernpoetsonvikingpoetry

@eehammond

Final congratulations of 2012

Hoping that all our readers are enjoying the holiday season, here's a final round-up of good news from the ASNC department:

Dr Rory Naismith, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in ASNC, has been awarded the 2012 Jan H. Nordbø scholarship and medal by the Norwegian Numismatic Society. This prestigious award exists to bring foreign scholars of numismatics to give a lecture in Norway. On 30 October, Dr Naismith lectured to the Norwegian Numismatic Society in Oslo on the subject of ‘Gold Coinage and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire’, and received the medal accompanying the scholarship. He also delivered a lecture the following day at the Museum of Cultural History in the University of Oslo, on ‘The Agnus Dei Coinage of Æthelred II’.

The Research Centre of St John’s College Oxford has awarded pump-priming funding for the initial stages of an international research project, ‘Interpreting Eddic Poetry’, to Dr Carolyne Larrington (Oxford) and ASNC's Dr Judy Quinn (Principal Investigators). The project will support an interdisciplinary research network which will convene for its first Workshop ‘Interpreting Eddic Poetry: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ in Oxford in July 2013. Details of the programme and registration arrangements will be announced shortly.

Funding has been awarded to Dr Judy Quinn and ASNC alumna Dr Debbie Potts from the pilot AHRC Cultural Engagement Fund to support the projects ‘Kennings in the Community’ and ‘Modern Poets on Viking Poetry’. Dr Potts will be based in the Department for three months from February to April 2013 to develop the projects and organise events related to them.

Congratulations to all of them, and best wishes to all of you for the New Year ...

Dreams and Nightmares: Festival of Ideas

Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Lecturer in Scandinavian History, who organised the ASNC contribution to the Festival of Ideas, reports:

If I say so myself, ASNC’s event for the Festival of Ideas was a great success. The theme of the Festival this year was ‘Dreams and Nightmares’, so ASNC organised a series of short talks and recitations dealing with ‘Dreams and Nightmares in Early Britain and Ireland’. The event was held in the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, rather than the usual lecture room, and this contributed to the theatricality of the presentations, as did six metre-high panels designed and painted by current ASNC students, which illustrated scenes of dreams, visions, and monsters from the various ASNC literatures. The three-hour programme began with Prof. Paul Russell discussing ‘Dream narratives in Old Welsh and Old Irish’, followed by students reading passages of these texts in the original. The studio quickly filled to capacity in the first half hour and stayed that way until the end. From the Celtic languages the focus turned to the Germanic side of things with Dr Richard Dance explaining where the words dream and nightmare come from and reading the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood. 

Richard Dance explicates Old English 'dream' and 'nightmare'

(photograph by Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson)

Three students read appropriate passages from Beowulf, and then Old Norse texts dealing with dreams and nightmares were read by Orri Tómasson (our teacher of Modern Icelandic) and Vicky Cribb (a postgraduate at ASNC) and explicated by Dr Judy Quinn. Dr Rory Naismith continued the English part of the programme by exploring the symbolism of the monsters and beasts that appear on Anglo-Saxon coins, and Dr Quinn capped off the event by discussing the Old Norse dreams and nightmares in compelling detail. 

Adam Kirton, a current ASNC undergraduate, reads Old English

(photograph by Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson)

The audience’s level of interest was evident not only in their attendance but also in the spontaneous question-and-answer sessions that happened after every talk. The audience’s attention was grabbed as well by the signs directing the public to the event, for student volunteers outside the building had them attached to swords, spears, and axes, and the student doorwarden keeping order in the hallway outside the drama studio was kitted out in authentic period costume. The audience was requested to fill out comment cards as they left, and most of those gave the event the highest rating. ASNC once again ably communicated the attraction and interest of our field, supported by the volunteer efforts of the many students who helped in advance and on the day.

ASNC undergraduate Becky Shercliff reads Old Irish

(photograph by Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson)

Review: 15th International Saga Conference (5-11th August 2012, University of Aarhus)

Anna Millward writes:

If I remember correctly, Þórr did not wear tight spandex and dance about on stage waving his hammer.[*] The Norse mythological cosmos was not made up of different dimensional ‘bubbles’, and saga scholars were chained to their desks in dusty old offices, not trekking around the Icelandic wilderness in a battered old Landover. In fact, I thought academics discussed metre and metaphors, not smells and sign language. Yet these quirky papers set the tone for what was to be an inspiring 15th International Saga Conference (University of Aarhus, 5th-11th August): pushing the boundaries, thinking outside of the box, and engaging in a discourse beyond that of the medieval saga.

Of course, the traditional Old Norse super-heroes were there in full force: John Mckinnell, Margaret Clunies Ross, Lars Lönnroth and Ted Andersson to name but a few of the world-leading experts in the Scandinavian scholarly community who gathered together to show-case their most recent research and inspire awe (…or strike terror?) into the hearts of aspiring young scholars. Boasting over 330 participants attending five parallel sessions running over five days, the 15th International Saga Conference was by far the biggest Saga Conference yet -- and as the Glastonbury of academia, Old Norse ASNaCs did not want to miss out. Descending on Aarhus like a troop of shield-maidens (sorry conference boys), the Cambridge crew donned their byrnies in preparation for battle on the academic stage. Yet the Saga Conference turned out to be a surprisingly friendly event: more festival than feud.

Headlining for Cambridge were Dr. Judy Quinn and Dr. Elizabeth Ashman Rowe (the Shirley Basseys and Tina Turners of the Old Norse world, if you will). Judy Quinn’s paper, ‘The Shallowed Depth of the Eddic Past’, explored the notion of cyclical time in eddic heroic poetry, whilst Elizabeth Rowe discussed the interaction between different historiographical genres in her paper, ‘Saga or Annalistic History? Icelandic Interactions of Genre and Concepts of History’. Both scholars gave a first-class performance, and made a valuable contribution to current scholarship.

Of course, no head-liners would be without their (no less amazing) support acts. A whole host of PhD ASNaCs (both ongoing and recently completed) took to the stage to ‘wow’ the academic community with their most recent work. Amongst them, Emily Osborne, Vicky Cribb, Brittany Schorn, Jo Shortt Butler and Jeff Love did the Old Norse literary buffs proud, whilst Paul Gazzoli and Rosie Bonté held up the fort for Scandi history. Even former ASNaCs Eleanor Barraclough (who has since passed over to ‘that other place’) and Emily Lethbridge (usually found on Icelandic horse-back or in a Landrover) did Cambridge proud as they mixed saga landscapes, literature and place names into a delightful interdisciplinary cocktail.

Amidst coffee breaks, trendy conference rucksacks and the world’s most spectacularly luminous yellow cake, ASNaCs attending the 15th International Saga Conference in Aarhus joined with the rest of the Old Norse community to give a memorable performance. Presenting a variety of papers, Old Norse ASNaCs offered experimental ideas and new approaches to Norse scholarship, resulting in dynamic and stimulating discourse. Although the specially-brewed ‘Saga Ale’, no doubt helped the academic conversation flow, Aarhus was an exciting and intellectually challenging event enjoyed by all. Even the ‘ASNaC groupies’, (who escaped the terror of giving conference-speeches) engaged in Norsical discussions and had fun (though being tricked into singing at the Conference Dinner was marginally less amusing). It’s great that such a small department like ASNaC has so many people active in the Old Norse arena; not only is it a testament to the increasing popularity of the medieval Scandinavian world, but it means that ASNaC can continue to really make a positive impact in the field of Norse studies. So forget the rainbow flags currently sweeping Scandinavia: this is Old Norse Pride, and ASNaC an important part of it.

*this was actually a video-clip: unfortunately, no scholar dressed up as Þórr-in-spandex.

Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC

Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:

The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic continues to be very proud of its association with the Sutton Trust, a philanthropic organisation which seeks to promote social mobility through education. Each year we host a Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC for a small group of talented young people, from non-privileged backgrounds, who are about to begin their final year of school. The purpose of the Summer School is to allow them to experience university life, attending a range of lectures, seminars and classes on all aspects of the ASNC undergraduate course: from Anglo-Saxon history to Old Norse literature, from palaeography to medieval Welsh law. This year we welcomed eleven teenagers from a wide geographical area, including students from Wales, Yorkshire and London, all of whom were bright, enthusiastic and willing to sacrifice a week of their summer holiday in order to learn about all things medieval.

The Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC, 2012

One of the highlights of the Summer School, as ever, was the afternoon spent in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College. The Parker sub-librarian, Dr Suzanne Paul, introduced the students to the Parker collection, and then the students spent an hour preparing presentations on manuscripts including the Parker Chronicle and the Old English Bede. After giving their presentations, the students had the opportunity to study the manuscripts in detail, as well as looking at other important items from the collection.

Admiring medieval manuscripts in the Parker Library

In Old Court, Corpus Christi College

 

Participants also had the opportunity to experience a supervision, the small-group teaching which is characteristic of Oxford and Cambridge. Each of them had chosen the topic in which they were most interested, and were supervised individually or in pairs by doctoral students and early career researchers in the ASNC department.

 

Finding Anglo-Saxon things to stand in front of ...

 

During the Summer School the students stayed at St John's College, and were able to indulge in typical Cambridge activities, such as punting on the river and attending a 'formal hall' dinner. We hope very much that this week will inspire them to apply to elite universities, such as Cambridge, for their undergraduate studies.

The grown-ups (allegedly): Ollie (residential supervisor), Becky (CAMbassador and ASNC graduate), and Lizzie (academic co-ordinator of the Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC)

And, despite the fact that most of the students had never studied a word of Latin before they arrived on the course, the expert teaching of Dr Rosalind Love ensured that, by the time of the disco on the last night of the Summer School, they were all able to get into trouble for swearing profusely in Insular Latin. No matter what the participants go on to do in life, that is one invaluable skill which will always stay with them.

ASNC on Youtube

Just in case you're still wondering what we're all about:

 

AHRC awards money for skills training in Viking Studies

The Arts & Humanities Research Council has awarded a grant of £45,000 to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham and the Highlands and Islands for a skills training programme for PhD students and Early Career Researchers in the field of  Old Norse-Icelandic and Viking Studies: Extending Academic Research about the Viking Diaspora and its Heritage in the British Isles.

This project addresses the skills gap in the AHRC's strategic area of Heritage and engages with the emerging theme of Translating Cultures. It comprises a preparatory workshop bringing together academics, young scholars and heritage professionals, followed by a field school in Orkney, providing hands-on experience of a heritage landscape.