Materiality and Religious Practice in Medieval Denmark
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Acta Scandinavica, vol. 17
New Studies on Emotion in Old Norse Literature
Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Gareth Lloyd Evans, Daniel Sävborg (eds)
- Pages: approx. 400 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Illustrations:2 tables b/w.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2026
- € 110,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61962-0
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (May/26)
- € 110,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61963-7
- E-book
- Forthcoming
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In this volume, the authors probe the emotive content of hagiography, romances, rímur, sagas, skaldic poetry, eddic poetry, elegies, medical texts and even runic sticks, providing a rich and fresh perspective on the depiction of feelings in Old Norse literature.
BIO
Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir (editor) is Assistant Professor of Icelandic Literature at the Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural studies, University of Iceland.
Gareth Lloyd Evans (editor) is Associate Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford and Official Fellow and Tutor in English at St John’s College, Oxford.
Daniel Sävborg (editor) is Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Tartu
Summary
This volume presents thirteen original essays that explore how emotions are represented across a wide spectrum of Old Norse texts. Subjects range from love, sorrow, and humiliation to monstrous feelings, renowned lovers, representations of the mind, curiosity, desire, and many other forms of emotional experience. Reflecting the vibrant scholarly interest in medieval depictions of emotion, this volume brings together diverse methodological approaches and critical perspectives. The contributors examine emotive expression in Eddic and skaldic poetry, rímur, romances, hagiography, medical texts, and runic inscriptions, as well as in major prose genres such as the kings’ sagas, sagas of Icelanders, contemporary sagas, and legendary sagas.
With its wide generic range and diverse critical strategies, this volume significantly broadens the scope of emotion studies in Old Norse literature — a field which was for a long time understudied but has now become a central topic within Old Norse studies.It will be of interest to scholars and students of medieval literature, history, philology, and the history of emotions, as well as to readers intrigued by how premodern texts register and interpret human affect.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Daniel Sävborg and Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Emotion in Old Norse Literature. An Introduction
2. Carolyne Larrington, ‘Mikit forað ertu’: Brynhildr and Monstrous Feeling in Old Norse Heroic Legend
3. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, The Sorrows of Sǫrli the Lover: On the Icelandic mansöngur and some Norse-Gaelic Contacts
4. Maria Cristina Lombardi, Metaphors and Emotions in Friðþjófs saga and in Friðþjófs rímur
5. Russell Poole, The Life of the Mind in the Skaldic Corpus
6. Alison Finlay, Love in the Eyes of Poets: Verse and Prose in the Poets’ Sagas
7. Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, ‘Þeim var ek verst, er ek unna mest’: The Concept of Love in Old Norse Literature
8. Rebecca Merkelbach, ‘I Sit Alone and Tell My Sorrow’: Emotion and the Generic Hybridity of the ‘Post-Classical’ Íslendingasögur
9. Eugenia Vorobeva, Humiliation and Situational Ethics: A Proverbial Motif in Some Sagas of Icelanders
10. Heidi Støa, Curiosity, Desire, and Ingenuity in Þjalar-Jóns saga
11. Bjørn Bandlien, An Emotional Entrepôt in Northern Europe: Love on Runic ticks in Medieval Bergen
12. Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Emotions in Old Norse Medical Literature
13. Torfi Tulinius, Mixed Emotions: Love and the Social Unconscious in Old Norse Literature
14. Tatjana N. Jackson, ‘Тhey Loved Each Other With Secret Love’: Old Norse Sources on Relations Between Ingigerd, the Wife of the Russian Prince Yaroslav the Wise, and the Norwegian King Olav Haraldsson
