New Studies on Emotion in Old Norse Literature

Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Gareth Lloyd Evans, Daniel Sävborg (eds)

Pages: 358 p.
Size:156 x 234 mm
Illustrations:2 tables b/w.

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2026

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ISBN: 978-2-503-61962-0
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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.

Subject(s)

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

List of Tables

Emotion in Old Norse Literature: An Introduction
Daniel Sävborg and Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir

Mikit forað ertu: Brynhildr and Monstrous Feeling in Old Norse Heroic Legend
Carolyne Larrington

The Sorrows of Sǫrli the Lover: On the Icelandic mansöngur and Some Norse-Gaelic Contacts
Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir

Metaphors and Emotions in Friðþjófs saga and in Friðþjófs rímur
Maria Cristina Lombardi

The Life of the Mind in the Skaldic Corpus
Russell Poole

Love in the Eyes of Poets: Verse and Prose in the Poets’ Sagas
Alison Finlay

‘Þeim var ek verst, er ek unna mest’: The Concept of Love in Old Norse Literature
Sif Ríkharðsdóttir

‘I Sit Alone and Tell My Sorrow’: Emotion and the Generic Hybridity of the ‘Post-Classical’ Íslendingasögur
Rebecca Merkelbach

Humiliation and Situational Ethics: A Proverbial Motif in Some Sagas of Icelanders
Eugenia Vorobeva

Curiosity, Desire, and Ingenuity in Þjalar-Jóns saga
Heidi Støa

An Emotional Entrepôt in Northern Europe: Love on Runic Sticks in Medieval Bergen
Bjørn Bandlien

Emotions in Old Norse Medical Literature
Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir

Mixed Emotions: Social Anxiety, Feelings, and Royal Blood in Thirteenth-Century Iceland
Torfi Tulinius

‘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 Oláfr Haraldsson
Tatjana N. Jackson