The main aim of this book is to discuss various modes of studying and defining the medieval self, based on a wide span of sources from medieval Western Scandinavia, c. 800-1500, such as archeological evidence, architecture and art, documents, literature, and runic inscriptions. The book engages with major theoretical discussions within the humanities and social sciences, such as cultural theory, practice theory, and cognitive theory. The authors investigate how the various approaches to the self influence our own scholarly mindsets and horizons, and how they condition what aspects of the medieval self are 'visible' to us. Utilizing this insight, we aim to propose a more syncretic approach towards the medieval self, not in order to substitute excellent models already in existence, but in order to foreground the flexibility and the complementarity of the current theories, when these are seen in relationship to each other. The self and how it relates to its surrounding world and history is a main concern of humanities and social sciences. Focusing on the theoretical and methodological flexibility when approaching the medieval self has the potential to raise our awareness of our own position and agency in various social spaces today.
Author(s): Stefka G. Eriksen (editor), Karen Langsholt Holmqvist (editor), Bjørn Bandlien (editor)
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: VIII+340
City: Berlin
Acknowledgments v
Stefka G. Eriksen, Karen Langsholt Holmqvist, and Bjørn Bandlien / Approaches to the Self – From Modernity Back to Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 1
David Gary Shaw / The Networked Historical Self, Traveling Version 21
Stefka G. Eriksen and Mark Turner / Cognitive Approaches to Old Norse Literature 41
Francis F. Steen / The Precarious Self 63
Bjørn Bandlien / Multiple Spaces, Multiple Selves? The Case of King Sverrir of Norway 81
Torfi H. Tulinius / The Medieval Subject and the Saga Hero 101
Karl G. Johansson / The Selfish Skald: The Problematic Case of the Self of the Poet of 'Sonatorrek' 123
Stefka G. Eriksen / Medieval Page-turners: Interpreting Revenge in 'Njáls saga' in Reykjabók (AM 468 4to) and Möðruvallabók (AM 132 fol.) 145
Ole-Albert Rønning Nordby / The Self in Legal Procedure: Oath-Taking as Individualism in Norwegian Medieval Law 177
Rakel Igland Diesen / The Agency of Children in Nordic Medieval Hagiography 195
Elise Naumann / Food, Everyday Practice, and the Self in Medieval Oslo: A Study of Identities Based on Dietary Reconstructions from Human Remains 213
Sarah Croix / Identifying "Occasions" of the Self in Viking-Age Scandinavia: Textile Production as Gendered Performance in Its Social and Spatial Settings 235
Egil Lindhart Bauer / Self-expression through Eponymous Tenement Plots in Medieval Oslo 255
Line M. Bonde / Searching for the Self in Danish Twelfth-Century Churches: A Praxeological Experiment 279
Karen Langsholt Holmqvist / The Creation of Selves as a Social Practice and Cognitive Process: A Study of the Construction of Selves in Medieval Graffiti 301
Stefka G. Eriksen, Karen Langsholt Holmqvist, and Bjørn Bandlien / The Self in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, and Beyond: Between the Material, the Social, and the Cognitive 325
Index 333
