Representations of shapeshifters are prominent in medieval culture and they are particularly abundant in the vernacular literatures of the societies around the North Sea. Some of the figures in these stories remain well known in later folklore and often even in modern media, such as werewolves, dragons, berserkir and bird-maidens. Incorporating studies about Old English, Norse, Latin, Irish, and Welsh literature, this collection of essays marks an important new contribution to the study of medieval shapeshifters. Each essay highlights how shapeshifting cannot be studied in isolation, but intersects with many other topics, such as the supernatural, monstrosity, animality, gender and identity. Contributors to Shapeshifters in Medieval North Atlantic Literature come from different intellectual traditions, embracing a multidisciplinary approach combining influences from literary criticism, history, philology, and anthropology. Bron: Flaptekst, uitgeversinformatie.

The essays in this book highlight how shapeshifting cannot be studied in isolation, but intersects with many other topics, such as the supernatural, monstrosity, animality, gender and identity.

The viking berserkr is an iconic warrior normally associated with violent fits of temper and the notorious berserksgangr or berserker frenzy. This book challenges the orthodox view that these men went ‘berserk’ in the modern English sense of the word. It examines all the evidence for medieval perceptions of berserkir and builds a model of how the medieval audience would have viewed them. Then, it extrapolates a Viking Age model of berserkir from this model, and supports the analysis with anthropological and archaeological evidence, to create a new and more accurate paradigm of the Viking Age berserkr and his place in society. This shows that berserkir were the champions of lords and kings, members of the social elite, and that much of what is believed about them is based on 17th-century and later scholarship and mythologizing: the medieval audience would have had a very different understanding of the Old Norse berserkr from that which people have now. The book sets out a challenge to rethink and reframe our perceptions of the past in a way that is less influenced by our own modern ideas. The Myths and Realities of the Viking berserkr will appeal to researchers and students alike studying the Viking Age, Medieval History and Old Norse Literature.

The journal welcomes papers on historical, literary, archaeological, cultural, and artistic themes, particularly interdisciplinary papers and those that make an innovative and significant contribution to the understanding of the early medieval world and stimulate further discussion. For submission details please see the association website: www.aema.net.au. Submissions then may be sent to [email protected].

The Dragon in the West is the first book to offer an in-depth examination of the history of the image and idea of the dragon. A creature popular in contemporary fiction and cinema, Ogden reveals how the dragon was known to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, and came down to us through early Christianity, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse legends.

Dragons, giants, and the monsters of learned discourse are rarely encountered in the Sagas of Icelanders, and therefore, the general teratological focus on physical monstrosity yields only limited results when applied to them. This, however, does not equal an absence of monstrosity – it only means that monstrosity is conceived of differently. This book shifts the view of monstrosity from the physical to the social, accounting for the unique social circumstances presented in the Íslendingasögur and demonstrating how closely interwoven the social and the monstrous are in this genre. Employing literary and cultural theory as well as anthropological and historical approaches, it reads the monsters of the Íslendingasögur in their literary and socio-cultural context, demonstrating that they are not distractions from feud and conflict, but that they are in fact an intrinsic part of the genre’s re-imagining of the past for the needs of the present.

This book is an edition and translation of one of the most important and celebrated sources of Old Norse-Icelandic mythology and heroic legend, namely the medieval poems now known collectively as the Poetic Edda or Elder Edda. Included are thirty-six texts, which are mostly preserved in medieval manuscripts, especially the thirteenth-century Icelandic codex traditionally known as the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. The poems cover diverse subjects, including the creation, destruction and rebirth of the world, the dealings of gods such as Óðinn, Þórr and Loki with giants and each other, and the more intimate, personal tragedies of the hero Sigurðr, his wife Guðrún and the valkyrie Brynhildr. Each poem is provided with an introduction, synopsis and suggestions for further reading. The Old Norse texts are furnished with a textual apparatus recording the manuscript readings behind this edition’s emendations, as well as select variant readings. The accompanying translations, informed by the latest scholarship, are concisely annotated to make them as accessible as possible. As the first open-access, single-volume parallel Old Norse edition and English translation of the Poetic Edda, this book will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars of Old Norse literature. It will also interest those researching other fields of medieval literature (especially Old English and Middle High German), and appeal to a wider general audience drawn to the myths and legends of the Viking Age and subsequent centuries.

The 9 essays collected in this volume are the result of a workshop for international doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies held at the Institute for Nordic Philology (LMU) in Munich in December 2018. The contributors focus on ›unwanted‹, illicit, neglected, and marginalised elements in saga literature and research on it. The chapters cover a wide range of intra-textual phenomena, narrative strategies, and understudied aspects of individual texts and subgenres. The analyses demonstrate the importance of deviance and transgression as literary characteristics of saga narration, as well as the discursive parameters that have been dominant in Saga Studies. The aim of this collection is to highlight the productiveness of developing modified methodological approaches to the sagas and their study, with a starting point in narratological considerations.

This anthology of international scholarship offers new critical approaches to the study of the many manifestations of the paranormal in the Middle Ages. The guiding principle of the collection is to depart from symbolic or reductionist readings of the subject matter in favor of focusing on the paranormal as human experience and, essentially, on how these experiences are defined by the sources. The authors work with a variety of medieval Icelandic textual sources, including family sagas, legendary sagas, romances, poetry, hagiography and miracles, exploring the diversity of paranormal activity in the medieval North. This volume questions all previous definitions of the subject matter, most decisively the idea of saga realism, and opens up new avenues in saga research.

There is something about a shapeshifter—a person who can transform into an animal—that captures our imagination; that causes us to want to howl at the moon, or flit through the night like a bat. Werewolves, vampires, demons, and other weird creatures appeal to our animal nature, our “dark side,” our desire to break free of the bonds of society and proper behavior. Real or imaginary, shapeshifters lurk deep in our psyches and remain formidable cultural icons. The myths, magic, and meaning surrounding shapeshifters are brought vividly to life in John B. Kachuba’s compelling and original cultural history. Rituals in early cultures worldwide seemingly allowed shamans, sorcerers, witches, and wizards to transform at will into animals and back again. Today, there are millions of people who believe that shapeshifters walk among us and may even be world leaders. Featuring a fantastic and ghoulish array of examples from history, literature, film, TV, and computer games, Shapeshifters explores our secret desire to become something other than human.