This interdisciplinary volume explores social, cultural and biological definitions of youth and age specific to the medieval north, and changing mentalities towards youth and age as a result of political, cultural, and religious transformations in the north.

Kids Those Days is a collection of interdisciplinary research into medieval childhood. Contributors investigate abandonment and abuse, fosterage and guardianship, criminal behavior and child-rearing, child bishops and sainthood, disabilities and miracles, and a wide variety of other subjects related to medieval children.

How did the life course, with all its biological, social and cultural aspects, influence the lives, writings, and art of the inhabitants of early medieval England? This volume explores how phases of human life such as childhood, puberty, and old age were identified, characterized, and related in contemporary sources, as well as how nonhuman life courses were constructed. The multi-disciplinary contributions range from analyses of age vocabulary to studies of medicine, name-giving practices, theology, Old English poetry, and material culture. Combined, these cultural-historical perspectives reveal how the concept and experience of the life course shaped attitudes in early medieval England. Contributors are Jo Appleby, Debby Banham, Darren Barber, Caroline R. Batten, James Chetwood, Katherine Cross, Amy Faulkner, Jacqueline Fay, Elaine Flowers, Daria Izdebska, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Thijs Porck, and Harriet Soper.

This book shows that childhood was an essential element in the arguments and purposes of authors in medieval Poland from 1050-1300 CE. This role of childhood in medieval mindsets has salient parallels throughout Europe and this is also explored in this volume.

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.

Nordic Inheritance Law through the Ages – Spaces of Action and Legal Strategies explores the significance of inheritance law from medieval times to the present through topical and in-depth studies that bring life to historical and contemporary inheritance practices. The contributions cover three themes: status of persons and options in the process of property devolution; wills, gift-giving and legal disputes as means to shape the working of the law; processes of inheritance legislation. The authors focus on instances where legal strategies of various actors particularly reveal inheritance law as a contested and yet constrained space of action, and somewhat surprisingly show similar solutions to family law issues dealt with in other Western European countries. Contributors are: Simone Abram, Gitte Meldgaard Abrahamsen, Per Andersen, Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, John Asland, Knut Dørum, Thomas Eeg, Ian Peter Grohse, Marianne Holdgaard, Astrid Mellem Johnsen, Már Jónsson, Mia Korpiola, Gabriela Bjarne Larsson, Auður Magnúsdóttir, Bodil Selmer, Helle I. M. Sigh, and Miriam Tveit.

The various phases of life and their manifestations in theory and social reality constitute a well-established area of research in the fields of western medieval studies and ancient history. In this respect the Byzantine East has been widely neglected. This volume will focus on the Byzantine experience of adolescence, which may be defined as the biological transition from childhood to adulthood as well as the social and psychological experience of leaving the care of parents, guardians and family groups and the gradual integration into adult society. The contributions gathered therein treat seven subtopics that correspond to crucial questions in the current research on adolescence: the legal status of adolescents; the mechanisms of transition from childhood to adolescence; the socialisation and gradual integration into adult society; adolescents in Byzantine art; psychological aspects of adolescence from medieval to modern times; illnesses of adolescents; adolescents in the western medieval world.The focus is on the Middle and Late Byzantine Period, where historical, hagiographical,legal and medical sources offer rich material for an investigation of these aspects. The book contributes to a better understanding of all these questions and to show future trajectories for research.

This volume is the first book-length study of masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders. Spanning the entire corpus of the Sagas of Icelanders—and taking into account a number of little-studied sagas as well as the more well-known works—it comprehensively interrogates the construction, operation, and problematization of masculinities in this genre. Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders elucidates the dominant model of masculinity that operates in the sagas, demonstrates how masculinities and masculine characters function within these texts, and investigates the means by which the sagas, and saga characters, may subvert masculine dominance. Combining close literary analysis with insights drawn from sociological theories of hegemonic and subordinated masculinities, notions of homosociality and performative gender, and psychoanalytic frameworks, the book brings to men and masculinities in saga literature the same scrutiny traditionally brought to the study of women and femininities. Ultimately, the volume demonstrates that masculinity is not simply glorified in the sagas, but is represented as being both inherently fragile and a burden to all characters, masculine and non-masculine alike.

This book provides an evocative insight into the property, power, remarriage, and identity of high-ranking widows in two fundamentally different societies, Iceland and Yorkshire. The legal position of widows in each region is examined in light of evidence from charters, royal records and sagas to establish a detailed picture of practice. Comparison and family reconstruction are important elements, enabling the book to emphasize the placement of widows within the context of society and its institutions, and to consider fully the impact of individual circumstances on the widows’ opportunities for action. The result offers a fresh approach that tests widely accepted generalizations about widows’ independence, highlights differences between regions, and suggests the need to reconsider traditional, rigid definitions of kinship systems.

Anglo-Saxon England was the first publication to consistently embrace all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 38 include: The Passio Andreae and The Dream of the Rood by Thomas D. Hill, Beowulf off the Map by Alfred Hiatt, Numerical Composition and Beowulf: A Re-consideration by Yvette Kisor, 'The Landed Endowment of the Anglo-Saxon Minster at Hanbury (Worcs.) by Steven Bassett, Scapegoating the Secular Clergy: The Hermeneutic Style as a Form of Monastic Self-Definition by Rebecca Stephenson, Understanding Numbers in MS London, British Library Harley by Daniel Anlezark, Tudor Antiquaries and the Vita 'dwardi Regis by Henry Summerso and Earl Godwine's Ship by Simon Keynes and Rosalind Love. A comprehensive bibliography concludes the volume, listing publications on Anglo-Saxon England during 2008.