<p>I denna uppsats undersöks ett flertal ortnamnsformer som förekommer i olika tyska, slaviska och skandinaviska källor och betecknar ett och samma ställe, nämligen staden Wolin belägen på sydspetsen av ön Wolin i polska Pommern. Syftet med arbetet är dels att fastställa etymologin av två av Wolin-namnen, <em>at Jómi </em>och <em>Jómsborg</em>, dels att förklara hur alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin hänger ihop och bestämma vilka faktorer som orsakade en sådan namnmångfald. Undersökningens material utgörs framför allt av de Wolin-namnformer som förekommer i de skandinaviska och de med dessa relaterade tyska källorna. Materialet analyseras i stort sett enligt den traditionella namntolkningsmetoden. Det visar sig att formen <em>at Jómi</em> sannolikt härstammar från det pommerska naturnamnet <em>*Jǫma</em> (˂ <em>jǫma</em> f. ’grop; dike’) som betecknade Stora bukten, en del av Szczecinbukten. Sammansättningen <em>Jómsborg</em> är en sekundär form som bildats från <em>at Jómi</em> enligt standardmodellen: dat. (<em>at</em>)<em> Jómi</em> > gen. <em>Jóms</em> + efterleden <em>-borg</em>. Alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin i primära källor är relaterade till varandra: vissa av dem är etymologiskt besläktade, vissa endast ”referentiellt”, dvs. de betecknar ett och samma ställe. Uppkomsten av ett så stort antal Wolin-ortnamnsformer kan i första hand förklaras genom att formerna i fråga har olika ursprung, att det fanns olika namnbrukarkretsar som använde olika former för att hänvisa till samma stad och att det uppstod olika stavningsvarianter och sammansatta namn under de primära formernas senare utveckling.</p>

This dissertation examines Robert Penn Warren‘s use of Arthurian legend, Judeo-Christian folklore, Norse mythology, and ancient vegetation rituals in his first four novels. It also illustrates how the use of these myths helps define Warren‘s Agrarian ideals while underscoring his subtle references to these ideals in his early fiction.

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Narratives of Nordic pre-history are common in textbooks of the Swedish 'folk school'. This thesis discusses them from an ideological critical perspective and analyses them as textbook myths. This analytic concept of myth is constructed and used as a tool for studying ideological expressions in pedagogical texts. It is compatible with a historical materialist, social constructivist and Gramsci inspired perspective towards folk schooling and can handle questions of selection and re-organisation of ancient narrative material. The study shows how a paternalistic ethnic ideology which showed the pupils how their ancestors immigrated and set up society and order is replaced by nationalistic myths where the Swedes are projected on the totality of the past. Idealisation of farmers and expressions that neutralise poverty and legitimates subordination are used continuously throughout the study period. After 1868 a national folk concept is established. Textbook myths with a euhemeristic portrayal of civilisation are replaced by other scientific ways of handling pre-historic religions including elements from nature mythology and evolutionary theory. The myths handle religions both through Christian polemics and theological projections. The results of the analyses are interpreted in the light of the contemporary socio-economic changes where a feudal agrarian society's principles for classifications and hierarchies are challenged and broken by the principles of a class society with a nationalistic ideology. In the concluding chapters the myths are discussed and interpreted in relation to curriculum codes and in a Gramsci inspired perspective as expressions of a passive bourgeois revolution, where intellectuals of the middle class conquered the school and the textbook myths by making alliances with the farming class and trying to neutralise the poor and the working class. The thesis contributes to research in the use of history, representation in pedagogical texts and to research in nationalism.

This paper is aimed at mapping important traits in a Hiberno-Norse identity. This is the main focus of the essay, but another important part is to problematize this using several theoretical approaches of which the main are identity, creolization and hybridization. The Hiberno-Norse culture being primarily an urban phenomenon, the thesis is delimited to the Hiberno-Norse towns with occasional comparisons to Scandinavia to see how the native Irish population influenced the invaders and how they gradually evolved into the Hiberno-Norse. Early on the Norse show signs of creolization that would ultimately lead to the creation of the Hiberno-Norse hybrid culture known from history and archaeology – an urban culture that show blended Norse and Irish features. / Denna uppsats är till för att sammanställa viktiga uttryck I en Iro-Skandinavisk identitet. Detta är huvudsyftet med uppsatsen, men en annan viktig del är att problematisera detta genom flera teoretiska begrepp, där de främsta är identitet, kreolisering och hybridisering. Då den Iro-Skandinaviska kulturen framför allt var ett urbant fenomen har uppsatsen avgränsats till de Iro-Skandinaviska städerna, med sporadiska jämförelser med Skandinavien för att se hur den inhemska Irländska befolkningen influerade angriparna och hur de skulle komma att utvecklas till Iro-Skandinaverna. Tidigt uppvisar nordborna tecken på kreolisering, som till slut skulle leda till uppkomsten av den Iro-Skandinaviska hybridkulturen känd från historian och arkeologin – en urban kultur som uppvisar blandade nordiska och irländska drag.

This dissertation examines the relationship between wisdom and identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. At present, the study of medieval wisdom is largely tangential to the study of proverbs and maxims. This dissertation makes wisdom its primary object of study; it sees wisdom not just as a literary category, but also as a cultural discourse found in texts not usually included in the wisdom canon. I therefore examine both wisdom literature and wisdom in literature. The central characteristic of wisdom, I argue, is its liminality. The biblical question “Where is wisdom to be found?” is difficult to answer because of wisdom’s in-between-ness: it is ever between individuals, communities, and times (Job 28:12 Douay-Rheims). As a liminal discourse, wisdom both grounds and problematizes identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. After a preliminary chapter that defines key terms such as “wisdom” and “wisdom literature,” I examine heroic wisdom in three characters who are defined by their wise traits and skills and yet who are ultimately betrayed by wisdom to death or exile. The implications of this problematic relation to wisdom are then examined in the next chapter, which analyzes the composition of wisdom in proverb poems. Like the wise hero, the poets represented in these poems blend their own voices with the voice of community, demonstrating that identity is open and therefore in need of constant revision. Next I examine how the liminality of wisdom is embodied in the figure of the wise monster, who negatively marks the boundaries of society and its desires. This then leads to a study of the reception of wisdom in chapter six, which focuses on instruction poems. Like narratives of wise monsters, these texts present lore as the nostalgic remnant of a tradition that defines identity, in this case the identity of a community. However, nostalgia assumes loss, and these texts also reveal an underlying fear that wisdom, the basis of the community’s identity, will be forgotten. Whether communal or individual, identity in this literature is both formed and threatened by liminal wisdom. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2014-05-08 15:35:46.885

My Interdisciplinary dissertation examines illustrations in manuscripts and early print sources and reveals their participation in the transmission and reception of Old Norse mythology. My approach encompasses Material Philology and Media Specific Analysis. The reception history of illustrations of Old Norse Mythology affects our understanding of related Interdisciplinary fields such as Book History, Visual Studies, Literary Studies and Cultural Studies. Part One of my dissertation begins with a discussion of the tradition of Old Norse oral poetry in pagan Scandinavia and the highly visual nature of the poems. The oral tradition died out in Scandinavia but survived in Iceland and was preserved in vernacular manuscripts in the thirteenth century. The discovery of these manuscripts in the seventeenth century initiated a cycle of illustration that largely occurred outside of Iceland. Part One concludes with an analytical survey of illustrations of Old Norse mythology in print sources from 1554 to 1915 revealing important patterns of transmission. Part Two traces the technological history of production of digital editions and manuscript facsimiles back to the seventeenth century when manuscripts were hand-copied and published by means of copperplate engravings. Part Two also discusses the scholarly and cultural prejudices towards images that are only now slowly fading. Part Two concludes with a description of my prototype for a digital image repository named MyNDIR (My Norse Digital Image Repository). MyNDIR will facilitate the emergence of images of Old Norse Studies from the current informal crowd sourcing of material on the web to a digital image repository supporting the dissemination of accurate scholarly knowledge in a widely accessible form. Part Three presents two thematic case studies that demonstrate the value of applying the skills of visual literacy to illustrations of Old Norse mythology. The first study examines Jakob Sigurðsson’s illustrations of Norse gods in hand-copied paper manuscripts from eighteenth-century Iceland. The second study examines illustrations by prominent Norwegian artists in the editions of Snorre Sturlason: Kongesagaer published in 1899 and 1900 respectively. What emerged from these studies is an understanding that illustrations offer insights for the study of Old Norse texts that the words of the texts alone cannot provide. / Graduate / 0362 / 0377 / 0279 / pabaer@uvic.ca

This thesis focuses on the formal and stylistic analysis and comparison of two works written by English authors, namely William Morris' poem The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (1876) and J. R. R. Tolkien's poetic work The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (published posthumously in 2009) with respect to how each of these works deals with the original Old Norse motives which they are based on. Both Sigurd the Volsung and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún can be described as poetic adaptations of the Old Norse tale of Sigurd Fafnisbani, which is recounted in the Saga of the Volsungs and in a cycle of poems found in the Poetic Edda. Both Morris and Tolkien borrowed this story to use it in their own works, yet each of them treats it in a different manner. Therefore, not only do both of the works differ from the original Old Norse texts on multiple levels, but they also differ one from another. The differences between them can be traced in the metrical properties of the individual poems, for instance, or in the use of specific stylistic elements. From this, it can be inferred that although it was the goal of both authors to evoke the atmosphere of the legendary heroic past where Sigurd's story takes place, each of them attempts to do so in a different way. This is probably caused by...

I denna uppsats undersöks ett flertal ortnamnsformer som förekommer i olika tyska, slaviska och skandinaviska källor och betecknar ett och samma ställe, nämligen staden Wolin belägen på sydspetsen av ön Wolin i polska Pommern. Syftet med arbetet är dels att fastställa etymologin av två av Wolin-namnen, at Jómi och Jómsborg, dels att förklara hur alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin hänger ihop och bestämma vilka faktorer som orsakade en sådan namnmångfald. Undersökningens material utgörs framför allt av de Wolin-namnformer som förekommer i de skandinaviska och de med dessa relaterade tyska källorna. Materialet analyseras i stort sett enligt den traditionella namntolkningsmetoden. Det visar sig att formen at Jómi sannolikt härstammar från det pommerska naturnamnet *Jǫma (˂ jǫma f. ’grop; dike’) som betecknade Stora bukten, en del av Szczecinbukten. Sammansättningen Jómsborg är en sekundär form som bildats från at Jómi enligt standardmodellen: dat. (at) Jómi &gt; gen. Jóms + efterleden -borg. Alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin i primära källor är relaterade till varandra: vissa av dem är etymologiskt besläktade, vissa endast ”referentiellt”, dvs. de betecknar ett och samma ställe. Uppkomsten av ett så stort antal Wolin-ortnamnsformer kan i första hand förklaras genom att formerna i fråga har olika ursprung, att det fanns olika namnbrukarkretsar som använde olika former för att hänvisa till samma stad och att det uppstod olika stavningsvarianter och sammansatta namn under de primära formernas senare utveckling.

Using the lives of impaired individuals catalogued in the Íslendingasögur as a narrative framework, this study examines medieval Scandinavian social views regarding impairment from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Beginning with the myths and legends of the eddic poetry and prose of Iceland, it investigates impairment in Norse pre-Christian belief; demonstrating how myth and memory informed medieval conceptualizations of the body. This thesis counters scholarly assumptions that the impaired were universally marginalized across medieval Europe. It argues that bodily difference, in the Norse world, was only viewed as a limitation when it prevented an individual from fulfilling roles that contributed to their community. As Christianity’s influence spread and northern European powers became more focused on state-building aims, Scandinavian societies also slowly began to transform. Less importance was placed on the community in favor of the individual and policies regarding bodily difference likewise changed; becoming less inclusive toward the impaired.