This thesis examines masculinities in the Íslendingasögur. It attempts to uncover the dominant model of masculinity that operates in the sagas, outlines how masculinities and masculine characters function within these texts, and investigates the means by which the sagas, and saga characters, may subvert masculine dominance. The thesis applies to men and masculinities in saga literature the same scrutiny traditionally used to study women and femininities. The first - introductory - chapter reviews the limited scholarship that presently exists on masculinities in Old Norse literature. It then proposes a new model for the critical study of saga masculinities, drawing on sociological theories of hegemonic and subordinated masculinities. The second chapter ranges across the entire Íslendingasaga corpus in order to demonstrate how masculinity inflects homosocial relationships (and thus virtually all aspects of saga texts). It also suggests that almost all masculine characters have a problematic relationship with masculinity as a result of the intersectional nature of subject formation. The third chapter, focusing on Njáls saga, argues that the male body is used to undermine the prevailing model of masculinity. It is argued that the Njála author purposefully deploys somatic indices that have gendered significance to show embodied resistance to the demands of masculinity. The fourth chapter examines the representation and treatment of a character (Grettir Ásmundarson) that embodies masculinity to an exceptional degree, but who nevertheless - or perhaps for that reason - experiences a problematic relationship with masculinity. Finally, an epilogue briefly investigates some of the ways in which female characters may undermine and problematize the masculinity of men and the category of masculinity itself. Ultimately, this thesis shows 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.

abstract: This study examines the ways in which translators writing in two contemporary medieval languages, Old Norse-Icelandic and Middle English, approached the complicated doctrine of the bodily Assumption of Mary. At its core this project is dedicated to understanding the spread and development of an idea in two contemporary vernacular cultures and focuses on the transmission of that idea from the debates of Latin clerical culture into Middle English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature written for an increasingly varied audience made up of monastics, secular clergy, and the laity. The project argues that Middle English and Old-Norse Icelandic writing about the bodily Assumption of Mary challenges misconceptions that vernacular translations and compositions concerned with Marian doctrine represent the popular concerns of the laity as opposed to the academic language, or high Mariology, of the clergy. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2014

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Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2017-01-18T13:56:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 8622162 bytes, checksum: 0bcfb8b91dbbbf51331420e49b3ad1b9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-18T13:56:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 8622162 bytes, checksum: 0bcfb8b91dbbbf51331420e49b3ad1b9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-30 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The Vikings, people who inhabited the Medieval Scandinavia, before the adoption of Christianity as the official religion in the eleventh century, had a very rich set of beliefs, rites and myths that were partially preserved by oral culture, manuscripts and archaeological remains and has been studied by researchers from all over the world. This dissertation makes an investigation of religious symbolisms attributed to animals in stone monuments erected during the Viking Age, and for that we use, as a study center object, the iconography present in the Scandinavian steles, making a dialogue between these imagistic representations and literary sources of Norse mythology, as well as many other sources of Old Norse Religion. Thus so, besides highlighting the peculiarities, inquiries and religious characteristics related to the main animals present in the Nordic religion, this work provides an overview of the current concept of religion of the Vikings and their most important aspects in a systematizing approach, because no one element of this fascinating religiosity of the north can be understood disassociated from the rest. / Os vikings, populações que habitavam a Escandinávia Medieval, antes da adoção do cristianismo como religião oficial no século XI, possuíam um riquíssimo conjunto de crenças, ritos e mitos que foram parcialmente preservados pela cultura oral, por manuscritos e por vestígios arqueológicos e que vem sendo estudado por pesquisadores de todo o mundo. A presente dissertação realiza uma investigação dos simbolismos religiosos atribuídos aos animais em monumentos de pedra erguidos durante a Era Viking, e para tanto, utilizamos como objeto central de estudo a iconografia presente nas estelas escandinavas, fazendo um diálogo entre estas representações imagéticas e as fontes literárias da mitologia nórdica, bem como com diversas outras fontes da Religiosidade Nórdica Pré-Cristã. Desta maneira, além de evidenciar as peculiaridades, indagações e características religiosas relacionadas aos principais animais presentes na religiosidade nórdica, este trabalho fornece um panorama geral da atual conceituação da religiosidade dos vikings e seus aspectos mais relevantes em uma abordagem sistematizadora, pois nenhum elemento da fascinante religiosidade deste povo pode ser entendido desassociado dos demais.

Courtesy and Women in the Scandinavian Knightly Epic Abstract The aim of this dissertation was synchronic and diachronic evaluation of gender roles in Scandinavian courtly epic from its beginning in the 13th century until the end of the 15th century. Its different conceptions of women, love, and courtesy were chosen as criteria, which make the main specifics of continental courtly fashion apparent - of the fashion which these translations were meant to introduce into Scandinavia. Besides literary analyses of gender norms, we have considered texts of pragmatic nature and even selected artefacts of material culture. Our focus, therefore, included a broader social, cultural, and political context of this literature and social norms and literary conventions of other contemporary literary genres in Scandinavia. Our work is based not only on primary sources and findings of literary history, but also on interdisciplinary research. Our analyses demonstrate the destabilisation and redefinition of gender boundaries in Old Norse literature, which was caused by translations of knightly epic, where the male hero was allowed so far unparalleled degree of sensitivity and feminine openness of emotions. Prior to these translations, honour and status of any man, who would humbly beseech his beloved like the heroes of...

<p>While the body in medieval literature can be compared to a text, the nature of this text varies depending on the classification of the body in question. For a monster, the body is static: it indicates victory, marks borders, and is not engaged with beyond the initial dismemberment and display. Conversely, the saintly body is a dynamic body, constantly called upon to continue acting on behalf of the community in the form of miracles. The saintly body is a body in flux—changing and accruing narratives to itself over time. Despite these differences, however, the body itself exists on a spectrum, ranging from human to non-human, and from monstrous to beatific. I therefore further argue that it is the relationship of the deceased individual and the community that determines how a body is treated and understood after death, even if the postmortem body in question bears signs that could easily be interpreted as either monstrous or saintly. This reception, in turn, is reflected in the body’s role within the community.</p>

This work attempts to outline concepts associated with body in the Old Norse literature. As the word for the body (líkamr) as well as the term for an incorporeal soul (sál) do not occur in the Old Norse literature until the translated Christian works and cannot therefore be used as markers, two areas closely connected with the concept of body have been chosen for the research: shifting of shape (hamr) and somatic expressions of emotions. In the first area, i.e. phenomena associated with shape-shifting, contexts of all (113) occurrences of radix ham- in the Old Norse literature are analysed in order to describe the semantical field of this root. Within the themes that have appeared in the material (i.e. shape-shifting related to flying, battle frenzy and magic), occurrences are ordered on an axis from those where the form (hamr) is considered to be holistic to those where just the form of body or soul is described. In this context, it is important to mention the proximity of man and animal in the Germanic environment, as shape-shifting is often related to an animal and thus points to the limits of human identity. In the second area, i.e. somatic expressions of emotions, we can also find cases where the mental and the physical area intersect and the boundaries between diseases and emotions are not...

Amongst the Iron Age Scandinavian elite, there are several supra-regional and multifaceted tripartite (or threefold) symbolic expressions. These include expressions found in art, artefacts and monuments, such as the triangular stone-settings, or Sw. treuddar, which may be the strongest manifestation in the landscape. In addition, tripartite symbolism is found in the elite’s óðal-claims and also Norse mythological structures. Due to the widespread pervasiveness of tripartite symbology within the culture of the Iron Age elite, these phenomena are conceptualised in the theoretical framework of a ‘tripartite ideology’. This study addresses the questions of why was the tripartite ideology so enduring within the Nordic Iron Age, in what ways did it manifest and what positions did it hold in the Iron Age elite’s socio-cultural and religious thought-world? This research examines the monumental, artefactual, social and mythological manifestations of the tripartite ideology in Iron Age Scandinavia. The objective is to formulate a theory which synthesises the various expressions of tripartite symbology using a source-pluralistic methodology, which combines archaeological evidence with both emic (insider) and etic (outsider) historical sources, alongside religious studies and semiotics in order to provide a more representative picture of the function of treuddar and tripartite symbolism in the Iron Age elite milieu. The result of this methodology is that the tripartite ideology is connected with the Iron Age elite’s ancestral óðal-claims based on a legendary or divine descent, along with acting as a‘liminal locus’ whereby the Other World could be accessed.

This thesis argues that the corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic literature which pertains to Iceland contains an intertextual narrative of the formation of Icelandic identity. An analysis of this narrative provides an opportunity to examine the relationship between literature and identity, as well as the potency of the artistic use of the idea of the past. The thesis identifies three salient narratives of communal action which inform the development of a discrete Icelandic identity, and which are examined in turn in the first three chapters of the thesis. The first is the landnám, the process of settlement itself; the second, the origin and evolution of the law; and the third, the assimilation and adaptation of Christianity. Although the roots of these narratives are doubtless historical, the thesis argues that their primary roles in the literature are as social myths, narratives whose literal truth- value is immaterial, but whose cultural symbolism is of overriding importance. The fourth chapter examines the depiction of the Icelander abroad, and uses the idiom of the relationship between þáttr (‘tale’) and surrounding text in the compilation of sagas of Norwegian kings Morkinskinna to consider the wider implications of the relationship between Icelandic and Norwegian identities. Finally, the thesis concludes with an analysis of the role of Sturlunga saga within this intertextual narrative, and its function as a set of narratives mediating between an identity grounded in social autonomy and one grounded in literature. The Íslendingasögur or ‘family sagas’ constitute the core of the thesis’s primary sources, for their subject-matter is focussed on the literary depiction of the Icelandic society under scrutiny. In order to demonstrate a continuity of engagement with ideas of identity across genres, a sample of other Icelandic texts are examined which depict Iceland or Icelanders, especially when in interaction with non-Icelandic characters or polities.

Tato práce se zabývá primárními rytířskými ságami, staroseverskými pře- klady evropské rytířské epiky, a jejich vlivem na další žánry ság, sekundární rytířské ságy a pozdní fantastické ságy. Naším cílem bylo zkoumat změny v prezentaci vybraných postav (hrdina, vládce a hrdinova žena) v závislosti na přechodu společnosti od rodové k systému s feudálními rysy. P·vodní staroseverská tradice je v práci zastoupena ságami rodovými. První kapitola popisuje hlavní problémy rozdělení zkoumaných žánr·. Druhá kapitola před- stavuje detailní analýzu formy a obsahu popis· postav v každém z žánr·. Poslední část přidává aspekt změn struktury společnosti, především ve spo- jitosti se snahou Hákona Hákonarsona zavést užší feudální vazby. Tento pře- chod skutečně ovlivnil očekávání publika. Zjistili jsme, že hlavní změna, kte- rou primární rytířské ságy znamenaly v rámci ságové literatury, bylo, že se cíleně pokoušely změnit společenské konvence a praxi. Pozdější žánry si už nenárokovaly morální závaznost. Přejaly sice kvality zavedené překlady ry- tířské epiky, ovšem dodržovaly také tradiční formu popisu postav. Klíčová slova: rytířské ságy, lživé ságy, rodové ságy, staroseverský, dvorský