abstract: The mid-eighteenth century publication of national British folk collections like James MacPherson's Works of Ossian and Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, placed a newfound interest in the ancient literature associated with Northern/Gothic heritage. This shift from the classical past created a non-classical interest in the barbarism of Old Norse society, which appeared to closely resemble the Anglo-Saxons. In addition to this growing interest, Edmund Burke's seminal treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, provided a newfound aesthetic interest in objects of terror. The barbaric obscurity and exoticism associated with the Norse culture provided the perfect figures to explore a Gothic heritage while invoking the terror of the sublime. This interest accounted for a variety of works published with Gothic themes and elements that included Old Norse pagan figures. Though a few scholars have attempted to shed light on this sub-field of Romanticism, it continues to lack critical attention, which inhibits a more holistic understanding of Romanticism. I argue that "Norse Romanticism" is a legitimate sub-field of Romanticism, made apparent by the number of primary works available from the age, and I synthesize the major works done thus far in creating a foundation for this field. I also argue that one of the tenets of Norse Romanticism is the newfound appreciation of the "Norse Woman" as a democratized figure, thus opening up a subversive space for dialogue in women's writing using the Gothic aesthetic. To illustrate this, I provide analysis of three Gothic poems written by women writers: Anna Seward's "Herva at the Tomb of Argantyr," Anne Bannerman's "The Nun," and Ann Radcliffe's "Salisbury Plains. Stonehenge." In addition, I supplement Robert Miles' theoretical reading of the Gothic with three philosophical essays on the empowerment of the imagination through terror writing in Anna Letitia Aikin (Barbauld) and John Aikin's "On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror" and "On Romances" as well as Ann Radcliffe's "On the Supernatural in Poetry." / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

abstract: The ancient religious practices and beliefs of the indigenous people of Northern Scandinavia, known as the Sámi, have been misrepresented and misinterpreted by well meaning ethnographers and researchers who view such practices and beliefs through an Descartes-Cartesian, objective-subjective lens. This thesis develops a more accurate, intersubjective paradigm that is used to illuminate more clearly the religious workings of the 17th-18th Century Sámi. Drawing upon the intersubjective theories presented by A. Irving Hallowell, Tim Ingold and Kenneth Morrison, ethnographic examples from the writings of early Lutheran missionaries and priests demonstrate that the Sámi lived in a world that can be best understood by the employ of the categories of Person (ontology), Power (epistemology) and Gift (axiology). / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Religious Studies 2014

abstract: Rather than being the lawless barbarian society that history and popular culture have painted it, medieval Scandinavian culture was more complex and nuanced. This dissertation interrogates the use of a rhetoric of reasonableness (hóf) in the medieval Nordic society to give voice to this silenced tradition. Specifically, this research focuses on the use of rhetoric in civic and legal settings to show that medieval Scandinavians were more interested in reasonable solutions than unreasonable ones. Civic rhetoric among the medieval Nordic people relied heavily on hóf to keep civic practice manageable. Working in small towns and villages without central bureaucracies, reasonableness became important to the functioning of the village. Large scale disruptions could mean the death of all inhabitants in the area due to social disruption if violence occurred, so finding reasonable means of dealing with social problems was of paramount importance to the Norse. Using readings and analysis from the Icelandic sagas, I show the mechanisms of their rhetoric were used to manage civic life. Legal rhetoric was also based on reasonableness. If civic actions became violent or potentially violent, then the courts needed a way to redress and maintain the peace in the area. The practice of law was heavily influenced by the rhetorical stance of hóf. The Scandinavian tradition of court cases appears in their early laws and in several sagas which allows a picture to be created of their rhetorical stance of reasonableness in the law cases. Analysis of historical data and saga manuscripts give evidence of a rhetorical tradition of reasonable redress in the legal system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2020

This thesis unravels the deeper meanings attributed to ordinary objects, such as clothing and food, in thirteenth-century Icelandic literature and legal records. I argue that women weaponized these ordinary objects to circumvent their social and legal disadvantages by performing acts that medieval Icelandic society deemed masculine. By comparing various literary sources, however, I show that medieval Icelandic society gradually redefined and questioned the acceptability of that behavior, especially during the thirteenth-century. This is particularly evident in the late thirteenth-century Njal’s Saga, wherein a woman named Hallgerd has been villainized for stealing cheese from a troublesome neighbor. If Hallgerd were a man, this behavior would have been considered rán, which was a masculine act whereby men challenged one another to take things by force. As a woman, however, Hallgerd’s clever use of ordinary objects was unsettling to men; her act, although mirroring the masculine expectations of rán, has been condemned by the author. Thus, by emphasizing the anxieties of men regarding such behavior, it is evident that later male authors, particularly those writing from the late thirteenth century onwards, considered this behavior as preventing society’s progression away from extra-legal conflict resolution. In doing so, the author of Njal’s Saga demonstrated that both women and men were aware of the power that these ordinary objects had in the hands of ambitious women, as well as how potentially dangerous and harmful to society they could be.

Drug overdose death rates in the United States have more than tripled since 1990 with more than 36,000 dying in 2008. In 2007 the estimated cost of drug use to U.S. society due to lost productivity, increased health care, and criminal justice costs was over $193 billion. Previous researchers have found that harm reduction is a viable treatment option within the field of addiction. The guiding premise in the harm reduction approach is that all people can achieve improved psychological and physiological health even if they are unable to be substance-free. However, there remains an important gap in the current literature regarding factors that may influence substance abuse counselors' use of the harm reduction model. Specific individual counselor independent variables (recovery status, education level, age, length of time in the field, and understanding of substance abuse conceptualizations) may play a role in counselors' acceptance of the harm reduction approach as a viable treatment for substance abuse. Therefore, the purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate which variables played a role in counselors' acceptance of the harm reduction model. This research sampled 100 professional substance abuse counselors selected from the American Counseling Association (ACA) database. Multiple regression analyses were utilized to examine study research questions. Findings of this study indicated that disease and eclectic orientation conceptualizations were significant predictors of harm reduction acceptance, suggesting training targets for increasing acceptance of the harm reduction model among counselors. This is an important contribution to the existing literature and enhances social change initiatives by expanding the use of effective substance abuse treatment options.

Portland, Oregon had the potential in the 1870s to become the center of Nordic immigration to the Pacific Northwest. It was the primary urban center of the area, and the headquarters for Scandinavian mission work. In the 1870s, Nordics began to establish churches, clubs, lodges and newspapers. After the first fifty years, however, Portland's Nordic ethnicity was not as evident in the city's character as mere numbers might warrant.

The "History of the Danish Mission, 1850-1964," gives a detailed account of the Mormon "beginnings" in Denmark and attempts to trace the development of a system of proselyting and its effect upon the lives of both missionaries and converts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. No attempt has been made in this study to record chronological detail to any extensive degree. Rather, emphasis has been placed on "beginnings" and major historical developments.This study includes an examination of the Scandinavian and Danish Mission records, several missionary journals and all known printed material related to the Mormon Church in Denmark. The Historian's Office of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City is the chief source of information on the history of Mormon activity in Scandinavia. Most of the mission and emigration records have been assembled there. Two large manuscripts, "Scandinavian Mission General History" (1850-1920) and "Danish Mission General History" (1920 – the present), kept in several large loose-leaf folios, were most informative because they included many eye witness accounts taken from diaries, journals, letters, and newspapers. A manuscript history of "Church Emigration" provides a description of each organized emigrant company to 1869. Also the records of individual congregations and early Church periodicals were informative. The library of the Historian's Office, furthermore, has copies of all Mormon literature published in Danish--tracts, pamphlets, periodicals, and books. The Brigham Young University Library was also useful for its many books, diaries, and articles dealing with the Danish Mission. Because of the author's ability to read source material in the Danish language additional perspective was given to this study.

No description available.

In this dissertation I argue that art projects are sites of interconnected social spaces where the work of transnational practices, neoliberal politics and identity construction take place. At the same time, art projects are "nodal points" that provide entry and linkages between communities across the Atlantic. In this study, based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Canada and Iceland, I explore this argument by examining ethnic networking between Icelandic-Canadians and the Icelandic state, which adopted neoliberal economic policies between 1991 and 2008. The neoliberal restructuring in Iceland was manifested in the implementation of programs of privatization and deregulation. The tidal wave of free trade, market rationality and expansions across national borders required re-imagined, nationalized accounts of Icelandic identity and society and reconfigurations of the margins of the Icelandic state. Through programs and a range of technologies, discourses, and practices, the Icelandic state worked to create enterprising, empowered, and creative subjects appropriate to the neoliberal project. At the same time these processes and practices served as tools for reawakening and revitalizing ethnic networking on a transnational scale. As enactments of programs initiated by the Icelandic state, the art projects studied here are approached in relation to neoliberal governmentality in a transnational context in order to explore how the operations of states and the new global economy are translated into local cultural practices, such as visual displays. This is a study of cultural circuits and transnational networking where art projects are the formative "nodes"-local sites of cultural production, neoliberal politics, multiple threads of truth claims in battles of cultural politics, identity formation, and conflicted notions of the value of art and the idea of creativity. / Anthropology

This dissertation reframes the Danish artist Anna Ancher (1859-1935) by expanding the context in which the artist has been considered, to position her as a Symbolist, modernist and independent artist. A revered and familiar artist in Denmark, most scholars discuss her paintings in association with the development of the art colony in Skagen, an important site of Denmark's Modern Breakthrough in the 1880s. The represented image of Ancher in paintings by male colonists during this period indicated her centrality within the group, depicted her as a fashionable bourgeois wife and respectable mother, but simultaneously neglected to reference the development of her professional practice. By 1889, Ancher had sold major paintings and gained national and international recognition. Michael Ancher's portrait of his wife in reform dress in Coming Home from Market (1902) signifies her freedom from conventional gender roles. Despite her affiliation with the Skagen colony, Ancher matured as a painter during the 1890s after its heyday. At this time Danish Symbolism and Vitalism came to eclipse the Naturalist orientation of the prior decade. The painter's study in Paris in 1889 and her contacts in cosmopolitan Copenhagen forged an avant-garde network that in many ways referenced, but also resisted, movements from the urban French center. An aesthetic that draws from the ostensibly contradictory and divergent ideas of Charles Baudelaire, Hans Christian Andersen and Friedrich Nietzsche can be found in Ancher's painting, positioning her alongside other Danish Symbolists. Ancher was also a native of the Jutland peninsula, which experienced the growth of pietist movements and major shifts impacting agricultural labor. Ancher's paintings of religion and harvest at the beginning of the twentieth century challenged contemporary French primitivist images of Breton peasants, especially those of Paul Gauguin. After 1900, Ancher's increasingly abstract paintings of unoccupied interiors reflect the complex modernist shift in valuation of the dwelling and a new emphasis on minimal decoration and strong planar surfaces in the home as conducive to physical and psychological health. In her paintings of her own studio, Ancher challenged normative gendered divisions in the organization of the home and asserted her identity as an autonomous artist. / Art History