Download or read book The Routledge History of Medieval Magic written by Sophie Page and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of Medieval Magic brings together the work of scholars from across Europe and North America to provide extensive insights into recent developments in the study of medieval magic between c.1100 and c.1500. This book covers a wide range of topics, including the magical texts which circulated in medieval Europe, the attitudes of intellectuals and churchmen to magic, the ways in which magic intersected with other aspects of medieval culture, and the early witch trials of the fifteenth century. In doing so, it offers the reader a detailed look at the impact that magic had within medieval society, such as its relationship to gender roles, natural philosophy, and courtly culture. This is furthered by the book’s interdisciplinary approach, containing chapters dedicated to archaeology, literature, music, and visual culture, as well as texts and manuscripts. The Routledge History of Medieval Magic also outlines how research on this subject could develop in the future, highlighting under-explored subjects, unpublished sources, and new approaches to the topic. It is the ideal book for both established scholars and students of medieval magic.

Download or read book Viking Worlds written by Marianne Hem Eriksen and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2014-11-30 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen papers explore a variety of inter-disciplinary approaches to understanding the Viking past, both in Scandinavia and in the Viking diaspora. Contributions employ both traditional inter- or multi-disciplinarian perspectives such as using historical sources, Icelandic sagas and Eddic poetry and also specialised methodologies and/or empirical studies, place-name research, the history of religion and technological advancements, such as isotope analysis. Together these generate new insights into the technology, social organisation and mentality of the worlds of the Vikings. Geographically, contributions range from Iceland through Scandinavia to the Continent. Scandinavian, British and Continental Viking scholars come together to challenge established truths, present new definitions and discuss old themes from new angles. Topics discussed include personal and communal identity; gender relations between people, artefacts, and places/spaces; rules and regulations within different social arenas; processes of production, trade and exchange, and transmission of knowledge within both past Viking-age societies and present-day research. Displaying thematic breadth as well as geographic and academic diversity, the articles may foreshadow up-and-coming themes for Viking Age research. Rooted in different traditions, using diverse methods and exploring eclectic material – Viking Worlds will provide the reader with a sense of current and forthcoming issues, debates and topics in Viking studies, and give insight into a new generation of ideas and approaches which will mark the years to come.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming written by Carole Hough and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this handbook, scholars from around the world offer an up-to-date account of the state of the art in different areas of onomastics, in a format that is both useful to specialists in related fields and accessible to the general reader. Since Ancient Greece, names have been regarded as central to the study of language, and this has continued to be a major theme of both philosophical and linguistic enquiry throughout the history of Western thought. The investigation of name origins is more recent, as is the study of names in literature. Relatively new is the study of names in society, which draws on techniques from sociolinguistics and has gradually been gathering momentum over the last few decades. The structure of this volume reflects the emergence of the main branches of name studies, in roughly chronological order. The first Part focuses on name theory and outlines key issues about the role of names in language, focusing on grammar, meaning, and discourse. Parts II and III deal with the study of place-names and personal names respectively, while Part IV outlines contrasting approaches to the study of names in literature, with case studies from different languages and time periods. Part V explores the field of socio-onomastics, with chapters relating to the names of people, places, and commercial products. Part VI then examines the interdisciplinary nature of name studies, before the concluding Part presents a selection of animate and inanimate referents ranging from aircraft to animals, and explains the naming strategies adopted for them.

Download or read book The Demise of Norse Religion written by Olof Sundqvist and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When describing the transition from Old Norse religion to Christianity in recent studies, the concept of "Christianization" is often applied. To a large extent this historiography focuses on the outcome of the encounter, namely the description of early Medieval Christianity and the new Christian society. The purpose of the present study is to concentrate more exclusively on the Old Norse religion during this period of change and to analyze the processes behind its disappearance on an official level of the society. More specifically this study concentrates on the role of Viking kings and indigenous agency in the winding up of the old religion. An actor-oriented perspective will thus be established, which focuses on the actions, methods and strategies applied by the early Christian Viking kings when dismantling the religious tradition that had previously formed their lives. In addition, the resistance that some pagan chieftains offered against these Christian kings is discussed as well as the question why they defended the old religious tradition.

Download or read book Rulership in 1st to 14th century Scandinavia written by Dagfinn Skre and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to revitalise the somewhat stagnant scholarly debate on Germanic rulership in the first millennium AD. A series of comprehensive chapters combines literary evidence on Scandinavia’s polities, kings, and other rulers with archaeological, documentary, toponymical, and linguistic evidence. The picture that emerges is one of surprisingly stable rulership institutions, sites, and myths, while control of them was contested between individuals, dynasties, and polities. While in the early centuries, Scandinavia was integrated in Germanic Europe, profound societal and cultural changes in 6th-century Scandinavia and the Christianisation of Continental and English kingdoms set northern kingship on a different path. The pagan heroic warrior ethos, essential to kingship, was developed and refined; only to recur overseas embodied in 9th–10th-century Vikings. Three chapters on a hitherto unknown masonry royal manor at Avaldsnes in western Norway, excavated 2017, concludes this volume with discussions of the late-medieval peak of Norwegian kingship and it’s eventual downfall in the late 14th century. This book’s discussions and results are relevant to all scholars and students of 1st-millenium Germanic kingship, polities, and societies.

Download or read book More than Mythology written by Catharina Raudvere and published by Nordic Academic Press. This book was released on 2012-01-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by distinguished scholars from multiple perspectives, this account widens the interpretative scope on religious life among the pre-Christian Scandinavian people. The religion of the Viking Age is conventionally identified through its mythology: the ambiguous character Odin, the forceful Thor, and the end of the world approaching in Ragnarök. However, pre-Christian religion consisted of so much more than mythic imagery and legends and has long lingered in folk tradition. Exploring the religion of the North through an interdisciplinary approach, the book sheds new light on a number of topics, including rituals, gender relations, social hierarchies, and interregional contacts between the Nordic tradition and the Sami and Finnish regions.

Download or read book Handbook of Pre Modern Nordic Memory Studies written by Jürg Glauser and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-11-19 with total page 1190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the field of Memory Studies has emerged as a key approach in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and has increasingly shown its ability to open new windows on Nordic Studies as well. The entries in this book document the work-to-date of this approach on the pre-modern Nordic world (mainly the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, but including as well both earlier and later periods). Given that Memory Studies is an ever expanding critical strategy, the approximately eighty contributors in this volume also discuss the potential for future research in this area. Topics covered range from texts to performance to visual and other aspects of material culture, all approached from within an interdisciplinary framework. International specialists, coming from such relevant fields as archaeology, mythology, history of religion, folklore, history, law, art, literature, philology, language, and mediality, offer assessments on the relevance of Memory Studies to their disciplines and show it at work in case studies. Finally, this handbook demonstrates the various levels of culture where memory had a critical impact in the pre-modern North and how deeply embedded the role of memory is in the material itself.

Download or read book Viking Rus written by Wladyslaw Duczko and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a detailed survey of the history and culture of Scandinavians, known as Rus, living during the Viking Age in the Eastern Europe where they created not only a principality of Kiev but also several large proto-town centres and numerous rural settlements.

Download or read book The Viking World written by Stefan Brink and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-10-31 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filling a gap in the literature for an academically oriented volume on the Viking period, this unique book is a one-stop authoritative introduction to all the latest research in the field, and the most comprehensive book of its kind ever attempted.

Download or read book An Arena for Higher Powers written by Olof Sundqvist and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In An Arena for Higher Powers Olof Sundqvist investigates ceremonial buildings and religious ruler strategies in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (i.e. AD 550-1050/1100). The author offers here an account of the role played by religion in political undertakings among the pre-Christian ruling elites at halls and cultic buildings. Sundqvist applies a regional approach, so as to be able to account for the specific historical, cultural and social contexts. The focus is mainly on three regions, the Lake Mälaren area in Sweden, Trøndelag in Norway, and Iceland. Since the political structure and other contextual aspects partly differed in the three regions, the religious strategies for gaining legitimacy and authorization at the sanctuaries also varied to some extent in these areas.

Download or read book Avaldsnes A Sea Kings Manor in First Millennium Western Scandinavia written by Dagfinn Skre and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 992 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Royal manor Avaldsnes in southwest Norway holds a rich history testified by 13th century sagas and exceptional graves from the first millennium AD. In 2011–12 the settlement was excavated. In this first book from the project crucial results from an international team of 23 scholars are published. The chapters cover a wide array of topics ranging from building-remains and scientific analyses of finds to landownership and ritual manifestations.

Download or read book Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-04-21 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideology and power are central elements in the political, social, religious and cultural development of the North during the transition from the Viking to the Middle Ages. While the medieval European Christian ideology of rulership has been widely discussed, an analysis of the Nordic pre-Christian ideology, and of its confrontation with the new European ideals has so far been lacking. This book examines the concepts and practices associated with chieftains, earls and kings from the ninth to the thirteenth century: the myths and rituals surrounding their position in a northern European warrior culture. The analysis seems to indicate that important elements of the pre-Christian ideology of rulership survived into the Christian Middle Ages, either transformed or even simply transferred. Contributors are Ian Beuermann, Anders Hultgård, Jan Erik Rekdal, Jens Peter Schjødt, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Joanna Skórzewska, Gro Steinsland and Olof Sundqvist.

Download or read book Bridging the Baltic Sea written by Lars Fredrik Stöcker and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the origins, evolution, and goals of Polish and Estonian émigré politics in Cold War Sweden and its linkages with both the host and homeland societies, this book investigates the transnational dimension of resistance and opposition to the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. The analysis of the constantly shifting, at times conspiratorial, and even subversive networks that transcended the Iron Curtain draws a line from World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union, framing half a century of transnationally concerted political activism in a geographical context that has not received much scholarly attention. Challenging the image of the Baltic Sea Region as a periphery of the European Cold War theater, the topography of the multilayered and complex linkages between neutral Sweden and her opposite coasts suggests that the small inland sea was a particularly vibrant setting for processes that efficiently defied the rigid border regimes of the Cold War era. This book relates both to ongoing historiographical debates about the scope and extent of East-West contacts that developed underneath the radar of international diplomacy and to the question of the role, significance, and impact of émigré politics during the Cold War. Embedding the dynamics of transnationally framed opposition in the wider context of political, economic, and cultural relations at the northeastern peripheries of divided Europe, the study not only sheds new light on so far still unexplored facets of interaction and cooperation between societies in East and West, but also offers a first comprehensive synthesis of the Baltic Sea Region’s post-war history.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion written by Timothy Insoll and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-28 with total page 1135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion provides a comprehensive overview by period and region of the relevant archaeological material in relation to theory, methodology, definition, and practice. Although, as the title indicates, the focus is upon archaeological investigations of ritual and religion, by necessity ideas and evidence from other disciplines are also included, among them anthropology, ethnography, religious studies, and history. The Handbook covers a global span - Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, and the Americas - and reaches from the earliest prehistory (the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic) to modern times. In addition, chapters focus upon relevant themes, ranging from landscape to death, from taboo to water, from gender to rites of passage, from ritual to fasting and feasting. Written by over sixty specialists, renowned in their respective fields, the Handbook presents the very best in current scholarship, and will serve both as a comprehensive introduction to its subject and as a stimulus to further research.

Download or read book Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge written by D. Gary Miller and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates the properties of several ancient syllabic and linear segmental scripts to make explicit the aspects of linguistic knowledge they attempt to represent. Some recent experimental work suggests that nonliterate speakers do not have segmental knowledge and that only syllabic knowledge is 'real' or accessible, whence the ubiquity of syllabaries. Miller disputes this by showing that such tests do not distinguish relevant types of knowledge, and that linguistic analysis of the ordering and writing conventions of early Western scripts corroborates the evidence from language acquisition, use, and change for segment awareness. By coding segments, the ancient syllabaries represented more phonological knowledge than the alphabet, which was a poor compromise between the vowelless West Semitic scripts and the vowel-redundant syllabic scripts. A wide range of information about early scripts and their development is combined with a new theory of the syllable as 'Sonority Phrase'. The book's value is further enhanced by thorough discussion of the issues from a broad range of theoretical and applied viewpoints, including language play and change, cognition, literacy, and cultural history.

Download or read book Germanic Heritage Languages in North America written by Janne Bondi Johannessen and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch, German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, West Frisian and Yiddish, and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition, attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processes across phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics and the lexicon, in addition to work on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and contact settings. With this, the volume also includes a variety of frameworks and approaches, synchronic and diachronic. Most European Germanic languages share some central linguistic features, such as V2, gender and agreement in the nominal system, and verb inflection. As minority languages faced with a majority language like English, similarities and differences emerge in patterns of variation and change in these heritage languages. These empirical findings shed new light on mechanisms and processes.

Download or read book Hip Heritage and Museum Practices in Contemporary Hybrid Markets written by Lizette Gradén and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on how museums prioritize and produce content, Hip Heritage demonstrates how economic issues play an ever-larger role in determining how cultural heritage is being framed and presented in contemporary heritage museums. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the authors at seven museums over the course of five years, this book offers an in-depth analysis of heritage museums in Nordic, Scandinavian and North American contexts. It investigates how economic realities, coupled with the cultural contexts in which museums operate, affect how these institutions organize, manage and develop their collections to make themselves relevant in society. Once charged with the primary task of educating citizens about their cultural identity and history, national museums and heritage organizations are also under pressure to rethink their market demands and meet stakeholders’ increasing interest in growing visitor numbers and expanding economic returns. Simultaneously, many museums are part of a cultural sector with diminished public funding and increased competition for the existing financing. Against this background, this book questions: ‘When the budget is tight, whose heritage counts most?’ It considers museums as arenas for heritage politics in action on the local, national and international levels, as well as at the institutional level. Hip Heritage will appeal to scholars and students engaged in the study of ethnology heritage, museum studies, marketing, leisure and tourism, public folklore, and sociology.