IMC 2013: Sessions

Session 1530: Identity, Belonging, and Medieval Scandinavia

Thursday 4 July 2013, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:	Katherine Miller, School of English, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair:	Helen Price, School of English, University of Leeds
Paper 1530-a	Identifying Family Traits in Grettis saga: Is It OK To Be an Ójafnaðarmaðr? (Language: English) Joanne Shortt Butler, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge Index terms: Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Mentalities
Paper 1530-b	Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: Translating Slaves in Hervarar Saga ok Heiðreks (Language: English) Katherine Miller, School of English, University of Leeds Index terms: Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Medievalism and Antiquarianism, Social History
Paper 1530-c	'The warm sand of Elsweyr is far away from here': The Other in Fantasies of the Medieval North (Language: English) Victoria Cooper, School of English, University of Leeds Index terms: Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Medievalism and Antiquarianism
Abstract	This session will take an interdisciplinary approach to the construction of identity in and about Medieval Scandinavia, focussing on problematic identities: slaves, outsiders (geographical or ethnic), and the contentious ójafnaðarmaðr. How did people writing in the Medieval North construct these ‘Others’? How have modern audiences (both academic translators and those creating medievalist fantasies) interpreted and recreated these identities for their own times? What language and traits are used in both cases to create these figures? And what is the function of such identities? Overall, this session will suggest a continuity and fluidity of function and interpretation between the medieval and the medievalist.