IMC 2016: Sessions
Session 315: In Addition to Daily Bread, III: No Ordinary Feast - Serving Up the Symbolic and Unsavoury
Monday 4 July 2016, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | 'Creating the New North' Research Programme, Universitetet i Tromsø - Norges arktiske universitet |
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| Organiser: | Sigrun Høgetveit Berg, Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology, The Arctic University of Norwa |
| Moderator/Chair: | Richard Holt, Institutt for historie og religionsvitenskap, Universitetet i Tromsø - Norges Arktiske Universitetet |
| Paper 315-a | Feasting with the Trolls of Nordic Literature (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Folk Studies, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Mentalities |
| Paper 315-b | Horses for Courses: Food and Faith in Early Medieval Times (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Folk Studies, Mentalities, Religious Life |
| Paper 315-c | Tasting the Good News: Food and Drink Symbolism in Medieval Irish Narratives (Language: English) Index terms: Biblical Studies, Language and Literature - Celtic, Religious Life |
| Abstract | The ominous presence of trolls in the northern cultural imagination extends to their culinary habits and the unsavoury troll feasts of the Old Norse sagas. The theme will be traced from the literature of the Middle Ages down to modern incarnations of gluttonous trolldom. Eating horse flesh was an abomination, tinged with pagan implications. Food taboos in the early Middle Ages illustrate what happened when food met faith. In the Bible, food and drink terms are used metaphorically in order to explain faith and knowledge of the Word of God. The same symbolism as that found in Scripture serves as a literary device in literature about the conversion of Ireland and for the announcement of the Good News through vernacular literature. |