IMC 2016: Sessions
Session 723: Hungrvaka: Stirring Up an Appetite for Old Norse Literature, III
Tuesday 5 July 2016, 14.15-15.45
Organiser: | Rebecca Merkelbach, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge |
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Moderator/Chair: | Joanne Shortt Butler, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge |
Paper 723-a | Food and Exclusion: Selling Beer and Chicken in the Saga-World (Language: English) Index terms: Economics - Trade, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Mentalities, Social History |
Paper 723-b | 'Feast and Furious': Feast-Related Conflicts in Old Norse Literature (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Law |
Paper 723-c | 'If a Man Steals Apples or Turnips': Law and Food in 13th-Century Norway (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Law |
Abstract | As part of a series of sessions, these papers trace and explore a variety of issues surrounding food and drink, feasting and nurturing in Old Norse-Icelandic and continental Scandinavian literature and law. They build upon the fruitful collaboration among young academics in the field that was established at the IMC in 2013 and 2014, and are intended to complement the proposed sessions entitled 'Scandinavian History in the Viking and Middle Ages'. This series of sessions will investigate the relationship medieval Icelanders had with food in the way it was played out in the literary and legal texts they produced. What motifs are associated with the consumption of certain types of food and drink? What are the legal implications of food production and distribution? In what way do nature and nurture play into the construction of characters in saga literature? This third session will focus on legal aspects of food production and distribution as they are depicted in the literature of medieval Iceland. The role of feasting as a social situation prone to conflict will be explored, and the perspective of Norwegian legal texts on the subject will be brought into the discussion. |