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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
Moderator/Chair:Joanne Shortt Butler, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge
Paper 723-aFood and Exclusion: Selling Beer and Chicken in the Saga-World
(Language: English)
Marion Poilvez, Faculty of Icelandic & Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
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)
Viktória Gyönki, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest / University of Iceland, Reykjavik
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)
Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen, Institutt for lingvistiske, litterære og estetiske studier, Universitetet i Bergen
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.