IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 1214: Environmental Determinism in Medieval Scandinavia and Beyond
Wednesday 7 July 2021, 14.15-15.45
| Organiser: | Sabine Heidi Walther, Abteilung für Skandinavische Sprachen und Literaturen, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Rebecca Merkelbach, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 1214-a | Emotions, Environment, and Martyrdom in Early Nordic History Writing (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin |
| Paper 1214-b | 'People's faces and colouring, the size of their bodies, and their various temperaments correspond to various climates': The Transfer of a Hippocratic Theory to Medieval Scandinavia (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Language and Literature - Scandinavian, Learning (The Classical Inheritance) |
| Abstract | Many authors of Antiquity base their character descriptions of foreign peoples on environmental determinism. They state, for example, that the cold climates and the harsh living conditions in which Germanic peoples live cause them to be wild and belligerent. Elizabeth Hasseler analyzes Norwegian historical sources (the Passio sancti Olavi and Theodoricus's De antiquitate regum Norwagensium). She investigates the connection between cold climates and contemporary theories of emotion and emotionality. Which role did they play in characterizing northern pre-Christian 'barbarism'? Sabine Heidi Walther introduces the learned sources of these medieval narratives. Which of these texts were known in medieval Scandinavia? How were they recontextualized? |