IMC 2026: Sessions

Paper 248-a:

The lived experience of life-changing damage resulting from violence made for a highly adaptable and recognizable feature of the semi-historical writing of saga-age Iceland. This ubiquity made injury a trope, one which could be deployed by authors for narrative, didactic, or mythopoeic purposes. Reflections on injury are almost commonplace in saga writing, from the grim humor of maimed or dying men commenting on their injuries to the strange links between the dreaming and waking worlds. And of course, what could be reflected upon after the fact could be anticipated through exposition or foresight. Injuries thus reverberate through and across narrative structures. The resulting “echoes” carry invite narrative accounting.

Such reflections also participated in a more prosaic renegotiation of the impaired figure’s body and self-knowledge. An established person, distorted due to injury, required re-imagining in a way the unmarked body did not. The resulting matrix of meaning allowed each injury to speak for itself, or at least to be spoken for. This paper will consider the mythopoeic significance of bodies injured or altered through dreams into waking life, centering on the stories of Án hrísmagi of Laxdæla saga, Gestr Bárðarson of Barðar saga snæfellsáss, and Þórsteinn uxafótr of Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts.

Paper 248-b:

This paper examines the heraldic transformation in the royal arms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway — and adjacent Pomeranian territories — between the late 14th and mid-15th centuries. It focuses on the replacement of the griffin (symbol of Eric of Pomerania’s paternal House of Griffins) with the lindworm dragon, introduced by Christopher of Bavaria in the fourth quarter of the Danish royal arms.

Drawing on royal seals, naval flags, illuminated chronicles, and archival materials, the study reconstructs the chronology and ideological context of this shift. It argues that the change was not simply artistic or dynastic, but symbolic of a deeper political and religious narrative: the Christianization of Slavic Wendish regions, the anti-pagan agenda of the Baltic Crusades, and the assertion of legitimacy by post-Union dynasties, particularly the Oldenburgs.

The “taming of the dragon” — in Christian iconography a metaphor for defeating chaos and paganism — projected royal power as divinely sanctioned. The paper shows how this symbolic substitution reflected the changing geopolitical identity of the Kalmar Union and demonstrates the use of heraldry as a tool of political messaging, dynastic continuity, and territorial ambition during a critical transitional period in Northern Europe.

Paper 248-c:

This paper analyses medieval Norse and Irish narratives, focusing on warriors with atypical traits like frenzy or shapeshifting, and their access to marriage. Through close examination of a selection of texts from fornaldarsögur, Íslendingasögur, and Ulster Cycle tales, marriage serves as a proxy for societal acceptance. Despite their liminal traits, these warriors can engage in marriage and societal roles. Findings include: in Ulster tales, violence linked to heroism allows inclusion; Norse texts show varied outcomes based on institutional containment; animal metaphors are laudatory in Irish tales but dehumanising in Norse sagas. These patterns reveal how communities negotiated martial, liminal identities: either by housing them or by casting them out.