About this course
In this course, we study the history, religion, and worldview of the pre-Christian Scandinavians as reflected in primary medieval texts and poems from the Viking Age. The course offers insights into the Viking Age in Scandinavia, both by reading original sources and by examining the pop-cultural echoes of the Viking world in the fiction and fantasy of today.
Syllabus
Faculty
Kim Bergqvist
FacultyPhD Candidate in History, Department of History, Stockholm University. MA (2010) and BA (2008) Stockholm University. Teaches medieval history at Stockholm University since 2012. Visiting Scholar to Columbia University (2016), Cornell University (2014), and the University of Navarra, Pamplona (2012–13). Publications have appeared in The Medieval Chronicle and Collegium Medievale. Areas of specialization: medieval Scandinavia; medieval Iberia; comparative history; medieval literature, genre and fiction; political culture; gender history; the history of emotions. With DIS since 2018.
Lena Norrman
FacultyPh.D., Older Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 2006. Senior Lecturer in Swedish in the department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch at the University of Minnesota since 2005. The role of women in medieval Scandinavia is the focus of Dr. Norrman’s research, with special emphasis on the use of weaving as a means of communication. She is the author of Viking Women: Narrative Roles in Woven Tapestries (2008). She has also published articles on women, storytelling and weaving in Viking Age Scandinavia and Classical Greece. With DIS from 2018.