Essay Title: ‘The incorporation of Norse mythological material in Beowulf is nothing more than a random assortment of half-remembered stories.’ Discuss.
Essay Title: ‘The primary value of eddic poetry and Snorri Sturluson’s Edda is located not in their aesthetic accomplishments but in their status as mythological sources.’ Discuss.
Essay Title: ‘There is ample evidence in the eddic corpus of a distinct genre of Odinic wisdom dialogue. The poems belonging to this genre are uniform in their themes and formulaic in their execution.’ Discuss.
Essay Question: How is the figure of the poet presented in the skáldasögur (Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa, Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, Hallfreðar saga, and Kormáks saga)?
Essay Question: Why do the authors of the skáldasögur (Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa, Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, Hallfreðar saga, and Kormáks saga) incorporate poetry in their sagas?
Essay Question: To what extent do the authors of Gísla saga Súrssonar and Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar critique Icelandic law and the sentence of outlawry?
Extended essay questions from the seminar course 'Poetry of the Vikings' (Old Norse poetry in translation) which ran in 2013/2014 at University College Cork. The seminar was led by Dr Tom Birkett.