Slides from three lectures introducing undergraduate students to Old Norse, with the main points of grammar covered as well as exercises to accompany the explanations. Includes a passage from Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða for translation. Used in Old…
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?
A handout produced by Joanne Shortt Butler on the origins of sagas: composition and tradition, including a timeline, extracts from sagas, and a reading list.
A short handout produced by Joanne Shortt Butler on the topic of Ari Thorgilsson’s Book of the Icelanders and Icelandic Identity, including a short reading list, questions, and a glossary of terms and characters.
Handout on Laxdœla saga saga (The Saga of the People of Laxárdalr) by Joanne Shortt Butler, including extracts from the saga, a family tree and reading list.