The Medieval North and Its Afterlife: Essays in Honor of Heather O’Donoghue (The Northern Medieval World)

This book showcases the variety and vitality of contemporary scholarship on Old Norse and related medieval literatures and their modern afterlives. The contents of the volume reflect the range of current research on Old Norse and related literatures, featuring original new work on Old Norse poetry and saga; related languages and literatures of medieval north-western Europe; and accounts of the afterlife of Old Norse in modern English literature. This collection demonstrates the lively state of contemporary research on Old Norse and related subjects. In doing so, it celebrates Heather O'Donoghue's extraordinary and enduring influence on the subject, as manifested in the wide-ranging and innovative research of her former students and colleagues. Table of Contents 6 List of Figures 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 14 Heather O’Donoghue: An Appreciation 18 Heather 22 Part I: Old Norse Poetry and Saga 26 Chapter 1 “There Is Hope for a Tree”: Two Laments on the Loss of Sons 26 Chapter 2 A Wave of Sound: Rhythmicizing the Formal Artifice of Skaldic Poetry 40 Chapter 3 Inspiring Storytelling in Saga Literature: Toponymic and Topographic Perspectives from Icelandic Folklore 60 Chapter 4 Healing Hands, Holy Water, and Hellish Diseases: Some Accounts of Medical Performance in Medieval Iceland 80 Chapter 5 A Question of Balance: Excess and Lack in Njáls saga 92 Chapter 6 Queenship, Learning, and Good Counsel in Flores och Blanzeflor 108 Chapter 7 When Grímr and Gunnar Met Hálfdan and Harold: Women Dressed as Men in Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar and Walter Scott’s Harold the Dauntless 124 Part II: Related Languages and Literatures of the Medieval North 148 Chapter 8 Seaworthy: Irish Immrama, Old Norse Voyage Tales, and the Women of the North Atlantic 148 Chapter 9 Christ’s Letter to Abgar in England and Ireland 164 Chapter 10 Norse, Irish, and English Songs: Communal Entertainment and Cultural Exchange in the Gesta Herwardi 178 Chapter 11 “No Good Song Is Ever Sung of a Traitor”: The Death of Earl Waltheof in Verse and Prose 190 Chapter 12 Norse Names and Narratives in Havelok the Dane 208 Chapter 13 Strong Language: An Old Norse Word and Northern English 222 Part III: Afterlives 242 Chapter 14 Mighty Men at Home: Domestic Environments and Heroic Masculinity in William Morris’s The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs 242 Chapter 15 Tolkien and Mirkwood 254 Chapter 16 Past and Present Identities in Margaret Elphinstone’s Islanders 268 Chapter 17 It’s not the End of the World: The Neo-Norse Cosmology of Joanne Harris 280 Chapter 18 “Here Are the Words of the Æsir Themselves”: Retelling the Master Builder Myth between Translation and Adaptation 296 Notes on Contributors 314 Index 318 This book showcases the variety and vitality of contemporary scholarship on Old Norse and related medieval literatures and their modern afterlives. The volume features original new work on Old Norse poetry and saga, other languages and literatures of medieval north-western Europe, and the afterlife of Old Norse in modern English literature. Demonstrating the lively state of contemporary research on Old Norse and related subjects, this collection celebrates Heather O’Donoghue’s extraordinary and enduring influence on the field, as manifested in the wide-ranging and innovative research of her former students and colleagues.