Approaches to the Medieval Self : : Representations and Conceptualizations of the Self in the Textual and Material Culture of Western Scandinavia, c. 800-1500 / / Stefka G. Eriksen, Karen Langsholt Holmqvist, Bjørn Bandlien.

• HerausgeberIn: Bandlien, Bjørn ,; Eriksen, Stefka G.,; Langsholt Holmqvist, Karen,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter,, [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VIII, 339 p.)

The main aim of this book is to discuss various modes of studying and defining the medieval self, based on a wide span of sources from medieval Western Scandinavia, c. 800-1500, such as archeological evidence, architecture and art, documents, literature, and runic inscriptions. The book engages with major theoretical discussions within the humanities and social sciences, such as cultural theory, practice theory, and cognitive theory. The authors investigate how the various approaches to the self influence our own scholarly mindsets and horizons, and how they condition what aspects of the medieval self are 'visible' to us. Utilizing this insight, we aim to propose a more syncretic approach towards the medieval self, not in order to substitute excellent models already in existence, but in order to foreground the flexibility and the complementarity of the current theories, when these are seen in relationship to each other. The self and how it relates to its surrounding world and history is a main concern of humanities and social sciences. Focusing on the theoretical and methodological flexibility when approaching the medieval self has the potential to raise our awareness of our own position and agency in various social spaces today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Approaches to the Self - From Modernity Back to Viking and Medieval Scandinavia -- The Networked Historical Self, Traveling Version -- Cognitive Approaches to Old Norse Literature -- The Precarious Self -- Multiple Spaces, Multiple Selves? The Case of King Sverrir of Norway -- The Medieval Subject and the Saga Hero -- The Selfish Skald: The Problematic Case of the Self of the Poet of Sonatorrek -- Medieval Page-turners: Interpreting Revenge in Njáls saga in Reykjabók (AM 468 4to) and Möðruvallabók (AM 132 fol.) -- The Self in Legal Procedure: Oath-Taking as Individualism in Norwegian Medieval Law -- The Agency of Children in Nordic Medieval Hagiography -- Food, Everyday Practice, and the Self in Medieval Oslo: A Study of Identities Based on Dietary Reconstructions from Human Remains -- Identifying "Occasions" of the Self in Viking-Age Scandinavia: Textile Production as Gendered Performance in Its Social and Spatial Settings -- Self-expression through Eponymous Tenement Plots in Medieval Oslo -- Searching for the Self in Danish Twelfth-Century Churches: A Praxeological Experiment -- The Creation of Selves as a Social Practice and Cognitive Process: A Study of the Construction of Selves in Medieval Graffiti -- The Self in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, and Beyond: Between the Material, the Social, and the Cognitive -- Index