University of Helsinki
08:15–18:00 Registration at Metsätalo lobby
09:00–09:30 Opening of the conference
Porthania, PII
Kendra Willson
Vice-Dean Minna Palander-Collin, University of Helsinki
To participate the opening online, click here.
09:30–10:30 Keynote lecture
Porthania, PII
Chair: Frog
Viewing the Vikings: An interdisciplinary challenge
Neil Price
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10:30–11:00 Coffee (Porthania, lobby)
Sponsored by Glossa: The Society for Medieval Studies in Finland
11:00–12:40 Session 1A – Roundtable: The centenary of Hermann Pálsson
Metsätalo, Hall 1
Session led by Torfi Tulinius, University of Iceland
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11:00–12:40 Session 1B – The other I
Porthania, Suomen laki Hall
Chair: Rebecca Merkelbach
Otherness and similarity of Glæsivellir: Rhetorical and intertextual implications
Virginie Adam
Is there an “other” in Ǫrvar-Odds saga?
Jonas Zeit-Altpeter
Towards a reoriented global North Atlantic: Race and captivity in the stories of Geirmundr Heljarskinn
Jacob Bell
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11:00–12:40 Session 1C – Magic
Metsätalo, Hall 6
Chair: Nancy L. Wicker
Knowledge is power: The limits of acceptable magic use in medieval chivalric rímur
Lee Colwill
Magic and magic-handlers: Categories of knowledge between past and present
Gwendolyne Knight
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11:00–12:40 Session 1D – Eddic discourse
Metsätalo, Hall 4
Chair: Kate Heslop
Hávamál: Date, internal coherence and context of composition
Mikael Males
The stylistic function of the vreiðr/vega collocation in the Poetic Edda
James Parkhouse, University of Oxford
Theodoric on the Rök stone
Klaus Johan Myrvoll
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11:00–12:40 Session 1E – Violence and evil
Porthania, P673
Chair: Michael Frost
“The quest of Seth” in Icelandic literature: The ecology of evil in Eden
Tiffany Nicole White
[Dixit] non se carere posse consortio praedecessorum suorum, ‘He said he was unable to be without his predecessors’: Attitudes towards the damnation of heathen ancestors in Old Norse-Icelandic literature
Thomas Andrew Hughes
Canon law and violence against clerics in the contemporary sagas
Elizabeth Walgenbach
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12:40–14:00 Lunch (Porthania, Unicafe)
12:40–14:00 Special session: Finnish for total beginners
Porthania, Suomen laki Hall
Alaric Hall
14:00–15:40 Session 2A – Ritual sacrifice
Metsätalo, hall 1
Chair: Edel Porter
Religious lives away from home in the Viking Age: Animal sacrifice
Lesley Abrams
Flesh, feathers, bones: Birds in the Viking Age funerary rituals
Klaudia Karpińska
“Who will die with him?”: Gender and sacrifice in Arabic accounts of the Rūs
Tonicha M. Upham
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14:00–15:40 Session 2B – Sámi & Finns I
Porthania, Suomen laki hall
Chair: Joonas Ahola
Finnar, Freyr, or Fate in Vatnsdæla – (Over-)mapping Iceland in Scandinavian cultural geography
Andreas Schmidt
From the Baltic Sea to the farthest North: Finnar, magic and imagined geographies in Old Norse
literature
Gaïa Perreaut
Into the unknown: Contextualizing the Finnar of the sagas
Sirpa Aalto & Anna Wessman
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14:00–15:40 Session 2C – Modern reception I
Metsätalo, Hall 6
Chair: Friederike Richter
Is Valhǫll a paradise? Adaptations of Norse myths in modern Japanese fiction
Sayaka Matsumoto
“Grei þetta er fullt flærdar og falskleita”: The many ghosts of Hamlet in sagas and folklore
Thomas Spray
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14:00–15:40 Session 2D – Language and sagas
Metsätalo, Hall 4
Chair: Haraldur Bernharðsson
bera Botta tilldi: A Gaelic phrase in Holm papp 4 4°x?
Merrill Kaplan
Hallgerðr’s hair and breeches: The original meaning of Hallgerðr Hǫskuldsdóttir’s nicknames
Bjarni Gunnar Ásgeirsson
What (missing) part of Eyja-fjalla-jökull don’t you understand: Truncated compounds in Icelandic saga landscape
Ilya Sverdlov
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14:00–15:40 Session 2E – Women and sagas
Porthania, P673
Chair: Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir
Women, trolls, and manuscripts: Female aspects of saga production, character drawing and transmission of the fornaldarsögur
Valerie Broustin & Rudolf Simek
The Lady Aud, a lifelike word-picture: Reinventing the foremother figure in 19th-century Icelandic folklore and Victorian travelogues
Sofie Vanherpen
Esja, the fostermother in Kjalnesinga saga
Anne Lind
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14:00–15:40 Session 2F – Text and style
Metsätalo, Room 12
Chair: Frog
“A bag of words” – Stylometry and authorship attribution for Old Norse texts
Haukur Þorgeirsson
Words of a wizard: The lexical relationship between Merlínússpá and Breta sögur
Alicia Maddalena
Rigmaroles on the margins of the Nordic countries
Yelena Sesselja Helgadóttir
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15:45–16:15 Coffee (Porthania, lobby, & Metsätalo, lobby)
16:15–17:55 Session 3A – Roundtable – Better late than never: Olga Smirnitskaya’s The Verse and the Language of Old Germanic Poetry appears in English
Metsätalo, Hall 1
Ilya Sverdlov, Haukur Þorgeirsson, Mikael Males, Michael Schulte & Maria Volkonskaya
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16:15–17:55 Session 3B – Sámi & Finns II
Porthania, Suomen laki Hall
Chair: Joonas Ahola
Norse depictions of the Sámi: Stereotypes and implications
Brent Johnson
Born of snow: The development of Snær inn gamli and his family in Scandinavian sources
Tom Grant
On the origins of things: Finnic syntyloitsut and cultural constructions of the material world
Alaric Hall
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16:15–17:55 Session 3C – Modern reception II
Metsätalo, Hall 6
Chair: Kirsi Kanerva
The medieval North in 19th century French literature
Pierre-Brice Stahl
‘Oldtids tunge’: Nineteenth-century antiquarian research into the sagas and the politics of language
Ciaran McDonough
I know you are but what am I? Film studies and genre in Finnboga saga and Vatnsdœla saga
Yoav Tirosh
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16:15–17:55 Session 3D – Fate and sorcery
Metsätalo, Hall 4
Chair: Gísli Sigurðsson
Old Norse seiðr and Old Russian volkvy: Sub-arctic shamanism in Rus’?
Leszek P. Słupecki
The Old Icelandic uses of the WEAVING and SPINNING of FATE metaphor and their provenance
Grzegorz Bartusik
On wings of death: Ibn Faḍlān’s “angel of death” as a valkyrja and/or völva
Gerður Halldóra Sigurðardóttir
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16:15–17:55 Session 3E – Proverbs and wisdom
Porthania, P673
Chair: Kathrin Clench-Priber
Humiliation and situational ethics: A proverbial motif in some Sagas of Icelanders
Eugenia K. Vorobeva
The wisdom of the sagas in post-medieval Icelandic proverb collection
Christine Schott
Women’s wisdom as prophetic ability in Ívens saga and Hærra Ivan
Holly McArthur
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16:15–17:55 Session 3F – Constructing the saga
Metsätalo, Room 12
Chair: Daniel Sävborg
Creating the medieval saga
Úlfar Bragason
The Old Norse prosimetrum – Looking for parallels
Jonas Wellendorf
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18:15–19:45 University of Helsinki Reception at Banqueting Rooms
Unioninkatu 33
Host: Vice-Dean Filipe Pereira da Silva, University of Helsinki