Current and planned events
TRAUMATIC MEMORIES OF THE MEDIEVAL NORSE WORLD: CALL FOR ARTICLES
Submission Deadline: January 2026
Contact:
tirosh@cc.au.dk
norph@cc.au.dk
Is trauma a form of memory? Do the two belong together? How can trauma be used to form cultural memory for a society that seeks a foundational myth? And did Óðinn cry when remembering his son’s future death? We call upon you to answer such questions and others that we have not yet considered in a forthcoming article collection edited by Pernille Hermann and Yoav Tirosh. This will be an exciting opportunity to further the work of memory in the pre-modern North, as well as further research into the field of trauma, underexplored in Old Norse studies.
The International Saga Conference,
3-8 August 2025, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland
Presentation of the book series, Memory in the Medieval North
Monday, 4 August, 18:00
Venue: Klub Rawa, ul. Bankowa 5, Katowice, room number to be announced
This series focuses on cultural memory studies in relation to the extensive and varied Nordic cultural goods from, and since, pre-modern times. Its interdisciplinary monographs and essay collections analyze the roles of memory, remembrance, commemoration, and other forms of anamnesis in, and deriving from, the Viking Age and the Middle Ages in Scandinavia. Volumes in the series often build on and extend the work of the international research network, “Memory and the Pre-Modern North” (http://premodern-memory.org/), whose members earlier published The Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches (2018).
Read more about the series ‘Memory and the Medieval North’ here: https://www.degruyter.com/serial/mmn-b/html
Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Momentum and New Avenues,
27-28 February 2025, Aarhus University, Denmark
Contact: Pernille Hermann, Scandinavian Studies, Aarhus University
This workshop evaluates the results gained within the study of pre-modern Nordic memory studies during the past c. 20 years and discusses future directions and new collaborations. Memory studies is one of the most promising new approaches in the international fields of Old Norse and medieval studies, and a series of meetings and seminars in Europe and North America have documented that memory construction was as widespread in the pre-modern world as it is in modern societies, even if the memory cultures of this period are much less investigated than those of modern times. Only the first minor steps have been taken to grasp the implications of this perspective on our understanding of the ancient past. It is the purpose of this workshop to move the discussion of acts of memorialization, memory formation, and identity construction in new directions. The focus will be on the rich and many-sided narrative and poetic culture of ancient Scandinavia and their function in various memory cultures in the Middle Ages and beyond. Based on medieval texts, it will be discussed how notions of the environment, gender, and trauma impacted ideas of past and present and self-images among groups of people.