In the last decade Cultural Memory is taking a more prominent position in Old Norse scholarship. This theory was conceived by Jan and Aleida Assmann and then introduced into our field by Jürg Glauser, and developed by scholars such as Pernille Hermann, Agnes Arnórsdóttir, and Stephen A. Mitchell. Cultural Memory suggests that the way history is portrayed through art, ritual, and text, has meaning in how a society remembers its past, and how this past is constructed. This course will introduce the concept of Cultural Memory, its context, its problems, and give examples of how it was used successfully in Old Norse scholarship. Then it will move to an extensive reading of Njáls saga, with the leading question of how does Cultural Memory influence our reading of this masterpiece.

Kurs im HIS-LSF