Annemari Ferreira - Old Norse Poetry in Performance

This book presents a range of approaches to the study of Old Norse poetry in performance.

The contributors examine both eddic and skaldic poems and consider the surviving evidence for how they were originally recited or otherwise performed in medieval Scandinavia, Iceland and at royal courts across Europe. This study also engages with the challenge of reconstructing medieval performance styles and examines ways of applying the modern discipline of Performance Studies to the fragmentary corpus of Old Norse verse. The performance of verse by characters who appear in the Old Icelandic saga tradition is also considered, as is the cultural value associated not only with the poems themselves but with their various means of transmission and reception.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the fields of Old Norse studies, Performance and Theatre History.

Brian McMahon is Associate Lecturer in English at Oxford Brookes University and Artistic Director at Reverend Productions.

Annemari Ferreira is Assistant Professor of English as a Foreign Language and Writing Centre Coordinator at SolBridge International School of Business, Woosong University, South Korea. She holds a research fellowship at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterised by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics.

ASH

Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic

Paul Cater Harrison, Michael D. Harris, Pellom McDaniels

Dancehall In/Securities

Perspectives on Caribbean Expressive Life

Patricia Noxolo, H Patten, and Sonjah Stanley Niaah

Circus and the Avant-Gardes

History, Imaginary, Innovation

Anna-Sophie Jrgens and Mirjam Hildbrand

Aesthetic Collectives

On the Nature of Collectivity in Cultural Performance

Andrew Wiskowski

Dance Data, Cognition and Multimodal Communication

Carla Fernandes, Vito Evola and Cludia Ribeiro

Theatre and the Virtual

Genesis, Touch, Gesture

Zornitsa Dimitrova

Old Norse Poetry in Performance

Brian McMahon and Annemari Ferreira

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre-Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS

Edited by
Brian McMahon and Annemari Ferreira

First published 2022

by Routledge

4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 selection and editorial matter, Brian McMahon and Annemari Ferreira; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Brian McMahon and Annemari Ferreira to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ferreira, Annemari, editor. | McMahon, Brian J. (Brian John), 1987 editor.

Title: Old Norse poetry in performance / edited by Annemari Ferreira & Brian McMahon.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies series page. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021054840 (print) | LCCN 2021054841 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367408305 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032252315 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367809324 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Old Norse poetryHistory and criticism. | Oral interpretation of poetry. | Oral traditionScandinaviaTo 1500. | Performing artsPhilosophy.

Classification: LCC PT7170 .O43 2022 (print) | LCC PT7170 (ebook) | DDC 839/.61009dc23/eng/20220215

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054840

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054841

ISBN: 978-0-367-40830-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-25231-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-80932-4 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780367809324

Typeset in Bembo

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Terry Gunnell

Stephen A. Mitchell

Ins Garca Lpez

Simon Nygaard

Harriet Soper

John McKinnell

Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen

Rebeca Franco Valle

Frog

Brian McMahon

Brian McMahon

Brian McMahon

Benjamin Bagby

Ptur Hni Bjrnsson

This book came about as the result of two conferences held at the University of Oxford in 2016 and 2019 under the title Old Norse Poetry in Performance. We would like to thank all those who attended and participated in these conferences for their insights and contributions. We are grateful to Somerville College and Christ Church for hosting these events and to the following organisations which generously sponsored them: Oxford Medieval Studies, TORCH (the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, the Viking Society for Northern Research, Reverend Productions, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, and the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute at Balliol College. The second conference benefited greatly from the organisational skills of Caitlin Ellis and William Brockbank, for which all involved were grateful.

The editors record their thanks to the following copyright holders for permission to include certain images in this book: Rebeca Franco Valle for several of the photographs which accompany her chapter, along with the Muse du Louvre and the Bibliothque Nationale, in Paris; Gabriel Hildebrand, Ola Myrin and Bengt A. Lundberg for their photographs of items in the collection of the Swedish History Museum; Museo de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro de Len for permission to include a photograph of the Scandinavian casket in its collection (IIC-3-089-002-0009); Christer hlin and the Swedish History Museum for the photograph of Tjurk Bracteate I (SHM 1453:25) in John McKinnells chapter; Hkan Larsson for his photographs of Vstan Teaters production of Eddan (2019); Daria Endresen, Roy Bjrge, Wardruna and Einar Selvik for the photographs of Einar Selvik in performance.