Tim William Machan - From Iceland to the Americas: Vinland and historical imagination

FROM ICELAND TO THE AMERICAS

Series editors: Anke Bernau, David Matthews and James Paz

Series founded by: J. J. Anderson and Gail Ashton

Advisory board: Ruth Evans, Patricia C. Ingham, Andrew James Johnston, Chris Jones, Catherine Karkov, Nicola McDonald, Sarah Salih, Larry Scanlon and Stephanie Trigg

Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture publishes monographs and essay collections comprising new research informed by current critical methodologies on the literary cultures of the Middle Ages. We are interested in all periods, from the early Middle Ages through to the late, and we include post-medieval engagements with and representations of the medieval period (or medievalism). Literature is taken in a broad sense, to include the many different medieval genres: imaginative, historical, political, scientific, religious. While we welcome contributions on the diverse cultures of medieval Britain and are happy to receive submissions on Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Latin and Celtic writings, we are also open to work on the Middle Ages in Europe more widely, and beyond.

Titles Available in the Series

Visions and ruins: Cultural memory and the untimely Middle Ages
Joshua Davies

Participatory reading in late-medieval England
Heather Blatt

Affective medievalism: Love, abjection and discontent
Thomas A. Prendergast and Stephanie Trigg

Performing women: Gender, self, and representation in late-medieval Metz
Susannah Crowder

The politics of Middle English parables: Fiction, theology, and social practice
Mary Raschko

Contemporary Chaucer across the centuries
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry and Melissa Raine (eds)

Borrowed objects and the art of poetry: Spolia in Old English verse
Denis Ferhatovi

Rebel angels: Space and sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon England
Jill Fitzgerald

A landscape of words: Ireland, Britain and the poetics of space, 7001250
Amy Mulligan

Household knowledges in late-medieval England and France
Glenn D. Burger and Rory G. Critten (eds)

Practising shame: Female honour in later medieval England
Mary C. Flannery

Dating Beowulf: Studies in intimacy
Daniel C. Remein and Erica Weaver (eds)

Enacting the Bible in medieval and early modern drama
Eva von Contzen and Chanita Goodblatt (eds)

Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition: Words, ideas, interactions
Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville (eds)

From Iceland to the Americas: Vinland and historical imagination
Tim William Machan and Jn Karl Helgason (eds)

From Iceland to the Americas

Vinland and historical imagination

Edited by
TIM WILLIAM MACHAN AND JN KARL HELGASON

Manchester University Press

Copyright Manchester University Press 2020

While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher.

Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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

ISBN 978 1 5261 2875 1 hardback

First published 2020

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

FRONT COVERThe Newport Tower in a late-nineteenth-century colourisation of an 1867 Harpers Weekly print. Courtesy of Jim Egan

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Dustin Geeraert holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Manitoba. As an Institute for the Humanities (UMIH) Research Affiliate, he guest edited a special volume of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, The Modern Reception of the Medieval Saga of the Sworn Brothers (2019), and has published other studies on the reception of Old Norse literature. He also co-edited a volume of horror fiction inspired by Winnipeg: The Shadow Over Portage and Main (2016). His research has appeared in The Journal of the William Morris Society, The Lovecraft Annual, and Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and has been presented at conferences such as The Middle Ages in the Modern Era and The Creative Power of the West Fjords in Icelandic Literature. He teaches at the University of Manitoba.

Simon Halink studied modern history and German literature in Utrecht and Berlin, and went on to write his PhD thesis at the University of Groningen on the role of Old Norse mythology in Icelandic national culture (c.18201918). He is affiliated with the Department of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies of the University of Iceland, where he works as a sessional lecturer and researcher. His current postdoctoral research focuses on the post-medieval reception history of Snorri Sturluson and his after-life in the cultural memories of Iceland, Denmark, and Norway.

Kevin J. Harty is Professor of English at La Salle University, where he has served as Chair of the department, as Director of University General Education, and as Special Assistant to the Provost for the University Core. He has published widely on the intersection of film and medieval literature and culture. His books include The Reel Middle Ages (1999), King Arthur on Film (1999), Cinema Arthuriana: Essays on Arthuriana Film (2002), The Vikings on Film (2011), and The Holy Grail on Film (2015). His Medieval Women on Film is scheduled for publication in 2020. His current project is a study of the Middle Ages as depicted on American, Canadian, and British television from 1946 to the present.

Jn Karl Helgason is Professor in the Department of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland. He has published monographs and articles on cultural history, metafiction, and the afterlife of Icelands medieval literature, and co-edited collections of essays devoted to cultural sainthood, Egils Saga, and law and literature. His books include Hetjan og hfund-urinn (1998), The Rewriting of Njls Saga (1999), Hfundar Njlu (2001), Echoes of Valhalla (2017), and National Poets, Cultural Saints (co-authored with Marijan Dovi, 2017).

Verena Hfig is Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a PhD in Scandinavian Studies from UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on the intersections of literature, material culture, and social history in Scandinavia from the Viking Age until today. Her forthcoming book,