COURSE SYLLABUS
Body in Old Norse Literature
This syllabus was prepared for the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University by Marie Novotná.
Course Description
The course aims to delineate a conceptual space for ideas about the body found in Old Norse literature and, in dialogue with contemporary body-related research, to search for polarities other than the body–soul dualism.
It focuses on selected themes through which Old Norse texts articulate bodily existence and personhood, especially somatic displays of emotion, change of form, the corporeality of revenants, the physical aspects of Old Norse terms for "soul", and the relationship between humans and animals.
The course draws on a wide range of Old Norse sources, including sagas, Eddic poetry, skaldic verse, and legal texts. Since no philosophical treatises on the body survive from the Old Norse world, abstract concepts are approached through close reading of narrative examples, where the meaning of each phenomenon emerges in relation to its literary and cultural context.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
Course Requirements
The course is completed for a grade. The final grade is composed of the following components:
(i) Participation and preparation (20% of the final grade): Careful reading of the assigned texts and active contribution to class discussion form an integral part of the course. Students are expected to come to class prepared and ready to discuss both primary and secondary readings.
(ii) Presentation (20% of the final grade): Each student will give a presentation on a topic related to the course content. The presentation should last approximately 15 minutes and should be accompanied by a PowerPoint or another suitable visual aid.
(iii) Final examination (60% of the final grade): In the final test, students will apply the knowledge acquired throughout the course. They are expected to demonstrate familiarity with the principal concepts, the required readings, and the interpretive issues discussed during the semester.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1 — Introduction: Approaching the Body in Old Norse Literature
The opening week introduces the main aims and methods of the course. Students are familiarized with the problem of reconstructing concepts of the body in a textual culture that did not produce systematic philosophical treatises on the subject. The class addresses the tension between vernacular and Christian models of personhood, the limits of the evidence, and the importance of narrative context for interpretation. It also presents the principal source types used throughout the semester, including sagas, Eddic poetry, skaldic verse, and laws.
Mandatory reading: No mandatory reading assigned.
Week 2 — Old Norse Terms for "Soul" and the Concept of the Porous Body
This lesson examines the semantic range of Old Norse terms associated with the soul or inner person, such as hugr, sál, fjǫr, ǫnd, óðr, fylgja, and hamingja. The class explores their material, relational, and situational dimensions. Particular attention is paid to the idea of the term "porous body" introduced by Kirsi Kanerva for the Old Norse world.
Mandatory reading:
Judy Quinn, 'Liquid Knowledge: Traditional Conceptualisations of Learning in Eddic Poetry', in Along the Oral-Written Continuum: Types of Texts, Relations and their Implications, ed. by Slavica Ranković, Leidulf Melve, and Else Mundal. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010, pp. 183–226.
Week 3 — Revenants: Corporeality, Memory, and the Revenants
This class investigates the corporeality of revenants in Old Norse literature. Through selected saga episodes, students examine how the dead return not as disembodied spirits but as materially present and socially disruptive beings. The lesson addresses the connection between corporeality, memory, and unresolved conflict, as well as the broader implications of revenant narratives for Old Norse conceptions of death, embodiment, and the porous boundary between living and dead.
Mandatory reading:
Kirsi Kanerva, 'The Role of the Dead in Medieval Iceland: A Case Study of Eyrbyggja saga', Collegium Medievale, 24 (2011), pp. 23–49.
Marie Novotná et al., 'Revenants in Old Norse Literature as Embodied Memory', Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica, 1 (2020), pp. 9–22.
Week 4 — Health: vernacular concept of heill, and Learned Medicine
This session focuses on the concept of heill and related notions of bodily integrity, health, and well-being. Students consider how Old Norse ideas of bodily condition interact with continental learned medicine and how literary texts register pain, illness, and bodily disturbance. The class explores the relationship between physical states and moral, emotional, or social conditions.
Mandatory reading:
Katharine Park, 'Medical Practice', in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 2: Medieval Science, ed. by David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 611–629.
Sarah Baccianti, 'Swelling in Anger: Somatic Descriptors in Old English and Old Norse Literature', in Emotion and Medieval Textual Media, ed. by Mary C. Flannery. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, pp. 51–74.
Week 5 — Emotions in Saga Style: Bodily Signs and Somatic Scripts
This lesson explores the representation of emotions in saga literature through bodily signs such as facial colour, swelling, exhaustion, eye pain, and death. Students analyse how emotions are registered in a restrained narrative style that often avoids explicit psychological commentary. The class considers the relationship between physical symptoms and emotional states and asks how embodied signs function as culturally legible markers of inner experience.
Mandatory reading:
Edel Porter and Teodoro Marique Antón, 'Flushing in Anger, Blushing in Shame', Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 2.1 (2015), pp. 24–49.
Carolyne Larrington, 'The Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval Period', Early Medieval Europe, 10.2 (2001), pp. 251–256.
Kirsi Kanerva, 'Eigi er sá heill, er í augun verkir. Eye Pain as a Literary Motif in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Íslendingasögur', Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 69 (2013), pp. 7–35.
Week 6 — Continental and Old Norse Emotive Scripts
This week examines the encounter between continental and Old Norse models of emotional expression. By focusing on translated texts and comparative material, students consider how embodied emotions are reshaped when narratives move between cultures. Particular attention is paid to vocalisation, bodily response, and the degree to which translated Old Norse texts preserve, transform, or reinterpret continental emotive scripts. The class considers the role of adaptation, redaction, and manuscript transmission in shaping what bodily experience means within a given narrative tradition.
Mandatory reading:
Carolyne Larrington, 'The Translated Lais', in The Arthur of the North: The Arthurian Legend in the Norse and Rus' Realms, ed. by Marianne E. Kalinke. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011, pp. 77–97.
Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, 'Translating Emotion: Vocalisation and Embodiment in Yvain and Ívens saga', in Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature: Body, Mind, Voice, ed. by Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington, and Corinne Saunders. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015, pp. 161–180.
Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse: The Movement of Texts in England, France, and Scandinavia. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012, pp. 13–18.
Week 7 — Hamr and the Human–Animal Boundary
This lesson turns to the semantic field of hamr and to the relationship between human and animal forms. Students explore how bodily identity may extend across species boundaries and how such crossings are reflected in both literary and archaeological material. The class examines bodily metaphor, hybridity, and the extent to which the human body in Old Norse culture is conceived as stable, permeable, or transformable.
Mandatory reading:
Sif Kristoffersen, 'Half Beast-Half Man: Hybrid Figures in Animal Art', World Archaeology, 42.2 (2010), pp. 261–272.
Kristina Jennbert, Animals and Humans: Recurrent Symbiosis in Archaeology and Old Norse Religion. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2011, pp. 118–139.
Week 8 — Flight and Aerial Transformation
This week focuses on forms of bodily transformation associated with flight. Students consider how narratives of magical or extraordinary movement imagine the body in altered states and how flight relates to power, liminality, and non-human capacities. The session places Old Norse material in dialogue with comparative medieval evidence in order to clarify both shared motifs and specifically Norse emphases. The process of separating interior states from their outward manifestations can be further illuminated by the theory of conceptual metaphors and its account of metaphorization.
Mandatory reading:
Maria Elena Ruggerini, 'Tales of Flight in Old Norse and Medieval English Texts', Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 2 (2006), pp. 201–238.
Leslie Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2011, pp. 165–78.
Week 9 — Battle Ecstasy and Animal Transformation: Berserkir
This lesson examines transformations linked to powerful animals such as the bear and the wolf, especially in the context of battle ecstasy. Students analyse the figure of the berserkr and discuss how bodily change, altered states of consciousness, and monstrous or liminal identity are represented in saga literature. The class also considers the methodological problems involved in distinguishing literary trope, social category, and comparative religious interpretation.
Mandatory reading:
Rebeca Merkelbach, 'Eigi í mannligu eðli. Shape, Monstrosity and Berserkism in the Íslendingasögur', in Shapeshifters in Medieval North Atlantic Literature, ed. by Irina Dumitrescu and Leah Tether. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 83–106.
Roderick Dale, 'Defining a Berserkr', in The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr. New York: Routledge, 2022, pp. 5–24.
Week 10 — Werewolves and Other Hybrid Forms
This class explores werewolves and related hybrid figures in Old Norse literature and in comparative medieval contexts. Through translated lais and indigenous saga material, students examine how transformation narratives negotiate identity, alterity, and the boundary between human and animal. The discussion also considers intercultural connections and the extent to which Old Norse werewolf narratives participate in wider European patterns while preserving distinct local meanings.
Mandatory reading:
Andrea Whitacre, 'The Translation of Transformation: A Comparison of Bisclavret and Yonec with the Norse Bisclaret and Jónet', Le Cygne, 4 (2017), pp. 25–46.
Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, 'The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 106.3 (2007), pp. 277–303.
Week 11 — Magic Practitioners and Transformation: Seiðr, Shamanism, and the Limits of Embodiment
This class examines transformations associated with practitioners of magic in Old Norse literature, especially figures connected with seiðr and other forms of ritual manipulation of immaterial forces. The lesson also introduces the long-standing debate over the relationship between Old Norse magic and shamanism, including the possible relevance of Sámi parallels. The aim is to analyse transformation not as an isolated motif, but as part of a broader literary and cultural logic that connects embodiment, ritual power, and ideological framing.
Mandatory reading:
Stephen A. Mitchell, 'Pagan Scandinavia and Conversion', in Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages. Philadelphia, 2011, pp. 26–40.
Week 12 — Afterlives of Hamr: Post-Medieval Developments and Conclusion
The final week traces the post-medieval development of the term hamr and reflects on the concept of the body as an index of cultural transition. Students consider how older notions survive, shift, or are reinterpreted in later material, including Scandinavian ballads and other post-medieval sources. The concluding discussion revisits the course as a whole and evaluates what Old Norse literature contributes to broader debates on embodiment, personhood, and the history of ideas.
Mandatory reading:
Marie Novotná, 'Role of the Body – Scandinavian Ballads vs. Old Norse Literature', in Ballads: New Approaches = Kvæði: nýggj sjónarmið, ed. by Malan Marnersdóttir et al. Tórshavn: Fróðskapur, 2018, pp. 293–305.
Optional reading:
Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, 'Emotions of a Vulnerable Viking: Negotiations of Masculinity in Egils saga', in Masculinities in Old Norse Literature, ed. by Gareth Lloyd Evans and Jessica Clare Hancock (Cambridge, 2020), pp. 147–153.
Kalinke, Marianne E, 'Sources, Translation, Redactions, Manuscript Transmission', in The Arthur of the North: The Arthurian Legend in the Norse and Rus' Realms, ed. by Marianne E. Kalinke. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011, pp. 22–28.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, 2003).
Merkelbach, Rebecca, Monsters in Society: Alterity, Transgression, and the Use of the Past in Medieval Iceland (Berlin and Boston, 2019).
Miller, William Ian, 'Emotions and the Sagas', in From Sagas to Society, ed. by Gísli Pálsson, Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland (Enfield Lock, 1992), pp. 89–100.
Su, Minje, 'Taming the Wolf: Reading Bisclaret in Light of Old Norse Kennings', in Margin, Monsters, Deviants: Alterities in Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. by Rebecca Merkelbach and Gwendolyne Knight (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 45–68.
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