The last two to three decades have seen a remarkable increase in international memory studies. This is not only true with respect to modern and contemporary literature, art, film, and other forms of cultural expression. Medieval studies have, to a somewhat lesser degree, also been influenced by this wave of research on negotation of memories and creating of pasts. Not least in dealing with Viking Age and Medieval Scandinavian cultures memory studies has become an emergent field which has prompted lively, interdisciplinary activities. The present lecture is an attempt at providing an overview of and an introduction to important methodological approaches characteristic of these studies as well as a presentation of some essential memory-related forms, genres, narratives, and modes in the rich and varied pre-modern Nordic tradition.
Every culture is to a significant degree defined by the way it relates to its own past and defines itself through memory. Ever since the time of ancient cultures – from the Egyptian culture’s veneration of the dead, to the scepticism against writing as expressed in classical Greek texts, to the Greek and Roman theories of rhetoric – different forms of memory presentation have again and again given rise to reflections about the phenomena of creating, disseminating, storing, re-creating, and re-writing memories, and of dealing with collective and cultural memory, activities so central to every society.
Christian culture for example, as many others, is deeply grounded in memory. Its central myths are profoundly connected with commemoration. When in the Last Supper Jesus admonishes his apostles to break the bread and drink the wine, he adds the famous words, ‘do this in remembrance of me’ (Luke 22,17-20, 1.Corinthians 11,23-25). Eucharist consists of a collective performance of believers; a ritual, endlessly repeated, it is a re-enactment that enables and generates dialogue with the past. Memory could not exist without such common activities framed by and expressing religious and cultural meaning as well as social attitudes.
Similarly, the corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic texts displaying mnemonic aspects is immense. It ranges from skaldic and eddic poetry to prose narratives such as the Icelandic Book of Settlement or the various saga-genres, the Prose Edda and the Grammatical Treatises, runic inscriptions and other memorials, such as burial mounds. Heterogeneity and diversity are characteristic of this huge material. A simple but elementary question such as, “Where is the seat of memory in the human body?” would produce at least two competing answers if we look at the Nordic material. One, based on the classical tradition that ultimately goes back to Aristotle, in which it is the brain where memory is placed. And another one in which an apparently more native tradition, expressed in breast-kennings, connects memory with the heart. Such intermingling diverse traditions are specific features of Old Norse-Icelandic memory theory.
Another significant characteristic of “memory” in these medieval texts is its continous narrativization, which very often takes the form of myths. Countless are stories which focus on female memory-figures, such as the eddic Seeress’s Prophecy or the giant-daughter Gunnlöd in the myth of the mead of poetry; Odin’s Ravens Huginn and Muninn have been interpreted as figures of “thought” and “memory”; giants’ body-parts as the eyes of Thjazi or the toe of Aurvandill are thrown up into the sky and function as forceful mnemonic pathos-formulae.
The lecture will address some of these and other issues of pre-modern Nordic memory studies.
Jürg Glauser is Emeritus Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the Universities of Basel and Zürich. His main fields of interest are the literary cultures of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, especially the late medieval sagas and the Eddas, and the early modern period. Methodological approaches are chiefly memory studies, transmission studies, historical mediology, rhetoric, historiography of literature, the disciplinary history of Scandinavian Studies. The main publications: Myth, Magic, and Memory in Early Scandinavian Narrative Culture, eds. J. Glauser, P. Hermann (2021); Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies, eds. J. Glauser, P. Hermann, S. A. Mitchell (2018); RE:writing. Medial perspectives on textual culture in the Icelandic Middle Ages, eds. K. Heslop, J. Glauser (2018); Skandinavische Literaturgeschichte, ed. J. Glauser (2011/16); Rittersagas – Übersetzung, Überlieferung, Transmission, eds. J. Glauser, S. Kramarz-Bein (2014); Balladen-Stimmen. Vokalität als theoretisches und historisches Phänomen der skandinavischen Balladentradition, ed. J. Glauser (2012); Text – Reihe – Transmission. Unfestigkeit als Phänomen skandinavischer Erzählprosa 1500-1800, eds. J. Glauser, A. K. Richter (2012); Island – Eine Literaturgeschichte (2011); Text – Bild –Karte. Kartographien der Vormoderne, eds. J. Glauser, C. Kiening (2007); Germanentum im fin de siècle. Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien zum Werk Andreas Heuslers, eds. J. Glauser, J. Zernack (2005); Skandinavische Literaturen der frühen Neuzeit, eds. J. Glauser, B. Sabel (2002); Verhandlungen mit dem New Historicism. Das Text-Kontext-Problem in der Literaturwissenschaft, eds. J. Glauser, A. Heitmann (1999); Isländische Märchensagas. Untersuchungen zur Prosaliteratur im spätmittelalterlichen Island (1983).