Viking & Medieval Scandinavia

Viking and Medieval Scandinavia is an annual multidisciplinary journal published by Brepols devoted to the study of medieval Scandinavia stretching geographically from Russia to North America and chronologically from the Viking Age to the end of the medieval period.

The journal follows the guidelines for peer-reviewed journals with anonymous assessment by two independent expert referees of each article prior to publication. Visit the journal's facebook page.

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Editorial Board

Editors

  • Pernille Hermann, Editor-in-chief (VMS 15- ), Aarhus Universitet
  • Russell Poole, Editor-in-chief (VMS 10-14), Western University
  • Carolyne Larrington, Editor-in-chief (VMS 7-9), Oxford University
  • Stefan Brink, Editor-in-chief (VMS 4-6), University of Aberdeen
  • Judy Quinn, Editor-in-chief (VMS 1-3), University of Cambridge

Editorial Assistants

  • Alisa Valpola-Walker, University of Cambridge

Editorial Board

  • Lesley Abrams, University of Oxford
  • Sverre Bagge, Universitetet i Bergen
  • Hannah Burrows, University of Aberdeen
  • Anne-Sofie Gräslund, Uppsala universitet
  • Stefanie Gropper, Universität Tübingen
  • Guðrún Nordal, Háskóli Íslands (University of Iceland)
  • Helgi Þorláksson, Háskóli Íslands (University of Iceland)
  • Kate Heslop, University of California, Berkeley
  • John Hines, Cardiff University
  • Judith Jesch, University of Nottingham
  • Philip Lavender, Göteborgs universitet
  • Stephen Mitchell, Harvard University
  • Erik Niblaeus, University of Cambridge
  • Neil Price, Uppsala universitet

Contributions

We welcome contributions for future issues of the journal across all the fields we cover from scholars at all stages of their careers. Through our journal we aim to foster an academic environment that values diversity, rigorous scholarship, academic freedom and inclusivity.

Please contact the current editor-in-chief for publication deadlines or any of the other editors to discuss a proposed submission:

Studies in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia

Studies in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia is an occasional monograph series. Links to past volumes of SVMS can be found on the list below. All enquiries about SVMS should be sent to Judy Quinn: jeq20@cam.ac.uk

Contents

VMS 19 (2023)
  • Args aðal: Queer Carnival and Divine Deviance in Lokasenna and Þrymskviða
    Caroline Batten
  • Movement and Stasis in Hárbarðsljóð
    Manu Braithwaite-Westoby
  • Hólmganga í aptrgǫngu, ‘zombie duelling’: The Afterlife of Duelling in Medieval Iceland
    Oren Falk
  • The Dialectic seduction: Óðinn and Vǫlundr
    Jan A Kozák
  • Nova Historia Sancti Ambrosii: new perspectives on the Authorship of Ambrósiuss saga biskups
    Davide Salmoiraghi
  • The Ervika Runestone and Other Evidence for the Early Christianization of Northern Norway
    Marte Spangen and Jørn E. Henriksen
  • Medieval Literature and Saami in the South
    Solveig Marie Wang
VMS 18 (2022)
  • Genealogical Stratigraphy: Excavating an Expansion Phase in Hversu Noregr Byggðist and the Flateyjarbók Ættartölur
    Ben Allport
  • Investigating the Íslendingasögur as Prosimetrum: A New Methodology
    Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Stefanie Gropper, Judy Quinn, Tarrin Wills, and Alexander Wilson
  • The False King Olaf, Queen Margaret, and the Prussian Hansa
    Richard Cole
  • Ohthere’s Northern Voyage: A Close Reading and Practical Interpretation
    Michael Korhammer
  • 1277: Contemporary Politics and the Prehistory of Sturlunga Saga
    Sverrir Jakobsson and Daniel M. White
  • Materiality and Myth: Encountering the Broken Body in the Eddic Corpus
    Timothy Liam Waters
  • The Stranger-King in Hvítramannaland
    Jonas Wellendorf
VMS 17 (2021)
  • Tracing Elite Networks and Status-Enhancing Strategies in Viking-Age Närke: The Hoard Evidence
    Florent Audy
  • The Battle of Stamford Bridge: Why Stamford Bridge? The Norwegian Strategy
    Michael C. Blundell
  • Power and ‘Sacral Rulers’ in Pre-Christian Scandinavia: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Dynamics
    Sophie Bønding
  • Moving the North: Rimbert, the Vita Anskarii, and the Cynocephali
    Nikolas E. Hoel
  • Óðinn and the Mead: the Two-Faced Myth
    Jan A. Kozák
  • Nuces skaldicae: Kennings and their Contexts in a Lausavísa in Gísla saga Súrssonar
    Russell Poole
  • ‘Hear Here’ – Poetic Citation and the Bureaucratic Spirit of Gylfaginning
    Pete Sandberg
  • Of Pots and Porridge: Food, Cooking, and Serving in Old Norse Sources
    Harriet J. Evans Tang and Steven P. Ashby
VMS 16 (2020)
  • Degrees of Separation: Icelandic Perceptions of Other Scandinavian Settlements in the Faroes, Orkney, Ireland, and the Hebrides
    Caitlin Ellis
  • Uncoiling the Serpent: Snake Figurines in the Viking Age
    Leszek Gardeła
  • Mikill Oflati ‘A Great Show-off’: Expressions of Self in the Runic Inscriptions of Maeshowe, Orkney
    Karen Langsholt Holmqvist
  • ‘I Had to Be Somewhere’: Spaces of Belonging in the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders
    Rebecca Merkelbach
  • A Matter of Honour: Evolving Moral Codes in the Sagas
    Stephen A. Mitchell
  • Insult and Insight: Skarpheðinn’s Performance at the Alpingi
    Thomas Morcom
  • The Danelaw Reconsidered: Colonization and Conflict in Viking-Age England
    Ben Raffield
  • Power over Men and Power over Words: The Poet-King Ragnarr Loðbrók
    Anna Solovyeva
VMS 15 (2019)
  • Ecclesiastical Government, carte blanche: Filling out Forms in Lárentíus saga biskups
    Joel D. Anderson
  • The Head, the Heart, and the Breast: Bodily Conceptions of Emotion and Cognition in Old Norse Skaldic Poetry
    Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir
  • In Pursuit of an Æsirist Ideology
    Richard Cole
  • A Norse Nightingale: The Circulation of Music and Writing in Strengleikar
    Kate Heslop
  • Birth, Belts, and the Brísingamen
    Verena Höfig
  • Aquitanian Viking Connections: The 840s and the Question of the Mullaghboden Silver Coins
    Stephen M. Lewis
  • Lords and Lordship in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum
    Erik Niblaeus
VMS 14 (2018)
  • The Allure of the Foreign. The Social and Cultural Dimension of Imports in Scandinavia in the Viking Age
    Hanne Lovise Aannestad
  • Speaking in Tongues: Mutilation and Miracles in Geisli and the Prose Hagiographies of St Óláfr
    Christopher Abram
  • Female Viking Revisited
    Fedir Androshchuk
  • Meat and Taboo in Medieval Scandinavian Law and Literature
    Timothy Bourns
  • Miniature Shields in the Viking Age: A Reassessment
    Leszek Gardela and Kerstin Odebäck
  • Mad Love: Myth, Kingship, and the Dissolution of the State
    Nicolas Meylan
  • Different Strokes: Judicial Violence in Viking-Age England and Scandinavia
    Keith Ruiter and Steven P. Ashby
  • Was There a Cult of ‘Saint Engelbrekt’?
    Andrey Scheglov
  • Saints and Politicians: The Bishops of Hólar in Troubled Times
    Sverrir Jakobsson
  • Enthronement in Early Rus: Between Byzantium and Scandinavia
    Alexandra Vukovich
VMS 13 (2017)
  • Spatial Orientation in Knýtlinga saga -
    Tatjana N. Jackson
  • Vikings in Hungary? The Theory of the Varangian-Rus’ Bodyguard of the First Hungarian Rulers
    Csete Katona
  • Political Conflict and Political Ideas in Twelfth-Century Denmark
    Lars Kjær
  • New and Old Interpretations of Njáls saga
    Lars Lönnroth
  • Sven Estridsen’s Incest and Divorce
    Niels Lund
  • Does Heilagt Tafn in Húsdrápa Mean ‘Holy Sacrifice’? Reassessing the Evidence
    Kristen Mills
  • Polygyny, Concubinage, and the Social Lives of Women in Viking-Age Scandinavia
    Ben Raffield, Neil Price, and Mark Collard
  • The Myth of Útgarðr — A Toponym as a Basis for an Old Norse System of Values?
    Lukas Rösli
VMS 12 (2016)
  • The Illuminated Þjófabálkr in Fourteenth-Century Icelandic Jónsbók Manuscripts
    Stefan Drechsler
  • Þórr the War God: Polemicizing Myth in Eilífr Goðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa
    Tom Grant
  • The Argument from Design in the Prologue to the Prose Edda
    Gunnar Harðarson
  • Bridges to Eternity: A Re-Examination of the Adoption of Christianity in Viking-Age Sweden
    Sara Ann Knutson
  • Salt and the Earliest Scandinavian Raids in France: Was there a Connection?
    Stephen M. Lewis
  • Continuity and Change: Forms of Liminality in the Sacred Social Spaces of the Pre-Christian Nordic World
    Luke John Murphy
  • Óðinn Visiting Christian Kings: Storytelling and the Construction of Royal Authority in Medieval Norway
    Arnfrid Opedal and Endre Elvestad
  • Words in Wood and Stone: Uses of Runic Writing in Medieval Norwegian Churches
    Kristel Zilmer
VMS 11 (2015)
  • The Relationship between Víga-Glúms saga and Reykdœla saga: Evidence from New Lexomic Methods
    Rosetta M. Berger and Michael D. C. Drout
  • Hebrew in Runic Inscriptions and Elsewhere
    Richard Cole
  • Trading in Viking-period Scandinavia — A Business Only for a Few? The Jämtland Case
    Olof Holm
  • A Viking Find from the Isle of Texel, the Netherlands and its Implications
    Nelleke L. Ijssennagger
  • Rune Carvers and Local Mobility
    Laila Kitzler Åhfeldt
  • Vikings and Bretons? The Language of Factional Politics in Late Carolingian Brittany
    Fraser McNair
  • Early Vikings in the Isle of Man: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives
    Dirk H. Steinforth
  • Towards the Etymology of the Names of the Dnieper Rapids in Constantine Porphyrogenitus: Βράσμα Νεροῦ — Fjodor Uspenskij
VMS 10 (2014)
  • Young Love in Sagaland: Narrative Games and Gender Images in the Icelandic Tale of Floris and Blancheflour
    Ármann Jakobsson
  • Buriel Practices in Sites of Cultural Memory in the Íslendingasögur
    Lisa Bennett
  • Horses, Lakes and Heroes. Landnámabók S83, Volsunga saga 13 and the Grey of Macha
    Matthias Egeler
  • New Perspectives on Eastern Vikings/Rus in Arabic Sources Armann Jakobsson
  • (Re) Visions of Royal Luck in the Sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason
    Chandar Lal
  • The Hills have Eyes: Post-Mortem Mountain Dwelling and the (Super)Natural Landscape in the Íslendingasögur
    Miriam Mayburd
  • Fate is a Hero's Best Friend: Towards a Socio-political Definition of Fate in Medieval Icelandic Literature
    Nicolas Meylan
  • Word from the South: A source for Morkinskinna?
    Helio Pires
  • The Origin of the Seven-Day Week in Scandinavia (Part 1): the Theophoric Day-Names
    Lasse C.A. Sonne
VMS 9 (2013)
  • A Cautionary Tale: Reading the Runic Message in Atlamál in grœnlenzko
    Tom Birkett
  • Þáttr and Saga: The Long and the Short of Óláfr Tryggvason
    Siân Grønlie
  • ‘Where Are All the Eddic Champions Gone?’ The Disappearance and Recovery of the Eddic Heroes in Late Medieval Icelandic Literature, 1400–1800
    Shaun F. D. Hughes
  • Between Frankish and Viking: Frisia and Frisians in the Viking Age
    Nelleke L. IJssennagger
  • Allegory in Old Norse Secular Literature: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges
    Mikael Males
  • Þrymskviða, Vígja, and the Canterbury Charm
    Bernard Mees
  • Viking Attacks in Western Iberia: An Overview
    Helio Pires
  • Lost in Transmission: Reconstituting Forgotten Verses in Gísla saga Súrssonar
    Edel Porter
  • The Similarity of Bone Skates and Skis
    B. A. Thurber
VMS 8 (2012)
  • Death by Dragons
    Paul Acker
  • Fulham 878–79: A New Considertaion of Viking Manoeuvres
    John Baker and Stuart Brookes
  • Piracy of Policy? Lübeck’s 1249 Attack on Copenhagen
    Maria R. D. Corsi
  • Salvation and Early Saga Writing in Iceland: Aspects of the Works of the Þingeyrar Monks and their Associates
    Haki Antonsson
  • Between Pagan Pirates and Glorious Sea-Warriors: The Portrayal of the Viking Pirate in Danish Twelfth-Century Latin Historiography
    Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm
  • Scribe, Redactor, Author: The Emergence and Evolution of Icelandic Romance
    Marianne E. Kalinke
  • Sigurðr’s Attack on Lisbon: Where Exactly?
    Helio Pires
  • The ‘Wind of the Giantess’: Snorri Sturluson, Rudolf Meissner, and the Interpretation of Mythological Kennings along Taxonomic Lines
    Judy Quinn
  • Contesting the Semantics of Viking Religion
    Paul B. Sturtevant
  • Physiology and Behaviour in the Sagas
    Tarrin Wills
VMS 7 (2011)
  • White-Christ
    A. V. Busygin
  • Putting Women in their Place? Gender, Landscape and the Construction of Landnâmabók
    Chris Callow
  • Denemearc, Tanmaurk Ala, and Confinia Nordmannorum: The Annales Regni Francorum and the Origins of Denmark
    Paul Gazzoli
  • The Many Conversions of Hallfreðr Vandræðaskáld
    Erin Michelle Goeres
  • Loki, the Vätte and the Ash Lad: a Study Combining Old Scandinavian and Late Material
    Eldar Heide
  • Magic and Discourses of Magic in the Old Norse Sagas of the Apostles
    Nicolas Meylan
  • Money for Freedom: Ransom Paying to Vikings in Western Iberia
    Helio Pires
  • Eddic Poetry for a New Era: Tradition and Innovation in Sólarljóð and Hugsvinnsmál
    Brittany Schorn
  • The Role of Gender in some Viking-Age Innovations in Personal Naming
    Philip Shaw
  • The Níðingr and the Wolf
    Bernt Øyvind Thorvaldsen
VMS 6 (2010)
  • Signs of power: Manors in Medieval Iceland
    Árni Daníel Júlíusson
  • Medieval Icelandic Christian Place-Names
    Margaret Cormack
  • Was Erik the Red’s Brattahlið located at Qinngua Kangilleq? A dissenting view
    Kevin J. Edwards, J. Edward Schofield and Jette Arneborg
  • Poppo's Ordeal: Courtier Bishops and the Success of Christianization at the Turn of the First Millennium
    Michael Gelting
  • Social Structures and Identity in Early Iceland
    Stephen Pax Leonard
  • Skalds, runes and voice
    Mats Malm
  • Ideology of the Ruler in Pre-Christian Scandinavia: Mythic and Ritual Relations
    Jens Peter Schjødt
VMS 5 (2009)
  • Helpful Danes and Pagan Irishmen: Saga Fantasies of the Viking Age in the British Isles
    Elizabeth Ashman Rowe
  • Fate and Weaving: Justification of a Metaphor   
    Karen Bek-Pedersen
  • The Economics of Devotion: Vows and Indulgences in Medieval Iceland   
    Margaret Cormack
  • The State and the Strangers: The Role of External Forces in a Process of State Formation in Viking-Age South Scandinavia (c. AD 900–1050)
    Andres Siegfried Dobat
  • The Legend of Saint Sunniva   
    Alexander O'Hara
  • From Dál Riata to the Gall-Gháidheil   
    Andrew Jennings and Arne Kruse
  • A Saint and his Sequence: Singing the Legend of Saint Olaf   
    Åslaug Ommundsen
  • Practical Fastenings of the Supernatural   
    Carrie Roy
  • Purity and Danger in Earliest Iceland: Excrement, Blood, Sacred Space, and Society in Eyrbyggja saga
    Kevin J. Wanner
  • Viking Identities: Gender, Material Culture, and Identity Introduction - Christina Lee
  • Gender, Material Culture, and Identity in the Viking Diaspora   
    Marie Louise Stig Sørensen
  • The Irish Viking Age: A Discussion of Architecture, Settlement Patterns and Identity
    Rebecca Boyd
  • Culture and Gender in the Danelaw: Scandinavian and Anglo-Scandinavian Brooches
    Jane F. Kershaw
VMS 4 (2008)
  • Translating Courtly Literature and Ideology in Medieval Sweden: Flores och Blanzeflor
    Massimiliano Bampi
  • Following the Trollish Baton Sinister: Ludic Design in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss
    Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough
  • Into Viking Minds: Re-interpreting the Staffs of Sorcery and unraveling Seiðr
    Leszek Gardela
  • Skaldic Verse-Making in Thirteenth-Century Iceland: The Case of the Sauðafellsferðarvísur
    Jonathan Grove
  • Room for All? Spaces and Places for Thing Assemblies: The Case of the All-Thing on Gotland, Sweden
    Nanouschka Myrberg
  • A Sacred Stone from Björkö’s Black Earth – On the Benefits of a Second Examination
    Ny Björn Gustafsson
  • The Lands of Denemearce: Cultural Differences and Social Networks of the Viking Age in South Scandinavia
    Søren M. Sindbæk
  • The Varnhem Archaeological Research Project: A New Insight into the Christianization of Västergötland
    Maria Vretemark and Tony Axelsson
  • Viking Identities: Myth and Memory Introduction: Myth and Cultural Memory in the Viking Diaspora - Judith Jesch
  • Scenes of Island Encounters in Icelandic Sagas: Reflections of Cultural Memory
    Kristel Zilmer
  • The Eiríkssynir in Vínland: Family Exploration or Family Myth?
    Pragya Vohra
  • A Viking in Shining Armour? Vikings and Chivalry in the Fornaldarsögur
    Carolyne Larrington
VMS 3 (2007)
  • Are the Spinning Nornir just a Yarn?
    Karen Bek-Petersen
  • Riding the Tree
    Yvonne S. Bonnetain
  • Kin-Slaying in the Poetic Edda: the End of the World?
    David Clark
  • Burial Rods and Charcoal Graves: New Light on Old Burial Practices
    Kristina Jonsson
  • The Making of Hávamál
    John McKinnell
  • A Divided Society: Peasants and the Aristocracy in Medieval Iceland
    Orri Vésteinsson
  • Strangers in Icelandic Society 1100-1400
    Sverrir Jakobsson
  • Ekphrasis: Round-Table Discussion Stylistic and Generic Identifiers of the Old Norse Skaldic Ekphrasis
    Margaret Clunies Ross
  • Ekphrasis and Surviving Imagery in Viking Scandinavia
    Signe Horn Fuglesang
  • Ekphrasis as Speech-Act: Ragnarsdrápa 1–7
    John Hines
  • Ekphrasis: its ‘Prolonged Echoes’ in Scandinavia
    Russell Poole
VMS 2 (2006)
  • Hel in Early Norse Poetry
    Christopher Abram
  • Poet into Myth: Starkaðr and Bragi
    Margaret Clunies Ross
  • Myth and Meaning in the Rök Inscription
    Joseph Harris
  • Merlin and the Völva
    Philip Lavender
  • Some Southern Perspectives on Starcatherus
    Russell Poole
  • Quid Sigvardus cum Christo? Moral Interpretations of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani in Old Norse Literature
    Elizabeth Ashman Rowe
  • Tales of Flight in Old Norse and Medieval English Texts
    Mariella Elena Ruggerini
  • The Representation of Waterborne Traffic in Old Norse Narratives – The Case of the Baltic Sea Area
    Kristel Zilmer
  • Discussion : Interrogating Genre in the Fornaldarsögur
VMS 1 (2005)
  • The Compilator and Contemporary Literary Culture in Old Norse Hagiography
    Simonetta Battista
  • Did Rannveig Change Her Mind? Resolve and Violence in Þorsteins þáttr stangarhöggs
    Oren Falk
  • Carolingian Coins in Ninth-Century Scandinavia
    Ildar Garipzanov
  • Spatial and Temporal Perspectives in Íslendingabók: Historiography and Social Structures
    Pernille Hermann
  • Óðinn in Old Norse Texts other than The Elder Edda, Snorra Edda and Ynglinga saga
    Annette Lassen
  • Thresholds and Passages: the Meanings of Bridges in the Viking Age and Early Middle Ages
    Julie Lund
  • Visual Poetry, Weaving Meaning: Micro Narratives in the Nordic Oral Tradition
    Lena Norrman
  • Converting to Europe: Christian Themes in Knýtlinga saga
    Carl Phelpstead
  • The Power of the Spoken Word as Literary Motif and Ritual Practice in Old Norse Literature
    Catherina Raudvere
  • Dietary Regulations in Early Christian Norway
    Alexandra Sanmark
  • Sagas, Religion, and Rulership: the Credibility of the Description of Rituals in Hákonar saga góða
    Olof Sundqvist
  • Knútr and the Cult of St Óláfr: Poetry and Patronage in Eleventh-Century Norway and England
    Matthew Townend