Constructing Pre-Christian Scandinavia, from Medieval Magic to Modern Philology

Pete Sandberg is a postdoc at the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Gothenburg. He received his PhD from University College London in 2018 with the thesis Repetition in Old Norse Eddic Poetry: Poetic Style, Voice, and Desire. He was previously a postdoc at Aarhus University.

The lecture will be held in English.

Welcome!

Abstract in english

This seminar will introduce the MSCA research project Runic Kitsch: Medieval Modernity, Modern Medievalism, and the History of Philology. This project aims to chart the long history of a particular way of looking at the past: specifically, looking back to the pre-Christian past of Scandinavia as a source of esoteric knowledge. Since this history stretches from the Christian Middle Ages into the birth of modern scholarship on the subject, the project will necessarily cross boundaries of period, region, and discipline. This talk will outline the three main stages of the project’s proposed history: beginning with a culture of antiquarianism in High to Late Medieval Scandinavia which draws an association between magic, runic inscription, and poetry in its evocation of the pre-Christian past, which informs learned writing of the Early Modern period, and finds its way into the birth of modern philology while becoming increasingly intertwined with the narratives of Scandinavian and German nationalism. The problems and challenges that this study faces will be discussed, as well as some potential future directions for this research.