Norse Bishops’ Sagas and Their European Contexts
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Program in Medieval Studies, Cornell Univ.
Organizer Name
Joel Anderson
Organizer Affiliation
Cornell Univ.
Presider Name
Paul Acker
Presider Affiliation
St. Louis Univ.
Paper Title 1
The Translated Bishop: The Icelandic Saintly Bishops, (Inter)nationality, and Locality
Presenter 1 Name
Ásdís Egilsdóttir
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Háskóli Íslands
Paper Title 2
Lárentius saga and Social Networks
Presenter 2 Name
Erika Sigurdson
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum
Start Date
8-5-2014 7:30 PM
Session Location
Fetzer 2040
Description
The bishops’ sagas are a group of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Norse texts that trace the lives of Iceland’s bishops. Compared with their more famous literary cousins – the sagas of Icelanders and the kings’ sagas – the bishops’ sagas have suffered from long periods of scholarly neglect. Until recently, the dominant tendency has been to examine these biographies within very local horizons. Over the past years, established scholars, as well as a number of graduate students in North America and Europe, have cultivated different approaches; in various ways, recent work on the bishops’ sagas has demonstrated the degree to which these texts were informed by, and responded to, their European contexts. This panel aims to further scholarly projects that situate the bishops’ sagas within some of the broader institutional, legal, educational, and literary frameworks of medieval Christendom.
Joel Anderson, Oren Falk
Norse Bishops’ Sagas and Their European Contexts
Fetzer 2040
The bishops’ sagas are a group of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Norse texts that trace the lives of Iceland’s bishops. Compared with their more famous literary cousins – the sagas of Icelanders and the kings’ sagas – the bishops’ sagas have suffered from long periods of scholarly neglect. Until recently, the dominant tendency has been to examine these biographies within very local horizons. Over the past years, established scholars, as well as a number of graduate students in North America and Europe, have cultivated different approaches; in various ways, recent work on the bishops’ sagas has demonstrated the degree to which these texts were informed by, and responded to, their European contexts. This panel aims to further scholarly projects that situate the bishops’ sagas within some of the broader institutional, legal, educational, and literary frameworks of medieval Christendom.
Joel Anderson, Oren Falk