This introduction lays out the theoretical background underlying this special issue of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, as well as introducing the following articles. This special issue is the direct result of a session entitled “Medieval disability studies: challenges and commonalities”, which was organised by co-editor Yoav Tirosh and Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir at the 16th research conference of the Nordic Network on Disability Research held in Reykjavík, Iceland, in May 2023. We hope that this contribution to the study of disability history will add interesting approaches and case studies to this ever-widening field.
History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia, Language and Literature
Samandrag Artikkelen diskuterer det lokalhistoriske tidsskriftet Heimen frå grunnlegginga i 1922 til 1994. Vekta er innleiingsvis lagt på det første nummer, ettersom dette skreiv fram tre erkjenningsinteresser som var med på å prege tidsskriftet i perioden, om enn i ulik grad. Det er tale om ei lokalhistorisk erkjenningsinteresse, i kraft av at tidsskriftet primært publiserte lokalhistorisk materiale som stod i ein opposisjon til det rikshistoriske. Den institusjonelle erkjenningsinteressa heng saman med den lokalhistoriske, men denne dreidde seg om at tidsskriftet tok mål av seg til å vere kanalen for å formidle eit mangfald av lokalhistorisk stoff frå kringom i Noreg. Den vitskaplege erkjenningsinteressa var ein refleksjon av at tidsskriftet ikkje ønska berre å vere eit talerøyr for den lokalhistoriske rørsla, men også å etablere lokalhistorie som ein historisk bindestreksdisiplin.
This paper attempts to reconstruct different paradigms, attitudes and experiences that underlie the understanding and action of non-professional teachers of German as a foreign language. The analysis shows that some of these teachers explain the problems of their students via a national-cultural affiliation, while other attempts to understand the students' challenges can also be observed. Participating observation of an academic congress on German as a foreign language makes clear that competing explanatory approaches are also present in specialist discourse. In this respect, the divergent categories of explanations observed in the field may appear to be based less on a teachers' lack of disciplinary socialisation than on different migration and diversity-related attitudes and views that originate from different social milieus.
Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages, History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia
ABSTRACT: The aim of this article is to discuss the uses of memory focusing on a scene
in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, a long prose text written in Iceland in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Both the theoretical background and current trends of memory and gift studies as applied
to saga scholarship are examined and then used to analyze the role of a detailed exchange
of goods between two of the central characters in the saga, Egill and Arinbjǫrn. The
final part of the article focuses on studying the scene in its historical context
of production, arguing that the saga uses gift exchange to memorialize the lineage
of prominent Icelanders likely related to the writing of the saga.
History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia, Language and Literature
Abstract
This article describes a didactic development project between
the University of Stavanger and National Archives of Norway related
to the education of teachers (5th–10th grade). In an introductory
seminar the students were introduced to core subjects in archival
theory and practice. Thereafter they were presented to incidents
in the lives of three persons, documented in open accessible archival
sources at the State Archives of Stavanger. Based on one of these
incidents documented, they were supposed to make their own narrative.
In addition they should present a short critical essay on the method
used. The students worked in groups of two to five students.
Narratives are highly profiled in the curriculum for the elementary
school, and the pupils are expected to be able to create narratives
about persons from different contemporary and past societies. The
pupils are even expected to be able to reflect upon historical and
societal challenges based upon information from digitally borne
and paper-based sources. They should also by themselves have gained experience
in how narratives can be made from documentation of real incidents,
and be trained in reflecting about the validity of the sources and
the credibility of the narratives.
In order to realize these goals narrative polyphony was developed
as a didactic approach. Through the narratives made by the students
on basis of the provided sources, persons from the past were made alive.
The individuals were visualized in various ways in the different
narratives, and their portraits were so clear and nuanced that different
possible sides of a specific person emerged.
The life and historic achievements of Rudolf of Habsburg, the founder of the Habsburg rule in Austria, were very often analyzed, especially in Austrian literature. Franz Grillparzer analyzed the rise of the Habsburgs in his "König Ottokars Glück und Ende", which belongs down to the present days to the most important dramas of the Austrian theater repertoire. Grillparzer introduced Rudolf of Habsburg as an ideal Christian ruler and played him off against the napoleonlike conqueror Ottokar. The study at hand summarizes the main features of the Rudolf figure. It compares the Habsburg ruler with the Luxembourger Charles IV, who is in the drama of the same name from the Czech writer Stanislav Lom likewise conventionalized to convey an ideal ruler.
Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages, History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia
ABSTRACT: The epic poem Vǫluspá, in which an ancient seeress foretells to Odin the tragic fate awaiting his son Baldr
and the eventual destruction of the gods at Ragnarǫk, is an acknowledged masterpiece
of medieval literature. However, outside the world of Norse studies it remains surprisingly
little known. Vǫluspá was composed in pre-literate Iceland and transmitted through performance for several
centuries before being committed to vellum, but none of the available English translations
(including W. H. Auden’s less than faithful version) were written to be read aloud,
making the poem much less likely to be included in university courses on European
or world literature. My verse translation, The Spaewife’s Prophecy, attempts to convey the enigmatic power of the original text, while the notes are
intended both to make the poem accessible to readers unfamiliar with Norse mythology
and also to situate it in the material and cultural world of the Icelanders.
History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia, Language and Literature
A large part of the articles published in the current issue of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies have been initially presented at the Fourth International Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania: Empire-Building and Region-Building in the Baltic, North and Black Sea areas held at Ovidius University Of Constanța in May 2013. The conference approached the North in the wider perspective of regional cooperation intra- and extra-Nordic muros. The North is regarded as a springboard of regional cooperation which has a strong though faltering historical and cultural background and an obvious European dimension. The downfall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the process of European integration (whether some of the Nordic countries belong to the EU or not, they are all part and parcel of the process and deeply affected by it) have encouraged the development of regional cooperation in Northern Europe. Belonging to the Northern dimension of the EU meant not only maintaining a regional identity with deep roots in history and culture and making the others acknowledge it, but also strengthening the influence of Nordic countries within and outside the EU and fostering other regional cooperation initiatives in the Baltic Sea area and outside it. Patterned on the Nordic regional cooperation, the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia strengthened their regional cooperation and envisaged deepening their ties to surrounding areas, especially with the Nordic countries. Alongside the Nordic countries, they also gradually turned into a model for the Danubian and Black Sea countries. In this respect, the conference addressed themes such as: the empire building, region-building, national/nationalist, cultural construction discourses present in these regions; the historic development of these regional initiatives and/or organizations and the relations between them; political, cultural and diplomatic relations between Baltic and/or Nordic states, on the one hand, and the Black Sea countries, on the other hand; the relations between the EU integration and different Baltic, North and Black Sea regional structures; education and leadership in the context of regionalization in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea areas; linguistic unity and diversity in Scandinavia and the Baltic states; Nordic and Baltic identity through cultural diversity; water protection in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea Region and the role of agriculture; inter- and intra-regional comparisons.