The Medieval North and Its Afterlife: Essays in Honor of Heather O'donoghue

The volume is dedicated to Heather O'Donoghue on the occasion of her seventieth birthday in 2023 and her retirement in 2021. O'Donoghue held the Vigfússon-Rausing Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at the University of Oxford since 1991. Prior to that, she was the Fellow in Medieval English Literature and the History of the English Language at Somerville College, Oxford, for well over a decade. Over these many years, O'Donoghue taught and supervised numerous students at all levels. She also published a number of seminal monographs and articles on a wide variety of topics within the fields of Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English. All of the contributors to the volume (with the exception of Carolyne Larrington) are former students, mentees, or colleagues of O'Donoghue.The book consists of eighteen articles following an introduction by Siân Grønlie and Carl Phelpstead and appreciations of O'Donoghue by Carolyne Larrington and Gareth Lloyd Evans. The articles are divided into three sections. The first part, entitled “Old Norse Poetry and Saga,” is comprised of seven articles. In “‘There is Hope for a Tree’: Two Laments on the Loss of Sons,” Siân Grønlie examines the tree as an image of loss and renewal in two laments on the death of sons. The texts under investigation are Egill Skallagrímsson's “Sonatorrek” and the legend of St. Eustace in Old English and Old-Norse-Icelandic translation. Grønlie suggests that Egill might have been influenced not only by Norse myth and tree kennings but also the legend of St. Eustace, with which he could possibly have become acquainted at the court of King Æthelstan. In “A Wave of Sound: Rhythmicizing the Formal Artifice of Skaldic Poetry,” Annemari Ferreira draws attention to the terminology employed in medieval treatises on poetic subjects that use the vocabulary of craftmanship and explores the manner in which poetic artistry was conceptualized by the Norse poets and their audiences. Matthias Egeler's “Inspiring Storytelling in Saga Literature: Toponymic and Topographic Perspectives from Icelandic Folklore” investigates the relationship between place-names, topography and storytelling using stories about three places located at Steingrímsfjörður from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He argues that the advantage to such an approach is “that the places that the stories are connected with are clearly identifyable [sic]” (p. 49). The focus of Sarah Baccianti's “Healing Hands, Holy Water and Hellish Diseases: Some Accounts of Medical Performance in Medieval Iceland” is examples of miraculous cures and how they reflect the history of medicine in medieval Iceland. In “A Question of Balance: Excess and Lack in Njáls saga,” Laura Gormley challenges those scholars who have described Njáls saga as a text informed by a play of opposites, and proposes instead that it should be viewed as an uneven game. Christian Carlsen's “Queenship, Learning, and Good Counsel in Flores och Blanzeflor” looks at some distinguishing features of the Swedish verse romance, such as the prominent motifs of queenship, learning, and counsel. Phillip Lavender's “When Grímr Met Hálfdan and Harold: Women Dressed as Men in Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar and Walter Scott's Harold the Dauntless” examines how gender or gender fluity is presented in an Icelandic mythical-heroic saga and a nineteenth-century novel. He acknowledges that “looking at such fictional characters is no replacement for studying the real-life experiences of gender nonconforming people in the past,” but concludes that “these narratives can provide a window onto social imaginaries surrounding the possibility of gender transivity” (p. 131).The second part of the book, entitled “Related Languages and Literatures of the Medieval North,” contains six articles. Amy C. Mulligan's “Seaworthy: Irish Immrama, Old Norse Voyage Tales, and the Women of the North Atlantic” discusses the significance of associating seaworthiness, which she defines as “the ability to undergo transformation and reap rewards from journeying” (p. 136), with men exclusively in the medieval North Atlantic. Emily Kesling's “Christ's Letter to Abgar in England and Ireland” focuses on the so-called Royal Prayerbook in which a scribe included a letter purportedly written by Jesus Christ himself. She examines how the letter came to be included in the Royal Prayerbook and what it possibly meant to readers at that time. In “Norse, Irish, and English Songs: Communal Entertainment and Cultural Exchange in the Gesta Herwardi,” Eleanor Parker draws attention to the fact that while the Gesta Herwardi puts emphasis on Herward's English identity, it also includes accounts of his encounters with different cultures in northern Britain, Ireland, Cornwall, and Flanders. She notes that here and there “the Gesta displays an interest in linking such national and regional identities to certain forms of storytelling, song, and performance” and explores “how the author's perspective on these issues sheds light on the question of what kind of ‘English’ story the Gesta aspires to tell” (p. 167). In “‘No Good Song Is Ever Sung of a Traitor’: The Death of Earl Waltheof in Verse and Prose,” Erin Michelle Goeres considers the manner in which verse and prose was utilized to tell the story of Waltheof. She concludes that “in Old English, Anglo-Norman, and Old Norse-Icelandic texts alike, prosimetric forms allowed medieval authors to explore the complexities of Waltheof's life and of the historical moment in which he died” (p. 193). Hannah M. Bailey's “Norse Names and Narratives in Havelok the Dane” provides a reading of the Middle English romance “in a spirit of openness to a diversity of influences—beyond strict ‘sources’” (p. 196). In “Strong Language: An Old Norse Word and Northern English,” Richard Dance studies the English words ‘ram,’ ‘rammy,’ and ‘rammish,’ arguing that this “ram-group of words . . . stands . . . as a peculiarly potent example of the etymological problems that can arise in the study of contact between two very closely related languages exchanging formally similar (and themselves probably related) sets of lexical items” (p. 225).The third part of the book, entitled “Afterlives,” is comprised of five articles. Jessica Clare Hancock's “Mighty Men at Home: Domestic Environments and Heroic Masculinity in William Morris's The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs” examines how houses reflect masculinities in Morris's poem. She concludes that “the continued accentuation of heroic masculinity, particularly in the context of domestic environments, detracts from a potential harmony with nature, and female equality; only if masculinity is fully evaded might the urge for mastery be evaded” (p. 240). Matthew Townend's “Tolkien and Mirkwood” explores J. R. R. Tolkien's Mirkwood and the Norse element in his creation of this forest. Carl Phelpstead's “Past and Present Identities in Margaret Elphinstone's Islanders” investigates Elphinsone's novel, which is set in the Shetland Islands “as a revealing example of the relationship between historical scholarship and creative writing,” arguing that “Elphinstone is unusual in drawing on archaeological interests and experience which give her a rare sensitivity to the material and environmental dimensions of daily life in the past” (p. 255). David Clark's “It's not the End of the World: The Neo-Norse Cosmology of Joanne Harris” examines Harris's Runemark and Runelight with a view to her use and adaptation of Norse mythology. Tom Birkett's “‘Here Are the Words of the Æsir Themselves’: Retelling the Master Builder Myth between Translation and Adaptation” reflects on the reception and translation of early medieval literature using as a case study several recent retellings of the Master Builder tale. The book concludes with notes on the contributors and an index of names.The quality of the articles on a large variety of topics in this interesting volume is consistently high. The book is a very fine and fitting tribute to a beloved teacher, advisor, mentor, and colleague. Kudos also to the two editors and the publisher for putting together and producing such a fine book.