Focuses specifically on the concept and role of islands in the medieval world. The main characteristic of an island is, of course, that of being isolated from the rest of the world; in geography by waters, in more abstract and symbolic meanings by other kinds of separating borders. Islands were the place 'on the other side', of difference, otherness and remoteness. As one of the articles in this volume puts it, islands are often depicted "as sites for extraordinary events and happenings".

What lies behind an island? Is an island just a piece of land surrounded by water? Or is it from a cultural, symbolic, and even geographical perspective much more than that? Considering the symbolic nature of islands as a longue durée and through the analysis of maps, texts, and historical accounts, this book explores how the depiction of insularity encodes specific meanings and analytical levels which shed light on medieval and modern worldviews.

Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Orkney, Shetland and, to some extent, the Hebrides, share both a Nordic cultural and linguistic heritage, and the experience of being surrounded by the ever-present North Atlantic Ocean. This has been a constant in the islanders’ history, forging their unique way of life, influencing their customs and traditions, and has been instrumental in moulding their identities. This volume is an exploration of a rich, intimate and, at times, terrifying relationship. It is the result of an international conference held in April 2014, when scholars from across the North Atlantic rim congregated in Lerwick, Shetland, to discuss maritime traditions, islands in Old Norse literature, insular archaeology, folklore, and traditional belief. The chapters reflect the varied origins of the contributors. Icelanders are well represented, as are scholars based in Orkney and Shetland, indicating the strength of scholarship in these seemingly isolated archipelagos. Peripheral they may be to the UK, but they lie at the heart of the North Atlantic, at the intersection of British and Nordic cultures. This book will be of interest to scholars of a wide range of disciplines, such as those involved in island studies, cultural studies, Old Norse literature, Icelandic studies, maritime heritage, oceanography, linguistics, folklore, British studies, ethnology, and archaeology. Similarly, it will also appeal to researchers from a wide geographical area, particularly the UK, and Scandinavia, and indeed anywhere where there is an interest in the study of islands or the North Atlantic.

Islandology is a fast-paced, fact-filled comparative essay in critical topography and cultural geography that cuts across different cultures and argues for a world of islands. The book explores the logical consequences of geographic place for the development of philosophy and the study of limits (Greece) and for the establishment of North Sea democracy (England and Iceland), explains the location of military hot-spots and great cities (Hormuz and Manhattan), and sheds new light on dozens of world-historical productions whose motivating islandic aspect has not heretofore been recognized (Shakespeare's Hamlet and Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung). Written by Shell in view of the melting of the world's great ice islands, Islandology shows not only new ways that we think about islands but also why and how we think by means of them.

This multidisciplinary collection of essays explores the functions, meanings and use of images and objects in various late Medieval and Early Modern social practices, which were linked by their ritual character. The book approaches ‘ritual’ as an action which is discussed under the general umbrella term “performative practice”, and is characterised by a synthesis between the repetitive and the extraordinary that carries an intense symbolic meaning and is emotionally charged. Images, spaces and rituals were closely interconnected in both the religious and the secular spheres, and played a relevant role in the symbolic communication of the time. The essays in this volume are devoted to a complex study of these phenomena in Northern and Central Europe, including regions which, due to linguistic or cultural barriers, have thus far received comparatively little attention in Anglo-American scholarship, including Scandinavia, Poland and the Baltic states.

In Between the Seas, Deborah Paci takes a comparative view of islandness in island identities through case studies of islands in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas. These case studies primarily include, in the Baltic case, the Åland Islands, Gotland, Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Ruhnu; and in the Mediterranean case, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia and Corsica. Examining multiple sites of these islands' identities such as history, environmental concerns and governance systems, this book provides a historical perspective into the relations between islands and the larger geopolitical regions around them, as well as historicizing 'insularist' rhetoric deployed by pro-independence groups within them. Paci examines the changing role and increasing political importance of islands in the European Union against the history of island insularity and offers a significant contribution to the wider field of island studies.