This anthology of essays, Northern Myths, Modern Identities, explores the various ways in which northern mythologies have been employed in the cultural construction of ethnic, national and supra-national identities from 1800 to the present.

Stories From Northern Myths by Emilie Kip Baker explores the fascinating and colorful world of Norse mythology. You have seen the heroes in the movies. Now you can learn the original stories that inspired modern-day portrayals of Loki, Thor, Odin, Sif, and other legendary characters. Chapters in this book include, Odin's Search for Wisdom, Sif's Golden Hair and the Making of the Hammer, How Thor Fought the Giant Hrungner, The Valkyrie, How Brunhilde Came to Burgundy, and The Death of Siegfried.

Through an in-depth analysis of historicist literature and art, this book demonstrates that cultural Scandinavism, despite its failure as a political mobilizer, was highly successful in strengthening and extending national consciousness-raising in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

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Stories of gods, heroes and monsters permeated discourses of national selfhood in the nineteenth century. During this tumultuous time, Europe’s modern nations arose from the misty waters of long-forgotten national pasts – or so was the perception at the time. Each embedded in their particular national and political contexts, towering cultural figures – N.F.S. Grundtvig, Jacob Grimm, Jonás Halgrímsson, William Morris, Adam Oehlenschläger and many more – were catalysts for the formation of national discourses of belonging, built upon the mythological story-worlds of Europe’s non-classical vernacular pasts. This interdisciplinary book offers new perspectives on the uses of pre-Christian mythologies in the formation of national communities in nineteenth-century Northern and Western Europe. Through theoretical articles and case studies, it puts forth new understandings of how cultural thinkers across Europe utilized pre-Christian mythologies as symbolic resources in the forging of national communities. Perceptions of national identity were thus shaped, many of which are still at play today.

Beer and Brewing in Medieval Culture and Contemporary Medievalism is a cross-cultural analysis of the role that alcohol consumption played in literature, social and cultural history, and gender roles in the Middle Ages. The volume also seeks to correct or offer new insights into historical beer production. By drawing on the expertise of scholars of history, archaeology, Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Medieval and Early Modern literature, the book shows how historical medieval beer and brewing has influenced nostalgic post-medieval nationalism and romanticized visions of the medieval ale-house seen in beer marketing today. The essays describe alcohol consumption in the Middle Ages across much of Northern Europe, engage with the various myths employed in modern craft beer advertising and beer production, and examine how gender intersects with beer production and consumption. The editors also raise certain critical questions about medievalisms which need to be interrogated, particularly in light of the continued use of the Middle Ages for white supremacist and colonialist ideals. The volume contributes to the study of the popular and historical understandings of the Middle Ages as well the issues of race and gender.

In the long nineteenth century, dominant stereotypes presented people of the Mediterranean South as particularly passionate and unruly, therefore incapable of adapting to the moral and political duties imposed by European civilization and modernity. This book studies, for the first time in comparative perspective, the gender dimension of a process that legitimised internal hierarchies between North and South in the continent. It also analyses how this phenomenon was responded to from Spain and Italy, pointing to the similarities and differences between both countries. Drawing on travel narratives, satires, philosophical works, novels, plays, operas, and paintings, it shows how this transnational process affected, in changing historical contexts, the ways in which nation, gender, and modernity were imagined and mutually articulated.