The Old Norse and Icelandic poets have left us vivid accounts of conflict and peace-making in the Viking Age. Russell G. Poole's editorial and critical analysis reveals much about the texts themselves, the events that they describe, and the culture from which they come. Poole attempts to put right many misunderstandings about the integrity of the texts and their narrative techniques. From a historical perspective, he weighs the poems' authenticity as contemporary documents which provide evidence bearing upon the reconstruction of Viking Age battles, peace negotiations, and other events. He traces the social roles played by violence in medieval Scandinavian society, and explores the many functions of the poet within that society. Arguing that these texts exhibit a mind-style so vastly different from our own present 'individualism, ' Poole suggests that the mind-set of the medieval Scandinavian could be termed 'non-individualist.' The poems discussed are the 'Darradarljód, ' where the speakers are Valkyries; 'Lidsmannaflokkr, ' a rank-and-file warrior's description of Canute the Great's siege of London in 1016; 'Torf-Einarr's Revenge'; 'Egil's Duel with Ljótr, ' five verses from the classic Egils saga Skallagrimssonar; 'A Battle on the Health, ' marking the culmination of a famous feud described in a very early Icelandic saga, the Heidarviga saga; and two extracts from the poem Sexstefia, one describing Haraldr of Norway's great fleet and victory over Sveinn of Denmark, and the other the peace settlement between these two kinds. The texts are presented in association with translations and commentaries as a resource not merely for medieval Scandinavian studies but also for the increasingly interwoven specialisms of literary theory and anthropology.

The Saints in Old Norse and Early Modern Icelandic Poetry is a complimentary volume to The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse-Icelandic Prose (UTP 2013). This volume focuses on Icelandic devotional poetry created during the early modern period.

The drottkvett was a form of Old Norse skaldic poetry composed to glorify a chieftain's deeds or to lament his death. Kari Ellen Gade explores the structural peculiarities of ninth- and tenth-century drottkvett poetry and suggests a solution to the mystery of the origins of the drottkvett and its eventual demise in the fourteenth century.

The Historical Dictionary of the Vikings traces Viking activity in Europe, North America, and Asia for over three centuries. During this period people from Scandinavia used their longships to launch lightning raids upon their European neighbors, to colonize new lands in the east and west, and to exchange Scandinavian furs for eastern wine and spices and Arab silver. The Viking age also saw significant changes at home in Scandinavia - kings extended their power, Norse paganism lost ground to christianity, and new towns and ports thrived as a result of increased contact with the wider world. This book provides a comprehensive work of reference for people interested in the Vikings, including entries on the main historical figures involved in this dramatic period, important battles and treaties, significant archaeological finds, and key works and sources of information on the period. It also summarizes the impact the Vikings had on the areas where they traveled and settled. There is a chronological table, detailed and annotated bibliographies for different themes and geographical locations, and an introduction discussing the major events and developments of the Viking age.

The pre-eminence of Anglo-Saxon England in its field can be seen as a result of its encouragement of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of all aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture. Thus this volume includes an important assessment of the correspondence of St Boniface, in which it is shown that the unusually formulaic nature of Boniface's letters is best understood as a reflex of the saint's familiarity with vernacular composition. A wide-ranging historical contextualization of The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle illuminates the way English readers of the later tenth century may have defined themselves in contradistinction to the monstrous unknown, and a fresh reading of the gendering of female portraiture in a famous illustrated manuscript of the Psychomachia of Prudentius (CCCC 23) shows the independent ways in which Anglo-Saxon illustrators were able to respond to their models. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications rounds off the book; and a full index of the contents of volumes 26-30 is provided. (Previous indexes have appeared in volumes 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25.)

The A to Z of the Vikings traces Viking activity in Europe, North America, and Asia for over three centuries. During this period people from Scandinavia used their longships to launch lightning raids upon their European neighbors, to colonize new lands in the east and west, and to exchange Scandinavian furs for eastern wine and spices and Arab silver. The Viking age also saw significant changes at home in Scandinavia--kings extended their power, Norse paganism lost ground to Christianity, and new towns and ports thrived as a result of increased contact with the wider world. This book provides a comprehensive work of reference for people interested in the Vikings, including entries on the main historical figures involved in this dramatic period, important battles and treaties, significant archaeological finds, and key works and sources of information on the period. It also summarizes the impact the Vikings had on the areas where they traveled and settled. There is a chronological table, detailed and annotated bibliographies for different themes and geographical locations, and an introduction discussing the major events and developments of the Viking age.

Essays on the depiction of animals, birds and insects in early medieval material culture, from texts to carvings to the landscape itself. For people in the early Middle Ages, the earth, air, water and ether teemed with other beings. Some of these were sentient creatures that swam, flew, slithered or stalked through the same environments inhabited by their human contemporaries. Others were objects that a modern beholder would be unlikely to think of as living things, but could yet be considered to possess a vitality that rendered them potent. Still others were things half glimpsed on a dark night or seen only in the mind's eye; strange beasts that haunted dreams and visions or inhabited exotic lands beyond the compass of everyday knowledge. This book discusses the various ways in which the early English and Scandinavians thought about and represented these other inhabitants of their world, and considers the multi-faceted nature of the relationship between people and beasts. Drawing on the evidence of material culture, art, language, literature, place-names and landscapes, the studies presented here reveal a world where the boundaries between humans, animals, monsters and objects were blurred and often permeable, and where to represent the bestial could be to holda mirror to the self. Michael D.J. Bintley is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University; Thomas J.T. Williams is a doctoral researcher at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. Contributors: Noël Adams, John Baker, Michael D. J. Bintley, Sue Brunning, László Sándor Chardonnens, Della Hooke, Eric Lacey, Richard North, Marijane Osborn, Victoria Symons, Thomas J. Williams