"To a faithful friend, straight are the roads and short."—Odin, from the H?vam?l (c. 1000)
Friendship was the most important social bond in Iceland and Norway during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages. Far more significantly than kinship ties, it defined relations between chieftains, and between chieftains and householders. In Viking Friendship, J?n Vi?ar Sigur?sson explores the various ways in which friendship tied Icelandic and Norwegian societies together, its role in power struggles and ending conflicts, and how it shaped religious beliefs and practices both before and after the introduction of Christianity.
Drawing on a wide range of Icelandic sagas and other sources, Sigur?sson details how loyalties between friends were established and maintained. The key elements of Viking friendship, he shows, were protection and generosity, which was most often expressed through gift giving and feasting. In a society without institutions that could guarantee support and security, these were crucial means of structuring mutual assistance. As a political force, friendship was essential in the decentralized Free State period in Iceland’s history (from its settlement about 800 until it came under Norwegian control in the years 1262–1264) as local chieftains vied for power and peace. In Norway, where authority was more centralized, kings attempted to use friendship to secure the loyalty of their subjects.
The strong reciprocal demands of Viking friendship also informed the relationship that individuals had both with the Old Norse gods and, after 1000, with Christianity’s God and saints. Addressing such other aspects as the possibility of friendship between women and the relationship between friendship and kinship, Sigur?sson concludes by tracing the decline of friendship as the fundamental social bond in Iceland as a consequence of Norwegian rule.
Автор: Halldorsson, Vidar Название: Sport in iceland ISBN: 1138681792 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781138681798 Издательство: Taylor&Francis Рейтинг: Цена: 9492.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: This book explores Icelandic cultural capital as a factor in sporting success, from traditions of workmanship, play and teamwork to international migration. The first study to focus specifically on the cultural aspects of a small nation`s international sporting success, this is an original and illuminating contribution to the sociology of sport.
Автор: Sundstol Vidar Название: The Devil`s Wedding Ring ISBN: 1517902800 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781517902803 Издательство: Marston Book Services Рейтинг: Цена: 4354.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание:
On Midsummer Eve in 1985, a young folklore researcher disappears from the village of Eidsborg in the Telemark region of Norway. Exactly thirty years later, the student Cecilie Wiborg goes missing. She too had been researching the old, pagan rituals associated with the 13th-century Eidsborg stave church. And then Knut Abrahamsen, a former police officer from the area, is found drowned in the nearby Tokke River, a presumed suicide since his pockets were filled with stones.
Hearing of the death of his former colleague and friend, private investigator Max Fjellanger feels compelled to leave his long-time home in Florida and return to his native Norway to attend Knut's funeral. Even though they haven't spoken in more than three decades, Max is not convinced that Knut killed himself. There are details about the circumstances of his death that just don't add up. And there seems to be a link to the case of the missing researcher in Telemark, which the two of them had worked together--until threats from a corrupt sheriff put an end to the investigation and to Max's career on the police force.
This time Max is determined to find out the truth. Reluctantly he finds himself drawn into a dark universe in which ancient superstitions, religious cults, and sinister forces are still very much alive. And the stave church, with its famed wooden statue of Saint Nikuls, is at the center of it all.
Finding an unlikely partner in Tirill Vesterli--a university librarian and single mother who is obsessed with crime novels--Max is plunged into a menacing world of ghostly monks, severed pigs' heads, and mythic rites, all somehow connected to Midsummer Eve, which is fast approaching. As Max and Tirill quickly learn, it's a misconception that the past is past--the truth is that it's never over.
This is award-winning crime novelist Vidar Sundstol at his best, spinning a tale that is taut with suspense and steeped in Norwegian culture, past and present.
Описание: In the summer of 1627, Barbary corsairs raided Iceland, killing dozens of people and abducting close to four hundred to sell into slavery in North Africa. Among those taken were the Lutheran minister Reverend Ólafur Egilsson.Reverend Ólafur (born in the same year as William Shakespeare and Galileo Galilei) wrote The Travels to chronicle his experiences both as a captive in Algiers and as a traveler across Europe (he journeyed alone from Algiers to Copenhagen in an attempt to raise funds to ransom the captives that remained in the Barbary States). He was a keen observer, and the narrative is filled with a wealth of detail—social, political, economic, religious—about both the Maghreb and Europe. It is also a moving story on the human level: we witness a man enduring great personal tragedy and struggling to reconcile such calamity with his understandingof God. The Travels is the first-ever English translation of the Icelandic texts. Until now, the corsair raid on Iceland has remained largely unknown in the English speaking world. To give a clearer sense of the extraordinary events connected with that raid, this edition of The Travels includes not only Reverend Ólafur’s first-person narrative but also a wealth of contemporary letters describing both the events of the raid itself and the conditions in North Africa under which the enslaved Icelanders lived. The book has Appendices containing background information on the cities of Algiers and Salé in the seventeenth century, on Iceland in the seventeenth century, on the manuscripts accessed for the translation, and on the book’s early modern European context.The combination of Reverend Ólafur’s narrative, the letters, and thematerial in the Appendices provides a first-hand, in-depth view of early seventeenth-century Europe and the Maghreb equaled by few otherworks dealing with the period. We are pleased to offer it to the wider audience that an English edition allows.
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