Preface and Acknowledgements

Abstract

From Iceland to the Americas, an anthology of thirteen original critical essays, is an exercise in the reception of a small historical fact with wide-ranging social, cultural, and imaginative consequences. Specifically, medieval records claim that around the year 1000 Leif Eiriksson and other Nordic explorers sailed westwards from Iceland and Greenland to a place they called Vinland. Archaeological evidence has in fact verified this claim, though primarily by way of one small, short-lived Norse settlement in Newfoundland, which may not even have been Leif’s. Whether or not this settlement was his, however, the contact associated with him has had an outsized impact on cultural imagination in and of the Americas. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, indeed, novels, poetry, history, politics, arts and crafts, comics, films, and now video games have all reflected a rising interest in the medieval Norse and their North American presence. Uniquely in reception studies, From Iceland to the Americas approaches this dynamic between Nordic history and its reception by bringing together international authorities on mythology, language, film, and cultural studies, as well as on the literature that has dominated critical reception. Collectively, the essays not only explore the connections among medieval Iceland and the modern Americas, but also probe why medieval contact has become a modern cultural touchstone. Together, the essays point to contradictions in the reception of Vinland and the Vikings that may in fact partially account for this ongoing popularity. For nearly two centuries, there has been a persistent, even urgent desire to identify the historical truth of the Norse presence, both figurative and literal, in the Americas – to tell the authentic narrative. Yet the essays also suggest the malleability of this truth, particularly in relation to social, cultural, and political imperatives. And in this kind of search for authenticity, history comes to look more like mythology, for which critical judgements Preface and acknowledgements