“Vituð ér enn—eða hvat?” Do you want to know, or what? Understanding medieval Scandinavian relationships with the divine

Abstract

The peoples who inhabited the worlds discussed in these two books, either in reality or within our imaginations, are at once slippery and certain. We may believe we have a grip on what the Norse/Viking worlds were about, only to have new evidence or a new approach to existing data challenge our views. These two books, The Norse myths that shape the way we think and The Norse sorceress: mind and materiality in the Viking world, explore the ways in which medieval northerners understood and interacted with the sublime, the divine, the non-human within their worlds and, in turn, how these interactions shape our own imaginations.