{"title":"Þistil, mistil, kistil: Plants of Death, Rebirth, and Magic in Medieval Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions","authors":"Lara E. C. Harris","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.2.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.2.01","url":null,"abstract":"The þistil mistil kistil inscription and its variants is one of the most cryptic magic runic inscriptions in the Old Norse corpus.1 Despite its having been researched by various scholars, its meaning, uses, and purposes are still largely unknown. In its original form, as illustrated on the Gørlev stone, the first two words that figure are the popular plants “thistle” (Þistil) and “mistletoe” (mistilteinn). Plantrelated formulas are not uncommon in the runic corpus, such as lina laukar alu (“flax/linen, leek, ale”)2 found in the Fløksand knife (Spurkland 2005, 46; MacLeod and Mees 2006, 103) and were believed to have magic properties and aid in childbirth (MacLeod and Mees 2006, 102; Heizmann 1992, 374–6). This theory has been put forward because leeks and linen are known to have been used as ingredients to heal and revive in Old Norse and AngloSaxon records.3","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":"95 1","pages":"133 - 165"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41380632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nizarorustu: A Textual Analysis of the Battle of Niså","authors":"J. R. Neal","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.2.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.2.05","url":null,"abstract":"In a night of brutal carnage on the choppy, windswept waves of the Kattegat off the coast of modernday Sweden, two great Viking navies lashed their ships together and crashed into each other in a winnertakeall bloodbath. Fought on August 9, 1062, at the mouth of the River Niså in Halland, north of Skåne, the Battle of Niså was the culmination of 15 years of warfare between King Haraldr Sigurðarson1","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":"95 1","pages":"227 - 268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49630735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Saxo Grammaticus’s Account of the Viking Age Site on the Danish Island of Hjarnø in Gesta Danorum","authors":"E. Sebo, M. Firth","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.2.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.2.02","url":null,"abstract":"The Kalvestene (calf stones) are a collection of ship settings,1 dated by cremated grave goods to the seventh to tenth century (Broholm 1937, 16–22), on the southern coast of the small island of Hjarnø, off the eastern coast of Jutland (fig. 1). This site is associated with a legend, first recorded in the twelfth century by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, concerning a legendary king, Hiarni, his rise and fall, and how he came to be buried on the island and the monuments built to commemorate him. From an archaeological point of view, the legend has been problematic. As Jörn Staecker notes, sites associated with legends are especially vulnerable to misinterpretation, since the story tends to frame archaeological perceptions (2005, 3–28).2 Certainly, the account of the site by the antiquarian Ole Worm in 1650 shows clear signs of being influenced by the legend, and the same is true of all","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":"95 1","pages":"166 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42370863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sámi Literature in Norwegian Language Arts Textbooks","authors":"Jonas Bakken","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.2.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.2.04","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":"95 1","pages":"203 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41527881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Icelandic Is French Law? A Few Remarks about the Discovery and Usage of Icelandic Antiquities in French Legal Historiography during the Nineteenth Century","authors":"Gilduin Davy","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.2.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.2.03","url":null,"abstract":"In Chateaubriand’s Voyage en Amérique et en Italie, we read: “In Gothic languages, Scandinavia was called Mannaheim, which means ‘country of men,’” and what the Latin of the sixth century has translated with vigor by these words: “the factory of the human race.”2 This extract, as an echo of Jordanes’s vagina nationum, demonstrates the growing interest for Scandinavia in French intellectual life during the nineteenth century, and especially for Iceland, described by Chateaubriand as “the Norse historical archive.” Just as MacPherson’s Ossian had at the end of the preceding century, the discovery of Ari Thorgilsson or Snorri Sturluson (“the Herodote of the North” for Chateaubriand) further opened a new field of research for French scholars. In fact, this field had been opened up from at least the middle of the eighteenth century, when Montesquieu fantasized about a mythicized North as a homeland of freedom (in opposition to the South) and saw it not only as factory of mankind but as the “factory of instruments that","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":"95 1","pages":"183 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43737285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bishops in Early Iceland","authors":"Kirsten Wolf","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44969410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Civil War Settlers: Scandinavians, Citizenship, and American Empire, 1848–1870","authors":"T. A. Brown","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49537438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Union eller undergang: Kampen for et forent Skandinavia","authors":"K. Ekman","doi":"10.5406/21638195.95.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.95.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44446,"journal":{"name":"SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47081031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}