Magic and Kingship in Medieval Iceland
The Construction of a Discourse of Political Resistance
By (author) Nicolas Meylan
This volume examines the performative and ideological functions of texts dealing with magic in contexts of social and political conflict.
This volume examines the performative and ideological functions of texts dealing with magic in contexts of social and political conflict. While the rites, representations, and agents of medieval Scandinavian magic have been the object of numerous studies, little attention has been given to magic as a discourse. As a consequence, Old Norse sources mobilizing magic have been analysed mainly as evidence for a stable extra-textual phenomenon. This volume breaks with this perspective.The book focuses on the use of discourses of magic in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Icelandic texts concerned with kingship. It is argued that Icelanders constructed magic as a discursive answer to the increasingly pressing question of how to deal with the reality of their subordination to kings. This they did by telling stories of flattering Icelandic successes over kings brought about by magic in a bid to challenge dominant definitions and the social and political status quo. The book thus follows the conditions of emergence that made these subversive discourses of magic meaningful; it describes the various forms they were given, the various constraints weighing upon their use, and the particular political goals they served.
- By (author) Nicolas Meylan
Other Titles in this Series
Loanwords and native words in Old and Middle Icelandic (12th c.- 1550)
A study in the history and dynamics of the Icelandic medieval lexicon
Volume 4
The Viking Age as a Period of Religious Transformation
The Christianization of Norway from AD 560 to 1150/1200
Volume 2
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