Ǫrvar-Oddr’s Ævikviða and the Genesis of Ǫrvar-Odds saga: A Poem on the Move - HELEN F. Traversing the Space of the Oral-Written Continuum: Medially Connotative Back-Referring Formulae in Landnámabók - SLAVICA RANKOVIĆ Talking Place and Mapping Icelandic Identity in Íslendingabók and Landnámabók - AMY C. Moving Lists: Enumeration between Use and Aesthetics, Storing and Creating - LUCIE DOLEŽALOVÁ Gyrðir á lykil (Gyrðir owns the key): Materialized Moments of Communication in Runic Items from Medieval Bergen - KRISTEL ZILMER Letters, Networks, and Public Opinion in Medieval Norway (1024–1263) - LEIDULF MELVE Letters from Kings: Epistolary Communication in the Kings’ Sagas (until c. Tracing Scribal Centres in Medieval Norway - ÅSLAUG OMMUNDSEN Medieval Nordic Backgrounds: Written Culture in an Oral Society - ELSE MUNDALĬreating Absence: The Representation of Writing in Early Histories of the North - AIDAN CONTI Literacy Studies: Past, Present, and Future - LEIDULF MELVE Together, these essays form a state-of-the-art volume that offers new and vital insights into the role of literacy in the Norse-speaking world. Key case studies are put forward to highlight the importance of institutional and individual writing communities, epistolary and list-making cultures, and the production of manuscripts as well as runic inscriptions. Finally, the oral-written continuum is examined, with a focus on important works such as Íslendingabók and Landnámabók, Old-Norse Icelandic translated romances, and the development of prosimetra. But before his book is through, he mentions several others not included in his list. In the Poetic Edda, Snorri offers a list of 16 Aesir goddesses. He also wrote the Heimskringla (History of the Kings of Norway) and several other sagas.

The contributions gathered here begin with a reassessment of how the unique verbal cultures of Scandinavia and Iceland can be understood in a broader European context, and then move on to explore foundational Nordic Latin histories and vernacular sagas. Snorri wrote the Prose Edda, a sort-of handbook for preserving Norse poetry. The culmination of over a decade’s research on verbal culture in the pre- and post-Conversion medieval North at Bergen’s Centre for Medieval Studies, this volume traces the movement of words and texts temporally, geographically, and intellectually across different media and genres.

List of norse sagas