About this Event
Traditionally, scholars have been interested in the extraordinarily large number of manuscripts produced in medieval Iceland because of the texts they contain—not least the famous Eddas and sagas, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century adaptations of Icelandic oral traditions deriving in part from the so-called Viking Age. But the last thirty years have seen a wave of research into manuscripts as artifacts: what were manuscripts made of, how, and by whom? What can manuscripts themselves tell us about the worlds through which they moved? Iceland makes for an especially interesting case study of manuscript culture because print made major inroads into Icelandic book production only in the nineteenth century; it can fairly be said that it was radio that killed medieval Icelandic scribal culture. This talk will think about manuscripts as artifacts from a range of perspectives—as repositories of DNA, as ecosystems, as nodes in human social networks, and more—to offer insights into the history of Iceland in the second millennium CE.
About the Speaker:
After degrees at Cambridge and Glasgow, Alaric worked at the University of Helsinki, and then, from 2007 to 2025, lectured in medieval English, Old Norse, and Icelandic at the University of Leeds. Moving to Canada for family reasons, he is now training to be a schoolteacher ... But he hasn't stopped researching medieval Britain, Scandinavia, and their connections to the wider Eurasian world. For more information, see https://www.alarichall.org.uk.
This talk is organized and presented in partnership with the Archaeological Society of Alberta.
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Event venue & nearby stays
Central Library, Level 3, Room 3-16B, 800 3rd Street Southeast, Calgary, Canada
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