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Space is a basic category of human thought. Over the last decades it became a very productive scientific category, too. Thinking about spaces, places, locations, or landscapes covers a spectrum of meanings from the concrete and material through to the abstract and metaphorical.
In this course we explore various categories of space in the field of Old Norse culture. Together with international guest scholars from different fields we want to find out how mythological, heroic, historical, geographical spaces or landscapes look like in written and oral narratives, but also on picture-stones, runic inscriptions, paintings, woodcarvings and manuscripts. Another promising question could be to ask about the relationship between texts, images and maps and the process of mapping itself.
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Week 1
Introduction and course overview: space as a key element of narration and representation
Week 2
Constructing mythological space: Eddic cosmography
Sources: Prose-Edda, Poetic Edda
Week 3
Discovering new spaces: geographical and social aspects; memory and space
Sources: Sagas (Grænlendinga saga, Eiríks saga rauða)
Week 4
Cosmography: descriptions of the world i exts
Sources: Leiðarvísir (Itinerary of Nikulas)
Week 5
Mapping the World: Cartography
Sources: Carta Marina
Week 6
Spatiality in visual media
Sources: picture-stones, runic inscriptions, paintings, woodcarvings, manuscripts
Week 7
Archaeology:
Sources:
Week 8 Language and space: spatial thinking i language; place names
Sources:
Conclusion and outlook
