The 2nd Jómsborg Conference - Conference Programme (original) (raw)
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2021
This book discusses Adam of Bremen's perceptions and interpretation of the Christianization of Scandinavia in the Early Middle Ages. The views the chronicler presents in the Gesta Hammaburgensis constitute the central element of this analysis. By departing from the historiography—both the older view of the Gesta as trustworthy, and the recent view of the work as unreliable and biased—this book focuses instead on the Christianization of Scandinavia as an authorial concept. What follows is a reevaluation of the Gesta's significance both to its medieval audience and the modern historian.
Proceedings of the 7th CER Comparative European Research Conference-International Scientific Conference for Ph. D. Students of EU Countries, 2017
Adam of Bremen was one of the most important chronicles of the eleventh century. He wrote a chronicle Gesta Hamburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum. This work is full of information. Many of them are about northern Europe, Iceland, Greenland and the mysterious Vinland. However, the question is what is true, what has been taken from other sources, what content has survived to our time. This paper presents criticism of the source in the context of Vinland. On individual examples, we explain what elements of the chronicler's description were taken, and what might be original. In addition, we try to answer a question about the multiple processing and borrowings of one source content by other documents. Finally, we hypothesize that the work of Adam of Bremen contributed to the creation of Vinland's vision in the written sagas.
Avaldsnes' Position in Norway in the 14th Century
RULERSHIP IN 1 ST TO 14 TH CENTURY SCANDINAVIA ROYAL GRAVES AND SITES AT AVALDSNES AND BEYOND Edited by Dagfi nn Skre, 2020
This book discusses the 1st-11th century developments that led to the formation of the three Scandinavian kingdoms in the Viking Age. Wide-ranging studies of communication routes, regional identities, judicial territories, and royal sites and graves trace a complex trajectory of rulership in these pagan Germanic societies. In the fi nal section, new light is shed on the pinnacle and demise of the Norwegian kingdom in the 13th-14th centuries.
Rulership in 1st to 14th century Scandinavia. Royal graves and sites at Avaldsnes and beyond
2020
OPEN ACCESS PUBLICATION: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110421101 This book discusses the 1st-11th century developments that led to the formation of the three Scandinavian kingdoms in the Viking Age. Wide-ranging studies of communication routes, regional identities, judicial territories, and royal sites and graves trace a complex trajectory of rulership in these pagan Germanic societies. In the fi nal section, new light is shed on the pinnacle and demise of the Norwegian kingdom in the 13th-14th centuries. The book seeks to revitalise the somewhat stagnant scholarly debate on Germanic rulership in the first millennium AD. A series of comprehensive chapters combines literary evidence on Scandinavia’s polities, kings, and other rulers with archaeological, documentary, toponymical, and linguistic evidence. The picture that emerges is one of surprisingly stable rulership institutions, sites, and myths, while control of them was contested between individuals, dynasties, and polities. While in the early centuries, Scandinavia was integrated in Germanic Europe, profound societal and cultural changes in 6th-century Scandinavia and the Christianisation of Continental and English kingdoms set northern kingship on a different path. The pagan heroic warrior ethos, essential to kingship, was developed and refined; only to recur overseas embodied in 9th–10th-century Vikings. Three chapters on a hitherto unknown masonry royal manor at Avaldsnes in western Norway, excavated 2017, concludes this volume with discussions of the late-medieval peak of Norwegian kingship and it’s eventual downfall in the late 14th century. This book’s discussions and results are relevant to all scholars and students of 1st-millenium Germanic kingship, polities, and societies. FREE DOWNLOAD HERE: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110421101
The Far North in the Eyes of Adam of Bremen and the Anonymous Author of Historia Norwegie
The Medieval Globe. 2021. Vol. 7.1., 2021
The anonymous chronicle Historia Norwegie (ca. 1160–1175) contains a unique geographical description which is believed to have been based on Adam of Bremen’s missionary map of the North (ca. 1070). This comparison of these two texts demonstrates that the anonymous Norwegian author actually did not rely much on Adam’s geography, since he knew these territories, if not from personal experience, then from local oral tradition.
CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN ADAM OF BREMEN'S NARRATIVE
Brepols Publishers, 2011
The History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen is a historical narrative written by Adam of Bremen, the magister of the cathedral school, in c. 1072-76. The text consisting of four books is well-known to students of Ottonian and early Salian Germany and Viking Age and early medieval Scandinavia, and a great number of German and Scandinavian historians have discussed various aspects of this text and the evidence that it provides. 14 The narrative belongs to the genre of gesta episcoporum (the deeds of bishops) and in this respect is distinct from texts describing the deeds of kings or the history of gentes. 15 The author has identified himself personally with the archbishopric and its history -especially when he describes its mission, legatio gentium, and narrates its relations with neighboring bishoprics as well as Saxon dukes. 16 Such self-identification is especially important, since Adam's historical account differs from other works of this genre in that it presents the history of a missionary archbishopric oriented outwards towards northern lands as much as inwards. This specific institutional context left a recognizable imprint on the text, and in the past fifty years a number of scholars have emphasized the importance of the northern mission of Hamburg-Bremen in terms of the structure of this narrative and for the institutional identity of its author. 17 Thus, it is this 'missionary Christian identity' that the narrator conveys to his readers. Direct addresses to the reader make it clear that it was the clergy of the archbishopric, and especially in Bremen, that * I would like to thank Hans-Werner Goetz for his helpful comments on this paper.
Speculum
Adams gives little sense of uncertainty in Christine or of development over time. Adams may be open to the charge that she is projecting the sharp lines of the conflict after 1407 back into the 1390s. There seems little room here for historical contingency, the possibility that things might have turned out otherwise. The problem seems clear from the way that Adams begins her first chapter, with the massacre of 1418. By this period the country was in outright civil war, and both factions had clearly defined objectives; even ordinary people had to choose sides. But by beginning here, Adams creates the impression that the factionalism of 1418 was implicit as early as the 1390s. Adams insists that although the public insults that led to violence began only around 1400, the "bad blood" began immediately after the onset of Charles VI's madness in 1392 (30). In this world of sharp contrasts, bereft of ambiguity, Christine never veers from the right side of history. We're left to wonder: Is it never possible for Christine to err, even for a moment? Did she never hesitate or harbor doubts? Although Adams occasionally refers to the "internal contradictions" of Christine's writings, the portrait she draws has all the wrinkles smoothed away. Any possible counterevidence is dismissed. We know, for example, that Christine did in fact occasionally receive payment from the duke of Burgundy, as in 1412, when she received payment for "several notable books" that she had presented to the duke. But Adams insists that Christine wrote for the duke out of intimidation and fear, while still managing to express her true beliefs in the works she wrote at this period. This is a static Christine: always supporting the Orleanist position, and already thinking maturely about serious matters in her early love poetry. Finally, in the book's epilogue, it becomes clear not only that Christine supported the Orleanists throughout her career, but that Adams herself has sided with them. Louis of Orleans, she concludes, should have been regent during the periods of Charles VI's vacancy and during the minority of the dauphin. Meanwhile, the Burgundian claim to power relied on brute force and manipulation of the popular will rather than reasoned justification of rulership. In the end, Adams ponders the place of Christine as a "worthy literary model for women." For scholars such as Sheila Delany, Christine is too conservative, too wedded to the past, too fearful of social change, too impeded by "feudal nostalgia." To such charges Adams replies that it was not Christine but the Burgundians whose support for rule by council can only be described as "feudal nostalgia," a model that harkened back to the Capetians. In clinging to Charles V as her model, Christine promoted a model of kingship that looked forward to the absolute monarchs of the early modern period. Christine-and the Armagnacs-were the "progressives" here. Although I'm skeptical of its methodology, I learned a great deal from this book. Adams has mastered a large secondary literature relating to Christine as well as the broader historical context. The scope of the book is impressive, embracing Christine's entire literary corpus. The only thing missing is a more human view of its subject.