Grimm Ripples The Legacy Of The Grimms Deutsche Sagen In Northern Europe

This book sheds new light on the key role played by the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagen in the collection of folklore an d the creation of national culture in Northern Europe.

This collection explores folklore and folkloristics within the diverse and contested national discourses of Britain and Ireland, examining their role in shaping the islands’ constituent nations from the eighteenth century to our contemporary moment of uncertainty and change. This book is concerned with understanding folklore, particularly through its intersections with the narratives of nation entwined within art, literature, disciplinary practice and lived experience. By following these ideas throughout history into the twenty-first century, the authors show how notions of the folk have inspired and informed varied points from the Brothers Grimm to Brexit. They also examine how folklore has been adapting to the real and imagined changes of recent political events, acquiring newfound global and local rhetorical power. This collection asks why, when and how folklore has been deployed, enacted and considered in the context of national ideologies and ideas of nationhood in Britain and Ireland. Editors Cheeseman and Hart have crafted a thoughtful and timely collection, ideal for students and scholars of folklore, history, literature, anthropology, sociology and media studies.

Old Norse literature abounds with descriptions of magic acts that allow ritual specialists of various kinds to manipulate the world around them, see into the future or the distant past, change weather conditions, influence the outcomes of battles, and more. While magic practitioners are known under myriad terms, the most iconic of them is the völva. As the central figure of the famous mythological poem Völuspá (The Prophecy of the Völva), the völva commands both respect and fear. In non-mythological texts similar women are portrayed as crucial albeit somewhat peculiar members of society. Always veiled in mystery, the völur and their kind have captured the academic and popular imagination for centuries. Bringing together scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, this volume aims to provide new insights into the reality of magic and its agents in the Viking world, beyond the pages of medieval texts. It explores new trajectories for the study of past mentalities, beliefs, and rituals as well as the tools employed in these practices and the individuals who wielded them. In doing so, the volume engages with several topical issues of Viking Age research, including the complex entanglements of mind and materiality, the cultural attitudes to animals and the natural world, and the cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. By addressing these complex themes, it offers a nuanced image of the völva and related magic workers in their cultural context. The volume is intended for a broad, diverse, and international audience, including experts in the field of Viking and Old Norse studies but also various non-professional history enthusiasts. The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World is a key output of the project Tanken bag Tingene (Thoughts behind Things) conducted at the National Museum of Denmark from 2020 to 2023 and funded by the Krogager Foundation.

Examining Romanticism's pan-European circulation of people, ideas, and texts, this history re-analyses the period and Britain's place in it.

The Brothers Grimm spent their formative years in the German town of Hanau. Their father's death in 1796 impoverished the family and affected the brothers for many years after. They attended the University of Marburg where they developed a curiosity about German folklore, which grew into a lifelong dedication to collecting German folk tales. The rise of Romanticism during the 19th century revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the brothers represented a pure form of national literature and culture. With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folk tales, they established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. Between 1812 and 1857, their first collection was revised and republished many times, growing from 86 stories to more than 200. In addition to writing and modifying folk tales, the brothers wrote collections of well-respected German and Scandinavian mythologies, and in 1838 they began writing a definitive German dictionary (Deutsches Wörterbuch), which they were unable to finish during their lifetimes.

This anthology of essays, Northern Myths, Modern Identities, explores the various ways in which northern mythologies have been employed in the cultural construction of ethnic, national and supra-national identities from 1800 to the present.

"For centuries, the literary heritage preserved in Icelandic medieval manuscripts has played a vital role in the self-image of the Icelandic nation. From the late eighteenth century, Icelandic scholars managed to study and publish this material on their own terms. Throughout the long nineteenth century, they also started to engage in philological work. This coincided with an increasing awareness among Icelanders of a separate nationality and their growing demand for autonomy. What was the connection between these two developments? The twelve chapters in this book explore the interplay between various national discourses that characterised the scholarly reception of Icelandic heritage during the period. Contributors are: Alderik H. Blom, Clarence E. Glad, Matthew James Driscoll, Gylfi Gunnlaugsson, Simon Halink, Hjalti Snær Ægisson, Jon Gunnar Jørgensen, Annette Lassen, and Ragnheiður Mósesdóttir."--