Judy Quinn

Maria Adele Cipolla

The compelling world of the Vikings and their descendants - preserved in the sagas, poetry, and mythology of medieval Iceland - has provided inspiration for centuries to artists and writers across Europe as well as to scholars devoted to editing and interpreting the manuscript texts. Imagining this distant'hyperborean' world has been the spur to a broad range of creative ventures, by editors, translators, playwrights, librettists, novelists, poets and cartoonists. The essays in this volume, by scholars from Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, and the UK, examine the scholarly and artistic reception of a variety of Old Norse texts from the beginnings of the manuscript tradition in twelfth-century Iceland to contemporary poetry, crime fiction and graphic novels in Britain, Ireland, Italy and Iceland. In between, the influence of Old Norse literature is explored in the context of Shakespeare's plays, eighteenth-century Italian opera, the Romantic movement in Sweden and Denmark, the so-called 'Nordic renaissance' of the late nineteenth-century (including the works of August Strindberg and William Morris) and some of the political movements of twentieth-century northern Europe. Interest in Old Norse literature is charted as it spread beyond the academies of Europe out to a wide reading and viewing public. The influence of the hyperborean muse is evident throughout - affecting editors as well as artists - as the idea of early Nordic culture has been refashioned to suit contemporary ideals.

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