Viking and Old Norse Culture (16-Week Class) (Spring Semester)

Description

In the years 800-1066, the Vikings reshaped the history and politics of Europe, raiding, conquering, settling and trading in an area of influence that reached from Byzantium in the east to North America in the west and from Iceland in the north to as far south as Spain and Italy. 1000 years later, the rediscovery of their literature spread throughout both elite and popular culture, inspiring generations of readers and creators. In this course we will study the history and the culture of the medieval Norsemen and their engagement with the rest of Europe from the Iron Age until the Norman Conquest. We will read the ancient Eddaic poems, Snorri Sturlusson’s prose retelling of Norse myth, and some of the Icelandic Sagas, including the greatest of them all, Njal’s Saga, which is as rich, complex, and sophisticated as any modern American (or 19th-century French or Russian) novel. Tom Shippey’s Laughing Shall I Die: The Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings will help to guide us through the full range of Old Norse culture, and we will see if new archeological discoveries or computer-assisted analyses can shed new light on old questions. Although Vikings never wore horned helmets (probably) or drank mead from the skulls of their enemies (too much spills out through the eye holes—or at least that’s always been my experience), the reality of Old Norse history is often more extreme than the imaginations of later popularizers, and this remarkable culture’s literary achievements are far greater than is often recognized.

Instructor: Dr. Michael Drout

Meet Times: Thursdays, 7:00-8:30 ET from January 8th-May 7, 2026. (16 sessions approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes long each)

Price: $350 (Non-Refundable)

How to access the class: This 16-week class will be conducted on Canvas Instructure. Links to join the class on Canvas will be available in your HHL account dashboard under “My Courses.” Click on this class’s page for full instructions on how to add the page to your own Canvas account.

Plan of Study

The approximate chronological order in which the literature was written is: Poetic (Elder) Edda, Skaldic Poetry, Prose Edda, Sagas. But I think it makes sense for us to read the Prose Edda first, as that is our source for almost everything we know (or think we know) about Old Norse mythology, legend, and religion. And if we start with Snorri’s work, the older poetry will make a lot more sense than it would if we began at the chronological beginning. After Snorri, we will go back to the earliest poetry, almost all of which comes from the Codex Regius manuscript. There are many ways to group the Eddaic poems, none of which is entirely satisfactory. We will start with the prophetic and possibly religious poems, then examine “wisdom poetry” and seemingly esoteric knowledge, and the look at Viking humor and social observation. The rest of the Eddaic poems we will study are all connected to the story of “the prince of the heroes of the North,” Sigurd the dragon-slayer and his ill-fated love with first a disgraced Valkyrie and then Gudrun, a Burgundian princess, who bridges history and legend by being married to both Sigurd the Volsung and Atilla the Hun.

At this point we should be read for the novelistic complexity of the Old Norse sagas, the expansive prose narratives that are the unique contribution of medieval Iceland to the world’s culture. Short but entertaining and insightful stories of conflict and resolution, such as “Thorstein the Staff-struck” are the threads (þættir) from which the great sagas were woven. After we struggle to figure out the moral and meaning of the short but perfect Hrafnkel’s Saga, we tackle the greatest (and longest and most complicated) of them all: Brennu-Njal’s Saga [The Saga of Burned-Njal] a beautiful and profound multi-generational epic whose story ranges from the Settlement Period of the ninth century through Iceland’s conversion to Christianity in the year 1000. Ostensibly the story of how one of the most loved and respected men in Iceland—a brilliant lawyer, wise peacemaker, and loyal friend—came to be burned alive with his family, Njal’s Saga is a masterpiece of synthesis, a tapestry cunningly made from all the threads of Viking and Old Norse culture.

Texts

Hrafnkel’s Saga and Other Stories. Hermann Pálsson, trans. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.

Njal’s Saga. Robert Cook, trans. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.

The Poetic Edda. Jackson Crawford, trans. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011.

Tom Shippey, Laughing Shall I Die: The Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings. Reaktion Books. 

Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda. Jesse Byock, trans. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.