From Iceland to the Americas

This volume investigates the reception of a small historical fact with wide-ranging social, cultural and imaginative consequences. Inspired by Leif Eiriksson’s visit to Vinland in about the year 1000, novels, poetry, history, politics, arts and crafts, comics, films and video games have all come to reflect rising interest in the medieval Norse and their North American presence. Uniquely in reception studiesFrom Iceland to the Americas approaches this dynamic between Nordic history and its reception by bringing together international authorities on mythology, language, film and cultural studies, as well as on the literature that has dominated critical reception. Collectively, the chapters not only explore the connections among medieval Iceland and the modern Americas, but also probe why medieval contact has become a modern cultural touchstone.

This volume looks at how Leif Eiriksson’s visit to Vinland around the year 1000 has been reimagined in the modern era, taking on a range of media from scholarly works on history and mythology to novels, films and comic books. More broadly, it asks why medieval contact has become a modern cultural touchstone.

This volume investigates the reception of a small historical fact with wide-ranging social, cultural and imaginative consequences. Inspired by Leif Eiriksson’s visit to Vinland in about the year 1000, novels, poetry, history, politics, arts and crafts, comics, films and video games have all come to reflect rising interest in the medieval Norse and their North American presence. Uniquely in reception studies, From Iceland to the Americas approaches this dynamic between Nordic history and its reception by bringing together international authorities on mythology, language, film and cultural studies, as well as on the literature that has dominated critical reception. Collectively, the chapters not only explore the connections among medieval Iceland and the modern Americas, but also probe why medieval contact has become a modern cultural touchstone.

Introduction1 Vinland on the brain: remembering the Norse – Tim William Machan Part I: Imagination and ideology2 Journeys to the centre of the mind: Iceland in the literary and the professorial imagination – Seth Lerer3 The ‘Viking tower’ in Newport, Rhode Island: fact, fiction, and film – Kevin J. Harty4 Critiquing Columbus with the Vinland sagas – Matthew Scribner5 Vinland and white nationalism – Verena HöfigPart II: Landscapes and cultural memory6 Migration of a North Atlantic seascape: Leif Eiriksson, the 1893 World’s Fair, and the Great Lakes landnám – Amy C. Mulligan7 Norwegian-American ‘missions of education’ and Old Norse literature – Bergur Þorgeirsson8 Americans in Sagaland: Iceland travel books 1854-1914 – Emily Lethbridge9 The good sense to lose America: Vinland as remembered by Icelanders – Simon HalinkPart III: Recasting the past10 Spectral Vikings in nineteenth-century American poetry – Angela Sorby11 ‘Who is this upstart Hitler?’: Norse gods and American comics during the Second World War – Jón Karl Helgason12 ‘There's no going back’: The Dark Knight and Balder's descent to Hel – Dustin Geeraert13 Old Norse in the New World: the mythology of emigration in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – Heather O’DonoghueBibliographyIndex