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The Aarhus University Summer School is an intensive short session course designed to meet the needs of students interested in a brief but challenging educational experience during the summer. Teaching takes place in a multinational environment, which brings together students and staff from different countries in Europe and abroad. This year's course, ‘Paganism and Christianity in Old Norse Textual Culture', allows you access to the latest knowledge in the field of Old Norse studies. It focuses on encounters between paganism and Christianity, and it teaches you how to interpret a literature that was created in learned Christian milieus, but which at the same time displays an immense interest in the pagan past. The course provides you with an excellent opportunity to meet international lecturers and fellow students and to earn credit during the summer.
The focus of the course is on the consequences the Conversion of the North had on Old Norse culture and literature. The main objective of the course is to study how the change of religion from paganism to Christianity influenced the world view and notions of the past, and found artistic expression in narrative and poetry. The material dealt with will be the rich and varied literature that was produced in the North, primarily in Iceland, during the High Middle Ages. This literature comprises both prose and poetry, for instance, the anonymous saga literature, the works of the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, and skaldic and eddic poetry. Old Norse literature was chiefly written by learned Christians. This, however, did not mean that orally-transmitted memories with roots in pre-Christian culture were excluded from the literature. To the contrary, compared with other contemporary European cultures and in spite of the strong influences from Christianity, the medieval writers were immensely absorbed in the orally transmitted memories of narratives, laws, poetry and pagan religious practice. However, to what extent did paganism live on in Christian times in the North? Why would notions from the pre-Christian past receive such intense interest from the intellectual elite? How, precisely, did the conversion influence the literary representations of Old Norse mythology, traditional poetry and narratives? The aim of the course is to deal with encounters between the traditional Nordic religion and Christianity, to discuss such encounters from a historical and a literary point of view and to treat the conversion both as a central historical event, a literary motif, and a hermeneutical key point in narratives.
To be admitted you must be enrolled at a university. If you are applying for admission to the summer school at master's level, you must hold a bachelor's degree or a minimum of 180 ECTS in your study programme. Students applying for admission at bachelor's level must have completed at least one year of study in a relevant subject.
Students are expected to have a high level of English proficiency, to be able to read the relevant literature and follow the teaching. Documentation may be required verifying the student's proficiency in English at a specified level.
The group of lecturers is Pernille Hermann and Rolf Stavnem, Aarhus University, and Stephen Mitchell, Harvard University, Sverrir Jakobsson, University of Iceland, Jens Peter Schjødt, Aarhus University, Simonetta Battista, University of Copenhagen and Annette Lassen, University of Iceland.
The course consists of more than 45 hours of classroom instruction. In addition, there will be talks presented by guest lecturers. Class attendance is compulsory and students are expected to participate actively in class discussions. Interaction and dialogue between lecturers and students is something we highly encourage.
Engelsk
A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture. Ed. Rory McTurk. Blackwell Publishing, 2007
Old Icelandic Literature and Society, Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Cambridge University Press, 2000
Sommerskolen er åben for både danske og internationale studerende.
Oral exam.
