Medieval Northern Europe Research Articles

Movement, Geography, and Rabbinic Culture in High Medieval Northern Europe

Despite the distance between their different communities and the difficulties of medieval travel, the Jews of northern Europe developed typical common legal and communal traditions. Rabbinic students traveled hundreds of kilometers to study with famous rabbis, rabbis themselves often relocated from one community to another, and questions were regularly sent to faraway rabbinic authorities and were quickly answered. This article sheds light on the movement and communication patterns of medieval Jewish scholars as a social group. It includes three sections; the first focuses on the movement patterns of prominent rabbis, the second on their forms of communication, and the third on the way these practices were reflected in the organization of larger communal structures. Overall, the article highlights the major role that networks of movement and communication played in the intellectual culture of the rabbinic elite (and other Jews as well) in high medieval northern Europe.

Rational Logics and the Struggle against Hunger in Medieval Northern Europe: Reflections on the Growing Autonomy of Spiritual and Economic Fields and the Memory of Crises, 9th-13th centuries

Résumé Cet article étudie l’évolution des attitudes des élites politiques depuis l’époque carolingienne jusqu’à l’émergence des communautés urbaines (XIIe siècle) dans la lutte contre la faim et les disettes, surtout dans les Pays-Bas du Sud. Le texte fait le bilan de l’action des Carolingiens, sur les plans économiques, spirituels et religieux, qui n’est pas le résultat de l’addition de deux logiques disjointes, une portée par les élites religieuses, l’autre par les acteurs pragmatiques laïcs : ces deux leviers sont mobilisés de manière simultanée par les mêmes individus. Cette juxtaposition s’observe vraisemblablement chez les paysans. L’article étudie ensuite le glissement vers les princes territoriaux de la gestion des réactions à la faim à l’époque post-carolingienne et ottonienne (Xe-XIe siècles). À l’aide d’un témoignage du début du XIIe siècle, l’article envisage ensuite comment les communautés urbaines commencent à autonomiser leurs pratiques de gestion de la faim, en s’émancipant le plus souvent des logiques d’action morales ou religieuses. Certains épisodes de crise aiguë provoquent toutefois un mouvement de résurrection des attitudes qui convoquent l’économique, le religieux et l’ordre moral. L’article conclut en évoquant des pistes de recherche sur la manière dont les institutions gardaient la mémoire des attitudes idéales en contexte de crise.

The Social Dynamics of Lovesickness and the Ecclesiastical Project's Expansion in Medieval Northern Europe

Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyze the social patterns of lovesickness in thirteenth century Iceland and Norway. I approach feelings from an anthropological perspective and understand them as emotional concepts that shed light not on the inner state of the individual, but rather on the social context in which one is integrated. Special attention is paid to the relationship between love and grief in Vǫlsunga saga, Tristrams saga , and the Strengleikar . In these sources, most of the concepts for grief, pain, and sorrow are associated with love affairs, and can be the result of infatuation, of the impossibility for the sweethearts to stay together, or of the beloved's death. This affection is also understood as an illness whose only remedy lies in the loved person. The emphasis placed on the conjugal relationship runs parallel to historical changes in kinship structure and marriage rules. Thus, emotional concepts and literary expressions of love could react against social practices and pave the way for the insertion of Christian laws. However, the Christian marriage model was not totally opposed to secular interests, as the economic and political gains of marriages were still crucial in both medieval literature and law.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Purse of medieval silver coins from royal shipwreck revealed by X-ray microscale Computed Tomography (µCT) scanning

We present the archaeological discovery and microscale X-ray Computed Tomography (µCT) scanning of a silver coin purse lost in a medieval shipwreck while the king who issued many of the coins was aboard. The find demonstrates that shipwrecks are extraordinary repositories of historical information, in this case providing insight into one of the most important and dramatic events of medieval Scandinavia. In the summer of 1495, Gribshunden, the flagship of King Hans, ruler of Denmark and Norway, burned and sank in the Baltic Sea en route to a political summit in Sweden. The identified coins in this purse impart direct evidence of Hans’ establishment of new mints to increase the amount of currency in circulation, and his decision not to recall and debase existing coins. These were essential elements of Hans’ comprehensive strategy for consolidating a Nordic political union and constructing a new nation. The recovered coins are too fragile for mechanical separation, but µCT allowed full or partial identification of 82% of the coins in the concreted purse. Our investigations suggest the purse likely was the personal possession of a high-ranking and trusted person in the king’s entourage. Further, the composition of the purse illuminates politics and monetary policy in medieval northern Europe.

Brothers from Afar: Rabbinic Approaches to Apostasy and Reversion in Medieval Europe by Ephraim Kanarfogel

Reviewed by: Brothers from Afar: Rabbinic Approaches to Apostasy and Reversion in Medieval Europe by Ephraim Kanarfogel Ahuva Liberles Ephraim Kanarfogel. Brothers from Afar: Rabbinic Approaches to Apostasy and Reversion in Medieval Europe. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2020. 260 pp. In his exciting new book, Brothers from Afar, Ephraim Kanarfogel tackles one of the greatest challenges for the religious leaders of the Jewish minority in Christian Europe—the mild but constant seepage of Jews into the arms of the Christian religion, by choice or under threats and coercion. Focusing on medieval northern Europe, this book presents the diverse rabbinic approaches to apostasy and shows how these approaches were translated into rabbinic decisions. Kanarfogel also identifies the complexity of rabbinic attitudes toward individuals who sought to rejoin the Jewish community after their conversion, and how these judgments were challenged and changed over the course of the Middle Ages and in different geographic areas. This book is the conclusive outcome of the author's many years of extensive research on this subject. As the author clarifies in his introduction, this is a book about the history of Halakhah as it relates to apostasy and reversion, rather than a book about medieval converts or conversion per se. At the same time, it reveals much about actual acts of conversion and medieval converts. Drawing on an extremely impressive corpus of medieval Jewish manuscripts, many of which were previously unknown or had never been addressed, Brothers [End Page 164] from Afar examines the sources against the backdrop of the linguistic and legal context in which they were created. Throughout the monograph, the reader will find profound rabbinic discussions illuminating several aspects of the intricate religious identity of apostates. How was an apostate supposed to comprehend his or her religious affiliation according to Jewish law? Did he or she relinquish Judaism by undergoing baptism? It is important to distinguish between the social and economic distance that the Jewish community, according to its rabbinic leaders, was expected to maintain from apostates, and rabbinic expectations from the converts to continue to fulfill their obligations to their Jewish family regardless of their baptism and new religious affiliation. In this context, the act of religious immersion upon the return of a convert to the fold is justified as a communal necessity, to publicly demonstrate the return to the Jewish community, rather than as a religious requirement to overturn one's conversion. In the first chapter, "Assessing the Ashkenazi Context," Kanarfogel challenges the generally accepted thesis suggested by Jacob Katz in his work, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (1961), that Rashi was the first to understand the talmudic principle that "A Jew remains a Jew even if he has sinned grievously" (ʾaf ʿal pi she-ḥataʾ Yisraʾel hu) as holding halakhic significance for the individual Jew who converted to Christianity, rather than merely as a general attitude. Until now, it has been widely accepted that Rashi's perception of apostates as still belonging, in most respects, to the Jewish people, was an approach embraced by most rabbinic adjudicators in medieval Ashkenaz. Even though earlier scholars acknowledged that some rabbinic authorities suggested apostates should undergo ritual immersion upon their return, this position was deemed to result from a desire on the part of lay Jews to gauge the sincerity of the apostate. It was also seen as an expectation that stemmed from popular culture and served to undo the convert's previous baptism (6–8). One of the goals of Brothers from Afar is to demonstrate that some rabbinic approaches were much closer to this view than was previously thought and that ritual immersion was indeed demanded by some rabbinic authorities. Kanarfogel asserts that mid-thirteenth-century northern French Tosafists prescribed immersion for apostates returning to Judaism, in contrast to earlier scholarly claims that apostates were encouraged to return to the Jewish community without being required to undergo any special ceremony or act. In chapter 2, "Establishing Boundaries: Immersion, Repentance, and Verification," Kanarfogel paints a rich picture of medieval rabbinic scholarship by examining dozens of medieval Hebrew manuscripts dealing with halakhic questions concerning converts and conversion, closely noting and revealing variations in the choice of words and shifts in the order...

Diverse Masculinities in Violence and Warfare: A Case Study of Individuals with Perimortem Weapon-related Trauma Buried at a Dominican Priory in Västerås, Sweden

Masculinities can be regarded as performative configurations of practices. The practices in which individuals engage define the concept of masculinity, and at the same time shape the male bodies performing them. Previous research has suggested that the use of physical violence – in the right manner – was an important way of enacting masculinity in medieval northern Europe. Acts of violence can leave identifiable marks on the body, and be detectable in human skeletal remains. This case study analysed individuals with weapon-related trauma, buried at the Dominican priory in Västerås, Sweden (thirteenth to sixteenth century AD). It focuses on ten males with injuries sustained around or shortly before the time of death, and the results are used to examine how masculinities were performed in activities associated with violence and battle, and how warrior masculinities were embodied. The text discusses battle-related activities, such as fighting, fleeing, being injured, healing and dying.

The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe: Images, Objects, Practices. Edited by HenningLaugerud, SalvadorRyan and Laura KatrineSkinnebach, Pp. 202, Dublin, Four Courts Press, Dublin 2016, £24.95.

The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe: Images, Objects, Practices. Edited by HenningLaugerud, SalvadorRyan and Laura KatrineSkinnebach, Pp. 202, Dublin, Four Courts Press, Dublin 2016, £24.95.

Sue Brunning, The Sword in Early Medieval Northern Europe: Experience, Identity, Representation. (Anglo-Saxon Studies 36.) Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2019. Pp. xvi, 213; many black-and-white figures, 1 map, and 13 graphs. $99. ISBN: 978-1-7832-7406-2.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsSue Brunning, The Sword in Early Medieval Northern Europe: Experience, Identity, Representation. (Anglo-Saxon Studies 36.) Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2019. Pp. xvi, 213; many black-and-white figures, 1 map, and 13 graphs. $99. ISBN: 978-1-7832-7406-2.Toby F. MartinToby F. MartinUniversity of Oxford Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 96, Number 3July 2021 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/714646 Views: 153Total views on this site Copyright 2021 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Tyranny of the Gingerbread House: Contextualising the Fear of Wolves in Medieval Northern Europe through Material Culture, Ecology and Folklore

In this paper, I propose to contextualise the popular perception ofthe "fairy tale wolf" as a window into a normative past, by focusing on responses to this animal in Britain and southern Scandinavia from the 8th to the 14th centuries, drawing on archaeological, artistic and written sources. These responses are subsequently juxtaposed with the socio-ecological context of the concept of the "fairy tale wolf" in early modern France. At a time when folklore is being increasingly incorporated into archaeological interpretation, I suggest that alternative understandings ofhuman relations with animals must be rooted in specific ecological and social contexts.

Colonial representations of race in alternative museums: The ‘African’ of St Benet’s, the ‘Arab’ of Jorvik, and the ‘Black Viking’

ABSTRACT The deceased person given the label of SK 3379 by archaeologists working at the Swinegate site in York, United Kingdom, provides an interesting perspective into the world of Early Medieval Northern Europe. This person, aged around forty-six at time of death, had cranial features unlike those typically found in the area, but rather pointed towards a biology found in Africa. Informally named ‘The African’, this person went on display at the Jorvik Centre as part of its post-flood revival. This article examined the background and significance of this person as well as the choices in display and narrative around them. It looks at the way the ‘African’ of St Benet’s became the ‘Arab’ in the Jorvik Centre, and the coloniality of the choices underlying such a choice. Finally, through visitor interviews, a decolonial approach to re-storying this person, the ‘Black Viking’ is forwarded. This article contains images of displayed human remains.

Friendship, Love and Brotherhood in Medieval Northern Europe, c.1000–1200, by Lars Hermanson

Friendship, Love and Brotherhood in Medieval Northern Europe, c.1000–1200, by Lars Hermanson

The Sword in Early Medieval Northern Europe: Experience, Identity, Representation, by Sue Brunning

The Sword in Early Medieval Northern Europe: Experience, Identity, Representation, by Sue Brunning

Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740–1830 by James Uden

Reviewed by: Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740–1830 by James Uden Giles Whiteley James Uden, Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740–1830 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020). Pp. 284. $74.00 cloth. Good scholarly books sometimes seek not only to add to what we know about any given subject, but also to radically reconfigure the supposed knowns of this subject. James Uden's Spectres of Antiquity is one such book. Founded on what initially seems like a counter-intuitive inspiration, Uden asks us to re-conceive our understanding of the origins of the Gothic as less a reaction to, than a reconfiguration of, the classical heritage. In the mode of all good Gothicists, Uden unearths the repressed kernel at the core of his subject, but in this case it is the surprising revelation that the Gothic does not seek to exorcise the "spectres" of the classics and the classical past, but rather mines and relies upon a subterranean vault of classical sources, creatively reworking them. The results of Uden's labors are striking, and it is not hyperbole to say that Spectres of Antiquity will be essential reading to all who are interested in the origins of the Gothic or to the history of classical reception in the eighteen and early nineteenth centuries. The story of the origins of the Gothic that Uden calls into question is much rehearsed. When Horace Walpole republished The Castle of Otranto in a second edition, he included a famous preface which figured the "Gothic Story" (the new subtitle) as the blending of two kinds of "romance," ancient and modern. The model for this Gothic was an English-language literary tradition of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, one which emphasized the power of "fancy," rather than the classical authors which many of Walpole's contemporaries were openly emulating. His defense of the genre was accompanied by an attack on Voltaire, who had himself recently attacked Shakespeare for violating the "classical" laws of the Aristotelian dramatic unities. Walpole's Gothic then is supposedly founded on a suppression of the "classical" laws of order, reason, and decorum, in favor of a more English or "Gothic" value of imagination. [End Page 130] In this, Walpole's version of the Gothic seemed to chime with a contemporary reappraisal of the standing of the "Gothic" during the period. His literary experiments became part of a wider politico-cultural narrative, one expressed in the factional infighting of the Whig party during the immediate period of composition, and one which had claimed the career of Walpole's father, Prime Minister Robert Walpole. According to this view, the rise of interest in Gothic art and architecture during the middle of the eighteenth century was ultimately a question of nationalism: the new Gothicists of the period discovered in their subject an imagined culture of medieval northern Europe. In a moment of ahistorical bravura, this same spirit could be traced back to the supposedly emancipatory gestures of the sackings of Rome by the Goths, and teleologically read forward both to Henry VIII's break with Rome and to the development of parliamentary democracy after the Revolution. As such, the Gothic became a quintessentially Whiggish preoccupation. If this stretched the Gothic well beyond its historical borders, it also did the same with the classical, conflating ancient Rome with the Catholic Church, and the Goths, who were broadly based in Germany, with the English. Regardless, however, of the questionable historicism of the Gothicists of the period, battle lines were supposedly drawn: it was the Gothic contra classicism. In Spectres of Antiquity, Uden not only questions this eighteenth-century historicism; he also questions the ways in which literary historians have been a little bit too quick to buy this story. Indeed, as with all good counter-narratives, closer scrutiny reveals that what initially seems extraordinary is obvious when Uden has brought the facts to light. His argument is that a clear classical presence underwrites the Gothic, one which, in many cases, has been right before the reader's eyes. For instance, under the subtitle to Otranto, Walpole positions an epigraph from Horace, as Matthew Lewis positions a different epigraph from the same...

Zuiderzeestädte an der Ostsee

Zuiderzee towns in the Baltic. ‘Vitten’ and ‘Vögte’ – Space and urban representatives in late-medieval ScaniaThe Scania peninsula in the southwest of present-day Sweden was one of the most important trading centres of medieval Northern Europe due to the seasonal presence of immense swarms of herring which attracted large numbers of fishermen and traders. Streching back from the beach of Scania were the so-called vitten, which the traders, grouped by region or city, held as their own, legally autonomous trade settlements, from the Danish King. Initially, these were seasonal trading colonies that were occupied only for the duration of the fair, which began in August and ended in November. In the late Middle Ages the vitten developed into miniature towns, modest off-shoots from the traders‘ mother city. The presence on a small peninsula (c 50 km2) of so many fishermen and merchants who did business together and came from different cities could easily have led to tensions and conflict.
 What was the relationship between the spatial arrangement of the vitten at Scania and the urban representatives of the vitten, the so-called vögte or governors? This question is addressed by focusing on the vitten of the Zuiderzee towns. Their vitten, among which were numbered those of eastern Zuiderzee cities like Kampen and Zutphen as well as those of western cities like Amsterdam, Brielle and Zierikzee, were part of the Hanse. However, the vitten of these cities have been virtually neglected in historiography. The territorial or local-topographical development of these vitten was characterized by regional concentration: the Zuiderzee vitten were located close or adjacent to one another. The new vitten of Zierikzee and Amsterdam bordered on that of Kampen. Traders from cities and towns without their own vitte were housed in a vitte of a neighboring city: those of Deventer and Zwolle, for instance, in the vitte of Kampen, those of Enkhuizen and Wieringen in the Amsterdam vitte and those from Schouwen island in the vitte of Zierikzee.
 The vitten of the eastern Zuiderzee towns were founded at the beginning of the fourteenth century, that is on average half a century earlier than those of the western Zuiderzee towns. The count of Holland and Zealand initially appointed the Zierikzee vogt or governor for all his subjects. Later on, the cities in his counties then had their own governors, first appointed by the count, later by the city (with or without the count‘s approval). The development of the representation of Holland and Zeeland towns in Scania differs from what was characteristic of the eastern Zuiderzee towns. Neither the Count /Duke of Guelders nor the bishop of Utrecht (as overlord of the Oversticht) attempted to interfere with the individual towns‘ governors or the vitten.
 The trend towards territorialisation in Scania was unmistakable. Although foreign traders, by reason of their origins, were subject to the jurisdiction of their mother city (the personality principle), a fact reflected in the responsibility of the vogt for the citizens in question, they were also increasingly spatially limited in Scania. This was a consequence of the limited space available, of the pursuit of control over one’s own community, and of the goal of allowing different urban groups to live together peaceably, prevent conflicts and guarantee the conduct of international trade. In this way the vitten, in particular those of the Zuiderzee towns that were further away from their mother cities, can be understood as urban colonies overseas.

Enclosed Gardens, Female Networks, and Spiritual Kinship in Late Medieval Northern Europe

Enclosed Gardens, Female Networks, and Spiritual Kinship in Late Medieval Northern Europe

Strange Fruits: Grafting, Foreigners, and the Garden Imaginary in Northern France and Germany, 1250–1350

Previous articleNext article No AccessStrange Fruits: Grafting, Foreigners, and the Garden Imaginary in Northern France and Germany, 1250–1350Liz Herbert McAvoy, Patricia Skinner, and Theresa TyersLiz Herbert McAvoy Search for more articles by this author , Patricia Skinner Search for more articles by this author , and Theresa Tyers Search for more articles by this author Liz Herbert McAvoy is Professor of Medieval Literature at Swansea University, Wales (e-mail: [email protected]); Patricia Skinner holds a Personal Chair in History at Swansea University, Wales (e-mail:[email protected]); Theresa Tyers is Honorary Research Associate at Swansea University, Wales (e-mail: [email protected])PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 94, Number 2April 2019 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/702738 Views: 433Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 2019 by the Medieval Academy of America.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Karen Dempsey Tending the ‘Contested’ Castle Garden: Sowing Seeds of Feminist Thought, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 31, no.22 (Feb 2021): 265–279.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000463Rachel M. Delman Enclosed Gardens, Female Networks, and Spiritual Kinship in Late Medieval Northern Europe, Viator 51, no.11 (Jan 2020): 437–464.https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.127054

The Beginnings of East-West Exchange and Trade Connections in Early Medieval Northern Europe in the 8th and 9th Centuries

The Beginnings of East-West Exchange and Trade Connections in Early Medieval Northern Europe in the 8th and 9th Centuries

The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe: Images, Objects and Practices, ed. Henning Laugerud et al.

<i>The Materiality of Devotion in Late Medieval Northern Europe: Images, Objects and Practices</i>, ed. Henning Laugerud <i>et al</i>.

The nature of the feast: commensality and the politics of consumption in Viking Age and Early Medieval Northern Europe

ABSTRACT In Early Medieval Northern Europe, food was more than mere sustenance. Rather, dietary choices were used to define and manipulate identity and shape power politics. Using the Norse Earldom of Orkney as a case study and commensality as an analytical framework, the authors explore how the archaeology of food, and in particular zooarchaeological evidence, can be used alongside near contemporary historical sources to better understand the political and social role of food, as well as the likely scale and impact of commensal activities on farming economies and environments in the Medieval North Atlantic. They argue that feasting and, by extension, the mechanisms by which preferentially consumed foodstuffs were grown, procured and processed, would have had a transformative impact on Norse society at diverse scales, from enabling individuals to participate in social negotiations to driving local and regional economies.