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Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities. This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.
Oxbow says: The six essays featured in this study originated as papers given at the 36th International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. The contributors survey the ornate altars produced from the early 8th to 13th century in Europe, with specific examples taken from Italy, Germany and Scandinavia.
This book explores the complexity of preaching as a phenomenon in the medieval Jewish-Christian encounter. This was not only an "encounter" as physical meeting or confrontation (such as the forced attendance of Jews at Christian sermons that took place across Europe), but also an "imaginary" or theological encounter in which Jews remained a figure from a distant constructed time and place who served only to underline and verify Christian teachings. Contributors also explore the Jewish response to Christian anti-Jewish preaching in their own preaching and religious instruction.
What did Danes and Swedes in the Middle Ages imagine and write about Jews and Judaism? This book draws on over 100 medieval Danish and Swedish manuscripts and incunabula as well as runic inscriptions and religious art (c. 1200-1515) to answer this question. There were no resident Jews in Scandinavia before the modern period, yet as this book shows ideas and fantasies about them appear to have been widespread and an integral part of life and culture in the medieval North. Volume 1 investigates the possibility of encounters between Scandinavians and Jews, the terminology used to write about Jews, Judaism, and Hebrew, and how Christian writers imagined the Jewish body. The (mis)use of Jews in d...
Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000–2000 focuses on the changing relationships between what gradually emerged as the Arts and Christianity, the latter term covering both a stream of ideas and its institutions. The book as a whole is addressed to a general academic audience concerned with issues of cultural history, while the individual essays are also intended as scholarly contributions within their own fields. A collaborative effort by twenty-five European and American scholars representing disciplines ranging from aesthetics to the history of art and architecture, from literature, music and the theatre to classics, church hi...
During the summer of 1627, corsairs from Algiers and Salé, Morocco, undertook the long voyage to Iceland where they raided the eastern and southern regions of the country, resulting in the deaths of around thirty people, and capturing about 400 further individuals who were sold on the slave markets. Around 10% of the captives were ransomed the next twenty years, mostly through the efforts of the Danish monarchy. In this volume, the history of these extraordinary events and their long-lasting memory are traced and analysed from the viewpoints of maritime warfare, cultural encounters and existential options, based on extensive use of various sources from several languages.
In late Antiquity, archaeology demonstrates lively and far-flung exchange along the river Dniester, through current Poland to the Baltic. By the 11th century the former Barbaricum had been transformed into a string of Christian kingdoms and principalities, whose parallel histories are as conspicious as their differences. From the legendary (if possible real) migrations of the Goths in Antiquity to the Varangian guard at the imperial court of Byzantium in the late Viking Age, trans-cultural interaction complemented important historical development. This book is about aspects of the changing interactions from late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages, from Goths to Varangians, and from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The history and archaeology of these connections have been poorly exposed and investigated in modern times. The papers presented in this volume are a selection of those presented during a series of four meetings organised 2007-2009 by the "Varangian Network", an interdisciplinary network for archaeological and historical research on relations between the Baltic and the Black Sea from late Antiquity to the medieval period.
A reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance, examining the complex and layered temporalities of Renaissance images and artifacts. In this widely anticipated book, two leading contemporary art historians offer a subtle and profound reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood examine the meanings, uses, and effects of chronologies, models of temporality, and notions of originality and repetition in Renaissance images and artifacts. Anachronic Renaissance reveals a web of paths traveled by works and artists—a landscape obscured by art history's disciplinary compulsion to anchor its data securely in time. The buildings, painti...
Printed book cultures in Scandinavia before 1525 were formed by their vicinity to expanding European book markets. Collections of prints were founded, decisions on printing books in Scandinavia were based upon thorough knowledge of what printers on the continent achieved in question of volume, quality and price. Building on a large database of contemporary provenances and statistical analyses of every possible aspect of peripheral book markets, as well as on new readings of many old and new sources, this book recalibrates scholarly looks on Scandinavian book history before the Reformation. The result is a fresh portrait of a dynamic period in cultural history which places Scandinavia, though in the geographical periphery of Europe, in the middle of European printing.
The End of the World in Scandinavian Mythology is a detailed study of the Scandinavian myth on the end of the world, the Ragnarök, and its comparative background. The Old Norse texts on Ragnarök, in the first place the 'Prophecy of the Seeress' and the Prose Edda of the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, are well known and much discussed. However, Anders Hultgård suggests that it is worthwhile to reconsider the Ragnarök myth and shed new light on it using new comparative evidence, and presenting texts in translation that otherwise are available only to specialists. The intricate question of Christian influence on Ragnarök is addressed in detail, with the author arriving at the conclusion of an independent pre-Christian myth with the closest analogies in ancient Iran. People in modern society are concerned with the future of our world, and we can see these same fears and hopes expressed in many ancient religions, transformed into myths of the future including both cosmic destruction and cosmic renewal. The Ragnarök myth can be said to be the classical instance of such myths, making it more relevant today than ever before.