Virtual Seminar of the HM Queen Margrethe II Distinguished Research Project on the Danish-Icelandic Reception of Nordic Antiquity
We are pleased to invite those interested in Old Norse antiquities and their reception to an online seminar to be held on Thursday 25th February 2021, marking the opening of our virtual exhibition “Reception and Reinvention: Old Norse in Time and Space”.
In recent decades, medievalism and reception studies have been areas of intensive enquiry across disciplines and periods. Until quite recently, medievalism has been foremost associated with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when, in Europe and North America, travelers, antiquarians, and poets looked back on the Middle Ages to conceptualize their own regional or national identities. However, the appeal of the European Middle Ages as a moment in which fledgling ‘nationalisms' took shape existed before and after this period of romantic nationalism. This seminar aims to produce deeper insights into how we conceptualize ‘reception' and its relationship to ‘reinvention', acknowledging that this nebulous term entails, at all times, the remembering, creating, reimagining and repurposing of a period of European history. The seminar will bring together scholars working in diverse fields of medieval and early-modern studies whose research relates to receptions of the past – broadly conceived – in their historical and cultural contexts.
The HM Queen Margrethe II Distinguished Research Project on the Danish-Icelandic Reception of Nordic Antiquity has been generously funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.
Organizers: Katarzyna Anna Kapitan and Dale Kedwards
Host institutions: Det Nationalhistoriske Museum, Frederiksborg Slot; Stofnun Vigdísar Finnbogadóttur í
erlendum tungumálum, Háskóli Íslands; Þjóðminjasafn Íslands.
To join us, please register by 20th February 2021 by sending an e-mail to Dale Kedwards (dale@hi.is)
Program can be downloaded here.
Program
25th February 2021 (Thursday)
09:40–9:50 Opening of the Seminar and Presentation of the Collaborative Project
Mette Skougaard (Director of the Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle)
9:50–10:20 Paired Objects Exhibition Presentation
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan and Dale Kedwards (University of Iceland, National Museum of Iceland, and Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle)
10:20–10:30 Coffee Break
10:30–11:30 Writing (Hi)stories Exhibition presentation
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan (University of Iceland, National Museum of Iceland, and Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle)
11:30–11:40 Coffee Break
11:40–12:40 Writing Futures Exhibition Presentation
Dale Kedwards (University of Iceland, National Museum of Iceland, and Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle)
12:40–13:40 Lunch Break
13:40–14:10 Looking Back...and to the Future: Prose Edda in the Eye of Paper Manuscript Producers and Readers in the 18th cent.
Friederike Richter (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin & Universität Zürich)
14:10–14:40 Raising Mjölnir: Norse Mythology in Icelandic National Culture
Simon Halink (Leiden University)
14:40–15:10 Antiquarianism, Golden Ages, and Medieval Law
Ciaran McDonough (University College Dublin)
15:10–15:40 White Man's Land: Vinland and the Pre-Columbian Discourse of Nineteenth-Century
Zachary J. Melton (University of Iceland)
15:40–15:55 Coffee Break
15:55–16:55 Perspectives on the Reception of Old Norse Antiquities - A Round Table Discussion
16:55-17:00 Closing of the Seminar
Mette Skougaard (Director of the Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle)