Saga Emotions

Saga emotions is an essential exploration of the representation and function of key emotional states in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature. Ranging widely across the more historically oriented sagas, the thirteen chapters collected here each take as their starting point a particular Old Norse emotion term - such as reiði (anger), gleði (joy), or the peculiarly Old Norse víghugr (killing-mood) - offering a detailed account of the term's usage in the saga corpus. Illuminating textual case studies are also provided to demonstrate the literary function in saga narrative of each emotion term. A key aim of the book is to avoid potentially misleading and anachronistic projections of modern emotional systems and terminology onto the very different emotion repertoire of Old Norse saga writers. Thus, the book's methodological approach maps the native, often overlapping, emotion models of Norse textual culture in fine-grained detail. It charts changes over time that reflect the emergence of new historical and social conditions in medieval Iceland, in particular the far-reaching impact of Christian emotional systems. Written by leading international scholars in saga and emotion studies, Saga emotions adds a much-needed level of emotional granularity to the study of saga literature. Breaking new ground in both saga studies and studies in emotion and their history, this important essay collection pioneers a lexically oriented approach to the textual representation of emotions as complex psychological and physical phenomena and thus provides a secure foundation for future research into the sagas, literature and history of medieval Iceland.