UMass Boston

Course Overview

Description

In this class we will take a critical look at popular portrayals of Vikings in film, television, literature, and comics by familiarizing ourselves with actual medieval texts about Vikings and the Viking Age. We will read (in English translations) from the famous Icelandic Sagas of Vikings as well as from poetry that memorializes warrior-kings and tells of dragon slayings. But we will also consider writings about the Vikings from cultures that fell victim to their raids and invasions, including the great Old English poem Beowulf. We will thus be able to critically compare contemporary uses and portrayals of the Vikings with the medieval sources, and will even trace some of the sources for the narratives of Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings. Our study of Viking Literatures will be also rooted in their various historical contexts, which will give us a more complex understanding of a society and its very rich literary and artistic traditions than many popular portrayals. These literatures will offer us fascinating insights into the society of the Vikings and their Anglo-Saxon victims, including elements of religion, gender and sexuality, economy, technologies of violence, and government. We will have to take on some very difficult questions about how and why texts both then and now represent violence as we equip ourselves to better understand Viking Literatures, but there will also be much to surprise and to delight in these rich cultural forms.