From Iceland to the Americas

Tim William Machan is Mary Lee Duda Professor of Literature, University of Notre DameJón Karl Helgason is Professor of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland

‘Anyone interested in the history of the idea of Vinland, the Vikings, and the impact these ideas had (and still have) on the historical imagination of the Americas will find ample food for thought in this volume.’— David F. Johnson (Florida State University) Arthuriana

• Introduction1 Vinland on the brain: remembering the Norse – Tim William MachanPart I: Imagination and ideology2 Journeys to the centre of the mind: Iceland in the literary and the professorial imagination – Seth Lerer3 The ‘Viking tower’ in Newport, Rhode Island: fact, fiction, and film – Kevin J. Harty4 Critiquing Columbus with the Vinland sagas – Matthew Scribner5 Vinland and white nationalism – Verena HöfigPart II: Landscapes and cultural memory6 Migration of a North Atlantic seascape: Leif Eiriksson, the 1893 World’s Fair, and the Great Lakes landnám – Amy C. Mulligan7 Norwegian-American ‘missions of education’ and Old Norse literature – Bergur Þorgeirsson8 Americans in Sagaland: Iceland travel books 1854-1914 – Emily Lethbridge9 The good sense to lose America: Vinland as remembered by Icelanders – Simon HalinkPart III: Recasting the past10 Spectral Vikings in nineteenth-century American poetry – Angela Sorby11 ‘Who is this upstart Hitler?’: Norse gods and American comics during the Second World War – Jón Karl Helgason12 ‘There's no going back’: The Dark Knight and Balder's descent to Hel – Dustin Geeraert13 Old Norse in the New World: the mythology of emigration in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – Heather O’DonoghueBibliographyIndex