Food Culture in Medieval Scandinavia

Viktória Gyönki is a historian, museologist and PhD candidate at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her research interests are connected to medieval Scandinavia, with a special interest on Icelandic and Norwegian legal sources connected to outlawry and conflict solving. Andrea Maraschi has a PhD in Medieval History (University of Bologna), and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Iceland and at the University of Bari. He teaches Anthropology of Food at the University of Bologna. His research interests touch, among other things, the history of food, the history of magic, and the history of medicine. Karoline Kjesrud is Associate Professor in medieval art at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. She works closely with the medieval collection and her research encompasses humans’ relations to religion, spirituality, and nature throughout history. Kjesrud is dedicated to highlighting historical perspectives for understanding the present and pointing out directions for the future. Stefan Figenschow is a medieval historian at UiT the Arctic University of Norway. His main research interests are comparative approaches to the expansion of medieval Scandinavian central authority to the north and east, comparing the actions of the Scandinavian realms to each other and with the more general European tendencies of the period. Marion Poilvez is a PhD candidate at the University of Iceland (Háskóli Íslands) and researches outlaws, outlawry, and the dynamics of exclusion in the Icelandic sagas. Erik Opsahl is a professor of Medieval History, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. His fields of interest are aristocracy, nobility, state formation, political culture, national and other identities and loyalties, networks, military history, and migration in Medieval and Early Modern History Magne Njåstad is professor of late medieval and early modern history at the Department of Historical and Classical Studies at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His special interests are political and social history, focusing on local communities’ political actions and tools of action. Helen F. Leslie-Jacobsen is a researcher in Old Norse philology at the University of Bergen, Norway, where she leads a project on medieval and early modern Norwegian and Icelandic law funded by the Trond Mohn stiftelse. Her research interests include law, manuscripts, translation, ballads, and prosimetric Old Norse sagas. Philip Lavender is a researcher at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion at the University of Gothenburg, and author of Long Lives of Short Sagas: The Irrepressibility of Narrative and the Case of Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra. His research focuses on legendary sagas and Icelandic romances, studying reception, gender, forgery, futures, and ecocritical perspectives. Andrew McGillivray is assistant professor of rhetoric and communications at the University of Winnipeg. He is author of Influences of Pre-Christian Mythology and Christianity on Old Norse Poetry (2018). Martina Ceolin is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her current research focuses on the so-called ‘post-classical’ Íslendingasögur, specifically on Finnboga saga ramma and its codicological contexts. She is also preparing an Italian translation of Áns saga bogsveigis.

• Contributors Acknowledgements Notes List of common abbreviations Part I: Food Production: Natural and Supernatural Strategies. (Andrea Maraschi) Magic, miracles and rituals to fight famine in Old Norse Literature (Karoline Kjesrud) Divine intervention in the preparations of food and drink in Old Norse Culture (Stefan Figenschow) The Rise and Extent of Commercial Stockfish Production and Trade in Medieval north-Norwegian Coastal Society Part II: Food Trade, Distribution, and Commercial Activities (Marion Poilvez) Food and Exclusion: Beer, Chicken and Social Mobility in the Saga World (Erik Opsahl) What Did the Norwegians Drink? (Magne Njåstad) Stockfish Distribution: Getting Stockfish to the Consumer (Helen Leslie-Jacobsen) The Theft of Food in Thirteenth Century Norway and Iceland Part III: Food Spaces, Consumption, and Feasting (Philip Lavender) The Semiotics of Hanging Around in the Kitchen in Late Sagas and Rímur (Andrew McGillivray) Consumption and Intoxication in an Old Norse Legendary Saga (Viktória Gyönki) Conflicts Regarding Hospitality in Old Norse Sources (Martina Ceolin) The Practice of Feasting in Medieval Iceland