Each student will research one of the following broad topics; this research will culminate in a final research project of 5000-6000 words which must be submitted both as hardcopy and as an electronic document

• Main Author: Administrator
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1069.4122; http://public.gettysburg.edu/%7Ecfee/courses./English4012001/4012010PrintSyllabus.pdf

In 793 AD the first Viking raid of England took place at the monastery at Lindisfarne, and this event marks the beginning of a presence in Britain which culminated with the crowning of a Danish king of England, Cnut, in 1016 AD. Large portions of Anglo-Saxon England were ruled under Danish law from the late ninth century onwards, and even the two great invasions of Britain in 1066, mounted by William of Normandy and Harald Hardradi, represented incursions from different branches of the same Viking family tree. The Vikings were Scandinavian (primarily Norsemen from Norway and Danes) adventurer-raiders who were first cousins to the AngloSaxons, who were following the same migratory patterns to Britain, and who made their way, like the Celts, to Spain and Asia Minor but even further, to North America. The etymology of the term "Viking" is uncertain; the Old English wiking has to do with a war band, and hence may denote a warlike pirate, while the Old Norse vikingr has long been thought to come from a root meaning "bay" or "inlet," and thus may refer merely to those associated with those places and the crafts which plied them. These Scandinavian invaders still adhered to the old pagan religion, and thus their appearance in Britain reinvigorated the pre-Christian Germanic elements in the cultural melting-pot. Course Objectives: In this course we will explore the genesis, development, and dissemination of medieval Scandinavian culture, focusing on the age of the greatest impact of the Vikings upon the British Isles (roughly AD 793 through AD 1066) but surveying an overview of the entire breadth and depth of early Scandinavian Europe. The bulk of the material we read will be in Modern English, but we will learn the rudiments of the Viking tongue. To do so we will study elements of the language of medieval Iceland, specifically the West Norse of the "classical" literary period (ca. 1150-1350 AD), but many of the texts from this period deal with much earlier events, the gods of the north, and legendary figures of heroic ...