From Iceland to the Americas : Vinland and historical imagination / edited by Tim William Machan and Jón Karl Helgason.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Machan, Tim William, editor.

Jón Karl Helgason, 1965- editor.

Series:

Manchester medieval literature and culture ; 33.

Manchester medieval literature and culture ; 33

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Leiv Eiriksson, -approximately 1020.

Leiv Eiriksson.

Vikings in literature.

Old Norse literature--Appreciation.

Old Norse literature.

Geographical discoveries in literature.

America--Discovery and exploration--Norse.

America.

Iceland--In literature.

Iceland.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 288 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2020.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

From Iceland to the Americas, an anthology of thirteen original critical essays, is an exercise in the reception of a small historical fact with wide-ranging social, cultural, and imaginative consequences. Medieval records claim that around the year 1000 Leif Eiriksson and other Nordic explorers sailed westwards from Iceland and Greenland to a place they called Vinland. Archaeological evidence has in fact verified this claim, though primarily by way of one small, short-lived Norse settlement in Newfoundland, which may not even have been Leif's. Whether or not this settlement was his, however, the contact associated with him has had an outsized impact on cultural imagination in and of the Americas. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, indeed, novels, poetry, history, politics, arts and crafts, comics, films and video games have all reflected a rising interest in the medieval Norse and their North American presence. Uniquely in reception studies, From Iceland to the Americas approaches this dynamic between Nordic history and its reception by bringing together international authorities on mythology, language, film, and cultural studies, as well as on the literature that has dominated critical reception. Collectively, the essays not only explore the connections among medieval Iceland and the modern Americas, but also probe why medieval contact has become a modern cultural touchstone.

Contents:

Vinland on the brain: remembering the Norse / Tim William Machan

Part I. Imagination and ideology: Journeys to the centre of the mind: Iceland in the literary and the professorial imagination / Seth Lerer

The "Viking tower" in Newport, Rhode Island: fact, fiction, and film / Kevin J. Harty

Critiquing Columbus with the Vinland sagas / Matthew Scribner

Vinland and white nationalism / Verena Hofig

Part II. Landscapes and cultural memory: Migration of a North Atlantic seascape: Leif Eiriksson, the 1893 World's Fair, and the Great Lakes landnam / Amy C. Mulligan

Norwegian-American "missions of education" and Old Norse literature / Bergur Porgeirsson

Americans in Sagaland: Iceland travel books 1854-1914 / Emily Lethbridge

The good sense to lose America: Vinland as remembered by Icelanders / Simon Halink

Part III. Recasting the past: Spectral Vikings in nineteenth-century American poetry / Angela Sorby

"Who is this upstart Hitler?": Norse gods and American comics during the Second World War / Jon Karl Helgason

"There's no going back": The Dark Knight and Balder's descent to Hel / Dustin Geeraert

Old Norse in the New World: the mythology of emigration in Neil Gaiman's American Gods / Heather O'Donoghue.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 Jul 2026).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-5261-2876-4

OCLC:

1154278688