The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination

Rix, Robert

doi:10.4324/9781315743622

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Through the figure of the Viking, boreal medievalism also includes an ethnic component. The imaginary of the Scandinavians of the Viking Age was developed by the interweaving of several discourses, such as the theory of climates which, via climatic determinism, considered the peoples of the North to be more robust and courageous (Pinna 1989), or the imaginary of the barbarian (Dumézil 2016;Shillinger and Alexandre 2008;Rix 2015;Di Filippo 2020). If the term 'Viking' initially did not correspond to a specific ethnic group, it has nowadays taken on a broader meaning and represents a specific people in the imaginary.…”

Section: Ethnic Componentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boreal Medievalism: The Imaginary of the Viking Age

Stahl

2023

Scand

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This article develops the notion of boreal medievalism through a dialogue between Nordic studies -with the concept of borealism -and History -with the notion and field of medievalism. The discourses on and representations of the Viking Age are characterised by their plasticity, their alterity from western medievalism, and their proximity to the reader. Boreal medievalism refers, therefore, to a specific and distinct form of medievalism constructed in an identity-based alterity (altérité identitaire) and established through the intertwining of three imaginaries: a geographical one with the North, a temporal one with the Middle Ages and the Viking Age, as well as an ethnic one with the figure of the Viking.

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Section: Ethnic Componentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boreal Medievalism: The Imaginary of the Viking Age

Stahl

2023

Scand

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“…Denigration and marginalisation represents, however, only one strand in medieval thinking about the North and its peoples. From classical times onwards, notions of characteristically northern valour and virtue contended with the images of barbarity and desolation (Rix 2015). 2 According to the thirteenth-century theologian Albertus Magus, the 'north wind strengthens virtues, whereas the south wind weakens them' (Davidson 2005, 26).…”

Section: Humanist Patriotismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reformation and the Idea of the North

Marshall

2019

Nordlit

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Both scholarly and popular perceptions have identified a profound cultural and political realignment of Europe with the Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a largely Protestant North confronting a predominantly Catholic South. This replaced a medieval conceptual geography of East-West, in which the North (on the basis of scriptural passages) was a zone of sinfulness and danger. This chapter argues that the emergence of a North-South cultural-religious dichotomy was more fraught and uncertain than often supposed. Late medieval North European humanists countered negative perceptions with patriotic accounts of national origins. In the era of the Counter-Reformation, British and Scandinavian Catholic exiles emphasised the intrinsic virtue and orthodoxy of northerners, and the potential for reclaiming their homelands from heresy. Protestants were often ambivalent about the North, not least since northern parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark-Norway were often associated with Catholic resistance, as well as with magic and superstition. The propaganda of the British Civil Wars reinforced both positive and negative stereotypes. While a cultural association of Protestantism with the North eventually took root, this was a contingent process, and should be seen more as a consequence than a cause of the stabilization of Europe's confessional borders.

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Moving the North: Rimbert, theVita Anskarii, and theCynocephali

Hoel¹

2021

Viking and Medieval Scandinavia

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The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Boreal Medievalism: The Imaginary of the Viking Age

Boreal Medievalism: The Imaginary of the Viking Age

The Reformation and the Idea of the North

Moving the North: Rimbert, theVita Anskarii, and theCynocephali

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