The article focuses on the role of imagination in Stanisław Wyspiański’s perception of the Gothic, which can be read out of his “French” letters to Lucjan Rydel, 19th-century poet and dramatist. During his journey to France in 1890, Wyspiański admires some Gothic cathedrals (i.e. Chartres, Reims, Rouen, Amiens) and personifies them metaphorically. The cathedral is a product of the imagination, she turns into amonumental theatrical stage, and its sculptures become dramatis personae of the play.
The paper explores the culinary culture of medieval Iceland and the then food taboo. The latter question relates to horse-meat, whose consumption was forbidden by the Church after the conversion of Iceland to Christianity (in 1000 CE). Eating horse-meat has been associated with pagan beliefs and practices. Moreover, the study focuses on various types of feasts in Icelandic sagas, i.e. wedding, funeral, negotiation, sacrificial, and family feasts. The author analyses the thirteenth century sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur) and selected contemporary sagas (samtíðarsögur).
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In this paper, I discuss various kinds of feasts in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, such as wedding, funeral, or sacrificial feasts. I discuss feasting, an important part of the culture of medieval Iceland, much more in terms of its functions (political, social, religious) than in terms of its culinary aspect. In addition, I consider how religious traditions impacted Old Icelandic food culture and how food taboo related to horse-meat consumption (declared just after the conversion of Iceland to Christianity in 1000 CE) affected social interaction.
Guðbrandur Vigfússon, an Icelander born in Galtardalur, Dalasýsla, was without doubt one of the most influential scholars of Old Norse studies of his day. His diplomatic edition of Flateyjarbók, his critical edition of Sturlunga saga, and his anthology An Icelandic Prose Reader are still of use to those without access to the relevant manuscripts. In this essay, I would like to survey his career (in Copenhagen and Oxford) as an editor of Old Norse Icelandic texts and the legacy that he has left to his successors in the field of Old Norse studies.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Iceland had become quite a popular destination for American travelers. Among this group were Samuel Kneeland, a physician and naturalist, and Bayard Taylor, a poet, translator and reporter for the New York Tribune, who came to Iceland in the summer of 1874 to attend the millennial celebration of the first settlement of that island. They visited Þingvellir, a site that many Icelanders considered and still consider “holy ground”, the Haukadalur valley, or the valley of geysers, and Reykjavík, the main and at the time the only Icelandic city. Two travelogues, entitled Egypt and Iceland in the Year 1874 and An American in Iceland, published in 1874 and 1876, respectively, were the fruit of their visit to Iceland. The present paper offers a reading of these accounts in order to trace the strategies employed by American authors to describe nineteenth-century Iceland and Icelanders.