Saga Emotions

Focusing particularly on historically oriented sagas, Saga emotions identifies and examines a range of emotions from across Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature. Each chapter begins with a discrete emotion term, such as reiði (anger), gleði (joy), or the peculiarly Old Norse víghugr (killing-mood), exploring its usages within the broad saga corpus, and focusing on its contextual meanings and narrative purposes. The contributions explore the specifics of the lexical terms used for different emotion states and offer in-depth case studies that consider how various emotions manifest within particular examples of saga literature. The book offers the emotional granularity lacking in current studies of Norse emotion and serves as an essential foundation for future research and study into emotional depiction in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature.

Gareth Lloyd Evans is Associate Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford and Official Fellow and Tutor in English at St John’s College, Oxford
Brynja þorgeirsdóttir is Assistant Professor of Icelandic Literature at the University of Iceland
Carolyne Larrington is Emeritus Professor of Medieval European Literature at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Research Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford