Research

I was determined to become a student in nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural history until I met Helgi Þorláksson, who drew my attention to early and pre-modern cultures of power, anthropological and sociological theory, and saga studies. He is responsible for my medieval turn as an undergraduate. I wrote my BA thesis under his supervision, on Snorri Sturluson’s wealth, honor, and power with reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s discourse on capital.

At Berkeley, where I studied medieval and early modern Europe at a department that does not specialize in Icelandic or Scandinavian history, my fields expanded and came to include, more generally, early law and legal history, intellectual history, and political thought and culture from medieval to early modern times. I returned to Iceland and Scandinavia in my dissertation, however, on feasting and gift giving as modes of political communication, written under Carol J. Clover and John Lindow from the Department of Scandinavian and Thomas A. Brady Jr. and Maureen C. Miller from the Department of history. My revised dissertation (originally titled Power and Political Communication) was published in the Islandica series at Cornell as Language of Power: Feasting and Gift Giving in Medieval Iceland and its Sagas.

 

RESEARCH PROJECTS AND PUBLICATION COLLABORATIONS

  • Since 2021, I have participated in the international research project Jónsbók and the Monarchical Project for Iceland, led by The University of Bergen. A conference was held in Bergen in 2021 and a volume of articles is forthcoming.
  • Since 2020, I lead the research project Samhengi Kristinréttar Árna Þorlákssonar (Iceland’s Medieval Christian Law in Context) with Anders Winroth (University of Oslo), in collaboration with Elizabeth Walgenbach (The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies) and Magnús Lyngdal Magnússon. This international project in medieval legal and church history is funded for two years by the Icelandic Research Council, Rannís (verkefnastyrkur). It will produce a critical edition and English translation of Bishop Árni Þorláksson’s church law of 1275, with thorough commentary on its international context and sources.
  • Since 2020, I have participated in the research project Oddarannsókn (The Oddi Research Project), led by Helgi Þorláksson (University of Iceland) on behalf of the Oddafélag (The Oddi Society). The project is funded by the research plan RÍM (Ritmenning íslenskra miðalda, The Textual Culture of Medieval Iceland), managed by Snorrastofa in Reykholt. My contribution will focus on the early history of Oddi as an ecclesiastical center. Since 2021, I have participated in conferences where the project is presented. Publication is forthcoming.
  • 2016‒21, I participated in a project/workshop on Bishop Jón Halldórsson (bishop 1322‒39), organized by the Center for Medieval Studies (Miðaldastofa) at the University of Iceland. It was an interdisciplinary project bringing together scholars from Iceland and Norway. An article volume was published by Brill in 2021.
  • 2016‒2020, I participated in the Scandinavian project Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050–1250, led by historians Lars Hermanson, Kim Esmark, Hans Jacob Orning, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Helle Vogt, Bjørn Poulsen, and Wojtek Jezierski. Three volumes were published 2019‒20 by Routledge ― my chapter appeared in the second volume.
  • I am currently translating Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum and writing thorough commentary on it, to be published with an introduction co-authored by Sverrir Jakobsson.
  • In 2012–14, I was a Rannís post-doc at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic studies in Reykjavík, working on Power and Political Violence in Medieval Iceland.
  • I wrote an introduction and commentary to Eiríkur Gauti Kristjánsson’s Icelandic translation of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, published in the Lærdómsrit series of Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag in 2016.
  • 2010‒18, I participated in the ‘Reykholt Project’, an international and interdisciplinary project hosted by the Cultural and Medieval Center Snorrastofa in Reykholt. Its final volume appeared in 2018: Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir and Helgi Þorláksson, eds. Snorri Sturluson and Reykholt: The Narrator, His Life, Works and Environment at Reykholt in Borgarfjörður, Western Iceland. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
  • 2013‒18, I participated in another international and interdisciplinary project on Reykholt hosted by the Cultural and Medieval Center Snorrastofa: ‘The Medieval Buildings of Reykholt’, led by archaeologist Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir. It concluded with a volume: Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir and Bergur Þorgeirsson, eds. The Buildings of Medieval Reykholt: The Wider Context. Reykjavík: Snorrastofa and University of Iceland Press.
  • I contributed two chapters to 66 handrit úr fórum Árna Magnússonar (2013) and a third one to The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (2017), international collaborations within Old Norse scholarship.