Projects: Nordic Romanticism & Viking Culture
CSS and Spleen Nordic International proudly present Nordic Romanticism & Viking Culture, a book project edited by Ulf Peter Hallberg and Anders Mortensen. The publication will be launched by Spleen Nordic International, Berlin, in Spring 2028.
The omnipresence of Viking culture in the Western world is hard to ignore. In recent years, major Viking-Age exhibitions have been launched at the national historical museums in all the capitals of Scandinavia and the British Isles. Viking documentaries, TV series and feature films are an inescapable part of streaming media services. The bewildering array of Viking fiction, jewellery, toys, ceramics, computer games, reenactment merchandise, food, and theme parks remind us how immensely connected popular culture of today is to Norse mythology and medieval Icelandic sagas. However, the modern story of Viking culture appropriation and repurposing cannot be told without reference to its restart in Nordic Romanticism, from where it spread and gained cultural and political importance in the world.
The research project highlights the double query of Viking Culture Then and Now, i.e. of how people actually lived and experienced their lives during the Viking Age, as well as aspects of how – and why – that period have influenced modern world culture, from the general perspective of the still ongoing, strong influence from Nordic Romanticism in these matters: how our understandings and delusions of Viking Culture are affected by the tradition from Nordic Romanticism since early 19th Century.
Nordic Romanticism & Viking Culture brings together the following participants: David Almer (Lund), Stewart Arnold (Hull), Katherine Beard (Oxford), Ela Sefcikova (Berlin), Susanne Filoche-Rommé (Paris), Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir (Oslo), Julia Håkansson (Lund), Anne Hope Jahren (Oslo), Johnni Langer (Paraiba), Roland Lysell (Stockholm), Alan Macniven (Edinburgh), Anders Mortensen (Lund), Alberto Robles-Delgado (Uppsala), Mats Roslund (Lund), Bodil Petersson (Kalmar), Rikard Schönström (Lund), Eli Sefcikova (Berlin), Vilde Johanne Snipstad (Oslo), Carmen Vioreanu (Bukarest) and Jes Wienberg (Lund).
The project will be published as a book, edited by Ulf Peter Hallberg and Anders Mortensen, at Spleen Nordic International, Berlin, in Spring 2028.