CSS International Conference

We at the Centre for Scandinavian Studies, Lund University, are delighted to announce the next CSS International Conference, Nordic Romanticism and Viking Culture, which will be held in Lund 10–13 June 2026.

The conference is jointly organized by CSS and Kulturen in Lund, and connects to CSS’s recurring series of international conferences and seminars focusing on Nordic culture in the world. The theme, Nordic Romanticism and Viking Culture, welcomes participants from the widest range of interdisciplinary fields and diverse historical perspectives of international Scandinavian Studies.

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 reminds 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.