*Please note that this course will run only if two or more students enroll.
*This course will take a one week break the week of August 3rd-August 9th, and will be extended one week after the regular Telepaideia Summer 2025 term.
Course Description: This course is an introduction to Old Norse/Old Icelandic: students will take a deep dive into the grammar and vocabulary of this fascinating language, and will learn about the wide corpus of medieval Icelandic sagas, poetry, and myriad other obscure and esoteric genres - almost every week of the course we will discuss a new part of the Old Norse corpus, from sagas of kings to translated romances to mythological poems. Old Norse is not only the language of the Vikings, spoken by the Icelanders and Norwegians (and very close to the languages of medieval Sweden and Denmark) who raided, traded, and colonized from the eighth through the eleventh centuries, but it is also the language of the their later medieval descendents, who sat on the edge of the medieval world reflecting on their past and their peripherality, and writing arguably the largest and most varied corpus of any medieval European vernacular language. Old Norse is also strikingly similar to the language of modern Icelanders, and modern Icelandic pronunciation will be used and taught in this course (the course will be taught primarily in English). This course will therefore serve as an excellent supplement/inspiration/tool to any student who want to learn modern Icelandic, the language of Björk, Halldór Laxness, Sjón, Laufey, and many other great poets, novelists, and musicians waiting for you to discover them.
DETAILS
Level: No previous experience with Old Norse, Modern Icelandic, or Scandinavian languages required, but experience with ancient/medieval languages and/or highly inflected languages and grammar is helpful.
Textbook: To ensure accessibility to all students, the course will use Barnes' open access A New Introduction to Old Norse from the Viking Society. However, I will happily field questions and/or discussions about any other texts students want to use or happen to be already using.
Sections capped at: 5 students. If the course is sold-out, please fill out this waiting-list form.
When
Tuesdays, 1:00p.m.-3:00p.m. U.S. Eastern Time
Cost
$650
Course is at capacity. Please fill out this waiting-list form.
