Livro: The Vikings go South: Scandinavian Studies in Londrina, Brazil
Autor: (Org. Lukas Gabriel Grzybowski)
This volume brings together a selection of texts produced within the research group LEM – Leituras da Escandinávia Medieval, the result of collective work carried out over the past year by myself and my students. United by a shared interest in Scandinavian medieval history and its reception in modern and contemporary contexts, the group investigates how the medieval past of Northern Europe has been constructed, narrated, interpreted, and appropriated across different times, places, and media. The chapters assembled here reflect the thematic diversity that characterizes LEM’s research agenda, while remaining anchored in a common concern with the Scandinavian past as a historical and cultural problem. Readers will find studies on the Christianization of Iceland and the narrative strategies through which this process was shaped in medieval sources; reflections on medieval authorship and its implications for the reading and interpretation of Old Norse material; and analyses of the reception of so-called “Viking heritage” in twentieth-century Paraná, highlighting the circulation, re-signification, and local appropriation of medieval Scandinavian imagery far beyond its original geographic and cultural contexts. One of the guiding principles of this book is to make visible research conducted outside the traditional centers of Scandinavian studies. Produced in South Brazil, these contributions seek not only to engage with established international scholarship, but also to demonstrate how the study of medieval Scandinavia and its afterlives can be meaningfully pursued from other academic and cultural locations. In this sense, the volume aims at readers interested both in Scandinavian history and in the broader question of how the Middle Ages are received, reimagined, and mobilized in modern and contemporary societies. All texts presented here should be understood as partial results of ongoing investigations. They are deliberately conceived as work in progress: open-ended, exploratory, and intended to stimulate discussion, critique, and dialogue. It is our hope that this volume will invite readers to engage with these studies not as final statements, but as contributions to a broader and continuing conversation on medieval Scandinavia and its many receptions.