To be held at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2027 (5-8th July):

Through the translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannaie and the efforts of Hákon Hákonarson, king of Norway (r. 1217-1263), romance reached the Medieval North where it soon took hold of the Scandinavian imagination. Old Norse translations of Old French romances were copied and transmitted from Norway to Iceland. These romances soon inspired a wave of new literary creations, leading to the production of Icelandic chivalric romances and later ballads and rimur, alongside potentially influencing other literary genres. These narratives were amongst the most popular stories read and received amongst medieval and later Icelandic communities as the manuscript preservation attests. And yet they continue to be amongst the most understanded communities of texts within Old Norse literary studies. This session seeks to respond to this gap in scholarship and invite papers which investigate these texts, challenging former assumptions and opening up new avenues of scholarship on these texts.

Suggested themes and topics may include but are not limited to:

· Chivalric romances, fornaldarsögur

· Translation (Old Norse and Old Swedish)

· Literary communities

· Gender

· Emotions

· Genre

· Families/ genealogies

· Travel/ geography

· Marginalised identities

· Manuscript reception and transmission

· Society and hierarchy

· Ethnicity and religion

· Monsters

· Transgression

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief biography by Friday 18th September to Mary Catherine O’Connor (mary.oconnor@balliol.ox.ac.uk) and Natalie Hopwood (ennrho@leeds.ac.uk)