Harriet J Evans Tang
Most recently a researcher funded by the Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur to complete the project: Bears and bearskins in the medieval North: Human-bear relationships at the intersection between Old Norse literature, laws, placenames and archaeology in Fennoscandia.
Formerly a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the project "COHABITing with Vikings: Social space in multi-species communities" at Durham University.
My PhD thesis, "Animal-Human Relations on the Household-farm in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland," was recently passed with no corrections (December 2017). This was an interdisciplinary project funded by the Wolfson Foundation, which considered the position and role of domestic animals in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and society, especially in relation to the concept of the household.
I received my MA from the University of York in January 2014. The title of my MA dissertation was: "The Horse and his Hero in Old Norse literature", which looked at list poems, Eddic poetry, and the Icelandic Family Sagas. While on the MA, I benefited from the Elizabeth Salter Fund in order to allow me to visit Aahus University in early 2013.
Supervisors: Matthew Townend and Steve Ashby
Formerly a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the project "COHABITing with Vikings: Social space in multi-species communities" at Durham University.
My PhD thesis, "Animal-Human Relations on the Household-farm in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland," was recently passed with no corrections (December 2017). This was an interdisciplinary project funded by the Wolfson Foundation, which considered the position and role of domestic animals in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and society, especially in relation to the concept of the household.
I received my MA from the University of York in January 2014. The title of my MA dissertation was: "The Horse and his Hero in Old Norse literature", which looked at list poems, Eddic poetry, and the Icelandic Family Sagas. While on the MA, I benefited from the Elizabeth Salter Fund in order to allow me to visit Aahus University in early 2013.
Supervisors: Matthew Townend and Steve Ashby
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Conference presentations by Harriet J Evans Tang
This paper brings together textual and archaeological evidence to re-consider the multifaceted aspects of ‘companionship’ that may have applied between dogs and humans in the Viking world, how dogs and humans may have lived together (or apart), and how these relationships may have affected their preservation in cultural events such as funerary rites and textual narratives. Alongside discussion of the burial evidence, the paper will consider evidence of human-dog relationships in life, such as dog-gnawed bones in middens, medieval legal regulation of canine behaviour, and the use of dogs in sayings and descriptions and nicknames of men. Touching on the dog gift-companions Karlsnautr and Selsnautr in Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar, the paper will propose a re-evaluation of how we conceive of gifts, companions, canine personhood and the ultimate result of such animal-human relationships as seen in the burial evidence.
Presented at the 18th International Saga Conference
Presented at the ViS conference: The Viking Age as a Foreign Place, University of Oslo
This paper proposes to look in greater depth at the possible emotional responses by animals in the Sagas of Icelanders, both in comparison with often taciturn and behavioural-focussed depictions of human emotional response, and by re-evaluating the double translation of emotion words that are assumed to indicate an emotion when applied to humans, and a purely physical response when applied to animals. It will argue that these moments of animal response using these words should be considered as equally emotive moments as the descriptions of human emotional response, and push for an altered tradition of translation, in which the behaviour of animals are considered on their own terms, and medieval Icelandic depictions of these behaviours are approached with greater awareness of the medieval Icelandic setting in which they have been formed.
While the rise of ecocriticism and animal studies has opened new avenues of inquiry in the study of Old Norse societies, much of the research arising from analysis of the texts, art, and artefacts of these societies routinely demonstrates that the line between the categories of human and animal was not always sharply defined. From the almost feral portrayal of berserkir in the Islendingasögur, to the interaction of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms in early Scandinavian ornamentation, to the ritualised treatment of human and animal bodies in burials, there is an evident overlap between the human and animal spheres of influence, and this ambiguity itself is a subject ripe for examination.
Utilising literary, linguistic, legal, and archaeological methodologies, this paper will use a selection of textual and archaeological material to explore and nuance this overlap. Laws, saga texts and atypical burials will be utilised to examine some of the evidence demonstrating an early Scandinavian understanding of animals as both objects and as agents. The paper will then conclude with a discussion of Freyfaxi, the prized equine companion to Hrafnkell Freysgoði, in order to consider the possibility of legal significance being ascribed to animal actions and its wider ramifications.
The migration to Iceland was a move to a land without the dangerous wild animals known from mainland Scandinavia and the British Isles. The place of Iceland then, in many ways, was a place of domestic animals. Yet in studies of animal-human relations in the Íslendingasögur, the place of the home has so far scarcely been considered (Rohrbach, 2009; Teuscher, 1990). Place is the third aspect of any relationship, and the places of these animal-human interactions, both the physical contexts of Viking-age and medieval Iceland, and the literary contexts of the sagas themselves, provide a way to focus on these narrative encounters that embraces the real animals behind the text. As the survival of Icelanders depended upon work with these animals, it cannot be denied that the experience of men and women in medieval Iceland would have shaped their perception of the world, and the stories they told (Ingold, 2011). Taking an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeology, climate data, and legal and literary studies, this paper will argue that the northern home-place is vital in understanding the animal-human relationships that we find depicted in the Íslendingasögur.
While the perception of space in the Viking period has been previously discussed (Hastrup, 2008, 1990, 1985; Kupiec and Milek, 2015; Skrede, 2005; Steinsland, 2005), these studies have neglected to consider the role of animals and animal places within perceptions of space in this period. Nonetheless, outside of Viking studies, scholars have suggested that animals can play key roles in the understanding and remembering of place (Jones, 1998; Mills, 2005; Sykes, 2014). This paper will focus on the spatial dimension of animal-human relations, with emphasis on how the embodied, sensory experience of dwelling with animals may have influenced the arrangement of space at Viking-age farms, and the possible effects of lived experience and daily practice on the writing of the past, suggesting that the settlement of Iceland was embodied both in the building of farms and the creation of narratives.
This paper will first consider the vital role of domestic animals in both the physical and cultural establishment of Iceland, before looking at the evolution of space and place at Sveigakot, an early settlement farm in the north of Iceland. The arrangement and claiming of space through building is a meaningful act, and rebuilding, adapting or repairing a built structure involves the transformation, alteration, or active continuing of place (Mullin 2011, 7; Thomas 1996, 89). This paper will ask what the building strategy at Sveigakot may mean, drawing on archaeological remains from the settlement period, and later textual narratives about this settlement to examine the transformation of space and materialisation of memory through spatial analysis, sensory archaeology, and cultural memory theory.
Post-humanist studies of animals often attempt to define what it means to be human, but when an animal figure is apparently placed into a human family, the lines drawn between the two become less distinct. In Old Norse-Icelandic literature, animals are sometimes seemingly placed into the family-unit. In Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, Hrafnkel refers to his horse fondly as his fóstri (‘fosterling’), and kills a man for having ridden him (Hrafnkels saga, ch. 5). This isn’t an isolated incident, and close readings of the Íslendingasögur can reveal a close relationship between certain domestic animals and the men and woman with whom they live and work.
Domestic animals were incredibly important in medieval Iceland. Living in close proximity to their livestock and with a heavy reliance on them for survival, perhaps it is to be expected that the sagas (as products of the medieval Icelandic imagination), might reflect a special opportunity to examine the cultural perception of these relationships. The purpose of my ongoing PhD project is to examine this relationship, especially in relation to the human household sphere, within an interdisciplinary methodology drawing on literary, documentary and archaeological sources and approaches.
Bearing this in mind, this project presentation proposes to consider the scope and depth of my ongoing thesis project, looking at the presence of domestic animals in the sagas and potential methodological challenges in conducting an interdisciplinary study into animal-human relations in medieval Icelandic agro-pastoral society. Focussing on the concept of the household-farm, this presentation will move forwards from Lévi-Strauss’ often quoted summation that living creatures are ‘good to think’ (Lévi-Strauss, 162), and discuss the sagas as places in which animals are ‘good to become (with)’ in a network of hybrid sociality within the saga-household.
Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, cited from Jón Jóhannesson, ed. 1950. Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, Íslenzk fornrit 11 (Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag), p. 104.
Lévi-Strauss, C, Totemism, trans. by Rodney Needham (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973).
Rohrbach, Lena, Der tierische Blick: Mensch-Tier-Relationen in der Sagaliteratur (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2009).
This paper brings together textual and archaeological evidence to re-consider the multifaceted aspects of ‘companionship’ that may have applied between dogs and humans in the Viking world, how dogs and humans may have lived together (or apart), and how these relationships may have affected their preservation in cultural events such as funerary rites and textual narratives. Alongside discussion of the burial evidence, the paper will consider evidence of human-dog relationships in life, such as dog-gnawed bones in middens, medieval legal regulation of canine behaviour, and the use of dogs in sayings and descriptions and nicknames of men. Touching on the dog gift-companions Karlsnautr and Selsnautr in Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar, the paper will propose a re-evaluation of how we conceive of gifts, companions, canine personhood and the ultimate result of such animal-human relationships as seen in the burial evidence.
Presented at the 18th International Saga Conference
Presented at the ViS conference: The Viking Age as a Foreign Place, University of Oslo
This paper proposes to look in greater depth at the possible emotional responses by animals in the Sagas of Icelanders, both in comparison with often taciturn and behavioural-focussed depictions of human emotional response, and by re-evaluating the double translation of emotion words that are assumed to indicate an emotion when applied to humans, and a purely physical response when applied to animals. It will argue that these moments of animal response using these words should be considered as equally emotive moments as the descriptions of human emotional response, and push for an altered tradition of translation, in which the behaviour of animals are considered on their own terms, and medieval Icelandic depictions of these behaviours are approached with greater awareness of the medieval Icelandic setting in which they have been formed.
While the rise of ecocriticism and animal studies has opened new avenues of inquiry in the study of Old Norse societies, much of the research arising from analysis of the texts, art, and artefacts of these societies routinely demonstrates that the line between the categories of human and animal was not always sharply defined. From the almost feral portrayal of berserkir in the Islendingasögur, to the interaction of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms in early Scandinavian ornamentation, to the ritualised treatment of human and animal bodies in burials, there is an evident overlap between the human and animal spheres of influence, and this ambiguity itself is a subject ripe for examination.
Utilising literary, linguistic, legal, and archaeological methodologies, this paper will use a selection of textual and archaeological material to explore and nuance this overlap. Laws, saga texts and atypical burials will be utilised to examine some of the evidence demonstrating an early Scandinavian understanding of animals as both objects and as agents. The paper will then conclude with a discussion of Freyfaxi, the prized equine companion to Hrafnkell Freysgoði, in order to consider the possibility of legal significance being ascribed to animal actions and its wider ramifications.
The migration to Iceland was a move to a land without the dangerous wild animals known from mainland Scandinavia and the British Isles. The place of Iceland then, in many ways, was a place of domestic animals. Yet in studies of animal-human relations in the Íslendingasögur, the place of the home has so far scarcely been considered (Rohrbach, 2009; Teuscher, 1990). Place is the third aspect of any relationship, and the places of these animal-human interactions, both the physical contexts of Viking-age and medieval Iceland, and the literary contexts of the sagas themselves, provide a way to focus on these narrative encounters that embraces the real animals behind the text. As the survival of Icelanders depended upon work with these animals, it cannot be denied that the experience of men and women in medieval Iceland would have shaped their perception of the world, and the stories they told (Ingold, 2011). Taking an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeology, climate data, and legal and literary studies, this paper will argue that the northern home-place is vital in understanding the animal-human relationships that we find depicted in the Íslendingasögur.
While the perception of space in the Viking period has been previously discussed (Hastrup, 2008, 1990, 1985; Kupiec and Milek, 2015; Skrede, 2005; Steinsland, 2005), these studies have neglected to consider the role of animals and animal places within perceptions of space in this period. Nonetheless, outside of Viking studies, scholars have suggested that animals can play key roles in the understanding and remembering of place (Jones, 1998; Mills, 2005; Sykes, 2014). This paper will focus on the spatial dimension of animal-human relations, with emphasis on how the embodied, sensory experience of dwelling with animals may have influenced the arrangement of space at Viking-age farms, and the possible effects of lived experience and daily practice on the writing of the past, suggesting that the settlement of Iceland was embodied both in the building of farms and the creation of narratives.
This paper will first consider the vital role of domestic animals in both the physical and cultural establishment of Iceland, before looking at the evolution of space and place at Sveigakot, an early settlement farm in the north of Iceland. The arrangement and claiming of space through building is a meaningful act, and rebuilding, adapting or repairing a built structure involves the transformation, alteration, or active continuing of place (Mullin 2011, 7; Thomas 1996, 89). This paper will ask what the building strategy at Sveigakot may mean, drawing on archaeological remains from the settlement period, and later textual narratives about this settlement to examine the transformation of space and materialisation of memory through spatial analysis, sensory archaeology, and cultural memory theory.
Post-humanist studies of animals often attempt to define what it means to be human, but when an animal figure is apparently placed into a human family, the lines drawn between the two become less distinct. In Old Norse-Icelandic literature, animals are sometimes seemingly placed into the family-unit. In Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, Hrafnkel refers to his horse fondly as his fóstri (‘fosterling’), and kills a man for having ridden him (Hrafnkels saga, ch. 5). This isn’t an isolated incident, and close readings of the Íslendingasögur can reveal a close relationship between certain domestic animals and the men and woman with whom they live and work.
Domestic animals were incredibly important in medieval Iceland. Living in close proximity to their livestock and with a heavy reliance on them for survival, perhaps it is to be expected that the sagas (as products of the medieval Icelandic imagination), might reflect a special opportunity to examine the cultural perception of these relationships. The purpose of my ongoing PhD project is to examine this relationship, especially in relation to the human household sphere, within an interdisciplinary methodology drawing on literary, documentary and archaeological sources and approaches.
Bearing this in mind, this project presentation proposes to consider the scope and depth of my ongoing thesis project, looking at the presence of domestic animals in the sagas and potential methodological challenges in conducting an interdisciplinary study into animal-human relations in medieval Icelandic agro-pastoral society. Focussing on the concept of the household-farm, this presentation will move forwards from Lévi-Strauss’ often quoted summation that living creatures are ‘good to think’ (Lévi-Strauss, 162), and discuss the sagas as places in which animals are ‘good to become (with)’ in a network of hybrid sociality within the saga-household.
Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, cited from Jón Jóhannesson, ed. 1950. Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, Íslenzk fornrit 11 (Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag), p. 104.
Lévi-Strauss, C, Totemism, trans. by Rodney Needham (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973).
Rohrbach, Lena, Der tierische Blick: Mensch-Tier-Relationen in der Sagaliteratur (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2009).
Deadline is this Friday!
By listening and observing the animal within, and beyond the text we can reach a deeper understanding of the presence of domestic animals in these sagas and the world of their composition and recording.
25th November 2015.
Have you ever wondered what someone could say about sheep in Njáls saga?
This talk will explore some of my current thinking about the impact of archaeology on the way we read the Icelandic sagas, and how by considering the full sensory experience of animal-human relations, we might start to see some rather odd goings on involving sheep, spaces, and some axe-wielding maniacs.