Landscape of Desire

Landscape of Desire

Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World

Gillian R. Overing and Marijane Osborn

$24.50 paper
ISBN: 0-8166-2375-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-2375-4

An exhilarating journey across a distant literary landscape, this book takes us to those places described, evoked, or invented in Beowulf and the sagas of Iceland. Chronicling their own travels in Scandinavia, charting the geography of medieval history and fiction, the authors negotiate the complex territory where past and present meet. In this encounter, ancient and modern viewpoints converge, forming a new way into the northern world of medieval literature.

Overing and Osborn use a variety of approaches, borrow from different disciplines, and employ an array of styles to discover and "reinvent" the landscape of these texts. Through their scholarly appraisals and personal encounters, maps and photographs, we accompany them as they follow Beowulf's sea route and travel to Drangey, the remote island in the Saga of Grettir. Here and at numerous other legendary sites, we see how the past is made up of divergent stories told in the present, and how our own histories and desires influence the shape and purpose of those stories.

These experiences and places, imagined and real, frame a new and essentially interdisciplinary space where a conversation among different professional, personal, and cultural viewpoints-a conversation that engages individual desire-can take place. This book will appeal to medievalists, historians, cultural geographers, critical theorists, and those who like to travel, whether in literature or their own good time.

"An extraordinarily rich study of the power of place in the Northern medieval world by two medievalists, who are also 'compleat geographers' in that they do fieldwork that is always informed by theory and they demonstrate exceptional sensitivity to place's double nature-compelling presence and elusiveness to interpretation." —Yi-Fu Tuan

"A wonderful book-richly textured, deeply personal, steeped in the power and presence of past place. Our mental maps of Beowulf and of the Icelandic sagas will never be the same again." —Roberta Frank

"A unique narrative describing the authors' Scandinavian journeys, by land and sea, undertaken together to recover the geomythic sites of Beowulf and the five famous sagas of Egil, Njal, Laxdæla, Hrafnkel, and Grettir. The result is an intellectually exhilarating and imaginatively compelling documentary." —Dolores Warwick Frase

"This unusual meditation on time and place by two Anglo-Saxon scholars will leave medievalists' thinking about Northern culture altered and enhanced." —Fred C. Robinson

Gillian R. Overing is professor of English at Wake Forest University. Marijane Osborn is professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

176 pages | 6 x 9 | 1994
14 color photographs, 17 black-and white photographs, 5 illustrations

Contents

Introduction

1. Mapping Beowulf

Reinventing Beowulf's voyage to Denmark

Traveling home with Beowulf

2. Geography in the Reader

Place in Question

Iceland and Icelanders

Places in Question

Selves in Place

Places in Translation and the Metonymy of Terrain

3. The Saga of the Saga

The Road to Drangey

Where's Grettir?



Landscape of Desire *Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World* Gillian R. Overing and Marijane Osborn		$24.50 paper ISBN: 0-8166-2375-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-2375-4
An exhilarating journey across a distant literary landscape, this book takes us to those places described, evoked, or invented in Beowulf and the sagas of Iceland. Chronicling their own travels in Scandinavia, charting the geography of medieval history and fiction, the authors negotiate the complex territory where past and present meet. In this encounter, ancient and modern viewpoints converge, forming a new way into the northern world of medieval literature. Overing and Osborn use a variety of approaches, borrow from different disciplines, and employ an array of styles to discover and "reinvent" the landscape of these texts. Through their scholarly appraisals and personal encounters, maps and photographs, we accompany them as they follow Beowulf's sea route and travel to Drangey, the remote island in the Saga of Grettir. Here and at numerous other legendary sites, we see how the past is made up of divergent stories told in the present, and how our own histories and desires influence the shape and purpose of those stories. These experiences and places, imagined and real, frame a new and essentially interdisciplinary space where a conversation among different professional, personal, and cultural viewpoints-a conversation that engages individual desire-can take place. This book will appeal to medievalists, historians, cultural geographers, critical theorists, and those who like to travel, whether in literature or their own good time. "An extraordinarily rich study of the power of place in the Northern medieval world by two medievalists, who are also 'compleat geographers' in that they do fieldwork that is always informed by theory and they demonstrate exceptional sensitivity to place's double nature-compelling presence and elusiveness to interpretation." —Yi-Fu Tuan "A wonderful book-richly textured, deeply personal, steeped in the power and presence of past place. Our mental maps of Beowulf and of the Icelandic sagas will never be the same again." —Roberta Frank "A unique narrative describing the authors' Scandinavian journeys, by land and sea, undertaken together to recover the geomythic sites of Beowulf and the five famous sagas of Egil, Njal, Laxdæla, Hrafnkel, and Grettir. The result is an intellectually exhilarating and imaginatively compelling documentary." —Dolores Warwick Frase "This unusual meditation on time and place by two Anglo-Saxon scholars will leave medievalists' thinking about Northern culture altered and enhanced." —Fred C. Robinson Gillian R. Overing is professor of English at Wake Forest University. Marijane Osborn is professor of English at the University of California, Davis. 176 pages \| 6 x 9 \| 1994 14 color photographs, 17 black-and white photographs, 5 illustrations Contents Introduction 1. Mapping Beowulf Reinventing Beowulf's voyage to Denmark Traveling home with Beowulf 2. Geography in the Reader Place in Question Iceland and Icelanders Places in Question Selves in Place Places in Translation and the Metonymy of Terrain 3. The Saga of the Saga The Road to Drangey Where's Grettir?