Castles of the Mind in Old Norse Culture: Archeological and Literary Evidence of St. Clement’s Church in Niðaróss

Stefka G. Eriksen

Environmental Archaeology, 2023, vol. 28, issue 1, 35-44

Abstract: This article juxtaposes the recently excavated archeological remains of St. Clement’s church in medieval Niðaróss (five wooden churches on top of each other with a material connection to a sixth older church) to the way the church is described in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, the long saga about Óláfr Tryggvason, and the Icelandic Laxdæla saga. The main aim of this article is to investigate whether the material continuity of the site, as attested by the archeology, is directly reflected in the literary sources, or whether cultural continuity is emphasised in a different way in the literary sources. The material and textual evidence will be interpreted to reveal new insights about the nature of and dynamics between natural/material and cultural/ideological continuity in medieval Christendom. The discussion also has further implications concerning interdisciplinary methods in medieval studies and environmental history.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14614103.2021.1953935 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:yenvxx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:35-44

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/yenv20

DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2021.1953935

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental Archaeology is currently edited by Tim Mighall

More articles in Environmental Archaeology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().