Our seminar concerns the formation of “cultural memory” in the Nordic High and Late Middle Ages: How and why were various modes of remembering simultaneously invoked when reference was made to the past?

Our discussions—informed by scholars representing such disciplines as history, literature, folklore, religion, and archaeology—will focus on problems of memory construction and on how competing memories (i.e., hegemonic and non-hegemonic memories, centrally promoted memories, and popular counter-memories) encounter each other, and how such discourses shaped conceptions of the past and pastness.