PhD Candidate Tara Athanasiou Article Published in the Journal of Medieval History

University of the Highlands and Islands Institute for Northern Studies PhD candidate Tara Athanasiou has an article published in the Journal of Medieval History reviewing UHI INS Visiting Professor Judith Jesch book 'The Saga of the Earls of Orkney'.

Tara’s PhD research, titled 'Place, Space and Mobility – Female Networks in the Viking Age and Early Medieval Period' is centred around gendered space and mobility in the Viking Age and early medieval period. Her thesis will examine how female mobility was enacted across the full spectrum of physical space, from within the ‘home’ itself, the community and district through to movement over significant geographical space.

Tara writes, "Although the saga is focused largely on the power relations and conflicts between the rival earls of Orkney and the elites, it provides a window into the varying roles, identities and opportunities open to women. As the pioneer of the study of Norse women through her 1991 monograph Women in the Viking Age, an evaluation of Jesch’s translation choices in relation to the female characters in the saga is a fruitful one. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards’ 1978 edition of the same saga reflected the idiom of its time and tempered its translation choices to meet contemporary sensitivities around gender.

By contrast, Jesch’s translation provides more depth, colour and insight into the cast of female characters. In chapters eight and nine, Ragnhildr Eiríksdóttir works her way through marriage to three successive brother earls, inciting murder and insurgency along the way. After a conspiracy to kill her second husband fails, she distances herself from her erstwhile collaborator, a man named Einarr. The Jesch translation contains none of the dissembling of the Pálsson and Edwards translation, which delicately states that Ragnhildr then ‘refused to have anything to do with him’. Instead, Jesch’s version bluntly states that Ragnhildr refused to ‘have sex with him’. In Jesch’s translation, Raghnhildr openly wields her sexuality as a form of power, providing insights into the perceived avenues of agency available to women at the time the saga was compiled."

The full article is available to read on the Journal of Medieval History website.

The publisher includes 50 free eprints of the article.