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Description: Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
buy the print edition
  • Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
  • Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
  • Studies in Old Norse Literature
  • Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
  • Copyright
  • Illustrations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Note on Conventions
  • Frontispiece
  • Introduction
  • PART I
  • 1 Wholeness and Partibility: Bodily Fragmentation in Mythological Narrative and Old Norse Poetics
  • 2 Sword-Prostheses and Grafted Limbs: More-Than-Human Embodiment in Fornaldarsögur
  • PART II
  • 3 ‘Allir hlutir væri smíðaðir af nokkuru efni’: Materiality, Personhood and Agency in Mythological Narrative and Old Norse Poetics
  • 4 Humans, Animals and the ‘Intimate Caesura’: Transgression and Transformation in the Sigurðr-Cycle
  • PART III
  • 5 Words of Change: Old Norse Terminologies and Concepts of Transformation
  • 6 Tales of Change: Narrative Patterns and Thematic Functions of Transformation
  • ​Conclusion: Beyond Binaries and Between Boundaries
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Studies in Old Norse Literature
  • Open Access Titles
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Copyright

Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature

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© Adèle Kreager 2026
Some Rights Reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
The right of Adèle Kreager to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2026
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 978 1 84384 805 9 (Hardback)
ISBN 978 1 84384 808 0 (Paperback)
ISBN 978 1 84384 807 3 (ePUB)
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
Our Authorised Representative for product safety in the EU is Easy Access
System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn,
Estonia, gpsr.requests@easproject.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Open Access Licence: CC–BY–NC–ND
Funding Body: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Dorothea Coke Fund
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate
Cover image: Hylestad Stave Church carvings. Photo: Kristian Hilsen (1971),
Nasjonalbiblioteket i Oslo, public domain, https://urn.nb.no/
URN:NBN:no-nb_digifoto_20160307_00011_NB_MIT_FNR_27264.
Cover design by waynekehoe.com
Cross references refer to page numbers in the print edition

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Description: Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
buy the print edition
View details
    • Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
    • Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
    • Studies in Old Norse Literature
    • Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
    • Copyright
    • Illustrations
    • Acknowledgements
    • Abbreviations
    • Note on Conventions
    • Frontispiece
    • Introduction
    • PART I
    • 1 Wholeness and Partibility: Bodily Fragmentation in Mythological Narrative and Old Norse Poetics
    • 2 Sword-Prostheses and Grafted Limbs: More-Than-Human Embodiment in Fornaldarsögur
    • PART II
    • 3 ‘Allir hlutir væri smíðaðir af nokkuru efni’: Materiality, Personhood and Agency in Mythological Narrative and Old Norse Poetics
    • 4 Humans, Animals and the ‘Intimate Caesura’: Transgression and Transformation in the Sigurðr-Cycle
    • PART III
    • 5 Words of Change: Old Norse Terminologies and Concepts of Transformation
    • 6 Tales of Change: Narrative Patterns and Thematic Functions of Transformation
    • ​Conclusion: Beyond Binaries and Between Boundaries
    • Bibliography
    • Index
    • Studies in Old Norse Literature

Details

Description: Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
Stable URL:https://openaccess.boydellandbrewercms.com/?id=-318694
Open Access license
Investigates how Old Norse myth, saga, and poetic traditions imagine human identity through encounters with animals, materials, and environments.

What happens to the category of the "human" in a world where bodies shift shape, objects fuse with living beings, and identities slip between species? This book explores how thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Icelandic texts confront this question, treating transformation not just as a narrative device, but as a way of thinking about what people are and how they inhabit the world.

From the fragmented and reassembled bodies in Snorra Edda to the intricate play between humans and things in skaldic verse and eddic riddles; from mind-altering acts of consumption in the Sigurðr-cycle to the sequence of limb-loss, prosthetic substitution, and reattachment in Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana-these works reveal a culture keenly attuned to bodily contingency and material entanglement. Tracing episodes and images of change across the corpus, including the wider lexicon of shapeshifting, the author presents a vision of medieval Icelandic thought creatively alive to the instability of human identity in its running negotiation with the nonhuman world.

This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND.
Author
Adèle Kreager
PublisherD.S.Brewer
Print publication date Jun, 2026
Print ISBN 9781843848059
EISBN 9781843848073

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Adèle Kreager. "Copyright." In Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature. D.S.Brewer, 2026. Accessed August 23, 2026. Librios IMS, https://openaccess.boydellandbrewercms.com/?id=-318698CITANCHOR.
Adèle Kreager. "Copyright." In Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature. D.S.Brewer, 2026. Accessed August 23, 2026. https://openaccess.boydellandbrewercms.com/?id=-318698CITANCHOR.
Adèle Kreager
Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature
Librios IMS
D.S.Brewer
June 9, 2026
August 23, 2026
https://openaccess.boydellandbrewercms.com/?id=-318698CITANCHOR