Bio

 

With a joint appointment at Harvard in Scandinavian and in Folklore and Mythology, my research and teaching naturally address a wide variety of genres and periods of Nordic culture and literature, and issues in folklore, centering on popular traditions, mythology, and legends in the late medieval and early modern periods, but I have also written on such diverse topics as Scandinavian drama and women's autobiographical literature in the 17th century (Job in Female Garb: Studies on the Autobiography of Agneta Horn [1985]). I am the author of Heroic Sagas and Ballads (1991), a study of the medieval Icelandic mythical-heroic sagas and their heritage in more recent Scandinavian ballads and other oral traditions, and of the medieval section of A History of Swedish Literature (1996), work for which I was awarded The Dag Strömbäck Prize from The Royal Gustav Adolf Academy, and was a co-editor of the 2nd edition of A.B. Lord's The Singer of Tales (2000). My recent research, including as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a visitor at the University of Aarhus, resulted in a book-length study of witchcraft and magic throughout medieval Scandinavia, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (2011) for which I was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow. In 2013, I was a Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, extending this earlier research with a project on medieval and early modern Nordic charm magic. In recent years, my research has also increasingly focused on memory studies, performance, and representations of the past (e.g., Minni and Muninn. Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture [2014], edited with Pernille Hermann and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches [2018], edited with Jürg Glauser and Pernille Hermann, and Old Norse Folklore: Tradition, Innovation, and Performance in Medieval Scandinavia [2023]). I was deeply honored to be awarded an honorary doctorate by Aarhus University in 2015 and the Jarl Gallén Prize in 2019, and to be presented with Myth, Magic, and Memory in Early Scandinavian Narrative Culture. Studies in Honour of Stephen A.Mitchell, edited by Jürg Glauser and Pernille Hermann, with Stefan Brink and Joseph Harris, in 2021.

As an undergraduate, I attended the University of California, Berkeley (A.B. in Anthropology and Scandinavian Languages and Literatures), as well as the University of Lund, Sweden, and later the University of Minnesota (Ph.D., in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures). In addition to being part of Harvard’s Scandinavian Program, and an active member (and frequent chairman) of The Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology, I have also been a curator of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature and serve on the Committee on Medieval Studies and the Standing Committee on Archaeology. Since coming to Harvard in 1980, I have been very involved in student life, and am the former Master of Eliot House (1991-2000). Together with colleagues from Aarhus University and Moesgaard Museum, Denmark, I annually teach in and direct Harvard’s Viking Studies Program in Scandinavia, featured in USA Today as one of the nation’s most unique study abroad programs.