HA is now the Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe

We have changed our name to Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe (JEMNE). We've updated our domain to jemne.org and our mission statement. Links to articles published under The Heroic Age will continue to function without change.

We hope you share our excitement as we transition!

Mission

JEMNE is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the exploration of all aspects of early medieval Northwestern Europe from c. 300–c. 1400. Our mission is to provide a forum for the investigation of the histories, cultures, and peoples of the medieval North Atlantic and North Sea regions in their local, intercultural, and global contexts. We seek to publish work using a variety of methodologies and frameworks both emergent and traditional. We welcome innovative approaches to the field.

Issue 21: Teaching in the Middle Ages

Beowulf and Medievalism: The Monsters Are Now Heroes

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11106534

Abstract: Assigning works of medievalism alongside canonical medieval texts can prove effective in engaging student interest and introducing new perspectives to familiar material. In this essay, I discuss teaching strategies that proved effective in my newly-created senior seminar course, Beowulf and Medievalism. In this course, I teach two translations of Beowulf, Seamus Heaney’s 1991 version and Maria Dahvana Headley’s 2020 version. Students then read several revisionist novels: John Gardner’s Grendel (1971), Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead (1976), Susan Signe Morrison Grendel’s Mother (2015), and Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife (2018). Student responses to these works not only sparked interest in the original text, but inspired research on a variety of topics, including ecocritical perspectives to Beowulf, Beowulf-inspired video gaming, toxic masculinity in the heroic code, and the roles of women in both Anglo-Saxon and contemporary society. Notably, students showed interest in the shifting role of Grendel and Grendel’s mother, from monsters to heroes, as reflections of today’s political and cultural concerns.

Teaching the Middle Ages in the Global South: A Few Whys and Hows

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11264875

Abstract: The study and teaching of the Middle Ages have been challenged lately. This article aims to discuss why and how this context can be studied and taught. The text addresses the problem trying to answer those questions in the Global South. The main argument is as the Global South has no direct connection to the early medieval period, a relation of alterity (instead of continuity) is imposed, while in the Global North the argument for continuity prevails. The article also argues that addressing distant pasts (as the early Middle Ages) from a meaningful pedagogical perspective using backward design methodologies can contribute to shape historical consciousnesses that are attentive to diversity, empowering students to imagine and build more diverse futures.

Issue 21: General Articles

Scyld and Grendel: Two Reigns of Terror

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11106950

Abstract: Scyld Scefing is often praised as a god cyning “good king” (11), who establishes a heroic encomium in the prologue of Beowulf. However, on closer investigation, we will argue that the brave deeds of Scyld do not appear very different from Grendel’s fyrendæda “crime-deeds” (1001). We will contend that this parallelism has profound ethical implications for both the famous Scyld and the infamous Grendel, and the juxtaposition of the Scyld-episode and Grendel-episode serves to highlight their lexical and thematic similarities. In this article, we will challenge conventional readings of Scyld as an appropriative model of heroism in the poem. We will suggest that while Grendel represents a terror to Denmark, Scyld equally represents a terror from Denmark. In the violent world of Beowulf, heroes and monsters reign supreme, and both pillage, plunder and terrorize their neighbors.

Reviews

Jones, Fossil Poetry

Miles Tittle (University of Ottawa)

The Politics of Exile in Early Northumbria

Abstract: The politics of exile in early Bernicia and Deira between c. 592 and 635 can tell us a great deal about the political environment and orientation of their kingdoms in the early seventh century.

Holocene Relative Sea-Level Changes in Western Scotland: The Early Insular Situation of Dun Add (Kintyre) and Dumbarton Rock (Strathclyde)

Abstract: Dun Add, an important center of the Dalriadic Scots, was established on a rocky outcrop that now protrudes from the land-locked flats of Crinan Moss, an unlikely situation for a defensive fortification. Given well-established post-glacial changes in sea levels, the outcrop was clearly once an island in Crinan Bay; however, it is not known whether the stronghold was first constructed on an island or later, when falling sea-levels had already abandoned the outcrop above the shoreline. Consideration of the present situation of the site above local mean sea level, the extent of peat deposition overlying buried estuarine terraces, and post-glacial uplift in the vicinity, indicates that when the fortification was first constructed (circa 300 BC) the outcrop was largely surrounded by the sea, and retained promontory or island status as late as AD 460–770. To validate uplift data, relative sea-level changes were compared against historical records for Dumbarton Rock. These records (i) provide independent validation of the model for local post-glacial uplift and (ii) demonstrate that the first fortifications at this second site, in or before the sixth century, were also constructed when the outcrop was an island. Post-glacial uplift could have contributed to recorded siege and seizure of Dun Add in the sixth/seventh centuries.