Vol 37 (2024)

This special issue unmutes and reveal new nuances of the sound cultures of the medieval North. Collectively, we study sounds and aural communication on judicial and social level, on religious and on ecological level. We study how sound and silence are valued in the North (Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Denmark), compared to Europe. We study intra- and extradiegetic sounds based on texts of various materialities (manuscripts and inscriptions), scripts (Latin and runic alphabet), languages (Old Norse and Latin) and literary genres (law texts, hagiography, Icelandic family sagas, Old Norse translations).

The sounds discussed encompass verbal, embodied and extended communication between humans of various social standing, and between humans and natural and supernatural energies, animals, and things.  We discuss urban and rural soundscapes,  as  well  as  the  soundscapes  of churches and farmhouses. We thus move beyond established dichotomies and hopefully demonstrate how sound appears as the nexus between body/mind, textual/material/immaterial culture, visual/aural culture, culture/nature, human/non-human. Even though we engage with and study mostly textual cultures, we point out to some of the ways the texts can be linked to their cultural/built, environment and natural surroundings, thus highlighting the huge potential of interdisciplinary approaches to sound, to which we hope to return in the future.