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Living past: Revenants in the sagas as porters of memory

Publication |
2019

Abstract

This paper poses a question in the framework of memory studies: is it possible to see Old Norse revenants as a bearer of memory? Beings that come from the past in the present could be an example of this discipline of par excellence. Memory studies offer a more modest perspective, as they are concentrating on the context as memory is the context in what the story is set into.

In the framework of it, sagas are eg seen there snapshots of working memory, exploration of social and ethic spaces, as communal identity negotiations and revenants could be understood as one of those conditions, contingencies, that influence the flow of events - but for memory studies an important and specific one, as themselves come from the past.