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February 24, 2025

Unexpected Cultural Encounters in Seventeenth Century Iceland: The Saga of Hamlet

Event Series: Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference

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Unexpected Cultural Encounters in Seventeenth Century Iceland: The Saga of Hamlet

The story of Hamlet is well-known throughout the world, having been popularized through Shakespeare’s play, but it has roots in a medieval Danish work. This talk will focus on a lesser-known version of this story that was written in Iceland in the seventeenth century. What would have happened if Hamlet’s murderous uncle had not shipped him away to be executed off-stage by the king of England? What if, instead, he had been sent to the Ottoman Empire, where he ended up fighting alongside Tamburlaine (Timur) against Emperor Bayezid? The Icelandic saga imagines an answer to these questions with cultural encounters between Scandinavia and Asia Minor, as well as between Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan. The talk will present this cosmopolitan material and address what these cultural encounters would have meant for Icelandic audiences during the turbulent seventeenth century.

This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and the Georgetown Humanities Initiative at Georgetown University with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. It is part of the series Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Baron Reznik

Participants

Philip Lavender

Philip Lavender

Philip Lavender is a researcher in the field of Old Norse and Early Modern Icelandic literature at the University of Gothenburg. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Long Lives of Short Sagas (2020) and co-editor along with Matilda Amundsen Bergström of Faking It!: The Performance of Forgery in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture (2022).

Michael Scott

Michael Scott

Michael Scott is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college advisor for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior advisor to the president of Georgetown University. Scott previously served as the pro-vice-chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice-chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University, where he is professor emeritus.