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 presented this cosmopolitan material and address what these cultural encounters would have meant for Icelandic audiences during the turbulent seventeenth century.
This event was 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
