New Focus on Retrospective Methods

Resuming methodological discussions: case studies from Northern Europe

Edited by Eldar Heide and Karen Bek-Pedersen

Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica). 2014. 230 pp.
ISBN 978-951-41-1093-1
35 euros

The articles featured in this volume concern folkloristics, philology, comparative linguistics, cultural geography, iconography, Old Norse studies and the history of religion in Scandinavia, but in particular they concern the questions of whether, how and to what extent late-recorded material can be used to shed light on historically much earlier periods.

It is a blunt fact that our sources for the study of pre-Christian times in Northern Europe are few, fragmentary and immensely limited. However, it is possible to obtain new and relevant information if we broaden our spectrum of sources to include not only contemporary or near-contemporary material, but also material from subsequent, even much later, periods. Showcasing that and how this may be done is the aim of the present volume. Seeking to reopen discussions that have been silent for some time, these articles, each in their way, target a range of methodological issues that are in need of being updated for the twenty-first century.

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