Runic Kitsch: Medieval Modernity, Modern Medievalism, and the History of Philology

This research project will examine a history of views of pre-Christian Scandinavia that begins in the High Middle Ages and continuesin the present day, focusing on a persistent association between runic inscription, eddic poetry, and magic.

Rather than continuitiesor survivals of pre-Christian practices into the Christian period, this research will reveal them as fundamentally High to Late Medievalpractices (such as magical runic inscriptions using eddic meters, and eddic poetry referring to runes and magic) showing a form ofalienated attraction toward the pagan past.

The survival of this attitude will be traced through the Early Modern period, in whichlearned writers not only take these Medieval Christian textual objects at face value, but also reproduce their stance of alienatedattraction, continuing to view the pre-Christian past as a source of esoteric knowledge.

Finally, we see this view continuallyreproduced through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries even as modern philology continues to develop.

In this period, we alsosee both “serious” scholarship on this subject and para-academic occultist interest in it become increasingly entangled with thepolitics of the far right.

Ultimately this research will reveal the continuing stance of alienated attraction as a form of runic “kitsch.” Theproject will be carried out in four phases to cover the necessary methodological concerns and sources from three periods (Medieval,Early Modern, Modern).

The results will be disseminated as a monograph manuscript, as well as in media articles and through papersgiven at international conferences.