Cold Counsel is the only collection devoted to the place of women in Old Norse literature and culture. It draws upon the disciplines of history, sociology, feminism, ethnography and psychoanalysis in order to raise fresh questions about such new subjects as gender, class, sexuality, family structure and ideology in medieval Iceland.

As its title suggests, Cold Counsel: The Women of Old Norse Literature and Myth is the only collection devoted to the place of women in Old Norse literature and culture. Testifying to the rich relation between Icelandic culture and literature, Cold Counsel draws upon the disciplines of history, sociology, feminism, ethnography, and psychoanalysis in order to raise fresh questions about such new subjects as gender, class, sexuality, family structure and ideology in medieval Iceland.

Probing the local genius as expressed in history and customs, Swenson absorbs the anguish of colonization and dictatorship to reveal ordinary people and events with a sardonic humor, pathos and hope. Her travels arrive at moral ambiguities where cultures clash and where the human population devastates the natural environment. With remarkable technical dexterity, she searches beneath the surface of politics and philosophy to find essential human character.

Drawing from her work in comparative religion and cultural anthropology, Adrie Kusserow offers a collection of portraits of Westerners in the East and Easterners in the West struggling to relearn and relive their ideas of culture, religion, and God. These poems expose the human craving for the nourishment of a spiritual life. Celebrated poet Karen Swenson has written the Foreword. Adrie Kusserow received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University in 1996 and is currently associate professor of cultural anthropology at St. Michael's College in Vermont. She continues to do cross-cultural field work on the spread of Eastern philosophies to the West.