Norwegian medieval Latin literature was in its prime in the latter half of the 12th century. A number of Latin works on Norwegian history came into existence. In this interdisciplinary collection of articles, there is a presentation of these works and their backgrounds, and the correlation between the Latin and the Norse tradition is examined. Of central importance in the book is the cult of Olav the Saint whose seat was the cathedral in Trondheim (Nidaros). The development of the Legend of St. Olav and the collection of miracles belonging to it are discussed by specialists of various professions from different points of view -- liturgical, religious historical, sociological, philological and literary.

The economic and political roles of towns in the Nordic late Middle Ages - with Lubeck as the major hub in an extensive network - have long been recognized and studied, be it in histories of nations, the Hanse, or individual towns. In such accounts, however, the regional web of urban culture has not always been given its due. And, as most manifestations of urban culture were anchored in the social and business corporations generally designated as guilds, these provided the natural point of departure for an attempt to appreciate this dynamic segment of northern Europe's cultural history. In this collection, leading specialists in Nordic urban history examine towns from the whole region, as distant and different from one another, such as Tallinn, Bergen, Lubeck, Oslo, and Stockholm, among others. The contributions discuss central and significant topics, including means of communication, social identities, pageantry and feasting, and the religious role of guilds. The book's Introduction locates these studies, individually and collectively, in relation to recent developments in the exploration of a late-medieval field whose potential is increasingly appreciated.

This collection of studies is a sequel to Hagg's popular survey The Novel in Antiquity (1983), and a companion volume to his recent The Virgin and her Lover (with B. Utas, 2003). Parthenope offers an indexed version of his main contributions in the field, especially from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as previously unpublished work, a new introduction and a complete bibliography of the author. Apart from probing further into the literary world of Chariton, Xenophon, and Heliodoros, Hagg also widens the scope with studies on the Lives of Aesop and Apollonios of Tyana and on the oriental reception of the Greek novel.

Mythology is usually reserved for non-Christian religions. However, the adoption of Christianity in Northern and East-Central Europe between c. 1000 and 1300 can be adequately described as a myth-making process: local saints were added to the Christian pantheon in all regions entering Latin Europe. The present collection explores the links between local sanctity and the making of national myths in medieval historical writing. By bringing together specialists in history and literature of the European periphery in question, the case is made that the writing of history and saints lives from this pioneering period should been analysed together as mainly successful attempts at creating cultural foundation myths. The book is based on a conference held in Bergen in November 2003 on Historiography and the Holy and forms part of the research programme at the interdisciplinary Centre of Medieval Studies (CMS) at the University of Bergen.

The rise of literary fiction in medieval Europe has been a hotly debated topic for at least two decades. Important progress has been made, but difficulties remain in finding a common ground among scholars from various disciplines and regions. The present volume seeks to clarify and broaden the subject in two ways: first by including a wide range of medieval narratives irrespective of their modern label and affiliation to certain disciplines; secondly, these studies extend the discussion beyond the canonical French and German romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by focusing mainly on texts in Greek, Latin, and Old Norse and by opting for a "peripheral" and a long-term view of the problem. The chapters take us from Greco-Roman antiquity to medieval France, then to the Scandinavian lands and from there to south-eastern Europe and Byzantium as the link back to the Greco-Roman world. This disposition also follows a spiral motion in time: from Antiquity to Late Antiquity and from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. By broadening the linguistic as well as the geographical and chronological scope of the debate, the book shows that we should not think of one "rise of fiction", but rather of a potential always imbued in, and related to, historical narratives and that a modern understanding of medieval fiction cannot afford to disregard non-fictional or non-vernacular writing.