Fast Goes the Fleeting Time: The Miscellaneous Concepts of Time in Different Old Norse Genres and their Causes (eBook)

This work is concerned with time reckoning and perception in Old Norse culture. Based on an analysis of various prose and poetic works, the author reconstructs the native images of time, as well as their changes in relation to social development, namely the arrival of Christianity and feudalism to the North. The primary sources are divided into three groups. The first group comprises works that contain traces of the original domestic understanding of time, the 'Poetic Edda', 'Snorri's Edda', legendary and family sagas. The second group includes different types of texts, all of which adopt foreign concepts of time that spread to Iceland especially through various learned treatises and the influence of the Church. Lastly, it is examined how foreign time reckoning and perception affected the temporal structure of kings' and bishops' sagas included in the third group of sources.

Kristýna Králová (Department of Germanic studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University) focuses on the research of the Old Norse understanding of time and fate and their literary representations, including foreshadowing. She is also interested in modern literary adaptations of Old Norse motifs and led a project, the result of which was a monograph on this topic, containing among others chapters on Czech and Slovak adaptations. She also participated in a project researching popular literature in the Middle Ages, as part of which she contributed a chapter about popular features of the Old Norse 'þættir', which was included in the final monograph of the project.