This year I was fortunate enough to give a presentation at The Háskóli Íslands Student Conference on the Medieval North, a wonderful conference for graduate students to share their early research across literature, history and archaeology. Sadly, with Covid, this took place in the slightly dingy confines of my room rather than Reykjavik, but it was still a great experience with some really interesting ideas shared.
I presented a paper titled Landnámabók – A Socio-Onomastic Case-Study, building on the work I originally undertook for my undergraduate degree. I have talked about some of the examples of this research here (including background information about Landnámabók as a source) but, broadly, I explore the social systems behind the trends and themes in nickname choices.
The conference recording (audio only) is available below if you’d like to listen through. (For a fun side game: spot the slip-of-the-tongue where I believe I accidentally misquote a date by 1000 years).
The conference has also published its proceedings, which can be found for free, accessible to all, here. They cover a wide range of linguistic, historical and archaeological examinations of the period, and there are some really amazing papers included in the collection.
