Though the crusades have garnered significant critical interest of late, little attention has been paid to the effects of the crusades on the literature of medieval Scandinavia. This article seeks to shed light on this understudied area by exploring the representation of crusading in the Old Icelandic Magnussona Saga, a narrative that tells the story of Sigurðr I of Norway and his crusade to the Holy Land in the early 12th century. Exploring the saga's global visionand how it differs from that seen in other European textsallows for a fuller understanding of the representations of the crusades during the global Middle Ages, particularly in terms of how these campaigns affected European literatures, even those produced on the fringes of the known world.

The crusades – specifically those focused on the recovery of Jerusalem – had a sustained impact on the literary culture of medieval England. While medieval France, Italy, and Germany produced far greater numbers of crusaders, a significant number of Englishmen participated in a variety of crusading campaigns as well, and the idea of crusading remained deeply important to the culture of medieval England for centuries after the collapse of the Latin Kingdom in the late thirteenth century. The popularity of the subject matter pervaded a wide variety of cultural registers, and, perhaps surprisingly, seems to have gained literary traction as the frequency of crusades to Jerusalem waned in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract