The Jew Who Wasn't There: Studies on Jews and Their Absence in Old Norse Literature

Abstract

This dissertation explores certain attitudes towards Jews and Judaism in Old Norse literature. Regardless of an apparent lack of actual Jewish settlement in the Nordic region during the Middle Ages, medieval Icelanders and Norwegians frequently turned to the image of 'the Jew' in writing and in art, sometimes using him as an abstract theological model, or elsewhere constructing a similar kind of ethnic Other to the anti-Semitic tropes we find in medieval societies where gentiles really did live alongside Jews. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the differing histories and functions projected onto the absent Jew in medieval Scandinavia.