Abstract:
Paradise Found: Environmental Rhetoric in Old Norse and English Translations of the Vinland Sagas, Eiríks saga rauða and Grœnlendinga saga
When confronting quandaries about climate change and the evolving relationship between nature and culture, historical literatures offer a unique window into how people of the past engaged with their environments. The Vínland sagas—Eiríks saga rauða and Grœnlendinga saga—are two Old Norse travel narratives in which landscape plays a central role. The differing terrains of Iceland, Greenland, and Vínland evoke a spectrum of emotions in saga figures: they inspire, terrify, intrigue, unsettle, impress, and even tire, ultimately catalyzing emotional responses that drive the two plots forward.
This project is thus guided by three key questions: How are these human-nonhuman interactions depicted in the original texts? Why might they have been portrayed in this particular way? And how faithfully do various English translations preserve the original ecological language? By compiling a lexicon of verbs used in the sagas to depict human-nonhuman interaction and comparing these constructions across the Old Norse corpus, I aim to shed light on potential medieval perspectives on nature-culture dynamics while simultaneously exploring how these perspectives are preserved in translations meant for a modern, English speaking audience.
Presentations of the project
- Burgoyne, Joshua C. (September 2025): The paper “Sanguine or Sweet: Dew as a Transitional Motif in Grœnlendingasaga,” presented at the conference “Eco-Emotions on Water,” University of Oslo, Norway.
- Burgoyne, Joshua C. (July 2026): The paper "Paradise Found?: Agential Landscape in the Vínland sagas, Eiríks saga rauða and Grœnlendinga saga," presented at Leeds International Medieval Congress.
- Burgoyne, Joshua C. (September 2026): The paper “‘Sukku þeir Skrælingar í jǫrð níðr’: Vínland, the Vínlanders, and Human Entanglements with Earth,” presented at the conference “Eco-Emotions on Earth,” University of Oslo, Norway.