In der letzten Zeit sind u.a. diese frei verfügbaren Titel erschienen:
Material Culture in the Swedish Navy, c. 1450-1850
Simon Ekström, Niklas Eriksson, Anna Maria Forssberg & Leos Müller (Hrsg.)
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003699408
Nearly 400 years have passed since the naval ship Vasa sank in Stockholm in 1628, and more than sixty years since its salvage in 1961. Today, Vasa stands as an iconic symbol – a ship, a shipwreck, a museum, and a unique manifestation of the material culture of Sweden’s early modern navy. But Vasa is not the only Swedish naval vessel of its time. Sweden’s naval records reveal nearly 900 other ships, each with a story very different from Vasa’s. Some were sunk in battle, many served in the navy for decades, others were repurposed as construction elements in harbours, or deliberately sunk at the entrances to Swedish cities and naval bases as obstacles for the enemy.
This volume focuses on and examines these forgotten or hidden ships as material culture, broadly defined to encompass all remains of the navy, from shipwrecks on the seabed to museum objects, archives, cannons, and even coffins made from ship timbers. The book highlights how new methods, techniques, and materials can challenge and enrich naval studies. It is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between underwater archaeology, history, ethnology, and cultural heritage studies from both Sweden and Finland.
The melody and rhythm of speech: General and Swedish prosody
Gösta Bruce
https://doi.org/10.7765/9789198740479
The book presents a comprehensive overview of the seminal approach to speech rhythm and melody developed by the world-renowned prosodist, Gösta Bruce. It examines prosodic phenomena (stress, tone, word accent, intonation) both from a phonetic and phonological point of view and at different levels of prosodic structure, from the word to text and dialogue with a focus on prosody’s different communicative functions.
Central chapters deal with word prosody, prominence and rhythm, tonal prominence and prosodic phrasing, using an Autosegmental-Metrical theoretical perspective. The chapter on word prosody examines the prosodic parameters stress, quantity, and tones both from a typological perspective as well as from a Scandinavian perspective. A following chapter on prominence and rhythm delves deeper into stress and speech rhythm in general. It also presents a phonological model for accounting for different degrees of rhythmic prominence and discusses phonetic cues to rhythmic prominence. A further major part of the book deals with tonal prominence and examines accentuation from both a typological perspective and relating more specifically to Swedish. Word accents and focusing in Swedish receive particular attention. A fourth key chapter on prosodic phrasing examines factors affecting prosodic grouping for the domains word, phrase, and utterance.
The book also includes a timely and valuable discussion of issues related to the methods of prosodic analysis as well as to the transcription of prosody. It applies the model for speech rhythm and accenting to discussions of dialectal variation, as well as to prosody acquisition, dysprosody, speech synthesis, and speech recognition.
Reflections of Traditional Oral Memory in the Eddas and Sagas
Gísli Sigurðsson
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112248492
The Eddas and Sagas of medieval Iceland are remarkable literary achievements, reflecting both the imaginative power and the memory practices of the culture that produced them. Written in various genres and narrative styles, these texts combine learned ideas of their time with traditional storytelling methods. They provide a vivid, often realistic depiction of the previous two to three centuries, gradually moving into the legendary and mythological as stories reach further back in time or into more distant realms. Understanding these texts as rooted in traditional oral memory—alongside the influences of medieval book culture—is essential to fully appreciating their form, purpose, and significance.
This book explores how Icelandic society remembered its past and environment, and how those memory practices shaped the literary culture. It examines what is unique about this literature, how the introduction of book culture transformed storytelling, and how written texts both preserved tradition and created new avenues for creativity and social prestige. The origins of Icelandic literary culture are traced to Norway, Ireland, and the British Isles, showing how intercultural exchange enriched narrative forms and themes.
Key texts, including Vǫluspá and Njáls saga, are analyzed to reveal how authors drew on both oral tradition and learned knowledge. The corpus of the Sagas of Icelanders demonstrates how oral memory shaped storytelling, mediating ideas about the natural world, history, and social norms. Snorri Sturluson’s Edda is highlighted as a sophisticated example of how writing was used to teach traditional mythology, using the sky as a mnemonic device for young poets learning the foundations of professional court poetry.
The book also examines the individuals who actively transformed oral tradition into literary culture. Snorri Sturluson and his nephew Sturla Þórðarson used the art of writing to elevate their social status while reshaping how their contemporaries—and later generations—understood the past. Their work laid the foundation for a new literary genre: the Sagas of Icelanders. Through their innovations, oral tradition was preserved, transformed, and made accessible to an increasingly literate audience, blending memory, history, and myth in unprecedented ways.
By combining literary analysis, historical context, and theories of memory, this book offers a fresh understanding of Icelandic medieval literature. It presents the Eddas and Sagas not merely as texts to be studied for their stories or history, but as dynamic cultural artifacts that illuminate the transition from oral to written culture, the negotiation of social power, and the creativity of individual authors working within and beyond their tradition. For scholars and general readers alike, it provides new insights into how medieval Icelanders remembered, narrated, and imagined their world.
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