Between History and Myth: Stories of Harald Fairhair and the Founding of the State

Between History and Myth: Stories of Harald Fairhair and the Founding of the State
ISBN-10
022614092X
ISBN-13
9780226140926
Category
History
Pages
296
Language
English
Published
2014-09
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Author
Bruce Lincoln

Description

Medieval accounts of how Norway was unified by its first king provide a lively, revealing, and wonderfully entertaining example of this process. Taking the story of how Harald Fairhair unified Norway in the ninth century as its central example, Bruce Lincoln illuminates the way a state's foundation story blurs the distinction between history and myth and how variant tellings of origin stories provide opportunities for dissidence and subversion as subtle - or not so subtle - modifications are introduced through details of character, incident, and plot structure.

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