This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Sca
“Turning to face north, face the north, we enter our own unconscious. Always, in retrospect, the journey north has the quality of dream.” Margaret Atwood, �
This volume contains work by scholars actively publishing on origin legends across early medieval western Europe, from the fall of Rome to the high Middle Ages.
The word "West" is omnipresent and often unquestioned. The goal of this volume is to elaborate a critical reflection on this concept and make these implicit pro