Name: Elisabeth Maria Magin
PhD: Runology
Thesis Title: Runes, runic writing and runic inscriptions as primary sources for town development in medieval Bergen, Norway
Thesis Description:
The aim of my thesis is to identify how, in which contexts and for which purposes runes were used in the medieval trading centre of Bergen, Norway by using modern EDP equipment. Much of my work is based on an archaeological database compiling the information that was uncovered in the so-called Bryggen excavations between 1955 and 1979 after a fire destroyed four house rows of the old merchant quarter of the city. Adding a runological database to the already existing archaeological database, and adding information from other excavation within the city centre as well, I will endeavour to identify certain areas of activity in the medieval town of Bergen with the aim of gaining more information on everyday life in Bergen.
Much of the work in my thesis is based on my dissertation which explored the possibilities of computerised data processing in runology. The corpus consisted of 100 of the 700 Bergen inscriptions. Some of the results were presented at Nottingham Rune Rede in March 2015.
Supervisors and Institution(s):
Judith Jesch, Professor of Viking Studies, Faculty of Arts, School of English, University of Nottingham
Christopher King, Assistant Professor (Archaeology), Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology, University of Nottingham
Gitte Hansen, Professor, The Cultural History Collections, University Museum of Bergen
Publications (please include full details with page nos. or web links):
- Review article: Arnulf Krause: Die wirkliche Mittelerde. European Journal of Scandinavian Studies. Volume 44, Issue 1, Pages 126–163.
- Review article: Reinhart Bleck: Entstehung des Nibelungenstoffes im 8. Jahrhundert. Linguistica e Filologia. Volume 34, Pages 171–176.
- Review article: The Viking World - Diversity and Change. The Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter, Issue 12-13, Pages 174-177.
- Journal article: Runes, Runic Writing and Runic Inscriptions as Primary Sources for Town Development in Medieval Bergen, Norway. The Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter, Issue 12-13, Pages 196-199.
Scholarly / Public Engagement Activities:
year: 2019
- M3C-funded PhD student at The University of Nottingham (since October 2015)
- Student Ambassador for Vikings and Anglo-Saxonx for Schools (since September 2016)
- Webside Editor for the Centre of the Study of the Viking Age (since September 2016)
- Between a rock and a hard place: Runic literacy in Bergen 1100-1400, Urban Literacy Seminar, Århus, January
year: 2018
- Rethinking Runology, The 12th Bergen International Postgraduate Symposium in Old Norse Studies 2018: Norms, Laws and Literature, Bergen, April
- Unicode & Runicode – how runes get onto your screen, M3C Research Festival, Birmingham, May
- Runes – how do they compute?, I vesterled – Westward bound, Bergen, October
- Taming fire, taking revenge – medieval runes and magic, Troublesome Elements, Leicester, November
- The Data Challenge: How to squeeze an excavation into a computer, Nottingham, December
year: 2017
- “Data mining the Middle Ages?”, The 11th Bergen International Postgraduate Symposium in Old Norse Studies 2017, Bergen, April
- “Trader, doctor, wife – female identities in medieval Bergen”, Midlands Viking Symposium 2017, Birmingham, April
- “Medieval Matters”, School of English PGR Symposium, Nottingham, May
- “Mind your language, Sir!”, Change: Archaeological Evidence for Socio-political, Cultural and Physical Transitions, Nottingham, May
- “Important Message Incoming!”, M3C Research Festival 2017, Leicester, May
“Kvinner på Bryggen – runeinnskrifter som spor etter kvinnelig tilstedeværelse”, Institutt for lingvistiske, litterære og estetiske studier, Bergen, September
- “Mens Bergen ble by: runeinnskrifter og runeristere mellom 1100 og 1300”, GIS-dagen 2017, Bergen, November
year: 2016
- “A name, what’s in a name?”, The 10th Bergen-UK Old Norse Postgraduate Symposium, Bergen, April
- “Databases in the Middle Ages? How?”, M3C Research Festival, Nottingham, May
- “Gyda wants you to go home—Text messaging in the Middle Ages”, LINK 16, Nottingham, June
- “Long-distance cultural contacts and names—onomastic studies in Bergen, Norway”, The Viking World - Diversity and Change, Nottingham, June/July
- “Ingibjorg loved me when I was in Stavanger”, The School of English Research Relay, Nottingham, October
- “Gyða tells you to go home”—Test messaging and archaeology, The 2016 SMA Student Colloquium, Brussels, November; paper awarded with 3rd prize for “Best paper given”
- Volunteer for Vikings for Schools, a workshop series introducting different aspects of the Viking Age to schoolchildren; changed role to Student Coordinator in September
year: 2015
- Lecturer at the Language Centre of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Norwegian A1-B1 (since 2012)
- Research assistant in the interdisciplinary project Runische Schriftlichkeit in den germanischen Sprachen
(since 2014) - "Archaeological Databases in Runology", Nottingham Rune Rede - Eigth Full-Day Runic Colloquium, Nottingham, March
- "Where you from? Runic name tags", Bergen in the Middle Ages, Bergen, November
year: 2014
- Lecture series (with Hermann Engster and Klaus Düwel) about the Viking Age in Scandinavia, concluded by a trip to the Viking Exhibition in Berlin
- Assistant teacher (German as a Second Language) at Heinrich Heine Secondary School Göttingen
- Research assistant in the interdisciplinary project Runische Schriftlichkeit in den germanischen Sprachen
year: 2010-2014
- Master’s degree in Scandinavian Studies and Pro- and Protohistoric Archaeology at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany; finished with distinction
- from 2011: Student research assistant in the interdisciplinary project Runische Schriftlichkeit in den germanischen Sprachen
- 2012: Lecture series (together with Klaus Düwel, Sigmund Oehrl et al.) about the Swedish island of Gotland, concluded by a field trip in May 2013
year: 2006-2010
- Bachelor’s degree in Scandinavian Studies and Pro- and Protohistoric Archaeology at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
- 2009-2010: ERASMUS-funded stay at Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
Research Interests:
- Modern transformation of Old Norse Mythology (computer games, television, books)
- Use and implementation of modern EDP equipment in Humanities
- Processes of Second Language Learning
- The development of crime novels from Conan Doyle to Stieg Larsson
- Childrens’ literature in Scandinavia
