Facebook for Vikings: Social Networks and the Icelandic Sagas
Timothy Tangherlini, Professor
Scandinavian
Applications for Fall 2024 are closed for this project.
The Icelandic Family Sagas are an intriguing window onto the social world of 10th and 11th century Iceland, seen through the authorial lens of late medieval writers. A striking characteristic of the sagas is the abundance of characters that interact in and across complex social networks as they first initiate and then try to resolve conflicts. Indeed, an enduring question in saga studies is how enmity arises between groups and how that enmity is eventually resolved. Since the main conflict resolution mechanism in early Icelandic society was the blood feud, the sagas can be quite violent at times. Yet nearly all sagas end with some form of a peaceful resolution and a return to social balance. Just as important as enmity is the concept of friendship. How is friendship perceived, how is friendship nurtured, and how is friendship violated in the saga? While the majority of saga scholarship has focused on a few main characters (the hero, the villain), or classes of characters (strong women), in developing analyses of these social conflicts, an approach that considers all of the characters in a saga (and possibly across multiple sagas), may help us develop a better understanding the dynamic complexity of these well-known works of late medieval fiction. In this project, we work on developing a comprehensive data set of character interaction networks for the Icelandic family sagas.
Role: Students will work on (a) validating existing character interaction networks and (b) work on developing new networks based on readings of sagas. Students will also work on developing a canonical list of saga characters, and representing the networks by individual saga or groups of sagas.
Qualifications: Students should have good knowledge of using spreadsheets or other simple database tools (mySQL, MariaDB). Students with a knowledge of Python (specifically Pandas and NetworkX) may be given different types of tasks, while students with some knowledge of web development (e.g. React) might work on developing an interim interface for saga network display.
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Related website: https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/15/5898653/mapping-mythical-social-networks
Related website: http://sagamap.hi.is/is/