Professor Wellendorf’s research interests focus on the interface between vernacular Old Norse literature and the Latin tradition. He is particularly interested in learned literature, broadly defined, mythography, historiography, skaldic poetry, and Old Norse treatises on grammar and poetics.
His doctoral dissertation (Bergen, 2017) concentrated on Old Norse vision literature. Since then, he has published extensively on Medieval Scandinavian Literature. Common to these studies is that Old Norse texts are studied against the backdrop of a wider classical and medieval Latin tradition.
In Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia: Retying the Bonds (Cambridge, 2018), Wellendorf explored the evolving perceptions of pre-Christian Scandinavian myth and religion over a span of five centuries (1200–1700). Currently, he is working on an edition of the Old Norwegian Book of Homilies (AM 619 4to) and a second book on Norse mythology (Working title: The Lives and Deaths of the Norse Gods).
Recent publications
– “Homilies and Christian Instruction.” The Cambridge History of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, eds. Heather O’Donoghue and Eleanor Parker, 354–371. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2024.
– “From Odinus to Noidus: Cultures in Contact in the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Shaman: Journal of the International Association for Academic Research on Shamanism, 147-166. 2023.
– “The Prosimetrum of Old Norse Historiography – Looking for Parallels.” Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures 9, 180–216. 2022. Open access.
– “Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature.” Scandinavian Studies 94/4, 504-529. 2022.
– “Austrfararvísur and Interreligious contacts in Conversion Age Scandinavia,” The Wild Hunt for Numinous Knowledge: Perspectives on and from the Study of Pre-Christian Nordic Religions in Honour of Jens Peter Schjødt, eds. Karen Bek-Pedersen, Sophie Bønding, Luke John Murphy, Simon Nygaard and Morten Warmind. Religionsvidenskabeligt tidskrift 74, 469-489. 2022. Open access.
A number of his publications can be found here.
Books
Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia: Retying the Bonds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
The Fourth Grammatical Treatise, ed. with Margaret Clunies Ross. London: The Viking Society, 2014. Open access.
Fjöld veit hon frœða: Utvalde arbeid av Else Mundal, ed. with Odd Einar Haugen and Bernt Øyvind Thorvaldsen. Bibliotheca Nordica 5. Oslo: Novus, 2012.
Kristelig visionslitteratur i norrøn tradition. Bibliotheca Nordica 2. Oslo: Novus, 2009.
Oral art forms and their passage into writing, ed. with Else Mundal. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2008.
