Jonas Wellendorf

Job title: 
Associate Professor
Department: 
Old Norse
Bio/CV: 

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:

— “The Beating Royal Heart and the Unruly Limbs in Rauðúlfs þáttr and the Speech against the Bishops.” Scripta Islandica 75 (2025): 167–95.
— “Homilies and Christian Instruction.” In The Cambridge HIstory of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, edited by Heather O’Donoghue and Eleanor Parker, 354–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
— “The Dynasty of Dan: Danish Origins in the Lejre Chronicle, Saxo and Beyond.” In Sous le signe de Saxo: Histoire, identité et nation dans la Gesta des Danois, 167–85. Source(s) - Hors-Série 1. Strassburg, 2024.
— “From Odinus to Noidus: Cultures in Contact in the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Shaman 31, no. 1/2 (2023): 147–66.
— “Austrfararvísur and Interreligious Contacts in Conversion Age Scandinavia.” Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 74 (2022): 469–89. https://doi.org/10.7146/RT.V74I.132116(link is external).
— “Ethnogenesis and Stranger-Kings in Old Scandinavian Literature.” Scandinavian Studies 94, no. 4 (2022): 504–29. https://doi.org/10.5406/21638195.94.4.05(link is external).
— “The Prosimetrum of Old Norse Historiography – Looking for Parallels.” Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures, no. 9 (2022): 180–216. https://doi.org/10.54103/interfaces-09-09(link is external).
— “The Stranger-King in Hvítramannalannd.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 18 (2022): 207–38.
Role: 
Faculty

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