Joshua Lee is a current PhD student at UC Berkeley’s Department of Scandinavian. He received his BA from the University of Edinburgh in History and Politics in 2020, an MLitt in Mediaeval History from the University of St Andrews in 2021, and an MA in Scandinavian Languages and Literature from UC Berkeley in 2024. His MLitt thesis was entitled ‘Friendship and Mistrust: characterising interactions between Scoto-Norse leaders and Norwegian kings c.1100-1260’.
He has been awarded the Fritz O. Fernström fellowship for studies in Norwegian at the University of Oslo. His interests in the Nordic region began during his MLitt where he fell in love with the Icelandic sagas and the Old Norse language and have since expanded to include nineteenth-century Norwegian literature and Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese folklore. His current research focuses on folklore, skaldic poetry, medieval didacticism, and societal belief and practice in both the sagas and medieval Scandinavian Latin texts. He has taught Reading and Composition courses for undergraduates focussing on Icelandic Folklore and on feud in the Icelandic sagas. He has also been a reader for courses ranging from Scandinavian mythology to Danish film. He presented a paper exploring Old Norse travel accounts at the 2024 Medieval Academy conference, at which he was awarded a student commendation and a bursary. Most recently, he has worked as a paid researcher on the Skaldic Project Database, examining lexical variation in Flateyjarbók.
