Judith Jesch, Professor of Viking Studies
Judith tells us about discovering Old Norse as an undergraduate, her specialisms in medieval, and what she enjoys about teaching in this area.
What originally drew you to study this area?
"My undergraduate degree is in English Language and Medieval Literature. I think I knew even before I went to university that I was interested in medieval studies generally and the history of the language. So that's why I chose that particular degree. Basically, we studied Old and Middle English and then we had a choice between Old Norse and Old French.
Because I knew a bit of French, I thought French would be easy, but maybe a bit boring."
I didn't know anything about Old Norse, so I thought I'd go for that. And that settled it really. Ever since I was introduced to Old Norse as an undergraduate, I've known that's what I'm most interested in.
What led you to a career in academia?
"After graduating I was already interested in northern things and I'd read some Norwegian literature in translation, so I thought I'd like to go to Norway. I went to Norway for a year as an au pair and I learned Norwegian and learned to ski! That was what I did instead of a master's degree, because they didn't exist in those days.
I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I did know that I wanted to learn more. I applied for a PhD and then I would let ‘que sera sera’! I didn’t necessarily plan an academic career at all. The PhD took quite a long time, but before I finished it, I had another year in Norway on a scholarship. Then I got a research assistantship in Germany, and I was there for two and a half years.
I did eventually finish the PhD, and by the time I got that far, it was obvious that an academic career was possible. This was at a time when there weren't very many academic jobs around, but the government came up with this amazing scheme called the ‘new blood scheme’, because they were aware that there weren't young people coming in to work in universities, so universities could bid for new posts in different areas. My former colleague and predecessor put in a bid for lectureship in Viking Studies. And I was the lucky person who got the job."
What are your specialisms?
"I'm interested in anything that's medieval, before around 1500, and anything written in Old Norse or any other Scandinavian language.
The interesting thing is I'm a professor of Viking studies and the Viking Age is the period before we get our Old Norse literature, which people associate with the Icelandic sagas and poetry and so on. I've tried to bring those two subjects together, and the way to do that is there are certain texts – on one hand there are runic inscriptions, on the other hand, poetry – which do go back to the Viking Age."
What I like doing is a kind of literary archaeology. The sagas also go back in many ways to earlier stories and poems that were probably oral before they came to be written down. I’m looking at the prehistory of some of these texts.
What is it that fascinates you about Viking and medieval studies?
"I think it's a really interesting language and it's hard. It's complicated. But the poetry is amazing. It was a culture that really valued language and rhetoric, speaking and writing, and telling stories and poetry.
We associate the Vikings with rape and pillage and violence. And there certainly was that as well. A former colleague once said the Vikings were ruffians, but they were cultured ruffians. And I kind of like that idea of cultured ruffian."
There's a certain roughness to all these tales. It's not knights and ladies, like so much other medieval literature. But at the same time, it's a culture that valued storytelling and poetry and all of those things. It's really very interesting.
Do you teach on any specific modules for the MA?
"I have two modules. In the first semester there's one called ‘Reading Old Norse’. It's really a taster because there's quite a lot to learn and the texts are often very long, so we can't necessarily get through the whole text. We use extracts and just get used to the language.
In the second semester there's a module called ‘Contextualising Old Norse’. We read the whole text in translation, but the students who've learned the language are encouraged to make use of that as well. We also look a little bit at the historical background, because this is literature that's seven or eight hundred years old and you also need to think about how it was written, because we know it was written by hand in manuscripts.
We also consider questions like how people enjoyed this literature – because they didn't all sit in the corner reading their manuscripts, it was probably read out loud to them – who wrote these things, as most of them are anonymous, and who was the audience.
There’s lots of interesting things to think about, as to how these stories and poems worked in the society that wrote them down."
What do you enjoy the most about teaching your specialism?
"I was teaching one of the sagas this morning to some third-year students and just the kind of wide-eyed wonder that they get from looking at these stories which are immensely relatable. They're about human beings and life and death and all that kind of thing. But they're also full of black humour. They're also unlike long Victorian novels. There's not a lot of description, it's all action. It's a sort of page turner!"
I've read these sagas so many times, I'm used to them. But with the students reading one for the first time, I'm almost seeing them through the students’ eyes. I do enjoy that because the sagas are so special. That's one of the things I like the most.
Why is Nottingham a great place to do the MA in Viking and Early Medieval English Studies?
"We see the connections between all these different subject areas. It's not just Old English here and Old Norse there and place names there – they overlap in interesting ways and we make sure that we help the students see why they overlap. We're also one of few places in the world where you can study runology at master's level.
In terms of the city, we are in the heart of the Danelaw, so Nottingham is one of what's called the 'Five Boroughs'. These were five towns that were ruled by the Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries, and there are things you can see here.
For example, you might know that Nottingham Castle was built on a hill – it’s William the Conqueror who built that. Then there's another hill, which is where the Lace Market is. If you go to St Mary's Church in the Lace Market, opposite the west entrance of the church, there's a plaque showing that they did some excavations there many years ago. That's the heart of Anglo-Saxon, Viking Nottingham.
It was a town in the period we’re studying and many of the street names in Nottingham and place-names in the surrounding county reflect that. Some are in Old English, some are in Old Norse. We're kind of right in the middle of all that.
Also, if you go to the Council House, in the shopping arcade beneath it, look up where the dome is and you’ll see there are four panels representing the history of the city. One of them shows the Vikings arriving in Nottingham in the middle of the 9th century. This was painted in the 1920s, when the Council House was built. Even then they were aware of the Viking origins of Nottingham as a town."
Any tips for those considering the MA?
"The most important thing is to be actively interested in one or more of the subjects that we teach.
You don't need a lot of previous knowledge, as we teach everything from scratch. But if you really are learning everything from scratch, then you have to perhaps put in a little bit more effort than people who might already have done the subject in their first degree. We're willing to consider people from all kinds of backgrounds because what we do is new to most people."
We just look for enthusiasm and a willingness to engage with the weird and wonderful Middle Ages!
How do you define ‘success’?
"From a personal point of view, my success in life has been that I've been extremely lucky to get paid to do something I really, really love doing. It’s something I still love doing after all these years. I still find it fascinating.
The other part is when the students go away, and most of them go off and do other things, but every so often I get an email from a former student saying ‘Remember me? I read sagas with you all those years ago…’. And it's nice that they still remember that and it's a part of what they enjoyed doing."
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Study Viking and Early Medieval English Studies MA
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