Talk: Reading Neurodivergence in Old Norse Literature
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of neurodivergent representation in all forms of media, including literature. Realistic representation is vital to providing relatable content for neurodivergent readers as well as challenging harmful stereotypes. Whilst authors today can continue to improve neurodivergent representation in their work, it is also important for neurodivergent people to see themselves reflected in historical literature. The neurodivergent experience is nothing new; we have always been here, and yet reading neurodivergence in historical texts can be particularly challenging, especially when they were written at a time when human understanding of neurodiversity was limited.
This paper will provide a neurodivergent reading of Egill in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar and Óðinn in the Prose and Poetic Eddas. It will argue that in Egill, we find a character often considered the archetypal ‘Viking’ who can also be read as the archetype for neurodivergent medieval literary characters. It will then examine how a neurodivergent reading of the deity to which Egill is devoted can offer further insights into how medieval texts can resonate with neurodivergent audiences. Rather than attempting a diagnostic approach, which would be fraught with methodological and moral problems, this paper will build on methodologies used in queer theory to identify neurodivergent coding: patterns of speech, behaviour, and the reactions of others, to argue that neurodivergent readings of literary characters such as Egill and Óðinn are possible. This approach will lay a foundation for neurodivergent readings of characters in the literature of a diverse range of cultures and periods in which neurodivergence was not necessarily deliberately written into the text but can nonetheless be read into it, opening a whole new field of neurodivergent representation.
Bio Dan Coultas is a third-year Post-Graduate Researcher in the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. His research, funded by the School of History, focuses on neurodivergent readings of medieval literature in Old Norse, Old English, and Middle
High German. He is also the chair of the UoL PGR Diversity Steering Committee, Secretary of the LUU Medieval Society, and a Student Assistant with the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society, working on a project to bring the Wakefield Court Rolls to a younger audience. Prior to returning to academia, Dan served for 13 years as a Submarine Warfare Officer in the Royal Navy and was the first official chair of the Defence Pagan Network.
Please register here! https://tinyurl.com/readingNDinoldnorselit
