Current PhD Students

Hannah Armstrong

Thesis Title:

'Sheaves from Sagaland': Ecomedievalism and the Norse North Atlantic in British Writing (1860-Present)

Supervisor:

Professor Matthew Townend

Description:

The striking landscapes of islands such as Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroes have long compelled British writers, particularly those with an interest in the medieval Norse and their celebrated saga literature. Using methodologies from Medieval Studies and the Environmental Humanities, this doctoral project proposes a new critical apparatus, 'Ecomedievalism', through which to analyse writers' interactions with, and depictions of, these island ecologies. By examining a range of textual materials such as travel writing and fiction, Hannah’s research explores narratives of medieval (dis)continuity and representations of the relationship between time and space to uncover the contemporary ideas and anxieties they encode.

Her wider research interests include: the history of the Gothic; reception studies; public history and heritage practices; and Old Norse sagas.

She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of East Anglia and completed her MSt in Medieval Literature at the University of Oxford. She is the 2021-2022 convenor of York’s Old Norse Reading Group and is one of the organisers of 2022 Norse in the North Conference (an annual conference that rotates between the universities of Durham, York, and Leeds).