Susie Corfield
Land Spirits in Old Norse and Old English Texts and Culture: An Eco-Folkloristic Approach
My research investigates the phenomenon of land spirits, landvættir, in Old Norse and Old English textual and material evidence. With my research, I am to delineate and establish the nature of land spirit veneration in the medieval North and interrogate how such beliefs influenced the ways that people interacted with their natural environments. As part of my research, I will develop the novel critical framework of ‘eco-folkloristics’, which will combine an ecocritical approach to source material with folkloristic motif analysis and an anthropological understanding of animism. Combined with a sustained taxonomic focus on land spirits, this critical methodology will allow me to investigate the nature and function of land spirit veneration across a broad range of Old Norse and Old English sources, with particular relation to how they influenced contemporary human interaction with the environment. My research is generously funded by the Wolfson Foundation.
Biography
Susie completed a BA in History at the University of Leeds in 2021, where she wrote her dissertation on the use of folklore as a tool for political legitimatisation under the Vietnamese communists. She then undertook her MA in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies at Háskóli Íslands between 2022 and 2024, during which time she spent a semester as an Erasmus postgraduate exchange student at Universitetet i Oslo. In Autumn 2026, Susie began her PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of York, funded by the Wolfson Foundation and supervised by Dr Pragya Vohra and Professor Matthew Townend. Susie’s research interests include: folklore and mythology in the medieval North, the application of folkloristics to historical research, international patterns of folklore and ecocriticism.