From the sacking of Lindisfarne Abbey in 793 until the end of the 11th century, voyaging Scandinavian traders and warriors played a decisive role in the formation of European culture. Not merely fearsome sackers of coastal farming communities, these fearless travelers spread their cultural influence (and genes) from Newfoundland to Russia and from Portugal to Byzantium, Baghdad and Sicily. The Vikings excelled in the commerce of gold, silver and slaves. They advanced nautical knowledge and crafted elaborate decorative arts. Their legendary exploits are vividly reimagined in the remarkable Old Norse sagas.

They journeyed boldly; / Went far for gold, / Fed the eagle /Out in the east, /And died in the south / In Saracenland

–Gripshold Rune-Stone (c. 1050) reprinted in Smithsonian.com March 2014 p 46.

Friday, February 24, 2017, 7:30 to 9:35 pm

On seeing the Vikings through the lens of Mediterranean Studies / Moderator, Fred Astren (SFSU)

Viking Legacies / Patrick Hunt (CMEMS Associate, Stanford). Biased chronicles depicting the shock and awe of Vikings raids have long held sway in public opinion. Yet archeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen’s seminal mid-19th century work in Copenhagen not only pioneered more precise artifact studies of Scandinavian antiquities and Viking ethnography in particular but also highlighted the differences in distinct human material phases. The discovery and conservation of the buried well-built lapstrake Viking longships at Oseberg and Gokstad underscored the viability of long distance seafaring coupled with navigational skills and other finds that were obscure until recently. However maligned the “Norsemen” might have been in hyperbolic clerical accounts of “raiders” (or traders), the rich Viking contributions to European cultural life and language from runestones to Danelaw are only now becoming better understood.

Performance: Norse Myth, Poetry, Music / Tim Rayborn delves into the ancient spiritual and cultural traditions of Northern Europe to present both reconstructed works and surviving musical fragments from the Viking Age. The Vikings were far more than barbarians and marauders. They were traders, explorers, poets, and masters of sailing. Their literature is remarkable; the Icelandic Sagas are prototypes of the European novel, and the Poetic Edda contains masterpieces of alliterative poetry. Their cosmology was as rich as those of the Greeks or Egyptians, and as explorers they were unmatched, traveling from Scandinavia to as far as North America and Baghdad. This program includes excerpts from the Edda and the Sagas, among other works, and offers both early medieval and traditional melodies from areas as diverse as Iceland, Norway, Shetland, and more. Tim brings to life this heroic era in a stunning one-man performance. Featuring voice, Saami drum, deerskin rattle, Baltic overtone flute, Nordic lyre, and bone flute.

Saturday, February 25, 2017, 10:00 am – noon and 1:30-4:00 pm:

Viking Language and Archaeology in Iceland: The Mosfell Archaeological Project / Jesse Byock (Old Norse and Medieval Scandinavian Studies, UCLA). Archeologist Jesse Byock considers two issues: Old Norse language and identity, and recent findings of the Mosfell Archaeological Project (MAP) in Iceland. He focuses on excavations at Hrísbrú, the farm of the Mosfell Chieftains, in Iceland’s Mosfell Valley. An interdisciplinary research project employing the tools of archaeology, history, anthropology, forensics, environmental sciences, saga studies, and landscape analysis, MAP is researching the many Viking-age remains in and around the Mosfell, treating this large area as a “Valley System.” MAP’s research at Hrísbrú has led to the discovery of a Viking chieftain’s farmstead with many core features of Viking-age life. The finds include a large longhouse from Iceland’s early settlement period, a pagan cremation grave, a conversion-era stave church, and an early Christian graveyard with pagan features. The finds provide a wealth of new evidence about life in Viking Age Iceland, and tell us a good deal about the Icelandic sagas.

From Frankish Altars to Scottish Fields: Trading, Raiding, and Gift-Giving in the Viking Age / Daniel Melleno (Classics, UC Berkeley). In September of 2014 an amateur treasure hunter in Scotland uncovered an astonishing trove. The Dumfriesshire Hoard contained more than 100 items, including jewelry and coins held in a silver gilded vessel originally used as a communion cup. While the hoard itself dates from the 10^th century, the cup is of late 8^th or early 9^th century origin. How did an 8^th century French cup end up filled with silver and buried in a Scottish field? The answer is simple: Vikings. We’re all familiar with the popular image of the Vikings, raiders arriving without warning in their longboats to burn, kill, steal. But the origins of our treasure hoard may not be so simple after all. Daniel Melleno will highlight the variety of ways in which treasures great and small changed hands and what this tells us about peace and war in the Viking Age.

Serpents and Dragons: Motifs and Meanings in Norwegian Designs / Deborah Loft (Art History, College of Marin). The visual creations of the Viking era fused beauty with function; decoration with symbolism. The skills which made the ships and their carvings were also realized in the impressive stave churches, with their exuberant interlace ornament. The motifs of interlaced serpents, dragons, and vines will be traced to their ancient origins, which shed light on their possible meanings. These productions offer an opportunity to consider the interactions of the Vikings with other cultures.  While full of meaning for the people who used them, the surviving examples rarely focused on human narrative.  This is one likely explanation for their obscure status in the art historical “canon”. It is time to reconsider their place in the history of art and culture.

The Lives and Deaths of the Norse Gods / Jonas Wellendorf (Old Norse Studies, UC Berkeley). The mythology of the North contains some bright and happy moments, but in comparison with its Classical counterparts, Scandinavian mythology is distinctively dark and gloomy. The Norse gods and their creation, our world, are bound to perish in the great battle at the end of times (Ragnarök). There is a promise of rebirth after the destruction, but the new world will have no room for the likes of Odin and Thor. Who were the Scandinavian gods, how do we know them? Why did such a terrible end await them? And which gods would survive Ragnarök? This talk will consider the emergence of the grand story of the lives and deaths of the Norse gods and seek to provide answers to these questions.

Panel Discussion with the presenters, moderated by Fred Astren

Download this program’s postcard: Vikings Postcard

Under a well-meaning but conflict-ridden imperial government, a deep fault line had emerged in Central Europe’s capital by the end of the 19th century. The public life of Vienna—its demographics and politics—had changed profoundly, and its cultural life—architecture, music, visual arts, and literature—both reflected and contributed to the upheaval. By 1900, the clash of polarities between tradition and the new had transformed Vienna from a proud and open metropolis to a city psychically troubled. Humanities West explores the modernist side of Vienna’s split personality, when a conflicted Vienna gave birth to emergent modernism and some of Europe’s greatest artistic treasures.

“Vienna, that scrollworked bastion, smoldered with more demons of the future than the most forward-minded cities of the West.” Frederick Morton, A Nervous Splendor

Friday, November 4, 2016, 7:30 to 9:30 pm.

Late Imperial Vienna: A metropolis of contrasts and conflicts / Gary Cohen (History, U Minnesota Twin Cities). We see Vienna around 1900 as a major cradle of twentieth-century modernist Western culture. Other major cities also gave birth to modernist breakthroughs, but Vienna produced a particularly rich concentration of innovators in psychology, philosophy, economics, architecture, art, music, and literature. The stark contrasts and conflicts of life in Vienna 1900 gave impetus to modernist innovations. The city enjoyed a rich cultural heritage, and its two million residents came from all over the multinational Habsburg Empire. The belated development of modern finance, industry, and commerce left small farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers reeling. The old pillars of Austrian society—the Habsburg dynasty, the aristocracy, and the Catholic Church—remained, but the democratizing forces of socialism, populist radical nationalism, and Christian Social politics challenged them. Many enjoyed the comforts of Viennese cafes and walks in the Vienna woods, but reports of labor protests, nationalist demonstrations, and mayhem in parliament filled the newspapers long before the catastrophe of World War I.

Lecture/Performance: City of Musics: The Twilight of Tonality / Bruce Lamott (Philharmonia Baroque). Vienna, the City of Music, became a City of Musics when the classicism of Brahms, the futurism of Wagner, the expressionism of an audacious new generation, and the nostalgia of operetta collided at the end of the 19^th century. Viennese audiences could suit their taste with an unprecedented variety of musical styles, but often defended their choices with spirited and sometimes amusing fervor. Featuring chamber music by Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Anton Webern, and Oscar Straus, with Helene Zindarsian (soprano), Robert Howard (cello), Keisuke Nakagoshi (piano). 

Saturday, November 5, 2016, 10:00 am to noon and 1:30 – 4:00 pm 

Literary Modernism in Austria / David Luft (Humanities, Oregon State U). The discussion of Vienna 1900 has been powerfully shaped by Carl Schorske’s analysis of the liberal era in Vienna and by his strong interests in music and the visual arts, as well as psychoanalysis. Professor Luft shifts the emphasis away from the aestheticism and decadence of the fin-de-siècle to the early 20^th century, especially “the generation of 1905.” He underscores the powerful role of literary modernism in this generation and points to the broader context of Viennese intellectual life in Austria, positing an ethical vision of literature and its possibilities for transforming modern life. He emphasizes the roles of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Austrian intellectual life after 1900—not only for the novelists, but for Wittgenstein and Freud as well. The essayists and novelists of early twentieth-century Austria represent a highpoint of the German language and one of the great moments of world literature.

Change from the Margins: Women, Jews, and Everyday Life in fin-de-siècle Vienna / Lisa Silverman (History, U of Wisconsin Milwaukee). Although best known for its world-renowned innovations in music, art, science, literature, fin de siècle Vienna was also shaped by the everyday lives of those who developed and sustained its social, cultural, and intellectual currents. Professor Silverman examines the ways in which cultural motifs shaped how Austrians articulated their responses to society’s changing conditions. Often, those without power, including women and Jews, successfully adapted to or resisted on a daily basis the rapidly changing ideologies around them. An examination of their experiences reveals that everyday life can be a fascinating and important basis for understanding social change.

Passion, Obsession and Betrayal: The Art of Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoshka / Kayleen Asbo (Psychology and Music, SF Conservatory of Music). While on the surface the works of the two most scandalous painters of fin-de-siècle Vienna could not be more different in technique and style, Symbolist Gustav Klimt and Expressionist Oskar Kokoshka both were driven to depict Eros and Tod (death), the twin drives that Freud was to famously posit as the basis for civilization. Both men also shared an obsessive fascination with Alma Mahler, who became the muse for their creations as well as the cause of their most infamous behavior. From the glittering mosaics of golden women to the raw and blistering Bride of the Wind, the intensely erotic portraits of the feminine by both artists were laced with symbols of death, doom and despair.

The Question of Art in Viennese Architecture / Mitchell Schwarzer (California College of the Arts). At the turn of the twentieth century, several Viennese architects proclaimed that the status of art within architecture had reached a point of crisis. Among them, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, and Adolf Loos agreed that the transformations of industrial culture—rail transportation, factory production, urban commerce, and middle-class social dynamics—demanded artistic responses from architects that went far beyond the surfacing of buildings in costumes of historical ornament. But how could art’s role in building design be reinvented? This lecture explores three astonishingly different solutions to this question: Wagner’s aim to develop ornamental responses in parallel with iron technology; Hoffmann’s proposal to harmonize aesthetically all aspects of building and life; and, finally, Loos’s manifesto to banish art from architecture.

Panel Discussion. Q&A with the presenters

Download this program’s postcard: HW Vienna Postcard FINAL