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wards the beginning of this article, we might add another metaphor: that
of text or narrative as map. Both narratives and maps are frameworks used
for organising knowledge in order to help us better understand the world
and our place in it.86 the way in which stories about and attached to spe-
cific places are used by individuals and communities as a means of aiding
navigation – both physically, and emotionally or cognitively – has become
a popular and fruitful subject of research by anthropologists focusing on
cultures from around the world, both ancient and modern.87
the practical aspect or nature of place-names, and their importance
for physical navigation and orientation as well as for transmitting narra-
tive – especially where new lands are concerned – is underlined in a recent
publication by Judith Jesch as part of a summary of Scandinavian nam-
ing practices.88 The idea that the Íslendingasögur communicate, in part at
least, something of the ‘mental map’ of early Icelanders has been explored
by Gísli Sigurðsson and tatjana Jackson.89 the process of naming and
86 See, e.g., May Yuan, ‘Mapping text,’ in The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of
Humanities Scholarship, ed. David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan and Trevor M. Harris
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana university Press, 2010), 109–23; robert t. tally,
Spatiality (London and new York: routledge, 2013).
87 See, e.g., Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places; also Christopher tilley, A Phenomenology of
Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments (oxford: Berg, 1994).
88 The Viking Diaspora (new York and London: routledge, 2014), 43–54. See also Jesch,
‘Viking “Geosophy” and Some Colonial Place-names,’ in Names Through the Looking-
Glass: Festschrift in Honour of Gillian Fellows-Jensen, ed. P. Gammeltoft and B. Jørgensen
(Copenhagen: reitzels forlag, 2006), 131–45 and ‘namings and narratives: Exploration
and Imagination in the norse Voyages Westward,’, in The World of Travellers: Exploration
and Imagination, ed. K. Dekker, K. olsen and t. Hofstra (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 61–79.
See also Stefan Brink, ‘naming the Land,’ in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink with neil
Price (London and new York: routledge, 2008), 57–66, who writes that: “since place
names are a mass material, their potential as socio- and cultural-historical sources becomes
great … since every name carries some historical information, place names can make the
landscape ‘speak’ to us. the names give another dimension to the silent archaeological
sources. they become small narratives that can be used in retelling the history of an early
landscape” (57).
89 Gísli Sigurðsson, ‘Mynd Íslendingasagna af Bretlandseyjum,’ in The Fantastic in Old
Norse/Icelandic Literature. Sagas and the British Isles: Preprint Papers of the 13th International
Saga Conference, Durham and York, 6th–12th August, 2006, 2 vols., ed. John McKinnell,
David ashurst and Donata Kick (Durham: Centre for Medieval and renaissance Studies,
university of Durham, 2006), I, 278–87; tatjana Jackson, ‘Ways on the “Mental Map” of
Medieval Scandinavia,’ in Analecta Septentrionalia: Beiträge zur nordgermanischen Kultur-
und Literaturgeschichte, ed. Wilhelm Heizmann, Klaus Böldl and Heinrich Beck (Berlin and
new York: De Gruyter, 2009), 211–20.