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exclusive, but rather as inseparable categories of analysis.7 The distinction
that I employ between impairment and disability emerges from certain
branches of dis/ability studies that differentiate between the two terms,8
using impairment to denote the medical aspects of a dis/ability and dis-
ability to refer collectively to potential social reactions that can take place
to an impairment (e.g. tolerance or stigma). In their studies into medieval,
mostly non-Scandinavian European sources, Irina Metzler and Christina
Lee observe that these sources primarily show impairment, which sug-
gests the distinction is a useful one for analysis of medieval material.9
Consequently, I follow Metzler and Lee to the extent that I distinguish
between impairment and disability whenever applicable or helpful for the
argument.
Finally, it should be noted that the Old Norse texts quoted in the follow-
ing pages use terms that may appear offensive and derogative to a modern
audience. The terms are quoted unchanged in order to give an unaltered
impression of the original semantics and their contexts. Thus, the choice
and use of the Old Norse terms represent neither the author’s choice of
formulation, nor her personal opinion on the topic of dis/ability. In the
general discussion of dis/ability, which is informed by recent scholarship,
I use terms that are as neutral as possible in their connotations so as not to
offend or hurt people.
2. Dis/ability Studies and Dis/ability history
In the 1980s the field of dis/ability studies emerged from an intense and
newly surfaced discourse about society’s reaction to and interaction with
disabled people. Strongly influenced by disability activism, dis/ability
studies has experienced significant developments in moving from a pre-
7 Cordula Nolte, “Editorial,” 3–4.
8 One of these branches is that of ‘social dis/ability studies’, which was first developed in the
UK in the 1970s. This model maintains that it is society that disables people because it is
not open enough to accept embodied difference; it thus proposes thinking about the binary
pair of impairment / disability in order to capture the physical and social issues that disa-
bled people have to deal with. For further reading, see Shakespeare, “Disability Rights and
Wrongs Revisited,” and Watson et al., Routledge Handbook of Disability studies (London:
Routledge, 2012).
9 Metzler, “Disability in Medieval Europe,” 190; Lee, “Abled, Disabled, Enabled,” 41.