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world. Because of this difficulty, many scholars consider it helpful to speak
of embodied difference.14 Any physical or mental difference – be it a congen-
ital, temporary, or lasting impairment – eventually becomes an embodied
difference. This concept not only frees us from conventional perspectives,
enabling us to paint a more diversified picture, but also emphasises how
physical as well as mental health issues are manifested in and expressed
through the body, which remains a central element in the discussion on
dis/ability. The body acts as a translator and makes the embodied differ-
ence visible to the society.15
Within Old Norse literary studies, dis/ability history perspectives
have been introduced only in the last couple of decades.16 In the 1990s,
Lois Bragg took up the dis/ability discourse in various articles that were
later collected in her seminal book Oedipus borealis (2004).17 Since then,
the topic of dis/ability has generated some interest in the field, not least in
relation to Old Norse mythology and the conspicuously high number of
physically impaired gods.18 Regarding Old Norse saga literature, especially
14 Nolte, “Editorial,” 3; and Anne Waldschmidt, “Warum und wozu brauchen die Disability
Studies die Disability History? Programmatische Überlegungen,” Disability History:
Konstruktionen von Behinderung in der Geschichte. Eine Einführung, ed. by Elsbeth Bösl,
Anne Klein and Anne Waldschmidt, Disability Studies: Körper – Macht – Differenz 6
(Bielefeld: transcript, 2010) 14–15.
15 Visibility is not necessarily coterminous with scrutinising glances or staring, but refers in
the first place to becoming aware and perceiving embodied difference. On the topic of star-
ing, see Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, staring: How We Look (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009).
16 For an overview of the state-of-the-art of history in Old Norse literary studies, see Ármann
Jakobsson, “Fötlun á íslandi á miðöldum: Svipmyndir,” Fötlun og menning: Íslandssagan
í öðru ljósi, ed. by Hanna Sigurjónsdóttir, Ármann Jakobsson, and Kristín Björnsdóttir
(Reykjavík: Félagsvísindastofnun Háskóla íslands – Rannsóknarsetur í fötlunarfræðum,
2013), 51–69; and Ármann Jakobsson et al., “Disability Before Disability: Mapping the
Uncharted in the Medieval Sagas,” scandinavian studies 92.4 (2020): 440–460.
17 See Lois Bragg, “Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration in sturlunga saga,” alvíss-
mál 4 (1994): 15–32, “Mute God”, “Impaired and Inspired: The Makings of a Medieval
Icelandic Poet,” Madness, Disability and social Exclusion: the Archaeology and Anthropology
of ‘Difference,’ ed. by Jane Hubert, (London / New York: Routledge, 2000), 128–143, and
Oedipus Borealis: the Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and saga (Madison / Teaneck:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004).
18 See Kolfinna Jónatansdóttir, “‘Blindur er betri en brenndur sé’: Um norræna guði og
skerðingar,” Fötlun og menning: Íslandssagan í öðru ljósi, ed. by Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir,
Ármann Jakobsson, and Kristín Björnsdóttir, (Reykjavík: Félagsvísindastofnun Háskóla
íslands – Rannsóknasetur í fötlunarfræðum, 2013), 27–49.