Móðir mín: Scenes of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Infancy in Medieval Icelandic Literature and Later Folklore

Abstract

Childbirth has not been a wide focus of medieval literary scholarship in the past. Scenes of birth are scarce, but many depictions of pregnancy or infants in the saga literature and folklore show a common connection to supernatural events and liminal spaces. These include dreams and prophecies; interactions with monstrous, non-human or godlike figures; and unnatural changes to the human body, including spontaneous blindness and male lactation. Serious consideration of the beginning of life can reveal important information about medieval and early modern societies. This thesis will add to the growing number of works addressing this topic by analyzing scenes of childbirth in medieval sagas and their connection to ‘rites of passage’ in medieval social structures through comparisons of this material to other sources including laws and later folktales.