Nordic Romanticism and Viking Culture

Centre for Scandinavian Studies, Lund University, and Kulturen in Lund happily announce the next CSS International Conference, Nordic Romanticism and Viking Culture, which will be held in Lund 10–13 June 2026.

The conference connects to CSS’s recurring series of international conferences and seminars focusing on Nordic culture in the world. The theme, Nordic Romanticism and Viking Culture, welcomes participants from the widest range of interdisciplinary fields and diverse historical perspectives of international Scandinavian Studies.

The omnipresence of Viking culture in the Western world is hard to ignore. In recent years, major Viking-Age exhibitions have been launched at the national historical museums in all the capitals of Scandinavia and the British Isles. Viking documentaries, TV series and feature films are an inescapable part of streaming media services. The bewildering array of Viking fiction, jewellery, toys, ceramics, computer games, reenactment merchandise, food, and theme parks reminds us how immensely connected popular culture of today is to Norse mythology and medieval Icelandic sagas. However, the modern story of Viking culture appropriation and repurposing cannot be told without reference to its restart in Nordic Romanticism, from where it spread and gained cultural and political importance in the world.

The conference will focus on the double query of Viking Culture Then and Now, i.e. of how people actually lived and experienced their lives during the Viking Age, as well as aspects of how – and why – that period have influenced modern world culture, from the general perspective of the still ongoing, strong influence from Nordic Romanticism in these matters: how our understandings and delusions of Viking Culture are affected by the tradition from Nordic Romanticism since early 19th Century. One of the aims of the conference is to highlight the bicentenary of Esaias Tegnér's Frithiof's saga (1825), by far the most influential literary export from Scandinavian Romanticism to the world – and also the first international success of Swedish literature.

Suggestions for the approach of the conference presentations:

· Vikings in the Era of High Romanticism

· Runology

· Vikings Material Culture Then and Now

· Vikings in Politics

· Blue Humanities & Viking Studies

· Forging of Viking Legacy

· Modern Repurposing of Medieval Manuscripts

We are very pleased to announce Alessia Bauer (École Pratique des Hautes Études and Sorbonne, Paris), Alan Macniven (University of Edinburgh), Mats Roslund (Lund University) and Rikard Schönström (Lund University) as keynote speakers of the conference. Other lectures, panels, and events will be continuously presented as the planning of the conference advances. For registration until 1 May 2026: https://www.css.lu.se/css-international-conference/call-for-papers/

The conference will take place at the Centre for Languages and Literature (Lund University) as well as in the beautiful halls of Kulturen in Lund. 

We hope that Nordic Romanticism and Viking Culture in Lund 2026 will become an inspiring meeting place for discussions and reflections from many other perspectives beyond those we have outlined here. We welcome you to submit abstracts (approximately 150 words) for papers (20 minutes) and proposals (approximately 250 words) for panels (60 minutes) by April 15 2026, to nrvc2026 [at] litt [dot] lu [dot] se 

We look forward to welcoming you to Lund in June!

Sincerely,

Conference Committee CSS and Kulturen i Lund