Towards a decentered Global North Atlantic: Blackness in Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd

Medieval North Atlantic Studies, which is broadly defined as the study of the British Isles, Iceland, Scandinavia, the English Channel, and the Low Countries, has a tendency to research two types of interactions. First, it focuses on common themes between these cultures, which then strengthens the argument for their grouping. Second, it emphasizes that these cultures traveled throughout Africa, Europe, and the East, participating in a “Global Middle Ages.” These current approaches to the North Atlantic, however, are compatible with the ideologies of white supremacists, and, for this reason, they should be examined. These approaches focus on the globality of the North Atlantic mainly in order to discuss how Northern cultures changed the rest of the globe, and not to show how these North Atlantic cultures were themselves changed by these interactions. The arguments assume an all‐white North Atlantic, maintaining that Old Norse literature and culture does not deal with issues of race. Evidence of the racial awareness of medieval Scandinavians has been dismissed as atypical, further exacerbating the problem. A decentered Global North Atlantic approach is beneficial to the study of the North Atlantic because it centers those most harmed by white supremacists' ideologies, counteracting white supremacists' wrongful understanding of the middle ages. The essay uses the Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd as an example to show that the saga dehumanizes characters through religious, racial, and geographical markers. Moreover, these examples have been ignored by academics who continue to disregard discussions of race in Old Norse literature and culture, as they imagine Vikings as devoid of racial understanding.