Grace O'Duffy
Thesis title:
'Sexual Violence Against Women in the Íslendingasögur and Fornaldarsögur'
Supervisor:
Research Interests:
Old Norse, Old English, feminist studies, gendered violence, enchantment, consent, Germanic languages, saga narratives, Tolkien studies, poetry, mythology, eschatology
About me:
I am a scholar of medieval literature, with a focus on women in Old Norse literature. My research aims to give volume to the lost or silenced voices of women in medieval literature. My primary aim is to interrogate how rape functions as a narrative device, and why it is so pervasive and, at times, insidious. My approach combines rigorous close reading and analysis of Old Norse language and literary tools with critical feminist theorists and scholars of rape and consent. My work has appeared in two of the leading journals in Old Norse studies, Saga-Book and Scandinavian Studies, and I have presented my work at dozens of conferences, workshops and congresses. Beyond Old Norse, I am also interested in researching sexual and gendered violence across the Middle Ages more broadly. I am also the co-founder of ADAM ‘Addressing Difficult Aspects of the Medieval’, a network which aims to unite and provide a platform for scholars who work on ‘difficult’ topics such as sexual violence, gender, disabilities, and critical race theory.
Originally from Lancashire, I studied for my undergraduate degree at the University of St Andrews, where I majored in English and produced a thesis analysing the presentation of Grendel’s mother in adaptations and translations of Beowulf. I also studied Russian, French, Comparative Literature, Classics, and Philosophy. I earned my MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Queen’s College, Cambridge, where my dissertation compared eschatological traditions in Old Norse and Old English poetics. I was awarded a Distinction and also won the Wallenberg Prize for my essay on masculinity in Hrólfs saga kraka, which has since been published in Scandinavian Studies. My DPhil at Oxford is generously funded by the AHRC OOC DTP.
Research:
Marital rape leading to child deformity; decades of enslavement and degradation; deception, kidnap, and incest; a spiral of solitude stemming from the invasion of a private bedchamber. These are a handful of the ways in which sexual violence manifests within the Old Norse corpus. My thesis focuses on two genres which have been consistently overlooked due to their alleged lack of sexually violent episodes: the Íslendingasögur ('family sagas' or 'sagas of Icelanders'), which depict Iceland’s settlement and history relatively recent to the time of writing, and the fornaldarsögur ('legendary sagas') which look at a more distant, removed past and often contain more fantastic elements.
Much of my research is comprised of closely reading isolated scenes and unpicking the delicate strands of literary construction. This threads my work with the specificity and intricacy of detail in the minutiae, allowing me to draw broader links and formulate overarching arguments that do not generalise, but instead reveal the remarkable complexity of the presentation of sexual violence across different sagas and different genres. Contrary to the bulk of extant scholarship on the topic, sexual violence is a pervasive theme in Old Norse literature, at times subtle and insidious and at times glaring and even shockingly graphic. My research offers a nuanced, sensitive, and rigorous approach to this complex topic.
Teaching:
I am currently a Stipendiary Lecture at Keble College, where I teach Prelims Paper 2 (Early Medieval Literature, c. 650–1350). I have previously taught this paper at Christ Church and St Hilda’s. I am also a Graduate Teaching Assistant on the FHS Paper 6 option in Old Norse. I have also taken students for FHS Course II Paper 2 on Old Norse romance, as well as the Modern Languages Paper XII in Old Norse. I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).
Peer-reviewed publications:
‘Eating Hearts and Biting Noses: Masculinity and Misogyny in Hrólfs saga kraka’, Scandinavian Studies 97, no. 2 (2025), 1–23.
‘A Triptych of Sexual Violence in Bósa saga ok Herrauðs’, Saga-Book 48 (2024), 59–88.
