Over the past half century, dwarves, hobbits, elves, magic, dragons, runes, and other staples of fantastic realms have become firmly entrenched in popular culture and mainstream media, from The Lord of the Rings to the Harry Potter series. Are such strange phenomena merely the products of fertile imaginations, or are there substantive historical inspirations behind them? Historian Justin M. Jacobs discusses the evolving conceptions of fantastic elements in Eurasian history and lays bare the truth behind what he sees as four distorted myths of fantasy in popular culture surrounding magic; elves, dwarves, and hobbits; Norse runes; and medieval bestiaries.
Jacobs, a professor of Chinese history at American University, is the author of several books, including Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures.
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Old Norse Runes
Runic scripts appear in depictions of fantasy worlds with such predictability that they can almost be considered a cliché of the genre. Jacobs delves into the Old Norse runic script that started it all, from its murky origins in the early first millennium and ubiquitous appearance on Viking memorial stones to underground graffiti left by Scandinavian Crusaders en route to Jerusalem and bawdy drivel carved on flimsy wooden sticks in long-forgotten alehouses. He explains why Old Norse runes were carved rather than written, the surprising similarities to the Roman alphabet, and how runic script changed over the centuries before finally being abandoned with the advent of printing.
Additional Sessions of A Journey through Fantastic Realms Series
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