£140k to study Viking riddles? Sounds like a job for Inspector Norse
IT is indeed a mystery: what could Viking humour possibly tell us about 21st Century environmental concerns?
Luckily, the answer may become clear, as academics have been awarded a £140,000 grant to study ancient Norse riddles – and how they might relate to things such as climate change and air pollution.
Researchers at Aberdeen University have been awarded taxpayers’ cash to chart the Vikings’ ancient love of teasers.
And the two-year project will culminate with events encouraging writers to construct their own 21st-Century posers about their ‘environmental concerns’.
Last night, though, the wordplay subsidy was condemned as a riddle in itself. James Price, of the Tax Payers’ Alliance, said ‘Eyebrows will be raised about whether spending taxpayers’ money on this type of fluff is worthwhile.
‘If people have a genuine interest in these sorts of topics then they should pay for it out of their own pockets rather than wasting university time and raiding squeezed higher education budgets.’
The award of £143,317 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) will fund the project – entitled ‘What Am I? Riddles, Riddling Language and World View in Old Norse Poetry’ beginning in September and running to August 2019.
Documents backing the application state: ‘This project... will provide the first detailed study of the Old Norse riddle-corpus [and] investigate the riddling strategies to be found everywhere in Old Norse poetry.
‘It will engage schoolchildren, creative writers, environmental bodies, the third sector, and others in exploring the natural world through “Viking” and through contemporary eyes.
‘Creative writers/poets, particularly in Orkney and North East Scotland [will benefit from] workshops and discussion about riddles and riddling language as a medium for describing the natural world and addressing environmental concerns.’
Lead investigator Dr Hannah Burrows, a lecturer in Scandinavian studies, is finishing off another AHRC-backed investigation, a £36,000 probe into the use of humour in historical texts.
Earlier this year, the UK Government-funded council was criticised for awarding a £200,000 grant to Bristol University to study the differences between rappers from Scotland and England.
And in 2016, it handed £45,000 to an Edinburgh University project that paid musicians to write songs about their carbon emissions.
An AHRC spokesman said they funded world-class research in subjects that played a vital role in helping to understand and connect with the past.
He said the riddles study would make a significant contribution to academic research and offered the potential for the public to learn more about Norse literature and its influence on the evolution of language.
Last week Dr Burrows said her research would unlock the cultural messages hidden in these unique writings and provide a fuller understanding of a society often known largely through stereotypes.
‘Eyebrows raised about spending on this fluff’