This paper will analyse the ways in which water landscapes and water-borne creatures are represented in Netflix’s film The Sea Beast (2022). First, the film addresses unsustainable use of the sea resources, such as hunting and poaching. However, instead of portraying actual marine species, the film shows enormous fantastic monsters, suggesting that the sea is a liminal space full of dangerous creatures. We are going to argue that the monsters have been used to embody the nonhuman world and the concept of ‘nature’ as something both beautiful and dangerous. Second, we are going to demonstrate that the visual aesthetics and imaginative landscapes of the Sea Beast world are a recycling project, as they are largely indebted to Olaus Magnus’s famous Carta marina created in the sixteenth century. In addition, the film draws inspiration from Lovecraft’s ideas and the Cthulhu aesthetics. We will consolidate these two themes by problematising the film’s approach to human explorations of the water landscapes. Namely, we will examine the ways human-nonhuman relations are portrayed, with nonhumans shown as needing to earn humans’ compassion. While monsters remain in focus, the film does not encourage care for other nonhuman inhabitants and parts of the marine ecosystem. Employing Donna Haraway’s concept of Cthulhucene, we argue that the film does not provide a feasible solution for humans and nonhumans sharing the same water environment. By encouraging humans to stay away from the sea for the fear of ‘Cthulhu’, the film reinforces the image of the sea as a liminal space. 

Stories about humans visiting the realms of fairies, trolls, and other supernatural creatures have been present in the folklore for millennia. Recently, Nationalmuseum Jamtli in Östersund, Sweden, has put on display 110 works of art representing Nordic mythology in an attempt to create a similar experience for its visitors. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Elsa Beskow, Carl Larsson, John Bauer, and Ivar Arosenius. Created during the 19thand early 20th centuries, before the advent of modern cinema, these works were made with a largely narrative purpose. Their role was to communicate Nordic culture and heritage to the next generations of Swedes. The proposed paper will provide a twofold analysis of the exhibition. First, we will explore how artists in the 19th and 20th centuries engaged in medievalism and represented the imaginative landscapes of Nordic mythology and sagas. We will also address how these works of art create an image of collective imagined realities of the past generations. Second, we will discuss how the exhibition itself, through its displays, becomes a landscape. While the art represents imaginative landscapes, the exhibition is a material milieu. By analysing the exhibition’s ways of display and the visual storytelling created by the museum, we will contribute to the understanding of how material landscapes can help modern individuals interact with the imaginative landscapes of the past.

Denna presentation kommer att bjuda in er till odjurens värld via Netflixs nya barnfilm Havsmonstret. Vi kommer att diskutera hur filmen tar upp viktiga miljöproblem så som tjuvjakt och förlust av biologisk mångfald genom dess porträttering av havsmonster. Dessutom kommer vi att belysa hur relationen mellan det mänskliga och det icke-mänskliga framställs och förkroppsligas genom monstren och deras jägare. 

The Muslim rule in Southern Europe has left a profound imprint in the culture and architecture of the areas it occupied. There are a few oldest European mosques and palaces which have survived until present day. Some of them, such as the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, have been converted into Christian cathedrals. By using the example of Islamic architecture in Europe, this article focusses on the distinctively Muslim elements in architecture and interior decor, and their influence upon European urban culture. 

The Muslim rule in Southern Europe has left a profound imprint in the culture and architecture of the areas it occupied. There are a few oldest European mosques and palaces which have survived until present day. Some of them, such as the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, have been converted into Christian cathedrals. By using the example of Islamic architecture in Europe, this article focusses on the distinctively Muslim elements in architecture and interior decor, and their influence upon European urban culture. 

The round city of Baghdad was a major architectural achievement of the eighth century CE. While most of the original structures have not survived, historians and artists attempt to reconstruct the historical Baghdad, using information from contemporary accounts. This article summarises what we currently know about the layout, architecture, and urban development of the medieval Baghdad, provides modern artistic renderings of the round city, and traces the influence of round citadels in modern culture and architecture. 

This chapter examines the role of ghosts and restless corpses in medieval and early modern texts. It argues that the undead were employed by the narrators to convey a certain message and that different roles were assigned to ghosts and to restless corpses. Thus, ghosts were usually used in the narratives where a dead person was portrayed to return to warn the living about hell and purgatory, as well as to ask for help to facilitate the soul's progress towards heaven. At the same time, one's turning into a walking corpse usually appeared in a 'cautionary tale' type of narrative where an individual was portrayed to be punished for their sins. Therefore, this chapter examines which types of offences were considered as leading to restlessness and why. It also presents the evidence against the popular assumption that being buried away from the consecrated ground was believed to cause one's turning into a restless corpse. On the contrary, in many sources, as this chapter demonstrates, the individuals who later turned into revenants had received a proper burial. Finally, the chapter examines the actions taken by the living in order to get rid of ghosts and wandering corpses, such as prayers, burning a corpse or dumping it into water, as well as the meaning attached to these apotropaic rituals. 

In this podcast I have discussed the origins and purposes of walking dead in medieval narratives and compared them to zombies in modern horror industries. 

This thesis explores the origins and purpose of the stories about restless corpses appearing in the medieval Latin sources created in England between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. By engaging with a wide variety of sources, including ancient texts, walking-dead stories created in medieval Europe and Iceland, early modern and modern collections of folk tales, medieval medical treatises, and excavation reports, this thesis endeavours to provide a new insight into the nature of the accounts about revenants appearing in medieval English sources. Walking-dead stories have been seen as the remnants of the pagan Germanic beliefs, the superstitions of the unlearned masses, which somehow found their way into the written narratives. By (1) studying these stories within the context of a wider variety of sources, in contrast to the previously accepted methodology of studying a walking-dead story only as a part of the work in which it appears, and (2) checking the available evidence for the existence of popular superstitions regarding the dangerous dead against a larger range of sources than has been done previously, this thesis challenges the traditional way of viewing the stories about wandering cadavers as originating from popular beliefs, and proposes and alternative point of view, namely, that walking-dead stories were composed by the learned authors on the basis of the earlier sources. 

A knight called William Laudun complained to Bishop Gilbert Foliot, that a certain 'evil Welshman', who 'died unchristianly' kept haunting the village, calling the locals by their names. Those who were called fell ill and died within a few days. Gilbert's advice to pierce the cadaver's neck and to sprinkle the body and the grave with holy water did not work. Eventually William cleaved the revenant's head with a sword thus putting an end to his wanderings. This story, written in the twelfth century by a court cleric Walter Map, bears a number of features typical of today horror films: death of the revenant is surrounded with negative circumstances which caused him turning into a 'zombie', the restless cadaver spreads infection, the efforts of the official authorities bring no result, the situation is saved by an ordinary hero, and the remedy is the destruction of the revenant's head. A walking corpse is a creature deprived of mobility, as it cannot move to the afterlife without assistance. As we can see, centuries later the image of someone stuck between life and death remains appealing. Moreover, while horror films, as it is currently argued, reflect the anxieties of a modern man, they often employ medieval narrative patterns. This chapter explores the continuity between medieval tales and today zombies, demonstrating how the walking dead have evolved to answer the concerns of modern society while still preserving their medieval nature.