Curriculum Vitae

• since October 2021: Assistant Professor and head of the department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Tübingen
• September 2021: Snorri Sturluson Fellow, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík
• August 2018–August 2021: Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Tübingen, in the DFG-Project, ‘The Other Sagas: A New Reading of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders’
• February–July 2018: Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Department of Nordic Philology, University of Zurich
• September 2017–January 2018: Teach@Tuebingen Fellow
• October 2012–July 2017: PhD at Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge. Titel of the dissertation: ‘Dólgr í byggðinni: The Literary Construction and Cultural Use of Social Monstrosity in the Sagas of Icelanders’

Teaching

During the summer semester 2025 Rebecca Merkelbach teaches the following courses:
HS Wie ein Kaleidoskop? Kreativität und Erzählkunst in der isländischen Sagaliteratur (Alma).
Einführung in das Altnordische (Alma)
Altnordischer Lesekreis (Alma)

Research

I am particularly interested in narratological and cultural studies approaches to late medieval Scandinavian literature. My research is concerned with narrative worlds and world-building, kaleidoscopic narration, and late medieval saga literature, but also with questions of the representation and function of gender, alterity and emotion.

In a DFG-funded project (‘The Other Sagas: A New Reading of the “Post-Classical” Sagas of Icelanders’, project no. 400154111), I analysed the so-called ‘post-classical’ Sagas of Icelanders with regard to the construction of characters, the treatment of the paranormal, the depiction of social interaction and the construction of their narrative worlds, and finally situated them in the context of the socio-cultural conditions of late medieval Iceland. The resulting monograph Story, World and Character in the Late Íslendingasögur: Rogue Sagas, was published in June 2024.

Within the framework of the SFB 1391: Andere Ästhetik I am concerned with the construction of the Sagas of Icelanders and other saga genres through the perspective of kaleidoscopic narration, which has so far been applied primarily to the late medieval chivalric sagas.

Publications

Monographs

• Story, World, and Character in the Late Medieval Íslendingasögur: Rogue Sagas. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2024.
• Monsters in Society: Alterity, Transgression, and the Use of the Past in Medieval Iceland. Kalamazoo/Berlin: Medieval Institute Publications/De Gruyter, 2019.

Edited Volumes

• Gesamtausgabe der Isländersagas [working title], ed. by Anita Sauckel and Rebecca Merkelbach [in preparation; to be published with Saga Forlag, Reykjavík]
• Emotion in der altnordischen Literatur: Darstellung, Überlieferung, Rezeption, ed. by Rebecca Merkelbach and Juliane Witte, Special Issue of NORDEUROPAforum [in preparation]
• Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, ed. by Rebecca Merkelbach (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025)
• Þáttasyrpa: Studien zur Literatur, Kultur und Sprache Nordeuropas. Festschrift für Stefanie Gropper, ed. by Anna Katharina Heiniger, Rebecca Merkelbach and Alexander Wilson, Beiträge zur Nordischen Philologie 72. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2022.
• Margins, Monsters, Deviants: Alterities in Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. by Rebecca Merkelbach and Gwendolyne Knight. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.

Articles

• ‘“Betra er sklíkt með gamni at heyra”: Kanonisierung und die isländische Sagaliteratur, in Kanon und Diversität, ed. by Katharina Fezer, Annette Gerok-Reiter, Johannes Lipps and Anna Pawlak (Berlin: De Gruyter) [accepted]
• ‘“I sit alone and tell my sorrow’: Emotion and the Generic Hybridity of the “Post-Classical” Íslendingasögur’, in New Studies on Emotion in Old Norse Literature, ed. by Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Gareth Lloyd Evans and Daniel Sävborg (Turnhout: Brepols) [forthcoming]
• ‘Revenants in Medieval Iceland and their Afterlives’, in The Palgrave Handbook of the Zombie, ed. by Simon Bacon (New York: Palgrave, 2025) 
  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24734-7_1-1
• ‘Dinge im Sagaversum: Zur Rolle von Objekten im Weltenbau der Isländersagas’, in Dingversammlung. Wirkmächtige Objekte in der altnordischen Literatur, ed. by Daniela Hahn (München: Utz, 2025), pp. 158–200
• ‘Introduction: Approaching Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature’, in Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, ed. by Rebecca Merkelbach (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 9–28
• ‘leiðask, leiðendi, viðbjóðr (disgust)’, in Saga Emotions, ed. by Gareth Lloyd Evans, Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir and Carolyne Larrington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2025), pp. 185–205
• ‘Kjalnesinga saga and the Outlaw Saga Tradition: Subversion and Simultaneity in a Kaleidoscopic Perspective’, Saga-Book 46 (2022), 65–92
• ‘Voice and World in Jökuls þáttr Búasonar’, in Þáttasyrpa: Studien zur Literatur, Kultur und Sprache Nordeuropas. Festschrift für Stefanie Gropper, ed. by Anna Katharina Heiniger, Rebecca Merkelbach and Alexander Wilson, Beiträge zur Nordischen Philologie 72 (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2022), pp. 127–36
• ‘Dreamworlds, Storyworlds: Narrative Proliferation and the Case of Stjörnu-Odda draumr’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 121.1 (2022), 6-33
• ‘Outlawed Bears and Trollish Foster-Parents: Exploring the Social Dimension of the “Post-Classical” Íslendingasögur’, in Unwanted: Neglected Approaches, Characters and Texts in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies, ed. by Daniela Hahn and Andreas Schmidt (München: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2021), pp. 143-79
• ‘“I had to be somewhere”: Spaces of Belonging in the “Post-Classical” Sagas of Icelanders’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 16 (2020), 103–35
• ‘“The coarsest and worst of the Íslendinga Sagas”: Approaching the Alterity of the “Post-Classical” Sagas of Icelanders’, in Margins, Monsters, Deviants: Alterities in Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. by Rebecca Merkelbach and Gwendolyne Knight (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 101–27
• ‘Dólgr í byggðinni: Meeting the Social Monster in the Sagas of Icelanders’, in Paranormal Encounters in Iceland 1150-1400, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Miriam Mayburd (Kalamazoo/Berlin: Medieval Institute Publications/De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 263–76
• ‘Disruptivität, Transgressivität, Monstrosität: Das Monströse als third term in den Isländersagas’, in Themenschwerpunkt Figur des Dritten in der altnordischen Literatur, ed. by Anita Saukel and Jan van Nahl, NORDEUROPAforum. Zeitschrift für Kulturstudien. Journal for the Study of Culture (2019), 85–111
• ‘Enchanting the Land: Monstrous Magic, Social Concerns and the Natural World in the Íslendingasögur’, in Social Norms in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. by Jakub Morawiec, Aleksandra Jochymek and Grzegorz Bartusik (Kalamazoo: ARC Humanities Press, 2019), pp. 213–27
• ‘Eigi í mannlegu eðli: Shape, Monstrosity and Berserkism in the Íslendingasögur’, in Shapeshifters in Medieval North Atlantic Literatures, ed. by Santiago Barreiro and Luciana Cordo Russo (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), pp. 83-105
• ‘“He has long forfeited all kinship ties”: Monstrosity, Familial Disruption, and the Cultural Relevance of the Outlaw Sagas’, Gripla 28 (2017), 103–37
• ‘Volkes Stimme: Interaktion als Dialog in der Konstruktion sozialer Monstrosität in den Isländersagas’, in Stimme und Performanz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. by Monika Unzeitig, Nine Miedema and Angela Schrott (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 251–75
• ‘Engi maðr skapar sik sjálfr: Fathers, Abuse and Monstrosity in the Outlaw Sagas’, in Bad Boys and Wicked Women: Antagonists and Troublemakers in Old Norse Literature, ed. by Daniela Hahn and Andreas Schmidt, Münchner Nordistische Studien 27, (Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2016), pp. 59–93
• ‘The Monster in Me: Social Corruption and the Perception of Monstrosity in the Sagas of Icelanders’, Quaestio Insularis 15 (2014), pp. 22–37
• ‘“Deeper and Deeper into the Wood”: Forests as Places of Transformation in The Lord of the Rings’, in Tolkien: The Forest and the City, ed. by Helen Conrad-O'Briain and Gerard Hynes (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 57–66