Iceland was an island discovered and populated by travellers in the early Middle Ages. Travel was thus an essential part of the Icelandic experience. The Old Icelandic sagas include numerous examples of travel writing, describing various kinds of sea voyages, such as Viking raids, military conquests, diplomatic missions, trading expeditions, as well as voyages of discovery and colonisation. Journeys on land are also described, in particular the pilgrimages which are called ‘walks to the South’ (ON. suðrgöngur). Norsemen drew geographical material from erudite works in Latin by Solinus, Orosius, Isidore of Seville, Bede, and Honorius Augustodunensis. To these they added information acquired personally, both at home and on journeys abroad as Vikings, traders, and pilgrims. What information concerning actual travel can be gathered from these sources? What was the motivation for the journeys described in the sagas? How do the sagas combine learned material from medieval Europe with native traditions from the Norse world? And above all, in what sense did the Icelanders view travel as a liminal experience?

The aim of this chapter is to offer an approachable introduction to the questions, goals, and techniques of affective neuroscience research in nonhuman animals. Rather than providing a detailed literature review, we attempt to outline the overarching principles of the neuroscience of emotion and highlight some areas of special interest. We begin by describing a broad conceptual framework for understanding emotion states that is relied upon by many affective neuroscientists working with nonhuman animals today. We then explore representative examples of work from especially instructive domains of emotion research in other animals, focusing on mice. We discuss each example in detail, introducing the relevant methods and highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, to convey the overall logic of affective neuroscience research in other animals and demonstrate its utility and potential for mechanistic insights into how emotions are manifested by the brain.

Here, the significance of mandates is shown for the initiation, pursuit, and outcome of mediation, as demonstrated by the Nordic cases of mediation from the past seventy-five years. Mandates influence the selection of mediator, but we argue that mediators can influence the mandate and develop it, within the confines set by the warring parties and the mandator. Some mandates are vague, which can allow space for the mediator, and mandates may change over time. Either way, they are important for the pursuit and outcome of the mediation. Five general conclusions are proposed for research and practice, including the mismatch between mandates and support for mediation efforts. In particular, the chapter emphasizes the utility of the mediation staircase for assessing outcomes. It also encourages the study of non-Nordic cases of mediation.

This chapter focuses on the role of institutions in shaping economic efficiency and development throughout European history. It argues that institutional innovations have been central to Europe’s long-term economic progress, even though inefficient institutions have sometimes persisted due to vested interests. We first discuss what is considered a development-friendly institutional setup, and then analyse relevant historical institutions such as serfdom, open fields, guilds, cooperatives, the modern business firm and socialist central planning to understand their specific (in)efficiency contributions and distributional consequences.

The study of travel in Late Antiquity is complicated by a specific set of factors that will appear throughout this volume and in every period: namely, the motivations and goals of the travellers. This is especially true in Late Antiquity because the mental shape of the world was changing quickly and dramatically from what came before. The imperial reign of Constantine (306–337) ushered in for Christian writers a long-expected saeculum of imperial peace and the triumph of the Christian message. The motivations for travel in Late Antiquity very often can only be read on the background of that paradigm shift. The triumph of the Church was inextricably linked to the shape of the empire, notionally and geographically. That same empire in which Christians formerly had moved quietly and in secret was now an open space for travel and expansive thinking. Thus, travel in Late Antiquity went hand-in-hand with new geographical horizons: not primarily a physical expansion of “the known world” (the oikoumenē in Greek), though that came too, but a freedom of expression through movement within the Roman Empire they already knew.

This chapter statistically tests the relationship between American hierarchy, property rights, and state capacity using mediation analysis. It finds that American economic hierarchy enhances property rights in partner states, indirectly strengthening state capacity. The analysis explores scope conditions and the interaction between security and economic hierarchy, highlighting the contrasting effects on state-building. The chapter discusses the implications of the quantitative results for cases like Afghanistan.

This chapter deals with the cardiac system that underpins animal vitality that is more complex than the vegetative one discussed in the previous chapter. The central activity of this system is breathing, and the chapter outlines different types of breathing posited by Galen, the anatomy underpinning them, and his explanation of why the deprivation of breath leads to the loss of life. The chapter also focuses on the three types of pneuma theorized by Galen, discussing their proper activities and properties enabling these activities. The focus on pneuma also brings attention to yet another Galenic division of parts into solids, fluids and pneumata. This division of tissues according to their texture and speed of movement offers an important glimpse into how Galen conceives of interaction between parts. Moreover, the rapid alterations in the pneumatic tissues underpin the physiological understanding of animal vitality.

This chapter analyses the relationship between population growth and resource constraints in European history, focusing on the Malthusian theory, which posits that population growth leads to stagnation due to finite resources. The chapter challenges this view by examining how technological innovations, agricultural improvements and changes in fertility strategies affected population dynamics. It explores how societies adapted to resource constraints and avoided the Malthusian trap through mechanisms such as the demographic transition. The chapter also uses case studies such as the decline of the Roman Empire to discuss the relevance of simple models for interpreting historical processes and presents nuanced insights into the complex interplay between population, resources and economic development.

This chapter explores Christ’s cry of dereliction as an access point to important theological issues related to the passion of Christ. Several historic and contemporary proposals are summarized and evaluated.

This chapter critically engages Assata: An Autobiography by former Black Liberation Army operative and political exile Assata Shakur. The argument examines how Shakur develops psychologically and politically as both a Black revolutionary and a Black revolutionary woman. The chapter offers close readings of the political messages shared throughout Assata then contextualizes Shakur’s frameworks by turning to her experiences as a runaway teen in the Village in New York City. Her story – from childhood until her time being held as a political prisoner – compels attention to how blackness and gender collide and at times collapse. This chapter illustrates how her political communiqué “To My People,” broadcast by Shakur while incarcerated, was informed by the lessons on Black gender and sexual vulnerability she learned from Miss Shirley, a transgender woman who was her surrogate caregiver during her time living in the Village.

This chapter explores the repertoire of minuets composed around the end of the eighteenth century specifically for dancing, considering them particularly in relation to the needs (perceived and real) of the dance. The research is based on an in-depth study of 319 minuets (and trios) composed for the annual balls of the Gesellschaft bildender Künstler at the Hofburg Redoutensaal. Certain defining features of the repertoire are identified, such as the two-bar grouping necessary for the dancers’ enactment of the minuet step. Larger-scale features are explored, such as the perceived need by music theorists (and possibly some composers) for eight-bar phrases to accommodate the choreography – even though the choreography does not actually dictate this – and the extent to which this might be considered a key structural feature of the minuet genre. The minuet choreography (established in Chapter 2) is set against the structure of a typical minuet composition, revealing that, while on the small scale there is considerable coherence between step and two-bar groupings, on the larger scale there is little correspondence between dance figure and musical phrase lengths. Compositional creativity, noble musical expression and musical anomalies are considered.

Mandates may cover several mediators in the same conflict. This may result in questions of coordination, notably of who should be in the lead. This becomes particularly difficult if great powers are significant actors – for instance, if conflicts are close to them – or for other reasons of strategic significance. There is also a problem of forum shopping, where the warring parties attempt to find mediators that are closest to their interests. Furthermore, there can be rivalries between regional and international organizations. Some of the Nordic experiences are recounted as well as ways to manage these issues.

Realist narrative genres, such as memoir and autobiography, are the most prevalent women’s prison writing. Contemporary readers rely on these narrative elements in order to believe stories. However, when the writer disassociates during a traumatic event and does not remember details that would ground their telling in recognizable details, their narratives cannot reliably reference them. As incarcerated women authors grapple with what they’ve suffered and what they’ve done, their narratives inevitably intersect with social realities that form the background violence that created the conditions for the discrete, traumatic events of harmdoing. While carceral culture essentializes people into stagnant categories of worth – good/flawed, criminal/victim, innocent/guilty – incarcerated women’s stories show how facile these conceptions are, how much harm they cause, and that incarceration does nothing to address these issues and often actively prohibits healing.

In 1237, having conquered much of the Central Asian steppes, a massive force of Mongols led by the third generation of Chinggis Khan’s descendants launched a campaign into eastern Europe, taking Kiev (1240) and sweeping westward into Poland and Hungary. News of this invasion quickly reached as far west as England. After more than 130 years of crusading, Latin Christians were passably familiar with the political and cultural complexities of the eastern Mediterranean; knowledge of the lands farther east, however, remained a hazy blend of ancient authors, Biblical lore, the Alexander Romance, and the legend of Prester John. Within short order, however, western European leaders took the initiative in their own hands, dispatching exploratory missions to the Mongols, like those of the Franciscans John of Plano Carpini in the mid-1240s and William of Rubruck in the early 1250s. Thanks to the detailed accounts of their travels they wrote on their return, the Mongols emerged from the fog of apocalyptic terror that had first surrounded them and, like a gradually-developing Polaroid, took on the contours of people with their own history, customs, and institutions