Lauren Poyer is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington. She holds a PhD in Scandinavian Studies with a concentration in philology (historical linguistics) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied Old Norse language and literature. Her research focuses primarily on representations of Christian folk religion in the Íslendingasögur, or the Sagas of Icelanders, a collection of medieval literature produced in Iceland during the High and Late Middle Ages that record the history of Iceland’s Viking Age settlement and which narrativize the various undertakings of Viking-Age individuals and families across the North Atlantic.

Lauren has co-designed and led multiple study abroad programs in the Nordic countries on topics such as the long history of law and justice and the intersections of political activism and traditional and contemporary art forms. She regularly teaches university courses on Scandinavian Mythology, the Sagas of the Vikings, Vikings in Popular Culture, and Old Norse Language. She is a regional “Kraken expert” in the Pacific Northwest and has presented on the medieval seafaring tales that inform our idea of the Kraken today. She is a frequent invited speaker on topics related to medieval Scandinavian culture at the National Nordic Museum.