Miller Renberg, Lynneth. "From Pulpit to Parish: Preaching Dance and Parish Dances in England and Scandinavia, 1300–1700."

Miller Renberg, Lynneth. "From Pulpit to Parish: Preaching Dance and Parish Dances in England and Scandinavia, 1300–1700." Journal of the Northern Renaissance 16 (2025).

URL: https://jnr2.hcommons.org/issues/16-dance-2025/ (Open Access)


From the editorial by Lynsey McCulloch and Emily Winerock:
Lynneth Miller Renberg documents parish dancing as an integral part of medieval and early modern community life. The scarcity of source material for this type of dancing—in contrast, as Miller Renberg points out, to the early modern dance manuals and other archives that serve scholarship of southern European dance—is one example of the challenges that researchers in this area face. Renberg, met with an even greater paucity of parish records in western Scandinavia, uses English sources to elucidate Norwegian and Icelandic traditions—drawing attention to the shared practices of Northern European nations and making the case for a dance history of the Northern Renaissance. Records of parish dance for this period are, in fact, more abundant in the British Isles than in continental Europe. In other words, for specific dance practices, such as parish dance, a focus on the North is essential to the historical retrieval of a significant European dance genre. That this genre is situated latterly in reformation culture/s points also to the limitations of a dance history dominated by Catholic societies and traditions.