Strangers at the Gate! Multidisciplinary Explorations of Communities, Borders, and Othering in Medieval Western Europe, edited by S. C. Thomson, contains eleven chapters that approach the volume’s core ideas of strangers and strangeness in the medieval west from a range of methodological perspectives, time periods, textual genres, and geographic regions. Most chapters discuss textual evidence written after the year 1000, and the volume as a whole is focused on western Europe, as its title suggests. The collection is bookended by more theoretical discussions in its introduction, S. C. Thomson’s “Introduction: Fearing, Facing, and Being a Stranger,” and conclusion, a brief Afterword by Sherif Abdelkarim. The volume opens with two methodological surveys: Marco Mostert’s “Studying Communication in the Margins of Medieval Society” and Florian Dolberg’s “HITting on Migration in the Murky Middle Ages: Advocating an Interdisciplinary Approach. A Case Study in Old English/Old Norse Language Contact” summarise the extant evidence for their respective topics.

Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 are most directly engaged with exploring the range of ways in which “strangers at the gate” could be received across the medieval west. Anna Adamska’s study on “The Language of the Mute Strangers: The Ambivalent Position of the German Language in the Late Medieval Polish Kingdom” offers a nuanced discussion of the ambiguity with which late medieval Polish speakers reacted to German-speaking strangers in their midst, finding also that “the linguistic and ethnic tensions between speakers of German and Polish could ease: when both were regarded as strangers by another” (77). Beatrice Saletti’s fascinating chapter on “How Foreigners Entered Italian Cities in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of Bologna” offers a rich case study of the value of civic records in understanding how medieval cities conceptualized and managed foreignness and foreigners, by examining the data from one day (July 21st, 1412) in one record (the Libri di Presentazioni dei Forestieri [Books of Presentations of Foreigners]) from late medieval Bologna.

Gerben Verbrugghe’s and Wim De Clercq’s chapter on “Little Flanders Beyond Wales: The Historical Context of Flemish Settlement Landscapes in South Pembrokeshire” surveys the historical evidence for and historiographic conversation concerning Flemish settlement in South Pembrokeshire, turning to a comparative analysis of settlement patterns in Flanders to explain the perceived “strangeness” of Flemish settlements in Wales. Finally, Adrien Carbonnet’s study “Repopulating the City with Strangers: The Forced Colonization of Arras by the King of France Louis XI (1479-1484)” explores the consequences of a situation in which everyone was a stranger. The chapter explores the failure of the northern French city of Arras after King Louis XI expelled its original (rebellious) residents and resettled it with reluctant new inhabitants from across France: “strange to the place and to one another, their experiences of alterity were doubled” (114).

The second half of the volume contains a series of chapters that explore the concept of strangeness from a range of perspectives. Euan McCartney Robson’s “Strangers in the Cathedral: Place, Landscape and Nostalgia in Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de Exordio” explores the “strangeness” of the Norman Durham Cathedral in the landscape as well as in Symeon of Durham’s textual record. Richard North’s “Resident Stranger: Sæmundr in the Ashkenaz” offers a lively exploration of the biography and textual legacy of the Icelandic scholar and historian Sæmundr inn froði [the learned] Sigfússon (1056-1133). Analyzing both a shift in Sæmundr’s Icelandic reputation from a learned scholar of the church to a figure linked with “astrology, dark arts and the devil” as well as the influence of Rabbinic commentary on Sæmundr’s writings, North argues that the Icelander “lived as a stranger among the Jews of Germany in the 1070s” (146), suggesting particularly that he “lived as a child in the Ashkenaz” and was schooled in the Rhineland (165).

Susan Irvine’s chapter, “The Perils of Medieval Bridges: Gregory, Grendel and Gawain,” explores the use of the “perilous bridge” literary motif across a range of medieval English texts. Irvine argues that “through the motif of the bridge, medieval authors invite their readers to reflect on the porous nature of these boundaries and on the implications of moving between worlds which are ostensibly far apart from one another” (166). Joshua S. Easterling’s “Strange Confessions: Salvations and Prayers for the Dead in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles” examines visions of “strange interactions between the living and the deceased” (184), focusing particularly on the light these texts shed on “women’s agency within thirteenth-century penitential culture” (185). Finally, James Plumtree’s chapter, “Placing the Green Children of Woolpit,” surveys medieval and modern discussions of this narrative of strangeness. Together, the essays inStrangers at the Gate! offer a range of approaches to the concepts of strangers and strangeness in medieval western Europe.