Steinsland has most recently been a professor in the Institute for Linguistic and
Nordic Studies at the
University of Oslo, where she was also a member of the international interdepartmental Centre for Studies in the
Viking Age and Nordic
Middle Ages[1][2] from its founding in 1993 until its dissolution.[3] She taught in the Institute for Religious Studies at the
University of Tromsø and has held guest faculty positions at
Linacre College,
Oxford University and at the
University of Bonn.[1] In 2007-08, she led the international interdisciplinary research group in "The Power of the Ruler and the Ideology of Rulership in Nordic Culture 800-1200" at the Centre for Advanced Study of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters,[4][5] and, since 1 August 2009, has been its Scientific Director.[6]
Steinsland specialises in
pre-Christian religion, the associated
Old Norse texts and
mythology and the
conversion of Scandinavia.[1] At both Oslo and Tromsø, she made Norse religion a main subject within the history of religion programme.[2] She is a member of the group for theology and religious studies in the Academy of Science and Letters.[7] As a historian of religion, her publications take
Norse paganism seriously and present it in a non-traditional light as having been still strong and vital when it encountered Christianity.[3] In 2005, she published a wideranging introductory book, Norrøn religion (Norse religion), which presents the subject from the perspective of myth and praxis.[citation needed]
In her 1989 Ph.D. dissertation, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi: en analyse av hierogami-myten i Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleygjatal og Hyndluljód (the
sacred marriage and Norse ideology of kingship: an analysis of the myth of the hieros gamos in Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleygjatal and Hyndluljóð), she reinterpreted the sacred marriage between a god and a
giantess as a power
myth legitimising rulership rather than a fertility myth; she specialises in the interpretation of written sources but made extensive use of
archaeology and frequently takes an interdisciplinary approach. She emphasised the female aspect of pre-Christian religion,[2] particularly in her 1997 book Eros og død i norrøne myter (
Eros and death in Norse myths), in which she contrasts the sexualisation of death in, for example, references to drowning as being embraced by the sea goddess
Rán with the post-conversion view of female sexuality as shameful.[3]
Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi: en analyse av hierogami-myten i Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleygjatal og Hyndluljód. Oslo: Solum, 1991.
ISBN82-560-0764-8. Doctoral dissertation, University of Oslo, 1989.
(with Preben Meulengracht Sørensen) Før kristendommen: digtning og livssyn i vikingetiden Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1990.
ISBN87-00-79194-6
(with Preben Meulengracht Sørensen) Menneske og makter i vikingenes verden Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1994.
ISBN82-00-21316-1
Eros og død i norrøne myter. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997.
ISBN82-00-22938-6
(Ed.) Words and Objects: Towards a Dialogue Between Archaeology and History of Religion. (Conference proceedings) Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning Serie B-Skrifter 71. Oslo: Norwegian University Press / Oxford/New York: Oxford University, 1984.
ISBN82-00-07751-9
(Ed.) Voluspå, og andre norrøne helligtekster. Verdens hellige skrifter. Oslo: De norske Bokklubbene, 2003.
ISBN82-525-4113-5
(Ed.) Draumkvedet, og tekster fra norrøn middelalder. Verdens hellige skrifter. Oslo: De norske Bokklubbene, 2004.
ISBN82-525-4627-7