About: Amber Rose Cederström (formerly Amber J. Rose) is a Ph.D. candidate in Scandinavian Studies, on the folklore track. Her research focuses on Nordic legends of witchcraft and she is writing her dissertation on verbal and visual legends of witchcraft as expressed in the seventeenth-century witchcraft trials of Finnmark, northern Norway, and murals of the “milk-stealing witch,” dating to about 1500, that decorate the interior of several churches on the Swedish island of Gotland. She is also an assistant acquisitions editor, acquiring in folklore, classics, and Scandinavian studies, at the University of Wisconsin Press.

Education:

- Cambridge University, MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (2006)
- Harvard University, BA in Folklore and Mythology (2004)

Courses Taught:

- SCAN ST 421: Witchcraft in the North (Spring 2018)

Awards:

• Boreal Prize, American Folklore Society: Nordic-Baltic Section (2015)
• American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship (2017)
• Aurora Borealis Prize - Arts and Humanities (2016)
• Boreal Prize, American Folklore Society: Nordic-Baltic Section (2015)
• Two-Year University Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2013)

Selected Publications:

• 2020 “Men and Milk-Witches on Gotland: A Folkloristic Perspective on an Art Historical Motif.” In Spiran och Kryptan, ed. Torsten Svensson. Forthcoming.
• 2016 Amber J. Rose, “ok þar er mér úlfsins ván, er ek eyrom sá: And I expect a wolf, when I see a wolf’s ears.” In Fantastic Animals, Animals in the Fantastic. Special issue, Fastitocalon—Studies in Fantasticism Ancient to Modern 6: 79–97.
• 2015 Amber J. Rose, “The Witch on the Wall: The Milk-Stealing Witch in Scandinavian Iconography.” Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 71:  27–43.