Has nostalgia existed forever or only since a given date? The word is first attested in 1688
but the experience of homesickness for a specific place time or both may be universal among
human beings. Today nostalgia receives extensive scrutiny in mass media as well as in
scholarship. Longing for the Middle Ages has been regarded as sometimes dangerous for
political reasons. Suspicion has grown about nostalgia for and in the medieval period: consider
the furor over the term Anglo-Saxon. The Medieval Latin Poem of Walthare better known as the
Waltharius cries out for a share of attention. This essay situates the Poem of Walthare within
nostalgia studies. The examination reviews the many different types of nostalgia that have been
identified lately. Alongside private and collective it touches on the role of consumerism and
the politicization of nostalgia especially by (neo-) Nazis white supremacists and their
opponents. At the same time the study delves into the earlier medical view of nostalgia: this
syndrome was diagnosed among Swiss mercenaries in the late seventeenth century. The recent
debates have interesting consequences for the short medieval epic which is rooted in the
events of a distant Germanic past which produced legends of exiles who yearned for their homes
and peoples. Yet the Latin of the Middle Ages does not fit naturally within modern national
languages and literatures. Since the late eighteenth century the poem has been coordinated
with early medieval German culture. Jacob Grimm who played a foundational role in this
research paid heed to the longing for a German homeland that he felt. Joseph Victor von
Scheffel had his own nostalgia for long-ago Saint Gall.
