Icelandic Sagas

I've been doing a lot of reading (and some writing) about Iceland ahead of my next visit there at the weekend.

The Sagas are an important part of Icelandic identity, and are very much stories of the everyday geographies of people and their quarrels and feuds, often between family members. They are bloodthirsty and grim, and funny and powerful in their nature.

Carol Hoggart has written a very useful piece in the journal Limina. This publishes pieces relating to history and cultural studies.

Read the article on the University of Western Australia (PDF download)

Description:

Iceland at the time of Norse settlement (c.870) was territory unmarked by human culture. It was a space with no history, no myths, no stories attached to it – a land with no human meaning. 
The ‘family sagas’ written in thirteenth-century Iceland (the Íslendingasögur) describe the past in a way that fills an empty terrain with significance – or as Jürg Glauser puts it, they perform a ‘semioticization of the landscape’. 
These Old-Norse prose narratives relate the process by which landscape was culturally constructed – and, in the process of telling, the Íslendingasögur are agents in this construction of Iceland. 
This essay takes as its starting point a notion that humans cannot understand their environment until it is cast in human terms. Space needs to be ‘mapped’, named, understood through (past) human interaction with it.

The tipoff to the article was one of many nuggets to be found in 'Looking for the Hidden Folk' by Nancy Marie Brown.

Image: Southern Iceland, Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the trail of the 'Detectorists'

Image
As I was in Suffolk last week, I headed for Framlingham as I knew that there were various locations from the series 'Detectorists' and also a wonderful pub just a few miles away where we could go for lunch. Parked up in the Market Square, and from there it was a short walk to several locations. Here are plenty more on a map. Managed to track down four locations: the outside of the 'Two Brewers' pub (the interior was filmed elsewhere), Lance's upstairs flat, the shop where Lance's former partner sells Spiritual goods and scented candles, and the village hall where the DMDC met. Here's me outside said hut. Don't forget the uniformbooks book of course. Still available and an excellent read.
Read more

Jonathan Meades on Sustainability

Image
Have blogged about Jonathan Meades before, and his particular presentation style which I like... Lunchtime today was spent in the company of the first in the series "Off-Kilter", made for BBC Scotland and was about Aberdeen . I liked the look of the area known as Fitty. Towards the end, he moved on to Donald Trump and his controversial plans for a golf course in the sand dunes close to Aberdeen. He called the planned development "New Trumpton on Sea" and talked about gated communities and their absentee residents. He riffed on the idea of ' sustainability ' and how every architect and development trumpeted its sustainable credentials. New words like : "Sustain-abulous" and "Sustain-astic" ! Called it "architectural correctness"... "It's a slogan of conformist unoriginality..." "The very act of making a building is energy hungry and vastly wasteful even if the building is an eco-igloo of Fairtrade otter dropp...
Read more

Edexcel Cultural Geography Contexts

Image
Those teachers who have opted for the Edexcel 'A' level specification in the UK (for students aged 16-18), there is a unit called "The World of Cultural Diversity" . Today, the pre-release titles were announced. Students will be expected to prepare OPTION 4: The World of Cultural Diversity • Explore what is meant by a global culture, how it is defined and, if it exists, what its characteristics are. • Research contrasting locations, some of which show the effects of cultural globalisation and others which seem to be resisting the process. Would be interested in hearing the thoughts of any blog readers on any suggested resources or thoughts on these particular contexts...
Read more