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Í greininni er farið í stuttu máli yfir sögu íslenska dýrasafnis sem starfrækt var frá 1970 - 1978 í Breiðfirðingabúð á Skólavörðustíg. Þar voru einkum til sýnis uppstoppuð íslensk dýr á borð við kindur, fugla, ísbirni, hesta og einn api. Fjallað er um hlutverk þess, umræðu í samtímafjölmiðlum, viðtökur safngesta og tímabundna lokun safnsins vegna gjaldþrots. Þá er varpað ljósi á sögu einstakra safngripa, ævisaga og framhaldslíf þeirra stuttlega rakin. Meðal annars er notast við nálgun póst-húmískra kennismiða sem fjallað hafa um mikilvægt hlutverk uppstoppaðra dýra og náttúruminjasafna, þegar kemur að því að vekja athygli á fækkun tegunda og jafnvel útrýmingu.

Explanations of sexual violence are an important topic because they reveal the societal context of violence. Perpetrators of violence commonly reject blame, explaining their actions with survivor behavior or the situation. In this study, 397 Icelandic social media posts from Facebook and Twitter were analyzed for explanations of violence. Societal explanations included general negative attitudes towards women, biological essentialism (that men cannot control their sex drive), the entitlement of men to sex and objectification. Survivor explanations included that the survivor had been drinking alcohol at the time of the violence, and that the survivor was expected to fight back to justify the event being classified as violence. The monster stereotype of perpetrators was salient in the accounts, either as fact, or to specifically challenge that idea. The results reveal powerful societal stereotypes when it comes to sexual violence, which need to be counteracted in the future.

In the Icelandic traditional ballads from medieval and post-medieval times, wo-men and their voices are very prominent, while stories of male heroes were rather portrayed in rímur. The language is very unusual and shows signs of translation, formulas are frequently used, and the mode of narration is objective and clear. Love is a common subject, and so is violence, often gender-based and sexual. In the article the background of these ballads is discussed shortly and their emergence in Icelandic oral culture and later its literature, as they were recorded by educated men, from nameless sources, most probably women. Seven ballads are then used to show different aspects of violence within the genre. All are highly dramatic, and their subject is harsh: hardship, rape, birth and loss of children, and sometimes the victims take things into their own hands and avenge in a graphic way. How ballads that tell such terrible tales, can have been sung and danced to at joyous gatherings, is an interesting food for thought. It will be reasoned that these ballads have primarily been sung by women, and they can even have been a consolation and a tool to deal with gender-based violence in their own lives.