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Medieval Icelandic law contains no provisions about copyright. Authors used without hesitation narrative texts by others, but poets were paid for composing laudatory poems about kings and narrators for telling stories at their courts. The art of storytelling became a speciality of Icelanders, who were also hired to write biographies of Norwegian kings. It was considered reprehensible to use the poetry of others as one's own work. Two Norwegian poets may have got the cognomens skáldaspillir (Destroyer of poets?) and illskælda (Bad or Evil poet?) for plagiarism. An Icelandic poet composed a laudatory poem about a woman but changed it to fit another one, receiving a bitter revenge. In Icelandic sagas stanzas occur frequently and, unlike borrowings in prose, their authors are usually named. In the medieval law of Iceland it is forbidden to compose about people not only derogatory but also laudatory poetry. Conceivably it has been considered to give the author some kind of power over the person who was the subject of the poetry. Proper copyright, though, does not occur in Icelandic law until the beginning of the twentieth century.

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.

People migrating to Europe in search for a new life have become increasingly visible in various ways for the last few years. The article stresses some of the weaknesses in discussions on migration to Europe, where it is often assumed that migration from the outside world has only recently been affecting Europe. The article emphasizes how classifications of people into categories such as "refugee" and "immigrant" and the naturalization of these categories, can lead to dehumanization and stark simplifications. The article approaches this through stories of three men in Brussels, Belgium who have fled difficult circumstances in their home country Niger. It also explores these issues from some Icelandic discussions.

Icelandic politics are analysed from the perspectives of three normative models of democracy: the liberal, republican and deliberative democratic theories. While the Icelandic constitution is rooted in classical liberal ideas, Icelandic politics can be harshly criticized from a liberal perspective, primarily because of the unclear separation of powers of government and for the extensive involvement of politics in other social sectors. Despite strong nationalist discourse which reflects republican characteristics, rooted in the struggle for independence from Denmark, republicanism has been marginal in Icelandic politics. In the years before the financial collapse, Icelandic society underwent a process of liberalization in which power shifted to the financial sector without disentangling the close ties that had prevailed between business and politics. The special commission set up by the Icelandic Parliament to investigate the causes of the financial collapse criticized Icelandic politics and governance for its flawed working practices and lack of professionalism. The appropriate lessons to draw from this criticism are to strengthen democratic practices and institutions. In the spirit of republicanism, however, the dominant discourse about Icelandic democracy after the financial collapse has been on increasing direct, vote-centric participation in opposition to the system of formal politics. While this development is understandable in light of the loss of trust in political institutions in the wake of the financial collapse, it has not contributed to trustworthy practices. In order to improve Icelandic politics, the analysis in this paper shows, it is important to work more in the spirit of deliberative democratic theory ; Peer Reviewed

The ambiguity between reality and fiction haunts Einar Már Guðmundsson's novel Hundadagar (Dog Days, 2015), as it is a fictional narrative about factual, historical figures and events, such as Jörgen Jörgensen, Rev. Jón Steingrímsson, Finnur Magnússon and Guðrún Johnsen, while the same can be said about many other novels labeled as postmodernism. Canadian literary scholar Linda Hutcheon coined the concept of historiographic metafiction to describe fictions as such, which are "intensely self-reflexive", while "paradoxically lay claim to historical events and personages". Hutcheon suggests that historiographic metafictions fully illuminate the very way in which postmodernism entangles itself with both the epistemological and ontological status of history. This paper begins with an introduction to Hutcheon's theoretical contributions on postmodernism, postmodern literature and the relationship between history and fiction, followed by a reading of Hundadagar as a historiographic metafiction. The narrator's strategies—such as parataxis, metanarrative comments, we-narrative discourse and documentary intertext—largely indicate an imitation, a revelation, or say, a parody of the process of historian's writings. The paper further suggests that it is the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008 that prompts the narrator to revisit the 18. and 19. century, since the financial crisis takes the role of a rupture of the Enlightenment ideals, leading to disorder and chaos. Moreover, the narrator finds an uncanny similarity between the past and the present, as if the history has been repeating itself. The spectre of history keeps (re)appearing in a deferred temporality. While revisiting the past, the narrator also (re)visits the present in an allegorical way. In a word, as a historiographic metafiction, Einar Már Guðmundsson's Hundadagar is "fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political", just as Hutcheon's perception of postmodernism.

This volume is the first study of the influence of Roman law on the first written law of Iceland. Starting with a presentation of the legislation during the period of the Icelandic free state, Hafliði Másson is presented in detail. Through him influences from Roman law, as well as norms from the Old Testament played a part in the legal codex of Grágás. The work is thus of significance for legal history as well as for German and Byzantine studies. Hans Henning Hoff, Hamburg.

This paper discusses the history of the nouns gleðimaður, which is known from Old as well as Modern icelandic, and gleðikona which first occurs in an 18th-century source. Other nominal compounds for men and women that have gleði- as their first member are also introduced. The meaning of these words is compared, as is their usage, in order to test the claim that the words for men normally have a neutral meaning ('cheerful man, party animal') but the words for women have a pejorative meaning ('hussy, prostitute'). The nature of the changes in the history of the gleði-compounds is also discussed, e.g., to what extent borrowing from a foreign language has taken place. Lars-Gunnar Andersson's categorization of the so-called "ugliness" of words is used for a more detailed definition of the semantic changes. Finally, we touch on the wish to reclaim the word gleðikona that has been observed in the last decades, i.e., to revive the practically forgotten meaning 'cheerful woman, female party animal'.