The astonishing range of writings about the social causes and consequences of the Icelandic 2008 financial crisis proffers a unique opportunity to analyse comparative-ly how scholars from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences deal with one and the same subject. How does the scholarly approach differ regarding the employment of theories, hypotheses, empirical data and concepts? Is the methodology of the humanities noticeably different from that of the social sciences? Did the boundaries of philosophy and related sciences change in times of crisis, momentarily or permanently?
Should the progress in the biological sciences during the last decades give rise to a re-evaluation of literary analysis? The paper opens with a discussion of this question with reference to a fragment of Dagur Sigurðarson's poem "Takk takk Tobbi", pub-lished in Rógmálmur og grásilfur (1971). The question is answered partly affirmative-ly, mostly on the grounds that embodied cognition has to be taken into account when analysing literature. It is pointed out that among the factors that have contributed to a better understanding of the complex relation between the body and language is recent research on Tourette syndrome. The relationship between this neurological disorder and poetry is the main subject of the paper and it is discussed with refer-ence to a scaldic strophe from The Saga of Gisli Sursson. First, Tourette-syndrome is discussed briefly, including the medical profession's stance toward it during the 19thand 20th century and scholarly work on the common traits that the disorder shares with poetry. Subsequently it is considered how these writings can benefit literary scholarship, Gisli Sursson's strophe is analysed and it is proposed that this analysis can't rely on metrical rules alone. Then the aforementioned poem by Dagur Sig-urðarson is reconsidered, and finally a few points are recapitulated.
The aim of this article is to discuss two contemporary Icelandic novels, Kata by Steinar Bragi and Gott fólk by Valur Grettisson, in connection to interpretations of revenge literature and films in the field of Law and literature. Both novels deal with shortcomings in the legal system and judiciary in dealing with and proving crimes involving rape and sexual abuse. This analysis focuses on how the two novels are connected to the advocacy for change, both for the legislator and the judicial system in Iceland. The novel Kata is named after the protagonist, whose daughter is kidnapped, raped and murdered. Kata decides to revenge her daughter and murder the perpetrators, one by one. Throughout the story the reader is made aware of the necessity of avenge, but still the question of righteousness remains. In Gott fólk the narrator, Sölvi, is put through the accountability process by Sara and her friends, after she accuses him of both mental and sexual misconduct during the time of their relationship. Sölvi experiences the process as revenge, but to the reader it is clear that he is guilty and cannot cope with that realization. The two novels offer a basis for discussion on sexual offence, the legal system, revenge and justice.
Literature has a long history of chastising women who defy ,traditional' gender roles. By turning a critical eye on the poem danse grotesque by the Icelandic poet Sjón, its staging and visual presentations, as well as fundamental interpretive keys such as trolls and dance, one senses a resistance to the prevailing manifestations of women in the Western media. The article shows how the poem reassesses the relationship between femininity and death in Western culture.Keywords: Concrete poetry, avant-garde, decadence, gender roles, death, dance, trollsKjartan Már ÓmarssonDoktorsnemi í almennri bókmenntafræði Hugvísindasviði Háskóla ÍslandsSæmundargötu 2 IS-101 Reykjavík, Íslandko@hi.is
This essay concerns itself with perceptions of the urban sphere, with its manifestations in literature and life writing, and with the city as a place of strangeness and travel in various senses, including the ways in which it pertains to the individual world view. Cities are places of density and internal connections, but their gates also open out and connect with other places, and increasingly other cities. Following a discussion of the Icelandic links between Copenhagen and Reykjavík, and the slow emergence of the latter as a "literary capital", the course is set for foreign cities, including Berlin and Paris in the company of Walter Benjamin, and the experience of getting lost with Franz Kafka in places that may be Prague and New York. In attempting to answer the question whether it is possible to become intimate with cities, we have recourse to city guides, life maps, a touring theatre – and the art of losing and finding.
This article presents findings from two qualitative research studies on readers' emotional reactions and empathy towards literary texts. Participants were presented with two fragments from novels by Vigdís Grímsdóttir and then asked about their reactions. In the first study, 20 participants were asked to read a fragment from the novel Þögnin(2000) and half of the participants had some kind of a musical education and the other half with no background in music. Interestingly, having a musical background impacted reactions differently than what was expected. As a result, a second study was carried out where the reactions of visual artists (10) were compared to non-artists (10) to a fragment from the novel Þegar stjarna hrapar (2003). Both novels contain information specific to music (Þögnin) or visual arts (Þegar stjarna hrapar). Cognitive science methods, such as the schema theory, will be used to explain how readers of diverse backgrounds react differently to the same text. This approach also illustrates how useful qualitative methods can be in studying topics beyond only the content of the text.
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.
Erlendis hafa þverfaglegar rannsóknir á sviði laga og bókmennta verið blómlegar á undanförnum ártugum. Á fyrstu áratugum tuttugustu aldar mótaðist meðal bandarískra lögfræðikennara hreyfing í kringum þetta efni (e. the law and literature movement) sem hafði framan af þann tilgang að bæta húmanískan bakgrunn lögfræðinema. Um miðjan þriðja áratuginn voru færð rök fyrir mikilvægi þess að lögfræðingar kynntu sér skáldskap og bókmenntir. Þar sem starf stéttarinnar snerist að verulegu leyti um skriftir (að semja sóknar- og varnarræður, lög og dómsorð) væri yfirgripsmikil þekking á stíl og stílbrögðum gagnleg hverjum þeim sem vildi ná árangri í faginu. Ekki leið á löngu þar til bandaríska fræðiumræðan fór að hafa áhrif víðar, meðal annars í Evrópu. Meginmarkmið með þessu þemahefti Ritisins er að kynna þessa fræðahefð hérlendis og vekja áhuga á margháttuðum tengslum lögfræðinnar við bókmenntafræði, sagnfræði og heimspeki. Í heftinu birtast fjórar frumsamdar og tvær þýddar greinar þar sem lög og bókmenntir fléttast saman.
Markmið greinarinnar er að fjalla um skáldsögur tveggja íslenskra kvenrithöfunda sem beita fagurfræði hins ókennilega (e. the uncanny, þ. das unheimliche) til að takast á við atburði fjármálahrunsins árið 2008. Sögurnar sem um ræðir eru Ég man þig (2010) eftir Yrsu Sigurðardóttur, og Hvítfeld: Fjölskyldusaga (2012) eftir Kristínu Eiríksdóttur. Í hug- og félagsvísindum er hrunið skilgreint sem sameiginlegt áfall þjóðar sem leiddi til djúpstæðrar minnis- og sjálfsmyndarkrísu á hinu sameiginlega opinbera sviði. Þá hefur hugmyndin um hrunbókmenntir verið glögglega skilgreind og rædd, til dæmis í bók Aleric Hall, Útrásarvíkingar: The Literature of the Icelandic Financial Crisis (2008-2014). Í greininni skoða ég hvernig ókennileg stef verkanna skírskota til samfélagsástands á hruntímum og hvernig reimd hús frásagnanna endurspegla bælingu, ótta og loks sorg á tímum fjármálakreppu.
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 essay offers a succinct but comprehensive overview of Icelandic cinema from its early 20th-century emergence to the present day. Split into two parts, the first half focusses on filmmaking in Iceland prior to the founding of the Icelandic Film Fund in 1978, which was to establish a continuous local film production for the first time. Prior to that filmmaking in Iceland boiled down to the occasional efforts of local amateurs, albeit often quite skilled ones, and professional filmmakers visiting from abroad. Indeed, the few silent feature films made in the country all stemmed from foreign filmmakers adapting Icelandic literature and taking advantage of its photogenic landscapes. The first Icelandic feature was not made until 1948 and although immensely popular, like those that followed in its wake, the national audience was simply too small to sustain filmmaking without financial support. Although this changed fundamentally with the Icelandic Film Fund, which instigated contemporary Icelandic cinema and the subject of the essay's second half, the Fund's support proved insufficient as the novelty of Icelandic cinema began to wear off at the local box office in the late 1980s. The rescue came from outside sources, in the form of nordic and European film funds, whose support was to transnationalize Icelandic cinema in terms of not only financing and production but also themes and subject material. These changes are most apparent in Icelandic cinema of the 1990s which also began to garner interest at the international film festival circuit. In the first decade of the twenty first century, however, American genre cinema began to replace the European art film as the typical model for Icelandic filmmakers. Hollywood itself also began to show extensive interest in Icelandic landscapes for its runaway productions, as did many other foreign film crews. In this way Icelandic cinema is increasingly characterized by not only national and transnational elements but also international ones.
This article discusses the "Critical period" in language acquisition – based on the theory that children are born with the natural ability to learn language; an ability that gradually fades or disappears. According to this theory, children who are not privy to normal language stimulation during childhood miss their chance to acquire a language "perfectly".Critical periods do not only exist in language, e.g. children and other young animals need to receive visual stimulation for their vision to develop. The beginning of this article considers difference in opportunities for research, and thereby the state of knowledge concerning the critical period in vision, compared to language acquisition. The difference is based mainly on two factors: on the one hand, animals have been studied to elucidate the critical period in vision – an option that linguists do not have – and, on the other, it is quite common for children to lack visual stimulation, i.e. due to cataracts. It is less common for children to grow up without language stimulation, although stories exist of children that, for one reason or another, were deprived of human interaction during childhood. The author uses this opportunity to provide an account of two such stories, in a more detailed fashion than would be necessary to define the critical period in language acquisition. These are also stories of violence and questionable work methods for the sake of science. This is followed by a discussion of deaf children as, in the past – as well as the present day – it was common for them not to receive appropriate language stimulation from the beginning, i.e. via the use of sign language. The examples are so many that late language acquisition by deaf children can shed light on the critical period in language acquisition.Many have discussed the critical period in language acquisition but emphasis is often placed on that which has remained unlearned. This article asks rather what can be learned and whether language structure can be established despite a late start for the language acquisition process.
This article deals with the authorship of Elísabet Kristín Jökulsdóttir, with special emphasis on the autofictional novel Heilræði lásasmiðsins (The locksmith's advice), as well as other works that are based on autobiographical material. Elísabet writes a lot about the female body, its desires and erotic longings, as well as how helpless and weak it can be in particular situations. Her writing on the self, body and sexuality centres on the opposition between love and rejection. The desire for love is the driving force behind her writing and a deep and ruthless self-examination is at work in her fictional world. This desire is closely connected to the female body and sexual drive and Elísabet scrutinizes the nature of 'femininity' and asks what it means to be ,a woman'. Elísabet describes the female body in all its nakedness and vulnerability and shows how the body is the battleground where the main conflicts between self and others take place. Elísabet frequently describes two oppositional worlds in her works. There are conflicts between the magical world and reality, the father and the mother, the child and the grown-up, psychological difficulties and 'sanity'. a divided self is a persistent theme in her writings, as well as the struggle to remain on the right side of the "borders", which are frequently mentioned. Elísabet's writings reveal a struggle for marking a place for oneself in the world, to be heard and seen, to be able to createand recreate the self and through her writing, she copes with existence and difficulties that are rooted in childhood. Through writing, she finds a way out and the writing process serves as self-analysis and therapy. In her works Elísabet also creates her own personal mythology, which she connects with women's struggle for self-realization, freedom and social space. The analysis of Elísabet's works is inspired by the writings of feminist scholars, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Kate millett and Hélène Cixous.
Þórarinn B. Þorláksson (1867–1924) has been credited with being the first Icelandic professional painter. His reception, both during his lifetime and posthumously, is therefore an interesting indication of the changes in the outlook and ideology surrounding the reception of Scandinavian findesiécle art up to the present. He was honourably mentioned by his contemporaries and then was forgotten in the upheavals surrounding the adoption of modern styles, such as abstract art, in Iceland around the Second World War. He regained attention in the sixties and has since then been revered as an important, though problematic, pioneer of Icelandic painting. This has in recent years been especially evident in the way he has been mentioned in the context of the revival of Nordic and Scandinavian late 19th and early 20th century art in NorthernEurope and America. The paper reviews and analyses the historical reception Þorláksson has received and the way his work has been inscribed into the narrative of Icelandic and Scandinavian Art History. This process is an attempt to understand and contextualise Þorláksson's work in aesthetic terms, while at the same time function as a critical mirror of the trends and ideologies surrounding the Nordic revival in recent years.
