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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 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'.

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.

The article initially addresses the novel Kata by Steinar Bragi in the context of genre and asks to what extent it aligns itself with the crime novel, in particular the more recent brand of the crime novel wherein social issues are placed at the forefront. The point is made that Kata diverges in some important respects from even the most radical of critiques found within the parameters of the crime genre, in that it suspends the very concepts that usually ground such narratives (justice, right, and crime) and comes to the conclusion that the widespread social acceptance of violence against women delegitimizes the entire edifice of Western thinking on social justice. It is here that the article looks towards Louis Althusser's theorization 149of ideological and oppressive state apparatuses, while shifting their object from the class struggle to gender relations. Althusser's concepts are employed to shed light on the ideology that supports and enables violence against women in contemporary societies, and how the reverse of the oppressive function of the state, that is, state leniency and disinterest in prosecuting sex crimes, or creating the environment in which they are unlikely to be reported, are taken up in the novel, thematized, and in turn, fuel the rage of the protagonist. Finally, a question is raised as to the signific-ance of the fact that a novel about female rage and disempowerment is written by a male author.

The icelandic poet Gerður Kristný has in the last two decades repeatedly told tragic stories focusing on the systemic violence that has for so long been directed against women, and her long narrative poem Drápa, or The Slaying (2014), is no exception. Drápa is a feminist critique focusing on the true story of Gréta Birgisdóttir, who was murdered by her husband Bragi Ólafsson in Reykjavík in January 1988. it is a poem about a killing that draws its power from various different sources, such as modern true crime fiction, the Nordic crime novel, and fantastic tales.

In the past months and years women have been raising awareness against rape and other sexual violence. The aim of the research discussed in this article is to shed a light on rape culture in Iceland, especially what ideas are prevailing among young people about rape, survivors and perpetrators. Moreover, the aim is to shed a light on the impact of these ideas on rape survivors. The study draws on focus group interviews with university students and semi-structured interviews with a university student, rape survivors and an expert who works closely with survivors. The findings highlight rape culture in Iceland and how rape and other sexual violence is normal-ized. Predominant discourses and myths tend to question the rape, portray survivors as responsible for the rape and find ways to extenuate perpetrators.

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.