Suchergebnisse

Ævintýrið "La Belle et la Bête" eða "Fríða og dýrið", eftir Madame de Villeneuve kom út í París árið 1740. Sagan var stytt og endursögð af Madame Leprince de Beaumont en hún gaf söguna út í London árið 1756 í Magasin des enfants, fræðslu og skemmtiriti sem ætlað var enskum nemendum hennar. Í þeirri gerð varð ævintýrið þekkt víða um lönd enda var bók Beaumonts lengi notuð við frönskukennslu. Þessi fræga saga er eitt þeirra fáu frönsku bókmenntaverka sem þýdd voru á íslensku á 18. öld. Hannes Finnsson, biskup í Skálholti, þýddi söguna og birti, undir heitinu "Skrýmslið góða", í verki sínu Kvöldvökurnar 1794. Í inngangsorðum sínum að Kvöldvökunum fjallar Hannes um þýðingarstarfið og áherslur sínar sem þýðandi. Í þessari grein er rýnt í þýðingu Hannesar á þessu fræga ævintýri sem naut mikilla vinsælda hérlendis á 19. öld og þýðingin birt óstytt.

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.

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.

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.

A haunted house can either be a monster or the habitat of monsters, or even both. These houses have a unique attraction and a variety of methods to catch their prey. The scariest haunted house in the film Rökkur by Erlingur Óttar Thoroddsen (2017) does not provide shelter from wind and weather as it is not made of wood, concrete or stone. The ghosts in Rökkur are lurking online instead. By using the premises of the horror genre, Erlingur focuses specifically on the dangers that young homosexual men can be facing today. Chat rooms and social media are like hunting grounds for the monsters stalking the main characters. The film also focuses on the staggering silence of survivors of sexual violence, as studies have indicated that male victims are less likely to report the crimes they have suffered.

The paper analyzes the rulings of the Supreme Court of iceland in rape cases after changes in the penal code in 1992 and 2007. The study employs discourse analysis in which legitimizing principles are identified. The aim of the paper is to explore whether victim blaming, misogyny or other such attitudes are reflected in the rul­ings. The paper concludes that the rulings' focus is mainly on physical abuse and violence although less emphasis is put on that after the changes in the penal code. Mental harm caused by rape is often given little attention or even completely igno­red. One main conclusion is that rape myths are reflected in the rulings and victim blaming is common although it is decreasing. it is also apparent that the emphasis on victim blaming diminishes if the perpetrator is of foreign origin.

This introductory chapter focuses on the multiple and diverse representations of urban communities and their infinite complexity. Firstly, the chapter introduces samples of recent representations of the city of Reykjavík, from Icelandic artists and scholars. Then the focus shifts to Enrique del Acebo Ibáñez´s theoretical ideas, as revealed in his book Sociología del arraigo: Una lectura crítica de la teoría de la ciudad (1996), (Sociology of Rootedness: Theories on the Origin and Nature of Urban Communities), translated into Icelandic in 2007, where he discusses the complex phenomenon of the "city" and questions the role of its inhabitants. His reflections substantiate previous theories of scholars such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, René König and Henri Lefebvre, whose writings are introduced and discussed in the chapter as well. Finally, the chapter applies a critical approach to a brief analysis of well-known Latin American narrative readily available in Icelandic, such as One hundred years of solitude (Cien años de soledad, 1967) by Gabriel García Márquez, The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) by Isabel Allende, and Amulet (Amuleto, 1999) by Eduardo Bolaño.