History of Iceland

The present study scrutinizes the outlawry and outlaws that appear in the Icelandic Family Sagas. It provides a thorough description about outlawry on the basis of extant law and saga texts as well as an analysis of referential connotations attached to it. The concept of outlawry was fundamental for the medieval Icelanders conceptions of their past. Indeed, understanding outlawry is essential for understanding many of the Family Sagas. Outlaws appear in saga texts in significant roles.

The Icelandic Family Sagas comprise a group of prose narratives that were written down in the 13th and 14th century Iceland. They are based on events and personae that belong to the 10th century Iceland. These narratives introduce many outlaws, out of which some 75 are named.

The Family Sagas are studied here as one corpus and special emphasis is given to those narrative features that repetitively appear in connection with outlawry and the outlaw characters. Therefore, the eventual objects of this study are the medieval Icelanders general conceptions of the historical outlawry as well as the variations of these conceptions throughout the period of saga writing. The medieval Icelanders general conceptions about the 10th 11th century, which are reflected in the Family Sagas, are here referred to as the Saga World. The Saga World is the historically based taleworld to which all of the Family Sagas refer.

The medieval law texts, which were derived from centuries old legislative traditions, reveal that outlawry meant banishing from the society and being denied all help, and that the outlawed person lost the protection of the law. In practice, outlawry was a death sentence.

However, outlaws occupy many differing roles in the saga narratives even in connection with recurrent narrative motifs. These roles reflect the social and spatial structures of the Saga World. The inspection of outlawry within these structures reveals that the definition of outlawry as it appears in the law texts is insufficient for understanding outlawry in the saga texts.

The social and spatial structures also provide a basis for the connotations of outlawry. In this study, these connotations are inspected primarily from the referential connections between outlawry in the Family Sagas and corresponding phenomena in other concurrent literature. This is done by studying the implementations of the basic elements of outlawry in the Family Sagas marginalization, banishing, rejection and solitariness within other literary genres and the taleworlds to which they refer. It is argued that these taleworlds reflect the same ideas that were associated with outlawry in the Family Sagas albeit in different forms and that these different forms reciprocally contributed to the conceptions of outlawry.

The variety of denotations and connotations of outlawry that is visible in the medieval Icelandic texts reflects the ambiguity of outlawry in the Family Sagas. This ambiguity may shed light to questions such as why an outlaw could be perceived as a hero in a literary genre that predominantly promoted law and order and why the same outlaw could be perceived as a villain on another occasion.

In Iceland, contemporary art has become important as a cosmopolitan representation of cultural identity. This chapter is not so much concerned with filling in art-historical gaps by making Icelandic artists visible (even though I believe this is an important issue). Rather I am concerned with the ways that contemporary art still is deployed as an aspect of remodelled identity construction among artists, and how these reconfigured identities were (and are still) mobilized through the close contact with non-Icelandic Fluxus artists, such as Dieter Roth (1930–1998) and Robert Filliou (1926–1987). Part of this investigation involves consideration of the cultural influence of Amsterdam during the 1960s and 1970s, and the critical role of artist-run spaces and radical art education. These initiatives collectively produced new paradigms and initiated new thinking about art in the growing capital of Iceland where contemporary art started to be institutionalised through the Living Art Museum established in 1978 and the Reykjavík Art Festival in 1972.

Á árunum upp úr 1930 kemur við sögu á Ísafirði, og reyndar víðar um land, Vilhelm nokkur Jakobsson. Hann er flestum gleymdur nú en lífssaga hans er dapurleg og með nokkrum ólíkindum. Einn þáttur hennar varpar á sinn hátt nokkuð merkilegu ljósi yfir stjórnmálaástand og stjórnmálaátök á Ísafirði á árunum fyrir seinni heimsstyrjöldina. Hér á eftir verður dregið saman yfirlit um líf þessa manns sem sjálfsagt hefði kosið að sín yrði minnst á annan hátt en lesa má úr fréttum dagblaða frá þessum árum.

Ari wrote the Islendingabok, but it is unlikely that he also wrote the Landnamabok, because several genealogies end around 1030, and important people from later in the 11th century ar missing, such as lawspeakers and even from Ari's own family.
Later editing of the Landnamabok incorporated people from the 12th and 13th century.

Hér fjallar höfundur um ömmur föður síns sem fæddust um 1880
og voru á fertugsaldri þegar heldri konur fengu kosningarétt á
Íslandi. Móðurmóðir föðurins, Kristrún Tómasdóttir Hallgrímsson
Benediktsson, átti uppruna sinn í hefðarslektum fámennrar borgarastéttar Íslands. Hún þótti fara út fyrir einstigi stéttarsóma síns
þegar hún féll fyrir talsvert yngri og óþekktum bóndasyni að
vestan. Föðurmóðir föðurins, Ingibjörg Hjartardóttir, var hreppstjóradóttir
frá Efra-Núpi í Húnavatnssýslu. Hún giftist ættstórum
sýslumanni, Halldóri Kr. Júlíussyni, sem var sjö árum eldri en
hún og átti þegar einn son. Þessar formæður höfundar áttu það
sameiginlegt að verða karlmannslausar með ung börn sín í upphafi
20. aldar; í kulda og trekki feðraveldis, nokkuð sem hafði afdrifaríkar
afleiðingar fyrir lífshlaup þeirra, möguleika og virðingarsess.
Þó beittu þær báðar ýtrustu útsjónarsemi við að láta drauma sína
rætast og reyndu fyrir sér í Ameríku. Það er ekki mikið til af opinberum
gögnum um líf þeirra en víða leynast upplýsingar um lífshlaup
þeirra og vísbendingar um drauma og væntingar, meðal annars í skáldsögum um eiginmenn þeirra, ritverkum um feður þeirra og svo minningum aðstandenda.

This chapter contains sociological analysis and historical narrative
concerning the grandmothers of the author’s father. They were
born around 1880, and were in their forties when women older
than 40 years of age were granted suffrage in Iceland. Kristrún
Tómasdóttir Hallgrímsson Benediktsson was born into one of the
few Icelandic families that could be considered bourgeois at the
time, possessing a great deal of family capital accumulated over
several generations. Despite her culturally rich and elitist upbringing,
Kristrún (34) fell in love with a man nine years her junior, a
handsome farmer’s son (26), who had grown up in isolation and
poverty in the Western Fjords of Iceland. The other grandmother,
Ingibjörg Hjartardóttir Halldórsson, was the daughter of a farmer
and district administrative officer and grew up at Efri-Núpur in
Húnavatnssýsla. She married a county magistrate, Halldór Kr.
Júlíusson, whose family status was high in Reykjavík, both financially
and culturally. His grandfather, Halldór Kr. Friðriksson, was
the first headmaster of Lærði skólinn, the first junior college in
Iceland. The author’s great grandmothers were both among the
few women in early 20th century Iceland who could be considered
upper-class. Both became divorcees with young children in a
deeply patriarchal society, which led to drastic transitions in their
lives and opportunities, and in their status as respectable women.
They therefore had to make use of all their ingenuity to fulfil their
upper-class dreams, and both tried to find a better future for
themselves in America. There are not many historical sources to
rely on when writing up their stories, but some indications of
their hopes and dreams can be found in narratives about their
husbands and fathers, and there are also their families’ memories
of them.

Narrative and context in the (de-)construction of interrogative testimony in judicial sources

The records of Icelandic county courts is a vast but largely unused type of source material for historians. The National Archives hold over 700 books of interrogations, sentencing and other judicial proceedings dating from the early 17th century until the 20th century. These sources hold the testimonies of people who are otherwise nowhere to be found in historical sources as well as information about various minute details of everyday life. As such, they are a veritable goldmine for historians in search of the life of „ordinary people“ in the past. A recent project undertaken by the National Archives to register the contents of these court books and establish a searchable online database will undoubtedly – hopefully – increase interest and scholarly use of these records in the near future.
Because of that the need for historians to engage in a theoretical discussion of interrogative testimony as a source type is pressing. Its contents cannot simply be taken at face value. This article discusses several of the epistemological and methodological issues at stake when analyzing such testimonies. Questions discussed include how interrogations took place in the late 18th and 19th centuries and in turn who can be deemed the author of the text, how events and experiences are narrated in court settings as well as in the creation of autobiographical memories and, consequently, what „truth-value“ interrogative testimonies hold, and finally the relation between fact and context in historical analysis. This theoretical discussion is then compared with recent analyses by two Icelandic scholars of testimonies of the accused in the murder of Natan Ketilsson in the early 19th century. This famous case led to what turned out to be the last public execution in Iceland in 1830. Both analyses are found to be highly problematic due to the absence of methodolocial and analytical nuance and a sense for, or at least a discussion of, the limitations of the sources and their interpretation.
The main argument of the article is that any analysis of interrogative testimonies must take into account the creative processes involved in constructing them, including (but not limited to) the discursive as well as performative aspects of the trial proceedings, the processes of pre- and reconstruction of narratives as well as the communicative intent of their authors, the intentions of the scholar reading and analysing their meaning, and finally the contextualisation of each testimony and/or court case.

Þótt ótrúlegt megi virðast, börðust sumir kunnustu menntamenn Íslendinga á tuttugustu öld fyrir kommúnisma, Sovét-Íslandi. Var þó vitað um fjöldaaftökur í kommúnistaríkjunum, hungursneyðir, þrælkunarbúðir, fjöldabrottflutninga, átthagafjötra og ritskoðun. Í krafti trúarofsa síns og rausnarlegra fjárframlaga frá Moskvu höfðu kommúnistar víðtæk áhrif í íslensku menningarlífi. En ýmsir frjálslyndir menntamenn andmæltu innlendum þjónum hins austræna jötuns. Í tilefni 100 ára fullveldis Íslands eru endurprentaðar hér ræður sex íslenskra rithöfunda til varnar vestrænni menningu 1950–1958.

Masters Thesis: The reputation and importance of Ari hinn fróði in the development of the Icelandic literary corpus is evident and widely recognized, but nevertheless, the importance of Íslendingabók in the development of the Íslendingasögur has not been investigated in detailed.
Showing the importance of the narrative structure and fundamental argumentation of Ari Þorgilsson in the genesis of an Icelandic historical ethos that allowed Icelanders to recover, reshaped and made use of their pagan ancestry is important to understand the close relation that Icelanders kept with their past in the centuries following the conversion.
Thus, it will be investigated how Íslendingabók represents an emerging ethos in Icelandic scholar tradition, that re-appropriates the past as praise-worthy but looks forward to a Christian future. In Íslendingabók, Ari chose an array of historical events, that became in the Íslendingasögur creating a Christian narrative that, like the one of many Íslendigasögur, evolves from one pole towards the final resolution. Ari’s narrative gravitates around the Christian origins of the land, and its final rising of an independent Church in the land.
By doing this, Ari created a new cultural ethos in Iceland, that wrote in vernacular rather than Latin, and influenced the narrative structure of the sagas while also rising the indigenous narratives to an scholar production.

In 2004, Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk (b. 1965) released her fifth solo album Medúlla, made almost exclusively with human voices. After outlining what I have termed ‘the elastic self’, which recognises both personal and external agency, this dissertation first examines how Björk uses technologies of the studio, using Actor Network Theory. Often mechanical manipulation is an attempt to depict powerlessness, whilst her employment of beatboxers’ interplay with technology is to express the body. . I will explore how Björk conceptualised and conceived Medúlla (2004), an album made almost entirely from human voicesI then perform an organicist motivic analysis of the album, studying motives used in different songs and links made across the musical foreground and background and the resulting unity. Through the concept of the rhizome and Actor Network Theory, I expand my analysis of motivic unity outside of the album, suggesting that the album can also be read as a network or as ‘elastic’. This study will attempt to understand how Björk’s idea of the self and body were transferred to the musical work.

The geological divergence of the North American and Eurasian plates creates a geological border known as the mid-Atlantic ridge. The continual diverging forces and intense volcanic activity of the sub-oceanic ridge have given birth to the landmass we know as Iceland. Symbolically, the geographical emergence of Iceland is a direct result of the distancing of both the old and new worlds. Iceland and its people rest at the crossroads of two very different societies, making it hard to share a sense of belonging with either continent, despite the unifying forces of globalization. Iceland's unique history and geographical isolation have resulted in a weak sense of belonging with either the historically rich European or progressive North American continents, thus fostering a strong ethnic and nationalistic identity. In lieu, Iceland has formed and maintained its own unique identity with help of both continents, becoming a geographic and cultural halfway intersection between both. This strong cultural identity can be best observed at Pingvellir, a lieu de mémoire representing the history, struggle, and relentlessness of Iceland's thirst for an identity of its own. The ensuing discussion outlines this thirst and how it paved the micronation's development of a strong national identity resistant of global cultural hybridization.

In the years leading up to the Crash of 2008, Iceland had been triumphed in world business media as an economic miracle. Its new breed of Viking Capitalism had become rock stars of the global finance driven economy, even while it was testing the foundations of Europe's financial system. Eirikur Bergmann applies Postcolonial analysis to explain the paradigmatic case of Iceland's fantastical boom, bust and rapid recovery after the Crash. His critical approach to the claims of the financialization advocates relates the questions of the national economy and globalisation to current trends in Europe and the World.

On October 20th 2012 two thirds of the Icelandic voters accepted the new ‘crowdsourced’, ‘post-revolutionary’ constitution in advisory referendum – sending it to Parliament for discussion and eventual ratification. Ever since gaining independence in 1944 constitutional revision has been on the agenda. Our constitution is still mostly based on the Danish nineteenth century version as our politicians have never been able to agree on a new one. Pressured by the angry public, Parliament hesitantly agreed to call for a special external nationally elected Constitutional Assembly/Council which has delivered a bill for a completely revised constitution. Initially this was seen as a healing process but gradually this too has been politicized, falling into traditional trenches of Icelandic party politics. In this paper I will explain the troubled process of reconstituting Iceland after the Crash and analyse how that relates to the resurrection of Iceland’s economy and political identity.

Based on a constructivist approach, this book offers a comparative analysis into the causes of nationalist populist politics in each of the five Nordic independent nation states. Behind the social liberal façade of the economically successful, welfare-orientated Nordic states, right-wing populism has found support in the region. Such parties emerged first in Denmark and Norway in the 1970s, before becoming prominent in Sweden and Finland after the turn of the millennium and in Iceland in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, when populist parties surged throughout the Nordics. The author traces these Nationalist trails of thoughts back to the National Socialistic movements of the 1920s and 1930s (the respective Nordic version Nazi parties) and before, to the birth of the Nordic nation states in the nineteenth century following the failure of integration. Since then, as the book argues, separate nationalisms have grown strong in each of the countries. This study will appeal to students and scholars as well as wider audiences interested in European Politics, Nordic Politics, Nationalism, and Populism.

This paper is being written mainly as a genealogy, but it does also contain much valuable information as to just why such genealogies exist and/or can be reconstructed with the right knowledge of ancient texts. It is also more evidence of the existence of a royal oligarchy which had many branches, so as to cover many geographic locations and peoples. Because we find that the Viking leaders were of ancient royal ancestry, as the rest of those who were in power and either royal or of papal families, we can better understand just why they were able to do what they did and get away with it. They were, doing publicly, what their royal ancestors had been doing (and what other royals of their time were also doing) in secret (See my work on Royal Supremacy).[I] In terms of the Viking history as it was left to us, as 'Vikings', their " history " as Viking raiders began with the attack on Lindisfarne monastery in 793 CE/AD, and ended with the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 CE/AD, when the Vikings were battling the English army, and the English army had successfully repelled them. Another thing to note, is that the Vikings are credited with various things, particularly, the discovery of America. However, there is evidence that their relatives and ancestors had already known of and visited America. And that explains just how it is that they knew where it was and how to get to it, and back. Though I have not yet written much about it (see my paper 'What Claudius Ptolemy Knew'), I have been meaning to write more about ancient world travel and the evidence that there is for it.[II] There are still a lot of people who do not want to even consider that ancient people had traveled around the world.

This book is an examination of some of the principal issues arising from the study of the kings’ sagas, the main narrative sources for Norwegian history before c. 1200. Providing an overview of the past two decades of scholarship, it discusses the vexed relationship between verse and prose and the reliability as historical sources of the verse alone or the combination of verse and prose; the possibility and extent of non-native influence on the composition of these texts; and the function of the past, in particular given that most of the historiography of Norway was produced in Iceland. This book aims to stimulate studies of medieval Scandinavian historiography with its critical perspective on the texts and the scholarship, while also providing a useful work of reference in order to make this area of research accessible to scholars in cognate fields.