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The Anthropology of Iceland
E. Paul Durrenberger
University of Iowa Press, 1995

 The Anthropology of Iceland presents the first perspectives on Icelandic anthropology from both Icelandic and foreign anthropologists. The thirteen essays in this volume are divided into four themes: ideology and action; kinship and gender; culture, class, and ethnicity; and the Commonwealth period of circa 930 to 1220, which saw the flowering of sagas. Insider and outsider viewpoints on such topics as the Icelandic women's movement, the transformation of the fishing industry, the idea of mystical power in modern Iceland, and archaeological research in Iceland merge to form an international, comparative discourse.

Individually and collectively, by bringing the insights of anthropology to bear on Iceland, the native and foreign authors of this volume carry Iceland into the realm of modern anthropology, advancing our understanding of the island's people and the practice of anthropology.

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Bard of Iceland
Jonas Hallgrimsson, Poet and Scientist
Richard Ringler
University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

Bard of Iceland makes available for the first time in any language other than Icelandic an extensive selection of works by Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807–1845), the most important poet of modern Iceland. Jónas was also Iceland’s first professionally trained geologist and an active contributor in a number of other scientific fields: geography, botany, zoology, and archaeology. He played a key role as well in Iceland’s struggle to gain independence from Denmark. "Descriptive power and fullness of spirit were the hallmarks of his soul," wrote a contemporary admirer.
    Dick Ringler, one of the premier scholars of Icelandic literature in the world, offers a substantial biography of Jónas, a representative selection of his most important poems, and some of his prose work in science and belles lettres. Ringler also provides extended commentaries and an essay on Icelandic prosody.
    The poems are translated into English equivalents of their original complex meters in Icelandic and Danish. As a poet Jónas was intimately familiar with his nation’s medieval literary inheritance—the sagas and eddas—and also with the groundbreaking work of contemporary German and Danish Romanticism (Chamisso, Heine, Oehlenschläger). A master of poetic form, Jónas not only exploited and enlarged the possibilities of traditional eddic and skaldic meters, but introduced the sonnet, triolet stanza, terza and ottava rima, and blank verse into the Icelandic metrical repertory.

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Bloodtaking and Peacemaking
Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland
William Ian Miller
University of Chicago Press, 1990
Dubbed by the New York Times as "one of the most sought-after legal academics in the county," William Ian Miller presents the arcane worlds of the Old Norse studies in a way sure to attract the interest of a wide range of readers. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking delves beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses. Miller's unique and engaging readings of ancient Iceland's sagas and extensive legal code reconstruct and illuminate the society that produced them.

People in the saga world negotiated a maze of violent possibility, with strategies that frequently put life and limb in the balance. But there was a paradox in striking the balance—one could not get even without going one better. Miller shows how blood vengeance, law, and peacemaking were inextricably bound together in the feuding process.

This book offers fascinating insights into the politics of a stateless society, its methods of social control, and the role that a uniquely sophisticated and self-conscious law played in the construction of Icelandic society.

"Illuminating."—Rory McTurk, Times Literary Supplement

"An impressive achievement in ethnohistory; it is an amalgam of historical research with legal and anthropological interpretation. What is more, and rarer, is that it is a pleasure to read due to the inclusion of narrative case material from the sagas themselves."—Dan Bauer, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
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Gambling Debt
Iceland's Rise and Fall in the Global Economy
E. Paul Durrenberger
University Press of Colorado, 2014

Gambling Debt is a game-changing contribution to the discussion of economic crises and neoliberal financial systems and strategies. Iceland’s 2008 financial collapse was the first case in a series of meltdowns, a warning of danger in the global order. This full-scale anthropology of financialization and the economic crisis broadly discusses this momentous bubble and burst and places it in theoretical, anthropological, and global historical context through descriptions of the complex developments leading to it and the larger social and cultural implications and consequences.

Chapters from anthropologists, sociologists, historians, economists, and key local participants focus on the neoliberal policies—mainly the privatization of banks and fishery resources—that concentrated wealth among a select few, skewed the distribution of capital in a way that Iceland had never experienced before, and plunged the country into a full-scale economic crisis. Gambling Debt significantly raises the level of understanding and debate on the issues relevant to financial crises, painting a portrait of the meltdown from many points of view—from bankers to schoolchildren, from fishers in coastal villages to the urban poor and immigrants, and from artists to philosophers and other intellectuals.

This book is for anyone interested in financial troubles and neoliberal politics as well as students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, economics, philosophy, political science, business, and ethics.

Publication supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

Contributors: 
Vilhjálmur Árnason, Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Jón Gunnar Bernburg, James Carrier, Sigurlína Davíðsdóttir, Dimitra Doukas, Níels Einarsson, Einar Mar Guðmundsson, Tinna Grétarsdóttir, Birna Gunnlaugsdóttir, Guðný S. Guðbjörnsdóttir, Pamela Joan Innes, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, Örn D. Jónsson, Hannes Lárusson, Kristín Loftsdóttir, James Maguire, Már Wolfgang Mixa, Evelyn Pinkerton, Hulda Proppé, James G. Rice, Rögnvaldur J. Sæmundsson, Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir, Margaret Willson


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History Of Scandinavia
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, And Iceland
T.K. Derry
University of Minnesota Press, 2000

This concise account traces the history of the Scandinavian countries from earliest times to the present, emphasizing common features in their heritage and in their contribution to the modern world.  The author’s aim is to describe each country’s history, traditions, and way of life and to examine the political development of the five nations in the context of the whole Nordic region.

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A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth
Islendinga Saga
Jon Johannesson
University of Manitoba Press, 2007
The founding of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth in 930 A.D. is one of the most significant events in the history of early Western Europe. This pioneering work of historiography provides a comprehensive history of Iceland from 870 A.D. to the end of the Commonwealth in 1262.
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Iceland
The First New Society
Richard F. Tomasson
University of Minnesota Press, 1980

Iceland was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

"Iceland, as described by Tomasson, has a fascinating, often contradictory culture," writes Seymour Martin Lipset in his forward to this book, the first sociological account in English of modern Icelandic society and the forces that have shaped it. Richard F. Tomasson argues that Iceland can best be understood as an example of "a new society"—the first such pioneer community to be founded in historical times. To the author the most significant influences upon Icelandic culture and social structure are the continuities that have persisted in this island society for eleven centuries, since its origins as an isolated Viking colony.

Tomasson traces the ways in which Icelandic culture developed out of the medieval pre- Christian society—in its language, relations between the sexes, egalitarianism, and the high frequency of illegitimate births. He also points out areas of contradiction and discontinuity, noting that Iceland has been transformed in the twentieth century by modernization of the society and international influences upon the culture.

Among the topics Tomasson examines are the Icelanders' involvement in their history and national literary tradition; their social, political, and economic life; the high level of literacy; the pervasive tolerance of Icelanders in moral and religious matters; their values; and the use of alcohol. Readers interested in the Scandinavian countries and in the comparative study of societies will find Iceland a useful analysis of a significant and little known national culture.

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Images of Contemporary Iceland
Everyday Lives and Global Contexts
Gisli Palsson
University of Iowa Press, 1996

The Anthropology of Iceland presents the first perspectives on Icelandic anthropology from both Icelandic and foreign anthropologists. The thirteen essays in this volume are divided into four themes: ideology and action; kinship and gender; culture, class, and ethnicity; and the Commonwealth period of circa 930 to 1220, which saw the flowering of sagas. Insider and outsider viewpoints on such topics as the Icelandic women's movement, the transformation of the fishing industry, the idea of mystical power in modern Iceland, and archaeological research in Iceland merge to form an international, comparative discourse.

Individually and collectively, by bringing the insights of anthropology to bear on Iceland, the native and foreign authors of this volume carry Iceland into the realm of modern anthropology, advancing our understanding of the island's people and the practice of anthropology.

[more]

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Laws of Early Iceland
Gragas II
Andrew Dennis
University of Manitoba Press, 2000
The laws of Mediaeval Iceland provide detailed and fascinating insight into the society that produced the Icelandic sagas. Known collectively as Gragas (Greygoose), this great legal code offers a wealth of information about early European legal systems and the society of the Middles Ages. This first translation of Gragas is in two volumes.
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The Man Who Stole Himself
The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan
Gisli Palsson
University of Chicago Press, 2016
The island nation of Iceland is known for many things—majestic landscapes, volcanic eruptions, distinctive seafood—but racial diversity is not one of them. So the little-known story of Hans Jonathan, a free black man who lived and raised a family in early nineteenth-century Iceland, is improbable and compelling, the stuff of novels.
            In The Man Who Stole Himself, Gisli Palsson lays out the story of Hans Jonathan (also known as Hans Jónatan) in stunning detail. Born into slavery in St. Croix in 1784, Hans was taken as a slave to Denmark, where he eventually enlisted in the navy and fought on behalf of the country in the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen. After the war, he declared himself a free man, believing that he was due freedom not only because of his patriotic service, but because while slavery remained legal in the colonies, it was outlawed in Denmark itself. He thus became the subject of one of the most notorious slavery cases in European history, which he lost. Then Hans ran away—never to be heard from in Denmark again, his fate unknown for more than two hundred years. It’s now known that Hans fled to Iceland, where he became a merchant and peasant farmer, married, and raised two children. Today, he has become something of an Icelandic icon, claimed as a proud and daring ancestor both there and among his descendants in America.
            The Man Who Stole Himself brilliantly intertwines Hans Jonathan’s adventurous travels with a portrait of the Danish slave trade, legal arguments over slavery, and the state of nineteenth-century race relations in the Northern Atlantic world. Throughout the book, Palsson traces themes of imperial dreams, colonialism, human rights, and globalization, which all come together in the life of a single, remarkable man. Hans literally led a life like no other. His is the story of a man who had the temerity—the courage—to steal himself.
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The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition
A Discourse on Method
Gísli Sigurðsson
Harvard University Press, 2004

This work explores the role of orality in shaping and evaluating medieval Icelandic literature. Applying field studies of oral cultures in modern times to this distinguished medieval literature, Gísli Sigurðsson asks how it would alter our reading of medieval Icelandic sagas if it were assumed they had grown out of a tradition of oral storytelling, similar to that observed in living cultures.

Sigurðsson examines how orally trained lawspeakers regarded the emergent written culture, especially in light of the fact that the writing down of the law in the early twelfth century undermined their social status. Part II considers characters, genealogies, and events common to several sagas from the east of Iceland between which a written link cannot be established. Part III explores the immanent or mental map provided to the listening audience of the location of Vinland by the sagas about the Vinland voyages. Finally, this volume focuses on how accepted foundations for research on medieval texts are affected if an underlying oral tradition (of the kind we know from the modern field work) is assumed as part of their cultural background. This point is emphasized through the examination of parallel passages from two sagas and from mythological overlays in an otherwise secular text.

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Most Unimaginably Strange
An Eclectic Companion to the Landscape of Iceland
Chris Caseldine
Reaktion Books, 2022
For all who yearn to travel to the home of the sagas, a beautifully illustrated companion to the terrain of Iceland—from puffins to ponies, glaciers and volcanoes to legendary trolls.
 
Described by William Morris as “most unimaginably strange,” the landscape of Iceland has fascinated and inspired travelers, scientists, artists, and writers throughout history. This book provides a contemporary understanding of the landscape as a whole, not only its iconic glaciers and volcanoes, but also its deserts, canyons, plants, and animals. The book examines historic and modern scientific studies of the landscape and animals, as well as accounts of early visitors to the land. These were captivating people, some eccentric but most drawn to Iceland by an enthrallment with all things northern, a desire to experience the land of the sagas, or plain scientific and touristic curiosity. Featuring many spectacular illustrations, this is a fine exploration of a most singular landscape.
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My Parents
Memoirs of New World Icelanders
Birna Bjarnadottir
University of Manitoba Press, 2007
My Parents: Memoirs of New World Icelanders is a collection of essays written by second-generation Icelandic immigrants in North America, describing the lives of their parents. Originally collected in 1956 by Dr. Finnbogi Gumundsson, the first Chair of Icelandic at the University of Manitoba, seven of the fourteen memoirs are translated here from Icelandic to English. They offer a rare first-hand look into the lives of New World immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Readers are invited straight into the heart of these people’s lives, from social evenings spent reading poetry and the sagas, to the daily struggles to prepare the land and build homes. A prevailing sense of community emerges from the writers’ stories, showing how Icelandic culture and tradition sustained the immigrants through hardship, illness, and isolation. My Parents also details some of the genealogy of the New World Icelanders who settled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota.
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Ore Choir
The Lava on Iceland
Katy Didden
Tupelo Press, 2022
Part miracle, part oracle, in these poems lava speaks “with the focus of a burning glass,” lighting lyric core samples through geo-historical and cultural texts about Iceland. Shifting the ground so “nouns are never still,” the lava reveals how language itself is a record of collisions: poem as matter, sound as forge, form as friction. And what does it mean to be human in the face of such ancient forces, especially as climate change unsettles the earth that anchors us? By the light of the “sphere’s credo,” can we, too, be remade?
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Popular Romance in Iceland
The Women, Worldviews, and Manuscript Witnesses of Nítí¿a saga
Sheryl McDonald Werronen
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
A late medieval Icelandic romance about the ‘maiden-king’ of France, Nítí¿a saga generated interest in its day and grew in popularity in post-Reformation Iceland, yet until now it has not received the comprehensive scholarly analysis that it much deserves. Analysing this saga from a variety of perspectives, this book sheds light on the manner in which Nítí¿a saga explores and negotiates the romance genre from an Icelandic perspective, showcasing this exciting saga’s strong female characters, worldviews, and long manuscript tradition. Beginning with Nítí¿a saga’s manuscript context, including its reception and transformation in early modern Iceland, this study also discusses how Nítí¿a saga was influenced by, and also later influenced, other Icelandic romances. Considering the text as literature, discussion of its unusual depiction of world geography, as well as the various characters and their relationships, provides insights into medieval Icelanders’ ideas about themselves and the world they lived in, including questions about Icelandic identity, gender, female solidarity, and the literary genre of romance itself. The book also includes a newly revised reading edition and translation of Nítí¿a saga.
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Ring of Seasons
Iceland--Its Culture and History
Terry G. Lacy
University of Michigan Press, 2000
A remote island with a rich and ancient literature. A land of hot springs and volcanoes. A country with an extraordinary history, a challenging geography and a vibrant contemporary culture. A land of ice.
In Ring of Seasons, Terry Lacy--an American who has lived in Iceland for twenty-four years-- brings both the perspective of the outsider and the familiar eye of the long-term resident to this delightful exploration of all facets of Iceland, past and present. She conveys her story with a skillful interlacing of history, religion, politics, and culture to paint a vivid picture of the way Icelanders live today as members of a wealthy society still very dependent upon nature--from a reliance on her icy waters to support an international fishing industry to a watchful cohabitation with the volcanoes that both destroy villages and create new islands.
This is a book for all who have been charmed by reading the Norse sagas, for all those intrigued by the country that can claim the oldest living democracy. It is an excellent introduction for anyone planning to visit Iceland and a delightful read for all those who do their exploration from the comfort of an armchair.
Terry G. Lacy is an American currently residing in Reykjavik, Iceland.
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The Travels of Reverend Olafur Egilsson
Karl Smari Hreinsson
Catholic University of America Press, 2016
The combination of Reverend Olafur's narrative, the letters, and the material in the Appendices provides a first-hand, in-depth view of early seventeenth-century Europe and the Maghreb equaled by few other works dealing with the period. We are pleased to offer it to the wider audience that an English edition allows.
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Wasteland with Words
A Social History of Iceland
Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon
Reaktion Books, 2010

Iceland is an enigmatic island country marked by contradiction: it’s a part of Europe, yet separated from it by the Atlantic Ocean; it’s seemingly inhospitable, yet home to more than 300,000. Wasteland with Words explores these paradoxes to uncover the mystery of Iceland.

In Wasteland with Words Sigurdur Gylfi Magnússon presents a wide-ranging and detailed analysis of the island’s history that examines the evolution and transformation of Icelandic culture while investigating the literary and historical factors that created the rich cultural heritage enjoyed by Icelanders today. Magnússon explains how a nineteenth-century economy based on the industries of fishing and agriculture—one of the poorest in Europe—grew to become a disproportionately large economic power in the late twentieth century, while retaining its strong sense of cultural identity. Bringing the story up to the present, he assesses the recent economic and political collapse of the country and how Iceland has coped. Throughout Magnússon seeks to chart the vast changes in this country’s history through the impact and effect on the Icelandic people themselves.

Up-to-date and fascinating, Wasteland with Words is a comprehensive study of the island’s cultural and historical development, from tiny fishing settlements to a global economic power.

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Wayward Icelanders
Punishment, Boundary Maintenance, And The
Helgi Gunnlaugsson
University of Wisconsin Press, 2000
Is Iceland, universally perceived as a peaceful, idyllic nation, being threatened by an inevitable flood of crime as it enters the global community? In recent decades the Icelandic state has taken serious steps to curb mounting crime, establishing a specialized drug court and an undercover drug police agency. Public opinion polls clearly demonstrate Icelanders’ growing concern that crime and drug use are on the rise. In their provocative new book, Wayward Icelanders, Helgi Gunnlaugsson and John Galliher offer another, more nuanced explanation for recent Icelandic attitudes toward crime, one that takes into account the unique history and culture of this relatively homogeneous and isolated nation.

Wayward Icelanders explores how the threat of crime has affected Icelanders’ collective self-identity, producing an ever greater need for social control. Historically Iceland has provided stiff sanctions for the use and abuse of mind-altering substances. Drunk driving has long been systematically punished, and even beer was prohibited for more than seventy years. The rate of conviction for these crimes is high, even in a democracy that prides itself on protecting civil liberties. Even more troubling, however, is the low rate of convictions for rape cases, which suggests that such crimes receive less attention from the state. Drawing on the classic work of Durkheim as well as Kai Erikson’s Wayward Puritans, Gunnlaugsson and Galliher demonstrate that an escalating war on crime can threaten freedom even in a small, affluent, and relatively nonviolent nation like Iceland with a long-standing commitment to democracy and individual rights.
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