Author: Kirsten Hastrup
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
In 930, Iceland first established a common law for the island and became an autonomous republic, which lasted until it came under the sovereignty of the Norwegian king nearly three and a half centuries later. This volume is a two-part analysis of that society, known as the Icelandic "commonwealth" or "Freestate." The first section examines how medieval Icelanders classified and perceived such domains as time, space, kinship, political organization, and cosmology, linking together these various realms to present an integrated picture of the society's world-view. The second section focuses on the changes that took place during the period in the fields of ecology, demography, religion, property relations, and the law, and explains how and why these changes, interacting with more fundamental social structures and beliefs, undermined--and ultimately destroyed--the society.
Culture and History in Medieval Iceland
Author: Kirsten Hastrup
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
In 930, Iceland first established a common law for the island and became an autonomous republic, which lasted until it came under the sovereignty of the Norwegian king nearly three and a half centuries later. This volume is a two-part analysis of that society, known as the Icelandic "commonwealth" or "Freestate." The first section examines how medieval Icelanders classified and perceived such domains as time, space, kinship, political organization, and cosmology, linking together these various realms to present an integrated picture of the society's world-view. The second section focuses on the changes that took place during the period in the fields of ecology, demography, religion, property relations, and the law, and explains how and why these changes, interacting with more fundamental social structures and beliefs, undermined--and ultimately destroyed--the society.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
In 930, Iceland first established a common law for the island and became an autonomous republic, which lasted until it came under the sovereignty of the Norwegian king nearly three and a half centuries later. This volume is a two-part analysis of that society, known as the Icelandic "commonwealth" or "Freestate." The first section examines how medieval Icelanders classified and perceived such domains as time, space, kinship, political organization, and cosmology, linking together these various realms to present an integrated picture of the society's world-view. The second section focuses on the changes that took place during the period in the fields of ecology, demography, religion, property relations, and the law, and explains how and why these changes, interacting with more fundamental social structures and beliefs, undermined--and ultimately destroyed--the society.
Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland
Author: Oren Falk
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192635573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Historians spend a lot of time thinking about violence: bloodshed and feats of heroism punctuate practically every narration of the past. Yet historians have been slow to subject 'violence' itself to conceptual analysis. What aspects of the past do we designate violent? To what methodological assumptions do we commit ourselves when we employ this term? How may we approach the category 'violence' in a specifically historical way, and what is it that we explain when we write its history? Astonishingly, such questions are seldom even voiced, much less debated, in the historical literature. Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland: This Spattered Isle lays out a cultural history model for understanding violence. Using interdisciplinary tools, it argues that violence is a positively constructed asset, deployed along three principal axes - power, signification, and risk. Analysing violence in instrumental terms, as an attempt to coerce others, focuses on power. Analysing it in symbolic terms, as an attempt to communicate meanings, focuses on signification. Finally, analysing it in cognitive terms, as an attempt to exercise agency despite imperfect control over circumstances, focuses on risk. Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland explores a place and time notorious for its rampant violence. Iceland's famous sagas hold treasure troves of circumstantial data, ideally suited for past-tense ethnography, yet demand that the reader come up with subtle and innovative methodologies for recovering histories from their stories. The sagas throw into sharp relief the kinds of analytic insights we obtain through cultural interpretation, offering lessons that apply to other epochs too.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192635573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Historians spend a lot of time thinking about violence: bloodshed and feats of heroism punctuate practically every narration of the past. Yet historians have been slow to subject 'violence' itself to conceptual analysis. What aspects of the past do we designate violent? To what methodological assumptions do we commit ourselves when we employ this term? How may we approach the category 'violence' in a specifically historical way, and what is it that we explain when we write its history? Astonishingly, such questions are seldom even voiced, much less debated, in the historical literature. Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland: This Spattered Isle lays out a cultural history model for understanding violence. Using interdisciplinary tools, it argues that violence is a positively constructed asset, deployed along three principal axes - power, signification, and risk. Analysing violence in instrumental terms, as an attempt to coerce others, focuses on power. Analysing it in symbolic terms, as an attempt to communicate meanings, focuses on signification. Finally, analysing it in cognitive terms, as an attempt to exercise agency despite imperfect control over circumstances, focuses on risk. Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland explores a place and time notorious for its rampant violence. Iceland's famous sagas hold treasure troves of circumstantial data, ideally suited for past-tense ethnography, yet demand that the reader come up with subtle and innovative methodologies for recovering histories from their stories. The sagas throw into sharp relief the kinds of analytic insights we obtain through cultural interpretation, offering lessons that apply to other epochs too.
The Development of Education in Medieval Iceland
Author: Ryder Patzuk-Russell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781501518553
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This book investigates the institutions and practices of education which lay behind medieval Icelandic literature, as well as behind many other aspects of medieval Icelandic culture and society. By bringing together a broad spectrum of sources, incl
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781501518553
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This book investigates the institutions and practices of education which lay behind medieval Icelandic literature, as well as behind many other aspects of medieval Icelandic culture and society. By bringing together a broad spectrum of sources, incl
Culture and history in medieval Iceland
Author: Kirsten Hastrup
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Iceland Imagined
Author: Karen Oslund
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029599083X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
This cultural and environmental history sweeps across the dramatic North Atlantic landscape, exploring its unusual geology, saga narratives, language, culture, and politics and analyzing its emergence as a distinctive and symbolic part of Europe. The book closes with a discussion of Iceland's modern whaling practices and its recent financial collapse.
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029599083X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
This cultural and environmental history sweeps across the dramatic North Atlantic landscape, exploring its unusual geology, saga narratives, language, culture, and politics and analyzing its emergence as a distinctive and symbolic part of Europe. The book closes with a discussion of Iceland's modern whaling practices and its recent financial collapse.
Island of Anthropology
Author: Kirsten Hastrup
Publisher: Coronet Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
This history of the anthropology of Iceland covers society from medieval times to current issues.
Publisher: Coronet Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
This history of the anthropology of Iceland covers society from medieval times to current issues.
Medieval Iceland
Author: Jesse L. Byock
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520069541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
Gift of Joan Wall. Includes index. Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-248) and index. * glr 20090610.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520069541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
Gift of Joan Wall. Includes index. Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-248) and index. * glr 20090610.
Dominican Resonances in Medieval Iceland
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004465510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
Book Description
This book explores the life and times of Jón Halldórsson, bishop of Skálholt (1322–39), a Dominican who had studied the liberal arts and canon law in Paris and Bologna, and provides a snapshot with wider implications for understanding of medieval literacy.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004465510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
Book Description
This book explores the life and times of Jón Halldórsson, bishop of Skálholt (1322–39), a Dominican who had studied the liberal arts and canon law in Paris and Bologna, and provides a snapshot with wider implications for understanding of medieval literacy.
The History of Iceland
Author: Gunnar Karlsson
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816635894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
Iceland is unique among European societies in having been founded as late as the Viking Age and in having copious written and archaeological sources about its origin. Gunnar Karlsson, that country's premier historian, chronicles the age of the Sagas, consulting them to describe an era without a monarch or central authority. Equating this prosperous time with the golden age of antiquity in world history, Karlsson then marks a correspondence between the Dark Ages of Europe and Iceland's "dreary period", which started with the loss of political independence in the late thirteenth century and culminated with an epoch of poverty and humility, especially during the early Modern Age. Iceland's renaissance came about with the successful struggle for independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and with the industrial and technical modernization of the first half of the twentieth century. Karlsson describes the rise of nationalism as Iceland's mostly poor peasants set about breaking with Denmark, and he shows how Iceland in the twentieth century slowly caught up economically with its European neighbors.
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816635894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
Iceland is unique among European societies in having been founded as late as the Viking Age and in having copious written and archaeological sources about its origin. Gunnar Karlsson, that country's premier historian, chronicles the age of the Sagas, consulting them to describe an era without a monarch or central authority. Equating this prosperous time with the golden age of antiquity in world history, Karlsson then marks a correspondence between the Dark Ages of Europe and Iceland's "dreary period", which started with the loss of political independence in the late thirteenth century and culminated with an epoch of poverty and humility, especially during the early Modern Age. Iceland's renaissance came about with the successful struggle for independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and with the industrial and technical modernization of the first half of the twentieth century. Karlsson describes the rise of nationalism as Iceland's mostly poor peasants set about breaking with Denmark, and he shows how Iceland in the twentieth century slowly caught up economically with its European neighbors.
The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition
Author: Gísli Sigurðsson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Book Description
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, G sli Sigur sson 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. Sigur sson 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.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Book Description
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, G sli Sigur sson 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. Sigur sson 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.