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14 pages, 260 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Tales of Their Times

by Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir

Humanities 2025, 14(1), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14010018 - 20 Jan 2025

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The aim of the article is to examine how the fairytales of storytellers from different times agree with the idea that their attitudes towards life appear in the fairytales that they tell and to consider whether they construct their fairytales so that they reflect the tensions and conflicts in their own times. This is achieved by looking into the tales of a woman storyteller in the nineteenth century when organized collecting began in Iceland, and three storytellers‘ repertoires from the twentieth century, when fairytales still belonged to the living oral tradition were tape-recorded. The survey is concluded by examining three recent plays involving fairytales which the author herself attended. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Depiction of Good and Evil in Fairytales)

14 pages, 279 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Race, Religion and the Medieval Norse Discovery of America

by Zachary J. Melton

Religions 2024, 15(9), 1084; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091084 - 6 Sep 2024

Viewed by 1566

Abstract

In 1837, Danish philologist Carl Christian Rafn published Antiquitates Americanæ, which introduced Americans to the Vinland sagas—medieval texts that suggest that Norse explorers “discovered” North America around the turn of the first millennium. Rafn, who saw it as his mission to promote Old Norse literature around the globe, presented some of his research in a way that would appeal to Anglo-American prejudices, particularly through the obsession with American Antiquities and the question of a pre-Columbian civilization. His conclusions and the Vinland sagas consequently entered the American racial and religious discourses. Like other discovery myths, the Vinland sagas were used by intellectuals to argue for an early white presence on the continent. Later that century, the Norse discovery was framed in religious terms as some white Americans attempted to replace the figure of Christopher Columbus with that of Leifur Eiriksson as the true discoverer of America. The ramifications of Rafn’s work and its reception can be seen in twentieth- and twenty-first-century representations of Vikings in American popular culture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Race, Religion, and Nationalism in the 21st Century)

18 pages, 4229 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Constitutive Science of Benedictine Literacy: The Archive of Þingeyrar Abbey in Iceland

by Gottskálk Jensson

Religions 2023, 14(7), 862; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14070862 - 1 Jul 2023

Viewed by 1640

Abstract

The monastic archives of Iceland have rarely been made the subject of specific studies. This article is intended to survey the history of one such archive, belonging to the Benedictine Abbey of Þingeyrar in Northern Iceland, which was founded 1133 and dissolved 1551. Through its extraordinarily rich literary production this monastery left an indelible mark on the Northern-European cultural heritage. After the Reformation Þingeyrar Cloister remained a state-owned and ecclesiastical institution until modern times. Its archive, which is partly preserved to this day, is both the most extensive of its kind to survive in Iceland and uniquely remained in place for almost eight centuries, making it possibly the longest operated archive in the Nordic countries. The Icelanders may be better known for their sagas and mythological poetry, but their industrious literacy certainly extended to creating bureaucratic documents in accordance with the Roman tradition. French Benedictines were among the first in the world to turn the art of archival management into an academic discipline, and the Icelandic Professor Árni Magnússon (d. 1730), who is best known for his great collection of Old Icelandic manuscripts, was the first Nordic scholar to employ their methods effectively, which he used to investigate the Archive of Þingeyrar. Surveying the history of this Icelandic archive gives us insight into a constitutive science fundamental for our access to the past. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Between Man and Nature: The Making of Benedictine Settlements in Medieval Iceland)

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