Transcript Power-Point

Freshman Seminar -
Death, Revenge & Madness in Icelandic
literature and culture
Welcome to class #2 !
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Freshman Seminar - wk 2
What IS Iceland??
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Iceland, officially the Republic of Iceland (Icelandic: Ísland
or Lýðveldið Ísland) is an island nation, a volcanic island in the
northern Atlantic Ocean between Greenland,
Norway, Ireland, Scotland (Great Britain), and the Faroe Islands.
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Facts about the country
Area
▪ Whole country: 39,768.5 sq. m. (103,000ﾊkm²)
▪ Vegetation: 9,191 square miles (23,805ﾊkm²)
▪ Lakes: 1,064 square miles (2,757ﾊkm²)
▪ Glaciers: 4,603 square miles (11,922ﾊkm²)
▪ Wasteland: 24,918 square miles (64,538ﾊkm²)
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Facts about the country - Comparison
Area
Total 9,631,418 km²
Water 3,718,711 mi² 4.87%
Population ﾊ- 2006 est. 298,290,000
2000 census ﾊ- 282 mill.
Density 30/km² 3/mi²
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Facts about the country - Cont.
-Second largest island in Europe
-By plane: 3 hrs to mainland Europe, 6 to US
Population: about 300.000
180.000 in Reykjavík
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Climate: subartic _ Gulf Stream
Average temp. in July 56ºF
In January: 32ºF
Precipitation: 32 inches
Midnight sun in June
4 hrs a day of daylight in Dec.
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Facts about the country - Cont.
-Government: parliamentary democracy
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
Fully independent since 1944
Language: Icelandic, the Norwegian of
1000 years ago. Fundamental part of cultural
Identity - fiercely defended by purists,
Conservative tongue…
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Currency: Icelandic krona (about 70 kr - 1 USD)
Religion: Lutheran is the state religion of
Iceland. Icelandic children receive mandatory
religious training in public schools, and priests
are state employees.
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Facts about the country - Geology
• A young country: about 17 million years
• Compared to its neighbours:
•Scotland and parts of continental Scandinavia
are 500 million years
* The Earth as a whole is 4600 million years
The origin of Iceland has to do with Plate Tectonics: the
theory that maintains that the earth's crust is composed of
plates that float around slowly on the earth's molten interior.
The heat and stresses created and released when these plates
run into, slide past, slide under or over one another account
for most if not all of the earth's earthquakes and volcanic activity
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Tectonic plates - Geology ctd.
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Distribution of volcanic systems -
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Distribution of earthquakes - worldwide
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Dynamics of plate tectonic movement
island over hot spot  (G)
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Dynamics of plate tectonic - Iceland
* An island over a hot spot AND on the mid Atlantic ridge
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Type of volcanic activity - Kröflueldar 1977
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Type of volcanic activity - Lakagígar 1783
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Earthquakes - distribution in Iceland
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The positive side - geothermal energy
1 Mineral water
2 water under 70C
3 water 70-100 C
4 150 C at 1000 m
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A negative side ? Climate in numbers
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A negative side ? Climate in numbers
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A negative side ? Erosion - Búlandstindur
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A negative side ? Erosion of the soil
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Why are there no trees?
•2500 ago 1/2 the country wooded
• 900 CE 1/4 of the country
• Ari Thorgilsson (XII century)
says the country was covered in forests
•Now: 1/100 of the surface
• Causes: wind and erosion
•Ash and pumice close to volcanoes
•Goats, cows and horses
•Worsening climate
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History
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History
•Germanic migrations from northern Germany,
Southern Scandinavia 4th, 5th century AD
•Germanic origins - mysterious? Possibly related and
derived from Celtic (both language families are IE)
*Many of the literary motifs are common to all Gmc.
Peoples - they pre-date the Völkerwanderungen.
- the deities of the Northern pantheon
- The Sigfried myth / the dragon
- The valkyrie-type of woman tricked into marrying
below her status (part of Sigfried myth)
*Reason for migration? Possibly climate changes
*Important consequences - Fall of the Roman Empire
*Britain becomes Anglo-Saxon
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Germanic migrations
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Characteristics of the Germanic peoples
•Tribes whose social structure was based on the Sippe,
the extended family.
•The Germani develop a warrior culture based on the
comitatus - a group of warriors who voluntarily swear
an oath of allegiance to a leader.
*the warriors protect the leader/king and in turn
the king rewards the individual with protection
(through the comitatus) and with wealth (gifts/
land)
•Tribal economy based on reciprocity rather than trade:
•Goods/services distributed as gifts and mutual obligation
Between members of the group
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MA/GERMANS.HTM
*essentially oral culture - runes
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History - Populating Iceland
•Further waves of Germanic migrations in the 8th
century bring about the settlement of Normandy
(886, 911 ratified by Charles the Simple and Rollo)
•Repeated attacks to Celtic monasteries in the
British Isles (Lindisfarne 789, 793 Jarrow 794 etc.)
•Establishment of the Danelaw 886
•Settlement of Scandinavian peoples in Ireland and the
Hebrides
•Settlement of Iceland 870-930 CE
•Documented in the Book of the Settlement
•Mostly Norwegian, some Danish, occasional Swede
and Scandinavian people previously settled in the
British Isles
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History - Reasons for later migration
•Complex factors:
•Climate worsening and agricultural consequences
•Demographic increase - the land could not sustain
everyone
*Political reasons - a few regional political &military
leaders were concentrating power in their hands
*Ship-building techniques improved
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History - Settlement of Iceland
•Norsemen that came to Ice. were not a planned migration
•Various waves over that period of 60 years
•10.000-20.000 people settle in Iceland during that time
*No leaders - a new land, empty for the most part, limited
habitable area
*The new society’s development was dictated by
competition among succeeding generations for the land’s
limited resources
Byock, Jesse. 1988. Medieval Iceland. Berkeley:UCP
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History - Settlement of Iceland ctd.
•Practices of land-taking (landnáma): both men and
women
•No religious or political figure more powerful than others
• Local parliaments with representatives
•Some settlers were Christian, others (majority) pagan
•930 establishment of the althing, the nation-wide
assembly of representative.
*It meets for two weeks at the end of June at Thingvellir,
‘Parliament plains’
*The representatives are regional leaders to whom local
farmers plead allegiance and in exchange get protection,
legal representation at the althing and support in
legal disputes
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History - Settlement of Iceland ctd.
•For the establishment of the Althing in 930, a code of
laws is collected in various parts of Norway, on which
Icelandic laws are based.
•Insistence on respect of laws (see Njál’s saga)
•The President of the assembly was the Law Speaker,
who recited one third of the legal code by heart each year
(his term lasted 3 years, in fact)
•The Althing was the place where laws were made,
modified, the Supreme court convened and judged cases
that could not be solved in the local tribunals - but it was
also much more: county fair, trade, news, marriages,
social and cultural point
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Thingvellir
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Althing at Thingvellir
Importance of parliament:
-Conversion to Christianity 1000 CE
-Surrendering sovereignty to Norway in 1264
following what can be considered a civil war lasting
about 50 years
- That sovereignty will not be recovered until 1944
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Parliament and the legal system
 No death penalty during the commonwealth
 Problems: apart from limited natural resources
 Two powers: legislative & judicial
 And the executive function? Who makes people
respect the laws?
 In the hand of the wronged party - or his/her
family
 compensation (weregild) or revenge
 Sometimes both
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Cultural development
 Poems from a common Gmc. era:
 Alliteration, common deities, common motifs
 Natural references to lands with a different
geography or vegetation from Iceland (Völuspá
The Seeress’s Prophecy) - reindeer in the
Sayings of the High One
 The version we have are probably from the
10th century (MS XIV)
 Attila - historical figure 406-453
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The problem of sources
 Historical writings in XII
 Lándnámabók and Íslendingabók
 Genealogies, church documents
 Very concise, often based on oral
accounts
 Writing about the settlement over two
centuries later
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The Sagas
 Sagas of Icelanders or Family Sagas Prototypical novels…
 Tales in prose, often extending 100s of
pages, about the history of the people that
settled in Iceland during the time of the
Settlement (870-930)
 Historical sources?
 Written in XIII-XIV centuries
Sagas online - http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/tarristi/sagas.htm