Living landscapes: the connection of landscape and literature in medieval Iceland and the formation of animal-places

Harriet Jean EvansWolfson Scholar

University of York

Living landscapes: the connection of landscape and literature in medieval Iceland and the formation of

animal-places

3rd International St Magnus Conference Kirkwall Harriet Jean Evans

[email protected] https://york.academia.edu/HarrietEvans @iamharrietjean


1. Literature as enculturation

2. What are “animal-places” in Landnámabók

3. Naming and claiming space

4. Pigs and the colonisation of Icelandic landscape

Literature as enculturation

• Colonisation is a method of claiming land• Texts about land also serve to bring this land into our human cultural

sphere• Is Landnámabók a method of claiming the landscape?

“Shifting the focus of scholarship to

acknowledge that the settlement of the North

Atlantic is also a story of dynamic interaction

between nature and culture challenges [a]

human-orientated view of Viking history”

(Vail 1998, 309-310)

The Book of SettlementsLandnámabók

• Collection of narratives around the settlement of Iceland

• Sturlubók (thirteenth-century) • A text open to adaptation (Hauksbók)

“Animal-places”

Those places which are claimed by, and subsequently named after, the

actions or presence of animals.

• Best examples: animals doing stuff

• Animals as fellow colonizers?

• Naming places: practical and ideological • In Landnámabók, places named (1) through

observation, (2) through action

Steinólfi [enn lági] hurfu svín þrjú; þau fundusk tveim vetrum síðar í Svínadal, ok váru þau þá þrír tigir svína. (Land. 158)

Three pigs lost Steinólfr [the low]; two winters later in Svínadal [pig-dale] they were found, and then there were thirty pigs.

Pigs and the colonisation of Icelandic space


1.

Ingimundi hurfu svín tíu ok fundusk annat haust í Svínadal, ok var þá hundrað svína. Göltr hét Beigaðr; hann hljóp á

Svínavatn ok svam, þar til er af gengu klaufirnar; hann sprakk á Beigaðarhóli. (Land. 220)

Ten pigs lost Ingimundr and they were found the next autumn in Svínadal [pig-dale], and then there were a hundred pigs. A boar was called Beigaðr; he leapt into Svínavatn [pig-water] and swam there until his cloven hoofs fell off; he died (from exertion) at Beigaðarhól.


2.

Helgi lendi þá við Galtarhamar; þar skaut hann á land svínum tveimr, ok hét göltrinn Sölvi. Þau fundusk þremr vetrum síðar í

Sölvadal; váru þá saman sjau tigir svína. (Land. 250-252)

Helgi then lands at Galtarhamarr [Boar’s crag]; there he set to land two pigs, and the boar was called Sölvi. They were found three winters later in Sölvadal [Sölvi’s dale]; then there were together seven tens of pigs.


3.

Closing thoughts


• Not just pigs• No uniform tradition, but narratives on claiming spaces• Animal-human relations are about space

• Landnámabók visualises Iceland as co-inhabited and co-settled by humans and animals

Thank you for listening

Many thanks to the Wolfson Foundation and the University of York.


[email protected] https://york.academia.edu/HarrietEvans @iamharrietjean

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Vésteinn Ólason, 2004. Society and Literature, in: Gísli Sigurðsson, Ólason, V. (Eds.), The Manuscripts of Iceland, Ritröð Þjóðmenningarhúss. English v. 2. Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland, Reykjavik, pp. 25–41.

Documents

Living landscapes: the connection of landscape and literature in medieval Iceland and the formation of animal-places