An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords
Abstract The article presents a historical ethnography of an imaginary road. Drawing on printed sources, archival material, and new field research, it analyses the Icelandic folktale of ‘Loss of Men on Heiðarbæjarheiði’ ( Manntjónið á Heiðarbæjarheiði ), a story of regional importance in the Strandi...
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ftdatacite:10.5281/zenodo.4667572 2023-05-15T16:49:55+02:00 An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords Egeler, Matthias 2021 https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667572 https://zenodo.org/record/4667572 en eng Zenodo https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667573 Open Access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC-BY Iceland; folklore Preprint Text article-journal ScholarlyArticle 2021 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667572 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667573 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Abstract The article presents a historical ethnography of an imaginary road. Drawing on printed sources, archival material, and new field research, it analyses the Icelandic folktale of ‘Loss of Men on Heiðarbæjarheiði’ ( Manntjónið á Heiðarbæjarheiði ), a story of regional importance in the Strandir district of the Icelandic Westfjords, esp. on the fjord of Steingrímsfjörður. The article shows the contrast between the presentation of the story in its printed ‘standard’ form and the shape that its appearances take when it is encountered locally, where its main Sitz im Leben is found in minimalist place-storytelling that is actualised in the engagement with particular places. In this local form as place-storytelling, the narrative shows a considerable amount of variation and a strong focus on the interpretation of local place-names. Based on the contexts of and the variation observed in the different variants of the story, the article presents an interpretation of ‘Loss of Men on Heiðarbæjarheiði’ which reads it as a formulation of collective fears. Report Iceland DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Steingrímsfjörður ENVELOPE(-21.529,-21.529,65.665,65.665) Strandir ENVELOPE(-21.416,-21.416,65.722,65.722) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
Iceland; folklore |
spellingShingle |
Iceland; folklore Egeler, Matthias An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords |
topic_facet |
Iceland; folklore |
description |
Abstract The article presents a historical ethnography of an imaginary road. Drawing on printed sources, archival material, and new field research, it analyses the Icelandic folktale of ‘Loss of Men on Heiðarbæjarheiði’ ( Manntjónið á Heiðarbæjarheiði ), a story of regional importance in the Strandir district of the Icelandic Westfjords, esp. on the fjord of Steingrímsfjörður. The article shows the contrast between the presentation of the story in its printed ‘standard’ form and the shape that its appearances take when it is encountered locally, where its main Sitz im Leben is found in minimalist place-storytelling that is actualised in the engagement with particular places. In this local form as place-storytelling, the narrative shows a considerable amount of variation and a strong focus on the interpretation of local place-names. Based on the contexts of and the variation observed in the different variants of the story, the article presents an interpretation of ‘Loss of Men on Heiðarbæjarheiði’ which reads it as a formulation of collective fears. |
format |
Report |
author |
Egeler, Matthias |
author_facet |
Egeler, Matthias |
author_sort |
Egeler, Matthias |
title |
An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords |
title_short |
An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords |
title_full |
An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords |
title_fullStr |
An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords |
title_full_unstemmed |
An Ethnography of an Imaginary Road: Fear, Death, and Storytelling in the Icelandic Westfjords |
title_sort |
ethnography of an imaginary road: fear, death, and storytelling in the icelandic westfjords |
publisher |
Zenodo |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667572 https://zenodo.org/record/4667572 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-21.529,-21.529,65.665,65.665) ENVELOPE(-21.416,-21.416,65.722,65.722) |
geographic |
Steingrímsfjörður Strandir |
geographic_facet |
Steingrímsfjörður Strandir |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667573 |
op_rights |
Open Access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667572 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4667573 |
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1766040087646175232 |