| Summary: | This paper studies the medieval ancestry and folkloric attestations of the puck figure in English, Icelandic and Irish traditions as a distinct supernatural entity outside of Shakespearean thought and one that has received little scholarly attention besides the debate of origins. The English puck figure is first found in Anglo-Saxon place name evidence, especially those featuring watery landmarks. Aside from toponymic evidence, the medieval English puck also arises in areas such as surnames, glosses and later literature and these sources depict the medieval English puck as a predominantly malevolent supernatural being associated with the landscape and regionally significant to the south of England. Medieval Icelandic literary sources predominantly depict the púki within the Augustinian framework of demonisation, however some nuances of the púki can be ascertained in Þorsteins þáttr skelks which depicts this being as malevolent and tied to a specific place, but also with an ambiguous corporeality, nocturnal nature and a connection to a different plane of existence. The medieval Irish púca proves elusive due to the restrictive nature of Old Irish writing. However, late medieval place name evidence and the appearance of other similar supernatural entities in medieval Irish literature indicates that the púca likely existed in medieval Irish folk consciousness. Employing folkloric evidence from each tradition then demonstrates how the puck figure survived and flourished idiomatically in each culture. The present study systematically presents and elucidates the evidence for the medieval puck figure in North Atlantic Europe thus demonstrating both the vibrant life of the puck outside of Shakespearean characterisation and his consistent, but not central, place in the folklore of these cultures from medieval to present times. Í ritgerðinni er litið til ólíkra birtingarmynda þeirrar yfirnáttúrulegu þjóðtrúarvættar sem nefnist púki og hvernig hann birtist okkur í miðaldabókmenntum jafnt sem þjóðsögum síðari alda innan ...
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