Images of Contemporary Iceland: Everyday Lives and Global Contexts PDF
Preview Images of Contemporary Iceland: Everyday Lives and Global Contexts
Images of Contemporary Iceland : Everyday title: Lives and Global Contexts author: GÃsli Pálsson publisher: University of Iowa Press isbn10 | asin: 0877455287 print isbn13: 9780877455288 ebook isbn13: 9781587291777 language: English Ethnology--Iceland, Iceland--Social life and subject customs. publication date: 1996 lcc: DL331.I43 1996eb ddc: 306/.094912 Ethnology--Iceland, Iceland--Social life and subject: customs. Page iii Images of Contemporary Iceland Everyday Lives and Global Contexts Edited by Gísli Pálsson and E. Paul Durrenberger University of Iowa Press Iowa City Page iv University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242 Copyright © 1996 by the University of Iowa Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Design by Omega Clay No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Images of contemporary Iceland: everyday lives and global contexts / edited by Gísli Pálsson and E. Paul Durrenberger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87745-528-7 (alk. paper) 1. EthnographyIceland. 2. IcelandSocial life and customs. I. Gísli Pálsson, 1949 . II. Durrenberger, E. Paul, 1943 . DL331.I43 1996 306'.094912dc20 95-35078 CIP 01 00 99 98 97 96 C 5 4 3 2 1 Page v CONTENTS Preface vii 1 1 Introduction E. Paul Durrenberger and Gísli Pálsson Part I. Contested Images of Nature 2 25 Whale-Siting: Spatiality in Icelandic Nationalism Anne Brydon 3 46 A Sea of Images: Fishers, Whalers, and Environmentalists Níels Einarsson 4 60 The Politics of Production: Enclosure, Equity, and Efficiency Gísli Pálsson and Agnar Helgason Part II. Nation and Gender 5 87 Housework and Wage Work: Gender in Icelandic Fishing Communities Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir Page vi 6 106 The Mountain Woman and the Presidency Inga Dóra Björnsdóttir 7 126 Motherhood, Patriarchy, and the Nation: Domestic Violence in Iceland Julie E. Gurdin Part III. Nature and Nation 8 149 Premodern and Modern Constructions of Population Regimes Daniel E. Vasey 9 171 Every Icelander a Special Case E. Paul Durrenberger 10 191 Literacy Identity and Literacy Practice Beverly A. Sizemore and Christopher H. Walker 11 215 The Wandering Semioticians: Tourism and the Image of Modern Iceland Magnús Einarsson Contributors 237 References 241 Index 267 Page vii PREFACE In 1987 we organized a workshop to take stock of anthropological research on Iceland. We collected and published papers from that meeting in The Anthropology of Iceland (University of Iowa Press, 1989). This volume proved to be a success; in the next five years anthropological work on Iceland intensified as people continued various lines of inquiry and there were more people, both Icelanders and non-Icelanders, working in the area. We thought it an opportune time to reassess the state of this work and organized a second workshop held in Iowa City in 1993. This time we defined the subject more narrowly as ethnographic research on modern Iceland. We invited all those who had recently worked in Iceland, and many of them were able to participate in the workshop. Most of the contributions appear in the present volume, but some were committed elsewhere; the papers by Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir and Gísli Pálsson appeared in Social Anthropology and Man, respectively. During the course of the lively discussions among the two dozen participants, it soon became apparent that a focus on images was Page viii emerging. This focus reflects a broader trend in anthropology, which we take up in the introduction. Thus, we could see the anthropology of Iceland as grappling with central issues of the discipline in the context and locale of a modern nation. Since the workshop we have worked with the authors to prepare a set of related essays addressed to similar questions about the many different contexts of modern life in Iceland. While most of the essays in this volume are revisions of work first presented at the workshop, others emerged as topics that first arose in the discussions there; the essays by Brydon and Pálsson and Helgason were prepared later with this volume in mind. The workshop upon which this work is based could not have occurred without the support of the University of Iowa-University of Iceland Exchange Program. Both of our universities supported the workshop not only with words and in spirit but with money. For their support we thank President Hunter Rawlings of the University of Iowa and Rektor Sigmundur Guðbjarnason of the University of Iceland. The United States National Science Foundation and the IcelandUnited States Educational Commission also funded the workshop. We thank Shaun Hughes of the English Department and Myrdene Anderson of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Purdue University for their lively and informed participation in our workshop. Hughes provided the fine-grained historical and literary detail from his familiarity with a diverse range of sources on Iceland, while Anderson provided her expansive view of anthropology and comprehensive understanding of issues. The contributors to this volume also benefited from comments and discussion by several other participants, including Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir, Hanna Ragnarsdóttir, and Hallfríður Þórarinsdóttir. Joe Bishop took care of the important details of the workshop, making everything from transportation to coffee breaks function smoothly. Agnar Helgason helped in the tedious details of the final preparation of the manuscript. Page 1 1 Introduction E. Paul Durrenberger and Gísli Pálsson If ever there was a bounded, self-contained society, it might be Iceland. It is a moderately large island in the middle of the North Atlantic with a small and relatively homogeneous population descended from ninth-century refugees from the unification of Norway. If ever there was an island of history, it, too, might be Iceland. The settlers had hardly disembarked when their descendants in the twelfth century began writing about their histories, family relationships, hardships, and victories. Iceland presents an image of a homogeneous island population with a long, well-recorded historyan apparently ideal subject for anthropologists looking for neat boundaries, self-contained cultures, and natural laboratories. In one way or another these dimensions have been the focus of much past work on Iceland by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, or others, Icelandic and foreign. The essays in this book challenge the notion of the cultural and historical island with reference to both Icelandic ethnography and anthropological theory, emphasizing the flow of cultural constructs in a holistic global world.
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