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12 - Sigurður Guðmundsson and Jón Árnason’s Icelandic Folktales
- Edited by Marjet Brolsma, Alex Drace-Francis, Krisztina Lajosi-Moore, Enno Maessen, Marleen Rensen, Jan Rock, Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, Guido Snel
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- Book:
- Networks, Narratives and Nations
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 16 November 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2022, pp 147-156
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Summary
Abstract
This chapter deals with a key figure in the creation of Icelandic national culture, Sigurður Guðmundsson the painter, and the central role he played in the early collection of Icelandic folktales.
Keywords: folktales; Iceland; Siguður Guðmundsson; national culture
“I will miss Sigurður for a long time; I cannot remember missing any person who is unrelated to me any more than this.” These words were written by the Icelandic folklore collector, Jón Árnason in a letter to Jón Sigur.sson, the Danish-based leader of Iceland's struggle for independence, on 18 October 1874, several weeks after Sigurður Guðmundsson málari (the painter) had died of consumption in Reykjavík at the age of just 41. Jón and several of Sigurður's other friends had then been doing their best to keep him alive for several years.
Sigurðvur Guðmundsson's key role in the creation of national culture in Iceland is unquestionable. While scholars have discussed his role in the design of the Icelandic national costume, the development of a national theatre and the institution of a national museum, much less has been said about his involvement with Iceland's central folk-tale collection, Jón Árnason's Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri (Icelandic Folktales and Wonder Tales, or Icelandic Legends, 1862–64). Indeed, Sigurður is given special mention in the introduction written by Guðbrandur Vigfússon as being one of those who “tell stories best and deserve special thanks for their role in this collection.”
Worth underlining immediately is the fact that when Jón Árnason was working on Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og afintýri in 1861, he spent some time living in the same house as both Sigurður and Matthías Jochumsson, at Aðalstræti 7 in Reykjavík. These three made up a very influential group: Jón Árnason, the 42-year-old town librarian, was already collecting folktales; Sigurður, at 28 years old, was working on a range of projects relating to the creation of national culture; while the 26-year-old Matthías Jóchumsson, later to become the national poet, was writing the first “national” drama, Útilegumennirnir (The outlaws), for which the painter would make the scenery and costumes. Matthías describes their life together as follows: “During the first part of that winter […], I was living in the same house […] as Sigurður the painter. Also there was Jón Árnason […] – both obsessed with – and full of – Icelandic knowledge; they had a great […] influence on me.”
5 - Eddic performance and eddic audiences
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- By Terry Gunnell, University of Iceland
- Edited by Carolyne Larrington, University of Oxford, Judy Quinn, University of Cambridge, Brittany Schorn, University of Cambridge
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- Book:
- A Handbook to Eddic Poetry
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 19 August 2016, pp 92-113
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Summary
What exactly was an eddic poem? The first thing that can be stated with any certainty is that it was not what it has become – in other words, a poem written in ink on parchment or paper, gathered together in a book with other poems in a format designed essentially for silent, private reading, in which all the stanzas can be quickly viewed side by side and reread at will. Prior to the early thirteenth century (when Grímnismál, Vafþrúðnismál, and Vǫluspá were transcribed in the small collection probably used by Snorri Sturluson for the Prose Edda), there is little doubt that most of the eddic poems lived in the oral tradition. Indeed, this would seem to be underlined by Snorri's statements with regard to eddic quotations that words were said (sagt) and figures named (nefndar) in Vǫluspá and Grímnismál; and that stanzas could be heard (máttu heyra) in Grímnismál, or were uttered by Vafþrúðnir (hér segir Vafþrúðnir jǫtunn). That the poems lived in this form for some time before they came to be recorded would also appear to be stressed by the fact that, unlike with many of the skaldic poems, Snorri does not appear to know the identities of the authors of these works, referring to Vǫluspá simply as – or alongside – what he calls forn vísindi (‘ancient wisdom’) (Gylfaginning: 12). The poems’ potentially ‘ancient’ nature and origin are supported still further by the use of the expression fornyrðislag (literally ‘old story metre’) for one of the main eddic metres, and the regular mention in the poems of trees, animals, objects, societies, attitudes, and beliefs that seem to have been unknown in Iceland (where the poems were transcribed). All this suggests that many of the poems must have originated in one form or another in a different environment (see below with regard to Grímnismál, for example; see also Einar Ólafur Sveinsson 1962: 202–66).
This chapter will not be concerned with suggesting any precise ‘original’ date for any of the eddic poems. The environmental features of the poems and the suggestions of ‘age’ are mentioned above first and foremost to remind us of the fact that (not least in Snorri's mind) these were works that originated, travelled, and had lived for some time in the medium of sound rather than in writing.