Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Eric Bryan is Assoc. Prof. of English at Missouri Univ. of Science and Technology. He has received grants from the Fulbright Program and American Scandinavian Foundation.

The book is structured around five folktales taken from the great collection compiled in the mid-nineteenth century by Jon Arnason and Magnus Grimmson. Bryan situates these in relation to thematically linked stories from Icelandic sagas, Scandinavian literature and, indeed, the wider Indo-European narrative tradition. He is particularly interested in the way in which the Reformation affected the development of stories. Iceland’s long winter nights ensured the continuance of a strong oral tradition. Against a view which sees a popular oral culture preserving pagan resistances opposing a Christianising elite literary culture, Bryan argues that vernacular storytelling represented a continual reworking to achieve a unified religious worldview....This book is a fascinating exploration of the connections between various Icelandic folktales and a valiant attempt to relate them to religious change. ... I would recommend the book to anyone interested in Icelandic folklore, or indeed the functioning of folklore more generally.

• Introduction: Stories, Memories, and Modalities BeliefChapter 1—The Dead Bridegroom Carries off his Bride: Pejoration and Adjacency Pairs in ATU 365Chapter 2—The Elf-Woman’s Conversion: Gender Spheres in Post-Medieval Icelandic FolktalesChapter 3— The Fylgjur of Iceland: Attendant Spirits and a Distorted Sense of GuardianshipChapter 4—The Elf Church: Memories of Contested Sacred SpacesChapter 5—The Stupid Boy and the Devil: Sæmundur Fróði, Magic, and RedemptionConclusion:  The Transformation of Memory and of SelfSelected BibliographyIndex