David Olafsson – författare

This book studies everyday writing practices among ordinary people in a poor rural society in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using the abundance of handwritten material produced, disseminated and consumed some centuries after the advent of print as its research material, the book's focus is on its day-to-day usage and on "minor knowledge," i.e., text matter originating and rooted primarily in the everyday life of the peasantry.The focus is on the history of education and communication in a global perspective. Rather than engaging in comparing different countries or regions, the authors seek to view and study early modern and modern manuscript culture as a transnational (or transregional) practice, giving agency to its ordinary participants and attention to hitherto overlooked source material. Through a microhistorical lens, the authors examine the strength of this aspect of popular culture and try to show it in a wider perspective, as well as asking questions about the importance of this development for the continuity of the literary tradition. The book is an attempt to explain “the nature of the literary culture” in general – how new ideas were transported from one person to another, from community to community, and between regions; essentially, the role of minor knowledge in the development of modern men.

Situated on an intersection between Material Culture Studies, History and Museum and Archival Studies, this book investigates the material world of the Icelandic population in the late Modern Era.Utilizing the great wealth of inventories of household goods stored at The National Archives of Iceland in conjunction with material objects, the book highlights new paths and insights into understanding people’s possessions and material relations, and the entwined biographies of people and things. It shows how people shaped their own lives by means of things and how these material relations are “archived” and represented in heritage and museum spaces. The book is divided into two parts that explore how material culture contributes to history, the relationship between things and text, and the practice of collecting things and address the process of assembly, or how things gather. Micro and macro methods of investigation tease out new approaches to debates around human–thing relationships, acknowledging ideas about material agency and social significance and that the human–material relation is reciprocal.This volume will appeal to students and researchers within the field of archaeology, material culture studies, museum studies, heritage, and the history of material culture.