Terry Gunnell’s upcoming online lecture on September 17, 5 p.m. (CET) is titled The Revenge of the Rejected: The Rise, Fall and Background Context of Icelandic Beliefs in Family Ghosts.
Abstract
Buildings in Iceland in the past tended to have a limited lifespan, something that resulted in the fact that beliefs in ghosts or spirits associated with buildings used to also be limited. Instead of such beliefs, Iceland has numerous legends about spirits that attach themselves to particular families, causing a wide range of problems over a number of generations. Interestingly enough, such beliefs do not seem to be encountered in neighbouring countries. This lecture will present an overview of the legends concerning these spirits, commonly referred to as mórar (peat-reds: male) and skottar (tassled hats: female), which commonly have a background in the mistreatment of the poor by the more wealthy. Attention will be paid to their features, their distribution, the potential reasons for their apparent uniqueness, and why these beliefs seem to be dwindling (but not totally disappearing) in modern Icelandic society.
Short biography
Terry Gunnell is Professor emeritus in Folkloristics at the University of Iceland. Author of The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia (1995), he is editor of Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area (2007), Legends and Landscape (2008), and Grimm Ripples: The Legacy of the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagen in Northern Europe (2022), and co-editor of The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to Völuspá and Nordic Days of Judgement (2013); Málarinn og menningarsköpun: Sigurður Guðmundsson og Kvöldfélagið 1858–1874, which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Award in 2017; and the forthcoming The Old Norse God Freyr New Perspectives in Mythology and Religion. He has also written numerous articles and chapters on Old Nordic religions, folk legends and belief, festivals, folk drama and performance, and is behind the creation of the Icelandic folk legend database Sagnagrunnur, and two other digital databases on the creation of national identity and the early collection of folklore in Iceland in the late nineteenth century.
