Databases, digital mapping and folk narratives in Iceland
"The Creation of National Culture in Iceland 1858-1874: Two On-Line Data Bases“
Terry Gunnell, University of Iceland
In this lecture, I will be discussing the creation and future of two new web sites containing searchable data-bases of material relating to sixteen highly active years in Iceland’s history. These were the years during which the foundations were placed for the creation of national costumes, a national museum, a national folktale collection, a national theatre, women’s education and the shape of present-day Reykjavík. The web sites in question, https://sigurdurmalari.hi.is/ and http://www.jonarnason.is/english/ are the result of two large projects in Folkloristics sponsored by the Icelandic Research Council, and led by the lecturer along with Karl Aspelund (University of Rhode Island) in the case of the first, and Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir (Arnamagnean Institute, Reykjavík) in the second. Assistance with the web sites and digital mapping has come from Olga Holownia and Trausti Dagsson. As the names of the web sites imply, they focus on two highly influential figures who form the heart of the romantic nationalistic “project” in Iceland, and their interaction with a wide ranging cultural network of similarly minded figures at home and abroad. In addition to providing direct access to this network, the two interrelated data bases place their material in a wider European context, and are directly related to the large S.P.I.N. and E.R.N.I.E. project in Amsterdam (http://spinnet.humanities.uva.nl/; and http://romanticnationalism.net/.
"Sagnagrunnur, database, a geographically mapped database of Icelandic folk legend: behind the scenes"
Trausti Dagsson, Gothenburg University
The presentation will discuss the technological methods used in creating the current version of Sagnagrunnur, a geographically mapped database of Icelandic folk legends which can be accessed via http://sagnagrunnur.com. The database contains metadata about more than 10.000 legends from published folklore collections, collected from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century. In the presentation I will describe the possibilities that the database and its interface provides, especially with the added spatial dimension, the development process and extension to the database in relation to other research projects.