Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture, and Storytelling in the

Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture, and Storytelling in the North Atlantic (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

Iceland, Greenland, Northern Norway, and the Faroe Islands lie on the edges of Western Europe, in an area long portrayed by travelers as remote and exotic - its nature harsh, its people reclusive. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, however, this marginalized region has gradually become part of modern Europe, a transformation that is narrated in Karen Oslundâ€™s Iceland Imagined.

This cultural and environmental history sweeps across the dramatic North Atlantic landscape, exploring its unusual geography, saga narratives, language, culture, and politics, and analyzing its emergence as a distinctive and symbolic part of Europe. The earliest visions of a wild frontier, filled with dangerous and unpredictable inhabitants, eventually gave way to images of beautiful, well-managed lands, inhabited by simple but virtuous people living close to nature.

This transformation was accomplished by state-sponsored natural histories of Iceland which explained that the monsters described in medieval and Renaissance travel accounts did not really exist, and by artists who painted the Icelandic landscapes to reflect their fertile and regulated qualities. Literary scholars and linguists who came to Iceland and Greenland in the nineteenth century related the stories and the languages of the â€œwild Northâ€ to those of their home countries.
Country USA
Brand University of Washington Press
Manufacturer University of Washington Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780295992938
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780295992938
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	University of Washington Press
Manufacturer	University of Washington Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780295992938
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780295992938
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture, and Storytelling in the North Atlantic (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

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