Documents
eHRAF is comprised of thousands of ethnographic sources including monographs, journal articles, dissertations and manuscripts. Use this page to find relevant documents by searching or filtering. Each document in eHRAF also contains a Publication Information page with added metadata including brief abstracts written by HRAF analysts who have subject-indexed the file.
Culture summaryessay 2004 • Durrenberger, E. Paul
Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
This is a culture summary of the Icelanders. Information is presented on major aspects of Icelanders' culture....Every Icelander a special caseessay 1996 • Durrenberger, E. Paul
Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
An ideology of egalitarianism and homogeneity developed in Iceland with the denial of class. This ideology developed in association with the independence movement that started in the mid-nineteenth century. This period also represented a shift away f...The dynamics of medieval IcelandBook 1992 • Durrenberger, E. Paul
Early Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
This is a study of the social, economic, and political changes that took place in Medieval Iceland over a period of approximately four hundred years --ninth through thirteen centuries -- from the first Norse settlement around 874 A.D. to Iceland's in...Stratification without a statearticle 1988 • Durrenberger, E. Paul
Early Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
From the ninth century, when the first settlers came, until 1262 when it ceased to exist, the Icelandic Commonwealth was a stratified society without a state. There developed a class of independent householders who appropriated the production of a cl...Law and literature in medieval Icelandarticle 1992 • Durrenberger, E. Paul
Early Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
Medieval Iceland was a stratified society without a state to enforce differential access to resources. Like other stateless societies its law defined private rather than public delicts. It did so in terms of the concepts of individual holiness, invio...The Icelandic family sagas as totemic artefactsessay 1991 • Durrenberger, E. Paul
Early Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
This article is a structural analysis of the Icelandic sagas. The author suggests '…that the sagas are neither art nor history, but articulations of what Lévi-Strauss (1966) calls a 'totemic operator', an overarching classification system which organ...Anthropological perspectives on the commonwealth periodessay 1989 • Durrenberger, E. Paul
Early Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
Viewed from the perspective of anthropology, this document examines some of the major issues which add to our knowledge of the Commonwealth period in Icelandic history. Durrenberger discusses the usefulness of medieval literature as a source of ethno...Forms of production and fishing expertiseessay 1989 • Durrenberger, E. Paul & Gísli Pálsson
Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
The author's examination of Icelandic notions of fishing success has led them '…to address a number of classical anthropological issues, among them: the relationship between models and reality, the relationship between ideologies and forms of product...Humor as a guide to social changeessay 1992 • Durrenberger, E. Paul & Wilcox, Jonathan
Early Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
The use of Icelandic family sagas in the reconstruction of medieval Icelandic history and social order has long been contested in the literature. This issue is significant because although the sagas present a relatively full account of Icelandic life...Economic representation and narrative structure in Hœnsa-þóris sagaarticle 1988 • Durrenberger, E. Paul et al.
Early Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
After a brief summary of the economy and social structure of the Commonwealth Period in Iceland (ca. 930-1220 A.D.), the authors present a descriptive analysis of the Icelandic family saga entitled Hœnsa-þórir's as it reflects various cultural elemen...Referencesessay 1996 • Gísli Pálsson & Durrenberger, E. Paul
Icelanders • Europe > Scandinavia
This paper consists of bibliographical citations, some of which are relevant to eHRAF documents 21-29 in this file....