Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.06.2009, Page 44

Books | Review
A full moon glimmers across snow-laden fields. Somewhere in the dis-
tance a wolf howls. Noiselessly, through
a strange mist, a shadow emerges, loom-
ing in the dark of our bedroom. The last
thing we see is the f lash of two swollen
white canines. Sound familiar? Why
does the vampire legend so absorb us?
Stories of vampires, like all folk legends,
tell us something innate about ourselves:
where we have been and where we might
go from here.
Terry Gunnell, lecturer in Folkloristics
at the University of Iceland, introduces
this broad selection of twelve scholarly
articles based on the plenary papers
of the 5th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore
Symposium that took place in Reykja-
vik in 2005. Appropriately, Gunnell sets
the stage with a quote from the Grimm
brothers:

The fairy tale is more poetic, the legend
more historical…The legend…adheres al-
ways to that which we are conscious of and
know well, such as a locale or a name that
has been secured through history.
Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping
Beauty, old friends first immortalised
by the Brothers Grimm, are fairy stories.
For children, young and old, they con-
jure up images from the past: the knight
on the white steed, the grumpy old drag-
on, witches mumbling over a bubbling
cauldron. Legends, on the other hand,
are cultural footholds, provide theories
for the sometime inexplicable actions
of our ancestors, and instil social and
moral values.
This fifth symposium, following the
last in Dublin in 1996, reads like a who’s
who of Folkloristic scholars. The papers,
penned by some of the foremost authori-
ties from Ireland, Great Britain, Scan-
dinavia, Estonia and the United States,
furnish deep insight into the research
methodology, history and the possible
intention behind folk legends. The au-
thors cover cross-cultural narration; the
social function and local celebration of
performance; the psyche and develop-
ment of legend within close-knit com-
munities; the influence of genre, form,
interpretation and philology on and
within the metier; and how, above all,
folk stories forge bridges between diver-
gent cultures, in effect, shaping identity
(landscape) within evolving societies.
Jacqueline Simpson’s essay, A Ghostly
View of England’s Past, strolls us along
the cobbled alleys of the ghost walks of
Scotland and England, and illustrates
how, over generations, a legend may
become distorted to suit present needs.
Legends of the Impaled Dead in Sweden,
by Bengt af Klintberg, shows that Bram
Stoker’s Dracula was stabbed through
the heart by countless generations—as
early as the Mesopotamians, in fact—
later than other, less fortunate Swed-
ish, Icelandic and German undead. Bo
Almqvist demonstrates the unique posi-
tion that Iceland maintains in keeping
folklore traditions alive. His paper, Mid-
wife to the Faeries in Icelandic Tradition,
based on over one hundred referenced
examples compiled from throughout
the country and listed as an appendix, is
staggering, and only the tip of the pro-
verbial midwife iceberg. From the earli-
est settlers through the 70s, numerous
Icelandic midwives attested that they
had been initiated by faeries. Apparent-
ly, the legend still retains a certain hold
on rural Iceland. As late as the 1990s,
Almqvist was hearing new variations re-
told from Icelanders, including the artist
Johanna Bogadottir.
Legends and Landscape is a celebration
of the collective minds of those dedicat-
ed folklorists attending the Symposium
and demonstrates a breadth of knowl-
edge that is quietly burgeoning. The
development of the new Sagnarunnar
database initiated by Terry Gunnell at
the University of Iceland (the inception
of which coincided with the symposium)
already maintains over 10,000 Icelandic
folk legends and is a clear testament to
this fact.
Although this book may not be for
the faint-hearted, it is ideally suited to
the scholar, student or folklore aficiona-
do. Be prepared to wrangle with a little
academic prose and you will be well re-
warded; in fact, you may even take up the
cause yourself.
To this very day folk legends inspire,
educate and, at times, confuse. A case in
point: in 2007, a Serbian national, Miro-
slav Milosevic, thrust a stake through
the heart of former dictator Slobodan
Milosevic who was just lying quietly in
his grave, just to be sure that the bloody
dictator would not make a vampire’s
comeback.
Some legends, it seems, never die—that
is, unless you have a silver bullet.
— MARK VINcENZ
Magic Lore
Legends That Just Won’t Die
Legends and Landscape
Ed. Terry Gunnell
2009
University of Iceland Press,
pp., 352
Two Thousand
Krónur’s Worth
Of Freedom
Poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Your language is
somebody else’s
property. Not only
does it get dealt with
in grammar books, by
officials making official rules for
how things can and cannot be – but
everytime anybody gets a good idea
for a phrasing, a metaphor, a pun or a
pickup line sooner than later someone
is going to use that piece of (your?)
language to sell you something –
deodorant, cars, bras, müsli, politics,
sneakers.
In the early seventies, Gil Scott-
Heron told us that the revolution
would not be televised – meaning
that it will belong to the masses
and not the mass media. It will not
be watched, you can’t subscribe
to it – everyone will participate.
In the nineties, hip-hop artist and
self-proclaimed radical KRS One
rephrased it for Nike – The revolution
is basketball, and basketball is the
truth and thus the revolution was
televised.
In Iceland the name for cellphone
credit is “frelsi”. Freedom. You
literally enter a store and ask for
“Two thousand krónur’s worth
of freedom”. This is the fruit of a
successful marketing campaign. In
the UK, people ‘hoover’ their carpets
– Hoover being a manufacturer of the
machines that suck carpets. All over
the world people ‘xerox’ documents –
Xerox being a manufacturer of those
document-copier thingies.
Of course people buying cellphone
credit know they are not getting
actual freedom for their money. For
one thing the people have long ago
been told they already are free, and
they do not believe themselves to be
encaged. And yet they keep saying
it, sneaking it past the gates of
their subconscious – two thousand
krónur’s worth of freedom – repeating
the advertisement to themselves,
to the clerks, to the people behind
them, to their friends and family until
everybody’s saying it. And you realise
you’re running out of freedom and
need to go get some more.
Language is not where we perform
our thought. Language is merely
the tool we use to categorise it and
“control” it. Gaining control over
language is the closest anyone can
come to actually controlling thought.
Think of prayer. Think of slogans.
Think repetitive pop lyrics (If you seek
Amy). Think of all the banal sentences
you hear and say every day for all of
your life – meaning close to nothing.
Think of your predetermined route
through grammatical structures – the
paths you take to form your thought.
This is where poetry comes in. If it
has any role in the world, any function
that I’d allow myself to describe as
holy, it’s to regain language, to strike
down banal structures with furious
anger, to reveal the thievery that’s
taken place – to steal back what I feel
belongs to me (or, in your case, you).
To not gain control over language,
but to relinquish control and liberate
language. Sometimes that means
making it weird. Making it difficult.
Making it damn near illegible.
The point is simply to squirm and
dance, kick and struggle, hug and
cuddle – the more righter it feels the
more gooder it is.
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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2009