7
Network (13
th
–14
th
September, 2010, Bergen,
Norway) as a medium of information and
communication for Network members. The
idea was to include announcements and reports
on relevant events, publications, research,
projects and also information on departments
and programs accompanied by perhaps two
short, discussion-oriented articles or their
responses. This idea was met with such
enthusiasm that the first issue appeared already
in December of the same year with 57 pages of
contributions. Since that time,
RMN Newsletter
has produced two issues per year, averaging
about 100 pages each and longer for special
issues. This activity rapidly established us as
an international journal. At the request of
Network members, we established a standard
of open peer-review for article contributions,
relevant for contributors’ bibliometric profiles
and allowing us to be ranked in several
systems. Articles had started off comprising
half or less of any particular issue, but the
proportion has gradually increased. Our
publication schedule had initially been on a
rhythm of appearing before the summer and
winter breaks on the academic calendar.
Feedback from Network members led us to
shift this rhythm to the beginnings of terms,
when people would be returning to work. The
average length of contributions was allowed to
increase. Announcements and reports of
current research had initially been quite
constrained in length. With a special issue in
2015, a new type of section was separated out
of this for non-peer-reviewed articles and
perspective pieces.
The journal has never been
static, but with the present issue we are making
some more substantial changes.
The delay in
RMN Newsletter’s publication
has resulted in a double-issue, the contents of
both issues 12 and 13. From this point onward,
we have decided that we will produce only one
issue per year. We have also done some
reorganizing of sections. “Communications” is
retained as the title for the section of peer-
reviewed articles, with a nod to the esteemed
series Folklore Fellows’ Communications.
This is followed by a complementary section
of non-peer-reviewed articles, discussions and
reports: “Communications, Perspectives and
Reports”. These sections are followed by
publication announcements and reports on or
introductions
to
ongoing
or
recently-
completed projects, including larger group
projects, post-doctoral and PhD projects as
well as Master’s thesis projects. We hope that
this new organization and publication rhythm
will appeal to our readership.
The aim of the journal continues to be to
provide an emergent discourse space in which
scholars may discuss, debate, and share
information,
and to make knowledge,
discussions and information available to those
interested in it. We have restructured the
journal and its rhythm, adapting to changing
circumstances as part of our on-going
evolution, but we continue to offer a distinct
venue to our contributors and readership. We
organize and maintain
RMN Newsletter as a
discourse space, but that space would be empty
were it not peopled by the voices of
contributors, allowing dialogue with an ever-
widening readership. Over the course of this
journal’s modest life, it is you who have driven
the journal’s evolution.
Frog
University of Helsinki
8
Icelandic Folklore, Landscape Theory, and Levity:
The Seyðisfjörður Dwarf-Stone
Matthias Egeler, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich / Institute for Advanced Study,
Berlin
Abstract: This paper discusses the relationship between a folk tale about the Dvergasteinn [‘Dwarf-Stone’] on the fjord
of Seyðisfjörður in eastern Iceland and the details of the tale’s landscape setting. It argues that storytelling for
storytelling’s sake might have been neglected in current theorising on the conceptualisation and narrative use of
landscape. This, as well as the intensity with which landscape is used in Iceland for the construction of narratives, might
also affect the use of place-lore for retrospective approaches.
In her introduction to the recent ‘Art Seminar’
volume on
Landscape Theory, Rachel Ziady
DeLue argues programmatically that “the
intellectual and socio-political stakes of
landscape theory are high”, and that the
importance of understanding our relationship
to landscape can hardly be overestimated
(DeLue 2008: 11). Seen against the background
provided by such an ambitious claim, it comes
as little surprise that the issues addressed in the
scholarly discourse on landscape tend to be
grave and important ones. Denis Cosgrove, for
instance, is deeply concerned with matters of
ideology: in the mid-1980s, he argued that
‘landscape’ is primarily a “way of seeing”,
through which parts of the European
population commented on social relations, and
emphasises the importance of ‘myth’,
‘memory’, and ‘meaning’ for the relationship
between landscape and human beings
(Cosgrove 2008: 20–21; Cosgrove in DeLue &
Elkins 2008: 88–89; Cosgrove 1984). Myth
and memory also play a core role for the
approach that was taken by Simon Schama in
his classic book on
Landscape and Memory,
and the seriousness of the topic is underlined
by the location in which he
begins his story of
landscape and remembrance: at the mound at
Giby in north-eastern Poland. He tells how this
mound made him grasp what really is meant by
‘landscape and memory’ – and that his
narrative opens at just this particular place sets
a solemn tone indeed, as this mound tells the
story of the mass-execution of several hundred
men and women (Schama 1996: 23–26). Keith
H. Basso in his long-term ethnographic study
of the use of places, place names, and place
stories among the Western Apache takes a very
different approach, but he deals with matters of
social importance as well:
a central concern of
his book is how fundamental ethical and social
questions can be addressed by taking recourse
to place-lore (Basso 1996). Gillian R. Overing
and Marijane Osborn adopt a more literary
perspective, engaging with the landscapes of
storytelling (1994). While the workings of
society and the tragedies of ‘real life’ remain
outside of the scope of their work, they still
share a sense of acuteness with other landscape
writers. Writing about the
Landscape of
Desire, they express already with their choice
of title a deeply-felt urgency for their
engagement with the relationship between
landscape, story, and meaning in an approach
where “place is a shared form of meaning”,
providing the space for an intense dialogue
with the past (1994: xvi–xvii). More recent, but
no less serious, is the approach taken by Robert
Macfarlane (2015). In discussing the landscape
writing of Barry Lopez and Peter Davidson, for
instance, he emphasises the humanistic value
of the approaches that these writers take to their
respective chosen landscapes – northern ones
in both cases – and concludes by emphasising
their ethical aspects and their relationship to
morality, seen as deeply connected to the
power of certain landscapes to “bestow [...] a
grace” upon the people inhabiting or travelling
through them (Macfarlane 2015: 209–220).
Even more intense is the engagement with
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