Sigurður Magnússon. Nature in Icelandic poetry.
- Author: Sigurður Magnússon
- Title: Nature in Icelandic poetry
- Published in: Literary Review, 39. 4
- Year: 1996
- Pages: 505
- E-text: ProQuest
- Reference: Sigurður Magnússon. "Nature in Icelandic poetry." Literary Review, 39. 4 (1996): 505.
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Annotation
In this article, Sigurður Magnússon investigates the use of nature in Icelandic poetry, briefly tracing its history of occurrence and character from its rarity in the medieval sagas to its rise in prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries, treated as a malevolent entity that reflected the struggles of Icelanders in the face of famine, and the romantic turn of the 19th century that favored nature as both a refuge and source of inspiration and origins. Using a famous quote from Njal’s saga, the author reveals an old appreciation of nature for its subsistence qualities in the eyes of farmers, rather than for its aesthetics or purity, and shows how this changed over time to embody contemporary poetry’s focus on the powerful landscapes of Iceland and how this shapes the ways Icelandic people view themselves and their country, and how their image is perceived by the wider world.
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See also
References
Chapter 75: Fögur er hlíðin : “Here a genuine feeling for nature seems to be expressed, yet it is not seen with the eyes of an esthete or an artist, but with the eyes of the practical farmer. It is neither rivers nor waterfalls, mountains nor glaciers that conjure up the winged words, but ‘whitening grain and the home field mown’; in other words, the fat of the land.” (p. 505)
Links
- Written by: Luca Panaro
- Icelandic/English translation:
