1st Edition
Objects in the Archives Modern Material Culture and Heritage in the North
Situated on an intersection between Material Culture Studies, History, and Museum and Archival Studies, this book investigates the material world of the Icelandic population in the late Modern Era.
Utilizing the great wealth of inventories of household goods stored at The National Archives of Iceland in conjunction with material objects, the book highlights new paths and insights into understanding people’s possessions and material relations, and the entwined biographies of people and things. It shows how people shaped their own lives by means of things, and how these material relations are “archived” and represented in heritage and museum spaces. The book is divided into two parts that explore how material culture contributes to history, the relationship between things and text, and the practice of collecting things and address the process of assembly, or how things gather. Micro and macro methods of investigation tease out new approaches to debates around human–thing relationships, acknowledging ideas about material agency and social significance and that the human–material relation is reciprocal.
This volume will appeal to students and researchers within the field of archaeology, material culture studies, museum studies, heritage, and the history of material culture.
1 Introduction: What Are Our Favourite Things and Why
Kristján Mímisson and Davíð Ólafsson
Objects of Expression – Expressing Objects
2 Probate Records and Private Property in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Iceland
Már Jónsson
3 Wool Socks, Silk Scarfs, Needles, and Wood Saws: Material Culture on the Margins of Icelandic Society
Anna Heiða Baldursdóttir
4 Lending and Borrowing of Books and Manuscripts: Sharing Economy and the Material Culture of Text in Nineteenth Century Iceland
Davíð Ólafsson
5 The Speech of Spindle Whorls: Words on Things and Things in Words
Gavin Lucas
6 The Affect of Relating: On the Various Manifestations of Things
Kristján Mímisson
7 And Old Manuscript, Leather Shoes, and a Walking Stick: The Role of Material Agency in Literary Criticism
Andri M. Kristjánsson
Objects of Gathering – Gathering Objects
8 In Pursuit of Modernity? On Collecting and Aesthetics in Iceland
Anna Lísa Rúnarsdóttir
9 The Icelandic Turf House as Skin: Archive, Anarchy, Heritage
Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson and Arnar Árnason
10 The ‘Archive’: Things to Consider
Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon
11 Buried Archives: The Multiple Curators of Waste
Ágústa Edwald Maxwell
12 In the Nude, Without Archive: Recollecting Traces of Holmegaard
Tim Flohr Sørensen and Þóra Pétursdóttir
13 Icelandic Cake Fight: History of an Immigrant Recipe
Laurie K. Bertram
14 Collecting Bald Cypress Knees: An Exercise in Symbiotic Interaction
Ewa Domanska
15 Epilogue: Things on a Wall: Potential History
Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon
Biography
Kristján Mímisson is an archaeologist and editorial curator at the National Museum of Iceland.
Davið Ólafsson is a historian and associate professor at the University of Iceland.
