A Tale of a Fool?
Kaup valmöguleikar
A Tale of a Fool? explores the life of Guðrún Ketilsdóttir, a peasant woman born in Iceland around 1759. Guðrún worked as a farmhand for most of her adult life, and when she died she left behind a partial autobiography, which is believed to be the oldest autobiography of an Icelandic peasant woman. In this autobiography, Guðrún writes openly about her life and provides colourful depictions of the society in which she lived, providing one of the few first-hand accounts that have survived from members of the peasant class at that time.
A Tale of a Fool? demonstrates how it is possible to work with this kind of source using the methods of microhistory as a historical tool to study events and individuals of the past. In doing so, it not only provides an illuminating study of the life of a peasant woman in the 18th and 19th centuries but also addresses the question of the methods, priorities and interpretations applied in the collecting, cataloguing and publication of women’s writing.
Nánar um bókina
- Taylor & Francis
- 9781351668101
- 9781138061347
- ePub
- 1
- Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir
- English
- 2019-03-14
- 100
- 2
- 2
Kaflar
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Epigraph
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: women in a men’s world
- 1 One woman, one story
- A century of hardship and disaster
- The life story of Guðrún Ketilsdóttir in her own words
- Sources
- 2 Early years
- Guðbjörg’s hardscrabble life at Sámsstaðir
- A large family in a time of disease and want
- 3 In service: clever and well behaved
- Food for the mind at Teigur
- Sent away to work
- 4 Employment on her own terms
- Uppity workers
- A single woman in service
- Famine
- 5 When one door closes, another opens
- Assets of the Teigur estate on Ketill’s death
- Guðrún’s pay
- Division of assets among the heirs
- 6 Guðrún at her professional peak
- In the sheriff’s household
- 7 Illugi Jónsson – a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
- Stormy relationship
- Birth of Jón Illugason
- The end of the marriage
- 8 Alone again
- Fugitive single mother and child?
- Jón Illugason, pauper
- Lone, discontented lodger-woman
- A riposte to the sheriff
- Guðrún’s descendants
- 9 We all grow more craven with age
- The end of the road
- 10 Auction of Guðrún’s worldly goods
- “A pauper’s poor possessions”
- Book-loving work maids
- 11 The bigger picture
- Guðrún Ketilsdóttir’s peripatetic life, 1759–1842
- 12 History of the manuscripts
- Women’s writings wrongly catalogued or lost
- A droll tale of Guðrún the prattler
- The comic tale of Gunna, a foul-mouthed, silly, prattling old woman
- Reception
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Bibliography
- Index