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Introduction
Terry Gunnell

Legends and Landscape

Das Märchen ist poetischer, die Sage historischer; jenes stehet beinahe nur in
sich selber fest, in seiner angeborenen Blüte und Vollendung; die Sage, von
einer geringern Mannigfaltigkeit der Farbe, hat noch das Besondere, daß sie an
etwas Bekanntem und Bewußtem hafte, an einem Ort oder einem durch die
Geschichte gesicherten Namen. Aus dieser ihrer Gebundenheit folgt, daß sie
nicht, gleich dem Märchen, überall zu Hause sein könne, sondern irgendeine
Bedingung voraussetze, ohne welche sie bald gar nicht da, bald nur unvoll-
kommener vorhanden sein würde (Grimm 1976: 7).

(The fairytale is more poetic, the legend is more historical; the former exists se-
curely almost in and of itself in its innate blossoming and consummation. The leg-
end, by contrast, is characterized by a lesser variety of colors, yet it represents
something special in that it adheres always to that which we are conscious of and
know well, such as a locale or a name that has been secured through history. Be-
cause of this local confinement, it follows that the legend cannot, like the fairytale,
find its home anywhere. Instead the legend demands certain conditions without
which it either cannot exist at all, or can only exist in less perfect form [trans.
Grimm 1981: I, 1].)

This famous early definition of the legend from the introduction to the
first volume of the Grimm brothers’ Deutsche Sagen (1816-1818) may well
have made too sharp a generic definition between the nature of the legend
and that of the wonder/fairy tale. Nonetheless, the connections that Wil-
helm Grimm highlights here between the legend and the temporal and
geographical environment that legend-tellers and their audiences inhabit
remain valid. Certainly, in our own time, as television, radio and the in-
ternet have extended the borders of our daily experiential “environment”,
many modern commentators have tended to drop direct connections with
living space, as when Linda Dégh stresses simply that:

The legend is a legend once it entertains debate about belief. Short or long,
complete or rudimentary, local or global, supernatural, horrible, mysterious, or

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grotesque, about one’s own or someone else’s experience, the sounding of con-
trary opinions is what makes a legend a legend (Dégh 2001: 97).

The same general approach is seen in Elliott Oring’s recent discussion of

legendary techniques: he argues that legends are essentially “concerned
with matters of truth” and with making “a claim about the truth of an
event” (Oring 2008: 128).1 Both of these definitions are naturally appli-
cable, but implied within the emphases on “truth” and “belief” remains the
central fact that, unlike wonder tales, legends are said to have taken place in
the “real” world we inhabit. They have always lived in and grown out of liv-
ing context (Gunnell forthcoming), something effectively reflected in the
title of Timothy R. Tangherlini’s important review of approaches to legend,
“‘It Happened Not Too Far From Here…’” (1990).2 In short, legends
past and present are told in conversation because they are seen as having
relevance to the space the tellers and listeners inhabit, a space which, for
most people in the nineteenth century when the first extensive collec-
tions of legends were made, was often very limited. Legends are told
within a particular space, and refer directly to that space however
broadly or narrowly defined. And when they are told, remembered and
passed on, referring to this and other spaces and people that the tellers and
listeners are aware of in their daily lives, they will commonly have an ef-
fect on the way in which the environment they are told in is understood.
In short, they are one of the features that turn “spaces” into “places”.
To quote the French philosopher, Michel de Certeau, the stories we relate
in our daily lives “have the function of founding and articulating spaces”
(de Certeau 1984: 123). “Places”, meanwhile, as de Certeau argues, are in
themselves “fragmentary and inward turning histories, pasts that others are
not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded […] like stories
held in reserve” (de Certeau 1984: 108). In other words, in the minds of
those who lived among them, it might be said that the “places” we inhabit

1 On the definition of legends, see further the discussion and references given in Dégh 2001
and Tangherlini 1990.
2 One of the most complete definitions of legend must be that given by Tangherlini in his
Interpreting Legend (1994). This definition effectively includes all of the features mentioned
above: “Legend, typically, is a traditional, (mono)episodic, highly ecotypified, localized and
historicized narrative of past events told as believable in conversational mode. Psychologi-
cally, legend is a symbolic representation of folk belief and reflects the collective experiences
and values of the group to whose tradition it belongs” (Tangherlini 1994: 22).

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are essentially all composed of memories and stories. It might also be ar-
gued that these places are “articulated” by the stories that people tell. For
that reason alone, the legends we tell will always be worthy of attention.
They have a range of values for not only folklorists and anthropologists,
but also psychologists, sociologists and social historians.
I have argued elsewhere with regard to the intrinsic connection be-
tween legends and landscape that legends actually give more than mean-
ing or “clothing” to a particular space; in the past (and possibly also in
the present):

folk legends served as a kind of map. On one side, they reminded people of place
names and routes, and gave historical depth to these surroundings, populating
them with ghosts and other beings of various kinds. On the other, they served
as a map of behaviour, underlining moral and social values and offering examples
to follow or avoid. Simultaneously, they reminded people of the temporal and
physical borders of their existence, questions of life and death, periods of liminal-
ity, insiders and outsiders, and continuously, the physical and spiritual division
between the cultural and the wild, what Levi-Strauss might refer to as the
“cooked” and the “raw”. If the map was followed, you had a good chance of living
in safety. If you broke it, you stood an equally good chance of ending up in a
folk legend yourself if not on a list of mortality statistics (Gunnell 2005: 70).

In short, when told or retold, legends offer guidance and provide expla-
nations for the unexplained. They also underline worldviews, social hier-
archies, beliefs, values, anxieties, threats and more. As Ulf Palmenfelt
argues later in this book (p. 89), like any other cultural form, legends “are
the results of people’s mental images, but also act as templates which
mould our minds”. Furthermore, as Ülo Valk notes (p. 153), it might be
said that legends in themselves represent a kind of social reality:

… in order to be fully understood, legends should not be detached from the so-
cial world of the village community that tells them. Social reality does not exist
outside legends but is actively constructed through the medium of language
and daily communication in its public and private forms, oral, written and
printed genres.

Similar ideas were expressed by the cultural historian David Hopkin in

his lecture at the 5th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium which
formed the background for the present collection of articles:

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As narrative tied history to geography, so the landscape itself was a daily lesson
in communal values established by the village’s ancestors, a daily reminder of
community honour won by one’s forefathers. Each narrative suggested a dozen
others […]. The local was, whether he liked it or not, caught up in a narrative
web of […] “belongingness” (Hopkin 2005; cf. Hopkin 2003, 79).

Furthermore, as Anna-Leena Siikala reminds us (p. 39), “legends are also

mirrors of a cultural system, even if they as individual narratives reflect
different aspects of world view and human experience”; in a sense they
“reflect the historical consciousness of a given society”.
“Historical consciousness”, however, is somewhat different to objective
“history”. The collections of folk legends found in the archives which the
Grimm brothers inspired have often been criticised in recent years by
scholars who have argued (with some degree of correctness, but often an
equal degree of arrogance about the greater value of our own work
today) that these early materials were badly collected, misleadingly pre-
sented and thus virtually near useless.3 Certainly, few modern folklorists
would attempt to use these accounts of the past as historical peepholes
into ancient times as the Grimms did. Most would agree, however, that
their value remains undiminished as historical sources about the time of
collection or the worldviews of those who told (and collected) them, and
not least their understanding of the past. As Timothy R. Tangherlini
notes in his article underlining the nature of legends as a form of social
transaction, in the historical legends of the past:

the appeal to the historical is neither an uncritical passing on of old stories, nor
a nostalgic revisiting of times past; rather, it is a rhetorical device deployed by
an individual engaged in a negotiation of ideological stances with other com-
munity members on questions of considerable contemporaneous import (p.
173).

If (as with contemporary legends) we bear in mind the nature and context of
the collection processes of their time, and the nature of the society that told
them, the legend collections of the past obviously still have a great deal to
offer, not only with regard to the insight they offer into the world of those
who told, listened to (and later read) these accounts, but also in respect of the
forces that encouraged the collection of these materials, and the nature of the

3 See especially the discussion on the subject by Bengt Holbek, Bengt af Klintberg and Jonas
Frykman in the journal Norveg (1979), 209-242.

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academic world that was engaged in their publication and analysis.4 This
viewpoint was one of the key motivations for calling the conference that
served as a background for the present collection of articles, and for offering
some of the material that it generated to a wider readership.

The Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposia (1988-2005)

It might be argued that an interest in folk legends has run throughout
the series of conferences to which the 5th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore
Symposium belonged.5 In itself, this is not surprising when one considers
that the initial inspiration behind the conferences has roots in the friend-
ship and cooperation that developed in the first half of the twentieth
century between the Irish scholar James Hamilton Delargy (Séamus Ó
Duilearga) and a range of other internationally-minded scholars from the
Nordic countries, many of whom were directly involved in folk legend
research from various viewpoints. These figures included Carl Wilhelm
von Sydow, Dag Strömbäck and Åke Campbell (Sweden); Reidar Chris-
tiansen, Knut Liestøl and Nils Lid (Norway); Einar Ólafur Sveinsson
(Iceland); Hans Ellekilde (Denmark); Kaarle Krohn and Rob K. V.
Wickman (Finland); and Oskar Loorits and Walter Anderson (Estonia)
(see further the article by Séamas Ó Catháin elsewhere in this volume).
Among these scholars, von Sydow, Christiansen, Strömbäck and Einar
Ólafur Sveinsson were especially interested in constructing academic con-
tacts between the Celtic and Nordic areas, and the fruits of this cooperation
have been reflected strongly in the Celtic-Nordic-Baltic symposia that
go back to the eighties.
Direct impetus and inspiration for the conferences came from the success
of the International Congress of the Folk Epic which had been hosted in
1985 by the Department of Irish Folklore at University College, Dublin,
and had brought a new generation of Nordic scholars into renewed contact
with their Irish and Scottish counterparts across the North Sea. Three
years later, in 1988, came the first symposium in this present series of con-
ferences. More limited in geographical scope, it centred around papers pre-
sented by a number of like-minded lecturers and students from the School
of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the Department of
4 See further the article by Arne Bugge Amundsen in this volume.
5 The information given in this section is largely based on facts given in Bo Almqvist’s open-
ing lecture at the Reykjavík symposium on the history of Celtic-Nordic-Baltic symposia.

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Irish Folklore at University College, Dublin, and set the tone that the
symposia sought to emulate. The 14 papers given at this conference fo-
cused on “The Supernatural in Irish and Scottish Migratory Legends”.6
While Nordic scholars were not personally involved here (with the notable
exception of Bo Almqvist, who was head of the Department of Irish Folk-
lore at the time, and an organiser of the conference), the connections with
the Nordic world were clearly apparent in the emphasis on migratory leg-
ends within which Reidar Christiansen’s index of Norwegian legends (The
Migratory Legends: 1958) tended to serve as a key point of comparison.
The success of this conference (and the interest it attracted) led to a second
and much larger conference in Galway in 1991. While this next sympo-
sium addressed a similar theme (“Migratory Legends on the Supernatural”),
the the area under investigation was now deliberately expanded, the 46 par-
ticipants now including not only academics and students from Dublin and
Edinburgh but also delegates from other universities teaching folklore not
only in Ireland but also in neighbouring countries. The international cul-
tural connections that Irish and Scottish academics like Bo Almqvist, Séa-
mas Ó Catháin, Alan Bruford, and Donald Archie MacDonald had forged
(and were maintaining) at this time could be clearly seen in the fact that
they were now joined by other scholars from Wales, Brittany, England, and
all the other Nordic countries, including Hilda Ellis Davidson and Jacque-
line Simpson from England; Bengt Holbek, Iørn Piø and Michael Chesnutt
from Denmark; Olav Bø and Reimund Kvideland from Norway; Bengt af
Klintberg from Sweden; Hallfreður Örn Eiríksson and Gísli Sigurðsson
from Iceland; Eyðun Andreasen from the Faroe Islands; Irma-Riita Järvi-
nen, Pirkko-Liisa Rausmaa, Marjatta Jauhiainen, Jukka Saarinen from Fin-
land; and Samuli Aikio from the Sami territories.7
Two years later, a third symposium (expanded still further to include
participants from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) was held in København
in 1993, now taking the wider focus of minor folklore genres (ranging from
proverbs and riddles to children’s rhymes, traditional prayers, wedding
songs and death laments).8 The 4th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic symposium
6 The papers from this conference were published in a special Béaloideas volume, The Fairy
Hill is on Fire, which has since sold out. See Almqvist, Ó Catháin and Ó Héalai 1991.
7 The papers from this conference later appeared in Béaloideas, 1992-1993 (Almqvist and Ó
Héalai 1992) and 1994-1995 (Almqvist and Ó Héalai 1996); Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore,
47 (1991), and 49 (1993); and Folklore, 104 (1993) and 105 (1994).
8 Some of the material from this conference was published in Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore,
51 (1995).

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was then held once again in Dublin in 1996. While the theme of this
conference concentrated on sea and maritime traditions (the symposium
being entitled “Islanders and Water-Dwellers”), the enduring interest in
the legend genre remained apparent. Many of the 31 papers presented
once again involved or focused on individual legends or groups of leg-
ends within the area in question.9
There can be little question about the long-term importance of these
symposia, not only in terms of the international networks forged and
strengthened, but also the enduring scholarship that they produced. As
Bo Almqvist underlined in his opening address to the 5th Celtic-
Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium in Reykjavík in 2005, the previous
four conferences had resulted not only in two central indexes of migra-
tory legend types in Ireland and Scotland,10 but also:
publications amounting to in excess of 1600 pages, some 100 papers of well
integrated solid scholarship, which have elucidated, and will continue to eluci-
date, connections and similarities as well as regional characteristic traits in the
Celtic-Nordic-Baltic areas.

There was clearly good reason for reawakening (and hopefully maintain-
ing) this particular series of international symposia.

The 5th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium, 2005

The motivation for the fifth symposium in Reykjavík in June 2005 which
forms the context for the present volume arose partly from the develop-
ment of the new Sagnagrunnur database of roughly 10,000 published
Icelandic folk legends at the University of Iceland (which came about
through cooperation between Bo Almqvist in Dublin and Rósa Þor-
steinsdóttir and the present author in Reykjavík), and a simultaneous
desire to celebrate the fact that the Folkloristics department of the Uni-
versity of Iceland had at last acquired a second full-time lecturer in the
9 The materials from this conference can be found in Islanders and Water-Dwellers, ed. Patricia
Lysaght, Séamas Ó Catháin and Dáithí Ó hÓgáin (1999).
10 It might also be said that these conferences also inspired Anna Brimnes’ as yet unpublished,
but no less important type list of Faroese legends, and Bo Almqvist’s pioneering work on a
list of Icelandic migratory legends, which led directly to the eventual development of the
Sagnagrunnur database (http://www3.hi.is/~terry/database/sagnagrunnur.htm, last viewed 1
October, 2008). See further above.

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shape of Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, meaning that it could become a fully-

fledged main subject at the university. There was also good reason to
celebrate the international connections that the department had built up
over the last two decades, which had helped it secure its present position.
Another Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium relating to legends
seemed the perfect venue for such a celebration.
Initial discussions between the present author, Séamas Ó Catháin, Ulf
Palmenfelt and Bengt af Klintberg revealed a joint desire to maintain
the flame of legend scholarship that had been ignited by the previous
symposia; and to use it as a means of illuminating the cultural and aca-
demic bridges that had been constructed over the centuries between the
Nordic and Celtic countries on one side, and the Nordic and Baltic
countries on the other. Naturally, during the ten years separating the
fourth and fifth symposia, a number of changes had taken place in the
nature of legend scholarship, and it was felt that the symposium should
not only reflect these changes and the new light they shed on the genre,
but also underline the range of uses that folk legends past and present
continue to offer as sources of research in different fields. The following
list of 37 lectures presented at the symposium (which accompanied the
12 plenary papers that form the basis of the articles printed in this pres-
ent volume) highlights the wide international interest that the confer-
ence inspired. It also underlines the breadth of approaches being taken
with legendary material today.
Papers Presented at the 5th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium on Folk Legends (in addi-
tion to those published in the present volume).
(Icelanders are ordered by Christian name in accordance with Icelandic tradition)
Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir (Reykjavík): “Nú er glatt í hverjum hól”: On How Icelandic Legends
Reflect the Prohibition of Dance
Eyðun Andreassen (Tórshavn: Plenary): Wizards and Witches: Gender and Society in the Tra-
dition of Magic
Jürgen Beyer (Södertörn): Nordic-Baltic Heavenly Letters
Jenny Blain (Sheffield) and Robert J Wallis (London): “I Born Of Giants Remember Very
Early”: Pagan Pasts and New Folklore
Carsten Bregenhøj (Vaasa): The Devil in The Julebuk: A Danish Belief Legend in Clerical and
Popular Tradition
Jenny Butler (Cork): Celtic Legends and the Irish Neo-Pagan Community
Michael Chesnutt (København: Plenary): The Archetypical Old Geezer: Other Old Men’s Anec-
dotes about Egill
Coppélie Cocq (Umeå): Marriage with the Supernatural
Margaret Cormack (Charleston): The Catholic Church in Lutheran Legend
Davíð Erlingsson (Reykjavík): Bits of the Myth of Recreation at Work in the Settlement of Iceland
Thomas Du Bois (Madison): Blessed Are the Meek: Leniency and Mercy in Sámi Legends

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Kelly Fitzgerald (Dublin): Hunger in Memory: Inherited Famine Recollections of Irish and Ice-
landic Diaspora
Gísli Sigurðsson (Reykjavík): Ghosts And Icelandic Canadians: Tradition and/ or Reality?
Lauri Harvilahti (Helsinki): Mythological Logic in Finnic and Baltic Legend Traditions
Blanka Henriksson (Åbo): Life after Death in Legends and Friendship Verses
David Hopkin (Glasgow): The Breton Gargantua and the Battle of the Bourdineaux: The Mo-
bilisation of Legend in Communal Fishing Disputes
Camilla Asplund Ingemark (Åbo): The Definition of the Human Community in Finnish-
Swedish Legends of the Supernatural
Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson (Reykjavík): The Spirit at Hjaltastaður
Júlíana Magnúsdóttir (Reykjavík): Legends, Storytellers and Folk Belief in Skaftárhreppur
Annikki Kaivola Bregenhøj (Turku): How Does an Informant Incorporate Legend Themes into his
Personal Legend Repertoire?
Eda Kalme (Tartu): The Social Construction of Reality on the Basis of Legendary Tradition after
W.W. II: The Case of the “Sausage Factory”
Kaarina Koski (Helsinki): Boundaries of the Community in Finnish Belief
Pauliina Latvala (Helsinki): Family Narratives and Interpretationo of Oral History
James P. Leary (Madison): Folk Legends in Nordic America
Merja Leppälahti (Turku): The Use of Scandinavian Folk Legends in Fantasy Literature Today
Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh (Dublin): The Occupational Context of Irish Supernatural Maritime
Legends
Pádraig Ó Héalai (Galway): St John’s Prologue in Irish Folk Tradition
Daíthí Ó hÓgáin (Dublin): Irish Hurling Legends: Individuals and Tradition
Ane Ohrvik (Oslo): The Intertexual Julenisse
Piret Paal (Tartu): Lapps Torturing Estonians
Guntis Pakalns (Riga): Urban Legends in a Time of Change in Latvia at the Beginning of the
1990s
Rosemary Power (London): Gaelic Love Tales in Iceland: A Case of Multiple Introduction?
Jonathan Roper (Sheffield): Legends in Charms
Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir (Reykjavík): A Female Storyteller from Breiðafjörður in Iceland, and her
Narratives
Mikael Sarelin (Åbo): Legends about the Knife Fighters
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein (Reykjavík): What Happens When Legends Become Heritage? Vernacular
Traditions and Vertical Integration
Ieva Vitola (Riga): Hidden Treasure Places in Latvia: Folk Legend and Archaeological Discourse

As in the present volume, the three-day series of lectures was effec-

tively “bookended” by plenary papers presented by the two esteemed
scholars to whom the conference (like the present book) was dedicated,
Jacqueline Simpson and Bo Almqvist, whose lifetime work has been an
inspiration to the rest of us, and especially to those of us who are inter-
ested in highlighting and researching the cultural connections between
the Celtic, Nordic and Baltic worlds reflected in legendary traditions
past and present. As with the present volume, the symposium also began
and ended with performances of poetry and music, which, in addition to
their artistic and entertainment value, effectively served to underline the
fact that the skills and potential of folklorists are far from limited to ac-
ademic research and the written word: a large number of the scholars and

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students involved in the conference revealed themselves to be poets,

singers, musicians, storytellers and artists, just like the performers to
whom they have dedicated their lives and their research.11

The Present Book

It would have been a near impossible task to publish all of the papers
presented at the Reykjavík conference. It was thus decided from the start
that this particular publication would be limited to the longer plenary
papers which were meant to introduce themes and approaches concern-
ing legend research, and inspire continuing discussion. It is hoped that
they will serve the same purpose for those that read this volume.
The plenary lectures in question were presented for the main part by
leading academic representatives of folklore and ethnology depart-
ments from Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland,
Swedish-speaking Finland, the Faroe Islands, and Estonia.12 The lectures
in question were meant to provide some insight into the ways in which
folk legends and the legend collections of the past are being approached
in folkloristics and ethnology departments in Ireland, Scotland, and the
Nordic and Baltic countries today. The lecturers in question were joined
by three internationally respected legend scholars with a lifetime of ex-
perience in the subject (that is, Jacqueline Simpson, Bo Almqvist, and
Bengt af Klintberg, the last of whom might be regarded as the “heart”
of the present volume), and two leading folklorists from North America
who have also been deeply involved in Nordic legend scholarship for
much of their careers: John Lindow and Timothy R. Tangherlini, both of
whom have been visiting Fulbright lecturers in the Folkloristics De-
partment at the University of Iceland in recent years.
The material included in this volume is thus not only wide-ranging in
geographical origin and relevance, but also offers challenging new ap-
proaches to folk legends and underlines the breadth of potential for dif-

11 It might be noted that among the conference delegates were two storytellers from Scotland:
Essie Stewart of the Scottish Traveller Community and Lawrence Tulloch from Shetland. We
are grateful to them for the storytelling session they presented at the heart of the conference.
12 Iceland, of course, hosted the conference and was well represented not only by the range of
Icelandic scholars that presented papers at the conference, but also in Bo Almqvist’s plenary
paper on Midwife to the Fairies. It might be noted that Eyðun Andreassen (from the Faroe
Islands) and Michael Chesnutt (the representative from Denmark) chose not to publish their
papers in this volume.

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ferent kinds of research connected with legendary material (see the arti-
cle by Amundsen). Here we see how legends reflect local conflicts going
on at the time of their presentation (Tangherlini); how they echo other
anxieties about the nature and consequences of sickness (Lindow) and an
awareness that the world experienced by those living in rural communi-
ties was in a perpetual state of transition (Palmenfelt). We observe how
legends can serve as oral “licences” of skill, with a surprising ability to
adapt themselves to local conditions (Almqvist). Legends are also
shown to have the potential for preserving very early beliefs (af Klint-
berg), while simultaneously providing the impetus for much of the
modern heritage industry (Simpson). They reveal early cultural links be-
tween countries (Shaw), yet sometimes serve slightly different practical
functions within each of the different societies in question (Siikala). In-
deed, as several articles show, the early collections were also intrinsically
involved in the creation of national identity (Valk), their recording and
the means by which they were archived underlining both local method-
ological conflicts and wider international academic influences (Wolf-
Knuts and Ó Catháin). It is nonetheless clear that the Reykjavík folk
legend symposium only gave us a view of the tip of the iceberg. The po-
tential is endless, especially when harnessed to interdisciplinary and in-
ternational cooperation.

Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to Letterstedtska föreningen, Stofnun
Árna Magnússonar, Stofnun Sigurðar Nordals, University College, Dublin,
the British, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish Embassies in Reykjavík,
and especially Háskóli Íslands, Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien, and
Nordisk Kulturfond for providing the financial support which made the
5th Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium possible. Special thanks are
also due to Gísli Sigurðsson, Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir, Jón Bóasson, Kristín
Birna Kristjánsdóttir, and Birna Rún Sævarsdóttir for assisting with the
organisation of the conference; to Olga Holownia for arranging the web
site; to Snæland Grímsson hf. for aiding with transport; to Heimir Páls-
son and Karl Guðmundsson for translating poems; to Ingunn Ás-
dísardóttir for helping with the formatting of the present publication; to
Andrew Wawn for reading over the Introduction; to Liv Anna Gunnell
for proof-reading assistance; Þorbjörg Jónsdóttir for the cover photograph

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and in particular to the Nordic House in Reykjavík for providing ac-

commodation and lecture rooms. Last of all, we are grateful to Nordisk
kulturfond for a publishing grant, and to Háskólaútgáfan for publishing
the present volume.

Cited Works:
Almqvist, Bo; Ó Catháin, Séamas; and Ó Héalai, Pádraig (eds) 1991: The Fairy Hill is
on Fire! Proceedings of the Symposium on the Supernatural in Irish and Scottish Migratory
Legends, Dublin 7-8 October 1988. Béaloideas, 59. Dublin.
Almqvist, Bo; and Ó Héalai, Pádraig (eds) 1992: Finscéalta Agus Litríocht: Legends and
Fiction: Papers Presented at the Nordic-Celtic Legend Symposium, Galway 17-22 March
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