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- Convenors:
-
Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir
(University of Iceland)
Monica Germana (University Of Westminster)
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Short Abstract
This panel explores North Atlantic narratives that draw on myth, nature, and folklore to reflect on identity, memory, and ecology. It invites papers on how figures like selkies or sea spirits express trauma, resistance, and alternative worldviews across diverse northern landscapes.
Long Abstract
This panel explores how literary and cultural narratives from across the North Atlantic—spanning regions like Scotland, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, and Sápmi/Sámi territories across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia—draw on myth and the natural world to reflect on how we live with and through nature. These narratives often turn to folklore, sea creatures, and island settings to think about the relationship between people and place, memory and environment. In doing so, they engage with questions of cultural identity, ecological change, and historical legacy, showing how land, sea, and body are deeply connected in storytelling.
The North Atlantic is a region shaped by both isolation and connection, harsh environments, and histories of colonialism and resource extraction. Folkloric figures such as the selkie, the nisse, and sea spirits—often shifting between human and nonhuman, or caught between worlds—challenge simple divisions between nature and culture, or between vulnerability and agency. This panel invites papers that consider how such figures are used in storytelling to express ecological uncertainty, inherited trauma, and resistance, and how they might offer alternative ways of understanding the world—through e.g. feminist, Indigenous, or posthuman perspectives. Papers might, for instance, focus on Greenlandic stories and climate memory, Faroese sea legends, or how recent Scandinavian fiction reimagines myth, animism, and inheritance.
By following such narrative threads across the North Atlantic, the panel asks how stories of nature help us rethink memory, myth, and what it means to belong to a place.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Monday 15 June, 2026, -Paper short abstract
This paper will discuss the use of mythological creatures in Icelandic fiction of the occupation during World War II to express emotions of trauma, loss and uncertainty as well as hope of protection through shared cultural memory and a deeply rooted connection with the natural landscape.
Paper long abstract
This paper proposes to discuss the use and function of mythological creatures in Icelandic fiction of the occupation during World War II. Although Iceland was occupied by Allied forces – British and later American –, this foreign army presence was regarded by many as an invasion and a threat to Icelandic cultural identity. Iceland had never been involved in a war and has never had an army, and this foreign military, which in many places outnumbered the locals, was experienced as alien, luring and menacing at the same time. This paper will discuss how several authors from different time periods turn to Icelandic mythological creatures and motifs to engage with this experience of a cultural threat on a different level than the dominant socio-political one. Figures such as the Icelandic land spirits and the elves, deeply rooted in Icelandic nature and culture, provided narrative ways to express emotions of trauma, loss, uncertainty, fear, as well as hope of protection, through shared memory and a deep-rooted connection with the natural landscape.
Paper short abstract
Uncanny Waters is an intergenerational, LGBTQ+ arts project, exploring folklore, ancestry and migration through costume, writing and performance. Inspired by the 'Necker', a South London river hag, the project queers myth as living heritage resisting patriarchal, colonial and transphobic erasure.
Paper long abstract
A short film and paper that documents Heads Bodies Legs intergenerational, LGBTQ+ community arts and heritage project Uncanny Waters.
The film (Winner of Best LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Big Syn UN Sustainable Development Goals) documents the exhibition of a 6-month community project which asked participants: ‘What stories did you inherit?’ Through costume and performance, we explored cultural and personal memory and participants created work which explored narratives of migration, ancestry and transformation. The project also took inspiration from Deptford’s ‘necker’, a folkloric river Hag.
Accessibility and inclusion are not only a principle but also a generative practise. Early project activities, mudlarking and low-tide walks, proved inaccessible for some. Alongside the live performances, exhibition and film, we created a digital gallery of photographs with poetic audio descriptions. The description texts were created by partially-blind poet Joseph Rizzo Naudi and queer poet Annie Hayter. Their process involved interviews and tactile exploration of the participants costumes, recording the experience and passing the material to a poet who worked ‘blind’ to generate evocative responses. This process revealed uncanny layers of meaning, giving voice to the hidden inspirations and idiosyncrasies in the work.
Our contribution to the ISFNR will be to provide a practise-based perspective, showing how by basing mythic tales in participatory arts practise, folklore can become a living tangible heritage, which opens possibilities of queer, feminist and decolonial ways of reimagining our relationship with water, memory and belonging.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how Osokin’s "Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari" and Fedorchenko’s film adaptation blend Soviet history into mythological time. By reimagining Mari folklore of women’s relationships with nature, they seek to reclaim Mari identity beyond the trauma of colonization.
Paper long abstract
My paper explores how myth and nature intersect with cultural identity in Denis Osokin’s "Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari" and Aleksey Fedorchenko’s eponymous film adaptation. Situated at the crossroads of Soviet history and indigenous Mari culture, these works show how mythological time absorbs and reframes historical trauma, including Soviet assimilation. In stories centered on Mari women, Osokin and Fedorchenko draw on folklore of female bonds with nature to challenge binaries of master/subaltern, culture/nature, Soviet/indigenous. Mythic beings such as the forest giantess Ovda or the resurrected dead highlight how Mari cosmologies blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman, living and dead, communal and individual.
By analyzing these narratives as post-Soviet and postcolonial texts, I argue that they resist hierarchical structures—grammatically, visually, and thematically—while presenting indigenous identity through folkloric and ecological lenses. Here, Soviet symbols (military uniforms, propaganda rituals) are not imposed markers of domination but absorbed into Mari traditions, reframed as part of the natural and cultural cycle. This destabilizes colonial narratives and instead offers a transhumanist vision of coexistence with the Other—spirits, ancestors, natural forces.
The Mari case suggests a model of storytelling where land, body, and culture are interconnected. It shows how the narratives of “small” or overlooked nations reclaim voice and continuity through myth, ritual, and the natural world.
Paper short abstract
Yelena Andreyevna, in Uncle Vanya by Chekhov, is likened to Rusalka (a water nymph) and a witch who enchants people and clouds their judgment. Yet, Yelena is a proud, benevolent woman who longs to be free from the everyday monotony and boredom. Is she truly a Rusalka, or simply a bored woman?
Paper long abstract
Uncle Vanya (1897) is among Anton Chekhov’s most renowned plays. One of its central figures, Yelena Andreyevna, is a young and charming woman married to an elderly, ailing professor. During their stay at the country estate of the professor’s first wife, Yelena’s presence captivates those around her, so much so that she is likened both to the folkloric Rusalka (a water spirit who lures men to their fate) and to a witch whose passivity and indolence seem to drain the vitality and judgment of those around her. Yet Yelena conceives of herself as a proud and benevolent woman, weary of the monotony and tedium that shape her daily existence, and at times longing for freedom from such constraints.
This paper explores the duality of Yelena’s character, considering how her role in the marriage and the near-hypnotic influence she exerts resonate with folkloric imagery of the Rusalka. Her role reflects both folkloric symbolism and the very human frustrations of a woman bound by others and by circumstances beyond her control.
Paper short abstract
A narrative analysis contextualising two variants of a 19th century Icelandic folk legend telling of historical poet Guðmundur Bergþórsson's magical resistance to a threat of forced relocation to King Frederick IV's court.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores legends which deal with King Frederick IV of Denmark's purported plans to acquire the popular poet Guðmundur Bergþórsson, and Guðmundur's magical resistance. The legend has been recorded in two 19th century variants, which both tell of how Guðmundur employed supernatural methods to abort the trip, using magical poetry to engineer a situation whereby he died before departure was scheduled. This study aims to better contextualise the variants of this legend. Firstly, they will be studied in relation to the life of their subject, Guðmundur Bergþórsson. Guðmundur's poetry has been widely preserved and his works draw inspiration from both Icelandic and Danish traditions. He lived with physical impairment from a young age– a detail that is integral to both legend variants. In one variant, the impairment increases his desirability to the King, while the variant recorded by lesser-known collector Magnús Bjarnason presents Guðmundur's use of mobility aids as a stumbling block to those sent to forcefully transport him. Secondly, the variants will be contextualised in relation to the lives of those who told and recorded them. I propose that Magnús Bjarnason's own experience of impairment could have been a factor behind the stark difference in the role impairment plays in the two variants. Finally, Guðmundur's last stand will be placed in its pre-independence Icelandic cultural and political context, and the legend studied as an expression of anxieties concerning Icelanders' vulnerabilities in the colonial relationship, as well as an assertion of Icelandic cultural identity and resolve for self-determination.
Paper short abstract
C.J. Cooke’s A Haunting in the Arctic (2023) uses the selkie myth to tell a story of trauma, memory, and the sea. Set on a Dundee whaler in 1901, it connects violence against women with exploitation of the ocean, showing how North Atlantic folklore links people, myth, and environment.
Paper long abstract
In A Haunting in the Arctic (2023), Scottish novelist C.J. Cooke draws on North Atlantic myth and the sea as a means of negotiating trauma, memory, and ecological exploitation. Set primarily in 1901 aboard a Dundee whaler, the novel intertwines the selkie motif with the harrowing experiences of a young woman who, abducted and repeatedly abused, gradually undergoes a metamorphosis into a selkie. This transformation operates both as a metaphor for psychological and emotional trauma and as an instance of the fluidity of identity, aligning the female body with the mutable and liminal realm of the sea.
As a Gothic historical novel, A Haunting in the Arctic participates in the genre’s concern with the voices of the marginalised and the silenced, here foregrounding the intersections of gendered violence and environmental exploitation. Cooke draws an explicit parallel between the violation of women’s bodies and the whaling industry’s “rape of the ocean” (p. 334), thereby exposing the workings of patriarchal power over both women and the natural world. The novel’s dual narrative structure—juxtaposing the 1901 whaling voyage with a contemporary haunting—further underscores how trauma, like ecological devastation, reverberates across time, much as the ocean itself carries residues of the past.
I argue that Cooke’s reworking of the selkie motif exemplifies how North Atlantic folklore may articulate entanglements of gender, ecology, and memory. Through the destabilisation of boundaries between the real and the mythic, the novel offers a powerful lens for exploring belonging, trauma, and the transformative potential of the sea.
Paper short abstract
In the narrative poem Seal Mother (2022/2025) by Gerður Kristný, a woman’s relationship with a seal cow points to a wider ecological context where symbiotic relationships are the basis of life. This paper explores Urta's references to Icelandic folklore as a creative enactment of hydrofeminism.
Paper long abstract
In the Icelandic narrative poem Urta (2022) [Seal Mother] (2025), the author Gerður Kristný ties together the traditions of old Norse meters and narrative poems, motifs from folklore and folk songs, references to the Sagas, and watery imagery to tell a story of people who survive on the border of land and sea, making a living from both farming and fishing. Seals also live on these borders, often lingering in the shallows or resting ashore. The existence of these two animal species, humans and seals, is shown as intertwined. A woman’s relationship with a seal cow, centering around their role as mothers, serves as an axis for a wider ecological context in which symbiotic relationships are acknowledged as the basis of life.
Exploring the proposition of various scholars that pre-modern literature such as myth and folklore point towards an ecocentric worldview which acknowledges hybridity, movement and flow between biotic beings and abiotic matter, this paper argues that Urta's references to Icelandic folklore serve as a creative enactment of hydrofeminism that reflects an ecocentric vision of the world.
Paper short abstract
The traditional folktale figure of the Scottish selkie is analyzed in contemporary narratives from an ecocritical perspective to consider the hybrid creature as one of connection, not only between sea and land, but also in topicalities of duality and transition including queer identity and grief.
Paper long abstract
Of the many Scottish legends and folktales, the selkie is perhaps the most represented in contemporary narrative. As seal-human hybrids, selkies interact with humans, thus enabling rich narratives to be created and explaining the large amount of selkie stories in contemporary literature. This presentation examines traditional selkie folktales, particularly from the northern Scottish isles, from an environmental humanities perspective in order to link those folktales to contemporary selkie representations which fit into the environmental awareness of new Scottish nature writing (Jamie, Antlers of Water xi). The hybrid selkie creature does not only serve as a connection between sea and land, but also serves as a figure of transition and hybridity in topics such as queer identity and grief. One of the primary texts examined to demonstrate this is The Gloaming (2018) by Kirsty Logan which takes place on an unnamed Scottish island and, with elements of both magical realism and queer identity, explores the flux between the world of human perception and the world beyond it as well as an island space in which “diversity is valued in its own right” (Cuevas-Hewitt, “Sketching Towards an Archpelagic Poetics of Postcolonial Belonging” 246). A further text examined is Orkney (2013) by Amy Sackville, in which the topic of transformation is not limited to the figure of the selkie, but extends to human characters and how humans influence change for the lifeforms and in the environment around them. Ultimately, this presentation links traditional selkie folktale narrative to contemporary renditions in the 21st century.
Paper short abstract
In her novels The Gracekeepers and The Gloaming, Kirsty Logan writes waterscapes where performativity, queer identities, and raw elements meet. Rooted in Scottish folklore, selkies become the intersection between human self-discovery and nonhuman lives that call the unruly seas their home.
Paper long abstract
Scottish novelist Kirsty Logan’s queer retellings of folktales engage in speculative reimaginings of selkie myths intertwined with issues of environmentalism and sapphic self-discovery. In her two, loosely connected novels The Gracekeepers (2015) and The Gloaming (2018), Logan constructs aquatic spaces in two distinct ways in relation to the human protagonists. The first type is marked by the littoral performativity of a flowing circus and professional mermaids. On these stages, some drowned, others floating, the protagonists find themselves in fluid spaces that allow for hidden identities and a soft exploration of non-normative selves. Yet, Logan still locates these places of true self-fulfilment in water, however, in waters away from prying human eyes. In the absence of a human audience, interspecies and more-than-human kinship finds its ways into the story through allusions to selkies. The sea itself is neither reduced to its imagery of freedom nor to its dangerous depths. Rather, the sea is represented as an agent in its own right that has no regard for humans. Logan’s depiction of nature, in particularly the sea, is multi-layered. By interweaving selkie folklore with environmental concerns and individual self-discovery, littoral spaces are more-than-human, diluting anthropocentric views of the ocean by poetically painting its dangerous and untamed space as indifferent to human action.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores contemporary cultural retellings of traditional selkie lore to reflect on the environmental messages articulated by the sonic dimension of seal stories.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores contemporary cultural retellings of traditional selkie lore to reflect on the environmental messages articulated by the sonic dimension of seal stories. Earlier studies suggested that the ‘[t]he plaintive-sounding barking of the seal would to primitive man hardly seem to lack overtones of human emotion’ (Puhvel 1963), to explain the wide-spread of seal-people legends across northern Europe. A close inspection of the sonic dimension of contemporary responses to selkie stories reveals a very nuanced spectrum of verbal (including dialogue and song) and non-verbal communication (ranging from silence to animal sounds), which arguably reflects the ambiguity and complexity of folkloric tales. On one hand, both the selkie’s elusive silence and verbal communication – and especially when selkies articulate their own voices – may draw attention to the boundary that separates the humans’ dry land and the selkies’ water, whilst questioning anthropocentric views on the environment. On the other hand, non-verbal communication, significantly performed in the liminal space that is the shore, frequently offers an attempt to break down binary human/animal categorical distinctions and, simultaneously, move beyond anthropocentrism altogether. Among others, this paper will make references to both verbal and non-verbal communication and sounds in Eric Linklater’s short story ‘Sealskin Trousers’ (1947), Amy Sackville’s novel Orkney (2013), Roseanne Watt’s poetry in Moder Dy (2019), Hanna Tuulikki’s sonic and choreographic performance Seals’kin (2022), Ellie Schmidt’s video works Three Selkie Songs (2022), and Nora Feingschidt’s film The Outrun (2024).