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- Convenors:
-
Haukur Ingvarsson
(University of Iceland)
Jenna Grace Sciuto (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts)
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Short Abstract
Centering the grotesque and transgressive aesthetics of the southern gothic, this panel considers the gothic’s role in literature from the Celtic&Nordic peripheries in elucidating what is suppressed in narratives of national histories and normative identities and what reappears in supernatural ways.
Long Abstract
Centering the grotesque and transgressive aesthetics of the southern gothic, this panel will consider the gothic’s role in literature from the Celtic and Nordic peripheries in elucidating what is suppressed in narratives of national histories and normative identities and what might reappear in supernatural ways. Exploring the intersecting worlds of the Celtic Fringe—Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany—and West Nordic Region—Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and the Western Coast of Norway—we ask what gothic forms illuminate in and across these spaces. The US South, representative of the nation, is associated with gothic tropes and forms in part as a result of the repression of violent histories. Such histories and the traumas of the past can be repressed but not erased: what hasn’t been reckoned with in the nation’s history reemerges in haunted ways, also enabling folktales and ghost stories to enter modern literature. For instance, the Icelandic folktales “The Deacon of Dark River” and “Solveig of Miklabær” are both referenced in the headnote to Einar Benediktsson’s 1892 Icelandic translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”, and, alongside Poe’s work, may be cited as intertexts to Icelandic writer Sjón’s novel Moonstone (2013). Is there a common use of the gothic exported from the US South and traveling through literature, film, and art, or how might we compare Scottish gothic forms to Faroese or US southern? What might these forms reveal about the tensions between the folkloric and the modern in illuminating the experiences of figures suppressed or pushed to the margins?
Accepted papers
Session 1 Sunday 14 June, 2026, -Paper short abstract
This paper will use a southern gothic lens to review the evidence for Norse settlement in the Western Isles of Scotland. The presence and absence of tropes in local namescapes are used to look behind sanitised narratives, to expose forgotten societal trauma and centre the fate of suppressed groups.
Paper long abstract
Not all narratives are born as free-flowing prose. In the Western Isles of Scotland, where written accounts and folk narratives are a surprisingly recent phenomenon, the story of pre-modern settlement draws on remnants of oral tradition. While the local names of places are important here, their ability to serve as allegories or problematise societal phenomena is often overlooked. Individual names can help biographise a place and its historical significance for the local community. When reviewed together as namescapes, what emerges is the story of the communities themselves and their formative experiences.
Read in context, the Hebridean namescapes have decidedly gothic features. Covering relatively isolated rural environments, they have a maudlin quality. While ruggedly beautiful, the scars of economic decline and abandonment abound. Lurking within this setting are memories of an older and potentially more traumatic story: the colonisation of the area by Viking-Age Scandinavians. By the later Middle Ages, however, associated Old-Norse place-names were reduced to devices in Romantic dinnseanchas (place-lore). More recently, the juxtaposition of Gaelic and Norse place-names was seen as proof of a vaguely-defined ‘hybrid’ society, without much comment on its evolution. Subsequent efforts to make Viking studies more accessible have presented Norse settlement in increasingly equitable terms.
This paper will use a southern gothic lens to question sanitised colonial narratives. It reviews the presence and absence of tropes in the place-name record in the context of deeply prejudiced and violent times, to explore the scope for forgotten historical trauma and witness the fate of suppressed groups.
Paper short abstract
The poetry of Einar Benediktsson (1864–1940) incorporates contrasting fantasies of future and past. This lecture explores how ghostly motifs in his work reflect tensions between modernity and history in Icelandic context, drawing parallels to societal trauma as seen in Southern Gothic literature.
Paper long abstract
The poet Einar Benediktsson (1864–1940) was incorporated into Icelandic folklore during his own lifetime. In many respects, he may be seen as modernity incarnate, as he envisioned a future for Iceland shaped by grand ambitions, particularly the production of electricity through the harnessing of waterfalls, which he regarded as a key to national progress. Through his poetic eloquence, he was able to persuade both domestic and international investors to provide financial support for his visionary projects. At the same time, Einar suffered from a pathological fear of darkness, a condition that left a distinct imprint on his life. He appeared to place genuine belief in the ghost stories found in the Icelandic sagas and folklore. These contrasting fantasies of the future and the past are clearly evident in his first poetry collection, Poems and Stories (1898), which not only contains poems advocating the removal of the old to make way for the new, but also includes rewritings of Icelandic ghost tales and a translation of a poem by the American poet Edgar Allan Poe.
This lecture will explore why ghostly phenomena seem to accompany the advent of modernity. It will ask whether the spectral elements in Einar’s literary work are primarily rooted in personal experience, or whether they reflect broader societal traumas that may be interpreted in light of Iceland’s historical and social development, similar to how studies of Southern Gothic literature have illuminated aspects of American society.
Paper short abstract
Applying US southern gothic forms to two novels set in Iceland in 1918—Sjón’s Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was (2013) and Gunnar Gunnarsson’s Seven Days of Darkness (1920)—brings repressed societal aspects, such as the suppression of queerness in Icelandic nationalist discourses, to the surface.
Paper long abstract
Although Icelanders were not directly involved in World War I and did not witness its horrors, they were reminded of their mortality in 1918 with the outbreak of the Spanish flu and the eruption of the volcano Katla, which turned day into night. Both Sjón’s Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was (2013) and Gunnar Gunnarsson’s Seven Days of Darkness (1920) capture this historic year through distinctly gothic approaches. The intertextuality between the two novels deepens some of the darker threads in Sjón’s novel, such as the suppression of queerness in Icelandic nationalist discourses. Applying US southern gothic forms to these novels bring suppressed societal aspects to the surface, resonating with the gothic’s engagement with the repressed histories of slavery and patriarchy in the US South.
In this talk, drawn from a co-written book chapter, I’ll elucidate queer themes present in both novels. For instance, according to Jean-Ulrick Désert, “queer space is in large part the function of wishful thinking or desires that become solidified” (21), which relates to the concretization of imaginings that occur through cinema, in this case international films that transport Máni outside of the time and place of 1918 Iceland—even if only within the space of the cinema and his own mind. Thus, through the queer space of the cinema, Máni can exist beyond the culture that surrounds him. Sjón’s novel, then, challenges ideas of nationalism and normative expectations, attempting to come to terms with that which has not been directly addressed in Icelandic culture.
Paper short abstract
This presentation explores the parallels between Absalom, Absalom! and The Saga of Burnt Njál, paying particular attention to shared Gothic elements, including quasi-hauntings and curses, and the interconnections of family, violence, justice, and community.
Paper long abstract
During an ambassadorial trip to Iceland for the United States State Department in October 1955, William Faulkner was presented with a copy of Brennunjáls Saga, or The Saga of Burnt Njál. It was an appropriate gift, for this, one of the greatest of the sagas, presents a distinctly Faulknerian narrative in which a series of tragical events culminates in the burning down of a house precipitated by the violence of the titular figure’s sons. As in Faulkner’s 1936 masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom!, the saga of Njál traces the intricate workings of multigenerational doom in what can be read as proto-Southern Gothic. At the center of these narratives stand two patriarchal figures, Thomas Sutpen and Njáll Þorgeirsson, who in an array of both active and passive strategies represent, articulate, and negotiate the moral systems and necessities of their respective worlds. Njál struggles to deal with newfound Christian notions of forgiveness clashing with older Norse concepts of vendetta while Sutpen’s rapacity in following American drives for power tests the nation’s spurious ideals for social equality. The violence that ensues in both stories reaches a Gothic level of nihilism and absurdity. This presentation will explore the parallels between Absalom, Absalom! and The Saga of Burnt Njál, paying particular attention to shared Gothic elements, including quasi-hauntings and curses, and the interconnections of family, violence, justice, and community.
Paper short abstract
Archives from 19th-century Nordic settlers in Texas reveal an ongoing exchange between settlers, academics, and audiences across the Atlantic regarding settler colonial nation-building and the potential influence of Nordic imaginaries through literature.
Paper long abstract
In 1961, The Lady With the Pen: Elise Wærenskjold in Texas, a translation of letters by the Norwegian journalist and newspaper editor Elise Wærenskjold, was published by the Norwegian American Historical Association. Elise Wærenskjold moved from southern Norway to Four Mile Prairie, Texas, in 1847 and lived there until she died in 1891. An integral part in documenting the Norwegian settlements in the US, Wærenskjold assisted scholars who promoted the Nordic Sagas for American audiences. From her settlement, she wrote frequently to Norwegian newspapers describing her life in Texas and the importance of literature for Nordic settler communities in Texas. In her letters, she criticises the institution of slavery while simultaneously promoting an image of the US South, and Texas specifically, as a place of freedom and equality.
This paper analyses Wærenskjold’s description of her migration and the building of the Norwegian settlement within the analytic of settler colonialism while also attending to her constant negotiation with the nation and her position in it. I focus specifically on Wærenskjold’s choice of words as I argue that her vocabulary, specifically her use of the words immigrant and settler, and moreover the transition from migrant to settler, as years pass, provides insight into the ongoing process of conceptualising her position in the United States. By analysing this transition alongside recent scholarship on the impact of Nordic imaginaries on the US nation-building, I examine how Wærenskjold interacts with the position of the settler while distancing herself from the ongoing process of colonialism.