Paper short abstract:

Torfhildur Hólm was an Icelandic folktale collector. Her collection is also the only Icelandic collection in which female narrators outnumber males. Here the focus will be on her status as a female collector, how women are portrayed in her collection and the gendered power relations at work.

Paper long abstract:

Folk legends and narratives can be a great window into the past. They can provide us with information about the world view in the time they were written down but also about the ideas and ideology of the people who collected them. Therefore, when looking at legends it is important to look at the people who told them and the context in which they were written down. Most of the Icelandic legends were collected, told and recorded by men, meaning that most legends reflect their point of view. Here the focus will be put on the folktale collection of Torfhildur Hólm, the only Icelandic woman who collected legends in the late 19th century.

Torfhildur broke hegemonic ideas of femininity and stepped into male dominant fields, multiple times. Her social and gendered status might therefor be seen as uncertain. In addition, Torfhildur’s folktale collection is unique as it is the only Icelandic collection in which female narrators outnumber males. The legends in her collection also differ in many ways from those found in the other collections. Here, the focus will be put on Torfhildur’s status as a collector, how women are portrayed in her collection and the gendered power relations at work.

The results of this project will shed valuable new light on old material (the folk legends), and simultaneously offer a new perspective on women’s struggle for equality in Iceland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, perspectives that have relevance to present day discussions on gender.