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Íslenzkt þjóðerni: Jón Jónsson Aðils’ Iceland and the road to the future

  • Kim Middel EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: October 17, 2018

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, historiography was used to further the cause of independence by profiling Iceland as a fully-fledged nation. The Icelandic historian Jón Jónsson Aðils was the man who would shape Iceland’s history, and the nation with it, in his work Icelandic Nationhood. His achievement was not self-evident; Iceland was part of the Danish realm and glorifying the past met with restrictions. This paper aims to illustrate how in this setting Aðils succeeded in constructing the Icelandic nation with the aid of existing Danish nationalist thought. I propose that using ideas of the famous Danish nationalist N.F.S. Grundtvig enabled Aðils to construct an Icelandic ’Golden Age’ specifically focused on culture and freedom that held future prospects. Finally, I will discuss the consequence of this focus as a decisive factor in the development of Icelandic self-awareness, aiming to contribute to the larger debate on the creation of national identities.

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Published Online: 2018-10-17
Published in Print: 2018-10-25

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Íslenzkt þjóðerni: Jón Jónsson Aðils’ Iceland and the road to the future
  4. Det ophøjede i dansk romantik og en figurativ-filosofisk vurdering af Jens Baggesen og Schack von Staffeldts digterdyst
  5. The North seen from the South in the Spanish reception of Selma Lagerlöf
  6. Dangerous Vicinity: Theorizing the Neighbour in August Strindberg’s “The Roofing Ceremony”
  7. The female detective as the child who needs to know. Saga Norén as an example of potent yet dysfunctional female detectives in contemporary Nordic Noir
  8. Group genitive in Swedish – s-genitive as a phrase marker
  9. Generics in Mainland Scandinavian languages
  10. Nordischer Klang
  11. Nordischer Klang 2017: Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich. Zeichenwelten/Welten zeichnen
  12. Comics creation as a social experiment: Simon Gärdenfors’ playful performance
  13. An Anatomy of Facelessness: On Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker Trilogy
  14. Stripping H.C. Andersen. Peter Madsen’s Historien om en mor (or, what a graphic novel adaptation can do that its literary source cannot)
  15. Reviews
  16. Olle Ferm et. al. (Hg.):The Eufemiavisor and Courtly Culture. Time, Texts and Cultural Transfer. Papers from a Symposium in Stockholm 11–13 October 2012
  17. Laura Sonja Wamhoff:Isländische Erinnerungskultur 1100–1300. Altnordische Historiographie und kulturelles Gedächtnis
  18. Jana Krüger, Vivian Busch, Katharina Seidel, Christiane Zimmermann u. Ute Zimmermann (Hg.):Die Faszination des Verborgenen und seine Entschlüsselung – Rāði sāʀ kunni. Beiträge zur Runologie, skandinavischen Mediävistik und germanischen Sprachwissenschaft
  19. Jón Karl Helgason:Echoes of Valhalla. The Afterlife of the Eddas and Sagas
  20. Alessia Bauer, Kurt Schier (Hg.) mit einem Nachtrag von Peter Landau:Konrad Maurer, Reise nach Island (im Sommer 1858)
  21. Margareta Petersson & Rikard Schönström (eds.):Nordens litteratur
  22. Matthias Egeler:Islands in the West. Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination
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