Grettir the Strong and Billy the Kid:

Outlaws, myth and reality in Iceland and America

Summer 2011. Post-graduate level. 10 ECTS credits. Language: English.

Location

Bárðardalur valley, North Iceland. The course begins with a bus drive from Reykjavík.

Registration

Enrolment deadline: TBA

Associated Disciplines

•    History
•    Literature
•    Folklore studies
•    Cultural studies
•    Sociology

Keywords

•    Outlaws
•    Myth
•    Culture
•    Nature
•    Social bandits
•    Margins
•    Sagas
•    Westerns

Description

This course explores the history of outlaws and outlaw mythology in Iceland and the US, in particular the American West. In doing so, it examines the historical origins of outlaws and their mythological development, the myths and folktales relating to them, and the fictionalised social bandit.  At the same time, it explores the connection between wildness and outlawry, and considers why the most potent outlaw stories concern desolate, forbidding landscapes. The most common outlaw material in Iceland will be read and interpreted, including medieval sagas, 17th-century accounts, folktales and historical accounts, along with the relationship between the Icelandic highlands and the country’s utopian/dystopic folktales on outlaws. 

Material from the US will include an appraisal of outlaw memoirs and biographies in story and song, most of them from the 19th century, with readings on Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Joaquin Murrieta, Belle Starr, and others. The outlaw landscape of the arid West and the US - Mexican border will also be a focus of study.
The well-known works of Eric Hobsbawm on social bandits and a subsequent criticism of his hypothesis from a variety of viewpoints will serve as a reference point, but the main emphasis will be on the interplay between myth and reality. 

Highlights

Outlaws are a fascinating subject, and the course will include field-trips to a variety of outlaw sites drawn from sagas and folktales. It will commence with a bus tour from the government building in Reykjavík, once a prison housing one of Iceland’s the best-known outlaws, before heading north stopping at a few outlaw sites, among them the Surtshellir cave, along the way. After spending the night in Skagafjörður, the the group will visit the legendary island of Drangey, immortalised in the Saga of Grettir the Strong, before proceeding on to Kiðagil, the teaching and boarding location of the Svartárkot project. Both Kiðagil and Svartárkot are in the vicinity of the rugged lava-field Ódáðahraun (Foul-deed lava), setting for a variety of outlaw-related folktales and home to a number of sites relating to documented outlaws.

Learning Outcomes

Students will study the ways in which cultures have constructed mythologies, the roles of myth, how landscape and myth intersect, and the ways in which geographic features come to convey cultural meaning.  The course will also explore the ways in which nationalism has encouraged the formulation of romantic tales of resistance against the state, which paradoxically can be used to disempower or subvert those who resist authority of the nation-state. It will also illuminate the many uses of outlaw mythologies in the development of Icelandic and American regional and national identities down to the present day, as it unravels the tangled skein of outlawry, banditry, violence, and law

Supervisors

Viðar Hreinsson mag.art., the Reykjavík Academy.

Dr. Louis S. Warren, W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, Dept. of History, University of California, Davis .

Reading

An exhibition pamphlet, with short surveys on Icelandic outlaws.

Three Icelandic outlaw sagas:
The Saga of Gísli Súrsson, The Saga of Grettir the Strong and The Saga of Hord and the People of Holm

These sagas are available in a few English translations:  
The Complete Sagas of Icelanders II. General Editor Viðar Hreinsson. Reykjavík, Bókaútgáfan Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.
Three Icelandic outlaw sagas: The saga of Gisli: The saga of Grettir: The saga of Hord. Translated by Anthonu Faulkes and George Johnston. Introduction and notes by Peter Foote. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2004.
The saga of Gísli is also in:
Gisli Sursson’s saga and The saga of the people of Eyri. London, Penguin 2003.
The saga of Grettir:
The saga of Grettir the Strong. London, Penguin, 2005.  

Icelandic folktales in English translation:
Outlaws together with adventures and stories of past events. Selected and translated by Alan Boucher. Reykjavík, Iceland Review 1994. (4. ed. The title of the earlier editions: Adventures, outlaws and past events)  

Jóhann Sigurjónsson. Eyvindur of the mountains (a play). Translated by Francis Magoun jr. Reykjavík, Helgafell 1961.

Selections from  Pat Garrett, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid:  Noted Desperado of the Southwest (1927)
Selections from Yellow Bird (John Rollin Ridge), Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated  California Bandit   (1854)
Richard White, "Outlaw Gangs of the Middle Border: American Social Bandits," from Gordon Bakken, ed., Law in the West (2000)

Preliminary Schedule (subject to change)

Day one: The course starts in Reykjavík in the morning, with a lecture and a bus tour to Skagafjörður, where participants stay for one night.

Day two: The bus arrives at Kiðagil at noon and lectures will be held in the afternoon.

Days two-four: American outlaws and frontier politics and culture.

Days five and six: Outlaws, landscapes, excursions and discussion.

Day seven: Interpreting mythologies.

Day eight: Outlaws and cultural context, student work and discussion.

Day nine: Sum up, discussion, with departures that evening or the morning after. 

Structure and Evaluation

See: Framework

Guest Lecturers

To be announced.

Enquiries

For specific information on this course and the Svartárkot program please send email to:  info@svartarkot.is .