On Wednesday 6 May the literary scholar Guðrún Ingólfsdóttir will give the talk “Leafing through the past: the search for women’s manuscripts” in the lecture series Íslensk bóksaga (Icelandic Book History) in the lecture hall of Þjóðarbókhlaða, the library building at Arngrímsgata 3, 12:05–12:45. Guðrún’s abstract says: “The lecture will discuss research I am now doing on women’s book culture from the Middle Ages to 1730. By book culture I mean women’s activity with books, as scribes and as owners and readers of manuscripts. Little is known about women’s education and their part in the nation’s cultural history. Research on their book culture is meant to shed light on these things, and no less on their self-image and the knowledge they gained from books. Women’s manuscripts are, however, poorly catalogued, as Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir and others have pointed out, so it proved necessary to dig into the mass of manuscripts to look for traces of our foremothers. Two manuscripts that are the result of this search will be described.”
Guðrún holds a doctorate in Icelandic literature from the University of Iceland. In 1996–2007 she worked on various projects at the University of Iceland, the National and University Library of Iceland and the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, such as teaching, cataloguing manuscripts, proofreading and writing entries for Alfræði íslenskra bókmennta og bókmenntafræða (an encyclopedia of Icelandic literature and literary studies). Guðrún has worked mainly on research into the literature and manuscripts of earlier times. The results can be seen in Icelandic and international journals and collections of essays.
The lecture series is funded by the Research Fund of Sigrún Á. Sigurðardóttir and Haraldur Sigurðsson
Everyone welcome.
