Icelanders, Germans and Danes – Triangulating colonial encounters in Iceland during the 15th to 17th centuries
Author(s): Natascha Mehler
Year: 2017
Summary
During the 15th to the 17th centuries, many Germans from Hamburg and Bremen spent their summer in the many trading stations along the extensive coast lines of Iceland. Although Iceland was a part of the kingdom of Denmark, German merchants and sailors, clerics and physicians dominated economic and cultural life, granted by Danish authorities. The paper tries to untackle the different colonial aspects and explores the triangular power relations between Icelanders, Germans and Danes in the early modern period. The Icelandic point of view is best understood through the emic text Brevis Commentarius de Islandia, an ethnographic description of Iceland, written by Arngímur Jónsson in 1593. Other written sources as well as the role of German material culture will be discussed in this context.
Cite this Record
Icelanders, Germans and Danes – Triangulating colonial encounters in Iceland during the 15th to 17th centuries. Natascha Mehler. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435286)
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Keywords
General
Colonialism
•
Ethnography
•
Iceland
Geographic Keywords
Germany
•
Western Europe
Temporal Keywords
Early modern
Spatial Coverage
min long: 5.865; min lat: 47.275 ; max long: 15.034; max lat: 55.057 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 274