Icelandic Literature and Ecofeminism

Abstract

This chapter outlines the appearance, characteristics, and evolvement of ecofeminist thought in Icelandic literature and scholarship from the 1970s to the present. This historical view, with an eye to the social context, reveals that in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the linking of anticapitalist ideas of modern man’s alienation from nature and feminist criticism of male dominance intermingled with a feminist rewriting of a male-oriented literary history taking place both in scholarly and literary writings. The (re)discovery of goddess power played a key role in this reevaluation in a literary system that, not least for national-political reasons, based its merit on the heritage of Norse mythology and the Sagas. Goddesses continue to be used as affirmations of female power and the (abused) power of nature in Icelandic literature. Recently, postcolonial considerations can be detected, with a focus on islandness and how the colonial system reflected and shaped other power relations, such as man’s supposed dominance over women and nature. The chapter underlines the importance of ecofeminist thought for contemporary ecocriticism, in literature as well as in literary theory, for example, by paving the way for posthuman theories and efforts to counter the Anthropocene worldview in the times of climate change.