About Space and Place

in Grettis saga, Gísla saga Súrssonar, and Hardar Saga og Hölmverja.





THE PROJECT

By characterizing its contemporary geography, a work of literature makes room for new imaginative spaces that challenge the boundaries of the physical. Yet how can we visualize, or perhaps even quantify, the geographic elements of conceptual literary space? In order to manageably address this inquiry, I chose the three outlaw sagas within the corpus of the Icelandic Sagas— Grettir's Saga, the Saga of Hord and the People of Holm, and Gisli's Saga—for their demonstrated interest in geography as a function of outlawry. The elements of this project, including the Place Name Map, Country Name Map, and Place Name Network all represent attempts to envision a "literary geography" that depicts space and place using digital technology.

adapted from the Digital Centers Internship Blog.



COMPLETE LIST OF AVAILABLE DOWNLOADS

  • Codebook {PDF}

  • Place Name Map: Shapefile

  • Country Name Map: Shapefile

  • Place Name Map: Tabular Data

  • Country Name Map: Tabular Data


PRINCIPLE INVESTIGATOR

Mary Catherine Kinniburgh completed her Masters at Columbia in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, and is now attending the Graduate Center at the City University of New York to continue work on her PhD. As a medievalist, her critical interests examine the intersections between literary and and physical landscapes from a material culture as well as ecocritical perspective, and ways in which digital methodologies can illuminate these interactions.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With special thanks to Jeremiah Trinidad-Christensen for his multifaceted assistance on this project, and gratitude to Ashley Jester, Eric Glass, Alex Gil, Jeffrey Lancaster, Bob Scott, and the staff of Columbia Libraries' Digital Centers for their invaluable perspectives. Takk fyrir to Hallgrímur J. Ámundason at the Onomastics Department of the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies for his help in locating resources on Icelandic place names.


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