Folk Legends of the North Atlantic Islands on Line

The creation of the Sagnagrunnur database of c. 10,000 Icelandic folk legends was briefly introduced at the ISFNR conference in 2005. In this lecture, the authors would like to outline the numerous developments that have taken place since that time, as the database was first of all effectively connected to a mapping programme (by Trausti) and has since been linked to the sound recordings of folk legends contained in the Ísmús database of the Arnagmagnean Institute (a further c. 10,000 legends), thereby allowing people also to listen to the legends on site. Over the last three years, this material (which also includes the database of Icelandic wonder tales compiled by Aðalheiður Guðmundssdóttir) has been joined by additional material from the Faroe Islands, Orkney, and in particular, Shetland, including sound links to recordings from the Tobar an Dualchais/ Kist o Riches site of recordings from the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. It can thus be said that this material now effectively forms a bridge with the Swedish material in Sägenkarten, the Norwegian material at present being collected as part of the SAMLA project, and the Danish legends contained in Timothy Tanghelini’s Danish Folklore Nexus, allowing us to quickly examine the way Nordic legends adapted in line with social and geographical
circumstances.