On Ogresses and Other Monsters
Halld�r Bj�rn Run�lfsson
Gabriela Fridriksdottir Melancholia (still from video) 2004 / video / 7:21 min
Icelandic folk tales and legends are extremely rich and original, forming an unusually diverse body of written and oral accounts of elves, trolls, ghosts, revived corpses, monsters, demons, magicians and sorcerers, to name only a few. The long list of categories constitutes a vast collections, mostly gathered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from oral folklore. Other collections were written down by one, or various writers after oral relations of old story-tellers, some of whom were found in remote and sparsely populated districts.
What makes these folk tales so original is the style in which they are written. It has nothing of the manicured, childish address which characterizes the world famous European fairy tales. Icelandic folk tales are blunt and unpolished; told in a straightforward, sometimes pitiless manner by people who either seemed to believe every word they said, or had the rare humor of pretending to believe in it. In any event, a good story-teller must not unfold the ambiguous veracity of his account if he wants to keep the attention of his audience.
The content is also different. Icelandic elves are not the small dwarfs with pointed ears and long white beard who decorate our modern gardens. They are ?hidden? people ? in whose existence many still believe – living in rocks and mountains; Eve?s unwashed children whom she tried to hide from God when he dropped by in Paradise unexpectedly, but of whose existence he knew perfectly well. As a punishment for her deceit he had them continue existing unseen by others than themselves. These hidden people, however, are a trifle nobler, richer and more courteous than us, but demand perfect honesty and loyalty on our behalf, which they reward thousand fold if kept, but punish by horrible faith when broken.
Icelandic trolls are usually ogresses, gigantic in size and ferocious, who try to lure men into their caves on the mountainous interior in order to sustain their own fragile descent. After a while the captives usually manage to deceive the ogresses and escape, but they never attain normality after the awful experience. A particular ogress, called Gryla, was believed to be the mother of the thirteen Yulepucks, mischievous little scoundrels known throughout Scandinavia as Father Christmas, before they were supplanted by the benevolent but less humorous Santa Claus. Gryla used to feed on naughty children who had not been properly dressed for Christmas, but an old rhyme speaks of her exhaustion and death when, during one good advent, all children decided to conspire against her by behaving impeccably and dressing in red for Christmas eve.
Strangely enough, throughout the last century Icelandic artists were reluctant to draw on these inspiring tales and legends, perhaps because of their obvious psychological candor. When informed of the recurring theme of the typical Icelandic tale of ogresses, writer, playwright and theoretician H�l?ne Sixou was appalled by their misogynic overtones. Nevertheless, �sgr�mur J�nsson (1876-1958), the first modern Icelandic painter to become professional was fascinated by the theme and did more illustrations and paintings of it than of any other, although only a few categories of folk tales did escape his pen and pencil. All his life J�nsson continued illustrating Icelandic folk tales, mainly in drawings and watercolors, but he never exhibited these works, although they appeared in various printed editions accompanied by respective tales. Among the striking features of his paintings and illustrations is the stunning likeness of a number of the ogresses rendered by him and his self-portraits.
Other artists were less tempted by folk tales, although the lava and moss landscapes of J�hannes Kjarval (1885-1972), the most venerated of Icelandic pioneering modernists, are crowded with imaginary fairies and spirits. In 1929, a third pioneering modernist, J�n Stef�nsson (1882-1963), a former student of Henri Matisse, tried his luck at the folk tale motif of Thorgeir?s Bull. The most frightening of all revived corpses, an agonizing bull with bare flesh, which dragged its bloodstained hide by the tale. Having been rejected by the woman he loved Thorgeir revived a slain bull, turning it into a monster, which eventually managed to kill the woman and several of her relatives. J�nsson was particularly happy with his dramatic painting, but was later attacked by the cultural authorities who found it to contain immoral sexual implications.
It is only recently that contemporary artists have dared revert to this kind of folklore in order to explore its latent psychological properties. In 1998, Steingrimur Eyfj�rd (b. 1954) did a memorable plaster statue of the aforementioned voracious Gryla, which he called Gryla/Venus, referring to the double nature of the ancient godess of love. Old, ugly and naked she is surrounded by prints of beautiful photo models, scrawled with small gynaecophobic doodles and remarks. Eyfj�rd shows remarkable sensitivity in dealing with the abject nature of the ogress theme, which he reinvigorates with perfectly contemporary allusions to seduction and repulsion inherent in the original accounts, but suppressed through the ages by shame and sexual repression.
Although Gabriela Fridriksdottir (b. 1971) seldom indulges directly in the fantastic realm of particular folk tales all the dark romanticism of incantation and atonement accompanies her abhorrent Catharsis, a video from 2004. A humanoid, covered in wheat and dough is coarsely stitched after spasmodic attempts at expiating its black bile under an uncanny performance of ghastly musicians. Fridriksdottir, who will be representing Iceland at the Venice Biennial this summer, orchestrates this macabre rite as a mediaeval sorceress, or a high priestess of a rustic occultist sect. Derivatives of her curious ceremony are awkward statues of branches covered with bandage and plaster, which look like freakish mutilated animals.
With artists like Steingrimur Eyfj�rd and Gabriela Fridriksdottir folklore is suddenly brought back to pertinent actuality through original deduction of its psychological implications, showing that Icelandic folk tales, some of which are many centuries old, are still to be reckoned with as gauges of the nation?s emotional and psychological demeanor.
