Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (born August 29, 1957) is an Icelandic historian specialising in microhistory. He has been an independent scholar for most of his career. He established the Center for Microhistorical Research (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/) at the Reykjavík Academy (http://www.akademia.is/index.php/en) in 2003. He currently holds a research position at the National Museum of Iceland (http://www.natmus.is/english) named after Dr. Kristján Eldjárn, the former president of Iceland and an archaeologist. The following text is based on his book The History War: Essays and Narrative on Ideology (Reykjavik, The Center for Microhistorical Research, 2007) (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/sogustrid.html), which is autobiographical in nature and deals with historiographical issues such as the development of ideas which are part of the microhistorical agenda. Magnússon is the author of 16 books (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/publications.html) and has been involved in the publication of nine more through a book series which he has co-edited. His latest book, titled Wasteland with Words. A social history of Iceland (http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/book.html?id=412) was published in 2010 by Reaktion Books (http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/) in England.

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon was born in the West End of Reykjavík. He completed his B.A. in history and philosophy in 1984 from University of Iceland (http://www.hi.is/en/introduction). His thesis was published year later in a book called, The Mode of Living in Iceland, 1930–1940, by the Institute of History at the University of Iceland (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/lifshaettir.html). That same year he started his doctoral studies in Pittsburgh, USA, at Carnegie Mellon University in history where he received a M.A. degree in 1988 and a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in 1993. His dissertation dealt with popular culture and is titled The Continuity of Everyday Life: Popular Culture in Iceland 1850-1940 (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/dissertation.html).

Magnússon has taught part-time at the University of Iceland (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/namskeid.html) and in other academic settings in Iceland from 1994 when he returned from the USA. He taught at his former university, Carnegie Mellon, in the spring of 2002 when he was a Fulbright Scholar for six months. In 1998 he became in the first chair of an independent research institute called The Reykjavik Academy (http://www.akademia.is/), which was founded by independent scholars who received their education in Iceland, Scandinavia, Europe and USA. The colorful saga of the Reykjavík Academy attracted considerable outside attention, from its humble beginnings as a forum for ten independent scholars to its eventually housing 80 researchers from all areas of the humanities and social sciences.

In 2003, Magnússon founded and chaired the Center for Microhistorical Research (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/), which, among other things, runs the international web-page microhistory.org (http://www.microhistory.org/) and publishes books on microhistorical issues. He is the editor of the web-journal The Journal of Microhistory (http://www.microhistory.org/journal2006.php) with his co-worker and a long-time friend Dr. Davið Ólafsson (http://www.akademia.is/index.php/en/the-society/society-members/47-d/113-davie-olafsson-). Magnússon is the founder and one of three editors of the book series Anthology of Icelandic Popular Culture (http://www.akademia.is/index.php/is/utgafa/synisbaekur-islenskrar-altyeu) which has already published 14 books in cooperation with the University of Iceland Press (http://www.haskolautgafan.hi.is/page/hu_utgafan). The other editors are Dr. Már Jónsson (http://notendur.hi.is/marj/), professor at the University of Iceland, and Dr. Davíð Ólafsson, a researcher and independent scholar at the Reykjavik Academy.

It could be argued that the primary objective of many of Magnússon’s work has been to present a view of the ways in which history, and in particular social history, has developed in the last 15–20 years, at a time of major reassessment within the academic world manifested in the radical ideas grouped under the banner of postmodernism and/or poststructuralism. The History War is based on his former research, which he has published in recent years on first hand sources, microhistory and everyday life. That includes the following books: Dreams of Things Past: Life Writing in Iceland (2004) (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/dreams.html); Metastories: Memory, Recollection, and History (2005) (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/metastories.html); Academic Liturgy. Humanities and the Society of Scholars (2007) (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/liturgy.html), and finally a book, which he co-edited, called From Re-evaluation to Disintegration. Two Final Theses, One Introduction, Three Interviews, Seven Articles, Five Photographs, One Afterword and A Few Obituaries from the Field of Humanities (2006) (http://www.akademia.is/sigm/disintegration.html).

After mostly dealing with the methods of microhistory for over ten years Magnússon turned back to his empirical research in 2007 with the focus on material culture and everyday life. Just recently, his book Wasteland with Words. A Social History of Iceland (2010) (http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/book.html?id=412), was published by Reaktion books (http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/) in England (see criticism in The Economist: http://www.economist.com/culture/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16213940&fsrc=rss). The book is written as an attempt to explain how the culture of Iceland was formed through a long process of literary practice from the beginning of the settlement in the ninth century up to modern times. It is also an analysis of an island culture, which successfully stepped into the twentieth century without losing its cultural identity. That success story ends with the meltdown of the banking, economic, and the political system in 2008. The focus of the book is on the people of Iceland, how they managed to survive in a relatively hostile environment thorough the centuries and become, for a while, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The resent sequence of events in 2008 are explained in the light of the historical development in Iceland. This is an experiment in social- and/or microhistorical studies, in which he strives to deal with a long period of time using the methods of microhistory.

• “Barefoot Historians: Education in Iceland in the Modern Period.“ Co-author Davíð Ólafsson. Writing Peasants. Studies on Peasant Literacy in Early Modern Northern Europe. Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt and Bjørn Poulsen (eds.). Landbohistorisk Selskab (Århus 2002), pp. 175–209. http://www.landhist.dk/bogsalg/bog.asp?bogid=153
• Iceland: a 20th-Century Case of Selective Modernization. Europe Since 1914 – Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. Scribner Library of Modern Europe. Editors in Chief Jay Winter and John Merriman (New York, 2006).
• Iceland: Through the Slow Process of Social and Cultural Change. Encyclopedia of the Modern World. Editor in Chief Peter N. Stearns (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
• “The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of Knowledge.“ Journal of Social History, 36 (Spring 2003), pp. 701–735. http://chnm.gmu.edu/jsh/abstracts.php?volume=36&issue=3
• Social History as "Sites of Memory?" The Institutionalization of History: Microhistory and the Grand Narrative. Journal of Social History Special issue 39:3 (Spring 2006), pp. 891–913.
• “Social History – Cultural History – Alltagsgeschichte – Microhistory: In-between Methodologies and Conceptual Frameworks.” Journal of Microhistory (2006): microhistory.org (06.11.2006). http://www.microhistory.org/pivot/entry.php?id=20
• Wasteland with Words. A Social History of Iceland Reaktion Books (London, 2010), ISBN 978-1-86189-661-2
• “What is Microhistory?” The History New Network (www.hnn.us) May 8, 2006. http://hnn.us/articles/23720.html