Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon

University of Iceland

Egodocuments and the Methods of Microhistory – The Story of Bíbí in Berlín In this talk, I exhibit the central ideas and methodology of the Icelandic school of microhistory and its connection to the scribal culture in the country, as well as the importance of egodocuments for microhistorical analysis. The central element in the analysis is the sources themselves – their creation, their context within the events they describe, the opportunities they present for analysis, and the academic context in which they have become a subject of enquiry, for example, in the context of autobiographical material.

Part of the focus in my talk is going to be on a woman – Bíbí in Berlín – who describes herself in an autobiography that she got seriously ill when she was in her first year of life, and, after that, she was labelled ‘feebleminded’ by her family and the local community. When she was growing up in the first half of the 20th century, people with intellectual disabilities were seen as a menace to society and the cause of multitude of social problems. Isolation was her destiny the entire life. When she died, she left behind a full-sized autobiography, whereas most of her contemporaries did not even know that she could read or write.