Drifting: Feminist Oral History and the Study of the Last Female Drifters in Iceland

Abstract

This paper examines the story of the last female drifters in Iceland from the voices of women who remembered them. It examines the advantages of the woman-on-woman oral history interview when obtaining women’s perspectives on women’s history. An examination of women’s narrative techniques suggests that women’s narrative style is often consistent with a conversational style; and therefore it is important to construct a space in woman-on-woman oral history interviews that carries a sense of place for a conversation. It also examines the woman-on-woman oral history interview as a continuation of women’s oral tradition in Iceland, especially an oral tradition from medieval Iceland; called a narrative dance (ice. sagnadans). Lastly, it examines the shared features of the Icelandic #Metoo event stories and the Icelandic narrative dances, in relation to woman-on-woman oral history interviews.