Gísli Sigurðsson II: 1 Orality 1 Introduction In a culture where stories, poetry or general knowledge cannot be stored in books on shelves (or online), people use other methods to accumulate their knowledge and keep it alive in a systematic fashion. Memory studies have drawn attention to various interactive techniques that have been applied in order to structure and remember what has to be remembered; names and a variety of stories and poetry are set up in lists with some inner coherence, such as family ties or regnal years, and/or attached to landscapes, buildings, traditions and rituals (Assmann 2011; Connerton 1989; Schama 1995). It is not essential that these memory tools are physically present in the real world because they can equally well be imagined buildings where what is to be remembered is associated with an imagined loca- tion. The underlying principle is that of interactivity; what you already know, i.e. see in front of you or can reconstruct in your mind, helps to call forth the items to be remembered (Yates 1966). This is a general principle that can be applied to words and music, associated with seasons of the year, certain traditional move- ments, rituals and customs. The general method can be used to build up a com- plicated and interactive network of stories and other essential knowledge within the relevant culture. A landscape is named and the name is explained with a story about an event that is associated with certain people that are connected with other people through family ties that lead you to still other stories about those individuals that are saved in a different landscape which also has a name and so on (Severi 2012). 2 Case study The principle of interactive memory outlined above is helpful in understanding the notion of building routes through landscape/space, time, and families in order to help people to orientate themselves in their environment. This environ- ment could be their social reality, or the physical landscape, which they travel, utilise for providing food and know where and how to avoid immediate dangers. Genealogies can in addition help to keep track of a sense of time and chronology in the past, for as long as people know stories and family trees that are mean- ingful in their immediate environment. In the public sphere, the ruling years of https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110431360-037 ht to you by | Landsbókasafn Íslands - Háskólabókasafn - The National and University Library of Iceland Authenticated | gislisi@hi.is author's copy Download Date | 12/11/18 3:52 PM