ABSTRACT
One distinguishing feature of microhistory concerns the position of the individual in the research. The essential point here is the correlation between the external conditions that circumscribe the life of the individual in question and their inner life. The concept of Eigensinn can be particularly illuminating in the historical analysis of societies in which centralized authority was comparatively weak, as was the case in Iceland in the 19th century. Humans often react extraordinarily “irrationally” to the most obvious situations, behaving according to quite different precepts from those that underlie the logic of science. Despite this, the encompassing framework of society remains of profound importance, as emerges in some recent works of mine on egodocuments and memory in Iceland in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The Icelandic society of the 19th century appears to be somewhat anomalous as regards how people related to memory.
