ABSTRACT
This study considers two kinds of texts from two very different places in the world and from two very different chronological periods. These are Australian Aboriginal clan songs from Arnhem Land, which continue to be performed in Northern Australia today and a group of poems with mythological and heroic subject matter which were recorded by medieval Icelandic people in the thirteenth century but are generally considered to have had a long oral history before they were written down. The oral text is larger and more complex than anything any individual or team of researchers can record and reproduce, whether they use the resources of pen, parchment or paper or whether they employ a battery of the audio-visual equipment that is available now, including film, video, tape and computer. In literate societies, by contrast, the dynamics of the relationship between creativity and ownership are reversed: demonstrable authorship is a necessary condition of ownership according to most literate conventions.
