ABSTRACT
Disability understanding is ever changing through history. Stories, narratives, and histories, are important supportive threads in the tapestry that is disability understanding through time. Locating and evaluating historical understandings of disability is a task of unravelling varied strands of material where such understanding can be found. This chapter tells the story of Sigríður Benediksdóttir (1815–1900) drawn from folkloric legends, micro historical analysis of official documents and the usages of the only photograph that exists of Sigríður. The research exposes disabling elements formed and stored in narratives that affected her life and are still affecting the idea of her character and the understanding of disability. The approach developed here by combining disability studies, microhistory and folkloristics in a research design based on advocacy worldview, shows an intertwined and complex social play between the lived experience of difference and the living tradition of tales of difference. In the end a new thread is weaved into the tapestry and disability understanding of Sigríður story by retelling the narrative from place of empowerment and disability art.
