AT THE MERCY OF EMOTIONS: ARCHIVES, EGODOCUMENTS AND MICROHISTORY

In this chapter I do two things: first, I make an attempt to demonstrate how it is possible to utilise ‘local knowledge’ in order to gain a perspective on the past which would not be within the reach of conventional historical research within the confines of the grand narrative. I try to do this by taking one example originating from a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Icelandic farmer. Second, I explore how the concept of death could hang over people’s everyday life, and how that situation forced every individual to be at the mercy of their own emotions. At the same time, I introduce the methods of microhistory to the field of emotions history.