Introduction: What Are Our Favourite Things and Why?

Our most favourite things are not necessarily our most valuable or expensive objects but those that we keep nearest to us, and which create familiarity. They are not always rigorously selected and assembled but frequently concentrate into seemingly random gatherings. The Icelandic probate inventories from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries comprise lists with such things of closeness, not scrupulously collected but acquired over a life span creating an interesting mishmash of things that provides an exceptional glance into the human-thing intimacy. Each inventory is tied to a persona, providing an utmost intimate account of its material residues. This introductory chapter provides not only an overview of the book, its issues, and authors, but also delves into the notion of small and ordinary things, their relation to humans, and why they are important to scholarship.