On “Post-ness”: Colonialism, Periodization, and Old Norse-Icelandic Studies

This article addresses an omission in histories of premodern colonialism: the period after Iceland became a dependency of the Kingdom of Norway in 1262/1264. My discussion is structured around two debates in terminology: the use of “colony” in studies of medieval Iceland and the meaning of “post-“in postcolonialism. By reviewing this historiography, this article develops a theory of “post-ness,” which is used to describe an alternative, transtemporal, nonteleological form of periodization, as well as an affect that suffuses how the end of self-rule was re-written and re-imagined across medieval and modern Iceland. Approaching Iceland in terms of “post-ness” affords new insight into the ways in which identities and histories were negotiated before and after 1262/1264, while also suggesting that this underexamined context provides new possibilities for historical and comparative studies of colonialism and anticolonialism.