The collection and study of customs and traditions, often referred to as “folkways”, developed somewhat later in Iceland than elsewhere in Europe, and was also slightly belated in comparison with the other Nordic countries. Prior to 1900, interest in the recording of folk traditions in Iceland had been largely limited to the three-volume Íslenzkar gátur, skemtanir, vikivakar og þulur (“Icelandic riddles, games, dance songs and rigmaroles”, 1887-1903), edited by Ólafur Davíðsson (1862–1903) and based largely on material collected by Jón Árnason (1819–1888), which, while concentrating on texts, also provided some information on games, dances and sports. As with oral narratives and poetry, there nonetheless remained a sense abroad that Iceland maintained an environment in which older strata of Nordic traditions might be found. This encouraged Max Bertel to write to Jónas Jónasson frá Hrafnagili (1856–1918), an Icelandic cleric working in a northern parish, asking him questions about Icelandic traditions concerning life and death (published in 1900 in Bertel’s article “Isländischer Brauch u. Volksglaube in Bezug auf die Nachkommenschaft”, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie).

It was perhaps this article that brought Jónas to the attention of Henning Feilberg and alerted that authoritative Danish scholar to the importance of collecting Icelandic material for the Dansk Folkemindesamling. Jónas was then given guidance by Axel Olrik as to how the material should be recorded. Jónas Jónasson died before managing to publish his wide-ranging collection, which encompassed all aspects of Icelandic folk life, from daily life to daily work, festivals, entertainments, animal husbandry, medicine and more. He nonetheless published one article dealing directly with traditions concerning life and death (1911), as well as various other short works on folk belief concerning life after death, the oral tradition and how folklore should be collected. Jónas Jónasson’s key work Íslenzkir þjóðhættir (“Icelandic Folk Traditions”), based on his detailed drafts and notes, was eventually edited and published by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson in 1935 (revised in 1961), and remains a central text.

In more recent years, Jónas Jónasson’s pioneering work has been followed up by the Icelandic ethnologist Árni Björnsson (1932-), who has published on Icelandic annual festivals and life festivals. Costume and disguise traditions in Iceland, past and present (along with those in the other Nordic countries), have been examined in detail as part of Masks and mumming in the Nordic area, (ed. Terry Gunnell, 2007).