Monthly Archives: June 2011

After a few days of decompression, I am starting to clear out my notebooks from the ICASS VII trip.  First, the video of the flight over southern Greenland.  This footage was shot on Sunday, 19 June, on the flight from … Continue reading →

Eiríksstaðir is a remarkable archaeological site halfway up the Haukadalur, a wide fjord in northwest Iceland.  A detailed replica of what Eirík the Red’s long house is supposed to have looked like was constructed in 2000, and according to the … Continue reading →

Guðríðr Þorbjarnardóttir is thought to be one of the most widely traveled women of the medieval Viking period.  Refused permission by her father to marry the son of  a slave, she married a sailor who was soon lost at sea.  … Continue reading →

Walking to the conference site yesterday, I glanced across the Glerá River (the River of Glass) and noticed about a dozen seemingly unattended prams in a field of dandelions. It almost looked like an art installation, since even in Scandinavia, … Continue reading →

Just finished two days of sessions on our theme of “Claims on Sites and Knowledge in Cold Regions. Material and Immaterial Constructs of Nature, Nations and Industry.” The session was organized by Urban Wråkberg and Dag Avango, but unfortunately Dag … Continue reading →

ICASS VII began this morning with a keynote address by the great Icelandic anthropologist Gísli Pálsson. Among his many interesting points related to the historical anthropology of the construction of Icelandic identity, was perhaps the most interesting note that recent … Continue reading →

Arrived in the northern Icelandic port of Akureyri this afternoon, after a bus trip from Keflavik that passed through one spectacularly beautiful glacial river valley after another. Like Norway, Iceland is a country that, just when you think it can’t … Continue reading →

Spent the day yesterday walking around Reykjavik searching for the Einar Jónsson statue of the Icelandic explorer Thorfinn Karlsefni. It is one of two such statues in the world: the other is on boat house row along Kelly Drive in … Continue reading →

At Logan Airport in Boston, waiting for the 2:35 PM flight to Reykjavik. With the four hour time change, the flight will arrive around midnight tonight. En route I hope the flight follows the same path it took when I … Continue reading →

In the middle of preparing for presenting a paper on the ASAT project at the Seventh International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences, “Circumpolar Perspectives in Global Dialogue: Social Sciences beyond the International Polar Year,” which will be held in Akureyri, … Continue reading →