Iceland Imagined
Nature, Culture, and Storytelling in the North Atlantic
Publication Year: 2011
Published by: University of Washington Press
Contents
Download PDF (109.1 KB)
pp. v-vi
Map 1. The North Atlantic
Map 2. Iceland
Map 3. Greenland
Map 4. The Faroe Islands
Foreword: Amid the Mists of Northern Waters and Words
Download PDF (66.2 KB)
pp. vii-xii
I should probably confess right at the outset that I myself am among the people described in Karen Oslund’s Iceland Imagined who have had a life-long fascination for this remote and eerily intriguing island in the North Atlantic. When my fifth-grade class back in the mid-1960s spent...
Acknowledgments
Download PDF (55.9 KB)
pp. xiii-xvi
In Christina Sunley’s novel The Tricking of Freya, the Icelandic “bad boy” Smundur—a stand-in for the trickster god Loki—explains to the heroine why the terrain at ingvellir is so rocky and hard for her to balance on: “Think of the earth as an egg with its shell cracked. We are standing on...
Introduction
Download PDF (203.6 KB)
pp. 3-29
On my first visit to Iceland, an Icelandic acquaintance took me for a driving tour around the Reykjanes peninsula. On this southwestern corner of the island, the capital of Reykjavk is surrounded by a cluster of outlying suburbs and neighboring communities...
1. Icelandic Landscapes
Download PDF (428.0 KB)
pp. 30-60
Icelandic nature, particularly in its extreme manifestations of volcanoes and glaciers and their potential to create natural disasters, has long fascinated travelers. The striking idea of a land shaped by fire and ice grips the memories of visitors, even as the tourist industry has rendered the image...
2. Nordic by Nature
Download PDF (150.1 KB)
pp. 61-81
On his outward voyage from Copenhagen to the Faroe Islands in 1828, the German bird enthusiast Carl Julian Graba noted his sighting of “the first Northern birds” (die ersten Vgel des Nordens) of the voyage off the coasts of the Shetland Islands. Although he had...
3. Mastering the World's Edges
Download PDF (353.8 KB)
pp. 82-103
Despite the work of the officials to improve material conditions in the North Atlantic, making a living there was never easy. One of the problems for the farmers, at whom the Icelandic and Danish officials aimed most of their efforts, was the absence of tools, especially...
4. Translating and Converting
Download PDF (123.5 KB)
pp. 104-122
The inside of the grocery store in the village of Kulusuk in East Greenland looks like any other Danish grocery store. The jam is a well-known Danish brand (Den Gamle Fabrik), the yogurt also comes from Denmark, and the socks and underwear, like those everywhere...
5. Reading Backward
Download PDF (203.8 KB)
pp. 123-151
Landing in the Faroe Islands is not very comfortable for people prone to airsickness. Of the eighteen islands that make up the Faroes, only one of them, the westernmost of the larger islands, Vgar, has enough flat ground to build runways. The airport at Vgar was built by the...
Epilogue: Whales and Men
Download PDF (203.8 KB)
pp. 152-170
It is difficult, for outsiders anyway, to think about Iceland without dealing in metaphors and symbols. Whenever Iceland surfaces in the international press, journalists are apt to explain whatever the issue at hand might be in terms of sagas, Vikings, volcanoes, glaciers, earthquakes...
Notes
Download PDF (325.9 KB)
pp. 171-219
Bibliography
Download PDF (193.5 KB)
pp. 220-251
Index
Download PDF (74.7 KB)
pp. 253-261
E-ISBN-13: 9780295802992
Print-ISBN-13: 9780295990835
Publication Year: 2011
