Iceland and Images of the North

Nature, Nostalgia, and Narrative: Material Identity in Icelandic Design

Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir, “Nature, Nostalgia, and Narrative: Material Identity in Icelandic Design,” in Iceland and Images of the North, ed. Sumarliði R. Ísleifsson with the collaboration of Daniel Chartier, Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, “Droit au Pôle” series, and Reykjavík: ReykjavíkurAkademían, 2011. Nature, Nostalgia, and Narrative: Material Identity in Icelandic Design Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir Iceland Academy of the Arts Abstract – This paper studies design objects in two tourist outlets in Reykjavík from the perspective of material culture studies and anthropology. The two cases are put into context with public discourse on Icelandic design in general, with a particular emphasis on the genre of product design. It discusses the rather recent development of Icelandic design as a cultural commodity, while looking at it as a cultural agent of identity formation. The paper highlights the relationship between product design and souvenir objects and points to issues of the past that seem to prevail, both public discourse and the production of Icelandic contemporary design. Keywords – Material culture, design, souvenir, identity, Iceland Introduction The Design Centre emphasises the importance of design in the culture and image of Iceland and the Icelanders.1 This paper is about objects, along with the images, identities, and ideologies they cannot escape from. It is an anthropological approach to the circulation of cultural commodities, a field with quite a long history where objects are studied as agents of social relations, as generators of power relations, and as loci of negotiations of images and identities.2 Material culture studies have also dealt with manufactured objects as tangible forms of human relations in their widest form. Most recently, scholars within the fields of anthropology and ethnology have become more and more interested in how people attribute meaning to objects of everyday life, including issues 1 Iceland Design Centre 2008. 2 Appadurai 1986; Clifford 1988; Errington 1998; Myers 2001; Phillips & Steiner 1999; Price 1989. ICELAND AND IMAGES OF THE NORTH [ 352 ] of mass consumption, home decorations, gifts, art, souvenirs, and contemporary design.3 In this paper I will discuss contemporary design in Iceland as it appears in tourist settings as well as written publications with particular emphasis on product design. It is the result of fieldwork conducted in Reykjavík over a period of several months in 2008 and 2010, with a case study of two outlets.4 One is the museum shop at the National Museum, and the other is Kraum, a design shop in the heart of Reykjavík.5 The two shops differ from each other in many respects, for instance, in the range of goods as well as the types of products on offer. However, of primary interest is what they share, which could be described as narratives of Icelandic nature and culture. The first shop is situated inside the National Museum building, which inescapably suggests a national context for the objects it displays. In addition, it is housed in a building that has particular historical connotations. The second is situated in the heart of the city centre, presenting itself as a fashionable shop exclusively for contemporary design. It is (like the museum shop) housed in a historical building that serves as a monument to the history of industry in Iceland (it is also the oldest building in Reykjavík, dated 1762). In both cases there is a strong attraction for tourists, and both shops embody a strong sense of the past. In my discussion I will emphasize product design more than other subcategories of design. It is the most common type of design found in the two shops, though jewellery and fashion design are also quite common. I frame the particular branch of product design as souvenir objects, for the explicit reason that they are contextualized as such by 3 Miller 1987; Buchli 2002; Attfield 2000; Henare, Holbraad, & Wastell 2007. 4 During the fieldwork, a discourse analysis was made of printed newspaper material as well as television material in the period 2007–2010, in addition to an analysis of published text in Icelandic on Icelandic design. Questionnaires were sent out by email to seven professional Icelandic designers, many of which were followed up by more indepth interviews. Numerous other informal discussions were held with professional designers and other relevant stakeholders during the time of the fieldwork. 5 These particular shops are used as a case study in this article for the distinct presence of contemporary design objects framed in...