50/50

This has not much to do with Iceland, actually. But the news here lately has had a lot to do with the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and as a follow up to my last post, it was interesting to learn on the news this morning that a judge has granted a class action lawsuit for the families and victims affected by the tragedy. But the lawsuit cannot be against the Federal Government, or FEMA, or the State Government in regard to lacks response to the tragedy - the judge felt there was not enough evidence of neglect, and I would say it is rather more likely that those agencies, once they saw what was going on in New Orleans, did the very best they could in the face of a terrible situation, and they deserve to be thanked. What the judge found however is that there might be enough to warrant legally persecuting the Army Corp of Engineers, for not building the levies around New Orleans well enough, and offering basically no protection, especially for the people in the 9th Ward, who we...

In the United States, people get sued a lot, or more precisely, companies get sued a lot. I was the plaintiff in three car accident cases (ie, it was the other person fault and they therefore owed me money) before I was 21. Then there are the class action lawsuits, where a lawfirm sees something that a company has done wrong, but they can't sue the company themselves, they have to get other people to sign up as plaintiff; I have been involved in two of those and was recently invited to be in a third. So anyhow it is not surprising that as part of my training in my job, we have had several conversations about how to avoid getting personally sued or opening the University up to liability, which of course means they might get sued and be found guilty. And then this afternoon, I had online sexual misconduct training, which was really weird. I expected it to be about policying boundaries, both in ourselves and in others, which not something I am particular interested in nor very good ...

UC Berkeley has now started offering modern Icelandic instruction, which is of course good news. When I was an undergraduate there and a graduate student, they only offered Old Norse as a one year graduate level course intended to prepare students to read the sagas in the original language (or the normalized Fornrit editions actually). So it is a big change to offer modern Icelandic now to undergraduates. For me personally, I am feeling very out of the loop, since I had understood that Jackson Crawford was just a one semester fill in for a faculty member who was on leave. From the way the media is treating it--Jackson always seems to get tons of publicity--it is like he is permanent. So well maybe I missed another boat, another chance to get home to my son in California because I didn't even apply for that half-time position when I saw it announced.  But I've been going through new faculty training up here at Pacific Lutheran University, and am grateful for the remarkable com...

When I was an undergraduate student, way back in the early 1990s, the woman teaching me Norwegian was named Olwen Shaw, a decent teacher and the first person I ever knew named Olwen. But what always made her stand out in my memory is that she drove a really old Saab, like a 1970s vintage Saab. And the reason, she explained, was she was getting her PhD in Scandinavian, and so she wanted a Scandinavian car. I'm not sure if I had ever, before then, really thought about cars in that personal sense of identity, they had always rather been markers of status and wealth. Anyhow, when it came time for me, after my first divorce, to buy my own car, I knew it had to be a Saab. I wanted something that would really solidify my identity as a Scandinavianist, and moreover Saabs are weird cars that plenty of people dislike, which made me glad, since hey, I was being a rebel anyhow. So I bought my 1993 Saab 9000 CS in October of 2001. I hung on to that car even when I lived in Iceland, letting pe...

I went up to the Nordic Heritage Museum today, they were having their annual Viking Days festival. It reminded me certainly of what they do at the Viking Village in Hafnafjörður, but with a rather noticeable exception. In the U.S., next to the Viking re-enactors, there are vendors selling all sorts of other Scandinavian wares, like rosemaled plates, Icelandic pannakökkur, Swedish table lines, etc. America is a land of paradoxes. "Viking" anything always puts me in a very strange mood, I really don't quite know how to think about the whole thing. Ever since I worked at the Smithsonian, on a big millennium Viking project, I've considered myself a bit of an expert on the subject. And when I moved to Iceland, there were people who knew that about me, and respected that, at least in Reykjanesbær. Once I would get into Reykjavík, all of that would fade, and I would find myself wanting my status to be known, but not wanting to do the social-cannoodling necessary to get it ...

America is a strange country, and its age is certainly starting to show. The quick boom of post-world II led to a lot of square brick buildings getting built very quickly, followed by the 60s automobile craze where strip malls popped up everywhere. 50 years later, we are still suffering from that urban/sub-urban "planning" disaster. This was all too apparent to me when the plane landed in Oakland the other day, and today when I took a bike ride here in Kent. Trash floating around, boring buildings, bloated streets, there is nothing much appealing anymore about the good old USA. Still, its my country, and I'd like to see it get a decent president at the next election. When I was in Norway, I had a conversation with my hostess about Donald Trump and her amazement was palpable that a man like that could even be remotely involved in politics, or in running for the office of President. At the time, I was totally in agreement. And then I get back to the US, and see hours of c...

There are sometimes those rare moments when you suddenly see yourself from someone else's perspective. Or well it is rare for me, I don't make a lot of effort to understand how other people see me or categorize me. But I can think of a few times, when I've been flocked in with a group of people or compared to a woman I would never myself identify with. That's when I realize I've done a bad job representing myself, or being true to myself. Like catching a glimpse of myself on the dancefloor and realizing wow, I really need to work on my moves. Something like this happened to me when I was in Iceland last November. My American family was with me, and they were being cool, listening to my advice and generally trusting me to set the schedule of what we should do while we were in Iceland and in Reykjavik. Reykjavik of course never feels as much like home to me as Reykjanesbær, especially 101, so staying in "Welcome Apartments" was not my cup of tea. And then ...

I flew on Norwegian Airlines instead of Icelandair for the trip I just took, which was, in my mind anyhow, a great symbolic gesture, a sort of declaration of independence, that I am a Scandinavianist and not an Old Norse or Icelandic scholar. Since I now work as the Director of the Scandinavian Cultural Center at Pacific Lutheran University, such a reorientation of my professional identity seems in order. And indeed as I was driving in the Norwegian countryside and walking around Oslo, I was glad I knew the touchstones of Norwegian history and identity, like Eidsvold and Ibsen and Dofrafjell. However, during the conference, it became very clear to me that although I appreciate knowing more about all the Scandinavian countries, when it comes to my scholarship, my focus is entirely on Icelandic history and identity--what it has meant to people through the centuries to be Icelandic. Perhaps this is because I have always been trying to understand what it means to me personally to be Icelan...

After three long, eventful weeks, this morning is my last day in Europe for the foreseeable future. I have actually no other trips on my radar, having spent all of my work travel budget for the year on this trip and having completely maxed out my personal credit card on the trip to Hawaii with my son last month. So I won't be traveling anywhere for a while, unless someone wants to pay me to come. I've had a good trip, it is nice to know that I still feel so at home in Scandinavia. Just little things, like plugging into the wall the familiar shape of the European plug I've kept stored in my top desk drawer, or having a European breakfast complete with cold cuts and salad, has been very nice. It is good to know I can slip right back into this world whenever the opportunity arises. But it is also weird to realize how much I have changed in the last year or so, that I really have gone through a fairly significant spell of depression. I made a joke to someone that I have a b...

I wrote an article a few years back called "Hverdagslegur: The Rhetorical Challenge of the Everyday Object", which was a review of the (then) newly renovated and expanded National Museum of Iceland. So obviously I am interested in National Museums, especially one's being renovated. And one happens to be right next to my hotel here in Zurich. So yesterday, when it was raining and the conference was over, I headed over to that museum. I'd taken pictures of the outside of it a few days earlier, because it cracked me up that the outside of the building was an unorganized construction zone, full of fences and gravel, yet there were big signs declaring optimistically "We are Open!" with arrows pointing the way through the mess. The other thing that cracked me up was that the symbol of their currently featured exhibition is a gigantic cowbell. Having seen the exhibition yesterday, I now understand that the artists featured in the exhibition was largely responsi...

Ever since I worked at the Smithsonian, and met scientist who work on the arctic/alpine environment, I have been perplexed and a bit skeptical about the whole idea. How could it be that if one just climbed the nearest mountain anywhere in the world high enough to get past the "tree line", one would find oneself coming to the arctic? Well, this week I got to test this theory out for myself, by taking a hike up into the alps. I certainly wasn't very convinced as we started the walk, especially because there are a lot more bugs in the alps, huge ants, chirping crickets, you name it. But as I climbed up next to a waterfall to get some freshwater, an Icelandic colleague pointed out the blueberries growing in the heath. I'd just been in Norway, and tasted the blueberries there, which didn't taste anything like the ones in Iceland, so I wasn't expecting much. But I can report that blueberries in the alps do taste just like Icelandic blueberries, and then I noticed ...

I'm working, in my head at least, on a talk about the Saga of the Faeroe Islands, specifically on the character of Thrand Göteskegg. He's such a contrast to Sigmund, the hero of the saga. Unlike many other sagas, this one is structured along the lines of a hero and anti-hero, and one of the distinguishing features in this saga between the hero and anti-hero is the degree to which fate controls their lives. Thrand is in good social standing throughout his life, and uses his own authority and power to maintain his prestige and power. Sigmund's life is much more dramatic, going from the lows of being a homeless beggar to being the king's favorite, to being murdered on the beach, all of his life being governed by luck and fate. The funny thing about the saga though, at least in the context of Flateyarbók, is that there seems to be more narrative attention on Thrand. The saga begins and ends with him, so my students have often argued he is the main character, even though he ...

There are a lot of Scandinavian Americans in Washington State, or Nordic Americans if one wants to be sure to be inclusive of Icelanders and Finns also. This is of course why I have my job at the Scandinavian Cultural Center at Pacific Lutheran University. Another Washington based Scandinavian museum is the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, which is  looking to expand into a whole big new designer facility in a downtown tourist district. They've been working on it since 2005 at least, and now things are finally getting critical, with the lease on their current building about to expire in 2018. I've been doing some light consulting with them since 2006, and just a few days ago gave them names of some scholars I thought they should contact to flesh out the medieval history and Nordic identity sections of the exhibition. I hope my suggestion proves helpful. Life is full of interesting challenges, and I always seem to be happiest when I've got some project I'm working ...

So, I changed my profile description yesterday, to reflect the fact that I no longer live in Iceland. Haven't actually since 2011, but I guess it took me a while to officially accept that. In fact, it wasn't until November of 2014 that it really sunk in. That is when I went to Iceland with my brother, sister, and niece. It was my niece's 18th birthday, my sister's 50th birthday, my brother's 45th birthday. It was not any special year birthday for me (although I considered it significant, as the answer to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe) but I was along as a guide. Going as a guide to Iceland was appropriate I thought, since my mom couldn't go, and since I do know a lot more about Iceland than my siblings. It was also kind of strange, because they had the unabashed enthusiasm of most tourists to Iceland, excited to see the Leifur Eiriksson statue, blown away by the great nightlife (even in November), eager to take pictures of all the waterfalls. ...

I just took one of those facebook personality quizzes, and I guess because I neither agreed nor disagreed with most of the statements, I was diagnosed as having Openness as my strongest character trait. I guess that's true enough, especially the part about holding unconventional beliefs. I've stopped telling anyone my views on abortion or guns or homosexuality, because my own weird position frustrates and confuses people on either side of those ingrained, polarizing issues. I also just finished reading Sidasti Galdrameistarinn. I like reading books in Icelandic, especially if the Icelandic is good and not too confusing. I remember trying to read Paradísarheimt by Laxness many years ago, and I couldn't even get through half of it. It doesnt help with language acquisition to read a book by an author who makes up words and favors convoluted metaphors. So I'm glad to read good juvenile literature. I can also read straight forward, plot driven novels in Icelandic with ease...

Today I was contacted, asked to answer some questions about dating in the Viking Age. It was an interesting opportunity to think that through. Although I've read books on the topic of love in the Viking Age, and taught a class on marriage, the specific liminal zone of dating is a bit different. The reporter was already keyed into the historic narrative that people used to date more for practical reasons, like the arranged marriage model, whereas the modern model is based more on dating for emotional reasons. I hope I complicated it a little bit by bringing up the idea of love at first site not as an emotional response, but as something fated, as something meant to be. There are so many sagas that deal with love matches, famously of course Laxdæla saga and all the skald sagas, all of which have thunderbolt love, like Kormak becoming obsessed after seeing Steingerdur's feet, that ends in terrible tragedy, like Gudrun having Kjartan killed. But I found myself talking a lot ab...

So, in the U.S. tonight, on the Travel Channel, was the "Expedition Unknown" episode about the sunstone, that piece of Icelandic feldspar that has refractive light properties which was supposedly used by the Vikings to navigate on a cloudy day. Like all shows on the travel channel, it is all about watching the host travel all over the world, eat weird foods, get in dangerous and unusual situations, but in this case, there is also a mixture of the "history's mysteries" format, where the host also tries to unravel some question about the past. It was OK. I'm on my own research expedition at the moment, trying to understand if all the Scandinavian countries do bollurdagur on the same day or not. I wish I could travel to all of them on Tuesday, and find out, but alas, my work will not allow it. Plus I have to give a talk about it tomorrow, so it would be too late anyhow. The bakery at Pacific Lutheran University is baking buns and filling them with whipped c...

I bought some books around Christmas time because I had decided to adopt the rather Icelandic Christmas tradition of giving books as presents to most everyone. I gave my niece a book written by a newly graduated student from the university I work at now (pretty impressive to be a published author in the US at 23) and my nephew a book about dangerous games boys can play. I gave my sister in law a book translated from Icelandic into English, one of those creepy Yrsa books, the sort of book I would never read but my sister in law enjoys. I bought two other books, both of which were written in Icelandic, Afdalabarn and Sidasti galdra meistarinn.   Afdalabarn was an extraordinary book for its optimism, how much every single character in the book had so much heart and so much love. I told someone at work that it was like watching a Hallmark movie, because even the worst character turned out at the end to have a heart of gold. It was weird to read, in a way, lights years away from the ...

Yesterday, between finishing the set up of the Thor Heyerdahl exhibition and greeting the female students participating in our Lucia festival this year, I showed the Ingmar Bergmann film Virgin Spring, as part of my Viking film series. So it was a busy, long, and strange day. But the film has stuck with me (probably because I watched it 3 times this weekend) and I am still thinking about it. Ingmar Bergman felt it was far from his best film, and most critics seem to agree, but I do not wish to be so harsh. The rape scene is very oddly handled, vacillating between objectifying and sympathizing with the victim, but as the advocate we had on hand (to deal with any possibly trauma viewing such a film might inflict), the good thing is that the rape scene is in no way gratuitous. It is what the film is about, and how the people around it are affected by this act of violence, and that is in some ways very good. I chose to show the film however as a treatment of the Viking Age, or the early me...

My wonderfully talented Icelandic artist friend Sigrun Lara Shanko was kind enough to agree to show her rugs at the Scandinavian Cultural Center. She takes features of the Icelandic landscape and turns them into rugs...check out her website shankorugs.com. I think they are stunning. One of the rugs she's exhibiting is one I'm hoping to acquire, its based on the glacier Ok. That glacier is receding quickly, hardly counts as a glacier anymore, and will likely soon disappear. What better testament to global warming than to get a rug depicting a dying glacier? Her exhibit coincides with the Taste of Iceland festival, which includes food, literature, art and music. Tonight I'm missing the writers jam, and tomorrow is the free Reykjavik Calling concert. But at least I did get to the restaurant last night where they are serving a special Iceland menu... Just now I'm on my way to see my son, literally. I'm in the airplane writing this. I remember when I was a kid, get...