2023 Icelandic Field Stations
Curriculum (Archived)

Our integrated studies approach aimed to enrich a transdisciplinary understanding of Icelandic culture-nature environments by engaging with conceptual, historical, and lived experiences of place. Through field studies and lectures by leading Icelandic and international scholars, place-based observations and site visits, exploring various visualization methods and literary research, examining historical records in relation to changes in landscape and climate, exchanging and building on environmental science and humanities knowledge, engaging with local communities, and discussing different multi-pillar perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of transformative issues at local, regional and global scales.

Foundational Topics

  • Ecology and natural sciences (geology, biodiversity, glaciology, hydrology)
  • Climate change (glacial recession, changing landscapes)
  • Systems thinking (interconnection, complexity)
  • Socio-cultural dynamics (politics, economics, ecotourism, energy resources, and industry, comprehension of core issues and stakeholders)
  • Landscape dynamics (language of landscape, land-use history and planning, architecture and climate)
  • Communication studies (understanding of environmental records, narratives, and digital visualization techniques)
  • Environmental Arts and Humanities research (interpretation of historical records and literature, learning through creative practices)

Annotated Reading List

This reading list contains materials with a focus on various aspects of the course. 

General Interest / Background

Gunnar Gunnarsson (1940). The Good Sheperd. Bobbs-Merrill Co. A gem of a novella that takes place in the Mývatn/Bárðardalur area. Recommended. Usually available cheap on amazon.com but there is a new edition with an Introduction by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, one of the best modern writers in Iceland. Not on amazon.com but here is a link to the Icelandic publisher: https://bjartur-verold.is/collections/2016/products/the-good-shepherd-adventa-a-ensku 

Gunnar Karlsson (2000). The History of Iceland. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (2010). Wasteland with Words: A Social History of Iceland. Reaktion Books, London. Interesting approach to Icelandic (cultural) history, relevant for the course: https://www.amazon.com/Wasteland-Words-Social-History-Iceland-ebook/dp/B008YUV2AK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524579898&sr=8-1&keywords=Magnusson+wasteland+with+words&dpID=51h5MzXlpjL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch 

Daisy Neijman ed. (2007). A History of Icelandic Literature. University of Nebraska Press. Useful overview for those who might want to orient themselves in the literary history of Iceland. 

Viðar Hreinsson (2012) Wakeful Nights. Stephan G. Stephansson: Icelandic-Canadian Poet. Benson Ranch Inc. Calgary, 2012. A biography of a poet who lived in Bárðardalur three years prior to his emigration to North America. The first c. 100 pages are informative about the literary culture as well as life and conditions in Iceland in the second half of the 19th century: https://www.amazon.com/Wakeful-Nights-Stephan-Stephansson-Icelandic-Canadian-ebook/dp/B00N9I9UL0/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1524580038&sr=8-1

Sverrir Jakobsson and Guðmundur Hálfdanarson (2016). Historical Dictionary of Iceland (3rd. ed). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham. Expensive but useful.

Nature, climate and ecology (Iceland and the Lake Mývatn area)

Arnþór Garðarsson 1979. Waterfowl populations of Lake Mývatn and recent changes in numbers and food habits. Oikos 32: 250-270. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3544231?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents 

Árni Einarsson 2004. “Lake Myvatn and the River Laxá: an introduction”. Aquatic Ecology 38: 111-114. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023%2FB%3AAECO.0000032091.58691.45.pdf 

Árni Einarsson, Gerdur Stefánsdóttir, Helgi Jóhannesson, Jón S. Ólafsson, Gísli Már Gíslason, Isamu Wakana, Gudni Gudbergsson and Arnthor Gardarsson 2004. The ecology of Lake Myvatn and the River Laxá: variation in space and time. Aquatic Ecology 38: 317-348. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023%2FB%3AAECO.0000032090.72702.a9.pdf 

Tobias Salathé 2013.Ramsar Advisory Mission No. 76 Mývatn-Laxá region, Iceland (2013) Ramsar Site N° 167: https://rsis.ramsar.org/RISapp/files/RAM/RAM_076_IS_en.pdf 

Ives, A.R., Árni Einarsson, V.A.A. Jansen & A. Garðarsson 2008. “High-amplitude fluctuations and alternative dynamical states of midges in Lake Myvatn”. Nature 452: 84-87 

Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Jónsson, Trausti. 2001. ‘“Little Ice Age” research: A perspective from Iceland’. Climatic Change 48, 9-52 .

 

Environmental history and relations between humans and nature.

Axel Kristinsson and Árni Daníel Júlíusson. „Adapting to Population Growth: The Evolutionary Alternative to Malthus“. Cliodynamics 7(1) 2016. https://doi.org/10.21237/C7clio7130171

Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Astrid Ogilvie, Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Megan Hicks, Viðar Hreinsson: “Two famines in 17th and 18th century Iceland: An introduction.” Paper presented at the COMPOT Workshop, Turku, Finland, January 2017 .

Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Anna Guðrún Þórhallsdóttir, Helga Ögmundardóttir. “The Sheep, the Soil and the Market.” Northscapes. Ed. Dolly Jørgensen and Sverker Sörlin. Vancouver 2013. https://www.academia.edu/16415276/The_Sheep_the_Market_and_the_Soil._Environmental_destruction_in_the_Icelandic_highlands_1880-1910  

Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Megan Hicks, Astrid Ogilvie, Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Viðar Hreinsson (2017): “Successions: The case of Mývatnssveit in Iceland 1801-1930.” Paper presented at the Succession Workshop, Rural History Conference, Leuven Belgium, 12. September 2017 .

Dugmore, Andrew J., Ian A. Simpson, Amanda Thomson, Orri Vésteinsson 2001: “Crossing the thresholds: human ecology and historical patterns of landscape degradation”. Catena, vol. 42, p. 175-192. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0341816200001375 

Hartman, S., Ogilvie, A.E.J., Ingimundarson, J.H., Dugmore, A.J., Hambrecht, George, McGovern, T.H. 2017. “Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities”, Global and Planetary Change 156, 123-139 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007

Hicks, Megan. 2014. “Losing Sleep Counting Sheep: early modern dynamics of hazardous husbandry in Mývatn, Iceland” in Human Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic: a Collaborative Model of Humans and Nature through Space and Time. Harrison and Maher (Eds). Lexington Publishers, Lanham Maryland. 

Hicks, Megan, Viðar Hreinsson, Árni Daniel Júlíusson, Astrid Ogilvie, and Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir. 2017. Grassroots Modernization: Pastoral Economies, Climate, and Political Change in Iceland’s Eighteenth through Twentieth Centuries. Presented for the 82nd Annual Society for American Archaeology Meeting, Vancouver, BC. Symposium: Historical Archaeology for Applied Archaeology: Climate Change, Resource Management, and Governance. .

McGovern, Thomas H., Orri Vésteinsson , Adolf Fridriksson, Mike Church , Ian Lawson, Ian A. Simpson, Arni Einarsson , Andy Dugmore , Gordon Cook , Sophia Perdikaris , Kevin Edwards , Amanda M. Thomson, W. Paul Adderley ,Anthony Newton , Gavin Lucas , Oscar Aldred: “Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact & Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale, invited paper in special issue on the archaeology of global change”, American Anthropologist, 2007,109(1):27-51. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1525/aa.2007.109.1.27 

Ogilvie, A.E.J. and Pálsson, Gísli. 2003. “Mood, magic and metaphor: Allusions to weather and climate in the Sagas of Icelander”s. (In) Weather, Climate, Culture. (Ed. by S. Strauss and B. S. Orlove). Berg Publishers, 251-274 . 

Ogilvie, A.E.J., Woollett, J.M., Smiarowski, K., Arneborg, J., Troelstra, S., Pálsdóttir, A. and McGovern, T.H. 2009. “Seals and sea ice in medieval Greenland”, Journal of the North Atlantic 2, 60-80 . 

Ogilvie, A.E.J. 2010. Historical climatology, Climatic Change, and implications for climate science in the 21st century, Climatic Change 100, 33-47 . https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10584-010-9854-1.pdf 

Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Ogilvie, A.E.J., Júlíusson, Árni Daníel, Hreinsson, Viðar, Hicks, Megan T. 2016. “Water and Sustainability in the Lake Mývatn Region of Iceland: Historical Perspectives and Current Concerns”. In (Shroder, J.F. and Greenwood, G.B., eds), Mountain Ice and Water: Investigations of the Hydrological Cycle in Alpine Environments, 155-192. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444637871000044 

Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Anthony Newton, Megan T. Hicks, A.J. Dugmore, Viðar Hreinsson, A.E.J. Ogilvie, Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Árni Einarsson, Steven Hartman, I.A. Simpson, Orri Vésteinsson, T.H. McGovern (Dec 2017, in Review) “Trolls, Water, Time, and Community: Resource Management in the Mývatn District of Northeast Iceland”, in: Ludomir Lozny & T.H. McGovern (ed.s). Managing the Commons: an Interdisciplinary Perspective, Springer Volumes in Historical Ecology, Springer Press, NY (DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL! pdf).

Simpson, I.A., Guðmundsson, G., Thomson, A.M. & Cluett, J. 2004. Assessing the role of winter grazing in historic land degradation, Mývatnssveit, northeast Iceland. Geoarchaeology 19: 471-502. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gea.20006 

Cultural history and manuscript culture

Davíð Ólafsson (2008). “Wordmongers: Post-medieval scribal culture and the case of Sighvatur Grímsson.” PhD diss., St. Andrews University 2008. Online: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/770 

Davíð Ólafsson (2012). “Vernacular Literacy Practices in Nineteenth-Century Icelandic Scribal Culture” Att läsa och att skriva Två vågor av vardagligt skriftbruk i Norden 1800–2000, ed. by Ann-Catrine Edlund, Umeå Universitet og Kung. Skytteanske Samfundet, Umeå, pp. 65-85. Pdf online:  https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:534711/FULLTEXT01.pdf 

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð Ólafsson (2017) Minor Knowledge and Microhistory. Routledge, New York and London. Recommended, to a large extent about the manuscript culture. The book is very expensive, but the Introduction is available online: https://www.academia.edu/29279545/Minor_Knowledge_and_Microhistory._Manuscript_Culture_in_the_Nineteenth_Century_2016

Viðar Hreinsson (2002) “The Poet in the Pigpen: Stephan G. Stephansson” Rustica Nova. The New Countryside and Transformations in Operating Environment, eds. Kalle Pihlainen og Erik Tirkkonen. Turku 2002: 179-194. (First 2-3 pages about manuscript culture .

Viðar Hreinsson (2008). “The Resurrection and Crucifixion of the Sheep” © The Provincialists. Ed. Eivind Reierstad. Torshavn (Faraoe Islands): 74-82 .

Viðar Hreinsson (2014). „Cultural Amnesia – and Sustainable Development.“ Култура/Culture 7.  http://cultcenter.net/journals/index.php/culture/article/view/26

Viðar Hreinsson (2018) „Viscious Cycle of Violence: The Afterlife of Hervör“. The legendary legacy: Transmission and reception of the Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, eds. Matthew Driscoll, Silvia Hufnagel, Philip Lavender and Beeke Stegmann, Viking Collection 24 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark) . 

Viðar Hreinsson (2023) “Rough Seas in Tattered Manuscripts” in Paper Stories: Paper and Book History in Post-Medieval Europe. Ed: Silvia Hufnagel, Þórunn Sigurðardóttir and Davíð Ólafsson. De Gruyter: 359-390. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111162768-017/html  (Attempt to link cutting edge environmental humanities with manuscript culture)