LÖGBERGHEIMSKRINGLAThe Icelandic Community Newspaper • 15 July 2014 • Number 14/ Númer 14 • 15. júlí 2014

Publication Mail Agreement No. 40012014 ISSN: 0047-4967

On a rappers’ album and in the New York City Museum of Fine Art / page 13

June 17 and Kvennahlaup

More photos, more stories / pages 8 to 11

Gimli Film Festival, Manitoba Icelandic Festival, Hecla Island and August the Deuce / pages 5 and 7

Upcoming celebrations

Björk

INSIDE

Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca

In Support of Lögberg-Heimskringla

TWO BIRDS / RÚNAR RÚNARSSONPHOTO COURTESY OF GIMLI FILM FESTIVAL

August 1, 2014 Links at the Lake Golf Course

Gimli, MBRegister online at

www.lh-inc.caor by phone 1-866-564-2374

The Board and staff of Nature Canada are honoured to have Senator Janis Johnson as the Honourary Chair of Nature Canada’s Women for Nature Initiative. Senator

Johnson has dedicated her career to serving Canadians in politics, business and arts and has served in many prominent positions in her community and her country. Her passion for social justice and equality for women led her to study political science, graduate to a career working in politics, and run her own business.

In the 1980s, Senator Johnson became the first woman to establish and chair the federal Progressive Conservative Women’s Caucus. Subsequently, she became the first female National Director of the PC Party of Canada in 1983. She was called to the Senate of Canada in 1990 and in addition to this eminent role, has also been an active volunteer on social advocacy campaigns. Johnson served on the boards of two universities, the YM/YWCA, Special Olympics Manitoba and Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and currently, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s National Advisory Council.

Senator Johnson raised a family, is an amma now and her greatest joy is taking her young grandsons on walks along Gimli Beach, where she has a home. Nature and the outdoors, especially Lake Winnipeg, have played a huge role in her life.

... continued on page 2

Over the last five years, and even before that, Iceland has been making international news in regard to its banking sector: first for how impressively it was growing, then

for how fantastically it collapsed, and now recently for how well it is recovering. This dizzying unfolding of events is the result of a peculiar set of economic decisions, public policies, and international politics. One scholar who is especially qualified to comment on all this is Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson, Professor at the University of Akureyri, School of Business and Science, who is a macro-economist with an emphasis on domestic public policy, and how that plays out in international arenas.

... continued on page 2

Senator, amma, and now Honourary Chair of Women for Nature Jodi Joy, Director of Development, Nature Canada Ottawa, ON

PHOTO COURTESY OF NATURE CANADA

Elisabeth I. Ward, Director of the Scandinavian Cultural Center, Pacific Lutheran University Tacoma, WA

Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson, macro-economist, spoke at universities across the USA

PHOTO: HILMAR ÞÓR HILMARSSON

THE RISE, FALL AND RISE OF ICELANDIC BANKING Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson

PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKIIMEDIA COMMONS

Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca

Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15. júlí 2014 • 3

Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca

2 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • July 15 2014

GIMLI

SELKIRK

Betel Home Foundation will continue to be a leader

and innovator in providing the highest quality of life for

each individual in our care. Betel Home Foundation

is an integral part of the community recognizing our

Icelandic roots and respecting others cultures.

Betel Home Foundation

G I M L I 96-1ST AVENUE • 204-642-5556 S E L K I R K 212 MANCHESTER AVENUE • 204-482-4651

Tax receipts available

for donations of either

money or stock.

Despite the financial difficulties facing Canadian universities in

recent years, the Scandinavian program at the University of Alberta continues to grow and thrive. This is due in no small part to the tremendous support we have received from the Scandinavian community in Edmonton and elsewhere in Alberta. The position I occupy was made possible by the many generous donations to the Scandinavian Professorship Endowment Fund established by the Scandinavian Studies Association-and in particular, the contribution made by its president, Mrs. Linnea Lodge. The association's continued

successful efforts to raise money for the fund demonstrates a commitment by individuals beyond the university to the academic discipline of Scandinavian Studies, and ensures its continued existence at the University of Alberta.

I recently joined the Department of Modem Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta as the inaugural Henry Cabot and Linnea Lodge Scandinavian Professor. I came to the University of Alberta from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I received my PhD in Scandinavian Studies in 2012. My area of research expertise is Old Norse literature and manuscript studies, and I

wrote my doctoral dissertation on the Old Norse-Icelandic legend of Martha and Mary Magdalen. I have published several articles related to this legend, and have also written on medieval and modern Icelandic literature more generally. I spent a year doing research at the Arnamagneean Collection at the University of Copenhagen in 2009-10, and also studied in Iceland for two summers. I am currently working on turning my dissertation into a book, and am collaborating with Professor Kirsten Wolf of the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a guide to the saints in Old Norse and early modern Icelandic poetry.

Since coming to Alberta, I have had the opportunity to teach several interesting courses, which have drawn students from a variety of backgrounds and academic disciplines. In the Fall 2012 term, I taught SCAND 341: Old Norse Mythology and Legends, and in Winter 2013, SCAND 342: Vikings and Sagas and SCAND 356: Women in Scandinavian Literature and Popular Culture. All of these courses had excellent enrollments, which speaks to the general appeal of our program's courses. I was on maternity leave for the 2013-14 academic year, but will resume teaching again the fall.

... continued on page 3

University of Alberta Scandinavian program

flourishingDr. Natalie M. Van Deusen, Chair, Canadian Initiative for Nordic Studies (CINS)

Natalie Van Deusen checks manuscripts in DenmarkPHOTO COURTESY OF DR. NATALIE M. VAN DEUSEN

The Icelandic National League of North America is pleased to announce that Kimberly K. Irwin has been awarded an Icelandic Government

Scholarship in Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland. She is a most worthy recipient, but the Icelandic Canadian community will miss her many contributions to organizations such as the Sólskríkjan choir, Icelandic Canadian Frón and the Lögberg-Heimskringla newspaper to name a few. We look forward to hearing of her adventures in Iceland.

Kimberly’s Saga (so far)There was a man called Hlöðver Águst Árnason,

son of the farmer Árni Sveinbjörnsson and Arndís Jónsdóttir of Oddstaðir in the Lundarreykjadalur Valley of Borgarfjörður. Hlöðver went to Canada and lived in Riverton, Manitoba. He married Anna Halldora Thorvaldson, daughter of Sveinn Thorvaldson, a man of good family and his first wife Margret Sólmundsdóttir of Riverton. They had six children: their eldest was Arni Gregg Arnason, an accomplished musician, teacher, pilot, and Captain. Arni married an Irish woman, Marjorie Gleason and eventually settled in British Columbia. They had three children: their daughter Carol Ann Arnason, a musician and teacher, married Dr. David Irwin and settled in Dawson Creek, BC. They have four children, one of which is Kimberly Kathleen and the story now turns to her.

Kimberly’s afi, Arni, was a proud Icelandic-Canadian, with a keen interest in the literature, language and culture of Iceland. He often told stories of his time in Riverton, and shared knowledge on family history and genealogy. When Kimberly was 14, he connected her with a cousin over the internet, and it was that friendship which really sparked her interest in learning about the country and language. Arni gave Kimberly books from Iceland, and she promised to one day learn Icelandic, and so Arni sent her on her way to Iceland.

Kimberly first made land in Iceland in 2005 through the Snorri Program, where she was well received by

the coordinator Ásta Sól, and later by her cousins, the descendants of Hlödver’s sisters. During her stay in Reykjavík, there were about 30 cousins who gathered to meet Kimberly. They had many questions about who her family was, how many of them there are, what they do and where they lived. However, Kimberly had only known her first cousins, and realized that she had a lot of research to do on her family. One cousin offered Kimberly sheep and potatoes to fatten her up, and insisted that she should learn Icelandic, he was even certain he could find a boy her age if she stayed. Kimberly laughed and kindly declined these gifts, but promised she would learn Icelandic and return.

In 2006, Kimberly began studying Icelandic through Háskóli Íslands Distance Learning program Icelandic Online Plus. In 2007, she returned to Iceland again to visit her cousins, but still had a long way to go before she could understand this man’s babble about food and boys. She wanted to be able to communicate beyond the basic level of comprehension, so later set off to Winnipeg, MB in 2009 with the intent to study Icelandic at the University of Manitoba. Kimberly has since then obtained a B.A. in Icelandic Language and Literature in 2013, and has recently been awarded the Icelandic Government Scholarship in Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland.

Since moving to Manitoba, Kimberly has been an active member in the Icelandic Community. She is a board member for the Snorri Alumni Association, and helps promote the program each year at Íslendingadagurinn. This year she gave a presentation for the Snorri Program at the INL of NA convention. She also assists Brad Hirst in organizing the Annual Snorri BBQ and other gatherings, and has worked with Julie Summers to put out the Snorri Alumni Association newsletter. In addition, Kimberly is a board member of the Icelandic Canadian Frón, a member of the Sólskríkjan Kór and has volunteered at the Scandinavian Pavilian at Folklorama.

In 2013, Kimberly became a volunteer at the Lögberg-Heimskringla, cataloguing and organizing their Icelandic Library Collection. She has participated in the annual festival parades of Mountain, ND, Hecla Island, and Gimli, MB on behalf of L-H. Kimberly has also become a member of the Social Media Team and is a co-editor for the new Lögberg-Heimskringla online magazine heimskringlog.com with Leif Norman.

Moving to Winnipeg allowed Kimberly to rediscover her Icelandic-Canadian roots, and develop a greater appreciation for the importance of strengthening the bonds between the descendants of Iceland and the Icelanders. She hopes to contribute to the Icelandic community by helping to promote opportunities for younger generations to appreciate their heritage. Upon completion of the Icelandic as a second language program, she would like to pursue a Masters in Icelandic studies, but for now, her saga will continue in Iceland in late August.

Kimberly Irwin awarded scholarship to study in Iceland

PHOTO: TERI HOFFORD PHOTOGRAPHY

Alicyn Goodman and Kimberly IrwinWinnipeg MB

Senator Janis Johnson... continued from page 1She has worked on issues affecting the health of the lake and it is the place where she feels closest to nature. Indeed, her love of nature was spawned there. She founded the Gimli Film Festival 13 years ago, which features a large screen planted in the lake allowing people to watch movies under the stars and observe the marvel of the Northern Lights.

She spoke at our recent Women for Nature celebration on Parliament Hill and expressed her delight at partnering with our organization to celebrate nature’s profound impact on Canadians. She is “attracted to the work that Nature Canada does to offer thousands of kids each year the opportunity to interact with their outdoor environment and to better understand it” and how it is so beneficial

for one’s mental health and well-being.Senator Johnson proudly partners

with Nature Canada and her fellow members of Women for Nature. She believes, as we do, in “women and the power we bring to doing this important work with our children and families across this country we love so much.”

If you or a woman you know is interested in taking a leadership role to save wildlife, protect your NatureHood and connect children to nature, please contact Jodi at 1-800-267-4088 ext. 239 or jjoy@naturecanada.ca. You can also visit womenfornature.ca to learn more about Women for Nature and get to know the amazing women involved. We look forward to inviting more women with a deep personal connection to nature to also become involved with the Women for Nature initiative.

I had the pleasure of meeting Hilmar while he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington, in Seattle, during Spring 2014. It was actually quite a relief to meet a real specialist in this field, someone who truly understood what had happened, since I have been asked from time to time to comment on the banking crisis in Iceland. As a specialist in the Icelandic sagas and the Viking Age, all I could ever comment on was the mis-use of the term Viking as it had been applied to Icelandic bankers during the boom of the early 2000s. Hilmar’s far more in-depth analysis looks at how a small nation operates in the international banking sector. Though it is not unusual for a small nation to have an oversized banking system in comparison to its GDP, Hilmar notes what is unusual is how unilaterally Iceland acted, in both building up that system, but more especially in how it has responded to the crisis since then.

During his visit to the United States, he was primarily occupied with writing several articles and making contacts with colleagues in North America. But he also devoted a great amount of time to speaking about his research on the economic and financial crisis in Iceland at universities across the United States. He presented at the University of California, Berkeley’s prestigious European Roundtable on the subject “Iceland in an Era of Shadow Banking: A Model for Crash and Recovery?”, a talk which was co-sponsored by the European Union Center of Excellence; Institute of European Studies; and Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. He also made invited presentations on crisis issues at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and at Cornell University’s Global Finance Initiative. Drawing on a long-term research project, Hilmar also presented at an Earth Energy IGERT Seminar at the Cornell Earth Energy Institute, where he discussed, with some of the leading scholars in geothermal energy, Iceland’s transition to clean energy and how it could assist emerging countries.

In addition to his research on Iceland, Hilmar has also recently been focusing on Latvia’s post- crisis economic recovery and comparing it with the post-crisis situation in Iceland. He worked for the World Bank in Latvia for four years and was a Visiting Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics during Fall 2013, so he knows the Latvian situation well. He made an academic presentation comparing these two small nations at the Yale Conference on Baltic and Scandinavian Studies, where I met him, and then convinced him to do a public presentation on this same topic at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, focusing on the financial crisis and also the human crisis.

His talk at the Nordic Heritage Museum was very well received. Hilmar emphasized there, more so than he had for the academics at Yale, the difference between Iceland and other small nations. While other countries, like Latvia and Ireland, work to integrate themselves into complex multi-national systems, and welcome help from such international organizations, especially the

EU, Iceland has focused on bilateral relationships and then even acted unilaterally during times of crisis. Hilmar stated during his talk at the Nordic Heritage Museum, “During the 2008 economic and financial crisis the government of Iceland contacted major central banks bilaterally to rescue its banking system but found itself isolated and without friends. Then a unilateral action was taken with an Emergency Act. Its three largest banks fell and its currency depreciated sharply. After the fall of the banking system Iceland had a dispute with the Netherlands and the UK over the so-called ICESAVE accounts, and again ended up acting unilaterally. Although the government of Iceland twice reached a settlement on ICESAVE, in both cases the President of Iceland refused to sign the legislation, and in the two national referendums that then took place, the nation rejected the deal. In retrospect Iceland was fortunate that its banking system fell and the nation rejected the ICESAVE deal. Rescuing the banks or accepting the ICESAVE deal could have brought Iceland’s national debt to an unsustainable level. But it was a risky strategy.”

Hilmar points to the history of the Cold War and the Cod War to show that this is a recurring strategy in Iceland’s brief 70-year history, and not an anomaly of the banking crisis. In the Cod War, Iceland unilaterally expanded its fisheries zone and took on the British navy to defend that move. Likewise, in the 2008 financial crisis Iceland unilaterally enacted an Emergency Act to protect domestic funds, which resulted in the UK listing the Icelandic government on its terrorist state watch list.

During his time in the U.S., Hilmar has also guest-taught in a number of classes, including at American University, School of Public Affairs in Washington DC; Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business Administration; the Scandinavian Area Studies Program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma; and at the University of Washington. The students at Pacific Lutheran University, where I teach, were fascinated to hear about the ins-and-outs of the behind-the-scene politics that went into building up the banking sector and the machinations to try to keep it afloat just before the collapse. Indeed, this modern economic story is turning out to be a fascinating saga, one I am sure Njáll himself would have appreciated.

We hope Hilmar will have occasion to return to North America soon. His sabbatical term expires in June and he will be returning to Iceland in late July.

Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson, guest lecturer at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA

PHOTO: ELISABETH WARD

Icelandic banking... continued from page 1

Scandinavian program... continued from page 3

I look forward to teaching the above courses again, as well as a new course, SCAND 399: Scandinavian Crime Fiction.

Our program will see some changes this year after the retirements of both Professor Chris Hale and Contract Instructor Marianne Lindvall, after 44 and 41 years respectively at the University of Alberta. Along with Adjunct Professor of Scandinavian Studies and Danish Marina Allemano, Chris and Marianne were instrumental in building the Scandinavian program at the University of Alberta, and in establishing a BA in Scandinavian Studies, which is the only such degree in Canada. During their careers, Chris taught a wide range of courses on Scandinavian language, literature, and culture, and Marianne taught Norwegian and Swedish language courses. We are excited to be welcoming Dr. John Eason as the new instructor of Norwegian and Swedish language, and look forward to the energy he will bring to the program.

For more information on our program, including opportunities for giving, visit our website (http://www.mlcs.ualberta.ca/UndergraduatePrograms/Scandinavian.aspx) or e-mail vandeuse@ualberta.ca.