Webinar Notes

Jun 2024

Reykjanes Volcanic Eruptions with Shawn Willsey

Relevant inks and Information from Presentation

Shawn's YouTube Site. https://www.youtube.com/@shawnwillsey

Book Reference: The Encyclopedia of Volcanoes, 2nd Edition by Haraldur Sigurdsson (Editor), Bruce Houghton (Editor), Steve McNutt (Editor), Hazel Rymer (Editor), John Stix (Editor), Academic Press; 2nd edition (April 14, 2015).

Jan 2024

The Njal's Saga Tapestry Project

Links from Presentation

Njal’s Saga Website.  njalurefill.is

National Nordic Museum, Seattle. (embroidery kits)  https://nordicmuseum.org

Embroidery Series Videos.  www.YouTube.com/watch?v=UHC44a10EwA

Iceland Saga Interactive Map.  Sagamap.hi.is

    (search for Brenna-Njáls saga)

Icelandic Settlements in North America Map.  https://www.icelandicroots.com/north-american-settlements

Njal´s Tapestry Facebook page.  Njálurefill.  https://www.facebook.com/Njalurefill

Kristín Ragna Gunnarsdóttir wesbite.  www.krg.is

Ístex yarn.  istex.is

Sveitabúðin UNA.  https://una-local-product.business.site

Eldstó Art Café.  www.eldsto.is

LAVA Center.  lavacentre.is

Jun 2023

Icelandic Horses in North America

Links from Presentation

United States Icelandic Horse Congress: https://icelandics.org/

Horses of Iceland: https://www.horsesoficeland.is

Harmony Icelandics: http://www.harmonyicelandics.com/

International Federation of Icelandic Horse Associations: https://www.feif.org/

May 2023

Author's Corner - Heidi Herman

Links from Presentation

The Tasty Vegetable YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetastyvegetable

Apr 2023

Iceland Travel Update 2023

Jan 2023

Immersion Icelandic Study

Icelandic Proficiency Levels

Here’s what the Isafjordur program “requires”, ideally:

A2 - Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment). Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters.  Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need.

A1 - Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.

Oct 2022

Author's Corner - Nancy Marie Brown

Source for Nancy's books

Bookshop.org

Sep 2021

Author's Corner - Nancy Marie Brown

Suggested Books from the Webinar

Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World by Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir

Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price

Women and Weapons in the Viking World by by Leszek Gardeła 

Oct 2020

The Fiske Icelandic Collection

Accessing the Fiske Icelandic Collection Photos       

Patrick Stevens, Curator of the Fiske Icelandic Collection at Cornell University, has provided the following instructions for accessing the photo collections. 

For accessing the photographs available digitally to the public, I [PJS] recommend going to the home page of the Cornell University Library Digital Collections, https://digital.library.cornell.edu/. One can then search for the collection of one’s choice using keywords. A list access (“View all collections”) brings one to a list of available collections (https://digital.library.cornell.edu/collections). The three collections  in this list from the Icelandic Collection or related to Iceland are:

Icelandic and Faroese Photographs of Frederick W.W. Howell with 416 images

John Clair Miller Image Collection of Twentieth-Century Architecture in Iceland with 612 images (copyright in effect)

Stereoscope Pictures From Iceland with 213 images.

We are planning to digitize others.

The Howell photographs are also available on flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cornelluniversitylibrary/collections/72157623945676076/.

In addition, there were two questions submitted at the end of the presentation.  Mr. Stevens graciously agreed to answer them and to provide instructions for access the Collection’s online photographs.  If you were not able to attend the presentation on October 22nd, the recording is available at the INLUS website.

As more books are moving to on-line only publication, how is the Icelandic Collection prepared to store and make available those items?

Although more Icelandic books and other formats are becoming available online, I sense that preference for the printed book remains strong in Iceland for various types of literature we collect, and that online-only is not typically the only option. We now have impressive arrays of Icelandic fiction and poetry, for example, on paper and on the shelves. While we may collect some of these works in electronic format for one valid scholarly reason or another, the print edition will remain at the core for most of Icelandic literary production, including belles-lettres, historiography, and biography--the last two categories displaying what I regard as even deeper research in recent years.

In the event e-only is the only option, we anticipate purchasing or acquiring from a vendor for electronic works, whether a publisher or a government office or an educational institution. If the resource is not free (and some nominally are), then we would negotiate terms for purchase, subscription, licensing, and access arrangements appropriate for our university community. These terms vary from one vendor to another. Optimal would be terms that offer perpetual access for a one-time outright purchase fee, but such terms are not always available.

What is the oldest text in the Collection - is it the Jónsbók or is there an earlier one?

The oldest text in the Fiske Icelandic Collection is a copy of the oldest known complete printed book in Icelandic, the 1540 New Testament published at Roskilde (Denmark). (I showed the manuscript replacement leaf from Matthew.) While there may have been books published in the 1530s in Icelandic on a press in Iceland, they appear not to have survived. Our copy of the NT is a bit worn, as I indicated, but is still one of the finest among the very few--probably fewer than ten--still in existence.

The parchment manuscript of Jónsbók dates from about 1550. Thus, we have a thoroughly medieval-looking manuscript that is younger than a printed book, both in the same language and from the same culture, but this situation is not surprising: in fact, printing and manuscript production of literary, administrative, and religious texts existed side by side for decades and in some instances or categories for centuries in Iceland.

In Halldór's [Hermansson] time, the belief was that the Jónsbók manuscript on parchment was copied around 1450. Revision of the date to ca. 1550 occurred only when an Icelandic scholar, respected for his knowledge of Icelandic paleography, was able by comparison with other manuscripts to identify the hand of ours as the same--name unknown--responsible for other manuscripts originating in eastern Iceland in the mid-sixteenth century.

If you have specific questions about the collections, Mr. Stevens is happy to talk with you and may be reached at pjs3@cornell.edu.