“Denmark and the New North Atlantic” presented in Reykjavík

Conference in Reykjavík, May 9-10: A Place in the World. Iceland in the Imperial World Order and the making of a North Atlantic Region

Former president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir took part in the seminar

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The new website thenewnorthatlantic.com was presented at the beginning of the conference.

During the two conference days “Denmark and the New North Atlantic” brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars for exploring the cultural and historical relations that have influenced Icelandic national narratives in a regional context. The conference addressed this mental and historical landscape in an interdisciplinary forum, with special focus on the position of Iceland in the imperial world order and the Danish realm as well as the development of an understanding of the North Atlantic as a culturally and politically constructed region form the nineteenth century and till the present.

Focus was on Iceland’s shifting status and relations within the region with reference to post-, crypto-, and neo-colonial insights and outlooks as well as referring to the role of nationalism in shaping historical understandings and changing perceptions of the region’s interrelations and Iceland’s place in the world.

PROGRAM:

Friday May 9, National Museum of Iceland

15-16.45:
Uffe Østergaard (Copenhagen Business School), keynote speaker:
Legacies of Empire in the present Danish nation state

Guðmundur Hálfdanarson (University of Iceland), keynote speaker:
Iceland: A Province, Colony or Dependency?

 

Saturday May 10, National Museum of Iceland

10-12.15:
Sverrir Jakobsson:
The Medieval Nordic Commonwealth and the „Danish Tongue“

Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson:
Representing Iceland. National identity and Pan Scandinavianism in Gunnar Gunnarsson‘s political writings

Sumarliði Ísleifsson:
The ambivalence of Iceland

Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud:
Fabulous Iceland – a place next to Neverland?

13.15-15.15:

Íris Ellenberger:
Danish immigrants in the republic of Iceland. Colonial history, cultural heritage and assimilation.

Ólafur Rastrick:

Placing Iceland on the Anthropometric Map: National Character, Physical Features and the Allure of Numbers

Kristín Loftsdóttir:
“Innocent babble”: Affective Identities and Racialization in Iceland

16-17:

Kristinn Schram:
Northwest-bound: making and mobilising a ‘West-Nordic Arctic’

Valur Ingimundarson:
Narrating a “New Frontier”: Arctic Identities and Icelandic Foreign Policy in the 21st Century

17-17.45:
Kirsten Thisted (University of Copenhagen), keynote speaker:
Building a “home” for the region. The role of Nordatlantens Brygge (The North Atlantic House in Copenhagen) in the construction of the New Nordic North-Atlantic.

 

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