So why are you in Iceland, Robyn?

 I'm so glad you asked!

I'm now the fifth year of my PhD, which means that I am dissertating. My project is focused in Scandinavia, exploring the ways that the availability of certain materials, both local and acquired through long distance trade, impacted art production in the Middle Ages. Each of my dissertation chapters focuses on a different medieval material: gold, antler, wood and ivory. 

I'm in Iceland to work on the chapter of my dissertation about wood. Timber was a major resource for medieval Norwegians, and wood carving the key artistic output. Churches were wood, sculpture was wood, and the country was covered in rich forests. However, when the Vikings (many of whom were Norwegian, though it was a quite diverse group from all over) settled in Iceland, they rapidly deforested the subarctic island. My chapter explores the ways that meanings around wood and wood carving might be different in Norway, where wood was plentiful, and Iceland, where it was not. This leads to drastic differences in art production in the two spaces that are rooted in similar cultural traditions. 

While in Iceland, I'll be working at the Institute for Icelandic Manuscript Studies in Reykjavik, as well as the National Museum, continuing my research and drafting (hopefully!!) my chapter. I will have a major presentation for my department at Penn in March--this is the most important right of passage in the PhD. 

This research will be supported by the Fulbright-National Science Foundation Arctic Research Grant and the Leífur Eiricksson Fellowship. 

Moving to Iceland! Fulbright 2021-2022

Now I’m twenty eight! Clearly I got a little busy in Sweden and didn’t finish the story, but I more or less learned Swedish. The summer concluded with a solo trip to Copenhagen, a road trip with my mom through Norway and then a presentation at a conference in Stockholm! Then we had a pandemic, I passed my PhD major field exams, more pandemic, now I’m moving to Iceland on a Fulbright. It’s still pandemic. Are we caught up? :) 

Welcome to the next adventure y’all. 

 

My Birthday!

On July 9th, I turned TWENTY SIX years old. I know, it is a little terrifying. It is always hard to spend a birthday away from home--this isn't my first time--but new friends here in Uppsala made sure I didn't feel sad or lonely.

My friend Sami surprised me with a Prinsessroll, a traditional Swedish cake! And we all went out for drinks and pizza at GH, one of the Uppsala University Nations. The Nations are a major part of the social life of Uppsala. They are essentially student social clubs, like fraternities, that stand for various regions of sweden. They originated in the Middle Ages, when young boys were sent away to school from their homes, and the Nations were a place they could gather with people from their own regions.

Also I fell out of my chair. When teachers warn you not to lean back on your chair legs ... they're right!!

A Bad Day Trip

I'll admit it's been almost a month now since I last updated my noble readers on my Scandinavian adventures! The reason is embarrassingly simple: I went on a bad day trip on Saturday, July 6th, and didn't want to blog about it!

Carl Larsson's home, Sundborn in Dalarna, Sweden

The Thursday before this minor catastrophe was half term for my Swedish program, and Swedish feasting turned out to be a very interesting insight into their culture. There are many rules for how dining in Sweden must be conducted; at many formal occasions, there are even alotted bathroom breaks. Each course was punctuated by musical performances and speeches, and the many digestives offered throughout the meal were always accompanied by a drinking song! We ate a beet salad, moose meatballs, and a chocolate lingonberry moose, sitting at table for more than three hours. Afterwards, there was dancing.

Our program director has a passion for singing.

Now about the day trip. I wanted to visit the home of Carl Larsson, probably the most famous Swedish painter. He lived at the end of the 19th century, at an idyllic Dalarna farmhouse called Sundborn. Eagerly, I purchased train tickets (nearly three hours each way) and went on an adventure.

But when I arrived in Falun, the nearest city to Sundborn, there were NO busses. Only one bus travels out to Carl Larsson's home each day. There is no tourism infrastructure in place in the sleepy little province of Dalarna. After trekking around Falun for forty five minutes, I finally reach the tourist office. She sends me off in a $40 taxi.

The tour of Carl Larsson's home (no student discount) was conveniently just about to start. The only other americans are a family of five with a screaming infant. The child wails and scrapes her hands along the artifacts for the full tour, while the jovial, blond haired tour guide pretends it isn't happening. Utter nightmare. In addition, maybe it's just my bad mood at this point, but Carl Larsson's perfect country estate has an eerie, Stepford quality to it. It's all just a little too perfect, all thanks to his artistic yet clearly oppressed wife Karin.

As soon as the tour is over, I am forced to rush back to catch the single bus of the day! so of the ten hours or so that I was traveling, I only got to be at Sundborn for about 90 minutes. I have to wait two hours at the train station to get back to Uppsala.

So there is my tale of woe. The moral? Things don't always go well when traveling. Attitudes cannot always be good, and travel cannot always be smooth. But we keep going nonetheless. Never give up, never surrender!

The Boat to Skokloster Castle

Because I apparently don't know how to take a day off (except today; I finally put my foot down today), yesterday I wrangled up a crew to accompany me on a boat cruise to Skokloster Castle, about an hour and forty minutes down river from Uppsala. Beer in hand, I admired the passing countryside, the lake houses and the lily pads, which spun and dipped beneath the water in the wake of the boat's engine. There was bright sun, so of course I got a little sunburned.

The M/S Kungen Carl Gustav is a boat with historic origins. Though now a modern vessel with modern engines, it has been afloat since the 19th c, with a smokestack for proof.

After a peaceful journey down the river and then across Lake Mälaren, the boat made dock in the historic, 17th c harbor of Skokloster, once the home of the Wrangel family. Built between 1654 and 1676 for Count Carl Gustaf Wrangel, a hero of the Thirty Years War, the castle is the largest ever owned by a private family in Sweden, and is considered one of the most important baroque castles in Europe. It is a rectilinear design around a central courtyard, with a hexagonal tower at each of the four corners. Originally, it was constructed to be approached by water, so the front faces the lake! This made a boat trip ideal.

At the family's church, originally a 13th c convent, we were greeted and immediately given a tour by a friendly docent, who told us some of the history of the family, explained the presence of their heraldry (adorned with four helms rather than three, even though only king's usually had this honor), and even showed us how to peep into the crypt to see the 24 coffins stowed there, all contained members of the Wrangel family.

Inside, we toured the bedrooms on the first floor and the small museum on the ground floor. I was particularly impressed (and sort of disgusted) by the 17th c gilded and hand painted leather wallpaper on the walls.

A 17th c dried puffer fish, expanded with hay and imported from distant lands 

17th c leather wallpaper 

There was also a very famous painting there, which I hadn't expected to see! Guiseppe Arcimboldo's Vertumnus, The God of Seasons, 1590-1591, a portrait made of fruits which bears the features of the Emperor Rudolf II.

And then a peaceful voyage back to Uppsala!

Sala Silvermine

After our moose encounters, the crew headed down the road to the Sala Silvermine, what Gustavus Adolphus called "Sweden's purse" during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The mine has medieval origins (eee!) and was first mined extensively during the fifteenth century. The mining techniques created severe instability in the 16th c, which led to a terrible cave in in the 17th century. There are still bones buried under this wreckage.

Back in the oldest days of the mine, they didn't have dynamite to clear rock with. They would build fires that would burn for two days to fracture the rock, and then chisel it away. They could get two centimeters in each time they did this, yet in the four hundred years the mine was active, they managed to go 380 m into the earth. Today, only 155 m remains above water, as the mine was shut in 1969. We went down 60 m through the Kristinashaft (named for the Swedish queen who ruled as it was made).

It was very very cold under the earth (and as you remember, I hadn't dressed warmly enough for the day to begin with!) Everyone was worried about my bare arms, which led to many friendly and comforting hugs, but I was honestly fine. Mind over matter, man! The scariest bit was descending the wet metal spiral staircases that hovered above shivering drops straight down into hell itself (apparently). There were a few hearty ghost stories, too. When entering the mine, you must knock three times to announce your presence to the lady of the mine. If you see a woman wearing a white dress, you're good to go. But if she appears to you in a black dress, and you hear the sound of falling rock, it might be a good idea to clear the area as soon as possible.

The magnificent subterranean vistas were basically impossible to photograph, but it was stunning to imagine the underground cathedrals the brave Swedish miners managed to chisel out of bare rock hundreds of years ago. Staring down the stunning depth of the Kristinashaft was enough to weaken anyone's knees, and those miners used to swing across its insane breadth in buckets.

Our guide, dressed in historic foreman's clothing, granted us the luck of the mine with a song. In the past, this chamber was used as a concert hall!

Moose Park!

On Friday, UISS took an excursion to a moose park and silver mine! I hadn't signed up in time (I tried Wednesday, and apparently Tuesday at noon was the cut-off), so there was a good chance I wouldn't get to go! Luckily, there was a pub crawl the night before, so I got up and stood outside the bus to see if anyone would be too hungover to go. They were. So off we went!

The moose park was about an hour from Uppsala on a large tract of land. It was a chillier day than I had expected, so I waited in the sun until the moose man had loaded up his tractors and was ready to take us on a tour of his passion project.

I got to pet a moose; specifically, I got to touch his fuzzy antlers (which they can feel!). Moose hair in summer is covered with a natural mosquito repelling grease that I didn't really want to get on my hands ...

Here is what I remember about moose: Only the males have antlers, and they grow them from May to September in order to impress the lady moose when the time is right in September. The antlers then lose their blood supply and drop off. Baby moose arrive eight months later, and the mothers don't want the guys around anymore, so the moose man moves them into their own pin. The moose man has a huge amount of land, so if the moose don't want to be in his tour, they can simply run off into the wilds. We probably saw about fifteen of his seventy total moose. When a new moose is born, the moose man stays with them for three days outside, and then spends huge amounts of time with them after that, so that they will trust him for life. When a little baby girl moose named Olivia was rejected by her mother (because her brother was taking all the milk ...), the moose man took her to live inside his home for three months.

My favorite moose was named Lugwig. He was a blond moose, and kept getting in trouble. He would go and try to stick his face in people's laps, and the moose man, obviously very fond of him, would yell, "Ludwig! Nej, Ludwig!!"

Ludwig the moose

There were babies too!