AMS 220 Cultural Knowledge and Icelandic Identity

Students who have completed the first two courses of an F1 sequence at Rhodes will be well aware that as societies inherit and then redefine their own cultural realities, they also accumulate selective knowledge that must then be transmitted usefully and memorably to others—whether through oral, written, or material means. This course is meant to build upon students’ previous examinations of value, meaning, and cultural transmission as we investigate how Icelandic identity has evolved over the last millennium via its interactions with the diverse religious, political, philosophical, and environmental perspectives emerging throughout Europe and beyond.

Although today it is perhaps best known for the spectacular and sometimes unpredictable geological features that earn the country its nickname as the “Land of Fire and Ice,” Iceland also has a rich cultural history that extends back more than a thousand years. But as remote as the island has often seemed to its own inhabitants and especially to outsiders, never did Iceland’s literature, religion, or politics exist in isolation from what was occurring elsewhere in the world. Instead, Iceland’s cultural traditions both reflected and affected the practices occurring on the global stage more broadly. In this five-week course, three weeks of which will be spent in Iceland itself, we will explore a great variety of Icelandic literature and art, examine historical artifacts and communication mediums from several different periods, and most importantly inhabit many of the same geographical spaces and geological landscapes in which the Icelanders forged their traditions and value systems. Our goal will thus be to learn as much as we can about the cultural history of Iceland’s people in order to understand what forces have shaped Icelandic identity over the ages—and also how that evolving identity has been complicated by outsiders often having a different view from the Icelanders themselves about what they found most meaningful.