ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a series of ethnographic and personal reflections on 15 years of fieldwork in Iceland. Themes of travel, nationhood, globalization, sense of place, and remoteness are developed in another series of archipelagic micro-essays. The opening piece outlines my first visit to Iceland in 2006 to work with my mentor and former professor, Anne Brydon, on her project examining the intersection between Icelandic artists and landscape. The next essay offers a critical reflection on the development and implementation of an experimental ethnographic methodology of drifting. Following this piece, I discuss the uncanny affect embedded in Icelandic landscapes that I experienced on my first trip to the Westfjords region of the island. Next, I discuss the value and unique resonance of working with my Wellesley College undergraduate students as part of an ethnographic field course I lead to Iceland each summer. In this piece, I consider the importance of teaching as it relates to knowing and suggest a potential for what could be called archipelagic teaching. “Layered Dreamworlds” works to uncover the strata of supernaturalism found throughout the Icelandic national consciousness and landscape and explores the notion of island supernaturalism. The micro-essays on the tiny island of Flatey and F-roads present brief reflections on the notion of remoteness and exile. Lastly, the piece on Iceland’s far northern Hornstandir peninsula outlines a novel ethnographic theory of practice (Bourdieu 1972) that builds on the model found in Sebald’s Rings of Saturn (1998) and is based on a recent research trip I undertook in the region.
