Connecting Voices
Indigenous and Icelandic scholars
“Sagnaskemmtun: Connecting Indigenous and Icelandic Voices” is the theme of a symposium to be held at the University of Manitoba on Thursday, October 16, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Iceland Reading Room of the Elizabeth Dafoe Library. The event, hosted jointly by Icelandic Studies and Indigenous Studies, will feature nine speakers on a variety of topics to celebrate 150 years of Icelandic settlement in Manitoba. Lunch and refreshments will be provided at the event, which is open to the public.
Speaker lineup throughout the day:
9:10 a.m. – L.K. Bertram “Ghost Money: Icelandic Emigration, First Nations Land, and the Making of Modern Iceland.”
9:45 a.m. – Nelson Gerrard “Unexpected Intimacies.”
10:35 a.m. – Sólmundur Pálsson “Knowing Lake Winnipeg through stories.”
11:10 a.m. – Óskar Örn Arnórsson “Some preliminary observations about Building in Iceland and New Iceland, ca. 1875.”
12:35 p.m. – Brynjar Mendoza “Sagnasamstaða: solidarity and the politics of storytelling.”
1:10 p.m. – Branislav Bédi “The motivation of students from Canada learning Icelandic language at the University of Iceland.”
1:45 p.m. – David Parent “Rendering Whiteness, Producing Dispossession: Icelandic-Métis Relations with Minnewakan.”
2:35 p.m. – Nicole Desautels “New Iceland: Our Home on Stolen Land.”
3:10 p.m. – Stefan Jonasson “Ink and Imagination: Indigenous Neighbours in the Icelandic Canadian Press.”
According to the late Hermann Pálsson (1921–2002), the name chosen for this symposium, sagnaskemmtun (literally, “saga entertainment”), refers to the “common pastime on Icelandic farms, from the 12th century down to modern times” that entailed “the reading aloud of stories to entertain the household,” essentially replacing the art of oral storytelling that preceded written books. “All kinds of written narratives were used in sagnaskemmtun – secular, sacred, historical, and legendary.”