Next Beck Lectures  
Birna Bjarnadóttir at University of Victoria 

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Dr. Birna Bjarnadóttir will be this fall’s Beck Lecturer at the University of Victoria while serving as a visiting professor at the university during the fall semester. Birna is a research specialist in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at the University of Iceland and was previously the chair of the Department of Icelandic Language and Literature at the University of Manitoba from 2003 to 2015. While in Victoria, Birna will deliver three lectures for the Richard and Margaret Beck Lecture Series on Icelandic Literature and teach a course on “The Transatlantic Context in Icelandic Canadian Literature” (see below). In addition to Birna’s lectures and course, there will be a guest lecture by Ólöf Garðarsdóttir and a screening of Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir’s acclaimed film, The Swan.

Sunday, September 14, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. – “‘Education is the lightest load you will ever carry’: The significance of self-education in the cultural history of the descendants of Icelandic 19th-century immigrants to Canada.”

Sunday, October 5, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. – “The varieties of migration experience in the poetry of Undína and Stephan G. Stephansson.”

Saturday, October 18, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. – “Icelandic emigration to the Americas, 1870-1914, seen from a Nordic comparative perspective.” The guest lecturer on this occasion will be Ólöf Garðarsdóttir, Dean of the School of Humanities and professor of social history at University of Iceland.

Sunday, November 23, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. – “The creative power of the Westfjords and Strandir in the history of Icelandic literature and world literature.”

Monday, December 29, 2025, at 7:30 p.m. – Screening of The Swan, directed by Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir. As part of the Victoria International Film Festival, Icelandic film director Ása Helga will be present during the screening of her 2017 film The Swan, which is based on a novel by the Icelandic writer Guðbergur Bergsson.

Throughout the fall semester, Dr. Birna Bjarnadóttir will teach the course, “The Transatlantic Context in Icelandic Canadian Literature” (GGMST 369: Special Topics in Scandinavian Studies Fall 2025). In this course, students will get an opportunity to explore and study the far-reaching intercultural enterprise in the literary works of both 19th-century Icelandic immigrants to Canada and their descendants. The focus will be on the works of the poet, farmer, essayist, pacifist, and social prophet Stephan G. Stephansson (1853–1927); Helga Steinvör Baldvinsdóttir (1858–1941), who wrote her poetry under the pseudonym Undína, and the poet and playwright Guttormur J. Guttormsson, (1878–1966), the son of Icelandic immigrants. Stephan G., Undína, and Guttormur only wrote in Icelandic and manifested a lifelong attachment to and engagement with the culture and heritage of Iceland. However, in their lives as immigrants and children of immigrants, the Icelandic language did not set them free from existential and historic complexities in the transatlantic region. Neither did the Icelandic language secure their works a uniform account of these complexities, a subject that is manifested by evident differences of their individual aesthetics and the varieties of their lived experiences.

The Beck Lecture series at the University of Victoria focuses on various aspects of Icelandic literature and culture. Richard and Margaret Beck made provision in their wills for a special fund to be established at the University of Victoria to provide public lectures on Icelandic language and literature. The first Richard and Margaret Beck Lecture on Icelandic Literature took place on February 14, 1988. Since then, the University of Victoria has hosted over 80 lectures on a wide range of topics.

For more information about the Beck Lectures, or to register for the course, “The Transatlantic Context in Icelandic Canadian Literature,” visit the Beck Lectures website at becklectures.uvic.ca