www.cwecrocker.com

I was born in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, a town roughly 500 km south of the L’Anse aux Meadows national historic site. Despite growing up in relative proximity to the site, which is the only known location of Norse settlement in what is now North America, my interest in Old Norse-Icelandic literature began only after I completed my first university degree in mathematics. At the time, I was living and working along the west coast of Scotland where I became an avid reader in my off time. It was through the works of modern authors like William Vollmann and Halldór Laxness that I became interested in and began to search out works of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, at the time in English translation.

When I decided to return to Canada and to university, the presence of an Icelandic department at the University of Manitoba was an immediate draw. Although not initially my sole focus, the courses I took at the U of M in the Icelandic department, in both medieval and modern culture and literature, had a profound impact. So much so that, after a year of undergraduate course work, I entered a Master’s program in the department under the supervision of Professor Birna Bjarnadóttir. Modern Icelandic language courses with P.J. Buchan were also a crucial part of my program there. When it came time to develop a thesis project, Old Norse-Icelandic literature (and the Sagas about Early Icelanders in particular) was an obvious focal point.

During the final year of my program, I took part in the U of M’s Icelandic field school in Iceland, which led to a student exchange semester in Iceland. There, I audited courses in Old Norse language and medieval Icelandic literature and completed my dissertation on the representation of women in the sagas. I also met Professor Ármann Jakobsson who became my PhD supervisor at the University of Iceland. My dissertation project there focused on dreams in the sagas and was part of a larger project on Paranormal Encounters in medieval Iceland.

During and following my PhD program, I worked as an instructor in the Icelandic Department at the U of M, continued to conduct and publish my research on medieval Icelandic literature, and also co-translated Guttormur J. Guttormsson’s Ten Plays with Elin Thordarson. In 2018, I returned to the University of Iceland to work as a postdoctoral researcher in a large multidisciplinary project led by Professor Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir. The project, titled “Disability before disability,” explored disability in Icelandic society, culture, and history before the establishment of disability as a modern legal, bureaucratic, and administrative concept.

For the past two years, I shifted focus by developing my own research project on the North American-Icelandic children’s newspaper Sólskin. My project centred around a large collection of children’s letters, including two written by a young Halldór Laxness, published in the paper in the 1910s. The project culminated with the publication of my book The Sunshine Children. In the meantime, I developed an outline to produce a book that continues my earlier research on the representation of disability in the medieval Icelandic sagas. The book will be a more comprehensive study of the topic, which I have previously written about in shorter articles and book chapters. I am grateful to the Canada Iceland Foundation for supporting my work.

Christopher is in the process of drafting the manuscript for publication.

I first studied Old Norse Mythology under Professor Richard Harris at the University of Saskatchewan in the summer of 2002. His classes on Norse Mythology and Medieval Icelandic Literature were my favourite classes as an undergraduate, and I was able to capture my fascination with the topic in a term paper, “Loki: Potency of Chaos.” Later in graduate school I was able to study Old Norse Literature under Birna Bjarnadóttir and Icelandic Language under P.J. Buchan, at the University of Manitoba Department of Icelandic. My PhD in English Literature focused on Medievalism, examining how nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, mainly in Iceland, the British Isles, and North America, rewrote medieval legends as a way of attempting to come to grips with the shocks and upheavals of modernity. Completing my PhD in 2016, I bicycled across Canada and came across a strange piece of graffiti near Moyie, British Columbia, which read simply LOKI, reminding me of this far-traveling and adaptable figure.

Since 2016 I have been teaching at the University of Manitoba, and it has been an honour to teach Old Norse Mythology and other classes for the Icelandic Department. I have also been preparing to write a book about Loki and his “international career” as one of the best-known figures of Norse Mythology during the last 50 years. In nineteenth-century poems, translations, and retellings, Loki was often vilified, partly as a result of the influence of nationalist ideals which in effect took his blood-brother Odin’s side in their feud, as Odin was seen as a founder of nations (moreover, Loki’s role as the slayer of the saintly god Baldr was interpreted as an almost devilish one). In the twentieth century, however, and especially since the 1970s (with Guðbergur Bergsson’s 1974 poem Flatey-Freyr as a milestone), many authors have been more sympathetic to Loki and have cast him in the role of creative patron, persecuted prophet, jaded anti-hero, defiant hero, or martyr for truth, a figure of worship and veneration; while the other gods of Asgard, and especially Odin, have more often been vilified for their empire-building and endless pursuit of war. Our religious, cultural, and indeed mythical, circumstances, now seem quite changed; but what does belief mean in an age of ongoing upheaval and rapid transformation? My title comes from Guðbergur Bergsson, who wrote: “Loki Is My God.”

Examining one of the most crucial, controversial, and inspiring figures from a body of literature which was written in Iceland and later communicated to the world, going on to inspire authors in numerous countries, will create a unique and poignant book that will appeal to anyone interested in Norse myth, Icelandic literature, Scandinavian cultural heritage and influence in the British Isles and North America, medievalism, folklore, and the living history of religion and culture. In times of ongoing catastrophe, the meaning of every stage of life may be interpreted by the fiery light of Ragnarok, an apocalyptic event in which Loki plays a definitive role. This dire catastrophe breaks the bonds of the trickster and of all beings, as history ends, foundations crumble, civilizations fall, and long-prophesied confrontations occur.

As a result of teaching (my article “Valhalla in Manitoba: An Icelandic Department Trip to New Iceland” will be published in the 2024 volume of Icelandic Connection shortly) and my own travels, I’ve also been visiting locations named after Norse mythical locations in western Canada (Gimli, Baldr, Ymir, Valhalla, etc.; this year I came across a “Loki Lane” is Kaslo, BC) and plan to draw on this experience, and to incorporate maps and illustrations into this book which will provide an overview of Loki’s story, mythical role, and reinterpretation in these strange times.

Dustin is preparing written materials and illustrations for his manuscript and has presented his first related paper on Loki as a counter-culture figure, to Heterodox Academy Canada (https://heterodoxacademy.org/events/hxcanada-symposia-session-022324/) then to Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada or AASSC. (https://aassc.com/resources/Documents/AASSC%20-%202024%20Program%20Updated.pdf)

Growing up in Winnipeg, Iceland always had a central presence on the vaguely imagined map of Europe, together with Poland and Ukraine, but I didn’t come from an Icelandic background or know about the history of New Iceland beyond the Íslendingadagurinn festival. When I was around 13 years old, I discovered an old Icelandic book in a used bookstore in St. Francois Xavier. It was tiny and fragile and had been sewn together from three different poetry booklets. One of those poetry booklets was handwritten, in a beautiful flowing script. I couldn’t read a word, but I fell under its spell. Twenty-five years later, the stories of these books and how they came to Canada with their immigrant owners are still what drives my research, and opening a handwritten manuscript for the first time still brings the same kid-like excitement.

I joined the Scandinavian Canadian Choir when I was in high school, and it was through music that I first got to know Icelandic. Kendra, Christine, Kristín, Susan, and the other choir members were an amazing support and an inspiration to learn more. I signed up for beginner Icelandic classes at the Scandinavian Cultural Centre of Winnipeg with Gunnvör Daníelsdóttir, and as an undergraduate student at the University of Manitoba I studied Icelandic with Kristín Jóhannsdóttir. Kristín and others encouraged me to apply for a scholarship to study Icelandic at the University of Iceland. It was this scholarship that brought me to Iceland in 2003 – and I’ve never left.

Receiving the scholarship was an honour and a chance to learn more about Icelandic language, culture, and literature. I was also lucky enough toget a summer job in a public library in Reykjavík after graduating. Helping library patrons all day made a huge difference for understanding spoken Icelandic.

My next degree was in translation studies. Although the idea was to take a practical degree for a career that wouldn’t leave me deep in student debt, things took an unexpected turn when I finally discovered Icelandic manuscripts as an area of study. I first took a course in manuscript studies in 2007 and participated at a summer school at the Èrni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. For anyone who loves books, it’s almost impossible not to love manuscripts, but reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century handwriting can be incredibly difficult.

In 2009, I discovered that the University of Manitoba has a huge collection of immigrants’ manuscripts, and this was the beginning of a journey of discovery to find the many manuscripts that Icelandic men and women had brought with them across the Atlantic but aren’t well known to students and researchers. The Fragile Heritage Project at the Èrni Magnússon Institute began in 201, thanks to a major three-year grant from the Eimskip Foundation. The Eimskip Foundation was originally established by Canadians and Americans of Icelandic descent.

Today, the Eimskip Foundation supports Ph.D. research in Iceland, and the grant supported fieldwork by me and three other doctoral students in Canada and the U.S. It was a unique opportunity that came just in time: the pandemic would have made our work impossible.

I graduated from the University of Iceland in November 2020 and have had the good fortune to continue at the Èrni Magnússon Institute, working with my wonderful Ph.D. supervisor, Dr. Margrét Eggertsdóttir. The idea for writing a full-length book on manuscript culture in East Iceland and the effect of mass immigration to North America originally developed from my Ph.D. research on Icelandic poetry.

East Iceland is a region of the country that often gets minimal attention in manuscript research, but many immigrant manuscripts come from East Iceland, which is not surprising given the large numbers of immigrant families who came from this part of Iceland. I hope that the book will capture an untold but important story in the shared history of Iceland and North America, and I am extremely grateful for the writer’s grant to turn this book project into a reality.

Katelin is currently finalizing her manuscript for publication.