2024 - Chantel Nygaard

My Icelandic heritage has always played a major role in my life. My Amma lived in Gimli the majority of her life. She was such an animated storyteller - I loved hearing stories about when she was growing up, about my grandpa, dad and aunts, and extended family (stories that often had us howling in laughter) what the houses she lived in were like, her time working at Betel, war time food, anything. I was rapt. In addition to family stories, we bonded over a love of food and cooking. Every holiday season, amma, my aunts, my sister and I make vinarterta. We’ll make upwards of 20 sometimes—and if you’ve ever made vinarterta before, you know it’s a very laborious process— it truly is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation. We also have Hangikjöt and all the trimmings for Christmas Eve dinner. Though these connections may be small, they allow me to feel connected to my Icelandic side and keep my Amma’s spirit alive.

I graduated high school in 2012 and began taking courses at the University of Manitoba that fall. Although I had no idea what I wanted to pursue, I had a general sense that I would end up doing something in the arts. So, I did what any aimless novice student would do and enrolled in a bunch of different arts courses in the hopes that something would ‘stick’. This led me to sociology and criminology, where I would go on to complete my Bachelors of Arts (Honours) in criminology in 2017. During my undergrad, I became interested in the field of global criminology and worked with the late Dr. Russell Smandych on my honours thesis that explored the HIV/AIDS pandemic amongst female sex workers in sub-Saharan Africa. By examining the crisis through an intersectional global criminological feminist lens, I wanted to highlight how broader socio-cultural and economic conditions and processes (such as globalization, neoliberalism, sexism, racism, and colonialism) become embodied by female sex workers in sub-Saharan Africa, in the form of HIV/AIDS.

After graduating, I took two years off to do a bit of traveling, work, and plan out my next-steps. I enrolled in the Master of Arts program at the University of Manitoba in the fall of 2019–not knowing (as we do now, in retrospect) that the COVID-19 pandemic was looming around the corner. Initially, I had hoped to travel to Iceland to conduct interviews with newcomers to learn about their experiences immigrating to the country. Travel restrictions made this no longer feasible, so my committee and I pivoted. At the time, I was working as a research assistant for my internal committee advisor, Dr. Sonia Bookman in the sociology of brands and branding and Iceland’s tourism advertisements were garnering international attention. My research interests in nationalisms, mythologies, and spatial imaginaries led my committee and I to consider how Iceland’s branding strategies and representations of space/place in these ads might reproduce certain myths and imaginaries, which is what my thesis explores.

After a long journey, I defended my thesis this fall. I am grateful to my thesis committee for their ongoing support during the writing process and am especially indebted to my thesis advisor, Dr. Lori Wilkinson, for her wisdom, expertise, and guidance during my master’s program and in this next phase, as I re-work my thesis and prepare it for publication. A special thank you to the Canadian Icelandic Foundation for supporting my work.