Anna Barbariol and Maria Benjaminsdottir have been awarded the master scholarships of 2024. Barbariol will be researching how the mid-10th century Eldgjá eruption impacted Norway during the viking age. Benjaminsdottir explores loss of landscapes through an ecological reading of Roni Horn’s installation Vatnasafn/Library of Water.
Abstracts:
Anna Barbariol: The 10th century Eldgjá eruption: a global phenomenon?
Around 940 a serie of deadly events spread all over the world. Annals from Europe, Asia and Africa, in fact, record deadly pestilences among people and cattle, famine and extreme weather conditions. The source of these catastrophes have been attributed to the eruption of the Eldgjá eruption, in Iceland. With my research, I plan to investigate how this phenomenon impacted Viking Age Norway. In order to do so, I will undertake an interdisciplinary approach, analysing and combining literature and archaeology. Because written sources for that period do not exist in Scandinavia, I will look at the Íslendingasögur for mentions of famine and any possible emotional state it could have caused among the population. I will specifically look for mentions in sagas taking place between the 10th and 11th century. The second part will, instead, focus on archaeological pollen analysis of a Norwegian Viking Age site. In this context I will analyse the possible triggers for vulnerability in Norwegian society, with a focus on weather and meteorological conditions. These should provide an insight into what really happened in Norway at that time. By combining the results it will be not only possible to identify and describe an overlooked historical event, but also to get a better vision on what impact this catastrophe had on contemporary Scandinavians and on the following generations.
Maria Benjaminsdottir: Memories of Landscapes - Roni Horn’s Vatnasafn/Library of Water in dialogue with Okjökull
Contained within a glass column in Roni Horn’s Vatnasafn/Library of Water, is the last remnant of the former glacier Okjökull. The glass column is one of twenty-four, each holding water from different Icelandic glacial sites. Inside the installation we can see the world warp in the water from glaciers that are no more, we step on words that tell of the weather inside and out, and we hear stories that reflect a global us that is gradually becoming the weather. Drawing on theories from the intersection of art history and visual studies, the thesis will do an ecological reading of Vatnasafn/Library of Water, through the lens of Okjökull. Visual representations of Okjökull, from 18thcentury maps to 21st century satellite pictures, will be placed in dialogue with the work to investigate a changing relationship over time. Today a memorial plaque is installed at the site of the former glacier. Both the plaque and the archived water in Vatnasafn/Library of Water perform a memorial function, not to a person or event of human history, but to a lost landscape. Roni Horn has described parts of the work as “a collective self-portrait”, and building on this, the thesis aims to investigate whether Vatnasafn/Library of Water can be seen as an ecological self-portrait of the contemporary subject as both body and geological force. Is the melting of glaciers a part of a collective portrait of humanity? What kind of relation to landscape is revealed, and can these memorials affect the viewer to stake out a new course?