: Everyday Life in Traditional Iceland: Marking the seasons
Before the advent of automobiles, electricity, television and the planes that ferry Icelanders to Spain for their holidays, seasons mattered to an extraordinary degree in Iceland. This lecture examines the life of Icelanders in this earlier time in light of the festivals by which they marked the passing of the seasons.
: False Myths concerning Iceland
Popular opinion holds that Icelanders, the descendants of Vikings, are a uniquely spiritual people, happy to reroute roads to avoid rocks in which “hidden people” dwell. This lecture explores the truth of such ideas.
: Wagner and the Volsungs
This lecture argues that Wagner’s Ring Cycle owes a far heavier debt to Old Icelandic sources including the Eddas and Völsunga Saga than to Medieval German works like Das Nibelungenlied.