Associate Professor of Icelandic

• Acting Head and Chair, Department of Icelandic
• Graduate Chair, Department of Icelandic

Office location: 372 University College

Phone: 204 474-9551

E-mail: bjarnado@cc.umanitoba.ca

ACADEMIC CAREER

• Ph.D. University of Iceland
• M.A. University of Iceland
• B.A. University of Iceland
• Visiting Researcher at the University of Warwick 1995-1996
• Undergraduate studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin, 1982-1984

TEACHING INTERESTS

Icelandic Literature; Guðbergur Bergsson; Old Norse Mythology; Icelandic-Canadian Literature; Romanticism; fragments from the history of aesthetics in Icelandic Literature; World Literature and the challenge of the Saga heritage.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Guðbergur Bergsson's aesthetics; the challenge of the Saga heritage; literature and philosophy; literature and religion; Romanticism; Maurice Blanchot; fragments from the history of aesthetics in Icelandic nineteenth and twentieth century literature; Benedikt Gröndal; the philosophy of the Norse Olympus; the artistic force of Eddic poetry; Grímur Thomsen; the New World in the minds of European writers.

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT

Fragments from the history of aesthetics in nineteenth and twentieth century Icelandic literature.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Recesses of the Mind. Aesthetics in Guðbergur Bergsson’s Work. Transl. Kristjana Gunnars. (Forthcoming: McGill-Queen’s University Press, January, 2012.) 

A Book of Fragments. Foreword by George Toles, illustrations by Cliff Eyland, Haraldur Jónsson and Guy Maddin. Winnipeg: Kind Publishing. Department of Icelandic Language and Literature, University of Manitoba, 2010.

“Preface”, The Young Icelander by Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason. Trans. Borga Jakobson. Halifax: Formac Publishing, 2009.

“Preface”, My Parents. Memoirs of New World Icelanders, co-edited Birna Bjarnadóttir and Finnbogi Gudmundsson.  Transl. David Gislason, Árný Hjaltadóttir and Katelin Parsons.  Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2007.

"Víglína undir klaustri. Um minningarsögur Guðrúnar Helgadóttur" [A Nunnery Under Siege. Guðrún Helgadóttir´s Autobiographical Fiction], Í Guðrúnarhúsi, ed. Dagný Kristjánsdóttir and Brynhildur Þórarinsdóttir, Reykjavík: Institute of Literary Research, University of Iceland, and Vaka-Helgafell Publishing, 2005.

Holdið hemur andann. Um fagurfræði í skáldskap Guðbergs Bergssonar [Aesthetics in Guðbergur Bergsson’s Work], Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press, 2003.

"Möglichkeiten der Kreativität am Rande Europas". Uber die Dichtung Gudbergur Bergssons, Präsentationen. Isländische und faröische Gegenwartsautoren, ed. and transl. Gert Kreutzer, Köln: Seltmann&Hein Verlag, 2002.