One Year Fulbright Iceland 2018-2019
Iceland began in the same chaotic way as many of my personal endeavors. I showed up one day without a place to live and a vague plan of purchasing a used camper van. Once miraculously acquired, I struggled desperately to learn to drive manual. Getting into second gear was like achieving lift-off, and driving 90 km/h was like flying in hyperspace. She was Space Bus, and she was instantly my constant companion.
Journal Entry - Iceland - November, 2018
Making Home in Iceland
I live and breathe the Arctic, so when the Fulbright Arctic Program offered the opportunity to make a temporary home in Iceland while working on my dissertation, I immediately accepted. Iceland has been my third longer-term journey living abroad and I was greatly looking forward to experiencing another sister country here in the north. I had been only once before to meet an old PhD student of my advisor and to see some of this remarkable country. I was instantly hooked.
Keep scrolling for the development of the Arctic Wetlands and Indigenous Peoples Study, a tidbit about Icelandic outdoor adventures, and a journal entry from my year-long stay.
Mývatn and Laxá Conservation Area, Iceland - May, 2019
Developing the Arctic Wetlands and Indigenous Peoples Study
As part of my dissertation studies, I have made it my personal business to understand the contexts and coordination of the conservation of lands, waters, and species in each of the Arctic countries. I determined to use this year to also understand research and coordination from an international perspective by affiliating with the Arctic Council’s Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF). CAFF is responsible for many of the international research and reporting initiatives that focus on Arctic biodiversity and produce publications on international monitoring, assessments, strategies, and policies including large publications such as the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment.
From the start, CAFF has been wonderfully supportive of my desire to research how Indigenous communities contribute to conservation in the Arctic. I took on the role as the lead researcher of the Arctic Wetlands and Indigenous Peoples Study, a small, somewhat independent part of the Sweden-led Resilience and Management of Arctic Wetlands Initiative (RMAWI).
While I had been developing a version of the study during spring 2018, it wasn’t until December that year that I was able to fully flesh out my objectives in AWIPS to include an assessment of Indigenous relationships to protected areas and how those protected areas contribute to biodiversity conservation. During the Arctic Wetlands Expert Workshop hosted by the Stockholm Environment Institute in February 2019, the importance of including Ramsar-designated wetlands in the study became increasingly clear for countries lacking easily available environmental data such as Russia and Greenland. By March, all 35 protected areas included in the study had been identified. For weeks I accumulated and translated management, conservation, and participation plans from these 35 sites in an effort to understand how Indigenous communities were using living resources within these sites and how they engage within the formal management process. Currently I am still working through the analysis, but expect the report to be ready by the end of the year.
Months Revolving Around Research and the Outdoors
Iceland certainly wasn’t all work and no play. Climbing, skiing, sailing, fishing, hot-potting, off-trail running, almost anything was immediately at my fingertips. I was very lucky to find outside-loving people when I began training at the climbing gym inside the local Icelandic Search and Rescue Unit where I became fast friends with some of the most incredibly brave people I have ever met. We spent the fall attempting to build by hand the second largest climbing gym in Iceland, the winter skiing at the local slope, and the spring climbing at our local canyon crag. It was the perfect balance to long days in the office and gave me a sense of community during the long winter months.
Part of my time in Iceland was spent in informal research as I learned about the people who so kindly welcomed me to their homeland. Iceland is unique in that it is the only Arctic country without an Indigenous population, though Icelanders themselves are first-settlers and represent an interesting category of once-colonized people. Until only a few decades ago, most Icelanders continued to live off the land by herding sheep and horses or fishing on the coasts and waterways in small subsistence economies. I have found Icelanders to be deeply connected to place and nature in many of the ways that I feel Inuit are also connected to the land, and thus I found beauty and solidarity our meeting.
Journal Snapshot - One Good Day in the Life of this Scientist
May 2019
I open my eyes at 06:00 to cold metal, cold floors, and the most beautiful view of sunrise peaking into the narrow valley, casting soft rays into the canyon river below. I live here - sort of. I’m actually the valley’s friendly, resident squatter and I’m parked on five square meters of some very nice farmer’s grass just off the road. I make coffee, lounge in my swivel chair, watch the birds, and heat the engine.
I drive into town, about fifteen minutes away, and stop at the local pool. Not to swim, I just come here to lounge in the hot tub and take a shower. Some go-getters are swimming laps. Not me, I’m barely awake.
Soon 08:00 rolls around and I head to work for second, better coffee. Today I’m translating a protected area management plan from Norwegian into English. It’s difficult because my command of the Scandinavian languages is poor, my patience is thin, and Google translate gives me some weird suggestions. I thank God when I get to the page describing rare and vulnerable species by their Latin binomials. I silently thank my undergraduate advisor for encouraging me to learn all the Arctic species by heart. It only take a few hours to figure I’ve gotten everything I can out of this 50-page document. I can hear my boss in his office coordinating how our research is going to save the Arctic. He has things covered and the weather is especially nice.
At 11:00, One of my mentors in the building spontaneously invites me out for a sail. Not after work, right this minute. I pack my things and stash a thermos of coffee. Five minutes drive and we’re loosening the ropes on the dock. Soon, we’re the only boat in the water. We chat aimlessly about work, share coffee, and tell stories about our home communities. I learn about old-timey fisheries in nowhere Iceland. We visit a waterfall pouring a steaming stream into the fjord. The wind dies down and we return to shore. I’m remotivated to take a crack at my publication.
I collect my van and head to town. I’ve taken to report writing at a small cafe and bar in town where everyone is kind and they supply my brain with free coffee. We’re on cup four or five by now and my fingers tremble as I type. I work in a weird kind of productive angst. I make some progress and take only a few breaks to catch up on the latest news about two new species of tweezer-beaked hopping rats described in the Philippines. They have nothing to do with my work but I can’t help reading neat conservation news, no matter how irrelevant.
I ate some Rúgbrauð (Icelandic rye bread) and smoked lamb in the back of the van, but by 15:00 I’m hankering for something sweet. I order a large slice of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. It’s made with coffee. It’s like clockwork because I order a piece everyday. I have written a few pages and I am satiated. I make plans to check out one of my study sites with a friend the following day. Mostly we’re going for the birdwatching. I sit in the cafe all afternoon.
At 18:00 I arrive at the local Search and Rescue depot where there is a small climbing gym. I have been training here the last nine months alongside the most amazing and giving Icelanders you can ever hope to meet. It’s the small bit of exercise I give to myself most days. We’ve been climbing outside a lot but not tonight. More mellow activity is in order.
It’s 21:00 and I’ve eaten dinner. I watercolor in the evening, except I haven’t been responsible and I’ve run out of water. I decide instead to paint my study species in beer rather than drink it. It seems reasonable at the time. I fall asleep with the midnight sun streaming through the open windows. I can’t wait to do it all over again.
Journal Entry - June 2019
To All My Wonderful People - Sjáumst!
My time in Iceland wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without all of the kind and wonderful people I have befriended along the way. Colleagues through Fulbright, colleagues at CAFF, friends through climbing, skiing, and Search and Rescue, friends from coffee shops, friends from art galleries, and friends from chance meetings in the streets. Thanks to everyone who took me on their sailboats, shared chairlifts, drank my horrible van coffee, made me laugh, and gave me a place to stay when the weather was outrageous. I will miss you dearly.
And just like that, my year in Iceland is wrapping up. I’m writing up my reflections on another year spent full-time in the Arctic as I prepare to leave for a summer of vagabonding across North America. It’s been a very special time and I’m very sad to be leaving. But I doubt I’ll be leaving for long!
The Fulbright Iceland Crew 2019
Back from left: Julia Parish, Arctic Artist; Rhonda Johnson, Circumpolar Health Expert ; Adam Smith, Marine Acoustician; Ceecee Cesario, Arctic Zooarchaeologist; Myself, General Shenaniganer; Oliver Daliet, Mechanical Engineer. Front from left: Brooks Bennet, Linguist; Max Savage, Translation Theorist; Joe Roman, Conservation Biologist.
