Iceland Post Script

People are still raving about the Geography Brown Bag Lunch! See student and professor responses below:

I enjoyed learning about the characteristic geological formations of Iceland, which, as a human geography professor, I don’t know as much about as I do regarding other aspects of Iceland. Drs. Kyem and Button are excellent guides to those sorts of things.

If I had gone to Iceland (sadly I didn’t), I probably would have focused more on the economic /cultural/political sorts of things that are the sorts of things I usually teach about. In particular, I would have been looking for signs of Iceland’s response to the recent world recession (which hit Iceland very hard and very early in the development of the crisis), I would have been taking pictures of brightly-colored Scandinavian-influenced buildings (of which Peter said he did see quite a few), and I would have probably went to see the parliament of Iceland (the “Althing”, which is one of the world’s oldest parliaments…founded in the year 930…and which is currently led by the world’s first openly lesbian Prime Minister). Also, they still use two letters in their alphabet, the “thorn” (Þ, þ) and the “eth” (Ð, ð) which were once letters in Old English.
Dr. Zachary Klaas
Geography


Some of the photos students took were positively artistic. They also got me thinking about deforestation--and whether the lack of trees in the dramatic landscapes of Iceland was a natural phenomenon or at least partly due to man-made causes.
The answer (for our store of geography trivia): Apparently 95% of the original forest cover from the time of Iceland's settlement has been lost because of human impact.
link:http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/iceland/natur.htm

Special thanks to Dr. Kyem for the slide presentation and to everyone who joined in with the Geography Graduate Society!
Dr. Patricia Houser



The food was good and the slides were educational and informative. It was nice to see the professors in a social setting.
A student in attendance.