21st Century Iceland Expedition

The first thing we noticed as we stepped off the bus was the wind. Snow clung to the lee side of the rocks, behind low bushes, and anywhere else it could find shelter from the wind funneled up from the North Atlantic, some 1,500 ft below us. As our two guides shepherded us down the trackless, treeless slopes, the expanse of Geirþjófsfjörður began to reveal itself. Between the precipitous fjord walls, only two farm houses and a sparse grove of spruce trees gave evidence that people ever visited this place.

We were here following Gisli Sursson, a Viking who hid in this fjord from his enemies in the middle of the 10th century. I had in my backpack a copy of the Gisli Saga, and on our way down to the waterline we stopped a few times to read excerpts as our guide would point out a swale in the grass or a small pile of stones—this is where Gisli stood more than a thousand years ago.

As we scrambled down, the wind brought a light rain off the sea, and I looked back up the thousand feet back to the road and saw new snow starting to build on the rocks far above. A ford across the head of the fjord brought us to one of the few forests we had seen in Iceland, a grove of scraggly low birch trees in which Gisli had made his final stand. Halfway back up the ridge, we took shelter at the foot of a rock wall carved with runic symbols—here, the Saga tells us, Gisli fought off his pursuers to his last:

“The battle was fierce and they succeeded in wounding Gisli in several places with their spears, but he defended himself with great courage and strength, and they faced such an onslaught of rocks and powerful blows that none escaped being wounded. When Gisli struck he never missed. The men attacked harder than ever, thrusting at him with their spears until his guts spilled out. Gisli gathered them up together in his shirt and bound them underneath with the cord. Then he told them to hold off a while. ‘The end you wanted will come,’ he said.”

Many of us, eyes squinting against the sleeting gray sky, traced the images and letters on the rock before starting to climb up again toward the road, quieter now, maybe thinking about Gisli's last hours, or maybe steeling ourselves against the growing cold and deepening snow.

As we climbed, shivering, into the welcome warmth of the bus, one of our guides told us, as we would hear time and time again, “you don't come to Iceland for the weather.”

- Pavel Cenkl

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Faculty Spotlight: PAVEL CENKL, Professor and Dean of Academics
Ph.D., English, Northeastern University, 2003
M.A., English, University of New Hampshire, 1994
B.A., English, Brandeis University, 1992

In May of this year Pavel Cenkl, Dean of Academics, and Llyd Wells, visiting Professor, took seven Sterling students on a two and a half week investigative trip to Iceland as part of the Global Field Studies program. On the coast of the Norwegian sea they researched the environmental, cultural, and economic impact of a newly constructed hydropower station, called Kárahnjukar, built solely to power one aluminum smelting plant. Across the country, on the North Atlantic coast, they followed the Gisli Saga for three days.

Through their travels Pavel, Llyd, and the students experienced first-hand the environment of Iceland, past and present. The academic journey made by teachers and students in Iceland exemplifies Pavel's teaching philosophy which he describes as, “the belief that students should feel empowered to act as co-investigators in the classroom, and be able to situate the material they engage in class within the larger context of the social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to its construction…this approach emphasizes the connection between scholarship and student experience.” At home on the Sterling College campus, Pavel continues to push the boundaries of intellect and experience past the walls of the traditional “classroom” and through the constraints of literal “class time.”

Pavel also teaches Black River Voices, Stories and Storytelling of the Far North, Literature and Film of the North, and A Sense of Place.

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