April 2020: "Narrating North" (Dr Ragnhild Ljosland)

This seminar investigates the interpretative repertoires of ‘north’ as a real or imagined location ‘on the edge’. The concept of ‘north’ contains certain tropes, which cross barriers of time and literary genre, concerning nature of the landscape, climate and weather, quality of light, relationship with other locations, relationship between places perceived as real and places perceived as imagined or mythological and the grey area between these two, zoology and mythological fauna, mutual relationship between nature and human, discovery and heroism. ‘What is north?’ is therefore a multifaceted question, incorporating other sub-questions: Where is north? How is north? When is north? Who is north? And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, why is north?

Dr Ragnhild Ljosland, Orkney College UHI

Watch a recording of this seminar here