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Accepted Paper:
Down into the earth we go: symbiosis of bodies and nature in Icelandic art
Karen Oslund
(Towson University)
This paper examines several Icelandic music videos and the use of nature and human bodies in them which both recalls the nineteenth century nationalist portrayal of Icelandic nature and at the same time evokes the global climate crisis, a harkening back to the past as well as a future prophecy.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the connections between the human body and Icelandic nature in the music videos of several Icelandic artists, including Björk, KALEO, and Of Monsters and Men (OMAM). While the musical styles of these artists are different, all of them create videos depicting bodies integrated into a landscape or nature (Thisted and Gremaud, eds, 2020). Through this trope, both the themes of environmental crisis and danger-- the disappearance of the landscape and the destruction of the body--are shown, as well as a more hopeful theme of harmonious union between people and nature. This portrayal reminds us of nationalistic portrayals of Icelandic nature in nineteenth century paintings with the merging of Icelandic landscapes and bodies (in the work of both foreign and Icelandic artists, such as W. G. Collingwood and Þórarinn Þorláksson), but with the additional aspect of endangered nature/body. By using Icelandic nature as representative of the globe, the island can seen as subject to the same changes as any other region, while at the same time iconic features of the Icelandic landscape are used to call attention to disaster.
Reference: Denmark and the New North Atlantic: Narratives and Memories in a Former Empire, ed Kirsten Thisted and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2020).