Beardsley finds sojourn to Iceland ‘instructive’
Iceland’s tourism slogan reads: “The last, best place on earth.”
Sharon Beardsley agrees, adding her perceptions - green (environmentally conscientious and lush landscape), Vikings, Norse mythology, geothermal heat, modern, and treeless - gleaned from a July 2007 trip Beardsley took with her colleague Karen Shafer.
Shafer is an Oregon Coast Community College (OCCC) speech adjunct and South Oregon University emerita professor of communication. Beardsley is an OCCC English instructor. The pair toured Europe with members of the San Diego Festival Chorus, not as singers, but as fill-ins for the group travel rate.
Beardsley will incorporate her experience in Iceland for her course, “Mythology and Folklore: English 250″ at OCCC.
“Settled by Norwegian and Celtic (Scottish and Irish) immigrants during the late ninth and tenth centuries A.D., Iceland boasts the world’s oldest functioning legislative assembly, the Althing, established in 930,” notes the World CIA Fact Book on Iceland website. “Independent for over 300 years, Iceland was subsequently ruled by Norway and Denmark. Fallout from the Askja volcano of 1875 devastated the Icelandic economy and caused widespread famine. Over the next quarter century, 20 percent of the island’s population emigrated, mostly to Canada and the US. Limited home rule from Denmark was granted in 1874 and complete independence attained in 1944. Literacy, longevity, income, and social cohesion are first-rate by world standards.”
Filed under: Culture & Heritage