Welcome to the Seminar on Popular Culture and the Fantastic, with guest lecturers Guðrún Dröfn Whitehead and Luca Arruns Panaro from the University of Iceland – Háskóli Íslands.

About the lecture

This lecture focuses on the legend of Vikings and heroism as represented in the Saga museum, a wax (that is, silicone) museum in Reykjavík, Iceland, where facts and fictions are joined in a single narrative to present a mythologized version of local history and identities. Audiences can experience the making or reaffirming of Icelandic heritage in silicone. It is a commodification of heritage, created for tourists and Icelandic school children. To this effect, the exhibition is performative. To gain the desired effect on visitors, various storytelling devices are used, including text panels, audio-guides, theatrical techniques and macabre realism. In short, the museum represents locally important (hi)stories, rooted at the core of the local, national character and external, tourism character traits.

 

Guðrún D. Whitehead

The aim is to consider the effects of performing local identity for an external group, i.e. tourists, creating a discordance for the local community, in a way where they disconnected from their nation’s past. The issue is further deepened because most Icelanders do not consider themselves Vikings at all. Vikingness, in this sense, is often performed, much like at the Saga Museum, during specific situations, such as sport matches (football, handball), during national crisis (such as after the economic crash) or when in contact with tourists. It should be noted that this has started to change since the tourism boom that started after the economic crash. Younger generations grow up with stereotype Vikings in their daily surroundings, as they are a frequently used marketing tool within local tourism.

Considering that the Saga Museum plays into the stereotype Viking, but within the framework of local national identity and common, local views on history (mythologised and real), how is Icelandic national identity performed within the exhibition?

About Guðrún D. Whitehead

Dr Gudrun D. Whitehead is an Assistant Professor in Museum Studies at the University of Iceland. Dr. Whitehead’s background in comparative literature and folklore has had an impact on her research interests. She has focused on subculture, the uncanny and disruptive elements of society, such as Vikings, horror, punk, human remains, and unconventional museum displays. She is particularly interested in cultural stereotypes, such as Vikings and their uses in the heritage industry and society in general. Her latest publication is The Performance of Viking Identity in Museums: Useful Heritage in the British Isles, Iceland, and Norway (2024). She also co-edited the volume Fashioning Horror: Dressing to Kill on Screen and in Literature (2017), which discusses the uses of clothing and fashion in horror, as well as how horror has been influential in the fashion industry.

Luca Arruns Panaro

This lecture presents ongoing research about the evolution of the Viking image through its ludification in video games. My current focus is the effect that game genre has on the representation of the Vikings. Though narrative features like setting, tone, and theme do factor in, game genre is largely determined by the style of play on offer (shooter, racing, role-playing, etc.; often hybridized). While most Viking video games belong to the genres of action-adventure and/or role-playing due to their usual emphasis on Viking combat and immersion and adventure in a historically inspired, virtual world, there are, of course, outliers. Certain genres such as these allow for greater detail in the depiction of historical groups like the Vikings, so by looking at games outside of this core group of action-adventure-RPG, the representation of the Vikings also changes to suit the emphasis on different types of gameplay.

I will also discuss elements of the production context of video games, noting regional and national differences that effect the representation of Vikings. The Swedish game industry offers a particularly insightful example, as Sweden is unique among the Nordic nations for producing some of the few successful Viking video games from the region while demonstrating a unique relationship to the material that differs from international perceptions. Nordic games about Nordic culture both draw upon heritage and act as digital heritage sites in themselves, keeping folklore alive and relevant in the digital age.

About Luca Arruns Panaro

Luca Arruns Panaro is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland. They hold a BA in history with a minor in medieval studies from the University of New Mexico and a joint MA/MPhil in Viking and medieval Norse studies from the Universities of Iceland and Oslo. Luca’s research interests lie at the intersection of medieval history and video games with a focus on Viking Age and Old Norse reception, and they are developing a public-facing database of medieval Norse literary references found in video games. They currently have two forthcoming publications on the subject of video game vikings, and one article published in 2021 titled, “Ludos in Mythos: God of War and the Subversion of Snorri.”

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