The Steilneset Memorial, Vardø, Norway, at Hyperallergic

In 17th-century Finnmark a common practice for determining the guilt of an accused witch was to subject them to the “water ordeal.” With hands and feet tied, they would be thrown into the freezing Barents Sea to see whether they sank or floated. If they sank, they were innocent. Water was thought to repel evil, so the suspect’s rising to the surface and floating proved their guilt.

In 21st-century America, Senator Lindsey Graham regarded a woman who, protesting the Supreme Court nomination of a man accused of sexual assault, asked if Brett Kavanaugh should take a polygraph test. In response he sneered “why don’t we dunk him in water and see if he floats?”

The figure of the hunted witch was evoked often in 2018, the year I finally realized a long-held dream to make an art-pilgrimage to the Arctic island of Vardø, the extreme northeastern point of Norway, to see the Steilneset Memorial to the victims of the Finnmark witchcraft trials. Read about my trip in my essay for Hyperallergic.

Art Escapes at Oak – The Nordic Journal

Denmark, Norway, sweden

The art offerings of the Nordics are well established: from the capitals’ gleaming national galleries to the scrappier artist-run spaces in their less-polished neighborhoods. But travel away from the established centres and you may stumble upon some of the region’s most visually arresting art sites. In each of the following three art escapes, in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, a unique alchemy fuses the site with the place in which it sits, and together they yield something almost magical.

For volume nine of Oak – The Nordic Journal, I wrote about the Steilneset Memorial (above) in Norway, Artipelag in Sweden, and Cisternerne in Denmark.

Photo: Karen Gardiner

Foula at Condé Nast Traveler

Scotland

The ancient Romans thought Foula was Ultima Thule, a place beyond the borders of the known world. Michael Powell used the island as a stand-in for St Kilda in his 1937 film The Edge of the World. All of which is to say that Foula feels pretty remote.

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Tbilisi at Fodor’s

Georgia, Uncategorized

At the crossroads of east and west, the Republic of Georgia is a place that has long absorbed opposing influences, and its charming capital, Tbilisi is no different. With its crumbling Neoclassical buildings and winding streets, Tbilisi is filled with history. But as it emerges as a hot travel destination, the city is also embracing modernity as it strives to move beyond the cultural stagnation of the Soviet era.

Read my recommendations for getting a taste of Tbilisi’s booming creative scene at Fodor’s

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Papa Westray at BBC

Scotland

A walk around Papa Westray – a four-square-mile island on the northern edge of the Orkney archipelago in Scotland – is a walk through history.
From the 5,600-year-old Knap of Howar, northern Europe’s oldest standing house, you can walk up the coast to St Boniface Kirk. One of the oldest Christian sites in the north of Scotland, the church’s graveyard is filled with lichen-covered headstones indicating generations of families and shipwrecked sailors. Further on at the wind-battered northernmost point, where the Atlantic crashes into the North Sea and daunting cliffs are deeply ridged from centuries of erosion, a stone cairn marks the site where Britain’s last great auk – the now extinct ‘northern penguin’ – was killed in 1813.

But Papay, as the island is locally known, is not lost in the past. Thanks to its forward-thinking residents, it is thriving.

Read the rest of my article about the Orkney island of Papa Westray at BBC Travel.

(All photos ©Karen Gardiner)

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Arctic Superstar at the Village Voice

New York, Norway

Poster for Arctic Superstar at Scandinavia House

Last week, for the Village Voice, I interviewed the Sámi rapper, SlinCraze. Nils Rune Utsi, as he is bestter known in his tiny Arctic hometown of Máze, was in NYC for the U.N Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, a gathering of 1,200 indigenous people from around the world, where he was invited to play a concert. He also appeared at Scandinavia House, alongside Aili Keskitalo, the President of the Sámi Parliament of Norway, and Simen Braathen, the director of a documentary film about him, “Arctic Superstar.”

The story of Arctic Superstar began in New York, where, in 2013, Braathen produced a photo exhibition of Norwegian rappers and the places they represent. SlinCraze played his first NYC gig at the Mothership in Brooklyn afterward. “SlinCraze’s story stuck out to me,” Braathen told me, “because of his raw ambition, yet impossible starting point. Language is obviously important in rap, yet there he was rapping in a language that is considered endangered by UNESCO. And killing it!”

Utsi’s language is Northern Sámi, understood by only 20,000 people. Not only do Norwegians or Europeans or anyone else not understand Northern Sámi, but many Sámi people don’t understand it either.

As he told me: “There’s no numbers on how many Sámi people there are, because of a history of the Norwegian government trying to wipe out the Sámi language. A lot of kids, from at least two generations before me, learned that speaking Sámi is taboo. So they forgot the language. There’s no real numbers on how many people are actually Sámi, because a lot of people work really hard to hide it.”

I was reminded while speaking to him of an artwork I saw last year in the Stormen cultural centre in Bodø, Arctic Norway. By Edvine Larssen, who lives and works on the Lofoten islands, the piece comprises a found vintage photograph of a Sámi couple. The people in the photograph had scratched out their traditional Sámi footwear.

Edvine Larssen at Stormen. Photo by author.

Why? Because at this time Norway had a policy of forced assimilation, known as Fornorsking, or Norwegianisation. Sámi traditions and clothing were banned, as were the Sámi languages, one of which SlinCraze is helping revitalise through his music.

Read my interview with SlinCraze here. And enjoy his thought-provoking video for Suhtadit (or, “fighting”).

The Art of the Faroe Islands

Faroe Islands

“Nation Building” by Edward Fuglø

I arrived in the Faroe Islands fairly well-versed in the islands’ musical and literary heritage, but with little grasp of the visual art scene there. In fact, the only encounter with Faroese art that I can recall previously was Tróndur Patursson’s glass bird installation at Reykjavík’s concert hall, Harpa a few years ago.

Tróndur Patursson in Harpa, Reykjavík

Upon arrival in the Faroe Islands I met some of those birds again, this time fluttering across windows and hanging from the ceiling throughout the tiny Vagar airport.

Tróndur Patursson at Vagar Airport

Always working with the nature he lives with in the Faroes, Patursson’s glass work appeared again at The Nordic House, this time taking the shape of the mountains. In the photo below, outside the window, Hans Pauli Olsen’s bronze sculpture, “Pilot Whale Killing,” plays with depths and explores that controversial Faroese tradition, the annual pilot whale hunt.

Tróndur Patursson at The Nordic House

The Nordic House is filled with art works; paintings, sculptures, lithographs and glasswork, by Faroese artists who also include Guðrið Poulseon, Jóhannes Geir and Edward Fuglø.

Fuglø’s work, “Microstate Hiker” was unfortunately on loan when I visited, but I was able to see more of his work at the hotel I was staying at, Hotel Føroyar. “Nation Building” (in the photo at the beginning of this post) was the first to strike me as I saw it hung over the staircase to the hotel’s restaurant. In it, the Faroese flag is created out of food packaging, most of which seem to be imported. The piece seems to comment on ideas of independence and self sufficiency in a nation not wholly independent and (because of the rugged terrain where vegetables do not grow easily) dependent upon imported foods. It’s worth remembering that the practice of pilot whale hunting came to be because it was once a real struggle to find food to eat here.

I was soon seduced by Fuglø’s work, filled with surreal elements and comments on Faroese identity. The below piece, in the hotel’s lounge, is called “Cosmic Event” and superimposes a flying saucer over a vintage wedding scene.

Edward Fuglø, Cosmic Event

This one, in the reception area. I don’t have the title of as the third panel had been removed when I went to take a last look and photo of it. Again, though, Fuglø is obviously playing with ideas of identity.

You can see more of his work here: http://www.edwardfuglo.com/works.html

Edward Fuglø at Hotel Føroyar

Reykjavik Winter Morning Wanderings

Iceland

When I visit Iceland in the winter, my favourite time to stroll the streets of Reykjavík is in the morning, when, until late morning, the city is concealed beneath the long winter night’s cloak and tourists are few and far between.

I left my hotel after nine, while the streets were lit only by lamp posts and shop windows. I wandered through the town all the way to the old harbour, where I waited for the dark to slowly lift and for the sky to turn that ghostly winter blue I love so much.

What I was listening to:

Faroe Islands: Tórshavn to Kirkjubøer

Faroe Islands

On my first morning in the Faroe Islands, I woke up to the winter dark. The night before, driving from the airport to Tórshavn, I could only just trace the lines of the mountains; all the houses, meanwhile, aglow, outlined by festive lights.

I set out in the dark morning from my hotel high about the town, the lights of the harbour twinkling in the distance and just a dusting of snow underfoot. In the gradually lifting dark, I followed the blue dot on my phone’s map, making sure to stick to the trail up and over the mountain all the way to the village of Kirkjubøur. Once I set foot on the mountain I had no more use for that blue dot, guided by a series of cairns and a happy dog who’s name tag read Bella. Bella walked with me — bouncing ahead but always returning to me if I fell too far behind — until I safely arrived in Kirkjubøur.

The two-hour walk stretched and was expanded by my compulsive stopping and gawking at the scenery around me; the warm golden glow of the rising sun casting a heavenly glow over the mountainscape. To the right, the islands of Hestur and Koltur rose gracefully from the surprisingly still sea, basking in the soft light that revealed just enough of their forms to arouse curiosity.

The sights of Kirkjubøur are of great historical significance — the ruins of the 14th century Magnus Cathedral, the Faroes’ oldest still functioning church, and the world’s oldest still-inhabited wooden house. But my memories are of untangling the horns of a sheep that got itself stuck in a football net, gently pushing its poor, bleating head as I unwound and unwrapped the net; piles and piles of seaweed washed ashore, thick and sturdy as hockey sticks, the relentless crashing of the waves, and the soft snoring of the bus driver coming from a small room just off the pristine bus shelter where I waited until the designated time for the little red bus to take me back to Tórshavn.

Tórshavn. 9:30am

What I was listening to in the Faroe Islands:

Lynda Benglis: Water Sources at Storm King Art Center

Art Exhibition, New York, usa

Lynda Benglis: Water Sources

I was recently invited to attend a preview of a new temporary exhibition at Storm King Art Center, an open-air sculpture park in upstate New York.

In the Hudson Valley, about an hour north of New York City, Storm King sits on more than 500 acres of rolling hills, fields, and woodlands, and is home to a collection of more than 100 large-scale sculptures by artists including Alexander Calder, Maya Lin, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, and Richard Serra, David Smith.

Its two special exhibitions for the summer season are Lynda Benglis: Water Sources and Outlooks: Luke Stettner. With more than a dozen outdoor sculptures, as well as more inside the museum’s building, it is the first exhibition to display a major grouping of Benglis’s large-scale sculptures and fountains, which she has been producing since the early 1980s.

Lynda Benglis: Water Sources

This piece, North, South, East, West, features a crustacean-like piece called Crescendo, which sits atop the very first water fountain she made in 1983-84 for the New Orleans World Fair (it was lost for a long time after the World Fair went bankrupt.)

The surroundings of her early life influence her work. Benglis grew up in Louisiana, always around water and a witness to oil spills in bayous.

Lynda Benglis: Water Sources

This 2014 piece, named Pink Ladies, is inspired by a kite Benglis saw at a kite-flying festival in Ahmedabad, India. Benglis reminds us that pink is a natural colour, though we may not see it as such. The texture, she says, is inspired by the brain coral she sees on her frequent scuba diving trips.

Lynda Benglis: Water Sources

Hills and Clouds, her most recent work, glows after dark. Natural phosphorescence, such as in bioluminescent waters and phosphorescent caves, in another of Benglis’ indfluences. She also cites the glow-in-the-dark displays at funhouses in the South that she visited as a child.

Storm King are offering special evening visits to see this piece glow in the dark. Even without the full effect, in a blazing hot June sun in my case, it is well worth the visit for the rare opportunity to see these pieces.