|
1
ScanDiaSyn-bloggen i august 2007
Fredag 24. august
 |
| Lena Andersen ready to mount an Icelandic horse. (Photo: Liva Sørensen) |
Lena Wienicke Andersen has uploaded some pictures from Iceland here, and I have also added the link to the archive page. It seems that she and Liva Sørensen went horseback riding in the aftermath of the Grand Meeting. That's certainly an appropriate thing to do in Iceland!
- Øystein
Onsdag 22. august
 |
| Peter lecturing about things that go bump in the night. (Photo: Caroline Heycock) |
The Mývatn Grand Meeting is over and most participants from outside should have come home from Iceland by now. I've set up an archive page for the meeting where we'll put various documents (handouts, slides) and information, including pictures from the event – currently there are links to two pages with pictures that Caroline took.
Now, the program continued Saturday with lectures by Rizzi, Thráinsson/Angantýsson, and Svenonius before the crowd was split into 8 groups. The tasks of the groups were to discuss the main topic of this years meeting plus evaluate the meeting as such and besides that take up whatever issues they felt like.
The group work took place in the afternoon, unlike the rest of the meeting, at the hotel, and the scientific part of the meeting culminated with a good almost two hour long plenary discussion before dinner. The discussion centered around issues of modularity and of parameters. To what extent are parameters as traditionally conceived of as feasible for understanding language variation at the microcomparative level? To what extent is syntactic variation a direct result of changes in other parts of the linguistic system? Should dialectal variation (across individuals) be studied along the lines of register variation (within the individual)?
 |
| Group work in Gamli Bærinn: Höskuldur, Pål (hidden), Karen Margrethe, Joan, and Marit. (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
The official closing dinner took place Saturday evening since several people would leave Sunday morning, missing the Askja excursion and subsequent proceedings (see below). Höskuldur delivered a speech and handed David Lightfoot the book ‘Icelandic Untamed’ – so that he could get an idea of what he would miss by not coming on the excursion. Gracious thanks were not only extended to our main invited speaker – the undersigned was left speechless by Höski's words and the book ‘Íslendingar’ plus the information that Höski had received altogether about 700 e-mail messages from him over the last few years.
 |
| From the plenary discussion (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
Sunday was excursion day. At 8 a.m. the buses started the long trip towards the volcano Askja, soon leaving the paved main road for a dirt road through Icelandic wasteland with magnificent scenery and the occasional green oasis amidst the lava fields. Mt. Herðubreið provided a point of orientation during most of the trip, moving from north to south east of it. Some pictures follow below.
 |
| Höski and Kristin singing a duet at Gamli Bærinn. (Photo: Caroline Heycock) |
The real culmination of the whole event occurred later the same day when we were all back at the hotel and assembled for a grill meal at the restaurant Gamli Bærinn. Ásgrímur had brought in a two of his musician friends, allowing for extensive musical entertainment with Höskuldur in the forefront. It all started with a couple of duets with Höski and Kristin, proceeded to a section with a Nordic song contest, and ended with a full dance floor and the band playing Icelandic rock tunes.
Monday morning a significant part of the participants left Mývatn and Iceland with the direct flight from Akureyri to Copenhagen. Peter, Christin, and I stayed on and met with the NORMS Scientific Advisory Board (Alexiadou, Newmeyer, and Rizzi). We brought them up to date with the past and planned activities of NORMS and discussed various issues related to the project. We then headed for Reykjavík together in the afternoon, had dinner together there, and then parted ways. As for myself I took a night flight to Copenhagen and arrived back in Tromsø Tuesday morning at 11.10.
- Øystein
 |
| Askja road-sign (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
 |
| Mt. Herðubreið and waterfall in Grafalandaá (Photo: Caroline Heycock) |
 |
| On the way to Askja in the Askja bus (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
 |
| Picnic at Herðubreiðarlindir, en route to Askja. Terje, Marit, and Christer. (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
 |
| People swimming in Víti crater at Askja. (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
 |
| Luckily nobody fell in! Jökulsá á Fjöllum (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
Fredag 17. august
 |
| A view of tranquil "Mosquito Lake" (Mývatn) (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
The weather has become significantly better at Mývatn. Now it's quite pleasant. However, with the rising temperature come also the "mýflugur".
 |
| Terje Lohndal presenting his paper at the workshop for PhD students (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
The Grand Meeting started yesterday. While the ScanDiaSyn/NORMS group leaders had a morning meeting the rest of the crowd was sent on a sightseeing tour sponsored by the town. Then the program proper started after lunch with some project reports and continued with the first session of regular papers (by Rosenkvist, Koeneman, Poletto, Lødrup, and the undersigned). The program continued today with first a workshop for PhD-students in the morning and then with the invited lecture by David Lightfoot after lunch, followed by further papers of the main program (by Eide, Bennis, Alexiadou, and Newmeyer).
 |
| Höskuldur Thráinsson introducing invited speaker David Lightfoot (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
Yesterday was closed off by a visit to the thermal bath, and I'm sure many of the participants will be tempted to do so today too.
 |
| Concentrated listeners at the 2007 Grand Meeting (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
- Øystein
Onsdag 15. august
It hasn't snowed today. The temperature has actually risen to 4°C. There have been a series of preparatory meetings during the day. Peter and I had the last one in the hot springs at Jarðböðin in the hours before the main crowd arrived.
- Øystein
 |
| At Jarðböðin. (Photo: Peter Svenonius) |
Tysdag 14. august
 |
| Hverfell/Hverfjall, Mývatn (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
 |
| Peter and Höski in front of Goðafoss (Photo: Øystein A. Vangsnes) |
Höskuldur, Peter, and I drove up from Reykjavík to Mývatn today. Rekjavík was nice and sunny – up here the temperature is 3°C... Now we're just praying that it won't snow tomorrow night when the hords of people come in for the Grand Meeting. The program has been continuously updated over the last week or so.
- Øystein
|
