The one-eyed Odin with his ravens Hugin and Munin: detail from the Icelandic Manuscript SÁM 66. Courtesy Arni Magnusson Institute, Reykjavik/Wikipedia
The one-eyed Odin with his ravens Hugin and Munin: detail from the Icelandic Manuscript SÁM 66. Courtesy Arni Magnusson Institute, Reykjavik/Wikipedia
Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
The collection of stories known as the Icelandic sagas are foundational works of Icelandic culture that are still widely read in the country today. Predating the Christianisation of Iceland in 1000 CE, these tales intermingle history, Norse paganism, and a morality steeped in warrior traditions and the northerly island’s rugged, barren terrain. In this performance and lecture, Kári Gíslason, a professor of creative writing and literary studies at Queensland University of Technology, evokes the sagas’ roots in oral storytelling as he melds his own story with that of the saga character Disa, whose tale of exile, love, murder and loyalty captivated Gíslason’s imagination as a young student and, in doing so, altered the trajectory of his life.
Video by the State Library of Queensland
video
Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
video
Childhood and adolescence
Marmar is living through a devastating war – but she’d rather tell you about her new dress
8 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?
12 minutes
video
Art
A puppeteer makes sense of an overwhelming world by shrinking it down to size
5 minutes
video
History
There are fragments of Romani Gypsy history all over the UK – if one knows where to look
3 minutes
video
Biology
Brilliant dots of colour form exquisite patterns in this close-up of butterfly wings
3 minutes
video
Anthropology
Does Mogi’s future lie with her horses on the Mongolian steppe, or in the city?
16 minutes
video
Genetics
Why it took a century to work out that humans interbred with Neanderthals
22 minutes