Iceland is a place with many imaginaries. It is host to a great richness of oral and supernatural traditions. Although sorcery, prophecy and the like are found worldwide, there are clearly distinct Icelandic variants. Did you know that Iceland’s many sorcerers and witches are almost entirely male, for example, and that they never ride broomsticks?

Iceland’s amazing landscapes have fostered a rich culture of the imagination. As May and Hallberg Hallmundsson write in the introduction to their book on Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales, Iceland’s humanity is fashioned by a deep experience of the land that has imprinted itself on the minds of its residents. Each feature of the land

Who would think that a country named for its vast expanses of glacial ice would also be the home of incredible underground heat. Steam literally pours out from the underground in many parts of this magical country. Lakes and rivers steam in the cold air. There are also abundant signs of volcanic activity, both from

On my way to Tallinn Estonia to give a paper on the Ponnivala Animation Project my husband and I stopped in Iceland for a week of camping and exploration. We planned to search for old Icelandic legends, known as Sagas. Could we find something resembling South India’s Legend of Ponnivala, that huge oral folk epic

I set out in late July with my husband Eric for a lovely week of exploration in Iceland. We were on our way to Estonia where I was scheduled to give a paper at a European Social Anthropology conference in Tallinn. We had heard that Iceland was an amazing country geologically and so we rented

The Legend of Ponnivala put up a large booth at FeTNA 2014 and we had plenty of visitors! Families, kids and individuals of all ages kept us busy. Many participants expressed interest and visited us more than once. We were kept busy by grandmothers, parents, young adults and even kids.  All wanted to learn more!

St. Louis, Missouri is famous as “America’s Gateway to the West” which is memorialized in a stunningly beautiful arch of immense proportions. It is so large that there is actually tramway hidden inside it that allows visitors to go to the very top. We took this tour and were thrilled with the lovely view of

The Ponnivala team was in St. Louis last week for FeTNA 2014. We enjoyed all the displays, cultural presentations, and even some fun workshops like Zoe Sherinian’s drumming workshop. Professor Zoe Sherinian (Ethnomusicology, University of Oklahoma) is a phenomenon all her own.  She has specialized in the playing of the Tamil parai drum for many

On Monday, June 23, Parthi Kandavel’s grade three class from Sathya Sai School came out to Ponnivala headquarters for an all-day field trip. Despite the long drive (nearly two hours), the youngsters arrived full of energy and enthusiasm. The day started off with a meditation by the pond. During the afternoon, the class was divided,