SYMBIOSIS

We had a poster (in Icelandic) at the Þjóðarspegillinn annual conference of the School of Social Sciences. There is room for improvement, but the photographs are wonderful, courtesy of Helga Ögmundardóttir, Dagný Kristinsdóttir and Birna Ásbjörnsdóttir:

That is the feeling here these days. We said goodbye to our summer researchers last week with a small banquet of pickles and sourdough bread with delicious homemade blueberry kombucha, courtesy of Dagný Kristinsdóttir.

Dagný and Ragnheiður Þórdís have been interviewing brewing, pickling and sourdough enthusiasts and experimenting with their methods themselves, documenting the processes with multimedia. Their research will form an integral part of the data used in the project, especially for preparing a questionnaire developed with the National Museum of Iceland that will be issued at the beginning of 2022.

The project has been joined by two young researchers; folklorists Ragnheiður Þórdís Jónsdóttir and Dagný Kristinsdóttir who, along with Ragnheiður Maísól Sturludóttir, will be conducting qualitative inquiries into practices and practicioners working with microbes to make food and drink at home. During the summer they will use interviews and participatory observation to document vernacular practices, maker cultures and materialities involved in homebrewing kombucha, kefir exchanges, sourdough baking and more. Their work will form the basis for a series of questionnaires issued by the National Museum of Iceland next year.