The Everyday Extraordinary

In June 2018 Justin Armstrong, a teacher at Welleslay Collage in Boston, brought his cultural anthropology field course to Ísafjörður as he had done for some years. When he looked outside the hotel window he noticed our museum that hadn’t been there in his previous visits. He emailed us, saying: “I teach a course called The Magic of Everyday Life! And I’m here with a group of my students! And we’re anthropologists! We need to meet!”

Boston students.

We were of course thrilled and the next day he brought his students for a visit and we made plans to collaborate on his return the following summer. We arranged visits for eight students with local residents where they spent an afternoon to learn about the magic of everyday life in the Westfjords.

The students processed the experience, using the anthropological tool-kit, and created a beautiful, creative and insightful exhibition in our Guestroom. 

It is an intimate dialouge between guest and host, visitor and local, and anthropologist and informant. As it says in the exhibition description, „it‘s where the the magic of everyday life bubbles up as the strange familiar and the familiar strange to create a truly unique cross-cultural understanding of the importance of anthropology and everyday life“

That truly is magical!

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