Literate Landscapes: Revitalising Icelandic Cultural Memory Through the Narratives of Place

Icelandic oral and written narratives are deeply ingrained in their cultural identity. These same narratives are invisible to the unfamiliar, in which landscapes are considered purely from an aesthetic position and misinform the viewer of the significance of these places by concealing the stories. 

This thesis intends to propose how narrative can provide context to a landscape, enhancing the understanding of the site by referencing the past, present, and future.

The second part concerns Icelandic literature, in which narratives are understood and engaged with through fragments of thematic and literal stories. The portrayal of the land and characters within critical narratives, The Poetic Edda, The Prose Edda and Íslendingasögur (The Sagas of Icelanders), provide performative references in how the land can provide the stage for narrative, in which architecture can be implemented as signifiers of stories.

These two components inform the design process towards creating a culturally resonant journey across three spatial moments, threaded together in the land by a collective narrative whose roots are deeply interwoven with the linguistic ideals so pertinent to the original literature of Iceland. The architecture engages with the history of their literate pasts and landscapes by offering a sequential chapter between moments of narrative passage.