Chair of the Snorri Foundation since 2023
Gísli's grandfather on his father's side was a journalist at Lögberg in Winnipeg in the early 1900s before returning to Iceland in 1911, and his mother studied Home Economics in Minneapolis in the late 1940s. Gísli himself studied medieval literature at the UofM in Winnipeg in the early 1980s and travelled through New Iceland, taking inteviews in Icelandic about life and work in the Interlake area.
Gísli was a visiting professor in the Icelandic department at UofM in 1988 and has since written on the Icelandic language in North America (http://ait.arnastofnun.is/grein.php?id=705), edited a collection of oral folklore collected during the winter of 1972-73 among people with Icelandic roots in Canada and the US (https://www.arnastofnun.is/is/sogururvesturheimi) – as well as published on the eddas and sagas, such as in http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_SigurdssonG.The_Medieval_Icelandic_Saga_and_Oral_Tradition.2004
Gísli also studied in Ireland but now lives with his wife and family of two daughters and two grandchildren in Reykjavík. He works as a Research Professor at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland where he teaches in the folklore department. He has produced radio shows on the medieval literature of Iceland, its reception and cultural identity, and has been involved in exhibitions, movies and documentaries on Vikings and the Vinland voyages, for example the big Viking exhibition at the Smithsonian that travelled around in North America at the beginning of our millennia.
Gísli now serves as the chair of the Icelandic National league, Þjóðræknisfélag Íslendinga, and the chair of the Snorri Board.
Gísli was a visiting professor in the Icelandic department at UofM in 1988 and has since written on the Icelandic language in North America (http://ait.arnastofnun.is/grein.php?id=705), edited a collection of oral folklore collected during the winter of 1972-73 among people with Icelandic roots in Canada and the US (https://www.arnastofnun.is/is/sogururvesturheimi) – as well as published on the eddas and sagas, such as in http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_SigurdssonG.The_Medieval_Icelandic_Saga_and_Oral_Tradition.2004
Gísli also studied in Ireland but now lives with his wife and family of two daughters and two grandchildren in Reykjavík. He works as a Research Professor at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland where he teaches in the folklore department. He has produced radio shows on the medieval literature of Iceland, its reception and cultural identity, and has been involved in exhibitions, movies and documentaries on Vikings and the Vinland voyages, for example the big Viking exhibition at the Smithsonian that travelled around in North America at the beginning of our millennia.
Gísli now serves as the chair of the Icelandic National league, Þjóðræknisfélag Íslendinga, and the chair of the Snorri Board.
