[Exhibition in The Old Library Art and Culture Project.]

During the village festival in Drangsnes, Iceland artist and researcher Erik Sjödin showed a selection of videos from visits to beekeepers in Iceland. The videos were shown in the old village library, which is now a space for art and culture activities and for selling local produce and craft.

the videos were displayed on tablets borrowed from the middle and upper school in Drangsnes. I used all of the seven small tablets the school had, which is about one for every student in the school.

[Apiary at Íslenski bærinn. Video: Erik Sjödin.]

The videos, like the ones above and below, are work in progress from Settlers, a project that explores the context of beekeeping in Iceland. They show apiaries in Iceland with comments from beekeepers on the particular circumstances of beekeeping on Iceland. More videos can be found here.

[Apiary in Hveragerði. Video: Erik Sjödin.]

Beekeeping is for various reasons not yet established in Iceland (it could be the weather). However an increasing number of people are making efforts to import and keep bees. This summer a new shipment with seventy something bee colonies arrived by airplane to Iceland from Åland, an island group in the Baltic sea. If these bees survive and reproduce it could mean that beekeeping is established in Iceland. If they don’t it will be one of several attempts to import bees that have not succeeded in creating a sustainable honeybee population in Iceland.

Thanks to Marta Guðrún Jóhannesdóttir for arranging the exhibition in The Old Library Arts and Culture Project during the village festival in Drangsnes, and for opening up the school in Drangsnes as a residency during the students summer leave. To Bjartni for leaving the bottle of home made dandelion sherry open during the exhibition. To the interviewed beekeepers, and to Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point and the Swedish-Icelandic Co-operation Fund for supporting my travels to work with this project on Iceland.