Ongoing work on Nordic Theology
Svalbard Conference
The Revd Dr Jack Dyce, our Emeritus Professor of Nordic Theology will deliver a paper at a conference organised by Island Dynamics at Longyearbyen, Svalbard in polar Norway in January 2019 for a conference on the theme of Darkness. The organisation is an international scholarly community originating in Shetland but now based in Copenhagen which fosters academic conversation around island studies and interdisciplinary collaboration in this field.
“As Dark as Snow”
An investigation of how snow serves the darkness motif in Nordic Noir crime fiction
The dominant Nordic aesthetic has often been one of light, from the translucence of sea and sky at Skagen to the eerie aurora of Northern lands. The thriving literary genre, Nordic Noir, with wide impact from social-political criticism to tourism, has drawn on a polar opposite – the dark. This darkness reflects variously evil, guilt, hiddenness, mystery, threat, fear, wickedness, ulterior motivation, pessimism, folly, depth (and yet a kind of comfort). Snow, with its imagined brightness and purity, might seem a strange candidate to be the servant of the dark narrative.
Multiple Media Perspectives on Portraying Prisons
In this connection, Jack is developing work on three related Danish narratives: the film ‘R’, the penal museum at Horsens and the replacement prison of East Jutland.