How to Listen to a Mountain
One-day symposium developed as part of visual artist and practice-based PhD researcher Julie Lænkholm’s doctoral research.
Centred around Strandatindur, the mountain overlooking Seyðisfjörður, the symposium brings together artists, scientists, local knowledge holders, and community members to explore different ways of knowing, experiencing, and relating to a changing landscape.
Through geology, climate science, local memory, embodied knowledge, artistic practice, storytelling, music, and collective walking, we ask: What does it mean to listen to a mountain?
The symposium emerges from a shift in Lænkholm’s artistic research - from an initial idea of earth weaving as a way of holding a mountain together towards an approach grounded in listening, observing, and working with the mountain’s own ecological processes. Weaving becomes both a metaphor and a methodology, connecting different voices, disciplines, and forms of knowledge while allowing contradictions, unexpected encounters, and new understandings to emerge. Rather than approaching the mountain solely as an object of study or intervention, How to Listen to a Mountain invites us to consider how attention, proximity, memory, and care might transform our relationships with the landscapes of which we are a part.
We look forward to welcoming you to Seyðisfjörður and invite you to join us for a day of conversations, shared experiences, walking, and listening.
Email skaftfell@skaftfell.is to register your participation for free.
| 10:30 – 10:45 |
Arrival, Tea and Welcome Mountain tea made with plants from Strandatindur and freshly baked croissants. An exhibition titled ”Do we look at the mountains? Or do the mountains look at us?” by local queer artists Ra Tack and Bella Podpadec will be open throughout the day. Julie Lænkholm - Visual artist and practice-based PhD researcher, PASS / Niels Bohr Institute Introduction to How to Listen to a Mountain, weaving as methodology, and a shift from intervening in the landscape towards listening to and working with its own ecological processes. |
Chapter I: Listening to the Landscape
| 10:45 - 11:15 |
Listening Through Geology and Monitoring Martina Stefani - Geologist, Natural Hazard Team What does it mean to monitor a mountain? What can scientific instruments tell us about its movement, and what remains beyond measurement? |
| 11:15 - 11:35 |
Stories from the Fjord Olafia Maria Gisladottir, family, friends and members of the local community Personal stories, memories and lived relationships with Strandatindur, the river and the fjord. |
| 11:35 - 11:50 |
Embodied Fjord Practice Mariana Murcia - Artist Swimming in the fjord as an artistic and embodied practice, encountering water, temperature, vulnerability and landscape. |
| 11:50 - 12:00 |
Listening Before Making Asta Birna — Landscape architect How do we listen to the land before working with it? Reflections on ecological attention, responsibility and landscape interventions. |
| 12:00 - 12:10 | Short break |
| 12:10 - 12:30 |
Embodied Weather Knowledge Marzibil Erlendsdóttir - Second-generation lighthouse keeper and weather observer for the Icelandic Meteorological Office In conversation with Julie Lænkholm. Weather as lived experience, inherited knowledge and daily observation. How do we come to know a landscape through wind, clouds, light and changing sea conditions? |
| 12:30 - 13:15 | Lunch Skaftfell Bistro |
Chapter II: Cultivating Care
| 13:15 - 13:40 |
Climate Change and Positive Tipping Points Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen — Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen Climate change, positive tipping points and the possibilities for transformative environmental action. |
| 13:40 - 14:05 |
Plants, Soil and Restoration Guðrún Óskarsdóttir — Plant ecologist, East Iceland Nature Research Centre A conversation about biodiversity, lupines on Strandatindur, soil restoration and the unintended consequences of ecological interventions. |
| 14:05 - 14:15 | Short break |
Chapter III: Atmospheric Rivers and Collective Anti-Monumental Landscape Making
| 14:15 - 14:40 |
Landscape, Art History and Anti-Monumental Practice Mikkel Bogh — Professor, art historian and Centre Leader of PASS A conversation about landscape, artistic representation, anti-monumental practice and the possibilities for art to transform our relationships with place. |
| 14:40 - 15:05 |
Storytelling, Film and Communicating Climate Change Andri Snær Magnason — Author, filmmaker and environmental storyteller How can storytelling connect scientific knowledge with memory, imagination and emotional experience? How might stories make climate change tangible and open possibilities for different futures? |
| 15:05 - 15:15 | Preparing for the Walk |
| 15:15 - 16:30 |
Walking with the Mountain A collective walk on Strandatindur. Walking as a way of listening, observing and encountering the mountain through movement, attention and bodily experience. |
| 16:30 - 17:00 |
Music and Voices for the Mountain Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir - Harpist A musical encounter with and for Strandatindur, exploring sound, resonance and the relationship between music, landscape and listening. Local choir A collective moment of singing and listening, bringing human voices into dialogue with the mountain and the fjord. |
| 17:00 | Closing |