Thesis Christ: Forming an Icelandic Identity with Lindie Lewis

What does it mean to think about colonialism outside of a British imperial context? How can indigeneity be used to describe cultures and peoples otherwise considered white? Lindie Lewis is dealing with these issues as she writes her thesis on Icelandic formations of identity through material culture. Lewis, a Spring/Fall senior majoring in anthropology, focuses in her thesis on people’s engagement with cultural heritage in postcolonial Iceland and the ways these interactions build a national identity.

Lewis was first inspired to explore the role of material culture in Iceland after reading The Return of Cultural Treasures by Jeannette Greenfield. Greenfield uses the return of medieval Icelandic manuscripts from Denmark in her discussion of repatriation, which made Lewis consider the effect of these repatriation efforts on the development of cultural consciousness over time. Within anthropology, Lewis has a concentration in political science, which has informed her thesis’ focus on representations of soft cultural power and led her to draw from political theory in her analysis. Lewis’ final product will combine multiple different fields from ethnography to archeology. 

This summer, Lewis went to Iceland to conduct ethnographic research, which ended up shaping the direction of her thesis. While there, she was able to experience several festivals firsthand, including the Independence Day ceremony and the Reykjavik Arts Festival. Lewis recorded interviews with various people she met in Iceland, from professors at the University of Iceland to attendees at the festivals. These interviews are now interspersed with her more traditional anthropological analysis within the text of her thesis.

Lewis spoke highly of her experience abroad and encouraged anyone who gets the chance to go abroad for thesis research to take it. “I really didn’t know what I was doing, but [by] the end, without those experiences, I would have had a much different thesis and I don’t think it would have been as meaningful,” said Lewis. 

Lewis’ time in Iceland led her thesis in some unexpected directions. She recounted how finding a reference to the Nazi party in Iceland in a mystery novel she read during the trip prompted her to investigate the hidden racial politics in Iceland at the time of its independence from Denmark in 1944. “Going from a murder mystery novel in an airport to all of this archival research that ended up being the bulk of my third chapter was really crazy,” Lewis remarked. From there, Lewis investigated a largely untouched history of racism in Iceland, including the existence of escaped Nazis in the Icelandic Parliament after independence and Nazi-adjacent policies in the legislation of the time. 

Throughout her thesis, Lewis explores how postcolonialism applies to Iceland uniquely as a country without a typical history of settlement in the European colonial context. Lewis explained, “There was no indigenous population before the settlement which is not how we conceptualize a lot of our settler narratives.” As a majority white nation separating itself from another majority white nation, Icelandic ideas of indigeneity run counter to many established ideas about racialized national identities in the postcolonial era. For Lewis, considering colonialism among white cultures is a necessary part of discussions of indigeneity. “I do think that in my time at Reed I talk about race all the time in academic settings but I never talk about whiteness in the same way that I talk about that. I think it’s really important to do that so that we don’t unintentionally set a standard for whiteness to be the standard,” explained Lewis. 

In the future, Lewis plans to continue working with issues of material culture by going to law school, where she intends to explore cultural property law and international policy. Lewis affirmed the free-flowing nature of the thesis process and expressed her appreciation for the new directions each step in the journey can lead to. “I genuinely thought mine would just be about the return of these manuscripts and then it opened up this whole question of indigeneity, colonialism, identity, and nation building,” she reflected. While Lewis does not definitively answer the questions she raises, the process of writing her thesis has helped her to articulate the ongoing importance of having discussions about the colonial legacies within our concepts of national identity in Iceland and beyond.