The Blaine Icelandic Heritage Society brings the story of Njáls Saga to the Blaine Public Library (610 3rd St, Blaine) for a Thursday afternoon on May 22. This ancient Icelandic Saga, which is one of Iceland’s most cherished sagas, is rendered in a tapestry that employs an equally ancient embroidery technique.
The present-day small community in Iceland where the ancient saga took place decided to recreate the story in an embroidered tapestry. The result, after seven years of work involving thousands of volunteer embroiderers from over 150 countries, may be the world’s longest tapestry – nearly the entire length of a football field.
Claudia Pétursson will give a talk on the saga, the community, and the tapestry at 4 pm in the meeting room of the Blaine Library. To help illustrate her talk she will have a nearly twenty-foot segment of the tapestry on display. Pétursson lives in Reykjavík, Iceland. She is traveling across North America this spring and summer to give presentations on the tapestry project in communities where Icelandic settlers lived. Blaine, Point Roberts, and Bellingham were popular settlement communities on the Pacific coast.
Pétursson has already made presentations on the saga and tapestry at a Scandinavian conference in Minneapolis, and an Icelandic Convention in Manitoba. She will be doing a week-long residency in the Metchosin Arts and Cultural Centre in Victoria, B.C. before presenting in Pt. Roberts and Blaine.
She plans to bring the story of the saga and the tapestry to Icelandic events this summer in Alberta, Manitoba, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Colorado. She is scheduling additional stops on the east coast including Washington, D.C. before she wraps up in the late fall.
And before embarking on that whirlwind North American tour, Claudia Pétursson will share the ancient Icelandic tale “told” through the images of a modern tapestry that was created using an ancient stitch, for one fine spring afternoon in the Blaine Library.
Blaine Icelanders 