Icelandic – Multilingual Month

The Flying Carpet – Fljúgandi teppi

The Flying Carpet – intercultural encounters

The Flying Carpet is a method of facilitated intercultural encounters created by Kristin R. Vilhjálmsdóttir. By implementing the The Flying Carpet in the teaching, students, parents and staff members get an opportunity to introduce their culture, languages and interests in a fun and lively way within an encouraging environment.

The emphasis is to not only work with aspects of national culture or backgrounds, but also individual interests and those things that matter the most in each and every person’s life.

The project should promote mutual respect and understanding between people in a concrete way and through different means of expressions. Everyone involved is received with acknowledgement. Through the cultural interaction that takes place the goal is to help developing life-skills that foster the view that diversity makes us richer, rather than seeing it as a cause for conflict.

Each individual is a participant and a spectator at the same time.

Awards

2010 and 2015: Nominated to the society price of “Fréttablaðið”, an Icelandic news paper, in the category “actions against prejudice”.

2017: The Icelandic contribution to The Nordic Language Festival in Aarhus.

2017: The Flying Carpet received The European Language Label.

Information about the Flying carpet in English

Video about the Flying Carpet in English

Reykjavik City Library runs several intercultural projects where the goal is to promote awareness of the positive values of cultural diversity in our society. The library puts an emphasis on co-operating with social service centres, schools, organizations and individuals from all over the world living in Reykjavík. The IFLA/UNESCO Multicultural Library Manifesto is used as a guideline in this work.

Kristín R. Vilhjálmsdóttir is the manager of multicultural projects at Reykjavík City Library. She is a language teacher and intercultural project manager, who has coordinated several award-winning projects related to interculturalism and multilingualism.

The Women’s Story Circle (Söguhringur kvenna) in Reykjavik City Library

Image: a visual art piece, a new map of Reykjavík, created by The Women´s Story Circle under the guidance of Lilianne Vorstenbosch

A worldful of stories

The Women’s Story Circle is a co-operation between Reykjavik City Library and W.O.M.E.N. in Iceland. A forum where women exchange stories, experiences and cultural backgrounds and take part in creative activities. It is open to women who are interested in meeting other women, sharing stories and ideas and having a nice time in good and relaxed company. The Women’s Story Circle also gives women who want to practice the Icelandic language the perfect opportunity to express themselves in Icelandic and enhance their language skills.

All women are welcome! Here is a short video about the project.

You can follow the activities on Facebook, we have a group and a page.

Litteraturcentrum Uppsala

Litteraturcentrum Uppsala is a collaboration of Studiefrämjandet, Kultur i länet, Kulturrådet, Uppsala city, Uppsala regional library and Svenska Pen. Its aim is to support local reading and writing and the regional literary field including a multilingual context. The centre is based in Uppsala, and it is a part of the culture plan of the Uppsala region.

The people involved in the activities of Litteraturcentrum Uppsala use at least the following languages: Swedish, Sami, Arabic, Bengali, Dari, French, German, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Wolof, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Estonian, Kokborok, Beluch, English, Tamil, Georgian, Turkish etc.

Anisur Rahman, the project leader for LItteraturcentrum Uppsala describes the work:

“We are interested in both the artistic and social effects of literature. We work locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, and have established productive partnerships with several organizations, including literary organizations, local theatres and schools. Our centre is now a platform for both professional and amateur writers in diverse mother languages. It is a meeting point for native, foreign, immigrant and exiled writers. We publish more than a hundred writers a year in our literary anthology from our creative writing workshops every year. We host more than a hundred literary events a year.

Our centre in Uppsala together with Litteraturcentrum in Tranås, Litteratur resurscentrum in Norbotten and similar project in Jämtland-Harjedalen is now Sweden’s international literary checkpoint where we have growing network and exchange with different continents. All are welcome on board to read and write in diverse languages in defense of free word and free thought.”

Anisur Rahman is Uppsala’s guest writer 2009–2011 in the ICORN system and currently project leader for Litteraturcentrum Uppsala, Studiefräjandet Uppsalaregion, http://www.litteraturcentrum.se/

Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism

Móðurmál (Mother Tongue) is an NGO founded in Reykjavik in 1994 as The Parents of Bilingual Children Association (Samtök foreldra tvítyngdra barna). It supports multilingualism by teaching languages to bi- or plurilingual children and develops structured language programs with clearly defined curricula and goals. It has offered instruction in over twenty languages for plurilingual children since 1994.

Móðurmál offers of has offered teaching in Albanian, in Arabic, in Czech, in Chinese, in English, in Filipino, in French, in German, in Ghanaian Languages Ewe & Twi, in Indonesian, in Italian, in Japanese, in Korean, in Latvian, in Lithuanian, in Nepalese, in Polish, in Portuguese, in Russian, in Serbian, in Slovakian, in Spanish, in Swedish, in Thai, in Turkish, in Ukrainian, and in Víetnamese

Móðurmál has received the following awards:

2008: “Vel að verki staðið” (“For A Job Well Done”) certificate of recognition from the Intercultural Centre for Mother Tongue’s active work on immigrantion issues in Iceland. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2014: “Samfélagsverðlaun Fréttablaðsins“ (The Society Award of Frettabladid) in category “From Generation to Generation“. The award was presented by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

2016: “Foreldraverðlaun Heimilis og skóla” (Parents’ award from the National Parents’ Association) for mother tongue teaching of bilingual children

Ós Pressan

Ós Pressan is a non-profit initiative designed to think of literature in an updated way, to bring out and promote new authors, to create an inclusive, multilingual writing community and to challenge the reality of the publishing industry in Iceland.

From Ós Pressan’s website you can find the newest collective publications of the community and presentations of the authors and other artists or journalists linked to this community that includes a wider range of writers, languages and visions.

The writers connected to Ós Pressan write in Icelandic, English, Spanish and Polish.

Sivuvalo – Is This Finnish Literature?

Sivuvalo project is a creative platform for writers who write in other than the two national languages in Finland. It offers information about transnational writers, edits publications and organizes multimedia poetry readings, workshops and other artistic collaborations.

The coordinator of the project is Peruvian poet Roxana Crisólogo and the producer of “Mutant Language” multimedia poetry evenings is Mexican poet and designer Daniel Malpica.

Sivuvalo´s website also includes a wide link list of writers who write in different languages in Finland.
Among them there are writers who write in Arabic, Burmese, English, Icelandic, Kurdish, Persian, Russian, Northern Sámi, Somali and Spanish.

NolitchX, Nordic Literatures in Change and Exchange

Nolitch X, Nordic Literatures in Change and Exchange, is a literature project (2017) with the objective of creating networks of immigrant language writers in the Nordic region. This initiative is a Nordic collaboration between associations, groups and individual writers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. NolitchX has support from Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point and Malmö Stad.

Multilingual Library, Helsinki, Finland

The Multilingual Library is located in Pasila Library, Helsinki and its collections cover over 80 languages. Customers living outside of Helsinki can order all materials to their local libraries around Finland.

The Multilingual library also hosts a blog about current topics related to literature and multilingualism. The blog has blogs in English and occasionally in other languages, e.g. in Somali, Persian and Arabic.

Customers who cannot find their own language among the language collection can suggest items to add to the collection.

In the book collection you find books at least in the following languages:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Byelorussian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Greenlandic, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Karelian, Khmer, Komi, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mari, Nepalese, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sámi, Sign language, Slovakian, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamili, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese and Yiddish

The mother languages of the permanent staff at Pasila Library, which is the physical location of Multilingual Library, include Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian, Estonian and Somali.