"Svalbard's Daughters"; Personal Accounts by Svalbard's Female Pioneers

Ingrid Urberg is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the Augustana Campus, University of Alberta in Camrose, AB where she teaches a variety of Norwegian language, Scandinavian literature and Scandinavian culture courses. Along with a colleague, she has recently developed a course called Explorations of the Canadian North, an interdisciplinary course which combines the study and writing of personal narratives with a
homestead stay/dogsled expedition in the Northwest Territories. Her current research projects are both connected to personal narratives. The first is an oral history project-The Norwegian Immigrant Experience in Alberta-which involves interviewing first generation Norwegian immigrants in Alberta. The second project
revolves around first hand written accounts by women who have lived for extended periods on Svalbard. She is focusing on issues of gender, marginalization, place, and identity in those works, and she is planning on broadening the scope of that research to include
women's personal narratives from Greenland and Northern
Canada. She was awarded the Augustana Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002, and the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit in 2006. From 2002-2005 she served as the President of NORTANA, The Norwegian Researchers and Teachers of North America. She is a frequent presenter at academic conferences in North America, and she is a frequent visitor to Norway.