Further Information

This Gimli, "A Shelter for the Vernacular Soul", is a place for us to cultivate a life of deep respect, humanity and a living relationship with nature and all that is. Our manifesto is to nurture connections with each other, with our place, and with the living world through rituals, workshops, events and feasts.

This Gimli, "A Shelter for the Vernacular Soul", is a place for us to remember and practice village mindedness, to enliven our imagination for a different way of being in the world and together. A way that nourishes both our soul and the soul of the world.

On a good day, well on any given day really, one could describe this project as a call to a cultural revolution and feasting events.

At the heart of this cultural revolution is the willingness to gather together and to reawaken our relationship to place and to others without slipping into the deep tracks of commodification and individualism.

This is a big dream, undoubtedly, and unrealistic in many ways, given the context of the times we live; but what else is there to do than to try and lay down a trail of bread-crumbs, hoping that some will be found by those who come after us and in turn nourish their imagination and village-mindedness. Will they hear our whispers for generations to come?

The Vernacular Soul is the relational outcome of the whole thing. It's the Vernacular culture that safeguards the stories and relational ways, even when we forget as individuals.

The project, This Gimli, is small and local. It is both an embodiment of this longing for connections and a village and a practice to enrich and strengthen the core elements of human life in relation and conversation with our current times.

We honor and invite beauty in all its forms to the hearth and center of This Gimli.

The heart of This Gimli is an exquisite handmade Mongolian yurt which is waiting as we “speak” in a safe storage in Reykjavík, waiting for a foundation and a good place on the outskirts of the capital. When autumn arrives our next mission is to find a good dome structure for her so she can withstand the Icelandic weather through the winter months and thereby continue to serve as a shelter for the vernacular soul.

“Gimli” is a name from the old norse mythology referring to a shelter during Ragnarök - the endings of the world in fire. The word is said to literally mean a shelter (respite) from fire. Today we mostly hear the word used when talking about the Icelandic settlement of Icelandic people in the 19th century in Manitoba, where the first settlers settled on naming their new home place , the town of Gimli.

“This” in front of Gimli is there to root us in a specific time and place and not least to make sure we do not fall into our habit of wanting to have the only thing, in this instance to claim Gimli as The shelter, the most important shelter and so forth, “This” helps us to counteract the tendency for uniqueness and supreme importance, the common longing of us to be at the forefront on the world stage in all different matters.

"This” is a prayer: May there be many shelters for these turbulent times in many places.

Our crowdfunding is for the material to build a platform as the foundation. The platform will be made of solid wood approximately 12m x 12m. In the fall we plan to raise a dome over the yurt, on the platform, to protect her from the winds and snow during the winter months.

We look to you, the public, so this project may become a reality. We ask that you support and participate in this much needed (in our humble opinion) cultural revolution and feasting practices.

This Gimli is a response to the deep cultural currents we are collectively dealing with at this time. Many people feel a deep sense of loss and loneliness at this time --- loss of connection to nature and place, loss of connection to each other, loss of reverence and a sense of the sacred.

Individualism and commodification has given us a sense of separation and a thirst for something more. The common focus seems often to be on the notion that there is something wrong with the individual that must be fixed. We’d like to offer an alternative perspective (at the same time we applaud and support the many institutes and therapeutic methods that are working to heal and help individuals).

If anything is obviously Icelandic vernacular culture, the heart of this vernacular soul, it must be stories, especially the stories that recount living relationships between the people, the place, and all that is. What might be termed as the mythic imagination. The foundation of this story mind, can be drawn into a very simple, yet profound sentence: A dragon is a dragon! That is to say a dragon is not a metaphor, he simply is what he is.

The cultural revolution we propose is not one that aims for the grand scale spectacular unique event that flips the world upside down, so to speak. What we are hinting at is fundamentally small and local, found in working connections, harmony, practice, eloquence, and nourishment for the spirit and the spirit of place.

This Gimli is a gift to the gods of small things, to the gods of beauty and culture.

Let’s practice this type of cultural revolution, little by little, every day, as people who come together.

Events and programs will be in the spirit of village-mindedness related to remembering our ancestries, stories, and honoring this place where we live and meet, this place that nourishes us and gives us shelter.

Viva la revolution! and hope to see you soon for a good feast at This Gimli.

Yours sincerely,

Elín Agla & Kristín Linda

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Drawings by Carm Espinal
Visual Design by Ali Dykstra