Societies
Obituaries Irene Garland by Mark Elliott Irene Garland, who died in January this year shortly before her 77th birthday, had for many years been one of the most active committee members of the Anglo-Norse Society of London (ANS). In her capacity as Secretary of the ANS she was particularly diligent in her involvement with CoScan, maintaining correspondence with us and distributing CoScan material to ANS members. She was at the CoScan Conference most recently in Aarhus in 2016, and at other CoScan functions. Perhaps her most valuable contribution to our interests was for the celebration of CoScan’s 60th anniversary celebrations in 2010, when she played a considerable part in the organisation of the lunch held in October that year in Westminster. Vera Irene Karlsen was born in Norway and brought up in Oslo. She travelled widely both in Norway and abroad, and met her future husband Roger Garland on a trip to Israel. They settled in London and had two children, and Irene was active in teaching both at the Norwegian School and at university level, in other translation and interpretation work, and with the Norwegian Church. For many years she was on the staff of the Norwegian Embassy in London, and her office for part of the time that she served as ANS Secretary was at the
Embassy. Her husband Roger was also regularly to be seen at ANS meetings, with the important role of presiding over refreshments — he was renowned as a catering expert. Irene’s latest great task for the Anglo-Norse Society was her work on the celebration of the Society’s centenary in 2018, in particular the staging of a reception in November at a London club attended by the two Royal patrons, Queen Elizabeth and King Harald. My personal recollections of Irene are of a person who could be both warm and business-like, ready to help and able to get things done. As a Norwegian with decades of experience in British living, she symbolised the closeness of Scandinavian and British culture very much in the spirit of CoScan’s own objectives. We shall miss her as a colleague, and as a friend.
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