RECEl~ED
MAR 0 1 2017
EMBLA NYHETER EMBLA LODGE NO. 2, DAUGHTERS OF NORWAY Tacoma, Washington March-April, 2017 VOL. 30, NO. 2 Publication Committee: Sarah Callow Janet Ruud Marilyn Mahnke Chris Engstrom
Photo Contributors: Sue Bentz Karen Bell Diane Nelson Marilyn Mahnke Sarah Callow
Welcome New President - Lisa Marie Ottoson Greetings to all Embla Sisters! I am so pleased to have the opportunity to be the President of Embla Lodge #2 this year. It has been a long considered personal goal and I will do my very best to serve you in an effective and fair manner. For those of you who are newer to our lodge, I'll share that I've been a member of Embla since 1999, when I joined with my mother and grandmother. We have had such amazing experiences through the Daughters of Norway, but the most gratifying is the wonderful friendships that have been forged as sisters over the years. On a personal note, I have family in the Trondheim area of Norway, over the Stavanger fjord, and then to Oslo. I have been blessed to have travelled to Norway on multiple occasions and am always looking forward to returning again soon! Other organizations with which I am involved include the Scandinavian Cultural Center at Pacific Lutheran University (my alma mater) as well as the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize Board of Directors, and the City of Tacoma, Alesund, Norway Sister City Committee. (Film Festival night is March 13, at the Grand Cinema, 6 PM) . I welcome input and suggestions from you and encourage you to share ideas, thoughts and ways to improve our lodge, our membership and our fellowship . Let's have a great year together! Janet Ruud installing Lisa Hilsen, Marie as new president Lisa Marie Ottoson
Elisabeth Ward to Speak at March Meeting The topic for our program at the March 2 meeting will be: "The Women of Vinland Controversy and Viking Age Exploration of North America". This will be presented by the director of the Scandinavian Cultural Center, Elisabeth Ward, Ph.D. (who, sadly, will be leaving March 17 to take on a new job as the Director of the Los Altos History Museum in Los Altos, California). For centuries in the Nordic countries, the only source of information was tales shared over the latenight fires. When writing did come to the north, stories were written down in the form of sagas. Two of those sagas tell about seafarers discovering a land we now call North America, but which they called "Vinland the Good." In her talk, Dr. Elisabeth Ward will compare what is told in the Vinland Sagas with current archaeological findings and investigations in the Viking Age settlement and exploration of the Western North Atlantic: Iceland, Greenland, and the Canadian Maritimes, as well as asking what the role of women was in the discovery and exploration of North America . Elisabeth Ward
Dr. Ward is half-Icelandic and began studying the Icelandic language and Scandinavian history at the University of California at Berkeley in 1992. She worked at the Smithsonian Institution between 1998 and 2003 as the assistant curator for a special exhibition, "Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga."