BRINGING TOGETHER KINDRED SPIRITS IN PUBLISHING, PRINTING AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS
NEXT EVENT
Luncheon Meeting of The Wynkyn de Worde Society
Morrísland: Kelmscott to Hlíðarendikot
Peter Jones
Wednesday 20 May 2026 | Goodenough College | 12:15 for 12:40pm
Please Note: Due to unforeseen circumstances our original May luncheon speaker, Tom Chivers, has had to cancel. Hopefully we will see him later in the year. Our Chair, Peter Jones, is standing in.
Our first meeting at our new venue of Goodenough College.
Peter’s lecture will chart William Morris’s first visit to Iceland during the summer of 1871, starting from Morris’s beloved home on the Thames – Kelmscott Manor – sailing on the Danish Postal Ship from Edinburgh to the Faeroe Islands, finally arriving in Reykjavík on Friday 14 July 1871. Morris spent two months trekking around Iceland with his friend Eríkur Magnússon, together with his guides Gisli and Eyvindr.
The main output from Peter’s research is Morrísland, a metaphorical map that plots his findings and interpretations about Morris and Iceland. We will travel to various Morrísland regions such as the Peninsular of Eschewal and Escape, which includes the Bay of Cuckolds, Lower Arsenic, near Wallpaper and Higher Arsenic, near Devon Great Consols. Moving on we will travel to the Jökul of Ambiguous Reality & Myth (Icelandic Sagas), before finally traversing The Fjords of Western Futures. Through these and other regions, Peter will posit why Morris visited Iceland twice, and how these experiences influenced him.
It is no coincidence that after returning from Iceland to his Thames-side abode, Morris went on to develop a passion for books, heritage preservation, workers’ rights, socialism and women’s suffrage.
