Each year the University Centre of the Westfjords hires experienced language teachers for the summer courses. Instructors in previous years have been among others Ólafur Guðsteinn Kristjánsson, Jón Bjarni Atlason, Ólöf Bergmannsdóttir, Bryndís Friðgeirsdóttir, Bjarney Ingibjörg Gunnlaugsdóttir, Dr. Peter Weiss 

The principal instructor for 2023 is Eiríkur Sturla Ólafsson and instructor of the elective classes within A1 and A2 is Marc Daníel Skipstað Volhardt.

Eiríkur has a BA degree in German and History and an MA degree in Translation Studies (2005). He studied in Reykjavík, Cologne and Berlin. 

He's a bit of a nerd when it comes to languages and grammar in particular and has a special interest in Latin, German, Icelandic (of course), Japanese and Etymology.

Eiríkur (or Eiki as most people call him) has been teaching Icelandic to foreigners since 2007 when he started teaching in Zürich, Switzerland. After moving on to Humboldt University Berlin for 6 years he has spent the last 8 years teaching Icelandic at the Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. The pandemic has brought some disturbance to the force though in the last few years. That has thankfully been changing lately.

Eiki has done many different things along with his teaching endeavours, such as sports and travel journalism, translation work and writing. Eiríkur's main interest is travelling, travelling and travelling some more, but he also counts his teaching to one of his major passions.

He also takes his swimming sessions very seriously and can't understand why his fellow countrymen waste all their time lying around in the "heiti pottur" when they could be having a good swim in the pool instead. 

 

Marc is a linguist from the University of Iceland but has also studied at Copenhagen University in Denmark and the University of Tromsø in Norway. His expertise are phonetics and phonology, the Nordic countries and Nordic languages, dialects and indigenous languages. Marc has e.g. carried out research in Mexico of the language Otomi. 

Marc teaches Icelandic as a second language, Danish as a second language and Scandinavian studies as well as general linguistics at the University of Iceland.

In his spare time, Marc enjoys travelling, photography, spending time in nature and his favourite is to have filtered coffee from a thermos flask at a petrol station.