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Stillbirth in Iceland: Causes and clinicopathological phenotypes
(University of Iceland, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, 2026-08-04) Bjarnadóttir, Ragnheiður; Jóhanna Gunnarsdóttir; Faculty of Medicine (UI); Læknadeild (HÍ); School of Health Sciences (UI); Heilbrigðisvísindasvið (HÍ)
Aims: to explore the stillbirth rate (SBR) and examine the etiology of stillbirth in Iceland from 1996-2021 as well as review the placental histopathology. Methods: Clinical information was obtained from medical records of mothers who had stillbirths and their infants (n=395). Infants were divided into groups according to gestational age (GA) at diagnosis of stillbirth: early preterm: ≥22 but < 28 weeks (n=140), late preterm: ≥28 but <37 weeks (n=130) and term: ≥ 37 weeks (n=125). Autopsy records and gross description of placenta were reviewed and microscopic slides re-evaluated and classified according to the Amsterdam placental workshop consensus into four major patterns of placental injury. Primary and associated causes of death were assigned according to the Stockholm classification of stillbirth. The SBR, maternal and fetoplacental characteristics, placental histopathology as well as cause of death were compared between two 13-year periods (1996-2008 and 2009-2021) and between GA groups. Chi-square tests were applied and p-level of 0.05 considered statistically significant. Results: The SBR decreased from 4.10 to 2.88/1000 births (p=0.009) between the former and latter period, but the reduction was limited to stillbirths diagnosed before term. Fewer stillbirths in the latter period were attributed to causes such as infection and placental abruption as well as unknown/unexplained. The most common primary causes of stillbirth were reduced circulation in the umbilical cord (25.6%) and placental insufficiency (25.2%); both increased with advancing GA. Despite no difference in proportion of small for gestational age infants between the two periods, placental weight <10th percentile for GA was significantly more common in the latter period than the earlier (30.3% vs 21.3%, p= 0.002), when a larger proportion of stillbirths was attributed to placental insufficiency (37.0 vs 17.0%, p=0.0002). The stillbirth rate at term was 1.18/1000 term infants with no decrease between the two periods. In stillbirth at term, placentas weighing under the 10th percentile were more common in the latter (43.5 vs 31.7%, p<0.05). Chronic villitis of unknown etiology (VUE) was significantly more often diagnosed in the latter period (40.3 vs,12.7%, p<0.01. Cord complications and placental insufficiency were the most common causes of stillbirth at term as 72% (91/125) of deaths were attributed to these causes, either alone or together. Compared to the earlier period, stillbirth was significantly more often attributed to placental insufficiency (with or without cord complications) in the latter compared to the earlier (56.5% vs. 22.2%, p<0.001). Placental histologic slides were reviewed for 96.4% stillborn singletons and classified into four major patterns of placental injury. Maternal vascular malperfusion (MVM) was diagnosed in 19.0%, fetal vascular malperfusion (FVM) in 31.6%, acute chorioamnionitis (ACA) in 32.2% and VUE in 15.9%. More than one pattern of placental injury was found in 7.7% and none of the major patterns in 27.9% of placentas. A similar proportion of MVM was seen in all GA groups, FVM was more common ≥28 weeks whereas ACA was most frequent <28 weeks and VUE most often diagnosed at term. A higher proportion of maternal vascular malperfusion was found in stillbirths with small for gestational age (SGA) infants than non-SGA (23.0 vs 6.1%) as well as in stillbirths with maternal hypertensive disorder of pregnancy than in stillbirths with a normotensive mother (23.9 vs 11.8%). The umbilical cord was classified as at risk in half (53.8%) of singleton stillbirths, the proportion increased with gestational age (28.9% <28 weeks, 56.0% ≥28 but <37 and 71.7% at term). Hypercoiled, excessively long and wrapped cords were most common. Term stillbirths with cord at risk often also had placental MVM and/or VUE. Conclusions: The SBR decreased in the latter period due to a reduction in preterm stillbirth but the SBR at term was unchanged. Reduced circulation of the umbilical cord and placental insufficiency were the commonest causes of death, both increasing with gestational age. Stillbirth due to infection and placental abruption as well as unexplained stillbirths decreased during the study period whereas deaths attributed to placental insufficiency became more common, reflecting lack of reduction of stillbirth at term in the latter period. Stillbirths with VUE and FVM, as well as umbilical cord at risk, were more common with advancing GA and often without recognized risk factors. Understanding major patterns of placental injury and their correlation to clinical phenotypes of stillbirth is valuable when counselling after stillbirth and planning surveillance of a subsequent pregnancy.
Verk
Professional Knowledge in Transition: Police Education Reform and the Reconfiguration of Knowledge in Icelandic Policing
(University of Iceland, School of Education, Faculty of Education and Diversity, 2026-08) Bragason, Olafur Orn; Guðrún Geirsdóttir og Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson; Faculty of Education and Diversity (UI); Deild menntunar og margbreytileika (HÍ); School of Education (UI); Menntavísindasvið (HÍ)
This doctoral thesis examines how Iceland’s 2016 police education reform reconfigured the forms, value, and legitimacy of professional knowledge as basic police education was shifted from a vocational model to a university-based programme. The reform formed part of a wider professionalisation process with the intention to strengthen the police’s analytical, ethical and communicative competence so that officers are better equipped to respond to an increasingly complex policing environment. Using the analytical perspectives of Shulman, Eraut and Chan, the thesis examines how different forms of knowledge are produced, valued and rendered legitimate across policy, educational and workplace settings. The research comprises four interrelated studies using a multi-method, multi-level design combining qualitative and quantitative approaches: (I) a historical discourse analysis of the policy and legislative texts that framed the reform; (II) an institutional analysis of the implementation of flexible learning and its relationship to workforce needs, access to education, and the system-level legitimation of the reform; (III) a longitudinal study of students’ valuations of professional competence before and after police education reform; and (IV) qualitative interviews with newly graduated officers examining how professional knowledge is enacted and legitimised in practice. The findings suggest that the reform achieved institutional alignment with higher education, but that epistemic and cultural change unfolded more slowly. At the policy level, legitimacy was built on both technocratic and professionalising logics; at the educational level, police students in the university-based programme placed greater value on analytical and relational competence than students in the earlier vocational model; and at the workplace level, academic and experiential knowledge remained only partially integrated. The thesis conceptualises these processes as part of a multi-level knowledge formation in policing and uses the concept of comprehensive competence to describe the cognitive, ethical, and relational dimensions of professional practice. The study contributes to international debates on professional education by portraying how reforms in a small state illuminate the complex interplay between institutional change, learning cultures, and the evolving legitimacy of professional knowledge.
Verk
Pathways to Sustainable Eating: Fostering Sustainable Attunement through Commensality and Collective Culinary Creativity
(University of Iceland, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Sociology, Anthropology and Folkloristics, 2026) Viðarsdóttir, Auður; Valdimar Tr. Hafstein; Faculty of Sociology, Anthropology and Folkloristics (UI); Félagsfræði-, mannfræði- og þjóðfræðideild (HÍ); School of Social Sciences (UI); Félagsvísindasvið (HÍ)
Considerable improvements can be achieved for human and planetary health if everyday food practices are transformed into a sustainable direction, as industrial food systems account for one third of greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to ecosystem degradation. Although the food system is global in scope, changes at local and regional levels are significant to drive its transformation. This PhD dissertation explores the experiences of individuals who have adopted more sustainable or healthier diets (e.g., vegans, vegetarians, flexitarians, and more) in Iceland in recent years with the aim to generate insights to inform further research and policy toward more sustainable and healthier foodways in the country. The research was a part of the transdisciplinary project Sustainable Healthy Diets: Filling the Gaps and Paving the Way for a Sustainable Future, funded by Rannís through the Strategic Research and Development Program 2020–2023. Grounded in ethnology and folkloristics, the analysis emphasizes meaning-making processes in everyday life. The study employs ethnographic methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and a qualitative questionnaire, to investigate the motivations, challenges, and practices associated with dietary transformations among people in Iceland. The dissertation is theoretically informed by more-than-human approaches that bridge the social sciences, humanities, and ecology, and frame eating as an active, embodied engagement that places humans in an ongoing, contingent relation with the world. The study’s findings contribute to research on sustainable dietary transformations, notably by shifting the focus from individual dietary changes to how food and eating can be actively employed to reform human–nature relations and build community. The study identifies creative tinkering as one of the main factors that facilitates and sustains a change toward more sustainable diets—a dynamic process in which new food habits gradually align with practitioners’ core values, bodily needs, and social and natural environments, constituting meaning-making through embodied relations with one’s own body, nature, and other living beings. The main hindering factor in maintaining a new diet, especially in the case of vegans, is the challenging social situations that alternative food practices can create, such as when new food values clash with family traditions or culinary heritage. However, creative tinkering reinforces people’s core values in such a way that it becomes easier for them to overcome and negotiate difficult social situations, share new food values, and maintain their kinship ties through repeated everyday commensality. New values thus become meaningful through human and more-than-human relations, demonstrating the transformative potential of eating as simultaneously a cultural and physiological process. In addition to situating commensality and kinship as relevant analytical tools within dietary sustainability research, the dissertation contributes two original concepts for further application and development in future research: sustainable attunement and collective culinary creativity. Sustainable attunement describes the iterative, embodied process of aligning new values with food habits, bodily needs, and social practices, including the emotional labor of navigating social frictions while remaining true to those values, all of which support the long-term maintenance of a new diet. Collective culinary creativity is a strategy for creating meaningful connections around food and sustainability in local contexts, enhancing the transformative potential of cooking and eating and effectively integrating ethnological methods into transdisciplinary research. Moreover, exploring food-related practices through the conceptual lens of time reveals that the values people build through social relationships often clash with the capitalist, dualistic logic that shapes the global food system and much modern knowledge production. Food’s relational role—as more than a commodity and a means to nurture human and more-thanhuman relations—is frequently undervalued within prevailing systems, which can hinder change as transformations become established largely through social ties. This mismatch must be critically examined to prevent undermining sustainable practices in everyday life. Lastly, this dissertation reflects on the role of ethnology in transdisciplinary research aimed at sustainable food transformations, arguing that ethnologists are particularly well suited to tackle complex socio-ecological challenges and engage with the inherent complexities and contradictions of dietary changes, ultimately facilitating sustainability transformations that treat everyday practices as sites of potential radical change.
Verk
Making Sense of Gender in Compulsory School Practices in Iceland
(University of Iceland, School of Education, Faculty of Philosophy, History and Archaeology, 2023-10) Þrastardóttir, Bergljót; Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson og Steinunn Helga Lárusdóttir; Faculty of Philosophy, History and Archaeology (UI); Deild heimspeki, sagnfræði og fornleifafræði (HÍ); School of Education (UI); Menntavísindasvið (HÍ)
The Act on Equal Status and Equal Rights Irrespective of Gender no. 150/2020 and the current national curriculum for compulsory school education in Iceland emphasise the promotion of gender equality and queer education. However, there are few signs of the enactment of these obligations at the compulsory school level, and research is lacking on the interplay of gender and education. I found this intriguing and decided that it was important to inquire about the gendered aspects of school practices at the compulsory school level, especially since Iceland has been internationally reported to be a feminist paradise. I chose to do the study presented in this thesis on how gender is manifested in school culture and practices in the upper grades of the compulsory school level (grades 8–10, age level 13–16) in one school. The study consists of one data set produced through ethnographic methods. Participant observations were conducted for three months, which gave the researcher an opportunity to interact closely in the field, producing deeper knowledge than before on how actors make sense of gender and how it is performed at the compulsory school level in Iceland. Students and school staff at the upper level of the school participated in group and individual interviews. Rich observational data and additional material was collected to acquire insights into the gendered practices and discourses in the school. This study contributes to and generates new knowledge on how the school and the culture define and (re)produce gender differences, particularly with regards to the available gender positions in schools. The thesis is a compilation of three articles. Article I explores gender dividing practices reflected in different school spaces. Article II explores how students’ gender performativity and conceptualisation of girls as drama supports binary understanding of gender. Article III presents girls claiming discursive space to be able to change the normative gender script in school. Together, these articles give insight into the gender aspects of compulsory school practices in Iceland. Main findings indicate that the school environment favoured dividing practices between boys and girls in both overt and subtle ways, with a relative lack of resistance to the persistent gender division. This was reflected in (cis)heteronormative understanding of gender and gender-based arrangement of different school spaces that reproduced binary gender relations. The understanding of gender categories in school settings had a vital role in positioning students based on their masculine or feminine performativity and reproduced the ideas reflected in societal discourse on gender and social media promoting stereotypical gendered performativity. Claiming discursive space to resist the normative gender script available to students was an individual effort which came with the risk of rejection. The findings further suggest that schools must do better and comply with their duties as to promote gender equality education instead of limiting available gender positions and, thus, students’ freedom to express fluid gender and sexual identities. Schools must also dismantle the myth of Iceland as a gender equal paradise since gender inequalities are still very prominent in schools and will go unnoticed if not addressed.
Verk
Animals on display in an Age of Extinction
(University of Iceland, School of Humanities, Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies, 2026) Kjartansdóttir, Katla; Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir; Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies (UI); Íslensku- og menningardeild (HÍ); School of Humanities (UI); Hugvísindasvið (HÍ)
The examination presented in this PhD dissertation unpacks the significant but changing role of animals, as living beings and in the forms of museum objects, souvenirs, and symbols. The main theoretical frameworks derive from crossdisciplinary, post-humanist perspectives, which have highlighted the agency and role of more-than-humans as important and valuable companion species. In line with these perspectives the aim throughout the dissertation is to draw forth the important role of more-than-humans (including animals and objects) as actants with their own cultural biographies and thing power. In this relation, particular attention is given to visual and material representations of the Atlantic puffin and the extinct great auk within the context of art, tourism and museums. The investigation reveals, for example, how the Atlantic puffin as a living animal, material object and visual symbol has increasingly been activated within the context of Arctic tourism in Iceland. Another aim of the dissertation is to shed light on how current human induced environmental challenges, such as climate change and animal extinction, have impacted and changed our human/more-than-human relations. Furthermore, how these changes are met and engaged with through visual and material representations within the context of art, tourism, and museums. The dissertation contributes to the emerging field of multi-species studies, across disciplines, which include animal studies, post-humanist studies and more-than-human studies. The four case studies shed light on the complexities, challenges, and politics of representing human/more-than-human entanglements in our present epoch, frequently described as the Age of Extinction. An epoch, which demands continual challenging of traditional, dualistic boundaries and divisions to raise fruitful discussions and, not least, to discover collective solutions. Throughout the dissertation museums, and other cultural spaces, are regarded as important arenas where discussions and critical reflections can take place on urgent dark ecological matters of our times, such as rapid animal extinction.

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