Elisabeth Ida Ward

Elisabeth Ida Ward served as assistant curator and co-editor of the Smithsonian Institution's special traveling exhibition, Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, from 2000 to 2004, an international project that involved diplomatic and scholarly involvement with all five Nordic Countries. She went on to complete her PhD in Scandinavian Languages and Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. While focusing her dissertation research on the medieval Icelandic literature known as the sagas, she learned Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish as well as German and Latin. As a Scandinavianist, she has studied the history, culture and politics of the Nordic countries and their interactions over time and participated in international academic projects and conferences that have brought her frequently to the Nordic countries. 

From 2012 until 2017, she served as the Director of the Scandinavian Cultural Center at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and on the advisory board for the National Nordic Museum. Since 2005, she has served as a consultant for Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center, helping to create exhibitions about the Vikings, Norwegian folk culture, and Norse mythology. In 2017, she began applying her love of history on the ground to small museums in California, and is currently the Executive Director of the Moulton Museum in south Orange County.

The daughter of an American serviceman who met his wife while stationed in Iceland in the 1960s, Elisabeth has a lifelong passion for all things Scandinavian.

Language ​​spoken: English