Veröld is our new venue this year. We are honored to have this amazing building as one of our venues, a building named after the first female president in the world, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.

The Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute for Foreign Languages (VFI) is a research institute within the School of Humanities of the University of Iceland. It provides a fulcrum for academic scholars teaching and researching the languages now taught within the Department of Languages and Cultures: Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

The Institute for Foreign Languages is one of the affiliated institutes of the Centre for research in the Humanities at the University of Iceland and has been operating since the 1970s. In October 2001, in connection with the 90th anniversary of the founding of the University of Iceland and the European Year of Languages, it was agreed to add the name of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir to the institute, which thus became the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute for Foreign Languages. This was to honour Vigdís for her contributions to foreign-language learning and appreciation through her work as a teacher, translator, theatre director, President of Iceland and Goodwill Ambassador of Languages for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).