American frontier

The American frontier comprises the geography, history, folklore, and cultural expression of life in the forward wave of American westward expansion that began with English colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last mainland territories as states in 1912. In North American development, "frontier" refers to a contrasting region at the edge of a European-American line of settlement, or settled area. American folklore is focused primarily on the 19th century, especially west of the Mississippi River. Enormous popular attention in the media focuses on the Western United States in the second half of the 19th century, a period sometimes called the Old West, or the Wild West, frequently exaggerating the romance and violence of the period.

As defined by Hine and Faragher, "frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states." They explain, "It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of peoples and cultures that gave birth and continuing life to America." Through treaties with foreign nations and native tribes; political compromise; military conquest; establishment of law and order; the building of farms, ranches, and towns; the marking of trails and digging of mines; and the pulling in of great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from coast to coast, fulfilling the dreams of Manifest Destiny. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his "Frontier Thesis" (1893) theorized that the frontier was a process that transformed Europeans into a new people, the Americans, whose values focused on equality, democracy, and optimism, as well as individualism, self-reliance, and even violence. Thus, Turner's Frontier Thesis proclaimed the westward frontier as the defining process of American history.

Icelandic language

Icelandic ⁱ/aɪsˈlændɪk/ ( íslenska ) is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. It is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the colonisation of the Americas. Icelandic, Faroese, Norn, and Western Norwegian formerly constituted West Nordic; Danish, Eastern Norwegian and Swedish constituted East Nordic. Modern Norwegian Bokmål is influenced by both groups, leading the Nordic languages to be divided into mainland Scandinavian languages and Insular Nordic (including Icelandic).

Most Western European languages have greatly reduced levels of inflection, particularly noun declension. In contrast, Icelandic retains a four-case synthetic grammar comparable to, but considerably more conservative and synthetic than, German. By virtue of its being in the Germanic family, which as a whole reduced the Indo-European case system, it is inappropriate to compare the grammar of Icelandic to that of the more conservative Baltic and Slavic languages of the Indo-European family, many of which retain six or more cases, except to note that Icelandic utilises a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic also has many instances of oblique cases without any governing word, as does Latin. For example, many of the various Latin ablatives have a corresponding Icelandic dative. The conservatism of the Icelandic language and its resultant near-isomorphism to Old Norse (which is equivalently termed Old Icelandic by linguists) means that modern Icelanders can easily read the Eddas, sagas, and other classic Old Norse literary works created in the tenth through thirteenth centuries.

Poetic Edda

The Poetic Edda is the modern attribution for an unnamed collection of Old Norse poems. Several versions exist, all consisting primarily of text from the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript known as the Codex Regius. The Codex Regius is arguably the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends, and from the early 19th century onwards has had a powerful influence on later Scandinavian literatures, not merely through the stories which it contains, but also through the visionary force and dramatic quality of many of the poems. It has also become an inspiring model for many later innovations in poetic meter, particularly in the Nordic languages, offering many varied examples of terse, stress-based metrical schemes working without any final rhyme, and instead using alliterative devices and strongly concentrated imagery. Poets who have acknowledged their debt to the Poetic Edda include Vilhelm Ekelund, August Strindberg, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, and Karin Boye.

University of Colorado

Coordinates: 39°44′43″N 104°59′00″W / 39.745196°N 104.983340°W / 39.745196; -104.983340

The University of Colorado system is a system of public universities in Colorado consisting of four campuses: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver in downtown Denver and at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. It is governed by an elected, nine-member Board of Regents of the University of Colorado.

The University of Colorado advances the economy, health and culture of Colorado and beyond, educating more than 435,000 students who have become catalysts in business, arts, health and community growth. CU’s four campuses feature top-tier faculty and hands-on learning opportunities in an environment where students thrive. Students and faculty at CU's four campuses are involved with research and learning that advances communities in Colorado and around the globe.

The University of Colorado's official abbreviation is CU, not the more intuitive "UC". This is to avoid confusion with the University of California system (founded in 1868), which at the time of the creation of the CU system was already referred to as UC.

University of Colorado Boulder

The University of Colorado Boulder (UCB, commonly referred to as CU, Boulder, CU-Boulder, or Colorado) is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado, United States. It is the flagship university of the University of Colorado system and was founded five months before Colorado was admitted to the union in 1876.

In 2010, the university consisted of nine colleges and schools and offered over 150 academic programs and enrolled 29,952 students. Twelve Nobel Laureates, nine MacArthur Fellows, and 18 astronauts have been affiliated with CU-Boulder as students, researchers, or faculty members in its history. The university received nearly $454 million in sponsored research in 2010 to fund programs like the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and JILA.

The Colorado Buffaloes compete in 17 varsity sports and are members of the NCAA Division I Pac-12 Conference. The Buffaloes have won 28 national championships: 20 in skiing, seven total in men's and women's cross country, and one in football. Approximately 1,500 students participate in 34 intercollegiate club sports annually as well.