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Specimen No. 37. Blue Skimmer Dragonfly
Specimen No. 37
Name: Blue Skimmer Dragonfly | Orcadella glaesina
Discovered by: Þóra Margrét Jónsdóttir
Date of Discovery: 18 June 1952
Locality: Viðey Island, Faxaflói Bay, Iceland
Catalog No. FD - 08 - 37
The Blue Skimmer (Orcadella glaesina) was first recorded in the summer of 1952 on the mossy shores of Viðey, a volcanic islet nestled in the gray chop of Faxaflói Bay, just north of Reykjavík. The discovery was made not by a scientist or trained collector, but by Þóra Margrét Jónsdóttir, a sixteen-year-old girl who kept a stitched notebook of birds, lichen, and cloud shapes — drawn with borrowed pencils and ink made from boiled blueberry skins.
The dragonfly had landed, according to her notes, on a pile of whale-smoothed driftwood beside the church ruins. The coloring was like nothing she’d seen in the region: the wings veined with dull lavenders, mist blues, sea glass greens, and the faintest blush of pink — as if the color had been applied by brush, then quickly rinsed by fog. Its thorax was nearly charcoal, matte and lean, and its large twin eyes were the precise pale green of sunken sea rope.
No formal training shaped her rendering. The illustration was done on recycled paper using a dipping pen and a single brush, its imperfections — splotches, unsteady outlines, anatomical guesses — left uncorrected. And yet, it captured something the taxonomists could not: the soft, weathered translucence of an organism shaped by mist and basalt and salt wind. There are slight asymmetries in the wing proportions and an extra segment added mistakenly to the leg. Yet despite its inaccuracies, her depiction captured the insect’s stillness, its complete lack of urgency — a quality that, curiously, matched the tone of the entire field book.
Viðey has a long-standing tradition of observational recordkeeping through art — especially among girls and women — passed down through wool-working circles and informal coastal schools. It was believed that what one could draw, one could name, and naming brought respect to even the smallest things. For many decades, this practice was dismissed by Icelandic universities as mere decorative folklore. But in 1964, when Þóra’s notebook was rediscovered in a Reykjavík attic, her Blue Skimmer sketch became the first non-scientific illustration to enter the National Museum’s entomological archive.
In 1973, the drawing was brought to the attention of a biologist from Hólar University, who had been cataloguing unclassified Icelandic Odonata. The wings, once thought too stylized to be accurate, were determined to be consistent with a localized subspecies. The name Orcadella glaesina was applied to the specimen posthumously, based on the bluish, reflective appearance of the wings when viewed from below.
In Flatey tradition, nothing is considered “discovered” unless it is also remembered. To this day, a framed reproduction of the drawing remains in the island’s post office, beside a photograph of Þóra in a hand-knitted lopapeysa, arms crossed, standing in front of the same lichen patch where she spotted the Blue Skimmer.
No other specimen has been captured since.
Note: High quality archival glicée print on acid-free paper, a method that creates fine art reproductions with exceptional color accuracy and longevity. Pigments-based inks are designed to resist fading and discoloration and capture the finest details and subtle color variations with great precision.
Housed in a 4×6” crystal-clear acrylic specimen block, its 1” depth allows freestanding display. Each piece is designed to exhibit on desk or shelf..
Fly Design uses a practice known as entonology — the study of fictitious insects — to reimagine the natural world through scientific storytelling and poetic design.
Specimen No. 37
Name: Blue Skimmer Dragonfly | Orcadella glaesina
Discovered by: Þóra Margrét Jónsdóttir
Date of Discovery: 18 June 1952
Locality: Viðey Island, Faxaflói Bay, Iceland
Catalog No. FD - 08 - 37
The Blue Skimmer (Orcadella glaesina) was first recorded in the summer of 1952 on the mossy shores of Viðey, a volcanic islet nestled in the gray chop of Faxaflói Bay, just north of Reykjavík. The discovery was made not by a scientist or trained collector, but by Þóra Margrét Jónsdóttir, a sixteen-year-old girl who kept a stitched notebook of birds, lichen, and cloud shapes — drawn with borrowed pencils and ink made from boiled blueberry skins.
The dragonfly had landed, according to her notes, on a pile of whale-smoothed driftwood beside the church ruins. The coloring was like nothing she’d seen in the region: the wings veined with dull lavenders, mist blues, sea glass greens, and the faintest blush of pink — as if the color had been applied by brush, then quickly rinsed by fog. Its thorax was nearly charcoal, matte and lean, and its large twin eyes were the precise pale green of sunken sea rope.
No formal training shaped her rendering. The illustration was done on recycled paper using a dipping pen and a single brush, its imperfections — splotches, unsteady outlines, anatomical guesses — left uncorrected. And yet, it captured something the taxonomists could not: the soft, weathered translucence of an organism shaped by mist and basalt and salt wind. There are slight asymmetries in the wing proportions and an extra segment added mistakenly to the leg. Yet despite its inaccuracies, her depiction captured the insect’s stillness, its complete lack of urgency — a quality that, curiously, matched the tone of the entire field book.
Viðey has a long-standing tradition of observational recordkeeping through art — especially among girls and women — passed down through wool-working circles and informal coastal schools. It was believed that what one could draw, one could name, and naming brought respect to even the smallest things. For many decades, this practice was dismissed by Icelandic universities as mere decorative folklore. But in 1964, when Þóra’s notebook was rediscovered in a Reykjavík attic, her Blue Skimmer sketch became the first non-scientific illustration to enter the National Museum’s entomological archive.
In 1973, the drawing was brought to the attention of a biologist from Hólar University, who had been cataloguing unclassified Icelandic Odonata. The wings, once thought too stylized to be accurate, were determined to be consistent with a localized subspecies. The name Orcadella glaesina was applied to the specimen posthumously, based on the bluish, reflective appearance of the wings when viewed from below.
In Flatey tradition, nothing is considered “discovered” unless it is also remembered. To this day, a framed reproduction of the drawing remains in the island’s post office, beside a photograph of Þóra in a hand-knitted lopapeysa, arms crossed, standing in front of the same lichen patch where she spotted the Blue Skimmer.
No other specimen has been captured since.
Note: High quality archival glicée print on acid-free paper, a method that creates fine art reproductions with exceptional color accuracy and longevity. Pigments-based inks are designed to resist fading and discoloration and capture the finest details and subtle color variations with great precision.
Housed in a 4×6” crystal-clear acrylic specimen block, its 1” depth allows freestanding display. Each piece is designed to exhibit on desk or shelf..
Fly Design uses a practice known as entonology — the study of fictitious insects — to reimagine the natural world through scientific storytelling and poetic design.