I'm an engineer with a PhD in electrical engineering and have spent more than twenty years of my career in the nanoelectronics industry researching how to create better electronic chips. The need to tell stories has always been there, but I never really envisioned a career as a writer. It wasn't until my 40s that I decided it was time to rekindle that passion for writing. I've always loved the dark atmosphere of Scandinavian noir TV series like The Killing and The Bridge with their often flawed and intriguing characters. So when I decided to write my first novel, it was almost a given that it was going to be a Nordic Noir thriller.
A mother is murdered, and her seven-year-old daughter is the only witness, but she does not speak. Detective Huldar and psychologist Freyja must find out what the girl saw and stop the killer.
Yrsa Sigurdardottir puts her own stamp on the Nordic Noir genre and combines crime fiction with a touch of horror, which I really like. Although this book is more of a police procedural, the plot is layered and complex, and still brings out that dark, chilling, and disturbing side of the crimes and the secrets the characters hold.
I read this book when I was in Iceland during its winter on a 3-month writing retreat. I was staying in the Westfjord’s in a town called Pingeri - population 200, which influenced my connection to the novel which is set in one of Iceland’s small, isolated towns and follows the lives of several residents.
It is both mundane and fantastical and philosophical. Written by an Icelandic author and translated into English, the story felt unique and highly distinctive of Icelandic culture. It’s a poetic, witty, slow-paced read, with some black humor that made me laugh out loud.
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE ICELANDIC LITERATURE PRIZE
"The Icelandic Dickens" Irish Examiner
"Stefansson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy" EILEEN BATTERSBY, T.L.S. Supplement
"A wonderful, exceptional writer . . . A timeless storyteller" CARSTEN JENSEN
"Sometimes, in small places, life becomes bigger"
Sometimes a distance from the world's tumult opens our hearts and our dreams. In a village of four hundred souls, the infinite light of an Icelandic summer makes its inhabitants want to explore, and the eternal night of winter lights up the magic of the stars.
Sea Sagas of the North is about story and transformation.
Story is a simple device common to every human culture. Put simply, the patterns of good story match the shapes of our lives. Story was once tales told at every flickering fireside, the children’s faces upturned and wide-eyed. Now it…
Purely by accident I stumbled on to a 1961 Penguin translation of Njáls saga and it was a transformative moment in my life. I signed up for Old Norse the next term, and never looked back. The sagas were incomparably intelligent in matters of psychology and politics and interpersonal interaction. And then told with such wit. How could the utter miracle of the fluorescence of so much pure genius on a volcanic island in the middle of nowhere not grab you? And what confluence of friendly stars would allow me to spend a life teaching and writing about them in a law school no less, paid as if I were a real lawyer?
An excellent account of this supremely intelligent Machiavellian rogue and wit of a Norwegian king by the eminent Norwegian historian and namesake Sverre Bagge. King Sverrir’s saga was written by an Icelander with the king looking over his shoulder and apparently dictating portions of it. Nothing quite captures a medieval insurgency any better than this saga when read through the lens of Bagge’s astute commentary.
I am a historical fiction writer living in a landlocked village in the Chilterns, UK. I became obsessed with long sea voyages while researching my debut novel, On Wilder Seas, which is inspired by the true story of Maria, the only woman aboard the Golden Hind during Francis Drake’s circumnavigation voyage in 1577-1580. I immersed myself in the literature of the sea, in early modern sailors’ accounts of their terrifying voyages, in their wills and diaries, in maps and sea-logs. A ship is the perfect setting for a novel: the confined space, the impossibility of escape, the ever-present danger – and the hostile, unforgiving sea is the ultimate antagonist.
The ‘sea-fiction’ literary canon is very male-focused. But in the real world, women put to sea too, and were sometimes at the forefront of exploration. Maria, the heroine of my novel, was the first non-native woman to set foot on the northwest coast of America, when she arrived with Francis Drake during his circumnavigation voyage in the summer of 1579. Five hundred years earlier, on the other side of the continent, another female pioneer, Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, explored and settled the Newfoundland coast.
Gudrid, the ‘Far Travelled’ of Icelandic sagas, is brought to life in this beautifully written and vividly imagined novel. Rich in historical detail and steeped in the mythology and worldview of the Vikings, it’s a thoroughly convincing portrait of an extraordinary woman at the edge of the known world.
A haunting, compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is a daring re-telling of the 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. It is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked, even as Christianity gains favour, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern ice-fields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores.
Taking the accidental discovery of North America as its…
In 2009, when I decided to set a crime series in Iceland, I embarked on a decade of research into the country, its people, its literature, its culture, and its elves. I visited the country, I spoke to its inhabitants and I read books, lots of books – I couldn’t find an elf, but I was told where they live. I needed to understand its criminals, its victims, its police, and most of all my detective Magnus Jonson. These are the best books that helped me get to grips with Iceland.
To understand a country, you need to understand its history. This book is the most accessible account of Iceland’s history and is also very funny. I wish it had been written ten years ago when I started out on my Iceland odyssey. Egill covers the whole of Iceland’s history from Ingólfur throwing his home pillars into the sea in 874 to decide where he should land, to the great women’s strike of 1975 when 90 percent of Icelandic women stopped doing what they were expected to do and the country came to a stop. Also includes my favourite bit of Icelandic history. On 9 May 1940 Hitler invaded Belgium and Holland and that same day Britain invaded Iceland, an action so mildly embarrassing that we never really talk about it. Egill does, though.
"[A] joyously peculiar book." -- The New York Times
‘Bjarnason’s intriguing book might be about a cold place, but it’s tailor-made to be read on the beach.’ –New Statesman
The untold story of how one tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic has shaped the world for centuries.
The history of Iceland began 1,200 years ago, when a frustrated Viking captain and his useless navigator ran aground in the middle of the North Atlantic. Suddenly, the island was no longer just a layover for the Arctic tern. Instead, it became a nation whose diplomats and musicians, sailors and soldiers,…
This
was a beautifully written murder mystery set in a dying fishing village in the
north of Iceland. The narrator, Kalmann, is an intriguing character. He is a
shark fisherman who stumbles across a body in the snow.
At times he is variously
funny, frustrating, sad, and untrustworthy. He hints at past mysteries without
fully revealing what they are, or the part he played in them. I read a lot of
murder mysteries, and this is the one that has stuck in my mind throughout the
year.
He is the self-appointed sheriff of Raufarho fn, a sleepy town in northern Iceland, and has everything under control. There's no need to worry. Day by day, he treks the wide plains which surround the almost deserted village, hunts Arctic foxes and lays shark bait in the sea - to process the fish into the Icelandic fermented delicacy, ha karl. But inside Kalmann's head, the wheels sometimes spin backwards. One winter, after he discovers a pool of human blood in the snow, the swiftly unfolding events threaten to overwhelm him. But with his naive wisdom and pure-hearted courage, he makes…
Sea Sagas of the North is about story and transformation.
Story is a simple device common to every human culture. Put simply, the patterns of good story match the shapes of our lives. Story was once tales told at every flickering fireside, the children’s faces upturned and wide-eyed. Now it…
I am a Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham and have been teaching, researching, and writing about all aspects of the Viking Age and its aftermath for many years. My particular expertise is in the poetry, sagas, and runic writings of medieval Scandinavia. To understand these, it has been important to me to follow in the footsteps of the Vikings from the Baltic to North America, to see the places they were familiar with, and to experience the traces of their culture in those places. These books tell the stories which will guide the armchair traveller on the same voyages.
North of Britain, the Vikings encountered the uninhabited Sheep Isles, or the Faroes, before they went on to discover their better-known settlement of Iceland. Connections remained close, and in the 13th century, an unknown Icelandic author wrote this swashbuckling tale of the wealthy merchants and farmers who lived in these small and craggy islands in the Viking Age, their inter-island rivalries, and their tricky relationships with the rulers of their Norwegian homeland.
Have you ever done something on a whim and fallen in love with it? That was how I found Old Norse literature. I was taught the Norse language by reading the prose and poetry of medieval Iceland. In reading their literature, I discovered a rich, vibrant society filled with complex, passionate people. Here were doomed romantics, poets, and philosophers–along with chieftains and priests facing complex political and religious change. I undertook a PhD to study their literary craft. I hope, if nothing else, that my novel might encourage readers to go off and read the sagas themselves. And, if I am really lucky, they may just enjoy my stories too.
Romantic in style, taste, and theme, this is a saga that culminates in that most human of narratives: the love triangle. Heavily inspired by the European romance genre, this saga has key themes of chivalry, history, and poetry. With its unusual focus on women and their desires, it has been suggested that this saga might even have been written by a woman, and for this reason alone, it is worth a read.
I believe there is no greater character in Icelandic literature than the tragic Guðrún. For those who wish to learn more about women in medieval Iceland beyond stereotypical accounts of shield maidens and queens, this is the book for you.
Written around 1245 by an unknown author, the Laxdaela Saga is an extraordinary tale of conflicting kinships and passionate love, and one of the most compelling works of Icelandic literature. Covering 150 years in the lives of the inhabitants of the community of Laxriverdale, the saga focuses primarily upon the story of Gudrun Osvif's-daughter: a proud, beautiful, vain and desirable figure, who is forced into an unhappy marriage and destroys the only man she has truly loved - her husband's best friend. A moving tale of murder and sacrifice, romance and regret, the Laxdaela Saga is also a fascinating insight…
Since spending much of my childhood on the Cornish coast, I’ve been fascinated by the ocean. Fortunately, I get to spend a lot of time at sea these days working as a cruise enrichment speaker! I’ve done 36 cruises so far aboard 15 different ships over the past 8 years. Much as I love visiting ports all around the world, I particularly enjoy a full day at sea with some time to relax and read in. I hope you enjoy your cruise and the books on this list as much as I have!
I absolutely love this quirky book in which the author travels to each of the places mentioned in the shipping forecast, one of Britain’s best-loved broadcasting institutions. I delved into it with relish as I found myself sailing through many of these myself on cruises to Norway, Iceland, UK and other countries in Western Europe.
I enjoyed the exploration of the history, geography, and culture of each shipping area. The book is packed with interesting facts and anecdotes, along with tales from people the author meets along the way. As a bonus, it’s very amusing in places!
This solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast on BBC radio is as familiar as the sound of Big Ben chiming the hour. Since its first broadcast in the 1920s it has inspired poems, songs and novels in addition to its intended objective of warning generations of seafarers of impending storms and gales. Sitting at home listening to the shipping forecast can be a cosily reassuring experience. There's no danger of a westerly gale eight, veering southwesterly increasing nine later (visibility poor) gusting through your average suburban living room, blowing the Sunday papers all over the place and startling the…
I didn't expect to like a crime novel set in 1829 Iceland, and it is a slow burn but ultimately a gripping account of a woman’s part in the notorious murder of two men. Evocative, powerful writing brings to life the grim, reality of Icelandic life at the time and a society hugely judgemental of women. Family ties and relationships are fluid, life is precarious, held together by unforgiving religious dogma. All this is brought vividly to life through the author’s meticulous research of original documents and a deep knowledge and understanding of the culture and history. I really enjoyed the complexity the author brings to Agnes, the woman at the heart of it all, the women who accommodated her in the months before her execution, and those who were changed by her presence amongst them. The author paints her as an entirely believable survivor of neglect, coercive control, brutality…
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tv=ti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her.…
